CHAPTER 9

Mosaic Jurisprudence. The Silly Paganism of the Sabians, an Impetus to Many Otherwise Inexplicable Laws, of Which the Beard Still Remains

NEXT, MAIMONIDES COMES to the explanation of Mosaic commandments, prefacing it with several preparatory chapters.

All actions, he says, can, with regard to their ends, be divided in the following way: purposeless, playful, unsuccessful, and good actions.1 The first are those in which one has no goal in mind: for example, when one plays with one’s hand while thinking. To these belong as well the actions of the insane. The second are those for which one sets a goal, but a small goal, namely, just [128] amusing oneself. The third are those actions for which one sets a goal, but where, as a result of certain causes, one doesn’t achieve it. The fourth are those actions for which one sets an important goal, which one in fact attains.

God’s effects cannot be of the first three types; rather, they are of the fourth kind.² God saw all that he had made, and it was good.³ The opinion of those who maintain that God’s effects are merely results of his will (without an idea of the goal) collapses here, though, of itself.

In the following section, Maimonides says that just as there is a diversity of views concerning God’s effects (in nature), so too there is a diversity of views with respect to His laws.⁴ Some see them as being nothing other than the consequence of God’s will, others regard them as the consequences of His wisdom. Maimonides concurs with the latter. He tries to explain some passages in the Talmud that appear to contradict this in such a way that they agree with it. Others, which don’t allow [129] for such interpretations, he simply wonders about.⁵ The goal of the laws is the perfection of the body (which is conceived as including the condition of its exterior) and the perfection of the mind, that is, the capacities for knowledge and willing.6 Among the Mosaic laws, however, there are some that appear not to aim at any of these goals.⁷ Such goals were, according to Maimonides, set in opposition to the paganism that predominated then. He thus provides a brief account of this paganism and the fatuous mythology that was its basis.

It is well known, he says, that Abraham was raised in the faith of the Sabians.⁸ They regarded the stars as gods and the sun as the greatest god. In their writings, they recount the following about Abraham: “Because Abraham, who was born in Kuth, strayed from the common belief and asserted the existence of a God beyond the sun, one confronted him with counter-ideas based on the obvious influence of the sun on nature. Abraham [130] replied: I gladly concede this influence. But the sun does not have this power from itself. It is like an ax in the hands of a woodcutter. The king then had him put in prison. But because he continued to spread his new doctrine, making a complete reformation seem imminent, the king drove him into the Eastern territories.”⁹

Naturally, they say nothing whatsoever about Abraham’s divine revelations.

The highest thing achieved by the philosophy of that era is the idea that God is the soul of all heavenly bodies.¹⁰.

The Sabians thus believed in the eternity of the world. According to them, Adam, just as much as everyone else, was beget by his parents. He was a prophet devoted to the moon (heaven protect us from such an honor!). He preached that people should worship the moon and also wrote various books about agriculture. Noah was a farmer and didn’t want to go along with revering the (star) images, [131] and for this the Sabians censured him. He, too, was thrown in jail for worshipping God. But his son Seth didn’t agree with him in this and prayed to the moon.¹¹ There were all kinds of laughable fairy tales about these beliefs, which illustrate the age’s high level of superstition and ignorance. These tales relate that when Adam traveled from Thascham12 (near India) to Babel, he brought along many natural oddities, among them a golden tree with leaves and blooms and a stone tree that couldn’t be destroyed by fire. We hear, moreover, about a tree that casts a shade over ten thousand men (though the tree was only as tall as a person). And so forth. According to this account, the Sabians invented star-icons: gold ones for the sun and silver for the moon. They divided climates and minerals according to the planets that influenced them. (The symbols common to planets and minerals, for example , which signifies the sun and gold, , which signifies Mercury and [132] quicksilver, and so on, are still the remaining traces of this.)

They built temples where they displayed these star images, believing that the powers of the planets were conferred upon the images that corresponded to them and that the planets thereby inspired people and gave them deep insight into the nature of things, as well as capacity for prophesy. Likewise, about the trees belonging to the planets they claim that when one plants them in the name of their planet, and nurtures them in a certain way, people will be inspired, owing to the influence of the planets. The prophets of Baal and Ascharah,¹³ who are mentioned in our Holy Scriptures, are from this sect.

This foolishness ramified in many directions, leading to different kinds of magic, like séances. The first intention of the Mosaic laws is thus: to eradicate this superstition and the paganism based on it. For everything that Jevoha despises they worship in their [133] gods.¹⁴ I find in their writings that they took care to sacrifice to the sun, their great god, seven bats, seven mice, and seven other creeping animals. How repulsive. Familiarity with the Sabians and their practices of worship was very useful to me in identifying the reason behind many (Mosaic) laws, which one couldn’t explain without reference to it. The main book for this is titled Hoabadah Hanbathiah,¹⁵ translated (into Arabic) by Aben Chaschiah.

This book is full of pagan nonsense and such things that were very appealing to the commoners. Namely, it is about magic, communicating with ghosts, and how one can use talismans to access the heavenly powers. Drawing on the Book of Adam, they also assert that there is a tree in India whose branches are transformed into insects when they are thrown onto the ground. In addition, there is also supposed to be a tree in the form of a person who occasionally emits sounds and words. There is supposed to be there, as well, a certain herb [134] with which one can make oneself invisible by carrying around a small amount. If one burns it in the open, one will hear noise and terrible voices for as long as it gives off smoke. All this can undermine faith in God’s miracles and lead people to think they that are brought about by secret arts.—

Thus, we are told that the tree Amloi,16 which they worshipped, has stood in Nienwah for twelve thousand years and was, on account of its position, involved in a drawn-out legal case with Mandragula.¹⁷ The prophet who owed his prophetic powers to the Amloi tree lost these capacities for quite some time as a result of this. When he regained them, his god cited the distraction of the case as the cause and ordered the prophet to send the files of the court case to all known courts in a position to decide which of the two gods was the more powerful one?

