1. Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 16. Maimonides wrote the Guide in Arabic for his student Joseph Ibn Aknin, who was struggling to reconcile traditional belief with Aristotelian science. In response to a written request for a Hebrew translation from the Jewish community of Lunel, the Rambam assured them that while he had no time for such an undertaking, the accomplished translator Shmuel Ibn Tibbon was working on it. Indeed, Ibn Tibbon consulted Maimonides while he drafted the Hebrew version. In 1190, this famed Provençal translator and linguist presented his Hebrew translation of the Guide. Most of the later translations were based on Ibn Tibbon’s work, which is considered highly accurate. For example, the sixteenth century saw both Latin and Italian versions of the Guide, both using Ibn Tibbon as their source. Later, German and Hungarian versions came out. An English translation by the Princeton-educated Methodist minister James Townley of the section in part 3 on the reasons for the commandments was published in 1827. A year after the debut of the Ibn Tibbon translation, the Spanish poet Yehuda Alharizi completed his own Hebrew translation. While considered both more lyrical and accessible than Ibn Tibbon’s, the Alharizi version never gained the same recognition. The Rambam’s son, Abraham, wrote that it contained inaccuracies. The scholar Solomon Munk returned to the original Arabic for his French translation and the first critical edition of the Guide (1856). Munk used manuscripts he had copied from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and incomplete manuscripts from the Bibliothèque nationale, Paris. Michael Friedlander produced the first English translation of the whole of the Guide based on the original Arabic in 1881. In 1963, Israel Prize laureate Shlomo Pines introduced a new English translation based on the Arabic. The Pines version is considered authoritative, and it spurred a flurry of academic interest in Maimonides in North America. In 1972, Yosef Kapach produced a new Hebrew translation. Professor Michael Schwarz of Tel Aviv University released his own Hebrew translation in 1997. The Hebrew version of this book used the Schwarz translation. The English version uses the Pines translation.
2. For a summary of the history of interpretation of the Guide, see Aviezer Ravitsky, “Sitrei Torato Shel Moreh Hanevukhim” [Secrets of the teaching of The Guide for the Perplexed], in Al Daat Hamakom: Mehkarim B’hagut Hayehudit Ub’toldoteheh [Studies in Jewish thought and its history] (Jerusalem: Keter Press, 1991), 142–82.
1. See, e.g., the surveys published by the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, http://www.midgam.com/results/articles/article.asp?articleId=33.
2. Moshe Halbertal, Maimonides: Life and Thought, trans. Joel Linsider (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 2.
3. See, e.g., Guide, part 1, chapter 26 [hereafter cited in the form 1:26]: “To speak at length of this matter would be superfluous, were it not for the notions to which the minds of the multitude are accustomed. For this reason, it behooves to explain the matter to those whose souls grasp at human perfection and, by dint of expatiating a little on the point in question just as we have done, to put an end to the fantasies that come to them from the age of infancy.”
4. I have chosen to use the proofs from the Mishneh Torah, as they are stated there more clearly than in the Guide. Translations from the Mishneh Torah are by Yedidya Sinclair.
5. See Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, 3; see also Guide, 2:1: “it is impossible that He should be two or more, because of the impossibility of a multitude of separate things that have no physical form.”
6. See the introduction to part 2 of the Guide, premise 12.
7. See Guide, 2:1.
8. For example, “One thing I ask of the Lord . . . to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Ps. 27:4); “My soul thirsts . . . O when will I come to appear before God!” (Ps. 42:3). Translations of biblical passages are from the JPS Tanakh.
9. See, e.g., Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Philosophical Implications, trans. Jackie Feldman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
10. The most prominent source of this idea is in the thought of Plotinus. See my discussion in chapter 12, “Perplexity and God.”
11. Guide, 1:56.
12. See, e.g., Hermann Cohen, Religion of Reason: Out of the Sources of Judaism, trans. Simon Kaplan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Yehezkel Kaufmann, Toldot Haemunah Hayisraelit [History of the religion of Israel] (Tel Aviv: Dvir Press, 1952), 2:227.
13. Today, more than a few Bible scholars disagree with the unequivocal distinctions made by Kaufman and claim that the biblical text is richer and more multifaceted than Kaufman allowed. One of the most interesting voices in this discussion is Yisrael Knohl, who argues that in Leviticus one may find an almost Maimonidean version of monotheism. Knohl, The Sanctuary of Silence (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).
14. Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides’ Avicennianism,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008): 107–19.
15. Some modern interpreters of the Rambam have argued that there is no essential theological difference between negating tens of attributes of God and negating hundreds of divine attributes. Either way, we cannot say anything about God. To my mind, this claim empties of all meaning the doctrine of negative attributes and undermines the theology that the Rambam constructed upon it. However, from various hints that the Rambam gives, it appears that he thought that human consciousness could represent God but that such representations could not be given verbal expression. Description of God through negation does have a function in refining how we think about God: “As for the negative attributes, they are those that must be used in order to conduct the mind toward that which must be believed with regard to Him, may He be exalted” (Guide, 1:58). The doctrine of negative attributes frees our thoughts about God from language, enabling a purer mental representation of God. According to this mode, the doctrine of negative attributes is a move from theology to cognitive praxis. For discussion of this see Eyal Bar Eytan, “Moreh Derekh l’yediyat Ha’elohim: Al Ha’megama Ha’hiyuvit shel Ha’teologia Hashelilit B’sefer Moreh Hanevukhim” (Guide to Knowing God: On the Positive Aspects of Negative Theology in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed) (unpublished PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001).
