Introduction
This article will shed light on Maimonides’s ethos of revelation of secrets—which is attested to most clearly in two specific loci in the Guide of the Perplexed (Dalālat al-ḥāʾirīn): the opening unit of the work, and the introduction to the Guide’s third part—and will explore its Islamic sources. This mode of research demands a turn away from the prevalent method through which the Guide has been studied for decades, namely, as a work whose core consists in strategies and an ethos of concealment, and which therefore calls for an inquiry into the methods of withholding knowledge and a careful reconstruction of the knowledge that lies hidden beneath its external layer. Instead, I seek to turn attention to an almost polar theme in the work and investigate the ways in which Maimonides fashioned his Guide as a work that involves an exceptional act—so he himself attests—of revelation of secrets, and a breach of the boundaries of concealment as dictated by tradition.
In the decades that have passed since the appearance of Leo Strauss’s “Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed” in 1941,Footnote 1 Strauss’s first attempt at providing an extensive account of Maimonides’s “art of revealing by not revealing,”Footnote 2
Maimonidean esotericism has become the most researched topic, as well as one of the most celebrated features, of Maimonides’s writing. Strauss’s article—which was later included in his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, and which came to be framed by the book’s overall thesis—was an important axis around which Maimonides scholarship was conducted for decades.Footnote 3
According to Strauss’s thesis, esoteric writing was employed for two main reasons. The first was the protection of communal cohesion. According to this line of argument, the purpose of “writing between the lines” was to secure social unity and coherency in view of the destructive power of the revelation of truth. Following a Nietzschean view, Strauss argued that the social structure would not endure under conditions of complete transparency.Footnote 4 The second reason was protection of the philosopher from the persecution and condemnation that might result from his undermining of the principles of faith held by his social milieu. The community, according to Strauss, would not tolerate an author who threatens its fundamental principles of faith—those that secure its cohesion—and would persecute him mercilessly.Footnote 5 In his scholarly work, Strauss attempted not only to understand the reason that lay behind esoteric writing but also to trace its ascent, its heyday, and its historical decline. In his view, the literary corpus of Plato marked the rise of esoteric writing, most significantly his Πολιτεία (The Republic) and νόμοι (The Laws).Footnote 6 The practice was appropriated, most notably, by abu-Nasr al-Fārābī,Footnote 7 and transmitted through his writing, according to Strauss, to Maimonides and his oeuvre,Footnote 8 specifically to the Guide of the Perplexed.Footnote 9 Strauss claimed that the most significant stylistic contribution of writings in the Islamicate world to the art of writing the Guide of the Perplexed was the lesson on the acute need to withhold knowledge from the multitude, as well as the different strategies of covert double-writing that allowed the text simultaneously to reveal (to the few) and conceal (from the many).
Scholars have accepted this genealogy of the sources of Maimonidean esotericism throughout the past 75 years, even though important additions to it have been proposed. Sara Klein-Braslavy suggested the first, arguing that this genealogy should be augmented by another mode of esotericism, one that involved the careful cultivation of special areas of knowledge,Footnote 10 which are to be revealed only to the adept. The second addition, which various scholars suggested, is esotericism drawn from rabbinic sources.Footnote 11 These scholars presented Maimonides as an author who coalesced two currents of esotericism: on the one hand, the Tannaitic-Amoraic mode of concealment, and on the other hand, the philosophical esotericism fostered by Greek authors, transmitted to the Islamicate world by the great translation movement and much elaborated by al-Fārābī, Ibn Bājja, and Ibn Sīnā.Footnote 12 Still, most of the scholarship written during these past decades remained within the confines of the Straussian paradigm, which called for an inquiry into the reasons and modes of concealment that Maimonides and his predecessors employed. A rare exception is to be found in the scholarship of Moshe Halbertal, who sought to answer the question of why Maimonides employed the language of secrecy and revelation in the first place. According to Halbertal, employing the discourse of secrecy allowed Maimonides an “extraordinary flexibility,”Footnote 13 and through it he forged a powerful vehicle for a “revolutionary integration between apparently contradictory cultural traditions.”Footnote 14 The important point that Halbertal indicated is that Maimonides not only protected the boundaries of concealment in his work but, at the same time, decisively declared that he would be breaching the limits of the esoteric and providing the rationale for this very act.
In this article, I argue that Maimonides had his Islamic sources not only regarding concealment but also with respect to the breaching of its boundaries.Footnote 15 In other words, by carefully attending to Islamic writings, Maimonides implemented in his Guide not only his method of withholding knowledge but also the ethos of revealing secrets. A study of these sources reveals that the coupling of Maimonides and al-Fārābī, so prevalent in scholarship, does not exhaust the picture at all, and even distorts it.Footnote 16
What were the sources of Maimonides’s idea of the exceptional revelation of secrets? I will consider two sources that earlier scholarship on the Guide has neglected: the closing unit of Ibn Sīnā’sFootnote 17Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs (Epistle on the States of the Soul),Footnote 18 the so-called epilogue of the “Lesser” Destination; and the introduction to Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’sFootnote 19Mishkāt al-anwār (Niche of Lights).Footnote 20 And I will argue that Maimonides was very much attuned to these texts when fashioning the two narratives that are included in his rhetoric of revelation: the narrative of the crisis of the body of knowledge, and that of the redemption of an elect disciple. Moreover, I will argue that the introduction to al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār also provided the general framework or genre—namely, the writing of an epistolary treatise in which secrets of scriptures are to be revealed—that Maimonides appropriated for the Guide. In contrast to Shlomo Pines’s argument that “the Guide belongs to a very peculiar literary genre, of which it is the unique specimen,”Footnote 21 I argue that, while the Guide indeed had no precedents in Jewish literature, it partakes of a genre that developed in the Islamicate world and was mediated to Maimonides through the writings of al-Ghazālī, which enjoyed wide dissemination in al-Andalus after its occupation by the Muwaḥḥidūn.
