Chapter XIII: Moses Maimonides (4)

Maimonides's ethics as well as his interpretation of the Pentateuchal laws is intellectualistic, as the foregoing account shows. And it is natural that it should be. The prevailing trend of thought in the middle ages, alike among the Arabs, Jews and Christians, was of this character. Aristotle was the master of science, and to him intellectual contemplation is the highest good of man. The distinction of man is his rational faculty, hence the excellence and perfection of this faculty is the proper function of man and the realization of his being. This alone leads to that "eudaimonia" or happiness for which man strives. To be sure complete happiness is impossible without the complete development of all one's powers, but this is because the reason in man is not isolated from the rest of his individual and social life; and perfection of mind requires as its auxiliaries and preparation complete living in freedom and comfort. But the aim is after all the life of the intellect, and the "dianoetic" virtues are superior to the practical. Theoretic contemplation stands far higher than practical activity. Add to this that Aristotle's God is pure thought thinking eternally itself, the universal mover, himself eternally unmoved, and attracting the celestial spheres as the object of love attracts the lover, without itself necessarily being affected, and the intellectualism of Aristotle stands out clearly.

Maimonides is an Aristotelian, and he endeavors to harmonize the intellectualism and theorism of the Stagirite with the diametrically opposed ethics and religion of the Hebrew Bible. And he is apparently unaware of the yawning gulf extending between them. The ethics of the Bible is nothing if not practical. No stress is laid upon knowledge and theoretical speculation as such. The wisdom and the wise man of the book of Proverbs no more mean the theoretical philosopher than the fool and the scorner in the same book denote the one ignorant in theoretical speculation. "The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord." This is the keynote of the book of Proverbs, and its precepts and exhortations are practical and nothing else. That the Pentateuchal law is solely concerned with practical conduct, religious, ceremonial and moral, needs not saying. It is so absolutely clear and evident that one wonders how so clear-sighted a thinker like Maimonides could have been misled by the authority of Aristotle and the intellectual atmosphere of the day to imagine otherwise. The very passage from Jeremiah which he quotes as summing up his idea of the _summum bonum_, speaks against him, and he only succeeds in manipulating it in his favor by misinterpreting the word "wise." Whatever the wise man may denote in the book of Proverbs, here in Jeremiah he is clearly contrasted with the person who in imitation of God practices kindness, judgment and righteousness. The word does not denote the theoretical philosopher, to be sure, but it approximates it more closely than the expression describing the ideal man of Jeremiah's commendation.

It is in line with Maimonides's general rationalistic and intellectualistic point of view when he undertakes to find a reason for every commandment, where no reason is given in the Law. He shows himself in this an opponent of all mysticism, sentimentality and arbitrariness. Reason is paramount. The intellect determines the will, and not even God's will may be arbitrary. His will is identical with his reason, hence there is a reason in everything that he wills. We may not in every case succeed in finding the reason where he himself did not choose to tell us, but a reason there always is, and the endeavor on our part to discover it should be commended rather than condemned.

The details of his motivation of the ceremonial laws are very interesting, and in many cases they anticipated, though in a cruder form, the more scientific theories of modern critics. Take his interpretation of the institution of sacrifices. Take away the personal manner of expression, which might seem to imply that God spoke to Moses in some such fashion as this: You and I know that sacrifices have no inherent meaning or value. They rather smack of superstition and idolatry. But what can we do? We cannot, _i. e._, we must not, change the nature of these people. We must train them gradually to see the truth for themselves. They are now on the level of their environment, and believe in the efficacy of killing sheep and oxen to the stars and the gods. We will use a true pedagogical method if we humor them in this their crudity for the purpose of transferring their allegiance from the false gods to the one true God. Let us then institute a system of sacrifices with all the details and minutiae of the sacrificial systems of the heathens and star worshippers. We shall impose this system upon our people for the time being, and in the end as they grow wiser they will outgrow it--take away this mode of expression in Maimonides's interpretation, which is not essential, and the essence may be rendered in more modern terms thus. Man's religion is subject to change and development and progress like all his other institutions. The forms they successively take in the course of their development are determined by the state of general intelligence and positive knowledge that the given race or nation possesses. The same thing holds of religious development. The institution of sacrifices is prevalent in all religious communities at a certain stage in their career. It starts with human sacrifice, which is later discarded and replaced by sacrifices of animals. And this is again in the course of time discontinued, leaving its traces only in the prayer book, which in Judaism has officially taken the place of the Temple service.