16. Maimonides writes at the beginning of the Guide that his intention is “to explain the meanings of words that appear in the books of the prophets.” In the introduction to part 3 he explains his purpose a little differently as being “to explain what can be explained of the Account of the Beginning and the Account of the Chariot.” For an attempt to address this tension, see Steven Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace,” in Perspectives on Maimonides: Philosophical and Historical Studies, ed. Joel Kramer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 47–75.
1. A full articulation of this view may be found in Yehudah Halevi’s Sefer Hakuzari [Book of the Kuzari] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1994), 1:40–43. It should be noted that when Maimonides sketches out the popular view of prophecy, he does not include all of the motifs that appear in Halevi’s theory of prophecy.
2. See, e.g., Guide, 1:7.
3. The possibility of this sort of miraculous involvement in the prophetic event elicited astonishment from generations of “radical interpreters” of the Guide, who believed that Maimonides’s true, esoteric teaching in the Guide was essentially Aristotelian. The concept of radical interpretation in the context of the Guide was popularized by Ravitsky in Sitrei, 143–46.
4. From Maimonides, Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot [Introduction to Avot], in Hakdamot Harambam Laperush Hamishnah [The Rambam’s introductions to the commentary on the Mishnah] (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1961), 168.
5. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985).
6. Maimonides, Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, 159.
7. Maimonides, Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, 159.
8. Maimonides, Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, 159.
9. See Guide, 1:34.
10. See Guide, 2:36.
11. Maimonides, Hakdama L’perek Helek [Introduction to chapter Helek], in Hakdamot, 115.
12. The metaphor of “overflow” is taken from Plotinus. We will explore it in chapter 12.
13. “The Works of Creation” is a name for the first chapter of Genesis, in which the world is created. Maimonides understood the “Work of Creation” as containing the laws of physics.
14. “The Works of the Chariot” refers to the first chapter of Ezekiel and contains the secrets of metaphysics, according to Maimonides.
15. Otzar Ha’geonim (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1932), vol. 4, Tractate Hagigah, 31.
16. As Yaakov Levinger has shown, this idea is rooted in the thought of Ibn Sina. Ibn Sina understood the prophetic event to be a kind of arousal a nondiscursive faculty of intuition. According to Levinger, Maimonides adopted this notion but substituted for intuition the faculty of divination, which, because it works very quickly, appears intuitive. Levinger, Harambam K’filosof V’khposek [Maimonides as philosopher and legal decisor] (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1990), 34–35.
17. See Barry S. Kogan, “What Can We Know and When Can We Know It? Maimonides on the Active Intelligence and Human Cognition,” in Moses Maimonides and His Time, ed. E. L. Ormsby (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 121–37.
18. One may note that this prophetic quality is reminiscent of what the Rabbinic sages termed the ability to “predict what will result” (“ro’eh et ha’nolad”). See, e.g., Babylonian Talmud [hereafter BT] Tamid, 32a. Rashi, in his commentary to BT Pesachim, 9b, sees this quality as a type of prophetic ability.
19. Avraham Nouriel, “Mishalim V’lo Nitparesh Shehem Mishal B’moreh Hanevukhim” [Parables that are not interpreted as parables in the Guide for the Perplexed], Da’at 25 (1990): 85–91.
20. See, e.g., Warren Zev Harvey, “Miriam the Prophetess and the Seventh Principle of the Guide for the Perplexed,” in At the Mouth of the Well: Studies in Jewish Thought and the Philosophy of Halakhah Presented to Gerald Blidstein, ed. Uri Ehrlich, Hayim Kreisel, and Daniel Y. Lasker (Beer Sheva: Ben Gurion University Press, 2008), 183–94.
21. Guide, 1:54.
1. Igeret Harambam L’rabi Yefet bar Eliyahu Hadayan [Letter to R. Yaphet Bar Eliyahu the Judge], in Igrot Harambam [Letters of the Rambam], ed. Yitzhak Shilat (Jerusalem: Shilat Publications, 1987), 1:311.
2. Miscellany of Hebrew Literature, trans. Dr. H. Adler (London: N. Trubner, 1872), 1:223.
3. Guide, 3:16.
4. Maimonides also proposed a metaphysical approach to evil in Guide, 3:10. There he makes the classic argument that evil is absence of God and therefore God cannot create evil, just as it is impossible to create darkness. This claim has ancient roots; see Plato, The Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1974).
5. This is a recurring theme in Maimonides’s writings; see, e.g., “Hanhagat Habriyut: Igeret Ha’refua Miiharambam z”l L’melekh Yishmael” [Healthy behavior: A medical letter from the Rambam z’l to the Ishmaelite king”], trans. Moshe Ibn Tibbon, edited from the manuscript by Zisman Montner in Medical Writings (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1957); Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, 281; MT, Hilkhot De-ot, chapter 4; George Geimm, The Doctrine of the Buddha (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1926), 3.