Admittedly, we cannot in this case point to the two essays mentioned above as definite Arabic sources of Maimonides. As in many other cases, Maimonides himself does not indicate his familiarity with these works, and we have no other explicit proof that he read them.Footnote 22 Nonetheless, this does not exempt us from the task of exploring the possible sources of the Guide. Between certainty, which we rarely attain, and the sources that could not possibly have influenced Maimonides lies a broad spectrum that ranges from the more likely to the less likely. In what follows, I will try to make the case—by pointing out affinities related to a cluster of themes and arguments—that the two works cited above were possibly on Maimonides’s mind and that he appropriated them when he wrote the Guide.Footnote 23
Maimonides’s appropriation was, of course, subject to a process of cultural negotiation. As is the case with most of his intertextual gestures, he almost never directly quoted in full or left his Islamic sources untouched.Footnote 24 He molded and fashioned them by paying close attention to the possibilities afforded him by the canonical sources of the Jewish tradition, in many cases shrewdly reinterpreting these precedents. In any case, as Sarah Stroumsa recently emphasized, when ideas and discourses migrate between cultures—in this case Islam and Judaism—they do not simply penetrate a new culture but are transformed during their migration.Footnote 25 That said, the textual investigation I propose will demonstrate that clusters of motifs, as well as structures of arguments, were retained in the course of their cultural migration from Islam to Judaism. This exploration will first allow me to shed new light on the question of the sources of Maimonides’s Guide and on his intertextual art of writing. Moreover, in the conclusion to the article, I will argue that through Maimonides’s mediation we can trace the influence of al-Ghazālī and Ibn Sīnā, even if indirect,Footnote 26 on the acceleration of the process of writing sitrey torah (secrets of the Torah) in medieval Judaism.
The Crisis of Esotericism in Ibn Sīnā’s Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs
In the concluding chapter of the Ilāhiyyāt, which seals his Kitāb al-Shifā, Ibn Sīnā subtly refers to the mode by which metaphysical knowledge is concealed, by symbols and allegories that withhold it from the unworthy:Footnote 27
[The Prophet] ought not to involve them [the masses] with anything [meta-physical] pertaining to the knowledge of God…. Beyond the knowledge that He is One, the Truth, and has nothing similar to Him. To go beyond this and obligate them to believe in His existence as being not referred to in place, as being not subject to verbal classifications, as being neither inside nor outside the world, nor anything of this kind [is to ask too much]. He will [simply] render their task too great [and] confuse the religion they have…. [The rest] would come to deny the truth of such existence, fall into dissensions, and indulge in disputations and analogical arguments that stand in the way of their performing their civil [duties]. This might even lead them to adopt views contrary to the welfare of the city [al-madīna], opposed to the imperatives of truth…. For it is not for everyone that [the acquisition] of divine wisdom is facilitated. Nor is it proper for any human to reveal that he possesses knowledge he is hiding from the commonality…. Rather, he should let them know of God’s majesty and greatness through symbols [rumūz] and similitudes [amṯila] derived from things that, for them, are majestic and great…. There is no harm if his [the Prophet’s] address contain symbols [rumūz] and pointers [ishārāt] that might call forth those naturally disposed toward the theoretical reflection [al-baḥṯ al-ḥikmī] to pursue philosophic investigations.Footnote 28
According to Ibn Sīnā, uncontrolled dissemination of metaphysical knowledge can inflict damage on its author, for such dissemination may expose him to the perils of incomprehension and of holding views that are in discrepancy with widely held opinions. Furthermore, harm can also be caused to the recipients of metaphysical knowledge and to society as a whole because of the threat of dissensus, the erosion of social bonds, and the destabilization of the political community.Footnote 29 There is thus a need to withhold knowledge from the masses and, moreover, a need to withhold from this high-risk group the very fact of concealment, that is, the idea that there is knowledge that, while not revealed to them, is held by the author. The way to achieve this is by structuring a multilayered discourse that is composed first and foremost of a symbolic or allegorical stratum that reflects the general beliefs of the masses, or, in the language of Ibn Sīnā, those “things that for them are majestic and great.”Footnote 30 This stratum will harness the power of language as it is generally used in order to infuse an idea with a regulating power without fully exposing its contents. The symbol and allegory, if properly introduced, will be effective without alerting most of the recipients. But the symbol must contain another element, which is a hint to its reader that its superficial level does not exhaust its content and that another layer awaits those who can acquire metaphysical knowledge. Methods of concealment should not only withhold knowledge but also be “inviting,” in the language of Ibn Sīnā, and summon the elect few to remove them.Footnote 31 Thus, Ibn Sīnā argued that the writing of esoteric knowledge must be done in a constant tension between shadow and light and be fully exposed only by those who are entrusted with the necessary capabilities, in a process that entails education and training.
