Introduction
Moses Mendelssohn, arguably the founding figure of modern Jewish philosophy, famously quipped that it was the hours of his youth spent studying the philosophical work of another Moses—Moses Maimonides—that left him with his famously crooked posture.Footnote 1 True or not, it is well known that Mendelssohn’s earliest exposure to philosophy involved rigorous study of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. And, once Mendelssohn himself attained the stature of an important Jewish thinker, there were those who applied to him the famous phrase once used to praise Maimonides: From Moses to Moses, none arose like Moses.
There is no questioning the fact of Maimonides’s importance in the life and thought of Moses Mendelssohn. What must be investigated, however, is the nature of the relationship between the early-modern Moses and his medieval forebear. How deep was Maimonides’s philosophical influence upon Mendelssohn? Where do the ideas of the two thinkers converge, and where do they diverge? As Lawrence Kaplan has noted, a full-scale study of Mendelssohn’s “attitude toward, use of, resemblance to, and divergence from Maimonides” would be a “complex and daunting” task.Footnote 2 Nevertheless, it is possible to work toward a wider understanding of this dynamic by examining individual components of the relationship between the two thinkers. In the present study, I will do just that: I will investigate the relationship between Mendelssohn and Maimonides as it emerges from their respective attitudes toward anthropomorphic language in the Bible.
This paper will focus on a particular subsection of each thinker’s writings. In Maimonides’s case, our concern will be with the several dozen chapters in the first part of the Guide that are devoted to reinterpretation of scriptural language in light of Maimonides’s de-anthropomorphised, incorporeal conception of God. These chapters constitute a central plank of Maimonides’s religious agenda, and, importantly, an element of his philosophical outlook that is not intended only for the intellectual elite.Footnote 3
Like Maimonides, Mendelssohn was both a philosopher and a religious Jew loyal to the Bible. His most extensive project intended for a Jewish audience was his German translation of the Pentateuch, accompanied by a Hebrew commentary, officially entitled Sefer Netivot ha-Shalom, but also known as the Bi’ur.Footnote 4 While Mendelssohn himself produced the entire translation, the commentary was written as a collaboration with several other scholars.Footnote 5 Published between 1780 and 1783, Mendelssohn was the editor of the entire work.Footnote 6
In this paper, I will investigate the manner in which Mendelssohn (and his collaborators) saw fit to interpret precisely the same set of biblical terms selected by Maimonides for philosophical reinterpretation. Through an investigation of Mendelssohn’s approach to anthropomorphism, divine incorporeality, and philosophical reinterpretation in the biblical commentary, I hope to shed light on an important dimension of the nature of his engagement with Maimonides.
I have chosen these two works because despite the historical, geographical, and cultural distance between them, they operate in a shared tradition—namely, that of Jewish philosophical biblical interpretation. Furthermore, the Guide is known to have played a pivotal role in Mendelssohn’s intellectual development. Indeed, Shmuel Feiner has gone so far as to claim that “if the reprinted Guide for the Perplexed had not come into Mendelssohn’s hands, he would have had a hard time becoming a philosopher of the German Enlightenment.”Footnote 7 Of course, the biographical and educational centrality of the Guide for Mendelssohn does not automatically imply its philosophical importance in his mature writings. Some scholars have suggested that Maimonides’s importance for Mendelssohn was primarily as a cultural hero and role model, rather than as a substantive source of philosophical inspiration.Footnote 8 It is precisely the question of Mendelssohn’s philosophical engagement with Maimonides’s ideas that will be examined in this study.
The central questions guiding our study are: What are the key features of Maimonides’s and Mendelssohn’s respective approaches to anthropomorphism in the biblical text? To what extent—and where, and how—does Mendelssohn engage directly with Maimonides in his interpretation of these terms? Does Mendelssohn’s interpretation follow a similar interpretative path to that of Maimonides? When and how do the two thinkers diverge?
The study is divided into several parts. In the first section, I will examine key features of the relevant chapters of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed devoted to the reinterpretation of anthropomorphic terms applied to God in the Bible.
My study of Mendelssohn is based on a close examination of his commentary on all of the anthropomorphic and anthropopathic terms attended to by Maimonides— including instances of those terms not cited in the Guide itself. Mendelssohn cites Maimonides directly in the Bi’ur, but this occurs in a relatively small number of cases. In the second part, I will discuss these cases, in which Mendelssohn engages directly and explicitly with Maimonides.
As is common in traditional Jewish biblical exegesis, Mendelssohn occasionally offers an extended discussion of a more general issue while commenting on a particular verse. In the third section, I will present a summary of discussions of this kind that relate to the issues of anthropomorphism and divine attributes. Here we will see the contours of Mendelssohn’s approach to this issue, as well as some similarities and differences between him and Maimonides. Finally, in the fourth section, I will examine specific sections in which Mendelssohn’s commentary reflects, or departs from, Maimonides’s approach.
Anthropomorphism and Reinterpretation in the Guide of the Perplexed
Maimonides’s commitment to an unknowable, incorporeal God with neither accidental nor essential attributes demands that, if he is to remain loyal to the truth of Scripture, he must reinterpret much of the language employed therein. The Bible often attributes actions, attributes, or even physical features to God. Taken literally, any of these contradict Maimonides’s conception of the deity: the God of the Bible looks and listens, speaks and rests, ascends and descends, dwells and consumes. The God of Maimonides, on the other hand, cannot properly be described in any of these ways—or at all. One major component of the Guide of the Perplexed is an attempt to offer figurative interpretations of language in the Bible that ascribes corporeal, anthropomorphic, or anthropopathic features to God, in a manner consistent with Maimonides’s philosophical conception of God. Indeed, more than forty chapters in the first book of the Guide are devoted to this enterprise. In what follows, I present a sketch of this component of Maimonides’s interpretive project. My focus will be on passages relevant for an investigation of Mendelssohn’s engagement with Maimonides.
The first chapter of the Guide is concerned with the predication to God of an “image” or “likeness” implied in verses such as Gen 1:26: “And God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”Footnote 9 Some people, Maimonides claims, erroneously believe that these terms indicate God has the physical shape and form of a human being.Footnote 10 The truth, however, is that the terms refer to “the natural form, I mean to the notion in virtue of which a thing is constituted as a substance and becomes what it is. It is the true reality of the thing in so far as the latter is that particular being.”Footnote 11 For man, Maimonides says, “that notion is that from which human apprehension derives.” It is, therefore, “on account of this intellectual apprehension that it is said of man: In the image of God created He him.”Footnote 12 Thus, for Maimonides, the notion that man is created in the “image” or “likeness” of God does not describe the physical features of either man or God. Rather, it indicates the similarity of human intellectual apprehension, in its non-physicality, with God’s non-physicality:
Now man possesses as his proprium something in him that is very strange as it is not found in anything else that exists under the sphere of the moon, namely, intellectual apprehension. In the exercise of this, no sense, no part of the body, none of the extremities are used; and therefore this apprehension was likened unto the apprehension of the deity, which does not require an instrument, although in reality it is not like the latter apprehension, but only appears so to the first stirrings of opinion. It was because of this something, I mean because of the divine intellect conjoined with man, that it is said of the latter that he is in the image of God and in His likeness, not that God, may He be exalted, is a body and possesses a shape.Footnote 13
Importantly, Maimonides specifies here that, “in reality it is not like the latter apprehension, but only appears so to the first stirrings of opinion.” We shall return to this double-layering of Maimonides’s reinterpretation shortly.