6. Geimm, Doctrine of the Buddha, 3.
7. One of the most important Western exponents of the view that the pursuit of happiness can be self-defeating was the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer; see Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (New York: Dover, 1966).
8. Geimm, Doctrine of the Buddha, 264–71.
9. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929).
10. There have been many versions of this proof. For an important and relatively recent discussion of the question, see Richard Taylor, Metaphysics (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 112–14.
11. See, e.g., the Ramban’s commentary on Genesis 1:1, 11:28, 46:15; Exodus 13:16, 6:2; and Leviticus 26:11.
12. The Rambam also presented an additional approach, which we do not examine in depth here, that of the Mu’atzila. According to this view, everything that happens in the world flows from a divine decision. God knows everything. God’s providence governs all creatures, and God is infallible, always doing good and never evil. Man has free will, and God rewards or punishes every human choice according to what we deserve.
13. For a discussion of Moses Ibn Tibbon’s treatment of the questions of evil and providence, see Halbertal, Maimonides, 340.
14. Guide, 1:1.
1. There is a wide range of opinions within the different streams of Kabbalah regarding the nature of the sefirot and the question of which ones are in contact with the lower worlds and which are never revealed. On this see, e.g., Haviva Pedaya, Ha’rambam: Hitalut Zman Mahzori V’text Kadosh [The Rambam: The elevation of cyclical time and the holy text] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 2003), 135–42; and Moshe Idel, Absorbing Perfections: Kabbalah and Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 26–111.
2. In addition to redemption, providence, and prophecy, the Rambam also offered a new perspective on the mitzvot, which we will explore in part 2, and on the idea of creation, which we will examine in part 3.
3. It is possible that the Rambam is basing his view here on a midrash (Shemot Rabbah, 36:3) according to which the light of Torah saves from harm one who learns it. The midrash interprets “The path of the righteous is like radiant sunlight, ever brightening until noon. The way of the wicked is all darkness; they do not know what will make them stumble” (Prov. 4:18–19) as follows: “This is like someone who is standing in darkness and has a torch in his hand, so he can see a stone in front of him and doesn’t stumble on it; he sees a pit in front of him, and does not fall into it, because of the light in his hand.” The midrash compares wisdom to a light that prevents one from coming to harm.
4. Guide, 3:18.
5. Aviezer Ravitsky, “Kfi Koah Ha’adam: Yemot Ha’mashiah B’mishnat Harambam” [According to human ability: The Messianic Era in the thought of the Rambam], in Al Daat Hamakom, 74–104.
6. In the light of this analysis, I propose accepting at face value the Rambam’s assertion that the decree of poverty was a consequence of the primal sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden, which was itself the result of imagination overcoming need. This entails rejecting Sarah Klein Braslavy’s allegorical interpretation. See Klein Braslavy, “Peirush Ha’rambam La’sipurim al Adam B’farshat Bereishit” [Maimonides’ interpretation of the Adam stories in Genesis], in Prakim B’torat Haadam shel Harambam [A study in Maimonides’s anthropology] (Jerusalem: Reuven Publishing, 1986), 118–21.
7. For further discussion of this reversal, see Aviezer Ravitsky, “Kfi Koah Ha’adam,” 77.
8. Guide, 2:40 and 3:27.
9. BT Niddah, 68a.
10. See, e.g., the Ramban on the Torah, commentary to Deuteronomy, 31:6.
11. This idea also has roots on the Talmud: “The lifetime of the world is 6000 years; 2000 years of chaos, 2000 years of Torah and 2000 years of the messianic era.” BT Sanhedrin, 97a.
12. See Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken, 1969), 72–77.
13. Carlyle was the most prominent exponent of the view that history is primarily the story of “great men” who created the major events of history and were not dependent on external forces. See Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (London: James Fraser, 1841).
14. This is the view of Marxist historians. See Nathan Rothenstreich, “Ha’yahid Ve’hahistoria” [The individual and history], in Ha’ishiyut V’dora: Kovetz shel Hartzaot Shehushmeu B’khenes Ha’shimini L’iyun B’historia [Personalities in their generation: Collected lectures from the Eighth Conference for the Study of History] (Jerusalem: Israeli Historical Society, 1964), 15–38; also Tzvi Ya’avetz, “Deot Shonot al Mekoma shel Ha’ishiut Ba’historia” [Different opinions on the role of personality in history], in Historia V’ruah Ha’zman: Az V’ata [History and the spirit of the age: Then and now] (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 2002), 45–57.
15. On this distinction see Ravitsky, “Kfi Koah Haadam,” 75–87; and Ravitsky, “Harambam: Ezoteriut V’hinukh Filosofi” [Maimonides: Esotericism and philosophical education],” Da’at 53 (2004): 43–62.
16. See Menachem Lorberbaum’s distinction between messianism and utopianism in the Rambam’s writings in Politics and the Limits of Law: Secularizing the Political in Medieval Jewish Thought (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
17. This is one of the central claims of Popper’s monumental work The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945).
1. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Mariner Books, 2008); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2009).
2. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 31.
3. Terry Eagleton, “Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching,” London Review of Books, October 19, 2006, 32.
4. Karen Armstrong, The Case for God (New York: Anchor, 2010).
5. Armstrong, The Case for God, 11.
6. MT, Hilkhot Teshuvah, 10:3
7. A good deal has been written about this. See, e.g., Moshe Halbertal, Mahapeikhot Parshaniot B’hithavutan [Interpretative revolutions in the making] (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997).
8. See Halbertal, Maimonides, 313–21.
1. For more on religious experience in Maimonides’s thought, see chapter 18.
1. See, e.g., Karen Armstrong, A History of God (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 357.
2. See the discussion of prophecy in chapter 2.
3. This chapter is a central one in the Guide, as can be seen from the number of other chapters that refer to it. See Guide, 1:8, 1:15, 1:16, 1:21, 1:38, and 3:54.
4. For a detailed study of Guide, 1:54, see Chana Kasher, “Peirushei Harambam L’sipur Nikrat Hatzur” [Maimonides’ interpretations of the story in the cleft in the rock], Da’at 35 (1995): 29–36.
5. Eudaemonia is the Greek term that denotes both success and a person’s full, human flourishing.
6. However, he made some significant changes to Aristotelian ethics in adopting the concept of the golden mean. On this see Marvin Fox, “The Doctrine of the Mean: Aristotle and Maimonides,” in Studies in Jewish Religion and History Presented to Alexander Altmann on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. S. Stein and R. Loewe (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1979), 93.
7. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 2.1.
8. Aristotle also hints at this view. For a broader discussion of this point see Fox, “The Doctrine of the Mean,” 100.
9. This point has been the subject of some controversy. According to Lorberbaum, Guide, 1:54, deals with the development of Moshe’s political leadership and not with the creation of law. I am inclined to agree with Eliezer Goldman and Warren Zev Harvey, who argue that the chapter also reflects the process of the birth of the Torah’s laws. It seems to me that at the root of this argument is a more fundamental disagreement about the relationship between leadership and law. According to Lorberbaum, the Rambam believed that leadership is prior to law and therefore the leader can transgress the law when law is blocking effective leadership. See Lorberbaum, Politics and the Limits of Law. For Harvey, on the other hand, law is a central tool of leadership and, other than in exceptional cases, it cannot be overridden. For Harvey, Guide, 1:54, describes the origins of the Torah’s law, which went hand in hand with Moses’s leadership, whereas for Lorberbaum, who wished to separate law and leadership, the chapter is about the development of Moses’s wisdom as a leader. My discussion here is based on the assumption that law is also a central subject of this chapter and, I believe, lends further support to that view. Goldman, “Ha’avoda Ha’meyuhedet B’mesigei Ha’amitot: Hearot Parshaniot La’moreh Ha’nevukhim, Helek Gimel, Perakim 51–54” [The special work in apprehending truths Interpretative notes on Guide for the Perplexed, 3:51–54], Sefer Ha’shanah shel Universitat Bar Ilan 6 (1966): 287–313; and Warren Zev Harvey, “Harambam al Klaliut Hahok V’tafkid Hashofet” [The Rambam on the generality of law and the role of the judge], in Din V’yosher B’Torat Ha’mishpat shel Ha’rambam [Law and reasoning in the Rambam’s legal thought], ed. Hanina Ben-Menachem and Berachyahu Lifshitz (Jerusalem: ha’Makhon le’heker ha’mishpat ha’Ivri, 2004), 253–71.
10. The purpose of all that exists beneath the sphere of the moon is to supply the needs of human beings, as the Rambam explains: “Know that the ancients did wonderfully wise work and verified everything in existence has a purpose, and nothing there is nothing that exists for no reason. . . . [A]s a rule, everything that exists beneath the sphere of the moon exists solely for the purposes of man; of all kinds of living things, some exist to be man’s food and some for his other needs” (Peirush Al Ha’mishnah).
11. I expand on this point in chapter 7.
12. It should be noted that the Rambam does in fact give reasons for some of the details of the sacrifices. On this problem see Chana Kasher, “Omanut Ha’ketiva B’moreh Ha’nevukhim” [The art of writing in the Guide for the Perplexed], Da’at 37 (1996): 63–106; and Josef Stern, Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nachmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998).
13. See Michael Tzvi Nehorai, “Torat Hamitzvot shel Harambam” [The Rambam’s teaching on the commandments], Da’at 13 (1984): 32–33.
14. Guide, 2:4.
15. On this see Amos Funkenstein, “Tefisato Hahistorit V’hameshihit shel Harambam” [Maimonides’ conception of history and messianism], in Tadmit V’todaah Historit B’yahadut Ub’svivatah Hatarbutit [Historical consciousness in Judaism and its cultural surroundings] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1991), 121–23.
16. On this see Alvin J. Reines, “Maimonides’s Concept of Mosaic Prophecy,” HUCA 40–41 (1969–70): 169–206.
17. The Torah’s practical answer to this problem is Hora’at Sha’ah, a temporary injunction. See Shalom Rosenberg, “Al Derekh Harov” [The way of the majority], Shnaton Hamishpat Haivri 14–15 (1988–89): 190–91. Compare Levinger, Harambam K’filosof V’khposek.
