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Maimonides' Doctrine of Creation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Norbert M. Samuelson
Norbert M. Samuelson
Affiliation:
Temple University
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Extract

Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed is among the most influential works ever written in religious philosophy. It occupies a unique place in Jewish religious thought. While the majority of subsequent Jewish thinkers have criticized what they understood of Maimonides' text, they have often felt obligated to struggle with his contentions. This obligation constitutes the highest expression of respect in Jewish philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , July 1991 , pp. 249 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1991

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References

1 Originally called Dalālat al-Hä'irīn, this text has been translated into many languages. Some better-known translations are: Moses Maimonides, Moreh Nevokhim (trans. Tibbon, Shmuel Ibn; Vilna: Funk, 1904)Google Scholar [Hebrew]; idem, Moreh Nevokhim: Dalālat al-Ha'irīn: Maqor ve-targum (trans. Yosef Qafah; Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Quq, 1972) [Hebrew]; idem, Dalālat al-Ha'irīn: The Guide of the Perplexed (trans. Salomon Pines; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) [English]; idem, Le guide des é gares (trans. Salomon Munk; 3 vols.; Paris: Franck, 1856-1866) [French].

2 For example, Maimonides' Guide, together with Averroes' commentaries on the works of Aristotle, were the major sources that Thomas Aquinas used to translate the Christian view of the universe into an Aristotelian schema. Similarly, the Guide played a major (although often negative) role in forming the beliefs of Spinoza.

3 Cf. Strauss, Leo, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1952) 38–94Google Scholar; and Pines, Salomon, “How to Begin to Study The Guide of the Perplexed” in Maimonides, Guide (trans., Pines, ) xi–lvi.Google Scholar While my reading of the Guide is influenced by Strauss, I do not advocate what is commonly called his “esoteric” interpretation. In this context, see Twersky, Isadore, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides (Mishneh Torah) (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar as a corrective to Strauss' interpretation.

4 Creation is discussed directly in Maimonides, Guide 2.2-28.

5 Ibid., 1.71-2.1.

6 Ibid., 1.2-12.

7 Ibid., 2.8.

8 Plato, Timaeus, 35b.Google Scholar Also cf. Plato, Respublica 617bGoogle Scholar(The Myth of Er).

9 Maimonides, , Guide 2.11Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., 2.12.

11 Ibid., 2.13; this opinion will be referred to as “the Torah view” from now on.

12 “… time itself being one of the created things. For time is consequent upon motion, and motion is an accident of what is moved.” (Maimonides, , Guide 2.13, p. 281Google Scholar; page references when necessary are from Pines's translation of the Guide.) Note that later on in the Guide Maimonides often says that according to this view the universe was “created in time” (e.g., ibid., 2.17, p. 298). Clearly these two statements are contradictory. Admittedly I am simplifying Maimonides' position, but my reason for preferring Guide 2.13 is that this reading is more coherent with everything else Maimonides says about his Torah view than is Guide 2.17. Furthermore, Guide 2.13 speaks directly about this view, whereas in the later passages the reference is a single line allusion to this position in the context of a direct discussion of the Aristotelian eternity/necessity account of creation. It is possible to reconcile the two contrasting claims by understanding the second set of passages as meaning that in contrast to the Aristotelian view, the Torah view could loosely be called “creation in time” in the sense that the universe has an origin, albeit that the origin, strictly speaking, does not occur in time.

