How Not To Read The Guide of The Perplexed

The Institute of Asian and African Studies
The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation
Oprint from
JERUSALEM STUDIES IN
ARABIC AND ISLAM
32(2006)
Joel L. Kraemer
HOW (NOT) TO READ

THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED
THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
JSAI 32 (2006)
HOW (NOT) TO READ

THE GUIDE OF THE PERPLEXED *
Joel L. Kraemer
University of Chicago
For the discourse (kalam ) in this treatise has not come about by chance
(ittifaq ), but by great accuracy and exceeding precision, and with care
not to fail to explain anything dicult. Nothing is said in [this treatise]
out of context except to explain something in its proper context. You
therefore should not pursue [this treatise] with your fancies, thereby
harming me and not beneting yourself. You ought rather to study
everything that you need to know and keep it in mind always. 1
For those who wish to get clear of diculties it is advantageous
to state the diculties well; for the subsequent free play of thought
(epora) implies the solution of previous diculties, and it is not
possible to untie a knot which one does not know. But the diculty
* I wish to thank James T. Robinson and Ralph Lerner, who read previous versions
of this paper and made valuable suggestions.
I rst met Franz Rosenthal in 1962, when I applied for graduate work in Near
Eastern Languages and Literatures at Yale University. I took the train from New
York to New Haven and met him in his oce at the Hall of Graduate Studies. He
was forty-eight but already gray, and I always thought of him as a sheikh. He had
studied Arabic in Berlin with Paul Kraus, and when I later wrote about Kraus I
thought of both when I said:
He never wavered, and his life trajectory never departed from its course.
He was ultimately committed from start to nish to a passion, a labor of
love|to philology, meaning the study of ancient texts, editing, translat-
ing, interpreting, as a way of discovering new knowledge about human
civilizations. He was devoted single-mindedly to learning, craving no
other ambition. He was an authentic scholar in the great tradition of
Orientalism. This was the single road he traveled in his life's journey.
(Kraemer, \Death of an Orientalist.")
The last time I saw Franz Rosenthal was shortly before he died. I turned the conver-
sation to pleasantries by recalling seminars in his oce but could not remember the
room number. He said that he had forgotten as well. For many years he fretted over
his failing memory, but this time he was at peace. He then said, Sic transit gloria
mundi, with his typical humorous self-deprecation. He was tired and had to rest. He
died a few days later and these were the last words I heard from him.
1 The Guide of the Perplexed , Admonition of this Treatise, trans. S. Pines, p. 15.
The word for \admonition," was.iyya, meaning also instruction, last will and testa-
ment, bequest , is cognate with Hebrew .sawa -a (with metathesis), the word Samuel
Ibn Tibbon used in his translation. I have used the Munk-Joel edition (Jerusalem
1930/31) for the text of the Guide.
350
How (not) to read The Guide of the Perplexed 351
(apora) of our thinking points to a knot in the object; for in so far as

our thought is in diculties, it is in like case with those who are tied
up; for in either case it is impossible to go forward. 2
Textual problems
Readers of the Guide tend to assume that its Arabic text is etched in
stone and that Shlomo Pines' translation is based on an immaculate
text and re ects its perfection. The text of the Guide is, alas, imperfect.
Issachar Joel, who redacted Salomon Munk's 1856{66 edition, was aware
that it was not a critical edition and hoped that Judische Wissenschaft
would produce an editio major by 1935.3
This was about seventy-seven years ago and no scholar or institu-
tion has met the challenge. Munk's edition was based on very few
manuscripts (the ones he could access), and he \corrected" the Judaeo-
Arabic text somewhat to conform with Classical Arabic. 4
Surviving draft copies of pages from the Guide have many correc-
tions, deletions and additions. A fair copy has not survived, as far as
we know, but even if we had such a copy at our disposal, we probably
would nd in it corrections as we do in the fair copy of Maimonides'
Commentary on the Mishnah , completed in 1168. When Maimonides
composed the Mishneh Torah (circa 1168{78) and thereafter, he contin-
ued to correct the fair copy of the Mishnah Commentary. After he died,
his son Abraham went on correcting, as did his descendants down to the
2 See Leo Strauss's epigraph, \The Literary Character of The Guide for the Per-
plexed ," p. 38, from Aristotle, Metaph. iii, B, 1 (995a27{30), trans. W.D. Ross, in The
Complete Works of Aristotle , ed. Jonathan Barnes. And see Aristotle, Metaphysics ,
ed. W.D. Ross, II, p. 221. Strauss quoted the passage in Greek and gave no textual
reference.
3 Salomon Munk, a German Orientalist residing in Paris, produced a magnicent
edition accompanied by translation and commentary. This was undertaken after the
onset of his blindness, so that he worked with assistants. It was dedicated to Monsieur
le Baron and Madame la Baronne James de Rothschild. At the same time, Munk
published his pioneering Melanges de Philosophie Juive et Arabe (1859). See Alfred
Ivry, \Solomon Munk and the Science of Judaism." Issachar Joel was helped by the
great Arabist D.H. Baneth, who also put him in touch with the publisher, Dr. J.
Junovitch.
4 Such attempts to \correct" Middle Arabic texts and make them conform to
the rules of Classical Arabic were made also by P.K. Hitti in his edition of Usama
b. Munqidh, Kitab al-i ,tibar, by the editors of Ibn Ab Us. aybi,a's ,Uyun al-anba -
f
.tabaqat al-at a -, in the Thousand and One Nights and in other works. See I.
. ibb
Schen, \Usama Ibn Munqidh's Memoirs: Some Further Light on Muslim Middle
Arabic (Parts I{II)."
352 Joel L. Kraemer
Nagid David II (1335{1415). 5

We know from Maimonides' precept and practice that he wrote at
least two drafts before writing a fair copy and carefully redacted ev-
erything.6 He sometimes wrote draft copies rapidly when pressed for
time, and early drafts were occasionally copied by scribes before they
had been corrected by the master, and were circulated in this defective
form. When queried on dicult passages, he occasionally had to explain
to questioners that the texts they had received were incorrect, viz. not
the latest version.7
Unravelling a knot
According to Maimonides' philosophic theology, the movements of the

heavens prove the existence of a Mover, although we lack scientic knowl-
edge about the nature of these movements. Maimonides discussed this
theme, inter alia, in Guide, II, 24, where he stated, as I shall show,
that our inability to acquire scientic knowledge of the movements of
the heavenly spheres does not mean that we cannot infer from them the
existence of their Mover.
He asserted this in a sentence that was, I believe, distorted at an early
moment in the history of the text. Samuel Ibn Tibbon, having received
a faulty copy of the Guide to translate, surmised that there must have
been a lacuna, and proposed an emendation by restoring the missing
words. His emendation was accepted by Salomon Munk, who observed
that Ibn Tibbon's reading ( lecon ) was justied by other passages of
the Guide, where Maimonides said explicitly that the movement of the
heaven proves the existence of a First Mover. 8
5 Maimonidis Commentarius in Mischnam , Introduction, I, p. 35. Abraham lled
in missing words, phrases and entire lines; see I, p. 48, line -4; II, p. 136, line 1; III,
p. 119, line -15. In certain cases, he followed his father's instructions.
6 See Maimonides' criticism of the anonymous author of a responsum in Iggeret
ha-Shemad , saying that this man \wrote a rst draft of these momentous things
without thinking to revise them because he considered his discourse indisputable and
in no need of review;" Letters, ed. Shailat, pp. 33{34.
7 An autograph manuscript of several chapters of the Mishneh Torah contains
deletions, corrections and marginal additions. See Samuel H. Atlas, A Section from
the Yad Ha-H . ah of Maimonides , based on Bodl. MS Heb. d.32, 2794. See also
. azak
Sassoon, Maimonidis Commentarius in Mischnam , Introduction, I, p. 32.
8 Le Guide des es , II, p. 194, n. 4 (on p. 195). In his text and translation,
egar
however, Munk adhered to the manuscripts and to al-H. arz. Munk did not mention
that Ibn Tibbon rst suggested his emendation in a marginal note on the passage, al-
though he was familiar with the notes from manuscripts of Ibn Tibbon's translations.
Shlomo Pines followed the received Arabic text; however, sensing the
diculty of the textus receptus and wishing to inform the reader that an
alternative existed, he added in a footnote that Ibn Tibbon's translation
had a dierent meaning.9 Pines' authority and the general reliability of
his translation enshrined the textus receptus as the universally accepted
reading. My attempt to interpret the text according to Ibn Tibbon's
version fell on deaf ears.10
This paper intends to use this one sentence in the Guide of the Per-
plexed as a springboard for a discussion of the methods to be employed
in interpreting the Guide.11 I oer my solution as the most plausible
hypothesis, which may be falsied by other evidence and reasoning. I
have featured two other attempts by other interpreters to solve the crux,
one an esoteric overinterpretation and the other an exoteric underinter-
pretation. My aim is clarication of method, not refutation, and hence
I have chosen two outstanding interpreters, whose contributions to the
eld are widely acclaimed.
The received Arabic text reads:
. . . li-anna asbaba 'l-istidlali ,ala 'l-sama -i mumtani ,atun
,indan a qad ba ,uda ,anna wa-,ala bi-'l-mawd.i ,i wa-'l-mar-
taba. wa-'l-istidlalu 'l-,ammu minhu annahu dallana ,ala
muh.arrikihi la-amrun la tas.ilu ,uqulu 'l-insani ,ila
ma ,rifatihi.12
Pines translates:
For it is impossible for us to accede to the points starting
from which conclusions may be drawn about the heavens; for
the latter are too far away from us and too high in place and
in rank. And even the general conclusion that may be drawn
from them, namely, that they prove [the existence of] 13 their
9 By textus receptus, I mean the text according to the Munk-Joel edition, with
which the editions by J. Qah. and H. Atay are in general agreement.
10 See my \Maimonides on Aristotle and Scientic Method," pp. 79{80.
11 Method is an orderly procedure or process of doing something, whereas method-
ology is the science of method; however, nowadays people use the word methodology
where they intend method. Similarly, hermeneutics as the study of interpretations
has come to mean interpretation itself.
12 Dal alat al-h n, II, 24, ed. Munk-Joel, p. 228.23{26, trans. Pines, p. 327. I
-ir
.a
refer to the pagination of Issachar Joel's 1930/31 redaction of Salomon Munk's Paris
(1856{66) edition. Pines gives the pagination of Munk's 1856{66 edition (here, p. 54a)
at the head of his pages. I have noted Classical Arabic vowel endings and tanwn to
make the syntactic structure clear.
13 Munk had \(l'existence de ) son moteur," whereas Pines added \the existence
of" to the text without brackets, although the word for existence does not appear in
the Arabic text.
354 Joel L. Kraemer
Mover, is a matter the knowledge of which cannot be reached

by human intellects.
Pines thought that he needed to add the word \even," which is not
warranted by the Arabic text.
My translation of the textus receptus :
For the causes of inference regarding the heaven are inac-
cessible to us; for it is too distant from us and too high in
place and rank.14 And the general inference from it, that it
indicates for us its Mover, is indeed something which human
intellects cannot know.15
According to the received text, then, we cannot have a general inference
indicating, or proving, the Mover of the heaven|an astounding remark
for Maimonides to have made, as it contradicts what he said elsewhere
and makes no contextual sense here. Yet the received text is almost
universally accepted by Maimonides' interpreters who have commented
on it. Actually, most scholars turn their backs on the sentence, unaware
that a knot exists.
Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation
As I have stated, Ibn Tibbon emended the sentence by inserting the

missing words. I have used angle brackets to indicate where they occur. 16
14 Maimonides treated al-sama - (heaven) here as singular masculine. He was evi-
dently thinking of the outermost heaven, which in Aristotle's cosmology is the rst
moved by the First Mover in an eternal motion, and causing the lower planetary
spheres to move; see Physics, viii, 6, 259b32{260a10. The word for heaven ( al-sama -)
is treated as feminine singular in most cases in the Guide. Out of the rst twenty in-
stances I checked, seventeen were feminine and three were masculine, when summiya
al-sam a - occurred. Ibn Tibbon, followed by Pines and others, translated al-sam a-
in the plural, following Hebrew, where shamayim is grammatically plural (formally
dual). In Classical Arabic sama - is either masculine or feminine singular, with the
plural being samawat. Samawat occurs, by my count, ten times in the Guide |part
I, chap. 34, ed. Munk-Joel, p. 49.25 (trans. Pines, p. 73); I, 36, 43b, 56.23 (p. 83); I,
53, 63b, 83.9 (p. 122); I, 76, 127b, 162.7 (p. 230); II, 5, 15b, 181.5 and 7 (p. 260);
II, 26, 57a, 232.9 (p. 332); II, 30, 67a, 245.24 (p. 350); III, 4, 7b, 304.10 and 24 (p.
424). Twice Maimonides used the phrase al-samawat wa-'l-ard. , which occurs very
frequently in the Qur-an.
15 The word \indeed" renders the Arabic emphatic particle la -, which is lacking in
the Pines translation and has been inexplicably ignored by scholars in their analyses
of this sentence; this is odd because it is syntactically problematic and suggests a
lacuna; see below at note 116.
16 Sefer Moreh ha-nevukhim la-Rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon be-ha ,ataqat Yehu-
dah Ibn Tibbon , ed. Y. Even Shmuel, p. 285.
x`y la`> ,mripn lr epexed mdy | mdn zllekd di`xde
.ezricil mc`d ilky eribi `l <oipr èd mpipr
And the general inference from them is that they indicate

for us their Mover, <but other matters concerning them are
something> [that human intellects cannot know] .
As opposed to the received Arabic text, Ibn Tibbon's version ts the
present context and does not clash with what Maimonides stated else-
where. Accordingly, Maimonides said that we can draw a general in-
ference from the heaven that it indicates, or proves, its Mover, but we
cannot have knowledge of anything else about it.
Translation of the restored Arabic text
If we reconstruct the Arabic text, where \heaven" is singular, with the

help of Ibn Tibbon's version, we attain a reasonably satisfactory text.
For the causes of inference regarding the heaven are inacces-
sible to us; for it is too distant from us and too high in place
and rank. And the general inference from it is that it indi-
cates for us its Mover, but other matters concerning it are
indeed something which human intellects cannot know.
Maimonides did not mention demonstrative proof, rather that we
have a general inference (al-istidlal al-,amm ) from heaven indicating a
Mover. By \other matters" he intended astronomical phenomena, par-
ticularly the perplexing motions of heavenly bodies.
Samuel Ibn Tibbon's reading was originally mentioned in a marginal
annotation to his text:17
x`y la`' epipr didiy .dn oexqg o`k il d`xp : z''ay xn`
dgewld dii`xd lr [x]'n`y aeygl oi`y 'oiipr èd mpiipr
ztenl m` egwl èdy byei `l oiipr èdy mripn lr mzrepzn
.miax zenewna dfe dwfg dii`xl e`
17 See Warren Z. Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt,"

pp. 155{56. Harvey quoted the note from Y. Even-Shmuel's annotated edition of Ibn
Tibbon's Moreh ha-nevukhim, II, 1, p. 316, and checked some manuscripts of Ibn
Tibbon's translation. On the marginal notes, see Carlos Fraenkel's doctorate, From
Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dal alat al-H.a-irn into
the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, Part I, chap. 1 and Part II; see also Y. Tzvi Langermann,
\A New Source for Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed
and his notes on it." I have used Ibn Tibbon's marginal note, as edited by Fraenkel,
p. 384.
356 Joel L. Kraemer
Samuel Ibn Tibbon said: \It appears to me that there is

some lacuna here, whose sense is: but other matters concern-
ing them are something [that human intellects cannot know] .
For it is inconceivable that he said of the inference taken
from their movement to their Mover that it is something
unknowable, since in many contexts he took it either as a
demonstration or as a strong proof.
The entire chapter (II, 24) was devoted to astronomical puzzles and
the conclusion that astronomers had not succeeded in solving them. Mai-
monides claimed that Ptolemy's epicycles and eccentrics are outside the
bounds of reason and opposed to natural science and that incongruities
and impossibilities in Ptolemy's accounts contradicted Aristotle. 18
Immediately before the crucial sentence, Maimonides wrote that only
God knows the true reality and nature of the heavens, their substance,
form, motions, and causes, and that He has enabled human beings to
know what is beneath the heavens in this world that is their abode.
After the crucial sentence Maimonides remarked, obviously referring to
astronomical puzzles, that \to fatigue our minds with something they
do not apprehend, lacking an instrument to do so, is an innate defect or
a kind of obsession."19
Establishing the limitations of the human mind was the main theme
of Part I, chapters 31 to 34. Maimonides began chapter 31 by saying that
although the human mind has the natural power to apprehend certain
things, there are also matters that it is totally incapable of knowing.
Joseph ben Judah, the addressee of the Guide, had a powerful ardor
for speculative matters, and it was his curiosity that drove him to seek
knowledge beyond his mental capacity and state of preparation.
The admonition not to fatigue our minds is addressed to all of us,
and in particular to Joseph ben Judah, who is alluded to throughout the
chapter; for instance, as the one who studied the Almagest under Mai-
monides' guidance and the one knew of astronomy what Maimonides
had explained to him orally. And it was presumably Joseph whom Mai-
monides was thinking of in particular when he warned against having
18 See Y.T. Langermann, \The True Perplexity."
19 The last word is waswas, which occurs once in the Qur -an (114:4) and once in the
Guide. It means literally \whispering" (onomatopoeic as is the entire verse), under-
stood in Qur-anic commentaries as the whispering of Satan (the \slinking whisperer"
(al-waswas al-khannas ) in verse 5); hence it came to mean \temptation," and so
Pines rendered it. However, it also developed the sense of obsession, which ts better
here. Another sense it has is \madness" (Ibn Tibbon and Schwarz: shiga ,on ), which
is apposite as well. Waswas was a medical term meaning \delusion" or \possession,"
often in the compound al-waswas al-sawdaw (\melancholic delusion"); see Michael
W. Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society , pp. 50, 65, 71, 221,
and 285{86.
an obsession with things that fatigue the mind and are beyond one's
capacity.
When Maimonides addressed the second person in the Guide, he in-
tended Joseph and others like him, however few they may be, and also
every \you" who becomes a reader throughout time, whom he occasion-
ally addressed directly, such as \you who are engaged in the study of this
treatise of mine" (II, 19, p. 305). There are variations on this \you",
viz. the one he addresses in Guide, I, 2 (p. 24), who glances through
Scripture in leisure time as though it were history or poetry, when \you
leave o drinking and copulating." And there is the \you" who ascribes
anger to God.20
Joseph studied astronomy with Maimonides when he resided in Cai-
ro/Fust.at.. He immersed himself in astronomical problems, which Mai-
monides found puzzling, confessing his own perplexity ( h.ayra ) and ad-
mitting that he had heard no demonstration ( burhan ) for them.21
After Joseph had emigrated to Aleppo, Maimonides wrote the Guide
for him and sent it to him in dispersed chapters, one after the other,
as they were written down, wherever Joseph was (Epistle Dedicatory,
trans. Pines, p. 4). The composition of the Guide is a complicated,
unsettled question. Maimonides ostensibly wrote it for Joseph b. Judah.
However, the treatise was disseminated in Cairo-Fust. at. even before it
was dispatched to Joseph, supporting his claim, in his allegorical letter
to Maimonides (see below, at note 58), that others received copies of the
Guide before him.22
I am sending you six quires of the Guide, which I have taken
from someone else, that are the end of the First Part. 23 I
20 Speaking of someone who ascribes a deciency to God (I, 36, p. 84), he wrote:
\Know accordingly, you who are that man, that when you believe in the doctrine
of the corporeality of God or believe that one of the states of the body belongs to
Him, you provoke His jealousy and anger, kindle the re of His wrath," etc. That is,
if you ascribe anger to God, He will be angry with you. Maimonides assumed that
the model reader would understand from elsewhere in the Guide what the true, or
philosophic, meaning of divine anger was.
21 Maimonides had used the notion of apodictic demonstration ( burh an ) once before
in this chapter (ed. Munk, 52a; ed. Munk-Joel, 226.13{15; trans. Pines, p. 324) in
connection with the measures of eccentricity demonstrated in the Almagest. See
Ptolemy's Almagest , trans. G.J. Toomer, p. 474, n. 12.
22 Epistles, ed. Baneth, no. 6, pp. 67{68.
23 The Oriental quire normally had ve folded sheets or bifolia, placed one upon
the other and folded straight down the middle, thereby comprising ten leaves, each
leaf having a recto and a verso, and hence twenty pages. The quires were stitched to-
gether to form a codex. See Malachi Beit-Arie, The Makings of the Medieval Hebrew
Book, pp. 113{15, 221{23. Baneth ( Epistles, p. 37, n. 1) suggested that Maimonides
intended Part I, chapter 71 or 71{72. Chapter 71 discussed the Mutakallimun, in-
cluding the Ash,ars. If he sent six quires of twenty pages each, however, he sent more
358 Joel L. Kraemer
am uncertain whether I sent to you the Introduction ( .sadr ),

which I am appending to them, and so I am sending it to
you now. These quires were copied by the Righteous Judge
and Abu 'l-Mah.asin.24 Be chary with them and do not lose
them lest I come to harm at the hands of the Gentiles. For
the wicked among Israel are many .25
We see here that one reason for Maimonides' caution and secrecy was
the threat of persecution by Muslim authorities.
Samuel Ibn Tibbon