18. Compare Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, book 5.
19. See MT, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, chapter 2.
20. According to the Rambam, God is above language, so when the Torah attributes speech to God it is referring to God’s will or thought. Guide, 1:65.
21. This is similar to an idea in the thought of Philo of Alexandria. In Philo’s view, there is a profound accord between the laws of nature and the laws of the Torah. See Mireille Hadas-Lebel, Philon Ha’alexandroni: Bein Yahadut L’helenism [Philo of Alexandria: Between Judaism and Hellenism] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Books, 2006), 135–40. See also Shlomo Pines, “Hashvaot bein Hahuka Hadatit L’vein Harefua eitzel Al Farabi V’eitzel Harambam” [Comparisons between religious law and medicine in Al-Farabi and Maimonides], Jewish Law Annual 14–15 (1988–89): 171–75.
1. For a classic, scholarly discussion of the kabbalistic sefirot see Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), 205–43.
2. See Moshe Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 173–99.
3. On Maimonides’s approach to this in other writings, see chapter 4 in this volume.
4. We should qualify this claim by pointing out that immediately afterward the Rambam lowers the reader’s expectations by limiting the discussion to understanding the general reasons for the commandments:
What everyone endowed with a sound intellect ought to believe about the commandments is what I shall set forth to you: The generalities of the commandments necessarily have a cause and have been given because of a certain utility; their details are that in regards to which it was said of the commandments that they that they were given merely for the sake of commanding something. (Guide, 3:26)
There is a further lowering of expectations in the Rambam’s claim that although the commandments work to perfect our personalities, they do not work equally well for all types of people:
Among the things that you likewise ought to know is that the Law does not pay attention to isolated cases. The Law was not given with a view to things that are rare. For in everything that it wishes to bring about, be it an opinion, or a moral habit, or a useful work, it is directed only toward the things that happen in the majority of cases and pays no attention to what happens rarely, or to the damage occurring to the unique human being because of this way of determination and because of the legal character of the governance. (Guide, 3:34)
The mitzvot work to perfect human beings, but they cannot always take account of exceptional cases. Indeed, they may even cause damage in the case of extraordinary individuals.
5. See, e.g., Yehezkel Kaufmann, Toldot Ha’emuna Ha’yisraelit: Mimei Kedem ad Sof Bayit Sheini [The religion of Israel: From its beginnings to the end of the Second Temple] (Tel Aviv: Mossad Bialik, 1937), 1:1–32.
6. Abraham’s conclusions as they are described in the first chapter of Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim of the Mishneh Torah are quite different from those attributed to him in the Guide. In the former, Maimonides appears to represent Abraham as proving the existence of God based on the eternal existence of the world, whereas in the latter, Abraham’s meditation on the cosmos leads him to conclude that the world was created. Guide, 3:29.
7. According to Maimonides, one of the essential features of pagan idolaters is that they were enslaved to their sensory experience. The Rambam describes Abraham, in contrast, as a free man, a wandering spirit not bound to sensory experience. See part 3 of this volume on the importance of freeing oneself from preconceptions.
8. The Rambam declared flatly that Christianity was idolatrous; see MT, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim, 9:4, in the uncensored Shabtei Frankel edition (Jerusalem: Frankel, 2001). The Rambam’s position on Christianity was no doubt influenced by his strong opposition to any kind of visual representation of God (see chapter 1). Less uncompromising views on Christianity held by Jewish authorities of the Middle Ages include the opinion of Tosafot that Christianity should be considered an idolatrous religion for Jews but not for Christians (see, e.g., Tosafot BT Sanhedrin 63a) and the opinion of Menachem Ha-Meiri that Christians were not idolatrous, but are rather [umot] ha-gedurot be-darkei ha-datot, that is, people who are bound by the ethical laws of a religion; see, e.g. Beit ha-Bechirah on BT Avodah Zarah 26a. See also Lawrence J. Kaplan, “Maimonides on the Singularity of the Jewish People,” Da’at 15 (1985): v–xxvii.
9. Maimonides, Igeret Teiman [Epistle to Yemen], in Igrot Harambam, 1:120.
10. Medieval Jewish thinkers tended to view Jesus as the founder of Christianity. See Avigdor Shinan, Oto Ha’ish: Yehudim Misaprim al Yeshu [That man: Jews talk about Jesus] (Tel Aviv: Yediot Books, 1999). Maimonides appears to have anticipated modern scholarship’s distinction between Christianity and Jesus.
11. Another example of this dynamic is the persistence of monotheism within the tribe of Levi during the Egyptian exile. According to the schematic history of MT, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim, chapter 1, the tribe of Levi alone kept the faith during the exile. One might think that this example shows how an idea can persist even without commandments. In fact, however, it serves as an additional illustration that rituals preserve ideas, rather than the opposite. According to Maimonides in MT, Hilkhot Issurei Bi’ah, 13:2, the tribe of Levi alone continued the rite of circumcision in Egypt. The fact that they also preserved monotheistic faith is no coincidence. In Guide, 3:49, Maimonides argues that the main reason for the commandment of circumcision is to create a framework of commitment to the monotheistic idea.