Another case, albeit with different characteristics, of the dialectics between disclosure and concealment in the oeuvre of Ibn Sīnā is his Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān. Ibn Sīnā begins this work with a dominant chord of disclosure, stating that in the work he intends to reveal knowledge that has not yet been disclosed: “Your persistence in the demand that I set forth the story of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān for you has overcome my stubborn determination and has untied the bonds of my firm resolve to defer and delay this, and I have consented to come to your aid.”Footnote 32 Yet, despite this explicit statement, the work itself, as Alfred Ivry noted, is a deeply coded dramatic narrative with allegorical dimensions. In such a coded narrative, the decoded message is not self-evident and is not set forth in the superficial level of the text.Footnote 33 Thus, the gesture of exposure and disclosure with which the work opens is accompanied by a gesture of withdrawal and concealment that is inherent in the allegorical mode of writing. The very writing of the treatise is an act of disclosure, but the content of the narrative reflects a reversal in the movement of disclosure and introduces elements of concealment into the very texture of this work.Footnote 34
However, in one of his other works, Ibn Sīnā also claimed that he explicitly decided to expose and discuss—now in a clear and detailed manner and not in the allegorical mode—layers of knowledge that the Peripatetic tradition (at least according to his own account) kept hidden. Ibn Sīnā accounted for this through his argument that there is also a danger in the act of withholding knowledge, namely, the threat to knowledge itself. What is the harm that may be caused to knowledge during eras in which traditions of concealment, accompanied by subtle revelation of and education in the proper methods of extricating knowledge, are ill-treated? This issue is the crucial link that ties Ibn Sīnā to the rhetoric Maimonides uses in his Guide. According to Ibn Sīnā, in such times one should turn from concealment to revelation and disclose what was bound to remain hidden in other circumstances. He explicitly stated this in the final paragraph of his Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs, which frames the treatise as a whole, and which was copied in some cases into manuscripts of both the Kitāb al-S̲ h̲ ifā and the Kitāb al-Najāt:Footnote 35
In this essay I have left out a discussion of the external aspects of the theory of the soul, except for what was absolutely necessary, and have instead “removed the cover” [Qurʾān 50:22], lifted the veil, and revealed the secrets [asrār] stored in the depths of books and withheld from explicit mention. [I did this] in an effort to return favor to my companions and also because I know that in our times there is no one who would either inherit these secrets through instruction or be able to gain a comprehensive knowledge of them through discovery, and [also], I have relinquished the hope that the person who seeks to perpetuate the knowledge and bequeath it to posterity has any means or device at his disposal other than to put it down in writing and include it in books, without relying on the learners’ will to ascertain them in the proper manner, uphold them, and bequeath them to posterity, or on the solicitude of our contemporaries and their like-minded successors to inquire into the topics of the symbols and their interpretations if it was expressed in symbol, and to elaborate the succinct passages if it was written succinctly. I forbid all my friends who would read [this treatise] to squander it on an evil or obdurate person, or to show it to him, or to deposit it where it does not belong, and bind them to God as their adversary in my behalf [in case they violate the prohibition].Footnote 36
A remarkable feature of this passage is its emphasis that esotericism must be regarded not only from the perspective of an ahistorical distinction between types of knowledge that are to be disclosed or concealed, but also from the perspective of the given historical era, which may demand shifts from the register of concealment to that of disclosure. Historical changes may necessitate an aberration, a departure from customary patterns of knowledge transmission and a breaching of the limitations that are generally imposed on its circulation. The acute crisis that, according to Ibn Sīnā, was taking place at the time he was writing his treatise renders the utilization of the techniques of esoteric transmission counterproductive. The method that allows for withholding knowledge by encoding it in symbols and allegories and a second method, which is only alluded to in this passage in the words “elaborate their succinct passages” and which entails condensed writing with omission of necessary elements, are presented here as inadequate.Footnote 37 In order to function properly, both methods depend on transmission to recipients who are equipped with the necessary skill of converting knowledge and transforming concealment into revelation through the act of careful reading and inference. During times of a decline in the culture of esotericism, the necessary conditions for successive esoteric transmission are not met. Ibn Sīnā’s argument, with its historical edge, exposes a new mode in discussing esotericism, for now it is not only knowledge that has to be retained between generations, in view of the threat that it will be lost; the very acknowledgment of esotericism, with its methods of concealment and modes of disclosure, is also on the verge of disappearing.
Ibn Sīnā’s response to his self-proclaimed crisis of esotericism is complex and involves, discursively, breaching a prohibition by shifting registers of written communication and abstaining declaratively from concealment. In order not to be exposed to the abovementioned risks of transmitting esoteric knowledge openly, Ibn Sīnā opts for a new solution. In contrast to works that simultaneously address multiple audiences by employing multilayered writing, his risāla addresses one specific circle, which is urged to retain the knowledge within its confines and to refrain from uncritically disseminating it. An attempt to overcome the loss of control that resulted from the decision not to implement any method of concealment is made through a specific mode of address to its readers.
The Epistolary Model of Disclosure in Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār
The major contribution of al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār (Niche of Lights) to the Guide of the Perplexed is the specific epistolary format in which it was written,Footnote 38 which provided Maimonides with both a literary genre for the revelation of secrets and a line of argumentation to justify the writing of concealed contents. The epistolary genre played a major structural role in revealing secrets not only because it allowed the author to write to his addressee under conditions of physical distance, which is the reason explicitly stated by both al-Ghazālī and Maimonides, but also because of the specific dialectics of proximity and distance that are at play in the genre.Footnote 39 This dialectic allows for a transmission of contents while retaining distance, and even, to some extent, for a concurrent act of advance and withdrawal.
