Design-Argument-Inspired, Midrashic Epistemology of Religion

In medieval Jewish philosophy, arguments from design often took a backseat to cosmological arguments for the existence of God. An earlier genre of Jewish literature, known as Midrash, contains some truncated anticipations of the argument from design. In this chapter, I develop two readings of a single Midrash. Each reading gives rise to its own epistemology of religion, drawing from the insights of the design argument. Placing this Midrash into the wider context of design arguments in the Jewish tradition, from ibn Pakuda to Maimonides, we shall discover a special focus, in Jewish theology, on blocking three concerns that any design argument must confront, the triple threat of deism, polytheism, and religious quietism.