Our second example is of particular importance, since Mendelssohn cites this element of Maimonides’s thinking directly. In Guide I:10, Maimonides discusses the verbs ‘alah (ascend) and yarad (descend). These terms, Maimonides writes, do possess literal, physical meanings—namely, ascent and descent—but these meanings are only intended when the words are applied to physical bodies.Footnote 14 Both terms also carry figurative meanings:
Subsequently these two terms were used figuratively to denote sublimity and greatness; so that when an individual’s rank was lowered, he was said to have descended; when, on the other hand, his rank became higher in respect of sublimity, he was said to have ascended… Similarly the term [to descend] is also used to denote a lower state of speculation; when a man directs his thought toward a very mean object, he is said to have descended; and similarly when he directs his thought toward an exalted and sublime object, he is said to have ascended.Footnote 15
This figurative meaning is used in three distinct ways in the Bible with respect to the relationship between humans and God, according to Maimonides. He describes the first as follows:
Now we, the community of men, are, in regard to place as well as degree of existence, in a most lowly position if we are compared to the all-encompassing heavenly sphere; whereas He, may He be exalted, is in respect of true existence, sublimity, and greatness in the very highest position—an elevation that is not a spatial one. And as He, may He be exalted, wished—as He did—to let some of us have knowledge deriving from Him and an overflow of prophetic inspiration, the alighting of the prophetic inspiration upon the prophet or the coming-down of the Indwelling to a certain place was termed descent; whereas the removal of this prophetic state from a particular individual or the cessation of the Indwelling in a place was termed ascent. In every case in which you find the terms descent and ascent applied to the Creator, may He be exalted, this last meaning is intended.Footnote 16
Divine “ascent” and “descent” are, then, not to be understood literally as ascent and descent, but rather as a description of human beings entering a prophetic state, or leaving such as state. Alternatively, the terms may describe the appearance or departure of the divine “Indwelling” (šeḵinah), a concept to which we will return. This interpretation of the terms, according to Maimonides, can be used to properly understand verses such as Exod 19:20: “The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain.”Footnote 17
Maimonides’s second figurative interpretation picks up on the fact that the Bible describes God as “descending” in both the narrative of the tower of Babel and that of Sodom. The act of “descending,” Maimonides claims, is ascribed to God in cases of “a calamity befalling a people or a terrestrial zone in accordance with His pre-eternal will.”Footnote 18 Maimonides explains:
With regard to this the prophetic books begin by stating, before describing the affliction, that He visited the action of these people and after that made their punishment come down upon them. This notion too is expressed by means of the term descent; the reason being that man is too insignificant to have his actions visited and to be punished for them, were it not for the pre-eternal will.Footnote 19
Finally, Maimonides offers a third figurative meaning of “ascending,” parallel in meaning with the first, except that its subject is a human individual, rather than God. Maimonides applies this interpretation to Exod 19:3: “And Moses went up to God.” For Maimonides, the meaning of this verse is that Moses’s thought was directed to an exalted object. It does not mean “that God, may He be exalted, has a place up to which one may ascend or from which one may descend; He is exalted very high above the imaginings of the ignorant.”Footnote 20
A third example appears in Guide I:19, a short chapter which discusses the word male’(filled). Maimonides’s concern here is with biblical verses such as Exod 40:34: “The presence [/glory] of the Lord filled the Tabernacle.”Footnote 21 For Maimonides, of course, God cannot “fill” anything, since God is incorporeal. Thus, the term must have another meaning. Here, importantly, he offers two possible interpretations of the word when it is predicated of God. First, he says, the term is “employed to signify the achievement of perfection in virtue and of the latter’s ultimate end.”Footnote 22 Thus, he says, Isa 6:3 (“His presence [/glory] fills all the earth!”) refers to the fact that “the whole earth bears witness to His perfection, that is, indicates it.”Footnote 23 Having offered this resolution, Maimonides goes on to offer an alternative: “However, if you wish to consider that the glory of the Lord is the created light that is designated as glory in every passage and that filled the tabernacle, there is no harm in it.”Footnote 24 This “created light” (an-nūr al-makhlūq in Arabic; ha’or hanniḇra’ in Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew) solves Maimonides’s problem without need for a figurative interpretation of the term male’: Instead of applying the word literally to God, one can apply it to a created thing that is not God. Maimonides’s wording here (“there is no harm in it”) implies that this is not his preferred option, though he views it as acceptable.Footnote 25
It should be noted that Maimonides does not claim to offer a figurative interpretation for every instance in which anthropomorphic terms are predicated of God in the Bible. Rather, as he states in Guide I:10, his aim in offering an explanation of any given term is “not only to draw your attention to what we mention in that particular chapter,” but also to “open a gate” enabling the reader to apply the same strategy to additional instances of equivocal terms.Footnote 26 He is, in other words, offering an independently applicable interpretive strategy through a comprehensive—but not exhaustive—series of example cases.