When Jonathan ben David and the Lunel sages turned to Maimonides
with a question on astrology and queries on passages in the Mishneh
Torah and asked him to translate the Guide for them along with some
of his other Arabic works, he recommended that they turn instead to
Samuel Ibn Tibbon, then in his thirties. 26
In around 4957 AM = 1196/7 CE, Maimonides sent the rst two
parts of the Guide in Arabic, and they were given to Samuel to translate
into Hebrew. Jonathan acknowledged receiving the Guide in his second
letter, preserved in his own hand|\And you added to us wisdom and
goodness, for you sent us the Guide of the Perplexed."27
than one or two chapters.
24 The Righteous Judge is presumably Maimonides' colleague Isaac ben Sason,
judge of Cairo/Fust.at., and Abu 'l-Mah.asin may be Maimonides' father-in-law,
Mishael. I am not sure that \copied by" means that they physically did the copying.
It was, after all, a long and arduous task and they were busy men.
25 Maimonides alluded to Jews who would report him to the Gentile authorities.
\Gentiles" (goyim ) in Judaeo-Arabic texts of the period are Muslims. For rish ,e
yisra -el, see Tosefta Sanhedrin (Zuckermandel), xiii, 2; Bavli Sot. ah 48b, 110b; Mish-
neh Torah, Shabbat, l, 15; ,Edut, xi, 10.
26 The details emerge from the correspondence between Maimonides and the sages
of Lunel and from Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Introduction, ed. Yehudah Even Shmuel,
pp. 117{22. Aviezer Ravitzky drew attention to Samuel Ibn Tibbon in his disserta-
tion, The Thought of Rabbi Zerah. yah b. Isaac b. She -altiel H.en and Maimonidean-
Tibbonian Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century , and a series of enlightening articles,
inter alia, \Samuel ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the Guide of the Per-
plexed " and \The Secrets of the Guide to the Perplexed : between the Thirteenth and
Twentieth Centuries." His work stimulated other scholars, such as Carlos Fraenkel,
James T. Robinson and Resianne Fontaine, to devote important studies to Samuel,
who was one of the luminaries of medieval Jewish thought | translator, exegete,
physician and philosopher.
27 Bodl. Heb. b. 11.33 (2874, 32); see S.M. Stern, \Autographs of Maimonides,"
pp. 196{99. Some of Stern's readings and translations are problematic and his text
and translation are lightly annotated. An annotated translation will appear in my
volume of Maimonides' letters, to be published in the Yale Judaica Series.
Samuel assured his readers, in the Introduction to his translation,

that he would check every doubtful word in the books which his father,
Judah Ibn Tibbon, translated, as well as in his Arabic grammars and
books. If any doubt remained, he would ask the Great Rav for elucida-
tion. He had already asked him many questions about uncertain places
in the text, some of them errors or lacunae, for the copy he received was
uncorrected. As the Lunel sages were eager to have the translation, he
settled for the inferior manuscript in his possession, indicating doubtful
places and promising to provide corrections in due course.
When Maimonides recovered somewhat from a long illness, he an-
swered the Lunel Sages. He wrote a long letter to Samuel, replying to
his questions, giving him general guidance on translation and specic
suggestions on sentences and terms, and recommending a list of philoso-
phers whose works should be read. He signed the letter 8 Tishre 4960
AM = 30 September 1199 CE. 28
We do not have the entire correspondence between Samuel and Mai-
monides. Samuel had written a letter accompanying a query on prov-
idence, most likely in Sivan 1509 SE (May-June 1198). 29 He hoped to
hear news of the master's complete recovery and desired a reply to his
previous letters about the Guide. Samuel announced that he was return-
ing his copy of the Guide because it was defective, requesting that the
master's pupils carefully proof-read the text and that he attest that it
was carried out satisfactorily. 30 Samuel made corrections in Part Three
on the basis of a second copy superior to the rst. He guessed that the
rst copy was derived from a version written in Arabic characters or
from a copy thereof; this explained the many errors in the rst copy.
Samuel indicated what he deemed errors in the margin with ink or with
his ngernail. He asked Maimonides to instruct the proof-readers not to
scrape, that is, expunge, anything in the text but to place corrections in
the margin, as scraping damaged the paper and made corrections dicult
to decipher. Since he inscribed queries in the margins of the manuscript
which he sent to Maimonides and his assistants, and they corrected the
text in the margin, marginal annotations are of great signicance. At the
next stage, when the manuscript was copied, the correct version would
be inserted into the text.
Abraham Maimonides mentioned that at the end of his father's life
28 Letters, ed. Shailat, pp. 525{54.
29 SE = Seleucid Era (bagan 312/11 BCE). Diesendruck published the letter in
\Samuel and Moses Ibn Tibbon on Maimonides' Theory of Providence," pp. 352{53.
It is also printed in Qoves., ed. Lichtenberg, I, 26v{27r.
30 Maimonides did sign such authorizations; see Bodleian Library Huntington 80
of the Mishneh Torah, which was was said to have been \proofread from my book, I,
Moses son of Maimon of blessed memory."
360 Joel L. Kraemer
he received letters from Samuel Ibn Tibbon, to which he replied, for

Samuel was an esteemed and discerning sage. \The righteous man, my
father and teacher (may the memory of the righteous be blessed) attested
that he [Samuel] went deeply into the secret matters of the Guide of the
Perplexed and his other compositions and understood his intention." 31
This conforms with the praise that Maimonides heaped on Samuel in his
letter to him and may even refer to it: 32
You are certainly qualied to translate from one language
to another, for God has given you a perceptive mind for
understanding a proverb and a gure [the words of the wise
and their riddles ] (Prov 1:6). I discern from your words that
your mind has penetrated to the depths of the matter and
has revealed the hidden secrets.
Though Maimonides was ill and weak, he took the trouble to write a
long letter to Samuel, showing his regard for the translator and for the
sages of Lunel, a place of learning which he saw emerging as a great
centre of scholarship.
The Creator of the world knows how I wrote to you this
amount and how I ee from mankind and seek seclusion in a
place they are unaware of, sometimes leaning against a wall,
sometimes writing while lying because of the great weakness
of my body, for its powers have failed and I am old. 33
In many places where Maimonides objected to Samuel's translation
he acknowledged that the problem was the faulty text that Samuel had
received. One cause of error was that scribes circulated copies of the
Guide that were not adequately proofread. When early unexamined
copies became public, it was virtually impossible to correct them, and
faulty readings got into circulation.
At an early stage, the Guide was transcribed into Arabic script and
read by Muslims and Christians, either with Hebrew quotations in Arabic
script (as in Atay's edition) or with the quotations in Hebrew letters, as
in a number of Genizah fragments. 34 ,Abd al-Lat.f al-Baghdad reported
31 Milhamot ha-Shem (Wars of the Lord ), ed. R. Margaliyot, p. 53. Qoves, ed.
. .
Lichtenberg, II, 16c, has the quotation, which appears to be an interpolation; see
Margaliyot, p. 53, n. 17.
32 Shailat, Letters, p. 531.
33 Letters, ed. Shailat, p. 550. On his hopes for Lunel's sages, see his letter in
Responsa, ed. Blau, IV, 33 = Letters, ed. Shailat, p. 558.
34 An abridgement of the Guide in Arabic letters for Christian use was discovered
by Georges Vajda, \Un abrege chretien du Guide des Egares de Mose Mamonide."
that Maimonides \wrote a book for the Jews and called it Kitab al-dalala,
and cursed whoever would write it in a non-Hebrew script." 35 Baneth
suggests that Maimonides did not want to publicize his attack on Ash ,ar
Kalam, favoured by Saladin and the Ayyubids, or his negation of divine
attributes, which they considered ta ,.tl, or atheism.36
Maimonides' formulation of an apophatic, or negative, theology, mea-
ning that we cannot ascribe positive attributes to God, clashed with
the Ash,ars, who did not shun anthropomorphic references to God and
ascribed to Him real eternal attributes. According to the Ash ,ars,
Qur-anic references to God's hand and face or to His descending and
sitting should not be interpreted as metaphorical and demythologized
attributes, but rather as real attributes whose true meaning is unfath-
omable. Maimonides' harsh strictures against Ash ,ar Kalam in the
Guide (I, 71 and 73, III, 17, 23) therefore directly con icted with pre-
vailing currents of thought. He also criticized the Ash ,ar denial of cause
and eect as undermining the possibility of science.
Baha- al-Dn b. Shaddad, a biographer of Saladin and member of
his entourage, praised the Sultan's piety, and said that he believed in
bodily resurrection and despised philosophers who denied positive divine
attributes. He gave as an example of Saladin's piety his order, drawn up
by al-Qad. al-Fad.il, to Saladin's son al-Malik al-Z. ahir, ruler of Aleppo,
to execute Shihab al-Dn al-Suhraward (1191). 37 Joseph ben Judah was
in Aleppo at the time, and was court physician to the ruler.
It was generally known among astute readers and commentators that
Maimonides suggested in veiled language that Muh. ammad was not an
authentic prophet (Guide, II, 40), a doctrine which Islamic law con-
sidered blasphemy punishable by death. Consequently, along with its
exoteric veneer, Maimonides wished to keep the Guide in Hebrew script
and restricted to responsible readers.
A later Muslim theologian, the famous H. anbal Ibn Taymiyya (d.
728/1328), portrayed Maimonides as a denier of divine attributes. 38 He
observed that early Jewish authorities did not reject the attributes of
God in the Torah. This only happened after Jews were aected by
the Jahmiyya sect, and denied positive divine attributes 39 , either as
35 Ibn Ab Usaybi,a, ,Uyun al-anba -, p. 687, in the biography of al-Baghdad.
36 Maimonides, Epistles, ed. Baneth, p. 37, n. 1.
37 Ibn Shaddad, The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin , p. 20.
38 Ibn Taymiyya fought against the Crudaders and Mongols and is inspirational
for militant Islamic movements.
39 The Jahmiyya were an early Islamic sect with views similar to those of the
Mu,tazila. They denied God's attributes, giving a metaphorical interpretation of
Qur-anic expressions such as hand and face. On Jahm b. S. afwan and the Jahmiyya
sect, see Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra ,
I, 493.; W. Montgomery Watt, \Djahmiyya," EI 2 , s.v.
362 Joel L. Kraemer
philosophers, such as Moses ben Maimon and his kind, or as Mu ,tazils,

such as Abu Ya,qub al-Bas.r.40
The esoteric scandal
The Guide, then, was, as its author professed, an exoteric work ( .zahir )
that had to be read perspicaciously in order to understand its concealed
(ba.tin ) messages. The exoteric teaching contains esoteric doctrines.
Warren Z. Harvey embraced the notion that the Guide 's literary char-
acter is esoteric and used this insight to explain the crux in the textus
receptus of the statement in II, 24. In so doing, he made, in my view, a
stunning overinterpretation. He insists that the received text is correct
and arrives at the conclusion that \the proof from the heavens is be-
yond our ken." He discussed his theory under the odd title|\Attempts
to Escape the Esoteric Scandal," as though this scandal is proven and
those who object are escaping the inevitable, indisputable truth. 41 \In
this passage," Harvey says: \The camou age is brie y removed from the
esoteric scandal, and Maimonides' true opinion is bared." By \brie y"
Harvey means that of all the thousands of sentences Maimonides wrote,
this is the only one in which his true opinion is candidly revealed. The
attempts to escape the scandal, he contends, stem from timidity and
refusal to acknowledge the glaring truth exposed in this sentence. We
are expected to believe that Maimonides wove a massive web of camou-
age to protect the timid from this outrageous belief, which remained
concealed over the centuries and is now nally exposed.
However, in the rst place, the revelation that Maimonides did not
accept the Aristotelian proof of God's existence is not so scandalous.
After all, Maimonides stated explicitly that he accepted the twenty-sixth
premise on the eternity of heavenly movement for the sake of argument
and that Aristotle himself never claimed to have proven it. Furthermore,
as we shall see, the crucial sentence does not refer to demonstrative proof
40 See al-Kit
ab al-Muh r, ed. G. Vajda and D. Blumenthal;
. taw
de Y
usuf al-Bas .
and see Ibn Taymiyya, Dar - ta ,arud. al-,aql wa-'l-naql, VII, p. 94 (an apparently
neglected source). Elsewhere (I, 131), Ibn Taymiyya made the intriguing statement:
\The great Muslim and non-Muslim investigators ( nuz..zar ) acknowledged creation of
the universe, so that Moses ben Maimon, author of the Guide of the Perplexed |
he was for the Jews what Abu H. amid al-Ghazal was for the Muslims|combined
prophetic views with philosophic views by interpreting the former according to the
latter. . . "
41 See W.Z. Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt," pp.
154{59. See Strauss's interpretation of this passage in his introductory essay to Pines'
translation: \How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed ," p. lv.
in any case. Maimonides' concern was that people might mistakenly

think that he actually accepted the opinion of the later Aristotelians
that the universe is primordial and eternal.
Referring to Ibn Tibbon as \Maimonides' loyal and notoriously liter-
alistic Arabic-to-Hebrew translator," Harvey says that Ibn Tibbon \was
so rued by this passage that he refused to believe that Maimonides
could have written it."42 To be precise, Ibn Tibbon observed that the
text did not make sense and suggested that something was lacking. We
have no direct or indirect evidence of his mental state when he saw the
text.
Stressing that Ibn Tibbon only noted his gloss in the margin, Harvey
insists that it was not a textual reading he had before him. 43 A more
plausible scenario, however, is that Ibn Tibbon received this reading from
Maimonides after asking him about the text. When Ibn Tibbon returned
the manuscript to Maimonides with his queries, the replies had to be
written in the margin, as Ibn Tibbon requested, and he or his copyists
would incorporate conrmed corrections into the translation. Harvey
dismisses the gloss without discussing Ibn Tibbon's correspondence with
Maimonides and his modus operandi. He claims that the emended version
is so remarkably smooth that it makes the passage state what many
readers would expect it to say and it even convinced \a leading authority
on medieval Arabic philosophy" that it was not an emendation. 44
The received text, on the other hand, is not smooth at all and does
not say what readers expect it to say, and that is precisely our knot
to unravel or we cannot move forward. Having two possible texts, one
smooth and coherent and the other rough and incoherent, a moderate
reading would favour the rst unless there were a strong compulsion not
to do so.45 Umberto Eco explains how to prove a textual conjecture:
42 Harvey's formulation (\he refused to believe. . . ") is inappropriate; it is ordinarily
used by an exegete who nds a text so oensive that he declares it an interpolation
or misattribution. Such is the case of the Guide, III, 51, which many rabbinic sages
considered so outre that Maimonides could not have written it; and if he did, it
should be hidden away or burned. See Shem T. ov ben Joseph ben Shem T. ov (15th
century) in his comment ad loc.
43 After saying (p. 156) that Samuel only noted his gloss in the margin, Harvey
then adds: \Generations of unnamed copyists silently incorporated it into the text."
We do not really know, however, that \Samuel only noted his gloss in the margin"
(emphasis added). He or one of his copyists may have written the correction in the
text once its validity was conrmed.
44 Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment," p. 157. I do not know what
grounds Harvey had for saying that I \evidently had not seen the translator's marginal
note."
45 See Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation , p. 26, on moderateness as being
within the modus in the sense of limit and measure. He also uses the term \model
reader." We cannot claim to know a correct or true intention of an author ( intentio
364 Joel L. Kraemer
How to prove a conjecture about the intentio operis ? The

only way is to check it upon the text as a coherent whole.
This idea, too, is an old one and comes from Augustine ( De
doctrina christiana ): any interpretation given of a certain
portion of a text can be accepted if it is conrmed by, and
must be rejected if it is challenged by, another portion of
the same text. In this sense the internal textual coherence
controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader. 46
Harvey alleges that some people, including the present writer, ig-
nored Maimonides' \repeated and explicit statements to the eect that
the twenty-sixth premise in the Introduction to the Second Part is not
proved."47 I, however, stressed that Maimonides granted the twenty-
sixth premise to the Aristotelians as a hypothesis, dialectically; indeed,
this was one of the main points of my article. 48 Maimonides used the
word taslm for \granting," which is a technical term in dialectical argu-
ment.49 Maimonides stated three times in the Introduction to the Second
Part that his acceptance of the eternity premise was ex hypothesi.
Harvey insists that the twenty-sixth premise, arming the necessity
of the eternity of the universe, is unproved. But this oversimplies the
issue. Maimonides explained that Aristotle thought the premise was cor-
rect, the most tting to be believed and the most probable. He claried
that Aristotle had not proven the premise of the universe's eternity and
Aristotle himself did not think that he had.50 Maimonides denied that
the premise was either necessary (as claimed by latter-day Aristotelians)
or impossible (as claimed by the Mutakallimun). When Maimonides
auctoris ) or work (intentio operis ), but we can set limits to the free-play of the
reader's intention (intentio lectoris ).
46 Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation , p. 65
47 Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment," p. 159.
48 See Kraemer, \Maimonides on Aristotle and Scientic Method," pp. 74{75.
49 See Guide, II, Introduction to the Second Part, pp. 235, 239 (ed. Munk-Joel,
p. 168.5{6, p. 169.3). See also Abu ,Abdallah al-Tabrz, al-Muqaddimat al-khams
un, pp. 26{27. The Arabic word for hypothesis, taqd
wa-'l-,ishr r, is Pines' reading,
inferring from Ibn Tibbon's translation ( hanah.ah ). The Munk-Joel text has taqrr.
Even-Shmuel, editor of Ibn Tibbon, understood taqrr = hanah.ah as \assumption"
or \hypothesis;" see III, p. 37, n. 3 on the text. Munk observes that Ibn Falaquera
used the same translation. Al-Tabrz probably had taqrr, which he rendered as
. (\positing"). Al-Tabr z's Commentary on the Twenty-Five Propositions was
wad ,
translated into Hebrew by an anonymous author and by Isaac ben Nathan, and used
by Crescas; see Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle , pp. 21{23; p. 698, n. 1 on
Proposition XXV.
50 This is a central point in my \Maimonides on Aristotle and Scientic Method;"
see especially pp. 58, 67, 69 and 72. Maimonides stressed that Aristotle appealed
more than once to the universal consensus of mankind, thereby giving the premise of
eternity only the force of a dialectical, not demonstrative, statement.
granted the latter-day Aristotelians the premise of the world's eternity,