Al-Ghazālī’s introduction, which begins with words of praise for the Lord and Muhammad, addresses its recipient—beginning from the second passage—in the second person singular and frames the treatise as a response to a question posed by the addressee, requesting the author to disclose the meaning of a specific cluster of scriptural verses in which secrets have been encoded:Footnote 40 “You asked me, O noble brother … that I unfold for you the mysteries of divine lights, along with an interpretation [taʾwīl]Footnote 41 of the apparent meanings of those recited verses and narrated reports that allude to the divine lights.”Footnote 42
This request from the addressee, according to al-Ghazālī, is his impetus for writing the work. Moreover, in his work al-Ghazālī never leaves the second person mode of address, which serves as a reminder of the specific, if unknown, addressee for whom the work was originally intended, but it may also be seen as an address to a much more inclusive “you,” that is, as an address to whomever reads the work. In the course of the work, al-Ghazālī continuously provokes his addressee and admonishes him. Moreover, as the next passage reveals, al-Ghazālī treats the very question the addressee posed to him as a testament to the latter’s merits, putting him in a privileged position that rightfully deserves the author’s response:
With your question you have climbed a difficult slope, one before whose upper regions the eyes of the observers fall back. You have knocked at a locked door that is not to be opened except for the firmly rooted possessors of knowledge.Footnote 43 What is more, not every mystery is to be unveiled and divulged, and not every reality is to be presented and disclosed. Indeed, “the breasts of the free are the graves of the mysteries.” … But I see you as one whose breast has been opened up by God through light and whose innermost consciousness has been kept free of the darknesses of delusion. Hence, in this discipline I will not be niggardly toward you in alluding to sparks and allusions or giving symbols of realities and subtleties, for the fear in holding back knowledge from those worthy of it is not less than that in disseminating it to those not worthy of it. He who bestows knowledge on the ignorant wastes it; and he who withholds knowledge from the worthy has done them wrong.Footnote 44
The virtues of the addressee are present, according to al-Ghazālī, in the very question he posed. In addition to highlighting the worthiness of the disciple, al-Ghazālī also indicates in this short passage the specific character of the sought-after knowledge, which he describes as “secrets” (al-asrār) and as “truth” (ḥaqīqa). These characterizations indicate the esoteric status of the requested knowledge, a status that would normally prevent the author from revealing it in writing. It is in this regard that al-Ghazālī puts forward the reason for breaching the boundaries of secrecy, namely, fear that the disciple will be unjustly treated, a concern that trumps even the requirement not to divulge the esoteric knowledge publicly. Al-Ghazālī also quotes two verses from a poem attributed to Imam al-Shāfiʿī as an authoritative source that supports this line of reasoning: “He who bestows knowledge on the ignorant wastes it; and he who withholds knowledge from the worthy has done them wrong.” The words of al-Shāfiʿī are not a traditional ornament decorating the passage but serve as a legal permission—attributed to the founder of the legal school (maḏhab) to which al-Ghazālī belonged—for the act of turning from concealment to revelation; in other words, they provide validation of an act that was prohibited, at the very least, in times of cultural decline. Al-Ghazālī further attests to the general requirement to conceal in the next passage, which begins with words from the Ḥadīth:
“There is a knowledge like the guise of the hidden; none knows it except the knowers of God. When they speak of it, none denies it except those who are arrogantly deluded about God.”Footnote 45 And when the people of the arrogant become many, it becomes necessary to preserve the coverings upon the face of the mysteries.Footnote 46
The words of the Ḥadīth implore one to avoid concealing knowledge for the sake of gaining spiritual prestige or material benefits. But, argues al-Ghazālī, the turbulent times, the decline of wisdom, and the proliferation of ignorance have brought a change in ethos and demand an altogether different commitment, which involves the concealment of wisdom and a careful regard for it.Footnote 47 This is the source of al-Ghazālī’s tension, and the meaning of his claim that, in order to reveal the hidden wisdom, he has to transgress a prohibition.
Another aspect of the quoted passage in which al-Ghazālī responds to his addressee’s question is its threefold structure of relationality to the truth. At the bottom of the hierarchy are the ignorant, who reject wisdom altogether. Above them stands the disciple, the one who “knocked at the locked door,” endowed with talent and deserving of the removal of the veil. And at the top of the hierarchy are those “rooted in knowledge,” a highly charged qurʾānic phrase with a long history of medieval interpretation, which describes those who stand, as it were, on the other side of the locked door. It should be emphasized that al-Ghazālī not only differentiates between the multitude (jumhūr) and the elite but draws another distinction, which cuts across the elite itself, between the apprentices and the masters of wisdom. Notwithstanding his preparedness to reveal the secrets to his disciple, al-Ghazālī proclaims in the final words of his introduction that he intends to keep some measure of concealment, as this befits both the stature of the disciple, who has the ability to infer knowledge from hints, and the nature of the knowledge, which is to be handled with caution:
Be satisfied with abridged allusions and brief indications, since the verification of this discussion would call for laying down principles and explaining details which my present moment does not allow, nor do my concern and thought turn toward. The keys of the hearts are in God’s hand; He opens hearts when He wills, as He wills, and how He wills. The only thing opening up at this moment is three chapters.Footnote 48
The work, as attested to by its author, is an act of endowment, though it does not make the knowledge completely transparent. Instead, al-Ghazālī presents his treatise as involving a careful interweaving of disclosure and concealment. The rhetorical gesture that runs through the introduction, declaring the transition that is to be taken in the course of the work from concealment to disclosure, ends on a somewhat reserved note. Not everything will be revealed, and even the part that is to be revealed will not be fully disclosed. In other words, in writing Mishkāt al-anwār, al-Ghazālī sought not simply to reveal the secrets of the divine light but, in the very movement of disclosure, to retain an opposite movement of retraction and cloaking. That said, and despite the aforementioned element of control and reserve, it should be emphasized that al-Ghazālī’s act of writing does involve a removal of barriers and a significant loss of control over the dissemination of knowledge, which pertain to its transmission in the textual medium. Al-Ghazālī briefly notes the specific strategies of reticence, encoded in the terms “indications” (ishārāt) and “allusions” (talwīḥāt) that signal only partial disclosure. Indeed, the introduction ends with a gesture of withdrawal, but this restraint should be understood neither as the main line of argumentation in the introduction nor as the exclusive interest of al-Ghazālī’s treatise. Essentially, Mishkāt al-anwār is a work of disclosure, as al-Ghazālī not only declares but also argues for in his introduction.