While the merit of Maimonides in foreshadowing this modern understanding of ancient religion cannot be overestimated, it is clear that in some of his other interpretations of Jewish ceremonial, he is wide of the mark. His rationalism could not take the place of a knowledge of history. His motivation of the dietary laws on the score of hygiene or of moderation and self-restraint is probably not true. Nor is the prohibition against mixing divers seeds, or wearing garments of wool and flax mixed, or shaving the corner of the beard, and so on, due to the fact that these were the customs of the idolaters and their priests. If Maimonides was bold enough to pull the sacrificial system down from its glorious pedestal in Jewish tradition and admit that being inherently nothing but a superstition, it was nevertheless instituted with such great pomp and ceremony, with a priestly family, a levitical tribe and a host of prescriptions and regulations, merely as a concession to the habits and prejudices of the people, why could he not apply the same method of explanation to the few prohibitions mentioned above? Why not say the ancient Hebrews were forbidden to mix divers seeds because they had been from time immemorial taught to believe that there was something sinful in joining together what God has kept asunder; and in order not to shock their sensibilities too rudely the new religion let them have these harmless notions in order by means of these to inculcate real truths?

Before concluding our sketch of Maimonides we must say a word about his Bible exegesis. Though the tendency to read philosophy into the Bible is as old as Philo, from whom it was borrowed by Clement of Alexandria and Origen and by them handed down to the other Patristic writers, and though in the Jewish middle ages too, from Saadia down, the verses of the Bible were employed to confirm views adopted from other considerations; though finally Abraham Ibn Daud in the matter of exegesis, too, anticipated Maimonides in finding the Aristotelian metaphysic in the sacred scriptures, still Maimonides as in everything else pertaining to Jewish belief and practice, so in the interpretation of the Bible also obtained the position of a leader, of the founder of a school and the most brilliant and most authoritative exponent thereof, putting in the shade everyone who preceded him and every endeavor in the same direction to which Maimonides himself owed his inspiration. Maimonides's treatment of the Bible texts and their application to his philosophical disquisitions is so much more comprehensive and masterly than anything in the same line done before him, that it made everything else superfluous and set the pace for manifold imitation by the successors of Maimonides, small and great. Reading the Bible through Aristotelian spectacles became the fashion of the day after Maimonides. Joseph Ibn Aknin, Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Jacob Anatoli, Joseph Ibn Caspi, Levi Ben Gerson and a host of others tried their hand at Biblical exegesis, and the Maimonidean stamp is upon their work.

We have already spoken of Maimonides's general attitude toward the anthropomorphisms in the Bible and the manner in which he accounts for the style and mode of expression of the Biblical writers. He wrote no special exegetical work, he composed no commentaries on the Bible. But his "Guide of the Perplexed" is full of quotations from the Biblical books, and certain sections in it are devoted to a systematic interpretation of those Biblical chapters and books which lend themselves most easily and, as Maimonides thought, imperatively to metaphysical interpretation. It is impossible here to enter into details, but it is proper briefly to point out his general method of treating the Biblical passages in question, and to state what these passages are.