he granted it as necessary and true in accordance with their view of its
being a premise that could lead to a demonstrative proof, although from
Maimonides' own point of view it was merely possible and could not lead
to such a conclusion. Maimonides wished to lay down the premises nec-
essary for establishing God's existence by the argument of the heaven's
movement, for on this basis he could provide a demonstration ( burhan )
that God is not a body, nor a force in a body and that time has no
dominion over him.51 The demonstration of God's incorporeity was one
of Maimonides' paramount concerns in the Guide.
Maimonides wanted to show that both the biblical theory of the
universe's creation and the philosophers' theory of its eternity lead to
positing a deity. This argument is reminiscent of a similar claim by Ibn
Tufayl and vulnerable to the same criticism. 52
Ibn T.ufayl's hero H.ayy b. Yaqz.an realized that accepting either op-
tion of the disjunction|the theory that the world is created or that it is
eternal|leads to the same conclusion; namely, the existence of a deity.
H.ayy reasoned that if the world was created ex nihilo, it must have a
Maker (fa ,il ) to bring it into being. This Maker could not be perceptible
to the senses, for it is not a material body, since if it were part of the
world it would need a cause and that cause would need a cause, so that
the series of causes would be innite, something that is absurd.
The alternative|that the world is eternal|implies that its motion
is eternal. Every motion requires a mover, which is either a force dis-
tributed through a body or it is not. It cannot be a force distributed
through a body because then it would be divided when bodies divide.
Now it has been proven that material bodies are nite, and hence the
force in them must be nite. Hence, a force having an innite activity
cannot belong to something material; it must belong to a being that is
not material and not describable by any predicate that qualies material
entities.
What H.ayy did not say, however, was that each alternative leads to
a dierent conception of the deity|one the Creator God of the Qur -an
and the other the First Mover of the philosophers.
Having proven the existence of the First Mover, Maimonides made a
bold declaration: \Now this is the deity ( huwa 'l-ilah ), may His name be
sublime; I am referring to the rst cause moving the sphere." 53 In the
Mishneh Torah, after giving a brief version of the Aristotelian argument,
51 See Guide, I, 71 (p. 182); II, Introduction (p. 235); II, 1 (p. 247); II, 2 (p. 252);
II, 12 (p. 279); II, 18 (p. 302); II, 25 (p. 328); III, 45 (p. 577).
52 See Ibn Tufayl, Hayy b. Yaqza
. . . n, ed. L. Gauthier, pp. 81{85; trans. L.E. Good-
man, pp. 130{32.
53 Guide, II, 1 (p. 246).
366 Joel L. Kraemer
he stated: \He, blessed be He, causes it to revolve without hand and

without body."54 Similarly, after the third philosophic speculation in
the Guide, the proof of a Necessary Being ( wajib al-wujud ), he said: \It
is He who is the deity, may His name be sublime." 55 After a fourth spec-
ulation, Maimonides announced: \All these are demonstrative methods
of proving the existence of one deity, who is neither a body nor a force in
a body, while believing at the same time in the eternity of the world." 56
The conclusion, that the First Mover or Necessary Being is the deity,
is fallacious if by \the deity" he meant the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, who brought the Israelites out of Egypt and gave the Torah to
Moses at Mount Sinai. There is no semantic equivalence between the
First Mover or Necessary Being and the God of Abraham, whose invo-
cation, In the name of YHWH, God of the World (Gen. 21:33), heads
all three parts of the Guide. Maimonides depicted Abraham as both
philosopher and believer, and entrusted it to the reader to work out this
contradiction.
Accepting the proof from eternal motion provisionally made Mai-
monides' position vulnerable to misinterpretation. He was so concerned
that his acceptance of the eternity of the universe might be misconstrued
as his own doctrine that he added a marginal note in his Commentary
on the Mishnah, completed some twenty years prior to the writing of the
Guide :
The greatest principle of the Torah is that the world is inno-
vated (muh.dath ) by God ex nihilo, and I only had recourse
to the idea of eternity according to the philosophers so that
the demonstration (burhan ) of God's existence would be ab-
solute.57
Moreover, in his correspondence with Joseph ben Judah, Maimonides
had to fend o an allegation that made the Guide an Averroistic creation.
Joseph ben Judah claimed in his allegorical letter to Maimonides that
he, Joseph, had legally married Kimah (= the star cluster Pleiades), the
54 Yesode ha-Torah , i, 5. Hyamson and some manuscripts have èd èd jexa ède
aaqnd, repeating the word for \He" three times. Maimonides used the Aristotelian
proof here without explaining that he posited eternal movement of the sphere ex
hypothesi and did not accept it as necessary or even probable.
55 Guide, II, 1 (pp. 247{48, on p. 248).
56 Guide, II, 1 (p. 249).
57 Commentary on the Mishnah , ed. Qah, Sanhedrin, x, 1, p. 212. The gloss
.
appears in the fourth of the thirteen principles of faith. Note that he said \according
to the philosophers," not \according to Aristotle." The marginal note is preserved in
the facsimile of the fair copy, ed. Sassoon, II, 301. It is semi-cursive, not as rounded as
the text, but less cursive than drafts of the Guide and has the characteristic features
of Maimonides' handwriting. See also Sassoon, Introduction, p. 33.
daughter of Maimonides, before two witnesses and friends, Ibn ,Ubayd-

allah (Maimonides) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). 58 While under the bridal
canopy, she was unfaithful and turned to other lovers. Kimah in this
allegory is presumably the Guide, and being unfaithful is her being dis-
tributed to others. Maimonides replied to Joseph's letter with a display
of irreverent wit. Some scholars reject the authenticity of the exchange
because Maimonides, they claim, would not have written in such a ban-
tering manner.59 This, however, is a reversal of proper historical method,
which requires that we build an image of a person on the basis of what
he or she says and does and what we can learn from this. As we nd
occasions when Maimonides displays cunning and wit, we have no right
to assume a priori that he was too serious to write with esprit.
Harvey's rejection of Ibn Tibbon's version was argued with such self-
condence and with such scorn for other views that it put the matter
to rest for Maimonides' interpreters. Only Joseph Qah. and Herbert A.
Davidson had tried to construe the textus receptus to yield a meaning
consistent with Maimonides' other statements, whereas others, regarding
it as Ibn Tibbon's private conjecture, brushed it aside without question-
ing the received text.60
Harvey tacitly assumes that what an author says only once may be
his true intention, and what he says many times may be a smoke-screen;
Leo Strauss had observed that the most important Biblical verse, \Hear,
O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one" (Deut. 6:4), is quoted by
Maimonides once in the Guide, imitating the Torah, which also cited the
58 Epistles, ed. Baneth, no. 4, p. 23. ,Ubaydall ah was Maimonides' family name
after his ancestor ,Abdallah/,Ubaydallah (Hebrew Obadiah). This is the earliest
claim of an Averroistic component in the Guide.
59 Shailat, Letters, pp. 694{95, contends that the exchange of letters is a clear
forgery. Davidson apparently omits mention of these letters in Moses Maimonides
and may have doubted their authenticity.
60 Qah tried to make sense of the textus receptus in his edition of the Guide, II,
.
356. See also Y. Tzvi Langermann, \Maimonides and Astronomy: Further Re ec-
tions," p. 3, n. 8, where he dismissed Ibn Tibbon's version and accepted Harvey's,
adding: \A number of scholars have suggested corresponding emendations of the
original. Nonetheless, all who have studied the texts are aware of the fact that
Ibn Tibbon's version is not justied by Maimonides' Judaeo-Arabic text." We do
not know, however, what \Maimonides' Judaeo-Arabic text" was apart from the re-
ceived text, which may be awed. Alfred Ivry remarks that \Maimonides has not
proved God's existence. . . by building on the scientic models he has discredited."
See Ivry, \The Logical and Scientic Premises of Maimonides' Thought," p. 69. He
suggests that \perhaps in an unguarded moment Maimonides admitted this," citing
our crux. Ivry notes, however, the linguistic and substantive diculties that have
troubled translators and scholars, referring to Pines' note and to Davidson's letter to
Alexander Altmann, cited in A. Altmann's \Maimonides on the Intellect," p. 117, n.
64.
368 Joel L. Kraemer
verse only once.61 True enough; however, the verse does not contradict
the teachings of Deuteronomy or of the entire Pentateuch.
Harvey overinterprets and commits the fallacy of misplaced esoteri-
cism. He took a wrong turn on the hermeneutic circle, which teaches that
understanding the text as a whole hinges on understanding its individual
parts, and understanding its individual parts depends upon reference to
the whole.
Maimonides dispersed his esoteric messages throughout the Guide,
interspersed with conventional teachings. Skepticism about a proof of
God's existence would need to resonate with traces of his acroamatic
doctrine, which should be a coherent whole. It would be of great in-
terest if Harvey and his followers could demonstrate this extraordinary
phenomenon | a single sentence outweighing all other statements | in
the writings of Maimonides' predecessors and contemporaries or, indeed,
in the writings of any other major thinker. This is a tower built on sand.
Those who refuse to accept the received Arabic text, Harvey claims,
want Maimonides to remain \a condent rationalist." Yet I, for one,
reject the received Arabic text and do not consider Maimonides a con-
dent rationalist. Harvey's expression \condent rationalist" is vague.
Is a condent rationalist someone who has condence in reason as ratio-
nal inquiry or someone who is unaware of the limitations of reason? I
understand a rationalist to be someone who holds that unaided reason
can attain knowledge of the nature of existence. Descartes, Spinoza and
Leibniz were rationalists, whereas Maimonides was not. Or a rationalist
may be dened as someone who gives preference to reason over other
ways of knowing; however, Maimonides was evidently not a rationalist
in this sense either.
Maimonides, as Harvey presents him, is unique in his milieu as the
standard-bearer of skepticism. After all, the idea of an orderly cosmos,
hierarchically arranged, with the outer sphere, the rst moved, receiving
its motion from the First Mover, was a topos among medieval Muslim,
Jewish and Christian thinkers. One needs boundless daring to embrace
Harvey's audacious claim, particularly as we nd no trace of this esoteric
scandal, to my knowledge, in the tradition of Maimonidean interpreta-
tion, which included the \radical esotericism" of Samuel Ibn Tibbon. 62
61 See Leo Strauss, \How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed ," pp.
xlvii{xlviii. Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment," pp. 157, 159.
62 On radical esotericism, see A. Ravitzky, Mishnato shel Zerah iah ben Yishaq, p.
. ..
28, cited by Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: The transformation
of the Dal alat al-H.a-irn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, I, 32; see also Ravitzky, \R.
Shmuel Ibn Tibbon we-sodo shel ha-Moreh Nevukhim," especially p. 26, n. 34 (on
p. 27), where Ravitzky compares Ibn Tibbon's directions for reading with those of
Leo Strauss in \The literary character of The Guide of the Perplexed ." The word
\radical" is, in my opinion, unnecessary. See also Ravitzky, \Sitre torato shel Moreh
While it is meritorious to think independently, a strong exegetical tradi-

tion, including interpreters who read Maimonides esoterically, must be
taken into consideration. It is possible but highly unlikely that Harvey is
the rst to remove the camou age that envelopes Maimonides' \esoteric
scandal."
Sawing o the branch

In his important study of Ibn Tibbon's translation, Carlos Fraenkel
agrees with Harvey, yet raises nagging questions. He too understands
the crucial sentence to be saying that human intellects are incapable of
apprehending \the First Mover from the movements of the spheres." 63
Paraphrasing, he writes (in Hebrew, my translation): \The proof in-
ferring from the eternal movement of the spheres their Mover and His
characteristics is not a demonstrative proof, that is, it is not scientic
knowledge in the Aristotelian sense." Fraenkel's paraphrase is imprecise,
for Maimonides did not mention in the crucial sentence demonstrative
proof of the First Mover.
Ibn Tibbon's marginal notes were probably related to questions that
the translator asked Maimonides in his letters to him. 64 The notes were
written at an early stage of his work and were meant also to inform his
Lunel colleagues where there were diculties in the Arabic text. When
the translator received conrmation from the master that his emendation
was correct, he would then insert it into the body of his translation, and
this is what I propose happened here. Ibn Tibbon was so sure of the
reading he proposed that he cited the passage as saying seamlessly that
supernal and divine things are remote, for God is in heaven and you are
upon earth, yet one can know the existence of God and his governance
ha-Nevukhim ," especially pp. 144-49. Ibn Tibbon was the rst exegete of the Guide
and the fountainhead of a school of Maimonides interpretation that included Jacob
Anatoli, who was Ibn Tibbon's pupil and son-in-law, and a colleague of Michael
Scott in the court of Frederick II in Naples (Colette Sirat, A History of Jewish
Philosophy , p. 226); Moses ben Solomon of Salerno, Zerah . iah ben She-altiel H.en in
the 13th century and Judah Romano and Immanuel of Rome at the beginning of
the 14th century (Fraenkel, p. 18, n. 16). Samuel Ibn Tibbon was, according to
Ravitzky and Fraenkel, a pre-Strauss Straussian. If we add other early exegetes, such
as Moses Narboni and Shem T. ov Falaquera, we may say that the early tradition of
Maimonidean interpretation was overwhelmingly \Straussian."
63 From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon: The Transformation of the Dal alat
al-H.a-irn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim, especially pp. 177, 187{90.
64 Moritz Steinschneider, Die Hebr
aischen Ubersetzungen , p. 416, cited by Fraenkel,
From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon , p. 23. See pp. 36{37, 50{53 for Maimonides'
conrmation of Ibn Tibbon's conjectures.
370 Joel L. Kraemer
of the world from the movement of the heavens and their powers, for
His existence is undoubtedly grasped from the everlasting and eternal
movement of the heavens.65
Fraenkel accepts the textus receptus, admitting that it agrantly con-
tradicts what Maimonides wrote elsewhere and that he \sawed o the
branch upon which he was sitting." 66 But why would Maimonides want
to do that ? Fraenkel explains, echoing Harvey, that by building his entire
system with proofs for God's existence, Maimonides wanted to protect
timorous readers from his radical skepticism disclosed in the crucial sen-
tence. Fraenkel had the information he needed to accept Ibn Tibbon's
reading, and his conclusion strikes one as a kind of non sequitur.
A large invisible crater
It is hard to imagine that Maimonides wanted to shield the timorous from

an esoteric scandal, as though he denied the philosophers' demonstration
of a First Mover, particularly as he had stated explicitly that the proof
followed premises accepted by the latter-day Aristotelians.
Harvey dropped a bomb, leaving a huge crater, yet most readers
tiptoed around it gingerly, preferring to overlook it or making believe it
wasn't there. Why was his theory so readily accepted? This is a question
of method, bearing on the eld of Maimonidean studies in particular and
Jewish studies in general, and hence of supreme importance.
First, there is an initial bias in favour of a received text and an
aversion to emendations because most interpreters of Maimonides are
not used to delving into philological questions and tend to regard them
as trivial. In this respect, there is a large gap between interpreters of
classical philosophy, who are mainly trained classicists, and interpreters
of Jewish thought.
Then there is the fact that Ibn Tibbon's reading was a marginal
gloss, which Harvey proclaimed was a personal conjecture, and inter-
preters ignorant of Ibn Tibbon's correspondence with Maimonides and
his working methods regard as subjective.
There is also, in general, the prevailing atmosphere of epistemic rel-
ativism: all opinions are equal and none can be disproved. Few are
willing to do the hard work that would allow them to make a choice be-
tween contending views. In our post-modernist culture, where anything
65 Ibn Tibbon on Qoh. 5:1; see Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes,
ed. James T. Robinson, p. 722.
66 Fraenkel, From Maimonides to Samuel Ibn Tibbon , p. 181.
goes, the scrupulous work of the historian and philologian is spurned as

unfashionable, the fusty lucubrations of a desiccated Casaubon. Knowl-
edge of languages, cultures and societies is regarded as detrimental to
profound philosophic understanding. 67
The choppy syntax solution

Herbert Davidson boldly took up the challenge posed by the text and
by Harvey's esoteric interpretation. \Challenging widely held interpre-
tations of Maimonides as \an esoteric writer," it has been said, \David-
son resolutely depicts him as a thinker who believed what he wrote." 68
However, even those who consider Maimonides to be \an esoteric writer"
think he believed what he wrote and meant what he said. The question
is Where did he write it and what did he say ?
Davidson wants us to take Maimonides plainly, which is the vulgar
(from Latin vulgus, \the common people") understanding, to use Mai-
monides' own term (jumhur ). How shall we interpret him, however, when
he is being equivocal, enigmatic, ironical, parabolic, paradoxical, wily,
or witty? Maimonides explains from the start his strategy of concealing
and revealing, preparing us for a multilayered, polysemous text subject
to dierent levels of interpretation, including some that are private and
others that are public. Maimonides was not doctrinaire; he presented
more than one solution to an aporia, and he intimated that some of his
premises contradicted others, in which case \the many must in no way
be aware of the contradiction; the author accordingly uses some device
to conceal it by all means."69
67 The study of philosophy is prerequisite to understanding, but it does not replace
knowledge of the text. A famous philosopher misread Maimonides' rst sentence of
the Mishneh Torah |\The foundation of the foundations and the pillar of the sciences
is to know that there is a rst existent" ( oey`x ievn my yiy ). Now the word sham
is an Arabism (thamma ), meaning \there" and \there is." The philosopher read
the word as shem, meaning \name," and based his discourse on that. I mentioned
this to a colleague, an admirer of the philosopher, who praised the profundity of the
philosopher's discourse. Well and good, but why in ict it on poor Maimonides, who
had not said a word here about being a name?
68 This is included in the blurb on the back cover of Davidson's Moses Maimonides:
The Man and His Works ; and see also Davidson's comment on p. 398.
69 Guide, Introduction, trans. Pines, pp. 18{20. Davidson states ( Moses Mai-
monides, p. 391) that he has not met a single instance of contradiction according to
Maimonides' stipulations. See below on \the fallacy of negative proof" and see Munk,
Le guide des es , I, 29, n. 1; Strauss, \Literary Character," pp. 70{78; Hannah
egar
Kasher, \Self-Cognizing Intellect and Negative Attributes in Maimonides' Theology"
and Yair Loberbaum, \On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics, and Esotericism in
372 Joel L. Kraemer
Davidson grapples with the textus receptus and strains to prove that
it does not contradict Maimonides' doctrine. 70 Writing authoritatively,
he gets o to starts on the wrong foot, referring to the received text as
\the original," using the term erroneously, as \the original" in textual
criticism refers to the original document written by the author , which in
this case we do not have.71 A logical fallacy accompanies this blunder,
for the original is the quest of our discussion, not the starting point;
and hence presenting the Munk-Joel text as \the original" is begging
the question (petitio principii ).
Davidson did not give a nod to Munk's preference for Ibn Tibbon's
version or to Pines' footnote on Ibn Tibbon's translation, which accord-
ing to Pines gives a dierent meaning, thereby raising a question about
the reliability of the received text. After all, Munk was a great Arabist
and thoroughly familiar with the Guide and with Ibn Tibbon's transla-
tion, and Pines' knowledge of the Guide was comprehensive.
Ibn Tibbon, Davidson observes, sensed that Maimonides was contra-
dicting the claim of demonstrative proof from the heavens in Guide, II,
1. He therefore removed the problem \by adding a few words." This
conclusion is, of course, inevitable once Davidson posits that Munk-Joel
is the original. Anything more is, by denition, additional. Davidson
Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed ." The word Maimonides used for \contradic-
tion" is tanaqud. (ed. Munk-Joel, pp. 12.10{13), which Davidson insists on translating
as \inconsistency," claiming that Maimonides did not mention contradiction or con-
trary statements, which are more precise! Maimonides used here logical terminology,
not vague terms such as \inconsistency," which can mean even variations in spelling.
Davidson cites no proof for his strange comment. Words mean what he chooses them
to mean. However, Maimonides' term tanaqud. means precisely \contradiction," just
as Ibn Tibbon, Munk and Pines translated it. See further A.M. Goichon, Lexique de
la 1angue philosophique d'Ibn S a , pp. 402{04; Vocabulaires compares d'Aristot1e et
n
d'Ibn Sna , p. 35. Tan . corresponds to Greek antiphasis (Aristotle, De Interpret .
aqud
6, l7a33 and Metaph. I, 7, 1057a34); and see F.W. Zimmermann, Al-Farabi's Com-
mentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's De Interpretatione, p. 53, n. 1. Aristotle
discussed logical opposition of propositions in Prior Ana1ytics, II, 15, 63b23{64a38.
Zimmermann says that Aristotle did not consistently distinguish between antithesis
and antiphasis, whereas al-Farab always used taqabul for the broader sense of \oppo-
sition" and tanaqud. for \contradiction." Maimonides used tanaqud. for contradictory
statements and tad.add for contrary statements throughout his list of seven causes
for these types of statement. In his Treatise on the Art of Logic , ed. and trans. R.
Brague, Traite de logique, p. 6 text/pp. 43{44 translation, Maimonides used taqabul
for opposition, tad.add for contrariety and tanaqud. for contradiction, using the same
terminology as in the Guide.
70 Davidson, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge" and \Further on a Prob-
lematic Passage in Guide for the Perplexed 2.24."
71 See Davidson, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 99, where he refers
to \The original, according to I. Joel's edition." See also p. 100, where he says, \In
the original, the words form an independent clause. . . ." For the proper terminology,
see, for instance, Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, p. 1 et passim.
does not consider, however, that Maimonides indicated to Ibn Tibbon