We have thus seen the thematic cluster that is at play in the introduction and the specific literary genre that serves as the infrastructure for al-Ghazālī’s treatise. In sum, we can see that in the introduction, the revelation of secrets is tied to the epistolary genre, and specifically to an epistle addressed to an elect disciple. In addition, al-Ghazālī presents a three-tiered hierarchy—sage/disciple/multitude— that undergirds both the need to disclose the secrets—namely, for the sake of guiding the disciple—and the need for a measure of concealment, to prevent the knowledge from falling into the hands of the masses. Furthermore, al-Ghazālī asserts that, in view of the various considerations, the scale tips in favor of disclosure and not concealment, for the obligation toward the disciple trumps the duty to conceal from the multitude. However, al-Ghazālī insists that not all knowledge will be revealed in his work, and that only indications and allusions will be provided. We will now turn to see how each and every one of these features returns in Maimonides’s Guide and serves as the discursive infrastructure for his own introduction.
Mishkāt al-anwār and the Prefatory Unit of the Guide of the Perplexed
Before closely examining Maimonides’s introduction and the way in which it was shaped by the epistolary genre, it should be emphasized that even though Maimonides was the first to employ this genre for writing a work in the realm of sitrey torah, the epistolary genre itself was a well-established medium already in the days of the geonim.Footnote 49 Furthermore, a survey of the geonic responsa reveals that already near the end of the tenth century, the epistolary genre exceeded the limits of a halakhic question or even a set of halakhic questions and a direct response to them. Robert Brody has indicated that two of the most celebrated “epistles” from geonic times, the famous epistle of Rav Sherira and that of Seder Rav Amram, were indeed written specifically as responsa, though they expanded the boundaries of the genre.Footnote 50 In another study, Neil Danzig showed that the genre of responsa, even when addressed to a specific addressee, was in many cases intended for and, indeed, reached wider circles.Footnote 51 Islamic al-Andalus, where earlier works written in the genre of the risāla Footnote 52—most notably the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ—were in circulation, provides us with many examples of the phenomenon of “epistles” pertaining to philosophy and theology.Footnote 53 Thus, for instance, we can find epistolary works written by Ibn Masarra,Footnote 54 al-BaṭalyawsīFootnote 55 and Ibn BājjaFootnote 56 and the short commentaries of Ibn Rushd to the Aristotelian corpus, which were all referred to in the manuscripts as Rasāʾil.Footnote 57
Turning to the Guide, we find that both the opening words of the “epistle dedicatory,” which form the first part of the opening unit, and the unit in its totality feature an equivocality.Footnote 58 The Guide opens with an epistle to Rabbi Joseph, son of Rabbi Judah:Footnote 59 “When you came to me—my honored pupil Rabbi Joseph, may the Rock guard you, son of Rabbi Judah, may his repose be in Paradise—having conceived the intention of journeying from the country farthest away in order to read texts under my guidance.”Footnote 60 This dedicatory part is also concluded as an epistle:
Then when God decreed our separation and you betook yourself elsewhere, these meetings aroused in me a resolution that had slackened. Your absence moved me to compose this Treatise, which I have composed for you and for those like you, however few they are. I have set it down in dispersed chapters. All of them that are written down will reach you where you are, one after the other. Be in good health.Footnote 61
The ambiguity of this opening unit consists in the fact that, on the one hand, it retains the form of an epistle—accentuating the uniqueness of its addressee both by directly addressing him and by employing the second person singular and thereby presenting the Guide as a continuous letter—sent, part by part, to its addressee in order to initiate him into the secrets of the Torah,Footnote 62 while, on the other hand, the second person singular is directed in this case at more than a single addressee. Indeed, the treatise is written not only for Rabbi Joseph b. Judah but, in the words of Maimonides, for him and “for those like” him. The singular turns plural already in the dedicatory epistle, and all the more so in the rest of the treatise. Furthermore, Maimonides refers to the Guide in the introduction as maqāla Footnote 63—which Pines translates as “treatise”—and not as risāla, which translates as “epistle.”Footnote 64 Although the two terms are sometimes used as synonyms, in this particular case the difference between them may be significant. Maimonides does not intend the text to be read only by one person in particular but, at the very least, aims at the class of people who resemble this person. Indeed, Maimonides openly refers to the existence of the Guide and even quotes from it in his other epistles.Footnote 65 Therefore, I argue that Maimonides deliberately chose the epistolary genre as a literary vehicle for his work and that one should not view this work as an epistle that was somehow caught on its way to its addressee and disseminated, contrary to Maimoindes’s original expectations. Maimonides’s Guide, like al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār, interlaces the epistolary genre with the purpose of the work, namely, the careful revelation of the secrets, which are presented as the hidden meaning that lies behind names and verses from the sacred scriptures.
