{"id":203,"date":"2009-08-20T01:12:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T01:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html"},"modified":"2009-08-20T01:12:16","modified_gmt":"2009-08-20T01:12:16","slug":"ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html","title":{"rendered":"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An &#8220;Apikoros&#8221; (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For those who were wondering about <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-on-intelligent-design.html\">my immediately previous entry<\/a>: When the classical Torah commentator Abraham ibn Ezra spoke of a &#8220;heretic&#8221; who challenges the simple in faith about God&#8217;s existence, but who gets an adequate response only from the discerning Jew who contemplates nature&#8217;s intelligent design, the word that Ibn Ezra uses for &#8220;heretic&#8221; is <i>apikoros<\/i>. In rabbinic Hebrew, there are other terms that convey different shades of heresy. You&#8217;ll find the original Hebrew here in an online version of <i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.hebrewbooks.org\/pdfpager.aspx?req=9596&amp;st=&amp;pgnum=303\">Mikraot Gedolot<\/a><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: normal\">&nbsp;on Exodus,&nbsp;<\/span><\/i>6 lines up from the bottom of Ibn Ezra&#8217;s section on the page.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nIf you recall, I told you last week that another great medieval sage,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/a-heretic-in-jewish-terms-someone-who-denies-intelligent-design.html\">Yehudah Ha&#8217;Levi<\/a>, clearly defined an&nbsp;<i>apikoros<\/i>&nbsp;as someone who rejects intelligent design. So too does Ibn Ezra. Perhaps they were secretly closet Evangelical Christians, suborned by the Discovery Institute, just like me, since we all know that all true Jews reject intelligent design. Don&#8217;t forget to add other rabbinic greats,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/maimonides-on-intelligent-design.html\">Maimonides<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/god-tinkers-he-interferes-and-miracles-happen-but-why.html\">Rabbeinu Bachya<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/04\/why-is-god-subtle.html\">Moshe Chaim Luzzatto<\/a>, and&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/06\/when-and-why-anti-darwin-sentiment-arose.html\">Samson Raphael Hirsch<\/a>,&nbsp;to your list of secret Christians.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Did I mention that Ibn Ezra, despite being a medieval rabbinic scholar, was hardly a stereotypical &#8220;frummie&#8221; black-hat type? Among other things he was the favorite rabbi of a later proto-modernist and skeptic,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.arts.ualberta.ca\/JHS\/reviews\/review136.htm\">Baruch Spinoza<\/a>.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For those who were wondering about my immediately previous entry: When the classical Torah commentator Abraham ibn Ezra spoke of a &#8220;heretic&#8221; who challenges the simple in faith about God&#8217;s existence, but who gets an adequate response only from the discerning Jew who contemplates nature&#8217;s intelligent design, the word that Ibn Ezra uses for &#8220;heretic&#8221;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lifes-origins-evolution"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ibn Ezra Agrees: An &quot;Apikoros&quot; (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An &quot;Apikoros&quot; (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design - Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For those who were wondering about my immediately previous entry: When the classical Torah commentator Abraham ibn Ezra spoke of a &#8220;heretic&#8221; who challenges the simple in faith about God&#8217;s existence, but who gets an adequate response only from the discerning Jew who contemplates nature&#8217;s intelligent design, the word that Ibn Ezra uses for &#8220;heretic&#8221;&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Kingdom of Priests\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-20T01:12:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David Klinghoffer\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An \"Apikoros\" (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design - Kingdom of Priests","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An \"Apikoros\" (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design - Kingdom of Priests","og_description":"For those who were wondering about my immediately previous entry: When the classical Torah commentator Abraham ibn Ezra spoke of a &#8220;heretic&#8221; who challenges the simple in faith about God&#8217;s existence, but who gets an adequate response only from the discerning Jew who contemplates nature&#8217;s intelligent design, the word that Ibn Ezra uses for &#8220;heretic&#8221;&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html","og_site_name":"Kingdom of Priests","article_published_time":"2009-08-20T01:12:16+00:00","author":"David Klinghoffer","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html","name":"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An \"Apikoros\" (Heretic) Is One Who Rejects Intelligent Design - Kingdom of Priests","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-08-20T01:12:16+00:00","dateModified":"2009-08-20T01:12:16+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/#\/schema\/person\/6e6734f7e172e24221264a565e8f4454"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/08\/ibn-ezra-agrees-an-apikoros-heretic-is-one-who-rejects-intelligent-design.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ibn Ezra Agrees: An &#8220;Apikoros&#8221; 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His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Weekly Standard, and the Jewish Forward. A California native, he currently lives on Mercer Island, Washington, with his wife and five children.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/author\/dklinghoffer"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/72"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}