The above examples offer a representative sample of the chapters devoted to reinterpreting biblical anthropomorphic language. But Maimonides’s de-anthropomorphising efforts do not end there. As has already been noted, even the figurative interpretations offered by Maimonides, at least in some cases, still entail the ascription of characteristics to God, even if they are not physical attributes. Thus, for example, to say that man’s being created in God’s image describes the similarity of man’s incorporeal apprehension to God’s analogous capability, implies a certain kind of divine psychology which Maimonides, given his total opposition to the attribution of any characteristics to God, ought to reject. In Guide I:20, which discusses the Hebrew word ram (high), Maimonides addresses this issue. After re-interpreting the term to mean “exalted station, nobility, and great worth,” rather than spatial height (when applied to God), Maimonides acknowledges that his reinterpretation remains problematic:
Perhaps my saying elevation in degree, exalted station, and great worth, creates a difficulty for you. For you may ask: how can you consider that many notions are included in one meaning? However, it shall be made clear to you that in the opinion of those who have perfect apprehension, there should not be many attributive qualifications predicated of God; and that all the numerous attributive qualifications indicating any exaltation of Him and of His great worth, power, perfection, bounty, and various other things, refer to one and the same notion. That notion is His essence and nothing outside this essence. Chapters on the names and attributes will reach you later. In this chapter my purpose is to show that the words: The High, [He that is] borne on high, do not have the meaning and signification of height in space, but of elevation in degree.Footnote 27
We see, then, that Maimonides’s project of reinterpreting anthropomorphic terms actually has two parts. The first, and more rudimentary, simply involves replacing an obviously physical activity or description predicated of God with a non-physical one. This, however, is still problematic, since God, according to Maimonides, is absolutely singular in a manner that prevents the ascription to God of any attributes at all. Several chapters later, Maimonides goes on to explain in more detail how attributes predicated of God are to be understood: When attributes such as “power,” “knowledge,” and even “existence” and “will” are used regarding God, Maimonides explains, they are meant in a singular fashion that bears no relation to the way those words are usually used, except for the word itself. They are, in other words, homonyms which carry one meaning when applied to anything other than God, and another meaning when predicated of God. The first meaning (“will,” “existence,” “power,” “knowledge” in their normal sense) cannot be attributed to God at all, according to Maimonides. The second meaning, which is ascribed to God, provides no information about God and entails neither an accidental nor an essential attribute—it simply points to God’s essence.Footnote 28
Additionally, Maimonides offers another use for descriptions of God. Instead of saying something (or nothing) about the deity, they might reflect human responses to features of the created world. Maimonides describes this as follows:
The meaning here is not that He possesses moral qualities, but that He performs actions resembling the actions that in us proceed from moral qualities—I mean from aptitudes of the soul; the meaning is not that He, may He be exalted, possesses aptitudes of the soul It has thus become clear to you that the ways and the characteristics are identical. They are the actions proceeding from God, may He be exalted, in reference to the world. Accordingly, whenever one of His actions is apprehended, the attribute from which this action proceeds is predicated of Him, may He be exalted, and the name deriving from that action is applied to Him.Footnote 29
By way of illustration, Maimonides offers the example of God’s “governance in the production of the embryos of living beings, the bringing of various faculties into existence in them and in those who rear them after birth—faculties that preserve them from destruction and annihilation and protect them against harm and are useful to them in all the doings that are necessary to them.”Footnote 30 These faculties offer a living being the chance to survive and thrive, and, like everything in the world, their ultimate cause is God. Thus, Maimonides says, they are, in a sense, an “action” or “way” of God. Furthermore, if an action with similar results was performed by a human being, that person would likely have the attribute of “mercy.” When predicating this adjective of God, Maimonides says, one is not claiming that God has mercy but, rather, that a feature of the world, caused by God, is of a kind that, if it had been initiated by a human, would lead us to describe that human as “merciful.” With these two steps, then, Maimonides takes his philosophical interpretation of corporeal and anthropomorphic language a stage further than the simple figurative interpretations offered in the terminological chapters of the first book of the Guide.
In light of Maimonides’s acknowledgement that all attributes and actions, even if taken figuratively, cannot be applied to God in the normal sense, why is it that some are considered acceptable, while others are not? Why, for example, can “drinking,” or “dying,” or “body” not be predicated of God, if all terms can be radically reinterpreted? Maimonides offers an answer to this question by employing the rabbinic dictum, “the Torah speaks the language of human beings.”Footnote 31 There is, he acknowledges, “no difference between, on the one hand, predicating eating and drinking of God, may He be exalted, and, on the other, predicating movement of Him.”Footnote 32 But, given the conventions and beliefs of the multitudes, certain predications, such as movement, are not popularly considered to be deficiencies, while others, such as eating and drinking, are. Therefore, only the former are employed in the Torah—even figuratively—in speaking about God, while the latter are avoided.
Finally, we return to the notion of the “created light.” As already noted, Maimonides offers this device as an alternative solution to the problem of anthropomorphic or corporeal language predicated of God. Instead of reinterpreting the attribute or action, one can simply substitute the “created light” for God as the subject (or object) of the sentence. However, Maimonides makes clear that he views this solution as an inferior approach, not becoming of a philosophically sophisticated reader. In Guide I:5, he states, regarding his reinterpretation of the verbs ḥazah (visioned), ra’ah (saw), and hibbiṭ (looked) in the previous chapter:
Our whole purpose was to show that whenever the words seeing, vision, and looking occur in this sense, intellectual apprehension is meant and not the eye’s sight, as God, may He be exalted, is not an existent that can be apprehended with the eyes. If, however, an individual of insufficient capacity should not wish to reach the rank to which we desire him to ascend and should he consider that all the words [figuring in the Bible] concerning this subject are indicative of sensual perception of created lights—be they angels or something else—why, there is no harm in his thinking this.Footnote 33
Divine corporeality is, for Maimonides, to be avoided even by the philosophically unsophisticated. While he does not consider the solution of the created lights (or “glory,” or “angel”) to be the most desirable solution to the problem of anthropomorphic descriptions of God, he is willing to accept this strategy as an approach that can enable those who are not of the intellectual elite to avoid the most egregious forms of anthropomorphism.Footnote 34
From Moses to Moses: Maimonides in the Bi’ur
There are five places in the Bi’ur in which Mendelssohn (and his team) cites Maimonides directly in reference to one of the anthropomorphic terms addressed in the relevant chapters of the first book of the Guide of the Perplexed. Of these, one addresses the root hlk (walk) as it appears in Gen 3:8. The other four cases are all instances of the same verb–yrd (descend)–with God as subject.Footnote 35 Direct mention of Maimonides on this topic is thus not extensive. In addition, Mendelssohn cites Maimonides in the context of his discussion of the status of the first commandment,Footnote 36 and quotes the Mishneh Torah on several halakhic matters.Footnote 37
The first mention of Maimonides, in the commentary to Gen 3:8, tells us little about Mendelssohn’s engagement with his ideas. Commenting upon the fact that the verse describes God’s voice “going about,”Footnote 38 Mendelssohn gives an extensive quotation of the commentary of the thirteenth-century exegete Naḥmanides, who, in turn, briefly refers to Maimonides’s opinion on the matter, as well as citing Genesis Rabbah, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Jonah ibn Janaḥ.Footnote 39 Noting that the verb for “going about” (mithalleḵ) might have as its subject either the šeḵinah (Naḥmanides), the divine voice (Ibn Ezra, Maimonides), or Adam and Eve (Ibn Janaḥ), Mendelssohn simply notes that he has translated the term into German in a manner that does not decide between the positions. For our purposes, what is relevant here is that for Mendelssohn, no divine corporeality is to be understood from the verse.
Mendelssohn’s serious and direct engagement with Maimonides on our topic occurs with respect to divine “descent.” Two of the four mentions of Maimonides’s opinion on this topic occur in the commentary to Genesis, which was primarily authored by Dubno. In the commentary to Gen 11:5, we find an extensive discussion of Maimonides’s reinterpretation of the terms ‘alah and yarad. In the three other cases, Mendelssohn (or Dubno) refers the reader to this first instance. Therefore, it seems fair to posit that, at least in this case, the four instances can be taken as reflecting a singular perspective.