We have already referred more than once to the Talmudic expressions "Maase Bereshit" (Work of Creation) and "Maase Merkaba" (Work of the Chariot). Maimonides says definitely that the former denotes the science of physics, _i. e._, the fundamental notions of nature as treated in Aristotle's Physics, and the latter signifies metaphysics or theology, as represented in Aristotle's Metaphysics. The creation chapters in Genesis contain beneath their simple exterior of a generally intelligible narrative, appealing to young and old alike, women as well as children, a treatment of philosophical physics. And similarly in the obscure phraseology of the vision of Ezekiel in the first and tenth chapters of that prophet's book, are contained allusions to the most profound ideas of metaphysics and theology, concerning God and the separate Intelligences and the celestial spheres. As the Rabbis forbid teaching these profound doctrines except to one or two worthy persons at a time, and as the authors of those chapters in the Bible clearly intended to conceal the esoteric contents from the gaze of the vulgar, Maimonides with all his eagerness to spread abroad the light of reason and knowledge hesitates to violate the spirit of Bible and Talmud. His interpretations of these mystic passages are therefore expressed in allusions and half-concealed revelations. The diligent student of the "Guide," who is familiar with the philosophy of Aristotle as taught by the Arabs Alfarabi and Avicenna will be able without much difficulty to solve Maimonides's allusions, the casual reader will not. Without going into details it will suffice for our purpose to say that in the creation story Maimonides finds the Aristotelian doctrines of matter and form, of the four elements, of potentiality and actuality, of the different powers of the soul, of logical and ethical distinctions (the true and the false on one hand, the good and the bad on the other), and so on.[300] In the Vision of Ezekiel he sees the Peripatetic ideas of the celestial spheres, of their various motions, of their souls, their intellects and the separate Intelligences, of the Active Intellect, of the influence of the heavenly bodies on the changes in the sublunar world, of the fifth element (the ether) and so on.[301] Don Isaac Abarbanel has already criticized this attempt of Maimonides by justly arguing that if the meaning of the mysterious vision of Ezekiel is what Maimonides thinks it is, there was no occasion to wrap it in such obscurity, since the matter is plainly taught in all schools of philosophy.[302] We might, however, reply that no less a man than Plato expresses himself in the Timæus in similarly obscure terms concerning the origin and formation of the world. Be this as it may, Munk is certainly right when he says that if, as is not improbable, Ezekiel's vision does contain cosmological speculations, they have nothing to do with the Aristotelian cosmology, but must be related to Babylonian theories.[303]

Another favorite book of the Bible for the exegesis of philosophers was the book of Job. In this Maimonides sees reflected the several views concerning Providence, divine knowledge and human freedom, which he enumerates (p. 290 ff.).[304]

The influence of Maimonides upon his contemporaries and immediate successors was indeed very great, and it was not confined to Judaism. Christian Scholastics and Mohammedan theologians studied and used the Guide of the Perplexed. Maimonides himself, it seems, though he wrote his "Guide" in the Arabic language, did not desire to make it accessible to the Mohammedans, fearing possibly that some of his doctrines concerning prophecy might be offensive to them. Hence he is said to have instructed his friends and disciples not to transliterate the Hebrew characters, which he in accordance with general Jewish usage employed in writing Arabic, into Arabic characters. But he was powerless to enforce his desire and there is no doubt that such transcriptions were in use. Samuel Tibbon himself, the Hebrew translator of the "Guide," made use of manuscript copies written in Arabic letters. We are told that in the Mohammedan schools in the city of Fez in Morocco, Jews were appointed to teach Maimonides's philosophy, and there is extant in Hebrew translation a commentary by a Mohammedan theologian on the twenty-five philosophical propositions laid down by Maimonides as the basis of his proof of the existence of God (p. 254).[305]

The influence of Maimonides on Christian scholasticism is still greater. We have already said (p. 199 f.) that the philosophical renaissance in Latin Europe during the thirteenth century was due to the introduction of the complete works of Aristotle in Latin translation. These translations were made partly from the Arabic versions of the Mohammedans, partly from the Greek originals, which became accessible after the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1207.[306] Before this time the scope of philosophical research and investigation in Christian Europe was limited, and its basis was the Platonism of St. Augustine and fragments of Aristotle's logic. In general Platonism was favorable to Christian dogma. Plato according to Augustine came nearest to Christianity of all the ancient Greek philosophers.[307] And the dangers to Church doctrine which lurked in philosophical discussion before the thirteenth century were a tendency to Pantheism on the part of thinkers imbued with the Neo-Platonic mode of thought, and an undue emphasis either on the unity of God as opposed to the Trinity (Abélard), or on the Trinity at the expense of the unity (Roscellinus of Compiègne)--conclusions resulting from the attitudes of the thinkers in question on the nature of universals.