This is only the beginning of the similarity between these works. Another correspondence is to be found in the shared fourfold argument, comprised of the following elements: (a) the knowledge that is revealed in the work was meant to be concealed, or at least not disseminated in written form; (b) notwithstanding the prohibition, the author chose to disclose the esoteric knowledge; (c) this act was explained by the obligation toward an elect disciple, which trumps the potential harm that may result from the circulation of the work among the ignorant; (d) the decision to transgress the prohibition is based on a traditional trope and a legal precedence. All these features can be gleaned from the following passage, from the Guide’s introduction to the first part:
God, may He be exalted, knows that I have never ceased to be exceedingly apprehensive about setting down those things that I wish to set down in this Treatise. For they are concealed things; none of them has been set down in any book—written in the religious community in these times of Exile—the books composed in these times being in our hands. How then can I now innovate and set them down? However, I have relied on two premises, the one being [the Sages’] saying in a similar case, It is time to act for the Lord, and so on; the second being their saying, Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven. Upon these two premises have I relied when setting down what I have composed in some of the chapters of this Treatise. To sum up: I am the man who when the concern pressed him and his way was straitened and he could find no other device by which to teach a demonstrated truth other than by giving satisfaction to a single virtuous man while displeasing ten thousand ignoramuses—I am he who prefers to address the single man by himself, and I do not heed the blame of those many creatures.Footnote 66
The prohibition Maimonides alludes to is the famous interdiction presented in the Mishnah in tractate Ḥagigah, forbidding one to expound on the account of creation (ma‘aśeh berešit) before two people and on the account of the chariot (ma‘aśeh merkaḇah) even before one person, unless, in the words of the Mishnah, he is a sage and understands his own knowledge.Footnote 67 Yet Maimonides declares that in writing the Guide he will not yield to this prohibition, for he sees the fulfilment of the potential of the “virtuous man” as trumping the need to maintain the boundaries of concealment. This breaching of the limits of secrecy is based, as in the case of al-Ghazālī, on traditional precedence. In this case, the traditional trope appears in two modes, which Maimonides calls “premises”: the first is “It is time to act for the Lord—violate your Torah,” a command to violate a prohibition, which Maimonides applies to the writing of the Guide by authorizing himself to declare that his time is indeed such a time that necessitates the transgression. As for the second “premise,” here, too, Maimonides alludes to the theme of transgression, as is made clear by reading this source alongside his commentary on the Mishnah, where he binds the verse “Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven” with a transgressive act.Footnote 68 Maimonides is thus willing to transgress the traditional prohibition yet still claim for his work the status of an exception that belongs within tradition itself, and this is because of his commitment to the disciple and his class. That said, Maimonides, like al-Ghazālī, declares that his transition from concealment to revelation will not be complete and that the knowledge will not be fully disclosed.
Maimonides characterizes this mode of regressive disclosure with the mishnaic term “chapter headings” (ra’šey peraqim), which is appropriated from the talmudic discussion on the aforementioned Mishnah from tractate Ḥagigah. In the words of Maimonides:
A sensible man thus should not demand of me or hope that when we mention a subject, we shall make a complete exposition of it, or that when we engage in the explanation of the meaning of one of the parables, we shall set forth exhaustively all that is expressed in that parable. An intelligent man would be unable to do so even by speaking directly to an interlocutor. How then could he put it down in writing without becoming a butt for every ignoramus who, thinking that he has the necessary knowledge, would let fly at him the shafts of his ignorance? … Hence you should not ask of me here anything beyond the chapter headings. And even these beginnings are not set down in order to be arranged in coherent fashion in this Treatise, but rather are scatteredFootnote 69 and entangled with other subjects that are to be clarified.Footnote 70
The chapter headings are referred to in this passage as “beginnings,” a term that joins a variety of other terms Maimonides uses when reflecting in the Guide on his own art of writing, and specifically on the meaning of the phrase ra’šey peraqim; these terms include alg ̲h̲ āz (riddles), marmūz (allegories or symbols), ishārāt (indications), talwīḥāt (allusions), and tanbīhāt (remarks).Footnote 71 It is important to emphasize that Maimonides employs only two of these terms in the dedicatory epistle. When referring to the mode in which he chose to disclose the secrets of the prophetic books to his disciple, he writes: “I saw that you are one worthy to have the secrets of the prophetic books revealed to you so that you would consider in them that which perfect men ought to consider. Thereupon I began to let you see certain allusions [talwīḥat] and to give you certain indications [ishārat].”Footnote 72 These are the very same terms al-Ghazālī utilized, and in the very same context—namely, when the author implores his disciple to be satisfied with the measure of disclosure he has decided upon. The rest of the aforementioned terms do not appear in the epistle, or in the introduction, but only in later chapters of the treatise.Footnote 73
Thus, reading the introductory unit of the Guide side by side with al-Ghazālī’s introduction has revealed the strong emphasis placed in both works, not on esotericism and protection of knowledge, but on the acute need to reveal knowledge, in the textual medium, even though this involves a transgression of the prohibition of disclosure. Furthermore, the analysis exposed both the shared literary infrastructure—namely, the epistolary genre—and the identity of the terms pertaining to the mode of revelation in the two works.
The Crisis of Esotericism in the Guide and Its Relation to the Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs
Maimonides’s assertion that sitrey torah must be disclosed in written form—in a careful manner that treads between revelation and concealment—in order to salvage an elect disciple is augmented in the Guide by another type of argument, which first appears in I:71 but is elaborated in the introduction to the Guide’s third part. According to this argumentative line, sitrey torah were forgotten through the ages and then rediscovered by Maimonides through the sheer power of his intellect, creating a situation that called for their revelation as their only mode of preservation. The claim about the crisis of esotericism, which Ibn Sīnā made in the epilogue to his Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs, is located in one of the Guide’s juncture-chapters—chapters in which thematic units are joined and which feature some of Maimonides’s programmatic assertions.Footnote 74 Maimonides begins chapter I:71 with these words:
Know that the many sciences devoted to establishing the truth regarding these matters that have existed in our religious community have perished because of the length of the time that has passed, because of our being dominated by the pagan nations, and because, as we have made clear, it is not permitted to divulge these matters to all people. For the only thing it is permitted to divulge to all people are the texts of the books. You already know that even the legalistic science of law was not put down in writing in the olden times because of the precept, which is widely known in the nation: “Words that I have communicated to you orally, you are not allowed to put down in writing.”Footnote 75
In these opening words to this chapter, Maimonides does not refer to the realm of esoteric lore explicitly, nor does he employ the term sitrey torah or plainly proclaim their loss. Instead, he opts to use a term that has specific gravity in the Guide but which is less culturally charged: al-ʿulūm, plural of al-ʿilm, which can be translated as “science” or “wisdom.” The interchangeability of the Arabic term ʿulūm with a term that designates esoteric knowledge (sitrey torah in the Guide)Footnote 76 was characteristic also of Ibn Sīnā’s epilogue, which tied together the terms al-ʿilm and al-asrār. Furthermore, before turning to an explicit discussion of sitrey torah, Maimonides refers to another corpus of knowledge that was transmitted only orally in “olden times,” which is the Jewish halakhah. This reference serves a dual aim: first, it strengthens the sense of threat to knowledge that is exclusively orally transmitted; second, it signals that this knowledge is to be redeemed only by shifting from oral to written discourse, a topos that is widely repeated in narratives of the history of Jewish law.