In the opening verse of the narrative of the tower of Babel, the Bi’ur cites Maimonides’s reinterpretation of the words “ascent” and “descent” at length. Mendelssohn and Dubno begin as follows:
“The Lord descended [to look at the city and tower that man had built]”… I will copy for you the words of Maimonides, with minor linguistic changes and some additional clarification in order to go easy on the reader: The matter of these terms is known—when a body moves from a high place to a low place, it is said that it descended [yarad], and when it moves from a low place to a high place, it is said that it ascended [‘alah]. Subsequently, these two terms were used figuratively to denote greatness of rank and significant virtue, so that when an individual’s station or rank changes to a worse, lower level, it is said of him that he descended; while if it changes from a lower level of virtue to a greater one, he is said to have ascended. Thus God, may He be exalted, said: “The stranger in your midst shall ascend above you higher and higher, while you descend lower and lower… “ (Deut 28:43), and said: “The Lord your God will set you in ascendancy above all the nations of the earth” (Deut 28:1), and said: “The Lord magnified Solomon in ascendancy” (I Chron 29:25). In the words of our Sages, may their memories be for a blessing: With regard to what is holy, one ascends but does not descend. And this figurative meaning also denotes a lower state of speculation, and the directing of the thoughts of an intelligent individual toward a matter lower than him in rank— it is said of him that he descended. Similarly, when he directs his thoughts to view a matter more sublime and exalted than him, it is said that he ascended. Now we, humankind, are of a lowly rank and degree of existence in comparison to the eminent intellects, and certainly in comparison to God, may He be exalted, to whom there is no equivalent in greatness or sublimity. He is more exalted and loftier than all of us—not in a spatial sense, but rather in respect of true existence and sublimity. And He, may He be exalted, willed to emanate from His wisdom and impart the spirit of prophecy upon those among humankind held by him in high esteem. The occurrence of prophecy to a prophet, or the dwelling of the Indwelling (šeḵinah) in a chosen place is called descent; while the departure of that prophecy from that person, or the withdrawal of the Indwelling from that place is called ascent. In every case in which you find the terms descent and ascent applied to the Creator, may He be exalted, the meaning is that which we just mentioned, and not that God, may He be blessed, is located in a particular place from which he could ascend or descend. God is exalted very far beyond such things.Footnote 40
Maimonides (in Ibn Tibbon’s translation) is quoted here at length—with some small changes that make Ibn Tibbon’s language easier to comprehend. As can be seen, the meaning of Maimonides’s first set of figurative interpretations of the verbs yarad and ‘alah—namely, that involving the direction of thought to a more (or less) exalted object, or the appearance or departure of the šeḵinah—is presented here in its entirety.
Mendelssohn and Dubno continue their citation of the Guide, presenting the second figurative interpretation, which refers to the onset of a calamity. In this part, the Bi’ur’s adjustments to Ibn Tibbon’s wording do have bearing on the meaning of the passage. Therefore, I indicate Mendelssohn’s additions in bold:
A similar case is that of a calamity befalling a nation in accordance with His pre-eternal will, in which the prophetic books precede mention of this affliction with a statement that God visited the actions of the people of this nation and decreed this punishment upon them. This notion is also called descent, because man is too lowly of rank to have his actions visited and to be punished for them, were it not for the will of the Beneficent to survey the actions of naught and nothingness—for the good of the one being punished. As the text said: “What is man that You have been mindful of him, mortal man that You have taken note of him.” (Ps 8:5) It is for this reason that this is called descent. Thus [Scripture] said: “Let us, then, descend and confound their speech there” (Gen 11:7); “The Lord descended to look” (Gen 11:5); “I will descend and see” (Gen 18:21). And the notion is the direction of thought to consider the actions of the sinner and their appropriate punishment.Footnote 41
Once again, Dubno and Mendelssohn are mostly faithful to Maimonides’s interpretation, but here they deviate in one important respect. In offering the reasons for divine “punishment,” Maimonides simply refers to the fact that “man is too insignificant to have his actions visited and to be punished for them, were it not for the pre-eternal will.”Footnote 42 The nature of this divine “will” is not elaborated upon by Maimonides here, in accordance with his approach to the nature of anthropomorphic language. God’s will, for Maimonides, is not an “attribute” in the regular sense, and discussing it tells us nothing about God or God’s intended purpose: As we saw above, Maimonides believes that “will” is attributed to God in a “purely equivocal” sense, so that the meaning of this term when predicated of God “is in no way like… [its] meaning in other applications.”Footnote 43 Indeed, with respect to even the most foundational of divine “attributes” (will, knowledge, power, and even existence), Maimonides thinks that “the meaning of the qualificative attributions ascribed to Him and the meaning of the attributions known to us have nothing in common in any respect or in any mode; these attributions have in common only the name and nothing else.”Footnote 44 Mendelssohn and Dubno, however, add a positive explanation of the divine will that seems to deviate from this aspect of Maimonides’s approach. Where Maimonides refers simply to “the will,”Footnote 45 the Bi’ur explains that the content of God’s will is to “survey the deeds of naught and nothingness—for the good of the one being punished.” This positive description of divine will—of purpose and intentionality—constitutes a departure from Maimonides’s explanation of the meanings of these terms, and indeed, from Maimonides’s philosophical approach to this subject. Yet the authors of the Bi’ur appear to be ascribing their gloss, too, to Maimonides.
Mendelssohn’s citation of Maimonides at length on this issue may be sufficient evidence to indicate his agreement with the position that he ascribes to him, especially considering that Maimonides is not quoted extensively in the Bi’ur. In any case, Mendelssohn affirms his acceptance of Maimonides’s interpretation both here and elsewhere. Here, he indicates his agreement through his choice of words in the German translation, as is noted in the continuation of the commentary.Footnote 46 As noted, in the other places where the root yrd is predicated of God, Mendelssohn and Dubno cite Maimonides’s opinion in short, and refer the reader back to the full quotation in the commentary to Gen 11:5. Mendelssohn writes as follows in his commentary to Exod 19:20:
“[The Lord descended upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mountain]”… We have already mentioned the notion of descent and ascent and their figurative meaning with respect to rank in the parashah (portion) of Noah (Gen 11:5), in the name of Maimonides, may his memory be for a blessing: When the thoughts of an intelligent individual are directed toward a matter lower than him, it is said of him that he descended; and upon his abandonment of it, it is said of him that he ascended.Footnote 47
In this case, Mendelssohn is applying Maimonides’s first figurative interpretation, whereas in the previous example, which refers to punishment, he applied the second.