12. This is based upon a book that Maimonides translated called Nabataean Agriculture, which describes Sabian practices in some detail. Though they are mentioned three times in the Koran, there is considerable scholarly debate over who the Sabians were or when and where they lived.
13. Guide, 3:37.
14. It is possible that within Maimonides’s attack on Sabian religion there is also a concealed polemic against Abraham Ibn Ezra and Yehudah Halevi for their astrological-magical explanations of some of the mitzvot. On this possibility, see Halbertal, Maimonides, 347.
15. BT Bava Batra, 25a.
16. It is interesting to note that this approach is employed today in biblical scholarship, for example, in Binyamin Uffenheimer’s contention that the Bible introduces idolatrous myths and motifs into the text in order to confront them more effectively. Uffenheimer, “Hitmodedut Ha’mikra” [The struggle of scripture], in Or L’ya’akov [A light to Jacob], ed. Y. Hoffman and P. Polak (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik, 1997), 17–35. In a similar vein, Yisrael Knohl claims, following Cassuto, that the show-bread in the Sanctuary were adopted from the world of idolatry so as to dispel the pagan-magical associations that were attached to displaying the bread. See Knohl, Mikdash Ha’Dmama: Iyun B’rovadei Ha’yitzira Ha’cohanit Sheba’torah [The sanctuary of silence: A study in the literary layers of the priestly Torah] (Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1993), 127–31. It is also interesting that the Rambam admitted: “I do not know the reason for having bread on the table (in the sanctuary) always” (Guide, 3:45). Knohl offers an answer to what the Rambam did not know, in a Maimonidean spirit.
17. I discuss this question extensively in part 3.
18. See also Guide, 3:43.
19. See Halevi, Sefer Ha’Kuzari, 1:76.
20. See Rabbenu Bachya Ibn Pakuda, Duties of the Heart (New York: Feldheim, 1996), introduction.
21. For more on Yom Kippur, see Guide, 3:43.
22. The Rambam’s approach to this in the Mishneh Torah is a little different. See Hilkhot Teshuvah, 1:6.
23. There is a tension within the Rambam’s writings over whether some personality types have characteristics that block them from developing certain other traits. In the Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah, chapter 2, the Rambam writes that although some people are born with deep-rooted negative characteristics, they may overcome them. This contradicts his stance in the Guide, 1:34. One may ask whether the Rambam changed his psychological view over the course of his life. On this possibility, see Hannah Kasher, “Moreh Ha’nevukhim: Yetzirat Mofet or Kitvei Kodesh?” [“The Guide for the Perplexed: Great book or holy text?”], Da’at 32–33 (1994): 73–83.
24. The distinction between praxis and virtues of character is taken from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 2.1: “Virtue, then, is of two sorts, virtue of thought and virtue of character . . . virtue of character (i.e. of ethos) results from habit (ethos); hence its name, ‘ethical,’ varied slightly from ‘ethos.’”
25. According to Eliezer Schweid, the main difference between Aristotle’s and Maimonides’s ethical systems lies in how they understand the purpose of achieving moral perfection. See Schweid, Ha’rambam V’hug Hashpaato [The Rambam and his circle of influence], ed. Dan Oryan (Jerusalem: Akadamon Press, 1982), 68.
1. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, The Faith of Maimonides (New York: Lambda, 1989).
2. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, “Religious Praxis: The Meaning of Halakhah,” in Judaism, Human Values and the Jewish State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 3–29.
3. Rabbenu Bachya Ibn Pakudah, Gate of Unity, chapter 6, p. 59.
4. I heard this orally from Aviezer Ravitsky.
5. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 42.
6. James, Varieties, 59.
7. The emotions of “love” and “awe” that are described in Guide, 3:52, flow from dedication to Torah and would appear to be somewhat different from the feelings of “love” and “awe” that are aroused through contemplation of nature. I discuss this in part 3, particularly in chapter 18.
1. See, e.g., MT, Hilkhot Nizkei Mamon, 5:5.
2. For a recent scholarly perspective on this question, see Halbertal, Maimonides, 197–228.
1. Yair Lorberbaum, “On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics and Esotericism in Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed,” Review of Metaphysics 55 (June 2002): 711–50.
1. The dedicatory epistle of the Guide asks what status we should give to their arguments. The Rambam writes there to his student Rabbi Joseph, son of Rabbi Judah: “You . . . asked me to make clear to you certain things pertaining to divine matters, to inform you of the intentions of the Mutakallimun in this respect, and to let you know whether their methods were demonstrative, and if not, to what art they belonged. As I also saw, you had already acquired some smattering of this subject from people other than myself; you were perplexed, as stupefaction has come over you.”
2. It also appears in medieval Jewish literature. See, e.g., Rabbi Saadiah Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions and Rabbenu Bachya Ibn Pakuda’s Duties of the Heart.
3. See Guide, 2:19.
4. W. Z. Harvey, “Maimonides’ Avicennianism,” 107–9.
5. See Guide, 2:2.
6. Guide, 1:75–76.
7. Herbert A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 309.
8. In a letter to Shmuel Ibn Tibbon, the Rambam explains the idea that a possibility becomes a certainty over an infinite span of time. See Igrot Harambam, 2:548.