In the early part of the thirteenth century for the first time, the horizon of the Latin schoolmen was suddenly enlarged and brilliantly illumined by the advent of the complete Aristotle in his severe, exacting and rigorous panoply. All science and philosophy opened before the impoverished schoolmen, famished for want of new ideas. And they threw themselves with zeal and enthusiasm into the study of the new philosophy. The Church took alarm because the new Aristotle constituted a danger to accepted dogma. He taught the eternity of the world, the uniformity of natural law, the unity of the human intellect, denying by implication Providence and freedom and individual immortality. Some of these doctrines were not precisely those of Aristotle but they could be derived from Aristotelian principles if interpreted in a certain way; and the Arab intermediators between Aristotle and his Christian students had so interpreted him. Averroes in particular, who gained the distinction of being the commentator _par excellence_ of Aristotle, was responsible for this mode of interpretation; and he had his followers among the Masters of Arts in the University of Paris. These and similar tendencies the Church was striving to prevent, and it attempted to do this at first crudely by prohibiting the study and teaching of the Physical and Metaphysical works of Aristotle. Failing in this the Papacy commissioned three representatives of the Dominican order to expurgate Aristotle in order to render him harmless. You might as well think of expurgating a book on geometry! The task was never carried out. But instead something more valuable for the welfare of the Church was accomplished in a different way. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas undertook the study of Aristotle and the interpretation of his works with a view to harmonizing his teachings with the dogmas of Christianity. Albertus Magnus began the task, Thomas Aquinas, his greater disciple, the Maimonides of Christian philosophy, completed it. And in this undertaking Maimonides was Thomas Aquinas's model.[308]

The Guide of the Perplexed was translated into Latin not long after its composition.[309] Before Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, the Franciscan leader, and William of Auvergne, the Bishop of Paris, had read and made use of Maimonides's philosophical masterpiece. Albertus Magnus was still more diligent in his adoption of Maimonidean views, or in taking account of them, where he is opposed to their adoption. But it remained for Thomas Aquinas, who made the most systematic attempt in the mediæval schools to harmonize the philosophy of Aristotle with the doctrine of the Church, to use Maimonides as his guide and model. Like Maimonides he employs Aristotelian proofs for the existence of God, proofs based on the eternity of motion; and like him Aquinas argues that if motion is not eternal and the world was made in time, the existence of God is still more readily evident. In his discussion of the divine attributes, of angels, of Providence, of Prophecy, of free will, of the ceremonial laws in the Pentateuch, Thomas Aquinas constantly takes account of Maimonides's views, whether he agrees with them or not. It is no doubt an exaggeration to say that there would have been no Aquinas if Maimonides had not preceded him. For Aquinas had access to the works of Aristotle and his Arabian commentators, the former of whom he studied more diligently than Maimonides himself. But there is no doubt that the method of harmonizing Aristotelian doctrine with traditional teaching so far as the common elements of Judaism and Christianity were concerned was suggested to Aquinas by his Jewish predecessor. It is not our province here to go into details of the system of Aquinas to show wherein he agrees or disagrees with Maimonides, nor is it possible to do more than mention the fact that after Aquinas also, Duns Scotus, the head of the Franciscan school, had the "Guide" before him, and in comparatively modern times, such celebrities as Scaliger and Leibnitz speak of the Jewish philosopher with admiration and respect.[310]