places where his copy was defective. Ibn Tibbon sought to establish a
correct text in consultation with the author. The plausible explanation,
that Ibn Tibbon queried Maimonides about this crucial text and received
a positive reply to his suggestion is not even considered. Ibn Tibbon's
Introduction to his translation, which tells us about his working meth-
ods, is overlooked. Moreover, Davidson speaking in an oracular style,
does not give examples, showing where Ibn Tibbon has added words
elsewhere in this way. Ibn Tibbon was a conscientious translator and
keen philologist. In his Hebrew translation of Aristotle's Meteorology, he
had to cope with a defective Arabic translation by Ibn al-Bit. rq, which
he hence compared with commentaries by Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Averroes, making judicious corrections, nding and amending lacunae,
a common type of error.72
Davidson claims that Ibn Tibbon's words | \whereas other things
regarding the heavens" | \are not attested to in the manuscripts cited
by any of the editors of the Arabic text and undoubtedly were added by
Ibn Tibbon as his own interpretation or eshing out of the text" [em-
phasis added].73 Davidson's condence is, to say the least, unwarranted.
First, he commits the fallacy of negative proof, called also argument
from ignorance (argumentum ad ignorantiam ). The person claims that
there is no evidence that `x' is the case and then wrongly infers that
`not-x' is the case.74 We have no evidence, for example, that rational
beings live elsewhere in the cosmos; however, this does not warrant the
conclusion that they do not exist. We have no evidence for the existence
of Abraham and Moses, yet this does not permit the inference that they
did not exist. This fallacy can be expressed in propositional calculus as
the fallacy of denying the antecedent: p > q, -p > -q.
Davidson acknowledges that he checked the apparatus in editions of
the Guide to nd Ibn Tibbon's reading and did not nd it. These ap-
paratuses, however, re ect a tiny fraction of extant manuscripts, and
his statistic is therefore meaningless. 75 Munk-Joel and Qah. used a few
72 See R. Fontaine, Otot ha-shamayim, Introduction, pp. lviii and lx.
73 \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 101. In \A Problematic Passage,"
pp. 7{8, Davidson refers to Ibn Tibbon's marginal gloss as \Tibbon's [sic] gratuitous
emendation."
74 See, e.g., David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies , pp. 47{48. Compare
the Talmudic saying, \We have not seen" is not a proof , an excellent example of
Talmudic reasoning; see M. ,Eduyyot, ii, 2 (lo - ra -inu eno re -ayah ). Maimonides,
incidentally, had a dierent reading ( en lo - ra -iti re -ayah ), in Commentary on the
Mishnah, ed. Qah . , Neziqin, p. 294. His reading is found in the Mishnah preserved
in MSS Vatican 121 and Paris Alliance H 147A.
75 See Colette Sirat, \Une Liste de Manuscrits: Pr eliminaire a une nouvelle
edition du Dalalat al-H.ayryn [sic];" Y. Tzvi Langermann, \Supplementary List of
374 Joel L. Kraemer
manuscripts out of the scores that are extant. 76 Davidson gets into a
greater error, for establishing a correct text does not depend on a vote
by a majority of manuscript witnesses. Even if Davidson had taken the
trouble to look at most or even all the extant manuscripts, and they
had the received text, this would not prove that it is correct. Extant
manuscripts may all go back to a single archetype (copy of the original)
or hyparchetype (copy of the archetype), in which a corruption occurred.
The textus receptus was evidently before the translator al-H. arz, mean-
ing that if there was a mishap, it occurred very early in the transmission
of the text.
The extant draft manuscripts of the Guide in Maimonides' hand-
writing contain many additions and corrections. 77 Unfortunately, we do
not have Maimonides' nal redaction of the Guide, which would have
been the prototype of exemplars and could have helped us in our quest.
Maimonides' method of composition, writing chapters, then quires and
codices over a ve year period and correcting and revising as he pro-
gressed, with scribes copying parts and circulating them, raises the pos-
Manuscripts and Fragments of Dalalat al-H.a -irn." Sirat lists forty-four manuscripts
and eight fragments, and Langermann lists thirty-eight manuscripts and fragments,
and presumably not all have been identied yet. Sirat recommends (p. 120) that a new
edition of the Guide be undertaken. However, M.H. Goshen-Gottstein, \Maimonides'
Guide of the Perplexed : Towards a Critical Edition," p. 135, working mainly with
Oxford manuscripts, thinks that the Guide 's manuscript tradition appears to derive
from a single archetype, and that a new critical edition would yield only marginal
improvements and is not worth the eort; whereas the Hebrew text of Ibn Tibbon
needs correction beyond the \arbitrary" method of Even Shmuel. What we need, in
my view, is a critical edition of Ibn Tibbon's translation with philological notes on
the Arabic text of the Guide, along the lines of Goshen-Gottstein's sample texts (pp.
136{42).
76 Munk used for his edition two Leiden manuscripts and partial manuscripts from
Oxford, Paris and Venice; see his preface, pp. iii{iv, and A. Ivry, \Salomon Munk
and the Science of Judaism," p. 482. At times he mentions using eight manuscripts
for his notes. His critical apparatus is rudimentary and was followed by I. Joel, with
one siglum (e.g. L, O, P) standing for all the manuscripts at a given library (Leiden,
Oxford, Paris). Qah. used Munk-Joel and three modern Yemenite manuscripts (I,
pp. 14{15).
77 Simon Hopkins, \Two New Maimonidean Autographs in the John Rylands Uni-
versity Library," listed (pp. 711{12) four known Genizah manuscripts of the Guide
in Maimonides' handwriting. To these I should like to add a fragment from the be-
ginning of the Guide in manuscript T-S J 2.39. It measures 23.5 x 16mm and is on
brown paper with marginal notes. The recto has, in what is most likely Maimonides'
handwriting, the poem that opens the Guide. The metre is ha-tenu ,ah. Inciden-
tally, the poem has twenty-six words, the gematria or numerical equivalent, of the
Tetragrammaton (YHWH). Compare the Mishneh Torah, where the rst book, the
Foundations of the Law, begins with the Tetragrammaton as an acrostic of the rst
four words: Yesod Ha-yesodot We-,amud Ha-h.okhmot. The verso of T-S J 2.39 has
the text that is printed in Munk-Joel, p. 1 to line 16, ending with the al - before
izdiyad. See the Appendix (pp. 395{396) for some examples of manuscript variants.
sibility that there may not have been an original. We would be justied
in assuming, however, that Maimonides kept a working copy of his own
which he continuously corrected.
Davidson takes extreme measures to rescue the textus receptus, the
most egregious being gratuitous denigration of Maimonides' style. Draw-
ing attention to the phrase qad ba ,uda ,anna wa-,ala bi-'l-mawd.i ,i wa-
'l-martaba (\It is too distant from us and too high in place and rank"),
Davidson archly comments that \its choppy syntax is pertinent and
should be noted."78 However, he does not say what is choppy about
the syntax.
Davidson solves the crux interpretum in the Arabic text (wa-'l-istidlal
al-,amm . . . ) by taking it as \a parenthetical circumstantial clause
(h.al )."79 This, he says, is \The only plausible construction of the pas-
sage I can see" [emphasis added]. However, he does not tell us what he
thinks a h.al clause is, or what a parenthetical h.al clause might be. We
expect to see other examples in Maimonides's writings or elsewhere, but
there are none. For whom is Davidson writing? The nave will bow to his
authority, and the Arabist will scratch his or her head in consternation.
Davidson's translation of the problematic passage reads:
The causes [i.e., the logical principles] from which proofs can
be drawn up (asbab al-istidlal ) regarding [the nature of the]
heavens are beyond our grasp. They [i.e., the heavens] are
at a distance from us and exalted in place and in rank|
the general [enterprise of] drawing up a proof from them
consisting [solely] in this, that they show us [or: prove to us]
their mover|indeed they [i.e., the heavens] are something to
the knowledge of which human minds cannot attain. 80
What Davidson calls a circumstantial parenthetical clause is miscon-
strued. We have rather a sentence containing a clause introduced by
78 Davidson, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 100.
79 Davidson's translation, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 101, has
\general proof" for al-istidlal al-,amm. Later (p. 102) he translates istidlal as \draw-
ing up of a proof," insisting that the word istidlal must be understood as a process|
the drawing of a proof or conclusion|not as its result (conclusion), and that it
cannot be the subject of the sentence. But istidlal is a mas.dar, or verbal noun (in-
nitive), and expresses \the action, passion, or state indicated by the corresponding
verbs without any reference to object, subject, or time" (Wright, Arabic Grammar,
I, 110B). It can, of course, be the subject of the sentence as well.
80 Davidson, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 103. Needless to say,
the original Arabic text and Ibn Tibbon's translation are not nearly as awkward as
this translation. Note that the preposition \to" in the last sentence is otiose, and see
Davidson, \Further on a Problematic Passage in Guide for the Perplexed 2.24," p.
12. Michael Schwarz (I, 340{41) follows Davidson in his Hebrew translation, giving
a forced rendition without providing a reason for rejecting Ibn Tibbon and Munk.
376 Joel L. Kraemer
anna (\that") with the masculine singular sux -hu, having as its an-
tecedent al-sama -. This sentence in the received text should be rendered:
\And the general inference from it, that it indicates for us its Mover, is
indeed something which human intellects cannot know."
Davidson had to omit the rst word of the rst sentence ( li-anna ),
which should read: \For the causes of the inference concerning the
heaven. . . " and it should be joined to the prior sentence. The Ara-
bic text treated heaven as masculine singular, not plural as Davidson
has it (following Ibn Tibbon). Worst egregiously, he needs to insert
\solely" and \enterprise," which are not in the text. The word \solely,"
in particular, alters the meaning. He needs eight words, \the general
[enterprise of] drawing up a proof," to translate wa-'l-istidlal al-,amm,
which means \the general inference." He notices the particle la -, but
not that its coordinate inna is missing.
Sensing that his translation is clumsy, Davidson takes refuge in his
authoritative assertion that Maimonides' style is characteristically loose,
choppy and anacoluthic throughout the Guide. Having made such a
bizarre claim, contradicting all we know of his style and his statement
that he wrote \with great exactness and exceeding precision" ( Introduc-
tion, p. 15), we would expect examples, but there is not even one. 81 And
why, we might ask, only anacoluthic? Why not aposiopetic and paratac-
tic? To my knowledge, no bona de Arabist familiar with Maimonides'
style (e.g. Mainz, Friedlander, Baneth, Goitein, Blau, Hopkins) has de-
scribed it as choppy and sloppy. 82 Isadore Twersky, writing about the
Mishneh Torah, observed in his chapter on Language and Style :83
There was no room or excuse for slovenliness; hasty writ-
ing, like shabby thinking, was intolerable. Inasmuch as lan-
guage was inherently problematic|restrictive and deceptive,
occasionally frustrating and misleading, so that ideas some-
times deed precise and meaningful expression|there was a
greater imperative for care and exactitude.
Maimonides' style in both Arabic and Hebrew is concise and lucid,
and he always commended brevity and clarity. Furthermore, it is ex-
tremely rare for an author to write exceedingly well in one native lan-
guage and poorly in another.
81 Davidson, \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 103; \Further on a
Problematic Passage," p. 12.
82 See, for example, the discussion of Maimonides' language by Joshua Blau in
his edition of the Responsa, III, 62{63; see also Israel Friedlaender, \Die arabische
Sprache des Maimonides," p. 428, with highest praise for Maimonides' Arabic style;
idem, \Der Stil des Maimonides."
83 I. Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides , p. 325.
Maimonides wrote the Commentary on the Mishnah , Book of Com-

mandments, the Guide of the Perplexed and his medical writings in
\Classical Arabic with Middle Arabic admixture." 84 He wrote his re-
sponsa with more Middle Arabic features, in a kind of \Semi-Classical
Middle Arabic."85 Davidson seems unaware of the Judaeo-Arabic di-
alect that Maimonides used. For example, he states in a comment on a
responsum that Maimonides \often used rst-person plural forms [ nqtl ]
when speaking of himself." 86 However, this is not a rst-person plural
form. In Maghrib Judaeo-Arabic, which Maimonides used in Egypt, the
form nqtl is rst person singular (e.g. ana naqul ). The plural form is
nqtlu, which he would not normally use when speaking of himself. This
is not a minute point|it is the most prominent feature of the Maghrib
dialect |\a veritable shibboleth of this dialect group."87
Maimonides was close to Arab intellectuals in Cairo and participated
in their learned circles, for which he needed to have an eloquent style.
His patron was al-Qad. al-Fad.il, the great epistolary stylist and Sal-
adin's chief administrator, through whose good oces he met Cairene
intellectual luminaries; he participated in the literary salon of the poet
Ibn Sana- al-Mulk; and he wrote medical works in Classical Arabic for
potentates.
Davidson's deprecation of Maimonides'style substantiates his view
that Leo Strauss's meticulous reading of the Guide is inappropriate.
He claims that Strauss's emphasis on every word is based on Strauss's
translation of a passage that distorts Maimonides' intention. 88
[I]f you wish to grasp the totality of what this treatise con-
tains, so that nothing of it will escape you, then you must
connect its chapters one with another; 89 and when reading a
84 Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic , p. 25. His
medical writings were rst written in Hebrew characters and then transcribed into
Arabic script, and this is what happened in the case of the Guide.
85 Blau, Emergence and Linguistic Background, p. 26. Maimonides occasionally
used the interrogative pronoun esh (< ayy shay ) = CA ma (\what").
86 Davidson, Maimonides, p. 41, n. 165; Responsa, ed. Blau, no. 218.
87 Blau, Responsa, III, 62, 71; Emergence and Linguistic Background , pp. 58{60.
The dialect was well diused in Egypt because of the many immigrants from the
Maghrib.
88 Davidson, Moses Maimonides , p. 395. This is in the Introduction with Respect
to this Treatise; see translation by Pines, p. 15; and see L. Strauss, Persecution and
the Art of Writing , p. 65. Davidson arbitrarily starts in the middle of a sentence,
capitalizing the rst word as though it were this way in Strauss, viz. \Connect its
chapters one with another. . . "
89 Here Strauss had an important footnote, saying: \That is to say, you must do
with the chapters of the Guide what Solomon did with the words and parables of the
Bible; just as Solomon found out the secret teaching of the Bible by connecting word
with word, and parable with parable, in the same way we may nd out the secret
378 Joel L. Kraemer
given chapter, your intention must be not only to understand

the totality of the subject of that chapter, but also to grasp
each word which occurs in it in the course of the speech, even
if that word does not belong to the intention of the chapter.
For the diction of this treatise has not been chosen by hap-
hazard, but with great exactness and exceeding precision. 90
\The translation," Davidson says, \serves as a raison d'être [?] for
Strauss's approach to Maimonides but it is tendentious, and a much more
plausible rendering of what Maimonides says is given in an admirable
new Hebrew translation of the Guide."91 In this new translation, lafz.a,
which Strauss translated as \word", was translated as , enabling
iehia
Davidson to have his Eureka moment by portentously announcing that

lafz.a means \expression," and that Maimonides was not stressing every
word, rather every expression, which is \more mundane," whatever that
means. Davidson's discovery, however, is tarnished by at least two glar-
ing blunders. Just as Arabic lafz.a means both word and phrase, so iehia
means both word and phrase. In fact, \expression" means both word
and phrase. Moreover, Ibn Tibbon, al-H. arz, Munk and Pines| all un-
derstood lafz.a to mean \word" in this passage. How, then, was Strauss
being \tendentious"? Who is being tendentious? 92
In any case, Davidson needs to disprove the view of all the above
translators that lafz.(a) means individual word in this context, and that
he is unable to do. It is dangerous to speak in absolute terms, as David-
son often does, because one instance to the contrary can be disastrous. 93
The Commentary on the Mishnah does not support Davidson. Going
teaching of the Guide by connecting chapter with chapter, and, indeed secret word
with secret word." Cf. I, Introduction, 8b; 9, 26{30. See Sara Klein-Braslavy, King
Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in the Thought of Maimonides .
90 The sentence goes on: \and with care to avoid failing to explain any obscure
point." This passage is a superb statement of the hermeneutical circle: Knowledge of
parts gives knowledge of the whole, and knowledge of the whole gives knowledge of
the parts. Davidson also cites Strauss's remark (not translation): \First, every word
of the Guide is chosen with exceeding care; since very few men are able or willing to
read with exceeding care, most men will fail to perceive the secret teaching;" Strauss,
\How To Begin To Study," p. xv.
91 Moses Maimonides , p. 395. He refers to the Hebrew translation I, 13 [sic] [should
be I, 19] by Michael Schwarz, who uses the word iehia, a modern dictionary meaning
of lafz.a, whereas Ibn Tibbon and al-H. arz used millah (\word").
92 Davidson cites an occurrence of lafz(a) in the Commentary on the Mishnah ,
.
where he says it means \terminology" or \sense." He sends us all the way to Mai-
monides' comment on Mishnah Nega ,im vii, 2; however I could not nd lafz. or lafz.a
there.
93 For instance, Davidson says that Maimonides \never reveals familiarity" with
either the Qur-an or Islamic law; Moses Maimonides, pp. 19{20. This absolute
statement can be refuted many times over. Maimonides quoted entire verses from
the Qur-an and often used categories and terminology of Islamic law.
through most of Seder Zera ,im, I found that lafz.(a) consistently means
\a word" or \a term,"94 and I checked many instances of lafz.(a) in the
Guide, Part One and the beginning of Part Two; almost all have the
sense of \a word" or \a term."
Both lafz. and lafz.a can mean, expression, word, utterance, saying,
while lafz.a, being an ism al-wah.da (nomen unitatis ), more strictly means
\word" or \term." Medieval Arabic translations from Greek permit us
to discover the Greek utterance in the source language (SL), underlying
the Arabic word in the target language (TL). In Aristotle's On Inter-
pretation, for instance, we nd lafz. and lafz.a nine times in the sense of
\spoken sound," such as ch. 2, 16a19 lafz.a dalla = phone semantike.
J.L. Ackrill translates: \A name is a spoken sound signicant by con-
vention. . . " the term phone semantike is the genus under which are
subsumed names, verbs, phrases and sentences. 95
In Arabic philosophic and linguistic texts, lafz.(a) is often in binary
opposition to ma ,na, as utterance opposed to meaning, where lafz.(a) can
be an individual word or phrase or sentence. 96
In contemporary philosophy of language, \utterance" is often used
94 Berakhot, i, 6, ed. Qah , p. 62; vii, 1, p. 80; Pe -ah, ii, 1, pp. 99 and100; vi,
.
3, p. 122; Demai, i, 1, p. 133; vii, 3, p. 159; Shevi ,it, viii, 1, p. 250; Terumot, i,
1, p. 269; ix, 4, p. 306. This is only part of one-sixth of the Mishnah, enough for a
sample. Maimonides occasionally used the word lugha for what is otherwise expressed
by lafz.(a). Both terms were used by medieval Arabic linguists, including those who
wrote in Judaeo-Arabic.
95 See also F.W. Zimmermann, Al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on
Aristotle's De Interpretatione, Index, p. 287, where lafz . is dened as expression,
speech, word . And see especially p. 40 (on De interpretatione 16b26{30), where lafz .a
means \word."
96 See A.-M. Goichon, Vocabulaires compar a , s.v. Lafz
es d'Aristote et d'Ibn S
n .,
p. 32 (le mot, la parole, l'expression ), with reference to Categories 2, 1a16{19 (to
legomenon ). And see al-F arab, The Utterances Employed in Logic (al-Alfaz. al-
musta ,mala f 'l-mant . iq ), p. 41 (for description of signicant utterances as being
either noun or verb, or compounded of both) and p. 65 for denition. See also
Wolfhart Heinrichs, Arabische Dichtung und Griechische Poetik , pp. 69{82, where
. (pl. alf . ) is translated as \sprachlicher Ausdruck" and ma n
lafz az , a (pl. ma ,an ) as
\gedanklicher Gegenstand." And nally, see M.G. Carter, \ Lafz.," EI 2 , s.v., noting
its word and sentence levels. Maimonides was familiar with Ibn Janah. 's Kitab al-us.ul
(Book of Roots ), where lafz.(a) occurs often as word and lexical item; see, e.g., ed. A.
Neubauer, p. 3.17, 5.10, 15, 27; 6.21, 24, 25, 28, 32; 16.7, etc., etc. (see especially,
Introduction, pp. 3{16). In Guide, I, 43 (p. 93), Maimonides said that Hebrew
\wing" (kanaf ) is an equivocal term, meaning, inter alia, concealing like the Arabic
term (lafz.) kanaftu, \I have concealed." He cites Jonah Ibn Janah. 's Book of Hebrew
Roots (Kit ab al-us l ), p. 325, where the author, whose patronymic means \wing",
.u
mentioned Jonah at the beginning of his denition. Mordechai Cohen, \Dimyon
we-Higayon, Emet we-Sheqer" (\Imagination and logic, truth and falsehood"), pp.
429{31, shows how Maimonides transformed the linguistic terminology of Ibn Janah.
into the logical terminology of al-Farab, which he used in his Treatise on the Art of
Logic (at p. 430, n. 50).
380 Joel L. Kraemer
rather than \expression," and is understood to be a unit of speech, which