The two other places in which Maimonides is cited in relation to these terms both add an additional factor into the equation—namely, an intermediary in the form of the “created glory” (kaḇod niḇra’), the šeḵinah, or an “angel” (mal’aḵ). In the commentary to Exod 3:8, Mendelssohn writes as follows:
“I have descended to rescue them [from the Egyptians]… “ The glory of God fills everything. The language of descent [here] is taken from its [regular] meaning of spatial movement toward a lower place, and used in a figurative sense: the direction of thought and consideration to a matter inferior and lowlier of rank than the individual considering it and directing his thought toward it. Indeed, the term descent is used figuratively in this way with respect to God, may He be blessed, in many places in Scripture, as the Guide [i.e. Maimonides] mentioned in his book, and as we have written in his name in the parashah (portion) of Noah (Gen 11:5). However, if these words were those of an angel speaking the language of its sender, then there may be no need for this [figurative interpretation]. The meaning would be its simple sense: I have descended to speak with you—in order to rescue them from the Egyptians (and this is how the Rashbam interpreted it).Footnote 48
Several important points emerge in this piece of commentary. First, we see that Mendelssohn is consistent in referring to Maimonides’s interpretation whenever the root yrd predicated anthropomorphically of God. Second, Mendelssohn follows Maimonides in a second respect: He offers the interpretative device of ascription to an angel (an instance of what Maimonides calls a “created light”Footnote 49) as an alternative strategy for dealing with the problem of anthropomorphism. Instead of reinterpreting what is meant by “descent,” one can interpret the subject of the verse to be an angel, regarding which anthropomorphism is less problematic. In the commentary to Gen 18:21, too, Mendelssohn and Dubno cite Maimonides in offering a similar resolution—namely, that the subject of the verse is an angel.Footnote 50 Maimonides, as we saw above, regards this interpretive option as an inferior, though acceptable one. Mendelssohn, however, expresses no reservation about employing this strategy.
What emerges from our examination of Mendelssohn’s citations of Maimonides is a picture of selective, but serious, engagement with Maimonides’s interpretive approach. On one hand, Mendelssohn only cites Maimonides with respect to a single term, despite the fact that—as he knew—Maimonides elaborated on his strategy with respect to dozens of other words as well. On the other hand, in all of the important appearances of this term, Mendelssohn refers back to his extensive citation of Maimonides. Furthermore, we have seen that Mendelssohn adapts Maimonides’s approach to accommodate differences in his own philosophical outlook. Like Maimonides, he does not want to ascribe physical movement to God; unlike him, however, he does not mind describing the divine will positively. Whilst adopting a Maimonidean structure, then, Mendelssohn fills it with content that, in some respects, deviates from Maimonides’s own approach.
Interpretation of Terms: Similarities and Differences
In the previous section, I discussed the small number of cases in which Mendelssohn and his collaborators refer to Maimonides explicitly. In addition to these cases, examination of the Bi’ur commentary on all the terms Maimonides reinterpreted in the first book of the Guide shows that Maimonides is a pervasive presence in Mendelssohn’s exegesis, even when he is not quoted directly. In this section, I will examine some of the key features of Mendelssohn’s commentary on these verses, highlighting both his affinities with Maimonides and his departures from him.
A. Acceptable and Unacceptable Attributes
Perhaps the most important discussion of divine attributes and anthropomorphic language that appears in the Bi’ur occurs in the context of Mendelssohn’s commentary on Gen 6:6, which describes God’s regret and sadness over creating humankind. For Maimonides, this is one of many cases in which terms denoting emotional or psychological states must be reinterpreted to indicate something else.Footnote 51 Mendelssohn, however, uses this verse as a springboard for a more general discussion of the kinds of statements that can and cannot be made about God. He begins his discussion by explaining that there are two different types of psychological traits:
An intelligent individual will observe that the psychological traits called passions (Leidenschaften) or emotions are divided into two types, essentially different from one another. The first type emerges from permanent characteristics and true powers of the soul. [This type consists of] the arousal of the faculty of desire to cleave to something, or to distance itself from it, in accordance with the good or bad it finds in it. Examples include love and hate; joviality, anger, and will; joy and sadness. All of these are essentially and basically perfect. They are appropriate for the heart [i.e. mind] of an intelligent person, and they will not mislead him, unless they get out of balance, moving beyond the bound of proper measure. In such a case they will disturb a person’s thoughts and muddle his disposition, leading him to great foolishness by causing the power of desire to overcome the rule of reason. This is the source of all rebelliousness and maliciousness, as we wrote above. However, as long as they do not get out of hand, they are praiseworthy qualities for a person—there is nothing essentially disgraceful or deficient about them.Footnote 52
We see here that the first kind of state, according to Mendelssohn, involves the arousing of desire or repulsion from a thing, in accordance with its qualities. These “true powers of the soul”—such as love and hate, joviality, anger, sadness, and so on—are perfectly positive traits when they are held in their proper manner. Problems only arise when these states move beyond the bound of their proper measure, causing a person’s desire to deviate from, and overpower, their reasoning. This, Mendelssohn claims, is the cause of disobedience and evil. Nevertheless, so long as these attributes maintain their proper measure, they are magnificent and entail no imperfection or lack. Mendelssohn then goes on to describe the second type of trait:
The source of the second type is privation and shortcoming. These do not have any existence except in the limitation of the individual possessing this privation from which they emerge. Examples of this type are miserliness and regret, cowardice and despair, and other similar states. For miserliness is only possible as the miserly individual’s needs increase and he worries that he will not find what he lacks; regret is only possible as a result of changes in knowledge and counsel; cowardice is only possible in a weak individual; despair only comes about in the absence of hope; and so on. These ways are essentially and basically lack. However, from a human perspective they are sometimes praised for causing an individual to perform good deeds, as is known to happen with regret and other similar states.Footnote 53
The second type of state, then, involves absence and lack. Miserliness, regret, cowardice, despair, and other such states fall into this category. These states, Mendelssohn explains, each consist in a person lacking something, such as strength or hope. People are sometimes praised for these states when they bring about good behavior, such as when regret leads a person to change her ways. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn claims, these characteristics all entail imperfection.