The transition to a specific discussion of esoteric knowledge takes place immediately after the reference to the Oral Torah, in the following passage:
Now if there was insistence that the legalistic science of law should not, in view of the harm that would be caused by such a procedure, be perpetuated in a written compilation accessible to all the people, all the more could none of sitrey torah have been set down in writing and be made accessible to the people. On the contrary they were transmitted [orally] by a few men belonging to the elite to a few of the same kind, just as I made clear to you from their saying: sitrey torah may only be transmitted to a counsellor, wise in crafts, and so on. This was the cause that necessitated the disappearance of these great roots of knowledge from the nation.Footnote 77
Maimonides frames the two passages with an assertion of loss, which appears in the opening sentence of the first passage and in the closing sentence of the second. In between, he shifts from discussing the Oral Torah in its halakhic manifestation, whose survival depended on its being written, to relating to the orality of sitrey torah. In contrast to the legal corpus, the esoteric knowledge was not transmitted in written form, a circumstance that brought about its loss.Footnote 78 Furthermore, the reference to the halakhic body of knowledge that appears prior to his focus on sitrey torah allowed Maimonides to tie his narrative of the esoteric knowledge to the well-rooted anxiety of forgetfulness, which hovers over the Torah and which was a prominent topos in late-antique and early medieval rabbinic discussions.Footnote 79 In light of the deep-rooted anxiety of forgetfulness in late-antique and medieval Judaism, Maimonides’s audacious narrative becomes not only plausible but almost inevitable, even though his claim regarding the complete loss and subsequent oblivion of a body of knowledge that was previously held by the nation (or even a small circle of its sages) is unprecedented in earlier Jewish sources. Maimonides cloaks the audacity of his claim in another veil, namely his assertion that “This was the cause that necessitated [my emphasis] the disappearance of these great roots of knowledge from the nation,” which treats the loss of the esoteric knowledge as unavoidable because of its oral transmission. The notion of the Oral Torah’s destiny of oblivion is articulated here in a naturalistic manner that relates the forgetting to the oral medium of transmission.Footnote 80 Here, we can also discern an important difference between Maimonides’s argument and that of Ibn Sīnā: Ibn Sīnā does not refer to a corpus of lost knowledge but to an esoteric knowledge that faces the threat of being forgotten but that is still, at least apparently, existent.
Although the esoteric lore has been lost, Maimonides argues that its restoration is possible, through a venture that can be undertaken by an individual who will restore the lost tradition and revive the knowledge through the power of his intellect. To his twofold argument regarding the loss of the esoteric knowledge and the powers of an outstanding individual to redeem the immense body of knowledge from oblivion, Maimonides adds a conclusion according to which the individual to whom these teachings are revealed must put them in writing, though in a careful and limited manner. Given that the loss of the esoteric lore has already happened once, and in light of its sudden resurgence, thanks to the efforts of the individual, this individual (namely, Maimonides himself) must prevent the subsequent loss of the secrets by committing them to a written treatise of his own making. Herein lies Maimonides’s final emphasis: binding the crisis of esotericism with a change in the mode-of-being of the esoteric knowledge, a change that entails a shift from orality to textuality, as well as an act of self-exemption from the traditional prohibition on writing.
The three claims—also put forth by Ibn Sīnā in his epilogue—which involve the crisis of esotericism, the individual who uncovered the secrets by his sheer intellectual power, and the obligation to transmit them in writing for the sake of their continuity, are clustered together in the introduction to the third part of the Guide:
It has been made clear that even that portion of it that becomes clear to him who has been given access to the understanding of it [namely, the account of the chariot], is subject to a legal prohibition against its being taught and explained except orally to one man having certain stated qualities, and even to that one only the chapter headings may be mentioned. This is the reason why the knowledge of this matter has ceased to exist in the entire religious community, so that nothing great or small remains of it. And it had to happen like this, for this knowledge was only transmitted from one chief to another and has never been set down in writing. If this is so, what stratagem can I use to draw attention toward that which may have appeared to me as indubitably clear, manifest, and evident in my opinion, according to what I have understood in these matters? On the other hand, if I had omitted setting down something of that which has appeared to me as clear, so that that knowledge would perish when I perish, as is inevitable, I should have considered that conduct as extremely cowardly with regard to you and everyone who is perplexed. It would have been, as it were, robbing one who deserves the truth of the truth, or begrudging an heir his inheritance. And both those traits are blameworthy…. If that interpretation is examined with a perfect care by him for whom this Treatise is composed and who has understood all its chapters—every chapter in its turn—the whole matter, which has become clear and manifest to me, will become clear to him so that nothing in it will remain hidden from him. This is the ultimate term that it is possible to attain in combining utility for everyone with abstention from explicit statements in teaching anything about this subject—as is obligatory.Footnote 81
Like Ibn Sīnā in his Risāla, Maimonides portrays his time as a unique window of opportunity in which—in contradistinction to eras of decline and loss—the redemption of the esoteric lore is possible, but only at the price of transmitting knowledge in a way that deviates from the traditional modes of transmission. Maimonides asserts that, in writing the Guide of the Perplexed, he indeed breaches a prohibition, but he presents his Guide as a project that will rectify this infraction and will ease the tension that is involved in his radical act. His assertion of the acute need for revelation is depicted as a temporary phase in the vast process he sought to generate in the Guide of the Perplexed, which was to lead to overcoming the crisis of esoteric knowledge and its restoration through the writing of a treatise that will bestow the secrets to those worthy of receiving them and will prevent the esoteric lore from relapsing into a state of crisis. But Maimonides, like Ibn Sīnā before him, was aware of the perils involved in the transition between modes of transmission, and of the uncontrollable nature of the dissemination of written materials. This may be the reason for Maimonides’s adjuration—which resembles Ibn Sīnā’s—to his reader to treat the treatise in an appropriately cautious manner:
I adjure—by God, may He be exalted!—every reader of this Treatise of mine not to comment upon a single word of it and not to explain to another anything in it save that which has been explained and commented upon in the words of the famous Sages of our Law who preceded me. But whatever he understands from this Treatise of those things that have not been said by any of our famous Sages other than myself should not be explained to another; nor should he hasten to refute me, for that which he understood me to say might be contrary to my intention. He thus would harm me in return for my having wanted to benefit him and would repay evil for good.Footnote 82
This adjuration reveals the audacity involved in the writing of the treatise and, at the same time, an anxiety that attests to an astute awareness of the inability to control the destiny of the written text and the ways in which it will be interpreted as it begins to circulate.
