 Maimonides (12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly "Shi'ur Qomah" whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical.Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah.Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide of the Perplexed.