9. In Guide, 2:1, the Rambam presented additional proofs for the existence of God. It is open to question whether he considered these proofs decisive.
1. See also MT, Hilkhot Teshuvah, 3:7.
2. See also Guide, 1:51.
3. See Aristotle, Metaphysics, book 11, sec. 9.
4. Moshe Idel, Studies in Ecstatic Kabbalah (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 1–33.
5. For more on this contradiction, see Shlomo Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge in Al-Farabi, Ibn Bajja and Maimonides,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. Isadore Twersky (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 82–102.
6. For an important discussion of this idea, see Warren Zev Harvey, “A Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 19, no. 2 (1981): 164–65.
7. Plotinus, Fifth Ennead, The Enneads: Abridged Edition, ed. John Dillon, trans. Stephen MacKenna (New York: Penguin Books, 1991).
8. Julius Guttman, Ha’filosophia shel HaYehadut[The philosophy of Judaism] (Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1951), 127–28.
9. As discussed, I claim that the Guide does not contradict itself in order to advance one opinion and reject another as much Maimonidean scholarship claims, but rather in order to present the different alternatives without deciding firmly between them. See Marvin Fox, “The Many-Sided Maimonides,” in Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3–25.
1. Guide, 1:26.
2. See his explanations of the Hebrew words for “look” and “see” in Guide, 1:4.
3. Elisha Ben Avuya was also known as Elisha Ahe; see BT Hagigah 15a.
4. BT Hagigah, 14b.
5. See BT Hagigah 15a. On the possibility that the Rambam based his image of Elisha Ben Avuya on Islamic sources, see Sarah Stroumsa, “Elisha Ben Avuya and Muslim Heretics in Maimonides’ Writings,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1995): 173–93.
6. It would appear that behind the Rambam’s idea here is the Aristotelian distinction between decisive and dialectical proof; the former confers certainty, while the latter only approaches certainty. See Arthur Hyman, “Demonstrative, Dialectical, and Sophistic Arguments in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides,” in Maimonides and His Time, ed. E. L. Ormsky (Washington DC: Catholic University of America, 1989), 35–51.
7. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1:1.
8. Elsewhere the Rambam writes about how upsetting the balance between desire and apprehension can damage understanding: “Moreover, every perfect man—after his intellect has attained the cognition of whatever in its nature can be grasped—when longing for another apprehension beyond that which has been achieved, cannot but have his faculty of apprehension deceived or destroyed” (Guide, 1:21). Elisha Ben Avuya is not the only figure in whom the Rambam diagnosed this imbalance. Maimonides also attributed the sin of the elders of the People of Israel, who wished to ascend Mount Sinai, to a lack of intellectual restraint. The Rambam demands patience of those who would come to know God: “He should not make categorical affirmations in favor of the first opinion that occurs to him and should not, from the outset, strain and impel his thoughts toward the apprehension of the deity; he rather should feel awe and refrain and hold back until he gradually elevates himself” (Guide, 1:5). A similar understanding of the sin of the elders may be found in MT, Hilkhot Meilah, 8:8.
9. René Descartes, Thoughts on First Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
1. The question is, why is a well-balanced personality, and not just a well-balanced society, necessary for philosophical achievement? The question is sharpened if we consider Maimonides’s Aristotelian taxonomy of the soul, according to which the soul has five components: “The nutritive part, is the physical component and is connected to the art of medicine; the emotional part is the component responsible for the five senses . . . sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch; the imaginative part recalls sensory impressions after they have passed from the sense that perceived them; the appetitive part is the component with which a person desires something or is repelled by it; the intellectual part is the power that understands, reflects and acquires wisdom” (Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, chapter 1).
According to the Rambam, ethical characteristics are acquired through the appetitive part of the soul: “Ethical qualities may be found in the appetitive part alone” (Ha’hakdama L’masekhet Avot, chapter 2). This implies that the intellectual and ethical domains are located in two different parts of the soul. A person may know what is good without being a good person. Whereas intellectual improvement requires study, ethical improvement is achieved by habituation to ethical behavior. But if there is such a clear dichotomy between the intellect and ethical character, why is ethical perfection a necessary precondition for intellectual achievement according to the Rambam? There are plenty of distinguished intellectuals who are not necessarily paragons of righteousness.
2. Julius Guttmann, Daat v’mada: Kovetz Maamarim V’hartzaot [Religion and science: Collected articles and lectures] (Jerusalem: Magnus Press, 1956), 95.
3. MT, Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah, 4:13.
1. For a detailed description of the structure of the spheres, see Guide, 1:72.
2. We may infer this from, among other things, the doubt that the Rambam casts on our ability to prove the eternity of the soul. He mocked one of his theological opponents for basing a proof of the soul’s eternity on the assumption that the soul is eternal: “Now this is a wondrous method, for it makes clear a hidden matter by something even more hidden. To this, the proverb well known among the Syrians may truthfully be applied: Your guarantee needs another guarantee. It is as if he already possessed a demonstration of the permanence of souls, and as if he knew in what form they last and what thing it is that lasts, so that he could make use thereof for drawing inferences” (Guide, 1:73).