From this one can get a sense of the wisdom of those dark times. [135]

Even more splendid is the story of a prophet named Tamuz who wanted to convert a king to worshipping the seven planets and the twelve zodiac signs, but who was killed by that king in the most brutal way. The next night all the images of the world gathered in the temple of the golden image of the sun. This image, surrounded by all the others, hurled itself to the ground and began to lament Tamuz and to tell his sad tale. This went on throughout the night. The following morning the images went their separate ways, each one flying back to its temple. From this story comes the annual custom of gathering and mourning Tamuz on the first day of the month Tamuz (July). (One can find a trace of this in Ezekiel, where we read: “The women weeping for Tamuz.”¹⁸) However, the tales the book tells about Adam, the serpent, the tree of knowledge, and so on, are poetic fabrications modeled on the biblical stories. [136]

There are other writings of the Sabians, for example, the Book of Astamchos,¹⁹ which is wrongly attributed to Aristotle, the Book of Talismans,²⁰ the Book of Hermes,²¹ the Book of Isaac the Sabian, meant as a defense of this religion, and another book by the same author about the customs of the Sabians, their holidays, sacrifices, prayers, and so on. These books were translated into Arabic. Many others have been lost over time.

The ground on which this paganism rested was the belief, widely disseminated at the time, that one could promote the fertility of the land, and thus the wellbeing of people, through worshipping the stars.22 Hence the related great respect for agriculture and for cattle, which were indispensible for agriculture (and could not be slaughtered). Cattle were thought to conform instinctively to the will of the gods and to voluntarily devote themselves to serving people for this important end. In the book Hoabada Hanbatiah, where the vineyard is discussed, we read: [137] “The old wise men and the prophets teach us that on holidays we should play these instruments (specified in the book) before the star images, in return for which we are promised divine rewards of long life, protection against illness, fertility of the earth, and so on.”

However, God, who wanted to relieve us of these mistakes and spare us these pointless actions, had Moses promise the opposite—that, namely, by worshipping the stars we would bring upon ourselves infertility, sickness, and short lives.

Divine effects are always the same.²³ Nature makes no leaps.²⁴ Everything gradually achieves perfection, after much preparation.

One can observe this same wisdom in the divine laws, many of which have as their ground a wise forbearance toward human weakness, in that the human habit of holding sacrificial ceremonies in temples is legitimated, though it is restricted and made [138] to conform to divine law. And this was the best way for divine wisdom to reach its goal.²⁵

Maimonides divides the Mosaic laws into fourteen classes and presents his reasons for each one in a very perspicacious way that was also appropriate for his times.²⁶ He also attempts to convey the usefulness of and practical wisdom in the stories and anecdotes about people and places that we find in the Mosaic books.²⁷ [139]

¹ Guide 3:25 | Pines 2:502.

² Guide 3:25 | Pines 2:503.

³ Gen. 1:31.

⁴ Guide 3:26 | Pines 2:506.

⁵ Guide 3:26 | Pines 2:508.

⁶ Guide 3:27 | Pines 2:510.

⁷ Guide 3:28 | Pines 2:513.

⁸ Guide 3:29 | Pines 2:514. For an outstanding discussion of Maimonides’ theory of the Sabians, see Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp. 84–105).

⁹ Guide 3:29 | Pines 2:514–15. Maimonides claims to cite this story from a book titled, al-Filaha al-nabatiyya [Nabatian agriculture], on which see Stroumsa, Maimonides and His World, pp. 98–102.

¹⁰ Guide 3:29| Pines 2:515.

¹¹ Seth was the son of Adam, not Noah. Maimon seems to misread this sentence in Maimonides’ text, which in Pines’ translation reads: “They [the Sabians] deem that Seth disagreed with the opinion of his father, Adam, concerning the worship of the moon” (Pines 2:515). Since Adam (according to the Sabians) was a prophet devoted to the moon, it would seem that Seth rejected, rather than accepted, the cult of the moon.

¹² In Ibn Tibbon: “ודוהל בורקה ם״אשת םילקאמ אצי רשאכ”. “Thascham” thus seems to refer to a certain climate area. The climate of the sun, according to Pines (2:516), or perhaps the climate of Palestine, as suggested by Michael Schwarz,More Nevochim Lerabbenu Moshe ben Maimon, 2:523n13.

¹³ Ashera (הרשא).

¹⁴ Deut. 12:31.

¹⁵ The Nabatean Agriculture.56.

¹⁶ “Althea bush” according to Pines (2:519).

¹⁷ Guide 3:29 | Pines 2:19.

¹⁸ Ezek. 8:14.

¹⁹ “The book of al-Ustumakhus” in Pines’ translation (2:520). The Bodleian library has a manuscript of this book. The manuscript notes that the book was written by Aristotle for Alexander the Great.

²⁰ In Maimonides, the reference here is in the plural: “books of talismans” (Guide 3:29 | Pines 2:520–21).

²¹ Namely, Hermes Trismegistus.

²² Guide 3:30 | Pines 2:522.

²³ Maimon might be relying here on Maimonides’ identification of divine and natural actions at the beginning of Guide 3:32.

²⁴ “La nature ne fait jamais des sauts.” Leibniz, New Essays, 4:16

²⁵ Guide 3:32 | Pines 2:526–27.

²⁶ Guide 3:35 | Pines 535–38.

²⁷ Guide 3:50 | Pines 2:613–17.