13 Ibid., 2.13, pp. 282-84.

14 Ibid., p. 284.

15 Ibid., p. 285.

16 Multiple versions can be found in Greek and Latin science. Of these the most important were written by the sixth-century BCE Miletians (viz., Thales [624-546 BCE], Anaximander [610-545 BCE], and Anaximenes [died ca. 525 BCE]), Heraclitus (540-475 BCE), Empedocles (ca. 500-430 BCE), Anaxagoras (ca. 488-128 BCE), the atomists [Leucippus of Miletus (332-262 BCE), Democritus of Abdera (ca. 460-370 BCE), Epicurus of Samos (341-270 BCE), and Lucretius (ca. 95-55 BCE)], the Stoics [Zeno of Cition, Cyprus (ca. 332-262 BCE), Chrysippus of Soli, Cilicia (ca. 280-207 BCE), and Posidonius of Apamea, Syria (ca. 135-51 BCE)], Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE), Archimedes (287-212 BCE), Seneca (ca. 3 BCE-65 CE) Plutarch (ca. 46-120 CE) and Ptolemy (ca. 150 CE). Cf. Claggett, Marshall, Greek Science in Antiquity (London: Collier Macmillan, 1955)Google Scholar; Farrington, Benjamin, Greek Science (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1944-1949)Google ScholarPubMed; Pederson, Olaf and Phil, Mogens, Early Physics and Astronomy (New York: American Elsevier, 1974)Google Scholar; Sarton, George, Introduction to the History of Science (Baltimore: Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1927)Google Scholar; and Vlastos, Gregory, Plato's Universe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

17 Maimonides, , Guide 2.14Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., 2.14, p. 285.

19 Ibid., 2.13, p. 283.

20 Ibid., 2.14, 15, 17-23. Maimonides also considered a set of arguments by an unnamed group of his contemporaries (hα-'αhαronim) whose position he identified, in Guide 2.21, as Aristotelian. While these philosophers explicitly affirm that the universe was created with intention (καναnαh), Maimonides argued their so-called purpose was really Aristotle's necessity.

21 Ibid., 2.16.

22 Ibid., 2.17.

23 Ibid., 2.19, p. 303.

24 Ibid., pp. 306-7.

25 Specifically Maimonides noted that there seems to be no way to demonstrate why spheres need to be located within spheres rather than existing independently of each other in space, why ten stars should be clustered together in the eighth sphere while other spheres contain only a single globe, or why these celestial bodies should have different areas. (Ibid., pp. 309-10)

26 Ibid., 2.24.

27 “Everything that Aristotle said about all that exists from beneath the sphere of the moon t o the center of the earth is indubitably correct,… [but] everything that Aristotle expounds with regard to the sphere of the moon and that which is above it is, except for certain things, something analogous to guessing and conjecturing.” (Ibid., 2.22, p. 320.)

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid., 2.19 and 22.

30 Ibid., 2.20.

31 Ibid., 2.14, p. 285.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 2.27.

34 Ibid., 2.23, 25-28.

35 Ibid.. 2.25.

36 Maimonides himself (Ibid., 2.25, p. 327) contrasted what scripture says about creation i n time with divine corporeality.

37 Ibid., p. 328.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., pp. 328-29.

42 Ibid., 2.26-27.

43 Ibid., 2.28.

44 Maimonides (ibid., 2.26) noted this object in the name of Rabbi Eliezer as a source of perplexity.

45 Harvey, Warren Zev, “A Third Approach to Maimonides' Cosmogony-Prophetology Puzzle,” HTR 74 (1981) 287–301Google Scholar.

46 Davidson, Herbert, “Maimonides' Secret Position on Creation,” in Twersky, Isadore, ed., Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979) 1. 16–40Google Scholar.

47 Fox, Marvin, “Creation or Eternity: God in Relation to the World,” in idem, , ed., Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1990) 251–96Google Scholar.

48 In fact this is what Levi Ben Gershon (Gersonides) concluded in Treatise 6 of The Wars of the Lord (Riva di Trento: n.p., 1560 and Leipzig: Lark, 1866).Google ScholarCf. Freudenthal, Gad, “Cosmogonie et Physique chez Gersonide,” REJ 145 (1986) 295–314Google Scholar; Staub, Jacob J., The Creation of the World According to Gersonides (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Touati, Charles, La Pensée Philosophigue et Théologique de Gersonides (Paris: Minuit, 1973)Google Scholar.

49 Davidson, , “Maimonides' Secret Position on Creation,” 21Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., 22.

51 Ibid., 29.

52 The writing of this section was motivated by an address at the 1990 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Jewish Studies by Roslyn Weiss, entitled “Torah without Revelation: A New Approach to Maimonides on Creation.” She was kind enough to share with me a written draft of her as yet unpublished essay.

53 Kaplan, Lawrence, “Maimonides on the Miraculous Element in Prophesy,” HTR 70 (1977) 233–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarHarvey, , “A Third Approach,” 288-89, 293, 298–99Google Scholar.

