while the heavens will endure.) Have there been other worlds besides our own? Are the heavenly bodies endowed with soul and reason? Have amulets and incantations any significance? What are the "Shedim"? What about metempsychosis? An opponent of Maimonides on philosophical grounds, Crescas was also dissatisfied with the method of Maimonides law code, the Mishneh Torah,. This was due to its absence of indications of the sources, the rare mention of divergent opinions, and the lack of provision to meet new cases, owing to its neglect to establish general principles of universal application ("Or Adonai," Preface). If among Jews he exercised for a long time only through Joseph Albo any perceptible influence, though he was studied, for instance, by Don Isaac Abravanel, who controverts especially his Messianic theories, and by Abram Shalom in his Neveh Shalom, Crescas' work was of prime and fundamental importance through the part it had in the shaping of Baruch Spinoza's system. Spinoza's distinction between attributes and properties is identical with Crescas' distinction between attributes subjectively ascribed and their objective reality in God. The connection between Spinoza's views on creation and free will, on love of God and of others, and those of Crescas has been established by Joël in his "Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinoza's" (Breslau, 1871). References Jewish philosophical and ethical texts Hebrew-language religious books