Conclusion
In light of the textual evidence presented in this article, we can see that Maimonides fashioned the literary framework of his Guide in close correspondence to al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-anwār and Ibn Sīnā’s epilogue to the Risāla fī aḥwāl al-nafs. These works provided him with both the genre and the lines of argumentation that underlie his treatise’s address to its recipients and through which he sought to pave the way to the hearts of the elite intellectual Jewish milieu of his age and to reshape the realm of secret knowledge in the Jewish tradition.
The investigation of the Guide’s opening unit, in comparison with the introduction to the third part of the treatise, has revealed a hitherto unnoticed bifurcation of the reasons for the writing of two distinct narratives. While these narratives do partly overlap—for instance, insofar as both address a crisis and overcoming it—they are nonetheless independent and distinct. One narrative is focused on the education of an individual and revolves around the disciple’s desire for knowledge and his perplexity—an issue addressed mainly in the “epistle dedicatory” and the general introduction—whereas the other narrative, in marked difference, focuses—both in its first appearance in I:71 and in the introduction to the third part—on the cultural heritage, which Maimonides terms “inheritance.” Here, Maimonides’s emphasis is on redeeming a body of knowledge (sitrey torah), which is highly esteemed in terms of its place in the hierarchy of knowledge, from the state of oblivion that has erased it from the cultural memory of the elite circles responsible for preserving it. In the scholarship to date, this bifurcation has not been explained or discerned. By tracing the different intellectual sources for these two narratives, the analysis I have offered here sheds light on the very existence of this divergence and also suggests a possible reason for it.
In conclusion, I wish to mention briefly a remarkable phenomenon that followed the Maimonidean implementation and integration of the Islamic discourse of disclosing secrets. The two motifs that were integrated in the Guide—the declarations on the crisis of forgetting of sitrey torah, and the urgent necessity to commit them to writing—had an enormous impact on the proliferation of writings in the field of sitrey torah in the post-Maimonidean age. In contrast to Maimonides’s hope that the writing of his own Guide would be accepted as a resolution of the crisis of lost knowledge, or at the very least would provide the basic framework, content-wise, for the discourse in the realm of sitrey torah,Footnote 83 his account in fact instigated an ongoing process of multifarious writings in the genre of sitrey torah.
As soon as the notion of forgetfulness took root—through the wide circulation of the Guide on the Iberian Peninsula, in Provence, and in the East—a process unforeseen by Maimonides took place. Instead of convincing his readers that the crisis of forgetfulness had been resolved by writing the Guide, the Guide promulgated an acute sense of crisis, as well as an ethos of breaching the limits of secrecy and the possibility of individual creation in the field of sitrey torah. Authors such as Samuel ibn Tibbon,Footnote 84 Joseph ibn Aknin,Footnote 85 Isaac Ibn Laṭif,Footnote 86 and Abraham Abulafia,Footnote 87 and possibly later authors also, wrote their works by reproducing, partly or in full, the argument put forth by Maimonides in his Guide, even though the contents of their works differ dramatically from each other and from the Guide. Despite these many differences, these authors all appropriated a set of presuppositions from Maimonides that shaped their own ethos and modus operandi. These presuppositions were: (a) that the esoteric tradition was lost (in part or fully) to Israel, creating an immense vacuum at the heart of Jewish culture; (b) that it is in the powers of an outstanding individual to restore the immense body of knowledge of these lost esoteric teachings; and (c) that the individual to whom these teachings are revealed must publicly disseminate them, in writing, as part of their revival. The Guide shaped these authors’ self-understanding, informed their conception of what happened to the esoteric teachings over the course of Jewish diasporic history, and provided them with a particular method and genre to counteract the crisis of the esoteric tradition, creatively and, indeed, subversively. Why subversively? Because while all did heed the Maimonidean view of the history of the esoteric tradition and its loss, and while they acquired from the Guide the range of possibilities available to them in their present—specifically, the necessity to reveal the secrets in writing as a fitting measure in a time of crisis—they did not subscribe to Maimonides’s claim that the Guide itself sufficed to fill the vacuum and complete the restoration of the lost tradition. This predicament left them with a discursive field highly esteemed in terms of its place in the hierarchy of knowledge but rather undefined and nebulous in terms of its contents, a field that summoned the select few to step up and fill the vacuum. This is the backdrop against which the aforementioned authors emerged and from which they embarked on their respective grand intellectual and cultural enterprises.Footnote 88 That said, it is important to stress that even when the authors diverged from the Guide in terms of both content and method, the book still left its imprint on the genre in which they wrote their works. Put otherwise, the contents of their works were poured into a cultural vessel cast by Maimonides in his Guide; and this vessel, in turn, was previously forged in the furnace of Islamic culture.