54 Maimonides, , Guide 2.32, p. 360Google Scholar.

55 Or, in Harvey's translation (“A Third Approach,” 290), “the vulgar.”

56 The modern scholars whose positions Kaplan discussd are, most notably, Zevi Diesendruck, Isaac Husik, and Harry Austryn Wolfson.

57 Kaplan, , “Maimonides on the Miraculous,” 249–52Google Scholar.

58 Ibid., 250-56.

59 Cf. Maimonides, Guide 2.32-33, 36–38, esp. 2.36Google Scholar.

60 Kaplan, , “Maimonides on the Miraculous,” 236Google Scholar.

61 There are many cases in Kaplan's essay where he should have distinguished between necessary and sufficient conditions. For example, he claimed that the interpretations of both the medieval and modern commentators are untenable because “Maimonides is not speaking of God's withholding prophecy but of God's granting prophecy” (ibid., 244). However, this is a difference of no significance. Because human excellence is a necessary and not a sufficient condition for prophecy, God must do something for someone to be a prophet, but there is nothing he must do to prevent someone from being a prophet. By not willing someone qualified to be a prophet, God withholds the prophecy. However, to “withhold” is an absence of action, not an action, and hence, as such, does not violate the principle that “God leads man to perfection” (ibid., 242). No one has ever claimed that God must do everything to perfect everyone or everything. If that were the case, then everyone or everything would be God, since to the extent that they are not God they are not perfect. Cf. Daud, Ibrahim Ibn, The Exalted Faith 2:6:2 202Google Scholar al l-203a2 of Solomon ibn Lavi's Hebrew translation copy, Mich 57, Bodleian Library, and my commentary on it in Samuelson, Norbert M. and Weiss, G., eds., The Exalted Faith of Abraham Ibn Daud (Cranbury/London/Mississauga: Associated University Presses, 1986) 241–42Google Scholar.

62 A second problem with Kaplan's interpretation is his understanding of what Maimonides and other medieval Jewish philosophers meant by “miracles.” He took the term “miracle” to mean, as it often does in a modern context, an event “brought about by the direct will of God” (Kaplan, , “Maimonides on the Miraculous,” 234)Google Scholar that is contrary to the laws of nature. (Also note Kaplan's use of the concept of miracles in his discussion of Shem Tob and Efodi on p. 247.) However, I think that this is not what Maimonides meant. Rather, for him (and everyone else in this tradition), a miracle is an event witnessed to and interpreted by a prophet to have profound significance for understanding how God functions in the world. Rather than being an event that is contrary to the laws of nature, it is an event that uniquely verifies that the laws of nature are expressions of divine will. This interpretation of what a miracle is does not affect the main line of my argument with either Kaplan or Harvey, so there is no reason to present it here. However, I have argued for this interpretation in connection with Rosenzweig's analysis of the traditional concept of miracles, in Samuelson, Norbert M., “Halevi and Rosenzweig on Miracles,” in Blumenthal, David R., ed., Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times (BJS 54; Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984) 157–72Google Scholar.

63 Other points of comparison between the two sets also seem likely. For example, in both sets there are positions attributed to the Aristotelians (C3 and P2) and to the law of Moses (Cl and P3). Furthermore, as Harvey has shown convincingly (“A Third Approach,” 292), within each set one view can be read as a qualification of another view. For example, P3 is a qualification of P2—not everyone qualified for prophecy receives prophecy; and C2 is a qualification of C3-not everything is subject to generation and corruption, i.e., while everything within the universe is subject to change in time, the universe (everything that is, including prime matter) is eternal, and therefore creation is not a temporal act.