That Maimonides's influence upon Jewish theology and thought was deep and lasting is a truism. The attitude of the prominent theologians and philosophers who succeeded him will appear in the sequel in connection with our treatment of the post-Maimonidean writers. Here a word must be said of the general effect of Maimonides's teaching upon Jews and Judaism throughout the dispersion. His fame as the greatest Jew of his time--great as a Talmudical authority, which appealed to all classes of Jewish students, great as a physician with the added glory of being a favorite at court, great as the head of the Jewish community in the East, and finally great as a philosopher and scientist--all these qualifications, never before or after united in the same way in any other man, served to make him the cynosure of all eyes and to make his word an object of notice and attention throughout the Jewish diaspora. What he said or wrote could not be ignored whether people liked it or not. They could afford to ignore a Gabirol even, or an Ibn Daud. But Maimonides must be reckoned with. The greater the man, the greater the alertness of lesser, though not less independent, spirits, to guard against the enslavement of all Judaism to one authority, no matter how great. And in particular where this authority erred in boldly adopting views in disagreement with Jewish tradition, as it seemed to many, and in setting up a new source of truth alongside of, or even above, the revelation of the Torah and the authority of tradition, to which these latter must be bent whether they will or no--his errors must be strenuously opposed and condemned without fear or favor. This was the view of the traditionalists, whose sole authorities in all matters of theology and related topics were the words of Scripture and Rabbinic literature as tradition had interpreted them. On the other hand, the rationalistic development during the past three centuries, which we have traced thus far, and the climax of that progress as capped by Maimonides was not without its influence on another class of the Jewish community, particularly in Spain and southern France; and these regarded Maimonides as the greatest teacher that ever lived. Their admiration was unbounded for his personality as well as his method and his conclusions. His opponents were regarded as obscurantists, who, rather than the object of their attack, were endangering Judaism. All Jewry was divided into two camps, the Maimunists and the anti-Maimunists; and the polemic and the struggle between them was long and bitter. Anathema and counter anathema, excommunication and counter excommunication was the least of the matter. The arm of the Church Inquisition was invoked, and the altar of a Parisian Church furnished the torch which set on flame the pages of Maimonides's "Guide" in the French capital. More tragic even was the punishment meted out to the Jewish informers who betrayed their people to the enemy. The men responsible had their tongues cut out.