can be a word or phrase or sentence. 97
The technique of scrutinizing every word in the writing of great au-
thors is familiar from Rabbinic hermeneutics. The Mishnah frequently
asks why Scripture used one word rather than another, and the Gemara
constantly asks the same of the Mishnah. Leo Strauss, confronting the
phenomenon of precise speech in Plato, called it \the law of logographic
necessity," meaning that in precise speech there is nothing slipshod, no
word chosen at random. \A writing is good if it complies with the ne-
cessity which ought to govern the writing of speeches: every part of the
written speech must be necessary for the whole; the place where each
part occurs is the place where it is necessary that it should occur. . . " 98
Strauss rst learned to interpret ancient philosophic texts from Martin
Heidegger. He said that he had \never seen before such seriousness, pro-
fundity, and concentration in the interpretation of philosophic texts,"
highlighting Heidegger's interpretation of Aristotle. 99
Some authorities dismiss the importance of numbers for the organi-
zation of the Guide, its chapters and overall structure. Davidson, for
instance, disputes the signicance of numbers, informing the reader that
Maimonides did not number the chapters of the Guide, \and undoubt-
edly gave not the slightest thought to whether he was engaged in writing
the fteenth, seventeenth, or nineteenth chapter" [emphasis added]. 100
But how can he know that Maimonides did not give any thought to
chapter numbers, and hence structure and arrangement? For instance,
Maimonides may have had his own working copy with the chapters num-
bered. It is inconceivable that he did not give the slightest thought to
the numbers of the chapters. The overall arrangement of the treatise was
a work of art. Even without a written memo, he would have known the
chapter numbers; for Maimonides had an iconic memory and knew the
entire Talmud by heart. He would have had total recall of the chapters,
especially as the plan of the Guide consisted of sections and subsections
97 See J.L. Austin How to do Things with Words , passim.
98 See The City and Man, pp. 53 (the quotation), 60; Thoughts on Machiavelli , p.
121; What is Political Philosophy , p. 31. See Socrates in Phaedrus 275d4{276a7 and
264b7{c5. Following logographic necessity means regarding great books as aesthetic
creations, as works of literature. Tiny details often indicate the grand design of a
work, and what is left unsaid, silences, may be more important than the details of
what is said; see Harry V. Jaa, A New Birth of Freedom , p. xii. After Strauss gave a
lecture at Jewish Theological Seminary in the 1940s, Prof. Saul Lieberman, impressed
by his reading of texts, remarked that it was a pity he did not become a Talmudist.
99 Strauss, \An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism," p. 28. I call this the
\I essay," as Strauss uses the rst person singular (\I" and \me") more than in other
writings of his, about ten times on each of the rst three pages.
100 Davidson, Moses Maimonides , p. 397.
of heptads. Indeed, one reason for a careful numbering of chapters was

for the sake of memory, as we see in his work on logic and in the Mishneh
Torah. There is nothing, however, like empirical evidence ad oculos, and
we nd that Maimonides was perfectly aware of the number and place
of the chapters. In his letter to Ibn Tibbon on translating the Guide, he
referred to its parts and chapter numbers: I,2; I, 21; I, 27; I, 74; II, 1;
II, 2; II, 10; II, 11; II, 15; II, 20; II, 22; II, 27; II, 28; II, 29; II, 30; II, 33;
II, 35; II, 36; II, 46; II, 47.101
Maimonides showed his partiality for numerical symbolism in his
early Treatise on the Art of Logic .102 He noted at the end that the
treatise has fourteen chapters, in which 175 terms are discussed (7 x
25).103 Chapter Two discusses 2 x 7 terms, and Chapter Ten studies the
ten Aristotelian categories. In Chapter Seven he discussed the fourteen
moods of the valid syllogism. Philosophy or science has seven parts.
Each chapter repeats the terms studied, except Chapter Ten, giving the
last four chapters a kind of independence. He had a preference for tetrads
(multiples of four) as well.104 Numerical symbolism is a mnemonic de-
vice for the reader, an aid for scribes, and a \numerical signature" of the
author.105
The Mishneh Torah consists of fourteen books. 106 The Book of
Knowledge, for instance, is divided into ve parts, two of seven chap-
ters, two of ten, and one (Laws of Idolatry) of twelve (see Foundations
of the Law, iii, 6).107 The Guide of the Perplexed comprises seven sec-
tions, each having seven parts. Jacob's dream has seven units and there
are seven degrees of proximity to the ruler's palace in Guide, III, 51.108
101 Letters, ed. Shailat, pp. 533{48. To be sure, Maimonides may have received Ibn
Tibbon's queries according to chapter numbers and responded accordingly. Never-
theless, he needed to rely on his own copy and/or memory to ascertain the text under
discussion.
102 See Strauss, What is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies , p. 165; Trait
e de
logique. ed. and trans. R. Brague, p. 13.
103 It may be coincidental that Guide, III, 51, arguably the most important chapter
in the book, is the 175th chapter, as Strauss notes.
104 Maimonides wrote, \This number four is wondrous and should be an object
of re ection;"Guide, II, 10 (p. 272). See also Guide, I, 72 and III, 54 (cited by
Langermann, \Maimonides and the Sciences," p. 172).
105 The expression was suggested to me by Dr. Gad Freudenthal.
106 For the view that fourteen is \sheer coincidence," see Fox, Interpreting Mai-
monides, p. 15.
107 It is not hard to imagine why twelve is signicant for idolatry, which is, in
Maimonides' view, closely related to astrology. Seventeen and nineteen are signicant
as 10 + 7 and 12 + 7. The number nineteen is meaningful in Qur -an 74:30. As for
early Gnostic sects, who placed importance on nineteen because of the twelve signs
of the Zodiac and the seven planets, see also Franz Rosenthal, \Nineteen," and Rudi
Paret, Der Koran: Kommentar , p. 492, note ad loc.
108 On Jacob's dream, see James Arthur Diamond, Maimonides and the Hermeneu-
382 Joel L. Kraemer
As Strauss says, these considerations are \necessarily somewhat playful.

But they are not so playful as to be incompatible with the seriousness
of scholarship."109
Davidson agrees with a reviewer of Thoughts on Machiavelli who
observed that Strauss's \speculations based on the numbers of chapters
or their titles and the like" is \a species of learned gobbledygook." 110 He
fails to cite, however, the many positive reviews of the book, such as one
by Willmoore Kendall, a reviewer who spent six months studying it. 111
Kendall nally worked out the puzzles and wrote an enthusiastic review,
in which he hailed Strauss's method as revolutionary, ascribing resistance
to Strauss's numerological observations to the prejudgment that \grown
men do not `play games' of this kind in philosophical writings." After
reading Thoughts on Machiavelli open-mindedly, Kendall concluded that
\anyone who henceforth attempts to write on Machiavelli without taking
Thoughts as his point of departure will be wasting his time. . . "
Critics of Strauss's observations on numerology sco and deride his
views with mirth and hilarity. Yet, to move to a dierent eld of study,
specialists on Shakespeare's sonnets maintain that they have a numero-
logical structure, which is the key to their proper sequence; that they
have an overall organization that depends on numbers and continuities;
and that many gain in meaning when we realize that Shakespeare was
\unusually inventive and ingenious both in his deployment of numero-
logical structure and in his symbolic use of numerical allusion." 112 One
of the exponents of this theory observed that \we have not yet learned
the rules of the game."113
tics of Concealment , ch. 5.
109 Strauss, \Maimonides' statement on Biblical science," p. 165.
110 Davidson, Moses Maimonides, p. 394, citing C. Friedrich [= the famous political
scientist Carl J. Friedrich], whose review was in the main favouable to Strauss.
111 Willmoore Kendall, review of Thoughts on Machiavelli , p. 251.
112 See Shakespeare's Sonnets , ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones, especially pp. 97{101.
Shakespeare's sonnets are excellent training ground for esoteric reading. See Helen
Vendler's Introduction to her The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets . See on Sonnet 37
on p. 195 for his \anagrammatic and graphic games" (also in 7, 9 and elsewhere, as
77). Vendler points out Shakespeare's use of self-contradiction and word games, his
use of key words and defective key words (silences), his \authorial instruction" and
his subversive and even blasphemous ways of treating ideas central to his culture;
see Conventions of Reference , pp. xii{xiii, xv{xvi; Introduction, pp. 21, 23 and 40.
The greatest blasphemy, I think, is in sonnet 121, line 9, which is a precise rendition
of Exodus 3:14. Vendler does not deal with it and Stephen Booth, Shakespeare's
Sonnets, p. 410, does not see it as blasphemy. See also Blakemore Evans, The Sonnets ,
p. 220, for a moderate interpetation.
113 T.P. Roche, Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences ; Stephen Booth (ed.),
Shakespeare's Sonnets ; and Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms , all cited by Duncan-
Jones. Numbers that take on importance for the Sonnets are twelve, seventeen,
twenty, twenty-eight, fty-two, sixty-three (7 x 9), seventy, 108, 126, 144.
Maimonides was not the rst to use numerical symbolism and Strauss
did not discover the technique. It goes back to the Pythagoreans, is found
in Plato, was continued by the Neopythagoreans and then by Augustine
and the Christian west, as well as by thinkers in the Islamic world. It
became a common heritage of the medieval period.
There is a direct correlation between the inability to interpret Mai-
monides' hints and obliviousness to his humour. For instance, in his
Commentary on Rosh ha-Shanah , he said that the moon was visible in
the east before sunrise and in the west after sunset on the same day. 114
Later, in his Commentary on the Mishnah , he declared that whoever be-
lieved such a thing was \nothing but an utterly ignorant man, who has
no more awareness of the celestial sphere than an ox or an ass (cf. 1 Sam
12:3)." Davidson does not accept the authenticity of the commentary
on Rosh ha-Shanah partly because of this passage, on the assumption
that Maimonides would not speak this way about himself. 115 The notion
of how he would speak about himself is purely subjective. Maimonides
wrote his Commentary on Rosh ha-Shanah before he studied astronomy
seriously, and later deplored his juvenile folly in a self-deprecating way.
A neglected particle
Strangely, no one has discussed the syntax of the crucial sentence. There
is an intensifying particle la - (\indeed, surely, truly, verily") attached
to amr.116 La - normally occurs at the beginning of a predicate, coordi-
nated with inna before the subject; for example| inna 'llaha la-ghafurun
114 Commentary on Rosh ha-Shanah , 22b (p. 18).
115 Davidson, Moses Maimonides, pp. 144{46, following H. Slonimski's 1890 pub-
lication on the issue, rejects the authenticity of Maimonides' Commentary on Rosh
ha-Shanah. Nevertheless, Maimonides' vocabulary and phrasing point to his author-
ship. Furthermore, Samuel Shaqili stated clearly that he copied it in Acre from a
Maimonides autograph. David II ha-Nagid, Maimonides' great-great-great grand-
son, in Acre at the time, presumably brought it there and would have explained
that it was in his ancestor's writing. Then Shaqili and his descendants disseminated
the commentary in Europe (where many copies were circulated). This narrative is
very convincing, yet Davidson does not explain why he rejects it and casts doubt on
Shaqili's veracity. See also Hilkhot ha-Yerushalmi , ed. Lieberman, Introduction, pp.
13{14; and Israel M. Ta-Shema, Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Literature , 2. Spain,
pp. 313{14, who showed that the Commentary on Rosh ha-Shanah and Maimonides'
autobiographical appendix about a storm at sea and his landing at Acre were au-
thentic and were probably written on the same paper because he was then at sea.
116 Davidson mentioned la - in his criticism of Qah 's attempt to read it as li-
.
[amr], where Davidson claimed that Maimonides' syntax is \very loose," yet without
explaining the la-. See \Maimonides and Metaphysical Knowledge," pp. 101{02 and
\A Problematic Passage," pp. 4{5. As the text is problematic, I would not exclude
the possibility that the lam is the preposition li -, as Qah. suggests.
384 Joel L. Kraemer
rah.mun = \God is forgiving, merciful." 117 This is an objective reason

for suspecting a lacuna in the text. If there is a la -, where is the inna ?
We would not expect to nd Greek de without a prior men. In any
event, those who wish to preserve the textus receptus need to explain the
presence of the particle la- and the glaring absence of inna, or at least
feel uneasy in failing to do so.
The meaning of istidlal
Maimonides used forms of the verb dalla twice in the interpretive crux,
and contrary to what both Harvey and Davidson supposed, neither oc-
currence has the sense of demonstrative proof. First there is al-istidlal
al-,amm (\the general inference"), where istidlal does not mean apod-
ictic demonstration. Hence Harvey's assertion that Maimonides denied
the demonstrative force of the proof from motion is wrong. 118 Istidlal
means seeking an indication, indicating, inferring, inference, or adducing
evidence. Maimonides used istidlal for inference and draw an inference,
and for citing a proof-text from holy writ. 119 Since in the tenth conjuga-
tion (istaf ,ala ) the root can mean to try or to endeavour, we occasionally
nd istidlal in the sense of try to prove, where the proof (dall ) may be
more than a simple inference.
117 For lam al-ta -kd, See Wright, Arabic Grammar, II, 79; Reckendorf, Arabische
Syntax , par. 65, 3{6.
118 While Davidson understands istidl al as \drawing up of a proof" (\Maimonides
on Metaphysical Knowledge," p. 102), he does not specify what kind of proof it is,
but his reference to demonstrative proof in Guide, II, 1 suggests that this is what he
has in mind. See Harvey, \Maimonides First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt,"
p. 158, n. 14. On Maimonides' demonstrative proofs in general, see Josef Stern,
\Maimonides' Demonstrations: Principles and Practice."
119 I have found the following instances in Part One: Guide, I, 5 Munk, p. 16a,
Munk-Joel, 19.13{14; I, 33, 36b, 47.25{26; I, 34, 38b 50.18{19; I, 71, 95b, 123.20; I,
71, 96a, 124.10{11; I, 71, 97a, 125.14{15; I, 71, 98a, 126.26-28; I, 71, 98b, 127.5{6;
I, 74, 117b, 150.12{13; I, 74, 118a, 150.15{16; I, 74, 124b, 158.21{22; I, 75, 125a,
159.6{7; I, 76, 125b, 159.21{22. See also Guide, II, 17, Munk-Joel, p. 242, line 2,
trans. Pines, p. 298 (\inferences drawn"); Guide, II, 29, Munk-Joel, p. 208, line 3,
trans. Pines, p. 344 (\bases his proofs, by his saying. . . "); Guide, III, 23, Munk-Joel,
p. 356, line 20, trans. Pines, p. 491 (\to cite as proof" from a verse). The verb
istadalla (istidl
al ) occurs frequently in the Commentary on the Mishnah in the sense
of citing a prooftext. See also Responsa, ed. Blau, no. 254, p. 467; L. Gardet and
M.M. Anawati, Introduction a la theologie musulmane , pp. 358, 361, 371, 379; J. van
Ess, Die Erkenntnislehre des ,Adudadin al-Ic , p. 441; and Ibn Rushd, al-Kashf ,an
man ahij al-adilla , p. 163. Istidl ahid ,al
al al-sh a -ib is a common Kal
a 'l-gh am term
for \inferring from the seen to the unseen (God); and see Joep Lameer, Al-Farabi
and Aristotelian Syllogistics , pp. 205{16.
The verb dalla, like istadalla, was used even for citing scriptural
prooftexts.120 It means to guide, to show the way, to indicate, and to
prove ; and the noun dalala means indication, sign, signicance, guidance
and proof, and is of course in the title of the Guide in the sense of showing
the way to those who have gone astray: Dalalat al-h.a -irn.121
The Guide is a sign pointing the way, and it begins not with the
Epistle Dedicatory nor with the words, In the name of the Lord, God of
the World (Gen. 21:33), but rather with a poem by the author about
this journey on the Sacred Way.
My knowledge goes forth to point out the way,
to pave straight its road.
Lo, everyone who goes astray in the eld of Torah,
Come and follow its path.
The unclean and the fool shall not pass over it;
It shall be called the Sacred Way.
The poem is inspired by Isa. 35:8.
And a highway shall appear there,
which shall be called the Sacred Way.
No one unclean shall pass over it,
But it shall be for God's people. 122
No traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.
Let us return now to the subject of proofs. There are two kinds of
proof from the heavens. First, there is the inference from the heavens
that God exists, an idea that we nd in Biblical texts and that Mai-
monides called \a general inference," which is an informal proof, such
as the proof from intelligent design. 123 Second, there is demonstrative
proof (burhan) based on the movement of the heavens, or the outer
sphere, that a First Mover exists, which is a formal proof.
120 Goichon, 1939, Vocabulaires, p. 11, says that dalla means \to signify, to indi-
cate," referring to semaino in Interpr. i, 16a17. See also Zimmermann, 1987, xxi, n.
1; xxx, n. 1; 24. 277, for dalla, dall and dalala as signify, signicant, signication;
De Int. 16a17f. (semainei, semantikos ).
121 See Dozy, Dictionaire, I, 454{56.
122 By emendation from lamo > le-,amo.
123 It could be considered a dialectic proof as a topos or general concept that people
have about the heavens and their signifying the existence of a deity, the cause of their
beauty and order.
386 Joel L. Kraemer
As for informal proof, we nd the following passage, which is inspired

