predecessors was his unflagging commitment toward using the Scripture as a means of elucidating the status quo of his surrounding Jewish community; as a historical scholar, Abarbanel was able to contemporize the lessons of the historical eras described in the Scripture and apply them successfully in his explanations of modern Jewish living. Abarbanel, who had himself taken part in the politics of the great powers of the day, believed that mere consideration of the literary elements of Scripture was insufficient, and that the political and social life of the characters in the Tanakh must also be taken into account. Due to the overall excellence and exhaustiveness of Abarbanel's exegetical literature, he was looked to as a beacon for later Christian scholarship, which often included the tasks of translating and condensing his works. His exegetical writings are set against a richly conceived backdrop of the Jewish historical and sociocultural experience, and it is often implied that his exegesis was sculpted with the purpose of giving hope to the Jews of Spain that the arrival of the Messiah was imminent in their days. This idea distinguished him from many other philosophers of the age, who did not rely as heavily on Messianic concepts. Philosophy Abarbanel's Jewish predecessors in the realm of philosophy did not receive the same tolerance at his hands as the Christians did. Men such as Isaac Albalag, Shem-Tov ibn Falaquera, Gersonides, Moses ben Joshua, and others, were denounced by Abarbanel as infidels and misleading guides for assuming a comparatively liberal standpoint in religiophilosophical questions. Abarbanel was essentially an opponent of philosophy, despite his authority on the subject, because his entire understanding of the Jewish religion was based on God's revelation in Jewish history. A characteristic instance of his vacillation is afforded by his most important religious work, the Rosh Amanah (The Pinnacle of Faith) (Amsterdam, 1505), whose title derives from Song of Songs 4:8. This work, devoted to the championship of the Maimonidean 13 articles of belief against the attacks of Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, ends with the statement that Maimonides compiled these articles merely in accordance with the fashion of other nations, which set up axioms or fundamental principles for their science. However, he holds that Judaism has nothing in common with human science; that the teachings of the Torah are revelations from God, and therefore are all of equal value; that among them are neither principles