Having outlined the difference between the two kinds of psychological states, Mendelssohn explains their applicability to religious language:
We see in the statements of the rabbis that they did not refrain from ascribing comportments of the first type to God (may he be exalted). They described God as angry, jovial, happy, and sad, because these comportments are free of any shortcoming or any worldly disgrace or exhaustion. He is angry in proper measure, justifiably jovial, happy over the complete good and saddened by true evil—without confusion or muddling of thought. He is infinitely higher than all this. As such, no change or shortcoming is implied by any of these traits, God forbid. Among people they do sometimes entail a shortcoming, producing inferior character traits, but this is for the reason we mentioned— that they exceed the proper measure and muddle the disposition of one of limited attainment. All of this relates to emotions of the first type that we mentioned. However, emotions of the second kind are never ascribed to God (may he be exalted) except as figurative expression, in order to speak the language of human beings, so that those listening will understand.Footnote 54
As might have been expected from his description of the two types of states, Mendelssohn holds that the first may be predicated of God, while the second may not—and he claims that this was the approach of the early rabbis in their many statements that ascribe psychological states to God.Footnote 55 To be more precise, the first (since it does not necessarily involve any lack) can be attributed to God in their proper, perfect measure. Unlike people, whose sadness or happiness may fluctuate, deviating from what the true goodness in the world around them properly requires, this does not happen with God. Accordingly, these characteristics, Mendelssohn claims, entail no imperfection whatsoever. The second type, on the other hand, does entail lack and imperfection. Terms that fit into this category can be predicated of God only in a figurative sense. When such terms are employed, Mendelssohn states, it is only because “the Torah speaks the language of human beings,” that is, the Torah describes matters in the way they appear from a human perspective. Mendelssohn applies this principle to the terms used in Gen 6:6: God’s “regretting” (vayyinnaḥem), he claims, is an instance of the Torah “speaking the language of human beings.” God does not really regret, but the act of destroying that which He created appears akin to regret from a human perspective and is, thus, described figuratively in this way. On the other hand, God’s “being saddened” (vayyit’aṣṣeḇ) occurs in accordance with that which is indeed bad, and is, thus, not figurative.
Mendelssohn’s distinction contains elements that are identifiably similar to Maimonides, as well as important departures from the medieval thinker’s approach. Mendelssohn shares with Maimonides the general notion that the Bible “speaks the language of human beings”—that is, that Scripture sometimes makes figurative use of common language which, if understood literally, would imply some kind of deficiency or physicality in God.Footnote 56 Similarly, Mendelssohn’s unwillingness to contemplate the notion that God possesses psychological states in the manner that humans do—states which can change in response to the vicissitudes of experience—follows Maimonides in removing God from the realm of human psychology and emotions. Nevertheless, Mendelssohn’s attribution of positive anthropopathic attributes to God, even if they are viewed by him as consistent and unchanging, entails a serious deviation from Maimonides’s conception of what can be said (and thought) about divine attributes.Footnote 57 For Mendelssohn, attributing to God certain psychological states, in their proper balance, is attributing perfection. For Maimonides, all psychological states are, by definition, imperfections.
B. God’s Attributes, God’s”Ways”
In Guide I:54, the chapter in which Maimonides presents his notion of “attributes of action,” we find an interpretation of Moses’s interaction with God in Exodus 33. According to Maimonides, this narrative should be understood as involving a request on Moses’s part to be shown God’s essence and God’s “ways.” The first request is refused, while the second is answered affirmatively.Footnote 58 Elsewhere, Maimonides explains that God’s statement to Moses, “you will see My back; but My face must not be seen,”Footnote 59 should be understood as referring to this:
In this sense it is said: And thou shalt see My back, which means that thou shalt apprehend what follows Me, has come to be like Me, and follows necessarily from My will—that is, all the things created by Me, as I shall explain in a chapter of this Treatise.Footnote 60
Maimonides interprets this verse in the context of his explanation of divine “attributes” as a reference to characteristics of the world rather than God. God’s “face” refers to God’s essence; God’s “back” refers to creation.
Mendelssohn’s commentary on this verse, though it does not cite Maimonides directly, is clearly influenced by him. He writes:
The seeing of [God’s] back is the apprehension of God’s ways through his eminent actions… and the knowledge of the ways and traits by which he governs created things. The seeing of [God’s] face is the apprehension of God and the knowledge of his ways as they are through his essence, and this is impossible for any created being, for the essence of a thing is as substantial as the concepts it apprehends, and an apprehended concept cannot be of loftier essence than the one apprehending it. As such, none but God himself can apprehend God (may he be exalted) in his essence.Footnote 61
Here, it seems, Mendelssohn follows Maimonides’s schema precisely. God’s “essence,” referred to as God’s “face,” cannot be conceived by any created being whatsoever. God’s “ways”—the manner in which God governs creation—are called God’s “back” and can be apprehended, to some degree at least, by human beings. While Maimonides’s name is not mentioned, this interpretation is very close indeed to his approach in the Guide. This aspect of Mendelssohn’s approach is found in several other passages as well.Footnote 62
Mendelssohn’s position on the unknowability and absolute uniqueness of God also emerges in his commentary on the thirteen attributes of God in Exod 34:6–7. Commenting on the repetition of the tetragrammaton, Mendelssohn offers the following explanation:
“The Lord! The Lord!”—the first name is the subject of the sentence and the second is the object, like saying, “the Lord is the Lord.” This is because the utmost that can be told about this eminent topic, and all that can possibly be expressed in speech or conceived in thought with respect to his essence, is the repetition of the subject itself: “He is him.” Thus he said, “I am that I am” [Exod 3:13], “I, I am He” [Deut 32:39]. This is a discussion of great depth…Footnote 63
This explanation is reminiscent of Maimonides’s rejection of essential attributes. Like Maimonides, Mendelssohn seems to be claiming that one can say very little about God. Indeed, all that can be thought or said about God is tautological: God is God. This emphasis on God’s absolute uniqueness is elaborated in Mendelssohn’s description of the other attributes:
One who feels sadness and whose soul aches for the suffering of another is called meraḥem (“merciful”). If he is aroused by this to provide assistance, without any hope of reward, but just to improve things for the one he assists, he is called ḥonen (“gracious”). This is because graciousness (ḥaninah) is the psychological trait of assisting others for their own sake, and not for the good of the one providing assistance. God alone is described as raḥum (“merciful”) and ḥannun (“gracious”). No created being is described as [merciful or gracious with the Hebrew terms] raḥum and ḥannun; they are only described as meraḥem and ḥonen. Similarly, only he is described as ‘ereḵ ‘appayim (“slow to anger”), while others are described as ma’ariḵ ‘appayim. How lofty this meaning is for those who understand it!Footnote 64
This passage could be understood in at least two ways. On one hand, it may be read as presenting an approach similar to that of Maimonides,Footnote 65 in which a word applied to God carries a meaning radically different from its regular intent. Considering what we have already seen of Mendelssohn’s approach, however, it seems possible that his intention here is to suggest that the different forms of terminology used to describe God (“gracious” as ḥannun rather than ḥonen; and “merciful” as raḥum instead of meraḥem) are meant to indicate the perfection and consistency of God’s attributes, in contrast to the imperfect and fluctuating attributes of human beings. In this reading, God’s attributes are radically different from those of human beings, but they are still positive attributes.
