  We witness the further departure of Judah’s thought from that of his predecessors when we examine his discussion of rhetoric and aesthetics. Medieval Aristotelians tended to locate rhetoric in the trivium (which also included logic and dialectic), and, thus, as propaedeutic to “higher” sciences such as metaphysics. In the Renaissance, however, eloquence was equated with wisdom, and the good rhetorician had to be proficient in all branches of human knowledge. This led many Jewish Renaissance thinkers to examine not only the classical authors (e.g., Cicero and Quintilian), but also to mine the Bible for its use of language and style. Whereas Maimonides and other Jewish Aristotelians had been interested in biblical rhetoric as a means to reproduce imaginative representations of philosophical truths to those unlearned in philosophy, Renaissance thinkers held that rhetoric was the art form par excellence, one that enabled the individual to command respect in public  life.[23]