Knowledge of the separate intelligences would ground belief in the eternity of the soul (for they could enable the soul to continue without a body), but if we are not convinced of the eternity of the soul, this indicates that we are not persuaded of the existence of separate intelligences either.
3. One of the contradictions between medieval physics and astronomy arises over the direction of movement of the spheres. According to Aristotle, the existence of a vacuum is a logical contradiction, because it implies the existence of a non-existent. Therefore, he thought that there could not be any space between the heavenly spheres; they must be touching. Consequently, the larger spheres move the smaller spheres, and therefore they must be moving in the same direction. However, astronomical observation showed that this is not the case:
Even more incongruous and dubious is the fact that in all cases in which one of two spheres is inside the other and adheres to it on every side, while the centers of the two are different, the smaller sphere can move inside the bigger one without the latter being in motion, whereas the bigger sphere cannot move upon any axis whatever without the smaller one being in motion. For whenever the bigger sphere moves, it necessarily, by means of its movement, sets the smaller one in motion, except in the case in which its motion is on an axis passing through the two centers. From the demonstrative premise and from the demonstrated fact that vacuum does not exist and from the assumptions regarding eccentricity, it follows necessarily that when the higher sphere is in motion it must move the sphere beneath it with the same motion and around its own center. Now we do not find that this is so. We find rather that neither of the two spheres, the containing and the contained, is set in motion by the movement of the other nor does it move around the other’s center or poles, but that each of them has its own particular motion. Hence necessity obliges the belief that between every two spheres there are bodies other than those of the spheres. Now if this be so, how many obscure points remain? (Guide, 2:24)
Such contradictions between medieval scientific theory and observation spurred the development of new, complicated astronomical and physical theories that the Rambam found unconvincing. Maimonides was one of the earliest figures in the history of science to identify the insoluble problems of medieval astronomy and physics. In this respect he was a precursor of Kepler, Copernicus. and Galileo, who solved the problems by demolishing the medieval, geocentric foundations of science.
4. See the letter to Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon’s about translating the Guide in Igrot Harambam, 2:553.
5. See Guide, 2:22.
6. The first Hebrew translator of the Guide, Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon, expressed surprise at the Rambam’s skepticism about what may be known of the natural world and added marginal notes opining that parts of Maimonides’s text must be “missing.” See Warren Zev Harvey, “Maimonides’ Critical Epistemology and Guide 2:24,” Aleph 8 (2008): 213–35.
7. There is another substantial admission of perplexity in part 1 of the Guide: “The things about which there is this perplexity are very numerous in divine matters, few in matters pertaining to natural science, and non-existent in matters pertaining to mathematics” (1:31), That is to say, the more elevated the body of knowledge, the more perplexity there is about it.
1. See Yair Lorberbaum, Tmurot B’yahaso shel Ha’rambam L’midrashot Hazal [On Maimonides’s relationship to rabbinic Midrash], Tarbiz 78 (2009): 203–30.
2. Igeret el Hokhmei Montpellier [Letter to the sages of Montpellier], in Igrot Harambam, 2:475–76.
3. See Guide, 1:31.
1. On this, see D. R. Blumenthal, “Maimonides, Prayer, Worship and Mysticism,” in Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, ed. D. R. Blumenthal, vol. 3 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988), 1–14.
2. The Rambam himself here refers his readers to his discussion of negative attributes: “as we explained when we spoke of attributes” (Guide, 3:51).
3. Elliot Wolfson, Abraham Abulafia, Kabbalist and Prophet: Hermeneutics, Theosophy, and Theurgy (Los Angeles: Cherub Press, 2000), 38–52; Moshe Idel, The Mystical Experience in Abraham Abulafia (Binghamton: SUNY Press, 1988).
1. The Rambam criticizes the approach that sets up not knowing as a goal of life and sees spiritual virtue in ignorance. His purpose is not to extol ignorance but to point out that there are limits to the powers of reason.
2. Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949), 29.
3. Einstein, The World as I See It, 29.
4. Guide, 1:68.
5. The most prominent modern exponent of this approach to Judaism was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. In my view, Heschel gave the fullest articulation of the religiosity of the Guide and the Mishneh Torah. See, e.g., his book God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1976).
6. Note that the Rambam also warns against the opposite intellectual sin of skepticism toward opinions that have been decisively proved to be true; see Guide, 1:59.
7. On different types of proof in the Guide, see Arthur Hyman, “Demonstrative, Dialectical and Sophistic Arguments in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides,” in Ormsky, Maimonides and His Time, 35–51.
1. See, e.g., S. Harvey, “Maimonides in the Sultan’s Palace.”
2. See, e.g., David Hartman, Torah and Philosophic Quest (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1976).
3. The possibilities that the Rambam presents regarding the ideal life are reflected in a profound disagreement between the medieval Islamic thinkers Ibn Bajja, who believed that the highest human fulfillment consisted in separation from society and devotion to study, and Al-Farabi, who thought that the ultimate fulfillment of philosophy was involvement in society and politics. See Pines, “The Limitations of Human Knowledge.”