by Scripture, with a Neoplatonic allusion in the rst sentence. 124
Thus Scripture says: O Throne of Glory exalted from old ,
and so on (Jer. 17:12). On account of this sense, the heaven
is called a throne, indicating to those who have knowledge
of it and re ect upon it the greatness of Him who caused
it to exist and to move, and who governs this lower world
by means of the over ow of its bounty. Accordingly, it says:
Thus said the Lord: The heaven is My throne [and the earth
is my footstool.] (Isa 66:1). That is, He says: the heaven
indicates (tadullu ) My existence, grandeur, and power, as a
throne indicates (dalala ) the greatness of the individual who
is considered worthy of it.
In the following passage, Maimonides referred to both an informal
and a formal (\according to the opinion of the philosophers") proof for
124 See Guide, I, 9 (pp. 34{35). \Throne" occurs in Guide, I, 9 ten times. See
also, for throne and God's essence, Guide, I, 28; I, 53; I, 57; I, 58; I, 70; II, 26,
II, 27; III, 2, 3, 6; III, 7. In the Qur -an, God's throne (kurs) encompasses heaven
and earth (2:255) and is identied by the Ikhwan al-S. afa- with the eighth sphere,
that of the xed stars (Rasa -il, II, 26), while the ,arsh (9:29) is identied with the
ninth surrounding sphere and is called the highest ( a ,la ,illiyyn ), alluding to Qur-an
83:18{19. The purpose of these identications was to avoid the anthropomorphism
suggested by the literal sense of the Qur -anic text and to solve the issue of God's
presence in the world. See Cl. Huart and J. Sadan, \Kurs," EI 2 , s.v.; Seyyed Hossein
Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines , p. 76; Yves Marquet, La
philosophie des Ihw an al-S a -, pp. 110{11. As the Qur -a
. af nic cosmology had seven

heavens, when astronomers introduced an eighth and a ninth, they were admitted on
the basis of this identication with kurs and ,arsh. Maimonides used the Qur -anic
locution a ,la al-,illiyn \He is. . . . in the very highest position," in Guide, I, 10; ed.
Munk-Joel, p. 24.15{16; trans. Pines, p. 36. In this passage, addressed to \We the
community of men," lit. Adamites (human beings), Maimonides used other Islamic
terms as well, viz. wah.y (prophetic inspiration), 20a, 25.2; h.ulul (befalling), 20a,
25.1, nazala (\descend") (of revelation or divine presence), passim; and Qur -anic
sakna for Indwelling or divine presence (rather than Hebrew shekhinah ) in Guide,
I, 10, Munk-Joel, p. 24.18 (Pines, p. 36); I, 21, p. 32.16{17 (p. 48); I, 21, p. 32.16{17
(p. 48); I, 22, p. 35.5 and 7{9 (p. 52); 1,25, p. 37.12 and 15 (p. 55); III, 39, p. 404.21
(p. 552); and III, 52, p. 464.10 (p. 629). Sakna occurs in Qur-an 2:248, then twice in
Surah 9 and thrice in Surah 48. It is derived from Hebrew/Aramaic shekhinah and
has the meaning of divine presence or divine aid in the Qur -an; however, sakna is
often translated as though it derived from Arabic sakana, meaning to rest, be(come)
calm, peaceful, tranquil . See T. Fahd, \Sak na," EI, s.v. with valuable bibliography.
Maimonides equated sakna with prophetic inspiration, or a prophetic vision, also
called light or created light. He also related sakna to divine providence and to the
glory (kavod ) of God, a biblical expression. He used the verbs nazala and h.alla
(subst. h.ulul ) for the alighting or descending of the sakna. In many other places,
Maimonides used the Hebrew term shekhinah. Perhaps he used Arabic sakna when
the context was more universal, but this requires further investigation.
the existence of the deity. He stated that \according to our opinion,"

the proof derived from the heaven is unequaled and proves that the First
Mover is not a body or a force subsisting in a body. 125 This, we should
observe, is a principle that is not implied by the creation account, yet of
supreme importance for Maimonides' theology. 126
. . . the heaven proves to us (tadulluna ) the existence of the
separate intellects, who are the spiritual beings and the an-
gels, and the heaven proves to us ( tadulluna ) the existence
of the deity, who is its mover and its governor, as we shall
explain. We shall make it clear that there is no proof indi-
cating (dall yadulluna ) to us the existence of the Maker ( al-
.sani ,), according to our opinion, like the indication ( dalala )
deriving from the heaven. The latter also proves, as we have
mentioned, according to the opinion of the philosophers, the
existence of the Mover of the heaven and His not being either
a body or a force subsisting in a body.
Some hermeneutic rules
1. Author and audience .

While in the postmodernist period we have witnessed \La mort de
l'auteur" (Roland Barthes) and the indeterminacy of the text (Jacques
Derrida), I prefer to think | with Umberto Eco | in terms of a herme-
neutic triangle, consisting of author, text and reader. Meaning emerges
from the convergence of these three horizons | the intention of the
author (intentio auctoris ), the intention of the text (intentio operis )
and the intention of the reader ( intentio lectoris ).127
125 See Guide, I, 70 (p. 175), where he called it \the greatest proof."
126 Guide, II, 18 (p. 302). See also Guide, I, 71 (pp. 181{82), where Maimonides
posited the alternative that the world is either eternal or created. Creation (only)
implies that the world has a creator who is the deity. If, however, the world is eternal,
it follows necessarily that the deity is unique, \an existent who is not a body nor a
force in a body and who is one, permanent, and sempiternal; who has no cause and
whose becoming subject to change is impossible. Accordingly, he is a deity." Pines'
translation (\a deity") is strange and it follows ed. Munk-Joel, p. 125.21: fa-huwa ilah.
However, Munk's edition ( Le Guide, I, 97a,12) has fa-huwa al-ilah, and he translates
(Le Guide, I, 349), \cet être est Dieu." Ibn Tibbon's translation (ed. Even Shmuel,
p. 157) has we-hu - ha-eloha, presupposing Arabic fa-huwa al-ilah, which is more than
likely the right reading here. Schwarz's translation (I, 192) has hu -. . . eloha, which
should be corrected.
127 Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation , p. 25.
388 Joel L. Kraemer
A work's author cannot be routinely identied with the empirical

author.128 Wayne C. Booth speaks of an author as an implied version
of himself, distinct from the real man. 129 Booth does not mean the
narrator, for the narrator is created by the author. The implied author,
on the other hand, is a \second self," who may be distinguished from
the real person by ironies, insincerity and lack of seriousness. Jonathan
Swift's \A Modest Proposal" has a narrator and an implied author who
are as shocked as the readers and the empirical author at a barbaric
proposal. Marcel Proust maintains in Contre Sainte-Beuve, \that a book
is the product of a dierent self from the self we manifest in our habits,
in our social life, in our vices." 130
The author has a dierent persona depending on his authorial func-
tion. Ibn Rushd wrote Fas.l al-maqal as a Muslim jurisprudent giving a
fatwa ; he wrote his Bidayat al-mujtahid as a jurist; he wrote commen-
taries on Plato and Aristotle as a philosopher; and he wrote his Kulliyyat
as a physician. His identities and authorial functions are, however, not so
clear-cut. Did the philosopher or the muft write Fas.l al-maqal ? Judg-
ing from content, we would say the philosopher, even though the work
is formally a fatwa. If the Guide is a theological work, as some believe,
was the implied author functioning as a theologian? As a jurist? Or
as a philosopher? Saul Lieberman believed that the jurist, author of
the Mishneh Torah, wrote the Guide as an act of philanthropia for the
perplexed.131
Maimonides claimed a degree of authorial control that dees the
imagination. If there are contradictions, he maintained, he deliberately
placed them there. Whatever appears strange, such as silences and mis-
quotations, is deliberate. We cannot, however, expect that a human
author is infallible. This is one of the factors making the Guide so
impenetrable. If we add scribal errors, the interpretive task becomes
even more problematic.132 Yet this cannot be used to reject the exo-
128 Eco, p. 67. Consider how prominent Maimonides made his ego in the Epistle
Dedicatory to the Guide , where \I," \my," and \me" occur about fty times on
only two pages. In the original Arabic, the pronoun occurs in a dierent grammatical
form, but it is still there. \You" (for Joseph) is also very prominent as the other
member of a dialogue.
129 The Rhetoric of Fiction , pp. 71{76, 151{52, 157, 200, 211{21, 395{96. And see
his A Rhetoric of Irony.
130 See Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve , in Marcel Proust on Art and Literature , trans.
Sylvia Townsend Warner, pp. 99{100. Proust also described the author as reader of
his own creation, in this case an article of his in Le Figaro, he being one of 10,000
readers, and how what he had written was reshaping itself in his mind. John Bayley,
in his review of Roger Shattuck, Marcel Proust, in New York Review of Books , Volume
22, Number 3 (March 6, 1975), stresses \Proust's literary esotericism."
131 Personal communication to the author.
132 James Robinson argues (personal communication) that Strauss's approach re-
teric/esoteric hypothesis. The notion that we may err and consider a

real mistake as deliberate does not vitiate the method. After all, we
cannot always identify irony either; we overlook it when it is there and
think it is there when it is not. 133
Maimonides designed his model reader in Joseph, the primary \you"
addressed in the treatise. He wrote the Guide for Joseph ben Judah
and those like him. By singling out Joseph, he indicates the kind of
person he wrote for, what he knows, what he does not yet know, what
perplexes him and how he should proceed in his studies. The main aim
of the Guide is to explain as far as possible the Account of the Beginning
and the Account of the Chariot with a view to him for whom it has been
composed.134 The aim is to design the model reader, who reads it as it is
intended to be read, including the prospect of being read as polysemous,
multilayered and admitting multiple interpretations.
2. Modern bias
The reader needs to be open-minded and prepared to read works

of another culture with the appropriate attitude, not from a mocking
distance, not shunning the alien and unfamiliar, not imposing modern
prejudices and presuppositions. The reader should try to understand
a great author as the author intended to be understood. 135 This is,
to be sure, an endeavour, and we are not authorized to assert that we
have achieved it, and that \our Maimonides" is the true one and \our
colleague's Maimonides" is his or her interpretation of Maimonides. To
understand the books of great authors, we must recognize our own be-
wilderment and ignorance and rid ourselves of pretenses to knowledge.
quires a well-edited text, because an over-zealous reader may attach importance to
a feature which is not there. Davidson has cogently stressed that Maimonides made
errors and changed his mind; hence nding signicance in every discrepancy can be
overinterpretation. In this respect, classical sources have had a better fate than Jew-
ish philosophic texts. Variant readings of Plato's dialogues, for instance, are before
our eyes. Among classical Jewish philosophic texts, only Judah ha-Levi's Kuzari
has been edited critically, by D.H. Baneth and Haggai Ben-Shammai, and a ne
translation with notes has been prepared by Barry Kogan.
133 See, however, Marvin Fox, Interpreting Maimonides , p. 57, where he cites the
rst and last sentence in Strauss's introductory essay to the Guide, observing that
the second is not identical to the rst and both disagree with Pines' translation,
commenting that these may be careless errors or else planted deliberately. Now how
could Strauss really have made such careless errors in his rst and last sentence?
134 Guide, III, [Introduction], pp. 415{16; Strauss, \How To Begin To Study," p.
xvii.
135 This is the keystone of Strauss's hermeneutics. See \How To Begin To Study,"
pp. 207{208, where he cites Kant's opposite view that \it is possible to understand a
philosopher better than he understands himself" ( Critique of Pure Reason , B 370).
Strauss is critical of Hermann Cohen's endeavour to understand Maimonides in Co-
hen's horizon and better than he understood himself.
390 Joel L. Kraemer
Strauss reiterates that we should avoid the historicist assumption

that an author's ideas are determined by the author's historical era,
\the climate of opinion" of the period. This method attaches great
importance to the author's intention, placing the reader's intention in
danger of overinterpretation, which can be controlled by concentrating
on the intention of the text in whole and in part. 136
3. The hermeneutic circle
We need, rst and foremost, to understand the overall plan of a

work and its intentions, then to study it in detail before returning to an
examination of the total work. Reading parts in terms of the whole and
the whole in terms of the parts is like viewing a great painting such as
\Las Meninas" of Velasquez. One views the entire masterpiece, then the
details, and then returns to the masterpiece. Every detail is signicant;
nothing can be taken for granted, and there are dazzling puzzles that
cannot be solved. We can say the same of great musical masterpieces,
such as Mozart's Magic Flute, and even of edices, such as the Seville
Cathedral. One cannot read great books casually and haphazardly, but
be ready to spend ten, fteen, twenty-ve and more years to begin to
understand Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Machiavelli or Spinoza.
4. Literary Character
Most scholars assume that persecution is the sole cause of

\esotericism"; yet persecution is only the \most obvious or
crudest reason" for exotericism. Such scholars ignore what
Strauss quietly suggested is the most important reason ani-
mating exoteric teaching: philosophic education, or genuine
freedom of thought.137
Leo Strauss's great contribution was to focus our attention on \the
art of writing" and \the literary character" of pre-modern philosophic
writings, written at times when free speech was denied. 138 Persecution
was not the only reason for cautious writing; another was to preserve
society from the corrosive eect of philosophic questioning of principles
necessary for social order and human survival. A third reason was educa-
tional, leading potential philosophers from conventional opinions to the
eternal questions of philosophy by the various devices of exoteric writing
| enigmas, obscurity of plan, contradiction, metaphorical equivalence,
imprecise repetitions, odd expressions, misquotations, allusions, preg-
nant silences, and so on. These irritants do not disturb the dogmatic
136 Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation , pp. 9 and 54.
137 Lenzner, Leo Strauss and the Problem of Freedom of Thought , p. iii.
138 See also Berel Lang, Philosophy and the Art of Writing .
slumber of the credulous, but act as an arousal for the suspicious and
vigilant.139 This kind of literature in non-liberal societies uses educa-
tion to reconcile order that is not oppressive with freedom that is not
anarchic.140
Maimonides said that every metaphysician who desired to teach with-
out using parables and riddles had to make his exposition obscure and
brief so that obscurity and brevity replaced parables and riddles. 141 He
alluded to a text which describes an exchange between Plato and Aristo-
tle in which Plato accused Aristotle of revealing philosophic secrets, and
Aristotle replied that he substituted obscurity and brevity for Plato's
parables and riddles.142
The story, as told, is that Plato refrained from inscribing the sciences
in books, favoring oral teaching to the morally pure and intellectually re-
ceptive. When he was old and afraid of forgetting, he wrote things down,
but used symbols (rumuz ) and enigmas (alghaz.) so that only the deserv-
ing would understand.143 Aristotle, however, communicated in writing
by elucidation and exhaustive discussion, thereby making philosophy ac-
139 Cf. Gospel of Mark 4:11{12.
140 Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing , pp. 36{37. Michael S. Kochin,
in his \Morality, Nature and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's `Persecution and the art
of writing'," observes that, \Exoteric writing is a written imitation, as far as that
is possible, of the oral Socratic method" (p. 262). Kochin has a superb analysis of
Maimonides' esotericism on p. 275.
141 Guide, Introduction, p. 8. Pines' translation is faulty; note 16 ad loc. does not
help. The words kull h.akm ilah rabban dhu h. aqqa (Munk-Joel, p. 4.17{18) mean
literally, \every true sage of metaphysics." The term h.akm here is not \sage" and
both ilah and rabban mean \metaphysical" or \theological." See also Munk, Le
Guide des es , I, 12, n. 1.
egar
142 See also al-F arab, Kitab al-jam , bayn ra -yay al-h.akmayn, pp. 84{85; trans.
Mallet, pp. 64{65; and Kraemer, \The Islamic Context," p. 50. See the biography
of Aristotle by al-Mubashshir b. Fatik, Mukhtar al-h.ikam, p. 184; trans. I. During,
Aristotle in the Biographical Tradition , p. 201 (and see his comment, p. 433). Avi-
cenna mentioned the same correspondence in F ithbat al-nubuwwa , in Tis , rasa -il
f
'l-h
. ikma wa-'l-t
. ab at, p. 85; trans. M.E. Marmura, Medieval Political Philoso-
,iyy
phy: a Sourcebook , p. 116. See Galen, Compendium Timaei Platonis , ed. P. Kraus
and R. Walzer, p. 3, on Aristotle's terse, obscure style. On the terse, compressed,
precise style of Aristotle's acroamatic works as opposed to the popular style of his di-
alogues, see the testimonies in The Works of Aristotle , trans. David Ross, XII, Select
Fragments, p. 5. Greek akroamatikos means \designed for hearing only , the esoteric
doctrines of philosophers, delivered orally;" Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon , p.
56.
143 On preference for oral instruction in Plato, see, e.g., Phaedrus 276A{277A; Sev-
enth Letter, 344e. See also al-Farab's introduction to his Compendium of Plato's
Laws, ed. Fr. Gabrieli, pp. 3{4. The reader will, I think, nd rewarding Seth
Benardete's edition of Strauss's (acroamatic) discussions of the Symposium |Leo
Strauss on Plato's Symposium. Strauss's classes, recorded by his students and handed
down in stenograph among them and to their students and students' students, are to
be published in due course.
392 Joel L. Kraemer
cessible. When Plato objected, it was explained that Aristotle's style was
nevertheless abstruse, obscure, and complicated, thereby preserving phi-
losophy from the undeserving. This narrative was presumably translated
into Arabic from a late Hellenistic source.
I suggest that Maimonides combined the style of Plato with the style
of Aristotle. He used allegories, as did Plato, and he wrote in an ob-
scure style, as did Aristotle. Education is not the transferal of a body
of knowledge from teacher to student, rather Socratic midwifery (maieu-
tics), wherein the student is taught to see things for him/herself. 144
Reading a cryptic text is like detective work, observing clues that
are on the surface yet overlooked by the casual observer. \The prob-
lem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things,
is the heart of things." Seth Benardete called this \Strauss's golden
sentence."145 The prior sentence reads:
There is no surer protection against the understanding of
anything than taking for granted or otherwise despising the
obvious and the surface.
Exoteric writing is coeval with philosophy. The Presocratic Heracli-
tus of Ephesus wrote in an ambiguous, oracular style with paradoxes,
riddles and symbols, and hence was called ainiktes, or \riddler," and
skoteinos, or \obscure." He dedicated his On Nature to the temple of
Artemis, having deliberately written it obscurely to give access only to
those of rank and in uence and to prevent the populace from despising
it.146 As the true nature reveals and hides itself, so Heraclitus must re-
veal and hide himself. Thus the two reasons for his cryptic and symbolic
writing were his disdain for most of those who would read his writings,
who have the truth in front of them but are too ignorant to see it and
live in their own private world; and the subtlety of his thought, which
required the use of symbol and paradox. 147 The division of society into
144 Plato, Republic, 518B-C; Theatetus 149A{151D.
145 Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli , p. 13, Benardete, \Leo Strauss's The City
and Man," p. 1.
146 G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schoeld, The Presocratic Philosophers , 2nd ed.,
no. 192, pp. 183{84. Placing the original copy of a manuscript in a temple protected it
against forgeries and made it decisive for determining doubtful readings. The expres-
sion katuv u-munah., \written and deposited," meant published; see S. Lieberman,
Hellenism in Jewish Palestine , pp. 85{86. See also Uvo H olscher, \Paradox, Sim-
ile, and Gnomic Utterances in Heraclitus," and Philip Wheelwright, Heraclitus, pp.
11,43, 93, 116.
147 Cotta, in Cicero's dialogue On the Nature of the Gods , said that Heraclitus
concealed his meaning intentionally; Cicero, De natura deorum, i, 26, 74; iii, 14, 35.
Heraclitus is said to speak obscurely on purpose, and Pythagoras also is said to hide
the truth. See also De natura deorum, i, 12, 30; i, 22, 61; i, 27, 77; and i, 30, 85.
elite intellectuals and unenlightened multitude was fundamental for Her-