This second reading is supported by the fact that, in certain places, Mendelssohn openly and explicitly deviates from interpretations intended to remove anthropomorphic meaning from biblical verses. We find an example of this in Exod 13:21, where God is described as “walking” ahead of the Israelites in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. Maimonides does not comment on this particular verse, but he does offer a figurative interpretation of the verb hlk.Footnote 66 The Aramaic translator Onkelos, widely quoted by both Maimonides and Mendelssohn because of his aversion to anthropomorphism, translates holeḵ (went/walked/moved) here as a transitive verb, indicating that God causes the pillars to move. Mendelssohn, however, rejects this interpretation:
“The Lord went before them [in a pillar of cloud by day, to guide them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, that they might travel day and night.]” Onkelos translated [the Hebrew holeḵ lifneyhem “went before them”] as medabbar qodameyhon [“led before them”], like one who guides. It seems that he intended to eliminate anthropomorphism, and that this is why he said that [God] guided a pillar of cloud and a pillar of smoke before them by his power. According to Rashbam, this happened through an angel called by its sender’s name. However, we find the following elsewhere: “You, O Lord, appear in plain sight when Your cloud rests over them and when You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night.” (Num 14:14) Therefore, we should not move from the simple meaning of the biblical text, even though we know that his presence fills the whole earth. The verse’s intent is to single out the place in which his powerful right hand and glorious arm would be shown and revealed miraculously. This being the case, it is possible to say—without any anthropomorphism, God forbid!—that the Holy One (blessed be he) was revealed to them and went before them during the day, to show them the way to go; and that he went before them in the pillar of fire at night, to give them light.Footnote 67
Mendelssohn’s rejection of Onkelos’s position here could just as easily be directed against Maimonides, who, as we have seen, rejects the application of any and all spatial categories to God. It seems here that, in a certain sense, Mendelssohn wants to have his cake and eat it, too. On one hand, he states that he is not ascribing any corporeality to God. And yet, on the other hand, he indicates that God was revealed to the Israelites in a particular place. Of course, this problem can be solved if one understands Mendelssohn as referring to a “created light” (to use Maimonides’s terminology) or some being other than God. Indeed, the Bi’ur commentary on Num 14:14 may support this interpretation: there, the verse’s statement that God appears “in plain sight (lit. ‘eye to eye’)” to the Israelites is explained as meaning “through the appearance of the glory before the eyes of the Israelites.”Footnote 68 Yet, if this interpretation is correct, it is hard to explain why Mendelssohn would reject the interpretations of Onkelos and Rashbam in the way that he does, since at a conceptual level his own interpretation would be taking a similar (if not identical) approach to theirs: claiming that “the Lord went (holeḵ) before them” should be understood as meaning that the Lord in fact caused something other than the Lord (the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire; or an angel; or the “created glory”) to go before them. Since Mendelssohn explicitly differentiates his position from those of Onkelos and Rashbam, it seems that his reference to the “glory” in his comments on Num 14:14 might be understood as referring to some (perhaps semi-figurative) notion of divine “appearance,” or at least direct divine intervention in specific physical events. If this interpretation is correct, it appears that Mendelssohn is more flexible than Maimonides in his understanding of what it means to oppose the ascription of corporeality to God.
Local Examples: The Bi’ur on Particular Terms
We have now examined direct references to Maimonides in the Bi’ur, as well as Mendelssohn’s extended discussions regarding anthropomorphic language and divine attributes. In this final section, we turn to examples of Mendelssohn’s interpretation of several specific anthropomorphic terms.
A. The Image of God
Like Maimonides, Mendelssohn interprets “image” and “likeness” as referring to man’s “form,” which is, in fact, his intellectual capabilities:
An “image” is like a form—his distinct form distinguishes him from all other creatures, in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and practical aptitude. In this he bears likeness and similarity with the angels on high. Through this, he descends and rules by strength over fish, birds, beasts, and bugs… and he also rules over the land itself—to uproot, smash, dig, and quarry for copper and iron.Footnote 69
Following Maimonides, Mendelssohn sees intellectual apprehension as constituting the content of man’s divine “image.” Worthy of note, however, is Mendelssohn’s emphasis on practical reason—human beings’ intellectual capacity enables them to have control over their environment. This difference reflects the fact that, for Maimonides, as for other medieval Aristotelians, the highest capacity of the intellect is purely theoretical. For Mendelssohn, on the other hand, the highest intellectual capacity has a practical dimension.Footnote 70
B. Speech, Sight, and the Divine Will
Another example of Mendelssohn’s commentary following a path similar to that of Maimonides can be found in their interpretation of divine speech in the creation story. Both thinkers are uncomfortable with the attribution of actual speech to God. Maimonides resolves this problem by explaining that divine speech either entails “will and volition,” or “a notion that has been grasped by the understanding having come from God.” All cases in which God speaks in the creation narrative, Maimonides states, belong to the first category—that is, they refer to God’s will.Footnote 71 Mendelssohn offers a similar explanation, explaining: “God’s wish to bring something from potentiality to actuality is called an ‘utterance.’”Footnote 72
We now move on to Maimonides’s and Mendelssohn’s respective interpretations of divine “seeing.” Maimonides explains that, when applied to God, the various verbs meaning “to see” are “used figuratively to denote the grasp of the intellect.”Footnote 73 For Maimonides, this meaning of “seeing” is to be understood both when God is the subject and when God is the object of intellectual apprehension. Thus, in offering scriptural examples, he presents verses such as Gen 18:1 (“the Lord appeared to him”), as well as those such as Gen 1:10 (“and God saw that this was good”).Footnote 74
Mendelssohn shares Maimonides’s interpretation of “seeing” when God is the object. Like Maimonides, Mendelssohn understands “seeing God” to indicate nonvisual apprehension (haśśagah).Footnote 75 Mendelssohn explains that the sense of sight was chosen for this figurative usage because of its implication of certain knowledge.Footnote 76 The sense of sight, he explains, is “borrowed” when referring to any perceptual apprehension with a high level of certainty, as sight is “greater and stronger” than other senses.Footnote 77 This explanation goes beyond that of Maimonides, who does not claim that sight, interpreted figuratively, refers only to perceptual knowledge and does not claim that sight is singled out among the senses due to its association with greater certainty.
