Aaron ben Elijah

Aaron ben Elijah, often called Aaron ben Elijah the Younger to distinguish him from the earlier Aaron ben Joseph of Constantinople, lived from about 1328 to 1369 and is widely considered the most prominent Karaite Jewish theologian, active chiefly in Constantinople after being born in Nicomedia. His major philosophical work, Etz HaChayyim, or Tree of Life, written in 1346, is a hundred and fourteen chapter treatise modeled on Maimonides's Guide to the Perplexed that addresses God's existence and incorporeality, the creation of the world, biblical anthropomorphism, divine unity and providence, adopting the Mutazilite Kalam theological system and combining atomism with Aristotelian elements to reconcile revelation with philosophy, while arguing that Kalam represented a natural religion whereas Greek philosophy on its own was a foreign import harmful to the purity of the Torah. He also wrote Gan Eden, or Garden of Eden, a comprehensive exposition of Karaite religious law completed in 1354, and Keter Torah, or Crown of the Torah, a philosophically inflected Torah commentary completed in 1362.