aclitus.148 He said, \. . . the majority are wrong, living as they do by
the senses only; and to me, one man, if he be the best, is worth ten
thousand."149
The Prolegomena to Aristotle written by Alexandrian commentators
posed questions that a good textual interpreter needs to ask. 150 Arabic
philosophy inherited these Prolegomena in dierent versions.
There were ten sections in the Introductions to Aristotle, including
a classication of Aristotle's writings into genres, among which was a
subdivision consisting of notes for personal use (notebooks) and trea-
tises consisting of dialogues ( exoterika ) and non-dialogical works ( akroa-
matika ), intended for initiates and including his treatises on theoretical
philosophy, practical philosophy and the Organon.151 The purpose of
Aristotle's obscurity was said to be exclusion of the unworthy, as cur-
tains function in temples. Simplicius explained more fully that the ob-
scurity was so that \good people may for that reason stretch their minds
even more, whereas empty minds that are lost through carelessness will
be chased away by the obscurity. . . " 152 Simplicius asked: \What is the
style of the Aristotelian treatises?" \Why did the Philosopher choose
unclear diction?" \What sort of interpreter is required for such argu-
ments?" \What sort of audience should be admitted?" 153
Strauss says that he discovered \a forgotten kind of writing" when
reading Lessing.154 He stressed Lessing's explanation of Leibniz's views
on religion and the motives that prompted Leibniz to defend orthodox
beliefs such as eternal damnation, the trinity, and transubstantiation.
Strauss created a leitmotif of Lessing's statement that Leibniz's accep-
tance of received opinions is \what all the ancient philosophers used to
do in their exoteric speech." The ancient philosophers behaved with
prudence, Lessing observed, for which \our most recent philosophers
148 W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy , I, The Earlier Presocratics

and the Pythagoreans , pp. 410{13.
149 Kathleen Freeman, Companion to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers , p. 119 (B 17,
B 19, B 29, B72, B 49). Cf. Maimonides, Instruction with Respect to this Treatise,
p. 16, who preferred giving satisfaction to a single virtuous (or \excellent," fad.il )
man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses. Maimonides evidently found this
in Galen, who cited Heraclitus.
150 See, for instance, L.G. Westerink, \The Alexandrian commentators," pp. 341{48.
151 Westerink, \The Alexandrian commentators," pp. 341{43.
152 Richard Sorabji, \The ancient commentators on Aristotle," p. 6.
153 Karl Praechter, \Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca ," p. 43.
154 Strauss, \Exoteric Teaching," in The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism ,
pp. 64{67. See also \On A Forgotten Kind of Writing, \ mainly a reply to critics, in
which Lessing is not mentioned.
394 Joel L. Kraemer
have become much too wise." 155 Lessing understood the educational
aim of exoteric writing, commenting that Leibniz \tried to lead each
individual along the path to truth on which he found him." In fact,
Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz were all practitioners of the art of equiv-
ocation and used exoteric teachings to conceal their esoteric doctrines. 156
Strauss noted that Lessing died in the year in which Kant published the
Critique of Pure Reason, after which the issue of exotericism was over-
looked almost completely \at least among scholars and philosophers as
distinguished from novelists." 157 Charles Rosen remarked on \the di-
culty of reading Benjamin's The Origin of German Trauerspiel with its
mosaic of quotations and commentary, requiring momentary re ection
after every sentence," which, he said, was typical of his era, \an age
of great esoteric literature," citing Joyce's Ulysses (1921), Eliot's The
Waste Land (1922), Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (1922) , and Yeats's
A Vision (1926).158 Benjamin's The Origin of German Trauerspiel , he
said, is a masterpiece in that tradition. Exoteric writing was used by
writers living in Communist countries, such as Czeslaw Milosz, whose
The Captive Mind contains a superb description of exoteric writing in
modern times.
In his essay on Heidegger, \An Introduction to Heideggerian Exis-
tentialism," Strauss describes the debate between Heidegger and Ernst
Cassirer at Davos from March 16 to April 6, 1929, and mentions that
he told Franz Rosenzweig about Heidegger's \precision and probing and
competence," and his \seriousness, profundity and concentration" in in-
terpreting philosophic texts. In the debate Heidegger had uncovered
his exo/esoteric rhetoric, viz. eloquent silences (sigetics, the rhetoric of
silence), double rhetoric, parabolic speech, and prudent dissembling. 159
155 Strauss, \Exoteric Teaching," p. 65. See Lessing's \Leibniz on eternal punish-
ment," in Philosophical and Theological Writings , ed. and trans. H.B. Nisbet, pp.
37{60, especially p. 46.
156 Descartes, for instance, was reclusive and secretive, and left private notebooks
that were copied and studied by Leibniz; see Amir D. Aczel, Descartes' Secret Note-
book. He did not publish his book Le Monde, with its Copernican premises, because
of his fear that he would suer Galileo's fate at the hands of the Inquisition. He only
alluded to it in his Discourse on Method. It was published in 1664, fourteen years
after he died; see Aczel, p. 138. Spinoza's equivocations and caution are well known.
157 He did not say which novelists. I would cite, among many others, Gerard de
Nerval, who used Kabbalah and number symbolism; see Selected Writings, trans.
Richard Sieburth, pp. 258, 274, 280, 298, 301, 305, 319, 327, 348{50, 390, n. 4. His
last sonnet in \The Chimeras" is inspired by Pythagoras' Golden Sayings, and its
last stanza is:
Souvent dans l'^
etre obscur habite un Dieu cach
e
Et comme un oeil naissant couvert par ses paupi
eres, Un pur esprit s'accro^
t sous
l'
ecorce des pierres!
158 Charles Rosen, \The Origins of Walter Benjamin."
159 See Georey Waite, \On Esotericism: Heidegger and/or Cassirer at Davos."
We have gone from an attempt to understand a passage, mainly one

sentence, in the Guide to a discussion of hermeneutics and literary char-
acter of philosophic writing, a question raised vis-a-vis ancient and me-
dieval philosophy by Leo Strauss. My nal comment on method relates
to the tone of the interpreter's presentation of a theory. As Maimonides
presented Aristotle as seeking the truth earnestly and propounding plau-
sible theories in a modest and tentative way, so ought we recognize our
limitations and the diculty of understanding mystifying texts from an-
other culture and era. We ought to acknowledge that our conclusions are
provisional and subject to correction and hope that someone will come
along and get it all better. Franz Rosenthal often protested that he did
not know some subject, such as ,Abbas poetry, where others in his shoes
would have claimed that they had mastered it as experts. His writing
was always careful and never overstated, open to other interpretations
and never nal. There should be no illusion of nality to anything we
say.
Appendix
I selected the following examples for those readers who imagine that the
text of the Guide is pristine to show how frequently there is a discrepancy
between a draft copy in Maimonides' own handwriting and the received
text in the Munk-Joel edition.
Hirschfeld, p. 680, MS fol. 2r = Guide, II, 32, has a lacuna of three
words that appear in Munk-Joel, p. 256.1 ( ,inda 'l-ta -ammuli 'l-h.asan ),
\if they are well examined" (Pines, p. 363). 160
MS fol. 2r, Guide, II, 33, has no division (the word fas.l ) between
chapters 32 and 33 (al-H.arz, chapters 33 and 34). Maimonides marked
chapter divisions with the word fas.l, as did Arab authors. Ibn Tibbon, as
we know, numbered the fus.ul. The manuscript and Munk-Joel, 256.2{4,
dier considerably. The manuscript lacks the reference to \in a separate
chapter" and the edition lacks: wa-dhalika 'l-idrak alladh adraka (lit.
\and this apprehension which he apprehended"). It appears that the
manuscript was defective at the end of ch. 33 and the beginning of ch.
34.
160 H. Hirschfeld, \The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cambridge. IV. Two
Autograph Fragments of Maimonides' Dalalat al H.airin [sic]," published in 1902{03.
Hirschfeld stated (p. 678) that \The variations of the text are so surprisingly numerous
for so small a portion of the work, that I found it desirable to reproduce it in print."
He recognized orthographic features of Maghribine writing. I. Joel reprinted the
Hirschfeld and Yellin texts at the end of the Munk-Joel edition on pp. 493{501.
396 Joel L. Kraemer
Yellin p. 102, MS fol. 1a = Guide, I, 17 (end), Munk-Joel, 29.16{17.

The manuscript has h.ilaf al-h.aqq al-murad bi-na (\is dierent from the
truth intended by us"), whereas Munk-Joel have h.ilaf al-amr al-murad
bi-na (\dierent from what is intended by us") as does Ibn Tibbon, but
al-H.arz has neither.161 The last words in the chapter are, fa-' ,lam
dhalika (\know this"), but in Munk-Joel, p. 29.17, and in Ibn Tibbon
and al-H.arz the words are, fa-' ,lam hadha ayd.an (\Know this also").
p. 102, fol. 1a = Guide, I, 18, Munk-Joel, 29.20. The manuscript
has f ishtirak (\On the equivocality") at the beginning of the chapter,
lacking in Munk-Joel, Ibn Tibbon and al-H. arizi.
p. 103, MS fol. 1b, line 5: amma min allah li-jism aw min shakhs.
insan li-llah (\either between God and a body or between a human
individual and God"). Munk-Joel, 30.5{6: bayna llah ta ,ala wa-bayna
makhluq min al-makhluqat (Pines, p. 44: \between God, may He be
exalted, and a created being").
Munk-Joel has, for the most part, better readings than the manu-
scripts, conrming that Maimonides' draft copies were not from nal
versions.
Bibliography
Ackrill, J.L. Aristotle's Categories and De Interpretatione . Oxford,
1963 (1979).
Aczel, A.D. A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism, and the Quest to
Understand the Universe: Descartes' Secret Notebook . New York,
2005.
Altmann, A. \Maimonides on the Intellect and the Scope of Meta-
physics." Von der mittelalterlichen zur modernen Aufklarung .
Tubingen, 1987, pp. 60{129.
Aristotle. The Complete Works of Aristotle . Jonathan Barnes, ed. 2
vols. Oxford, 1984.

||. Die Hermeneutik des Aristoteles in der arabischen Ubersetzung
des Ish.ak. ibn H.onain. Isidor Pollak, ed. Leipzig, 1913.
||. Metaphysics: A Revised Text with Introduction and Commentary .
W.D. Ross, ed. 2 vols. Oxford, 1997.
161 D. Yellin, \Two Pages of Maimonides' Handwriting."
Baneth, D.H. \Maimonides as his own Translator." Tarbiz 23 (1952):

170{91 (In Hebrew). Also in Gotthold E. Weil Jubilee Volume on
the occasion of his seventieth birthday . Jerusalem, 1952, pp. 34{55.
Bauer, W. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament . W.F. Arndt
and F. Wilbur Gingrich, eds. Chicago, 1979.
Beit-Arie, M. The Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book: Studies in
Palaeology and Codicology. Jerusalem, 1993.
Benardete, S. \Leo Strauss's The City and Man." Political Science
Reviewer 8 (1978): 1{20.
Blau, J. A Grammar of Mediaeval Judaeo-Arabic . Jerusalem, 1961 (In
Hebrew).
||. The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic : A
Study of the Origins of Neo-Arabic and Middle Arabic . 1st Ed.
London, 1965; 3rd Ed. Jerusalem, 1999.
Booth, W.C. The Rhetoric of Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago, 1983.
Brague, R. \Leo Strauss and Maimonides." In A. Udo, ed. Leo
Strauss's Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement , 1991, pp. 93{
114.
||. \Leo Strauss et Maimonide." In S. Pines and Y. Yovel, eds.
Maimonides and Philosophy . Dordrecht, 1986, pp. 246{68.
Cicero, De natura deorum. H. Rackham, trans. London & Cambridge,
Mass., 1956.
Cohen, M.Z. \Imagination and Logic, Truth and Falsehood." Tarbiz
73 (2004): 417{58 (In Hebrew).
Colonna, Francesco. Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in
a Dream. Joscelyn Godwin, trans. London, 1999; reprinted with
corrections, 2003.
Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri , I. Inferno.
Robert M. Durling, ed. and trans. Introduction and notes by
Ronald L. Martinez and Robert M. Durling. New York, 1996.
||. The Inferno. A. Esolen, ed. and trans. New York, 2002.
Davidson, H.A. Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God
in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy . New York & Oxford,
1987.
398 Joel L. Kraemer
||. \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge." Maimonidean Stud-

ies 3 (1991): 49{103.
||. \Further on a Problematic Passage in Guide for the Perplexed
2.24." Maimonidean Studies 4 (1997): 1{13.
||. Moses Maimonides: The Man and his Works . New York, 2005.
Deutsch, K.L. & W. Nicgorski. Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and
Jewish thinker. Lanham, MD, 1993.
Diamond, J.A. Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: De-
ciphering Scripture and Midrash in The Guide of the Perplexed.
Albany, N.Y., 2002.
Duncan-Jones, K. Shakespeare's Sonnets. London, 1997 (Arden Shake-
speare).
Eco, Umberto. Interpretation and Overinterpretation . Stefan Collini,
ed. Cambridge, 1992.
EI. Encyclopaedia of Islam, new edition. 12 vols. Leiden, 1960-2004.
Ess, Josef van. Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert
Hidschra: eine Geschichte des religiosen Denkens im fruhen Islam .
6 vols. Berlin & New York, 1991{1997.
Faithfull, R.G. \The Esoteric Interpretation of Dante." Italica 27
(1950): 82{87.
al-Farab, Abu Nas.r. Tah..sl al-sa ,ada. H.aydarabad, 1345 AH (1927{
28). M. Mahdi, trans. The Attainment of Happiness . In Alfarabis
Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle . Glencoe, Ill., 1962 (1969).
||. The Utterances Employed in Logic (al-Alfaz. al-musta ,mala f
'l-mant.iq ). M. Mahdi, ed. Beirut, 1968.
||. al-Farabi's Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle's De
Interpretatione (Sharh. al-Farab li-Kitab Arist. u.tals f 'l-,ibara ).
F.W. Zimmermann, trans. Oxford, 1981.
Fischer, D.H. Historians Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical
Thought. New York, 1970.
Fleissner, R.F. \Shakespeare and Psalm 46, once more." Word Ways,
November 1, 2004.
Fortin, E.L. Dissent and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: Dante and his
Precursors. M.A. LePain, trans. 2002. (Dissidence et philosophie
au Moyen Age: Dante et ses antecedents . Paris, 1981.)
|| \Between the Lines: Was Leo Strauss a Secret Enemy of Moral-
ity?" Crisis 7 (1989): 19{26. Reprinted in idem, Classical Chris-
tianity and the Political Order , II, pp. 317{27.
||. Classical Christianity and the Political Order. J. Brian Benes-
tad, ed. 3 vols. Lanham, Maryland & London, 1996.
Fox, M. Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphy-
sics, and Moral Philosophy. Chicago, 1990.
Fraenkel, C. From Maimonides to Samuel ibn Tibbon: The Transforma-
tion of the Dalalat al-H.a-irn into the Moreh ha-Nevukhim. PhD.
Dissertation, The Hebrew University, 2002.
Freeman, K. Companion to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Compan-
ion to Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 2 nd ed. Oxford, 1959.
Friedlander, I. Der Sprachgebrauch des Maimonides. Ein lexikalis-
cher und grammatischer Beitrag zur Kenntnis des mittelarabis-
chen.
Leipzig, 1901.
||. \Die arabische Sprache des Maimonides." In W. Bacher et al. eds.
Moses ben Maimon, sein Leben, seine Werke und sein Ein uss . 2
vols. Leipzig, 1908{14, vol. 1, pp. 422{28.
||. \Der Stil des Maimonides." In W. Bacher et al. eds. Moses ben
Maimon, vol. 1, pp. 429{38.
Friedlander, P. Plato. H. Meyerho, trans. 3 vols. New York, N.Y.,
1958{69.
Gadamer, H.G. Philosophical Hermeneutics . David E. Linge, ed. and
trans. Berkeley, 1976
Gardet, L. and M.M. Anawati. Introduction a la theologie musulmane .
Paris, 1948 (1981).
Germino, D. \Blasphemy and Leo Strauss's Machiavelli." The Review
of Politics, 53, No. 1, Special Issue on the Thought of Leo Strauss
(1991): 145{56. Also in K.L. Deutsch & W. Nicgorski. Leo Strauss:
Political Philosopher and Jewish thinker , pp. 297{307.
400 Joel L. Kraemer
Goichon, A.-M. Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sna . Paris,

1938.
||. Vocabulaires compares d'Aristote et d'Ibn Sna; supplement au
Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sna . Paris, 1939.
Goshen-Gottstein, M.H. \Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed : To-
wards a Critical Edition." Studies in Jewish Religious and Intel-
lectual History: Presented to Alexander Altmann on the occasion
of his seventieth birthday. Alabama, 1979, pp. 133{42.
Green K.H. (ed.). Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity: Es-
says and Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought. Albany, 1997.
Guenon, R. The Esotericism of Dante. H.D. Fohr and Cecil Bethell,
trans.; Samuel D. Fohr, ed. Hillsdale, N.Y., 2001 (rst published
as L'Esoterisme de Dante. Paris, 1925 (1957).
Harvey, W.Z. \Maimonides' First Commandment, Physics, and
Doubt." Hazon Nahum: Studies in Jewish Law, Thought, and His-
tory, Presented to Dr. Norman Lamm . Y. Elman & J.S. Gurock,
eds. New York, 1997.
Hary, B.H. and H. Ben-Shammai (eds.). Esoteric and Exoteric Aspects
in Judaeo-Arabic Culture. Leiden, 2006.
Heinrichs, W. Arabische Dichtung und griechische Poetik: H. azim al-
Qart.aganns Grundlegung der Poetik mit Hilfe Aristotelischer Be-
grie. Beirut & Wiesbaden, 1969.
Hirschfeld, I.H. \The Arabic Portion of the Cairo Genizah at Cam-
bridge. IV. Two Autograph Fragments of Maimonides' Dalalat al
H.airin [sic]," JQR 15 (1902{03): 677{81.
Holscher, U. \Paradox, Simile, and Gnomic Utterances in Heracli-
tus." In The Pre-Socratics: A Collection of Critical Essays . P.D.
Alexander, ed. Mourelatos. Garden City, N.Y., 1974, pp. 229{38.
Hopkins, S. \Two Maimonidean Autographs in the John Rylands Uni-
versity Library," John Rylands University Library Bulletin 67
(1985): 710{35.
Hopper, V.F. Medieval Number Symbolism: Its Sources, Meaning, and
In uence on Thought and Expression . Mineola, New York, 1938
(2000).
Ibn Ab Us.aybi,a, Muwaaq al-Dn. ,Uyun al-anba - f .tabaqat al-at.ib-
ba -. Beirut, 1965.
Ibn Rushd, Abu 'l-Wald. Averroes on Plato's Republic. Ralph Lerner,
trans. Ithaca and London, 1974.
Ibn Shaddad, Baha- al-Dn. The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin,
or al-Nawadir al-Sult.aniyya wa-'l-Mah.asin al-Yusuyya. D.S.
Richards, trans. Hampshire, UK & Burlington, VT, 2002.
Ibn Taymiyya, Taq al-Dn. Dar - ta ,arud. al-,aql wa-'l-naql. Muh.am-
mad Rashd Salim, ed. 11 vols. Riad. , 1979{1981.
Ibn Tibbon, Samuel. Otot ha-shamayim: Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew
version of Anstotle's Meteorology. R. Fontaine, ed. and trans.
Leiden, 1995.
Ibn T.ufayl, Muh.ammad b. ,Abd al-Malik. H.ayy ibn Yaqz.an f asrar
al-h.ikma al-mashriqiyya. 2nd ed. L. Gauthier, ed. Beirut, 1936.
||. H.ayy ibn Yaqz.an: A Philosophical Tale. L.E. Goodman, trans.
Los Angeles, 1991.
Ivry, A. \Leo Strauss on Maimonides." Leo Strauss's Thought. A.
Udo, ed. Boulder, 1991, pp. 75{91.
||. \The Logical and Scientic Premises of Maimonides' Thought."
Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism... dedicated to the
memory of Alexander Altmann . A.L. Ivry, E. Wolfson, and A.
Arkus, eds. Amsterdam, 1998, pp. 63{97.
||. \Solomon Munk and the Science of Judaism Meet Maimonides'
\Guide of the Perplexed." Moses Maimonides (1138{1204): His
Religious, Scientic, and Philosophical Wirkungsgeschichte in Dif-
ferent Cultural Contexts. K. Hasselho and O. Fraisse, eds. Wurz-
burg, 2004, pp. 479{89.
Kasher, H. \Self-Cognizing Intellect and Negative Attributes in Mai-
monides' Theology." The Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994):
461{472.
Kendall, W. \Thoughts on Machiavelli." The Philosophical Review 75
(1966): 247{54.
Kermode, F. \A New Era in Shakespeare Criticism?" New York Review
of Books 15 (Nov. 5, 1970).
402 Joel L. Kraemer
Kirk, G.S., J.E. Raven and M. Schoeld. The Presocratic Philosophers :
A Critical History with a Selection of Texts . 2nd ed. Cambridge,
1983.
Al-Kitab al-Muh.taw de Yusuf al-Bas.r, texte, traduction et commen-
taire par Georges Vajda; edite par David R. Blumenthal. Leiden,
1985.
Klein-Braslavy, S. King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in the
Thought of Maimonides. Jerusalem, 1996 (In Hebrew).
Kochin, M. \Morality, Nature, and Esotericism in Leo Strauss's `Perse-
cution and the Art of Writing'." The Review of Politics 64 (2002):
261{83.
Kraemer, J.L. \Maimonides on Aristotle and Scientic Method." Moses
Maimonides and his Time. E.L. Ormsby, ed. Washington, D.C.,
1989, pp. 53{88.
||. \Death of an Orientalist." The Jewish Discovery of Islam . M.
Kramer, ed. New York, 1999, pp. 181{223.
Kraus, P. Jabir ibn H.ayyan, Contribution a l'histoire des idees scien-
tiques dans l'Islam. vol. 1. Jabir et la science grecque. Paris,
1942 (reprinted 1986).
Lameer, J. Al-Farabi and Aristotelian Syllogistics: Greek Theory and
Islamic Practice. Leiden, 1994.
Lampert, L. Leo Strauss and Nietzsche . Chicago, 1996.
Langermann, Y.T. \The true perplexity: The Guide of the Perplexed ,
Part II, chapter 24." Perspectives on Maimonides: philosophical
and historical studies . J.L. Kraemer, ed. Oxford, 1990, pp. 159{
74.
||. \A New Source for Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Translation of the Guide
of the Perplexed and his notes on it." Pe ,amim 72 (1997): 51{74
(In Hebrew).
||. \Maimonides and Astronomy: Further Re ections." The Jews
and the Sciences in the Middle Ages . Aldershot, 1999, pp. 1{26.
||. \Supplementary List of Manuscripts and Fragments of Dalalat
al-H.a -irn. Maimonidean Studies 4 (2000): 31{37.
Lanza, A. Dante e la Gnosi: Esoterismo del `Convivio.' Rome, 1990.
Lefaivre, L. Leon Battista Alberti's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: Rec-