The details of the Maimunist controversy belong to the general historian.[311] Our purpose here is to indicate in brief outline the general effect which the teaching of Maimonides had upon his and subsequent ages. The thirteenth century produced no great men in philosophy at all comparable to Moses Ben Maimon or his famous predecessors. The persecutions of the Jews in Spain led many of them to emigrate to neighboring countries, which put an end to the glorious era inaugurated three centuries before by Hasdai Ibn Shaprut. The centre of Jewish liberal studies was transferred to south France, but the literary activities there were a pale shadow compared with those which made Jewish Spain famous. Philosophical thought had reached its perigee in Maimonides, and what followed after was an attempt on the part of his lesser disciples and successors to follow in the steps of their master, to extend his teachings, to make them more widespread and more popular. With the transference of the literary centre from Spain to Provence went the gradual disuse of Arabic as the medium of philosophic and scientific culture, and the age of translation made its appearance. Prior to, and including, Maimonides all the Jewish thinkers whom we have considered, with the exception of Abraham Bar Hiyya and Abraham Ibn Ezra, wrote their works in Arabic. After Maimonides Hebrew takes the place of Arabic, and in addition to the new works composed, the commentaries on the "Guide" which were now written in plenty and the philosophico-exegetical works on the Bible in the Maimonidean spirit, the ancient classics of Saadia, Bahya, Gabirol, Halevi, Ibn Zaddik, Ibn Daud and Maimonides himself had to be translated from Arabic into Hebrew. In addition to these religio-philosophical works, it was necessary to translate those writings which contained the purely scientific and philosophical branches that were preliminary to the study of religious philosophy. This included logic, the various branches of mathematics and astronomy, medical treatises and some of the books of the Aristotelian corpus with the Arabic compendia and commentaries thereon. The grammatical and lexical treatises of Hayyuj and Ibn Janah were also translated. The most famous of the host of translators, which the need of the times brought forth, were the three Tibbonides, Judah (1120-1190), Samuel (1150-1230) and Moses (fl. 1240-1283), Jacob Anatoli (fl. 1194-1256), Shemtob Falaquera (1225-1290), Jacob Ben Machir (1236-1304), Moses of Narbonne (d. after 1362), and others. Some of these wrote original works besides. Samuel Ibn Tibbon wrote a philosophical treatise, "Ma`amar Yikkawu ha-Mayim,"[312] and commentaries in the Maimonidean vein on Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. His greater fame rests on his translation of the "Guide of the Perplexed." He translated besides Maimonides's "Letter on Resurrection," the "Eight Chapters," and other Arabic writings on science and philosophy. Moses Ibn Tibbon was prolific as an original writer as well as a translator. Joseph Ibn Aknin (1160-1226), the favorite pupil of Maimonides, for whom the latter wrote his "Guide," is the author of treatises on philosophical topics, and of exegetical works on certain books of the Bible and on the Mishnic treatise, the "Ethics of the Fathers."[312a] Jacob Anatoli, in addition to translating Ptolemy's Almagest and Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle's logic, wrote a work, "Malmad ha-Talmidim," on philosophical homiletics in the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch.[313] Shemtob Falaquera, the translator of portions of Gabirol's "Fons Vitæ,"[314] is the author of a commentary on the "Guide," entitled "Moreh ha-Moreh,"[315] and of a number of ethical and psychological works.[316] Jacob Ben Machir translated a number of scientific and philosophical works, particularly on astronomy, and is likewise the author of two original works on astronomy. Joseph Ibn Caspi (1297-1340) was a very prolific writer, having twenty-nine works to his credit, most of them exegetical, and among them a commentary on the "Guide."[317] Moses of Narbonne wrote an important commentary on the "Guide,"[318] and is likewise the author of a number of works on the philosophy of Averroes, of whom he was a great admirer. The translations of Judah Ibn Tibbon, the father of translators as he has been called, go back indeed to the latter half of the twelfth century, and Abraham Ibn Ezra translated an astronomical work as early as 1160. But the bulk of the work of translation is the product of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The result of these translations was that scientific and philosophical works became accessible to all those who knew Hebrew instead of being confined to the lands of Arabian culture. Another effect was the enlargement of the Hebrew language and the development of a new Hebrew dialect with a philosophical and scientific terminology. These translations so far as they relate to pure science and philosophy were neglected in the closing centuries of the middle ages, when conditions among the Jews were such as precluded them from taking an interest in any but purely religious studies. Continuous persecutions, the establishment of the Ghettoes, the rise of the Kabbala and the opposition of the pietists and mystics to the rationalism of the philosophers all tended to the neglect of scientific study and to the concentration of all attention upon the Biblical, Rabbinic and mystical literature. The Jews at the close of the middle ages and the beginning of modern times withdrew into their shell, and the science and learning of the outside had little effect on them. Hence, and also for the reason that with the beginning of modern times all that was mediæval was, in the secular world, relegated, figuratively speaking, to the ash-heap, or literally speaking to the mouldering dust of the library shelves--for both of these reasons the very large number of the translations above mentioned were never printed, and they are still buried on the shelves of the great European libraries, notably of the British Museum, the national library of Paris, the Bodleian of Oxford, the royal library of Munich, and others. The reader who wishes to have an idea of the translating and commenting activity of the Jews in the thirteenth and following centuries in the domains of logic, philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, medicine and folklore is referred to the monumental work of the late Moritz Steinschneider, the prince of Hebrew Bibliographers, "Die Hebräischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher," (The Hebrew translations of the middle ages, and the Jews as dragomen) Berlin, 1893, containing 1077 pages of lexicon octavo size devoted to brief enumerations and descriptions of extant editions and manuscripts of the translations referred to.[319]