Students of religion are aware that the same ritual act can have many meanings depending on the cultural context. As Walter Kaelber observes, “Viewed cross-culturally, a given ascetic form may have different, even opposite objectives.” Accordingly, the same detail may have entirely opposite meanings in different ascetic regimens. Thus for the biblical Daniel and his ascetic heirs, beans were an ideal food, probably because they are dry and not susceptible to impurity; but for Pythagoreans and others, they were to be avoided perhaps because in certain Mediterranean populations, they presented an actual medical danger. These factors alert us to the principle that understanding a ritual system in its cultural context is vital. They also encourage us to read rituals and actions as we read texts–coding their creators' statements about what they value in a religious system and what they aspire to be.

There is probably no topic in Maimonides' philosophy more thoroughly explored than that of human perfection, many of the studies dealing explicitly with the notion of imitatio Dei. Maimonides' view of ultimate perfection has been interpreted alternatively as primarily either intellectual, political, ethical, or halakhic. Many have interpreted Maimonides as positing a harmonious combination of the contemplative life and the life of socially oriented activity—bios praktikos—despite the evident tension between the two.Others have explained the apparent inconsistency in Maimonides' approach in terms of the distinction between exoteric and esoteric doctrines. The appropriate texts in Maimonides' writings have been analyzed in detail, and the sources at his disposal have been discussed at length. The challenge facing the student of Maimonides' thought, however, lies not only in explicating the individual texts which deal in a direct manner with the topic, but also in identifying all the issues and texts which are relevant to the topic, as well as their sources, and how they are related.