This different explanation may help to explain a more significant difference between the two thinkers: with respect to God’s “seeing” in the creation narrative, Mendelssohn offers an explanation that departs from that of Maimonides, though it is in the spirit of the two thinkers’ shared understanding of divine “speech.” The phrase, “and God saw that this was good,” appears (with some variations) seven times in the creation story.Footnote 78 As already noted, Maimonides gives this phrase as one of his examples of the figurative meaning of “seeing” as intellectual apprehension. Mendelssohn, however, suggests the following interpretation:
“And God saw [that the light was good]”—God’s wish to bring something from potentiality into actuality is called “saying,” and his wish for its duration is called “seeing,” as in “I saw [that wisdom is superior to folly as light is superior to darkness]” (Eccl 2:13); “I see the words of Admon” (m. Ketub. 13:3–5) and similar cases; “And the king said to the priest Zadok, ‘Do you see? You return to the safety of the city” (2 Sam 15:27). The term indicates that their duration stands or falls with his wish, and that should it dissipate for a moment, they will return to nothing. This is why, for each act on each day, he said, “And God saw that it was good.” God’s will was that each thing would take on the form mentioned with the appropriate quality, for the purpose intended by him (may he be blessed).Footnote 79
For Mendelssohn, then, divine “saying” and divine “seeing” are intricately linked, both describing the relationship between the divine will and God’s creation. God’s “seeing” that something was “good” simply indicates that that thing was in accordance with God’s fixed purpose and that God willed its continued existence. Mendelssohn goes on to explain that the reason for the use of the superlative “very good” only on the sixth day is to indicate that only creation in its totality can be fully identified with God’s will.Footnote 80
Taken alone, Mendelssohn’s interpretation of the verb ra’ah (saw) in this context appears to deviate from Maimonides’s understanding of the same term. This deviation is quite plausibly a conscious one: Having explained that “sight” can be a figurative term for perceptual apprehension, Mendelssohn likely saw fit to refrain from employing this interpretation of the term when attributed to God, since God’s knowledge is not perceptual but rather purely intellectual. He thus needed to find an alternative figurative interpretation of divine “sight.” It seems fair to claim that Mendelssohn’s interpretation of “sight” as referring to God’s unchanging will, though it deviates from Maimonides’s figurative interpretation of divine “sight,” nevertheless fits comfortably with Maimonides’s (and Mendelssohn’s own) reading of divine “speech” in a similar fashion.Footnote 81
C. Interpretive Affinities
In many cases, Mendelssohn’s interpretations of anthropomorphic terms predicated of God in the Bible match Maimonides’s explanations exactly. Thus, for example, the Bi’ur interprets God’s “hearing” to mean either intellectual comprehensionFootnote 82 or response to prayer.Footnote 83 These match Maimonides’s figurative interpretations. Similarly, both Maimonides and Mendelssohn interpret references to God’s “eye” as symbolizing divine providence.Footnote 84
Another parallel interpretation can be found in Mendelssohn’s and Maimonides’s respective interpretations of the biblical description of God as a “consuming fire.”Footnote 85 According to Maimonides, the implication of this phrase is divine punishment in accordance with disobedience: “He is a fire that eateth, which means that He destroys those who disobey Him as a fire destroys that which is in its power.”Footnote 86 Mendelssohn offers a similar explanation, which appears parenthetically in his translation and also in his commentary:
[Mendelssohn translation:] For the Lord your God is a consuming fire (He punishes with severity), a jealous God (who tolerates no alien deities alongside himself). (Deut 4:24).
[Commentary:] “is a consuming fire”: Despite appearing without the prepositional letter kaf that indicates resemblance, this phrase means that He is like a consuming fire. (Ibn Ezra) Perhaps, however, the prepositional letter kaf that indicates resemblance is missing in order to strengthen the statement. Its sense is that “He punishes justly and does not overlook anything.”Footnote 87
Yet another parallel appears with respect to the Hebrew word panim (face). Maimonides explains that this word can be interpreted figuratively either to mean “in the presence of,” or—as in “face to face”Footnote 88—it can indicate the lack of any intermediary between a person and God.Footnote 89 Once again, Mendelssohn employs both of Maimonides’s figurative interpretations: Moses’s speaking with God “face to face” does not mean that God has an actual face, but rather Moses received God’s revelation clearly and without intermediary.Footnote 90 And peney YHWH (“the face of the Lord”) is understood to mean the same as lifney YHWH (“before the Lord”).Footnote 91
Conclusions
In this study, we have compared Mendelssohn’s interpretations of anthropomorphic terms in the Bi’ur with Maimonides’s approach in the Guide of the Perplexed. The basic picture that has emerged is one of attached complexity. Considerable intellectual affinity—and, no doubt, influence—has been observed in the two thinkers’ concern with reinterpreting biblical terminology in a manner that divests God of any corporeal or anthropomorphic features. At the same time, certain important departures have been noted in Mendelssohn’s approach.
As we have seen, direct citation of Maimonides in the Bi’ur is limited almost exclusively to verses in which “descent” is predicated of God in the biblical text. As in Jerusalem, however, Mendelssohn’s engagement with Maimonides in the Bi’ur does not seem to be limited to the places in which he quotes him explicitly. Both in general approach and in the interpretation of specific terms, we see certain strong similarities between the two thinkers: Both speak of God’s essence as unknowable by lower beings; both reinterpret any word ascribing physicality or deficiency to God; both offer an interpretation of God’s “attributes” as referring to God’s “ways,” that is, the created world. We have also seen important shared motifs, such as the equation of divine “speech” with God’s will; and the two thinkers’ shared understanding of Moses’ experience of God’s “back” as referring to the “attributes of action.”
On the other hand, we have also seen several fundamental departures from Maimonides in the Bi’ur. Maimonides explains that even his figurative reinterpretations are often just a first, inadequate, step away from anthropomorphism (or anthropopathism): For example, he suggests that the equation of human and divine “image” with intellectual apprehension should itself not be taken literally, since it is not strictly possible to speak even of God’s intellectual “apprehension” in any meaningful sense of the word. Mendelssohn does not express such reservations about the project of figurative interpretation—for him, the “first-level” figurative interpretation is sufficient. We have also seen that Mendelssohn distinguishes between two types of attributes—those which entail deficiency, and which therefore can only be ascribed to God figuratively (anthropomorphic attributes and anthropopathic attributes that imply deficiency in God); and those which do not necessarily involve lack, and which can be ascribed to God positively (“positive” anthropopathic attributes). Maimonides, of course, would not accept such a distinction, since he opposes the literal ascription of any attributes—including essential attributes—to God. Finally, on at least one occasion, Mendelssohn explicitly rejects an “incorporealizing” interpretation offered by other commentators, in favor of an interpretation that at least seems to be less strict in applying this principle.
The picture that emerges is one of a complex, philosophically serious, but critical engagement with Maimonides on Mendelssohn’s part. This analysis seems to show that the suggestion that Mendelssohn “was not a Maimonidean” is an overstatement, despite the real differences between the two.Footnote 92 Similarly, the claim that the importance of Maimonides for Mendelssohn’s work was more in the role of a cultural hero than of a philosophical influence would appear to be contradicted by Mendelssohn’s extensive engagement with Maimonides’s ideas in the Bi’ur—even in the cases in which he departs from the opinions of his predecessor. Mendelssohn does not always adopt the opinions of his mediaeval forebear, but here, as in other places, it seems that Moses Maimonides is a constant, if ambivalent, presence in the thought of Moses Mendelssohn.