ognizing the Architectural Body in the Early Italian Renaissance .
Cambridge, 2005.
Lenzner, S.J. Leo Strauss and the Problem of Freedom of Thought: The
Rediscovery of the Philosophic Arts of Reading and Writing . PhD.
Dissertation. Harvard University, 2003.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Philosophical and Theological Writings .
H.B. Nisbet, ed. and trans. Cambridge, 2005.
Levine. D.L. \Without Malice but with Forethought: A Response to
Burnyeat." The Review of Politics, 53/ 1 (Special Issue on the
Thought of Leo Strauss) (1991): 200{18.
Lieberman, S. Hellenism in Jewish Palestine. New York, 1950.
Loberbaum, Y. \On Contradictions, Rationality, Dialectics, and Eso-
tericism in Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed." The Review of
Metaphysics 55 (2002): 95{134.
Maas, P. Textual Criticism. Barbara Flower, trans. Oxford, 1958.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. Discourses on Livy. H.C. Manseld and N. Tar-
cov, trans. Chicago, 1996.
Maimonides, Moses. Mishnah ,im perush Rabbenu Mosheh ben Mai-
mon: maqor we-targum. Y. Qah., ed. and trans. 6 vols. Jeru-
salem, 1963{1967.
||. Commentarius in Mischnam . S.D. Sassoon, ed. Corpus Codicum
Hebraicorum Medii Aevi. 5 vols. Copenhagen, 1966.
||. Hilkhot ha-Yerushalmi. S. Lieberman, ed. New York, 1995.
||. Traite de logique. R. Brague, ed. and trans. Paris, 1996.
||. Le guide des egares ; traite de theologie et de philosophie, par
Mose ben Maimoun, dit Mamonide. Publie pour la premiere fois
dans l'original arabe et accompagne d'une traduction francaise et
de notes critiques litteraires et explicatives par S. Munk . 3 vols.
Paris, 1856{66 (1960).
Dalalat al-h.a -irn. S. Munk and I. Joel, eds. Jerusalem, 1930/31.
||. Delâlet u l-hair^n. Ta -lf-i Musa ibn Meymun al-Qurt. ub An-
dalus. H. Atay, ed. Ankara, 1974.
404 Joel L. Kraemer
||. Sefer Moreh ha-nevukhim le-Rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon be-

ha ,ataqat Yehudah Ibn Tibbon. 4 vols. Y. Even Shmuel, ed.
Jerusalem, 1959{87.
||. Sefer Moreh ha-nevukhim le-Rabbenu Mosheh ben Maimon be-
ha ,ataqat Yehudah Ibn Tibbon. Y. Even Shmuel, ed. Jerusalem,
1981.
||. The Guide of the Perplexed. Hebrew Translation from the Arabic .
M. Schwarz, trans. 2 vols. Tel Aviv, 2002.
||. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated with an introduction and
notes by Shlomo Pines. With an introductory essay by Leo Strauss .
Chicago, 1963.
||. Iggerot ha-Rambam (Mose ben Maimon. Epistulae ). Jerusalem,
1946. D.H. Baneth, ed. 2nd enlarged edition with supplement by
A.H. Halkin. Jerusalem, 1985.
||. Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides. I. Shailat, ed. and
trans. 2 vols. Maaleh Adumim, 1988{89.
||. Responsa. J. Blau, ed. 4 vols. Jerusalem, 1986.
Mainz, E. \Zum arabischen Sprachgebauch des Maimonides." Islamica
8 (1931/32): 556{72.
Manseld, H.C. \Strauss's Machiavelli." Political Theory 3 (1975):
372{384; Also in Manseld, Machiavelli's Virtue, chapter 9.
||. Machiavelli's Virtue. Chicago, 1996.
Marquet, Y. La philosophie des Ih.wan al-s.afa -. Algiers, 1973
Meier, H. Die Denkbewegung von Leo Strauss: Die Geschichte der
Philosophie und die Intention des Philosophen . Stuttgart, 1996.
Nasr, S.H. An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines . Albany,
1993.
Nehamas, A. The Art of Living: Socratic Re ections from Plato to
Foucault. Berkeley, 1998.
||. Virtues of Authenticity: Essays on Plato and Socrates . Prince-
ton, 1999.
Orr, M. \Flaubert's Egypt: Crucible and Crux for Textual Identity."
Travellers in Egypt. Paul Starkey and Janet Starkey, eds. London
& New York, 2001, pp. 189{200.
Pangle, T.L. Leo Strauss: An Introduction to his Thought and Intellec-

tual Legacy. Baltimore, 2006.
Paret, R. Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz . Stuttgart, 1971.
Praechter, K. \Review of the Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca ."
Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and their In-
uence. Richard Sorabji, ed. London, 1990, pp. 31{54.
Proust, Marcel. Contre Sainte-Beuve. In Marcel Proust on Art and
Literature. 2nd ed. Sylvia Townsend Warner, trans. New York,
1997, pp. 19{276.
Ptolemy, Claudius. Ptolemy's Almagest. G.J. Toomer, trans. Prince-
ton, 1998.
Ravitzky, A. Mishnato shel R. Zerah.ya ben Yis.h.aq ben She -altiel H.en
we-he-Hagut ha-Maimonit-Tibbonit ba-Me -ah ha-13 (The thought
of R. Zerahiah B. Isaac B. Shealtiel Hen & Maimonidean-Tibbo-
nian philosophy in the 13th century ). PhD Hebrew University,
1978.
||. \Samuel ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the Guide of
the Perplexed." AJS Review 6 (1981): 231{72.
||. \Shmuel Ibn Tibbon we-Sodo shel ha-Moreh nevukhim" (\Sa-
muel Ibn Tibbon and the Esoteric Character of the Guide of the
Perplexed "). Daat 10 (1983): 19{46.
||. \Sitre Torato shel Moreh ha-Nevukhim-ha parshanut be-dorotaw
uve-dorotenu" (\The Secrets of the Guide of the Perplexed : Be-
tween the Thirteenth and the Twentieth Centuries"). Jerusalem
Studies in Jewish Thought 5 (1986): 23{69. Reprinted in ,Al
Da ,at ha-Maqom: Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy .
Jerusalem, 1991, pp. 142{81.
||. \The Secrets of the Guide to the Perplexed : between the Thir-
teenth and Twentieth Centuries." Studies in Maimonides. I. Twer-
sky, ed. Cambridge, 1990, pp. 159{207.
Reckendorf, H. Arabische Syntax. 2nd ed. Heidelberg, 1977 (1921).
Reynolds, L.D. and N.G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the
Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature . Oxford, 1968.
Ricoeur, P. The Con ict of Interpretations; Essays in Hermeneutics .
D. Ihde, ed. Evanston, 1974.
406 Joel L. Kraemer
Riedweg, C. Pythagoras: His Life, Teaching, and In uence . Translated

by Steven Rendall in collaboration with Christoph Riedweg and
Andreas Schatzmann. Itaca, 2005.
Robinson, J.T. Samuel Ibn Tibbon's Commentary on Ecclesiastes . PhD
Thesis, Harvard University. 2 vols. 2002.
Rosen, C. \The Origins of Walter Benjamin," New York Review of
Books Volume 24, Number 18 November 10, 1977
Rosenthal, F. \From Arabic Books and Manuscripts, V: A One-Volume
Library of Arabic Philosophical and Scientic Texts in Istanbul."
JAOS 75 (1955): 14{23.
||. \Nineteen." Analecta Biblica 12 (1959): 304{18.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Discourses and Other Early Political
Writings. V. Gourevitch, ed. and trans. Cambridge, 1997.
Schen, I. \Usama Ibn Munqidh's Memoirs : Some Further Light on
Muslim Middle Arabic (Parts I{II)." JSS 17 (1972): 218{36, 64{
97.
Schleiermacher, F. Hermeneutics and Criticism And Other Writings .
A. Bowie, ed. and trans. Cambridge, 1998.
Schwartz, D. Contradiction and Concealment in Medieval Jewish
Thought. Ramat-Gan, 2002 (In Hebrew).
Sirat, C. A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages . Cam-
bridge, 1985.
||. \Une Liste de Manuscrits: Preliminaire a une nouvelle edition
du Dalalat al-H.ayryn." Maimonidean Studies 4 (2000): 31{37.
Smith, S.B. \Leo Strauss's Platonic Liberalism," pp. 789{92. Political
Theory 28/6 (2000): 787{809. Reprinted in idem, Reading Leo
Strauss, ch. 4.
||. Reading Leo Strauss: Politics, Philosophy, Judaism . Chicago,
2006.
Sorabji, R. \The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle." In Aristotle
Transformed: the ancient commentators and their in uence . Idem,
ed. London, 1990, pp. 1{30.
Spinoza, Baruch. Complete Works. S. Shirley, trans.; ed. with intro-
duction and notes by M.L. Morgan. Indianapolis, 2002.

Steinschneider, M. Die Hebraischen Ubersetzungen des Mittelalters und
die Juden als Dolmetscher. Berlin, 1893.
Stern, J. \Maimonides' Demonstrations: Principles and Practice." Me-
dieval Philosophy and Theology 10 (2001): 47{84.
Stern, S.M. \Autographs of Maimonides in the Bodleian Library." Bod-
leian Library Record 5 (1954): 180{202.
Strauss, L. \Besprechung von Julius Ebbinghaus." Gesammelte Schri-
ften, II, pp. 437{39.
||. \The Literary Character of The Guide for the Perplexed." In
Essays on Maimonides. S.W. Baron, ed. New York, 1941, pp. 37{
91. Reprinted in idem, Persecution and the Art of Writing . 1952,
pp. 38{94.
||. \How to Study Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise." Proceed-
ings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 17 (1948), pp.
69{131. Reprinted in idem, Persecution and the Art of Writing .
1952, pp. 142{201 and in K.H. Green, ed. Jewish Philosophy and
the Crisis of Modernity: Essays and Lectures in Modern Jewish
Thought. Albany, 1997, pp. 181{233.
||. Persecution and the Art of Writing . Glencoe, Ill., 1952.
||. Thoughts on Machiavelli. Glencoe, Ill., 1958.
||. \Maimonides' Statement on Political Science." In idem. What
is Political Philosophy? 1959, pp. 155{69.
||. What is Political Philosophy ? And Other Studies. Glencoe, Il.,
1959.
||. \How To Begin To Study The Guide of the Perplexed." Mai-
monides' Guide of the Perplexed . S. Pines, trans. Chicago, 1963,
pp. xi{lvi. Reprinted in idem, Liberalism Ancient and Modern .
1968, pp. 140{84.
||. The City and Man. Chicago, 1964.
||. Liberalism Ancient and Modern . New York, 1968.
||. \Niccolo Machiavelli." History of Political Philosophy . 2nd
ed. Leo Strauss and J. Cropsey, eds. Chicago, 1972, pp. 271{
92. Reprinted in idem, Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy .
1983, pp. 210{28.
408 Joel L. Kraemer
||. \Correspondence concerning Wahrheit und Method, Leo Strauss

and Hans-Georg Gadamer." The Independent Journal of Philoso-
phy 2 1978 (Special Issue on Leo Strauss): 5{12.
||. Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy . Chicago, 1983.
||. \An Introduction to Heideggerian Existentialism." In idem, The
Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism . 1989, pp. 27{46.
||. \Exoteric Teaching." K. Green, ed. Interpretation 14 (1986):
51{59. Reprinted in idem, The Rebirth of Classical Political Ra-
tionalism. 1989, pp. 63{71.
||. The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction
to the Thought of Leo Strauss . Selected and Introduced by T.L.
Pangle. Chicago, 1989.
||. \How to Begin to Study Medieval Philosophy." In Thomas
L. Pangle, ed. The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism .
Chicago, 1989, pp. 207{26.
||. Philosophy and the Law. Eve Adler, trans. Albany, 1995.
Translated from Philosophie und Gesetz : Beitrage zum Verstand-
nis Maimunis und seiner Vorlaufer . Berlin, 1935.
||. Gesammelte Schiften. H. Meier, ed. 3 vols. Stuttgart, 1996{
2001.
Strauss, L. and J. Klein. \A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo
Strauss."The St. John's Review from The College 22, no. 1 (April
1970). pp. 1{5. Reprinted in K.H. Green, ed. Jewish Philosophy
and the Crisis of Modernity. pp. 457{66.
Tarcov, N. \On a Certain Critique of `Straussianism'." The Review of
Politics. Special Issue on the Thought of Leo Strauss. 53 (1991):
3{18. Reprinted in Leo Strauss: Political Philosopher and Jewish
Thinker. K.L. Deutsch and W. Nicgorski, eds. pp. 259{74
Ta-Shema, I.M. Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Literature . Vol. 2. Spain.
Jerusalem, 2004.
Twersky, I. Introduction to the Code of Maimonides . Cambridge, Mass.,
1980.
Udo, A. (ed.) Leo Strauss's Thought. Boulder, 1991.
Vajda, G. \Un abrege chretien du Guide des Egares de Mose Mal-
monide." Journal Asiatique 1960: 115{36.
Westerink, L.G. \The Alexandrian commentators." In Aristotle Trans-

formed: the ancient commentators and their in uence . Richard
Sorabji, ed. London, 1990, pp. 325{48.
Wheelwright, P. Heraclitus. Oxford, 1999.
Winks, R.W. (ed.) The Historian as Detective: Essays on Evidence .
New York, 1969.
Wright, W. A Grammar of the Arabic Language . 3rd rev. ed. 2 vols.
Cambridge, 1955.
Yellin, D. \Two Pages of Maimonides Handwriting." Tarbiz 1 (1929{
30): 93{106 (In Hebrew).
Zuckert, C.H. and M. Zuckert. The Truth about Leo Strauss : Politi-
cal Philosophy and American Democracy . University Of Chicago
Press, 2006.

How Not To Read The Guide of The Perplexed

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Not To Read The Guide of The Perplexed

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Institute of Asian and African Studies

The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation

HOW (NOT) TO READ

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

HOW (NOT) TO READ

(apora) of our thinking points to a knot in the object; for in so far as

Nagid David II (1335{1415). 5

According to Maimonides' philosophic theology, the movements of the

Mover, is a matter the knowledge of which cannot be reached

Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation

As I have stated, Ibn Tibbon emended the sentence by inserting the

x`y la`> ,mripn lr epexed mdy | mdn zllekd di`xde

.ezricil mc`d ilky eribi `l <oipr `ed mpipr

And the general inference from them is that they indicate

Translation of the restored Arabic text

If we reconstruct the Arabic text, where \heaven" is singular, with the

dgewld dii`xd lr [x]'n`y aeygl oi`y 'oiipr `ed mpiipr

ztenl m` egwl `edy byei `l oiipr `edy mripn lr mzrepzn

.miax zenewna dfe dwfg dii`xl e`

17 See Warren Z. Harvey, \Maimonides' First Commandment, Physics, and Doubt,"

Samuel Ibn Tibbon said: \It appears to me that there is

am uncertain whether I sent to you the Introduction ( .sadr ),

Samuel Ibn Tibbon

Samuel assured his readers, in the Introduction to his translation,

he received letters from Samuel Ibn Tibbon, to which he replied, for

philosophers, such as Moses ben Maimon and his kind, or as Mu ,tazils,

The esoteric scandal

in any case. Maimonides' concern was that people might mistakenly

How to prove a conjecture about the intentio operis ? The

granted the latter-day Aristotelians the premise of the world's eternity,

he stated: \He, blessed be He, causes it to revolve without hand and

daughter of Maimonides, before two witnesses and friends, Ibn ,Ubayd-

While it is meritorious to think independently, a strong exegetical tradi-

Sawing o the branch

A large invisible crater

It is hard to imagine that Maimonides wanted to shield the timorous from

goes, the scrupulous work of the historian and philologian is spurned as

The choppy syntax solution

does not consider, however, that Maimonides indicated to Ibn Tibbon

Maimonides wrote the Commentary on the Mishnah , Book of Com-

given chapter, your intention must be not only to understand

Davidson to have his Eureka moment by portentously announcing that

rather than \expression," and is understood to be a unit of speech, which

of heptads. Indeed, one reason for a careful numbering of chapters was

As Strauss says, these considerations are \necessarily somewhat playful.

rah.mun = \God is forgiving, merciful." 117 This is an objective reason

The meaning of istidlal

As for informal proof, we nd the following passage, which is inspired

the existence of the deity. He stated that \according to our opinion,"

Some hermeneutic rules

1. Author and audience .

A work's author cannot be routinely identi ed with the empirical

teric/esoteric hypothesis. The notion that we may err and consider a

The reader needs to be open-minded and prepared to read works

Strauss reiterates that we should avoid the historicist assumption

We need, rst and foremost, to understand the overall plan of a

Most scholars assume that persecution is the sole cause of

elite intellectuals and unenlightened multitude was fundamental for Her-

148 W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy , I, The Earlier Presocratics

We have gone from an attempt to understand a passage, mainly one

Yellin p. 102, MS fol. 1a = Guide, I, 17 (end), Munk-Joel, 29.16{17.

Baneth, D.H. \Maimonides as his own Translator." Tarbiz 23 (1952):

||. \Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge." Maimonidean Stud-

philosophers, such as Moses ben Maimon and his kind, or as Mu ,tazils,

rah.mun = \God is forgiving, merciful." 117 This is an objective reason

The meaning of istidlal

A work's author cannot be routinely identied with the empirical

Goichon, A.-M. Lexique de la langue philosophique d'Ibn Sna . Paris,