64 Harvey, , (“A Third Approach,” 289–300).Google Scholar Harvey's argument for the entailment of Cl and PI seems to involve a misunderstanding of the term “supernatural” that parallels Kaplan's apparent misunderstanding of the term “miracle.” Maimonides explicitly stated that a motive for rejecting the Aristotelian opinion on cosmogony (C3) is that it excludes the possibility of miracles. However, Harvey did not take this to be a serious objection to C3, because Maimonides also stated (Guide 2.25, p. 328; 2.29, pp. 345-46) that the view of the Torah on prophecy (P3) “need not be taken as referring to a supernatural miracle” (Harvey, , “A Third Approach,” 291), and that, according to Guide 2.25, it is possible to interpret miracles in such a way as to be coherent with “Aristotle's theory of eternity”Google Scholar(Harvey, , “A Third Approach,” 291 n. 15).Google Scholar The implication of this footnote is that Harvey believes that a miracle is something supernatural in the sense that it contradicts a law of nature. However, as we have already stated, this is not what Maimonides meant by a miracle. If such an act is “supernatural,” it is not in the sense of being unnatural; rather, it is an act that goes beyond human nature. Clearly a prophet is seen to do something beyond human nature-he has a disposition to act in a way that human beings who are less than prophets are not able to do. In this sense prophets, because they can prophesy, naturally are superhuman. Similarly, humans, because they can reason, naturally are super-animal, and animals, because they can initiate their own locomotion, are super-mineral. Furthermore, as we have seen above, Maimonides' qualification about interpreting the biblical witness in a nonliteral way is to establish the viability of the Platonic position of eternal creation (C2), and not the position of the Aristotelians (C3).

65 Harvey, , “A Third Approach,” 292Google Scholar.

66 Kaplan, , “Maimonides on the Miraculous,” 250, 253.Google Scholar

67 Harvey, (“A Third Approach,” 293)Google Scholar in fact granted that there is no logical incompatibility between the claim that the universe is created and the claim that it is eternal.

68 I take this to mean that Maimonides limited the validity of Aristotelian science to Aristotle's Physica, to the exclusion of both De caelo and Metaphysica.

69 In fact, it would be obvious to any Aristotelian that the laws are different. For example, whereas natural motion in the sublunar world is rectilinear, natural motion in the heavens is circular.

70 Henceforth this threefold claim about God will simply be referred to as “God.”

71 Harvey, (“A Third Approach,” 296)Google Scholar identifies the text as Guide 2.1-2.

72 The form of argument employed here is a modus tollens, that is, (1) either A or B; (2) i f A, then C; (3) if B, then C; (4) therefore, C. In this case, A = the world is created; B = the world is eternal; C = God. Cf. Samuelson, Norbert M., “Comments on Maimonides' Concept of Mosaic Prophecy,” Central Conference of American Rabbis Journal 18 (1971) 9–25Google Scholar.

73 Maimonides, , Guide 2.26.Google Scholar For Harvey's, discussion, see “A Third Approach,” 296–97Google Scholar.

74 Harvey, , “A Third Approach,” 297–98Google Scholar.

75 Ibid., 297.

76 Ibid., 297 n. 40. Cf. Maimonides, , Guide, 2.13, p. 284Google Scholar.

77 In the Timaeus necessity (άνάγκη) is intimately associated with spontaneity (τòαύτóματον), nature (Φύσις), and chance (τύχη). Its complement, however, is associated with design (τέχνη) or more literally, with what requires “skill” and “craft.” Cf. Plato, Timaeus 47e–48eGoogle Scholar; Cranford, Francis MacDonald, Plato's Cosmology (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, n.d.) 165Google Scholar; Plato, Leges 10Google Scholar; Aristotle, Physica 2.4–6Google Scholar; Aristotle, Metaphysica A3–10, B2Google Scholar; and Solmsen, Friedrich, Aristotle's System of the Physical World: A Comparison with his Predecessors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1960) 102–17Google Scholar.

78 I suspect that Spinoza read Maimonides in much the way that Harvey did and that this misreading of Maimonides' position is at the heart of Spinoza's affirmation of mechanical necessity and denial of purposive causation in his Ethics.

79 See n. 12 above.

80 Fox, , “Creation or Eternity,” 290.Google Scholar

81 “min shay'” in the original; “me-davar” in Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation.

82 “lo me-davar ela ahar ha-he der ha-muhtaf” in Ibn Tibbon's Hebrew translation.

83 In fact Maimonides (Guide 2.13, p. 283) explicitly said that at this stage of the argument he is oversimplifying the alternatives, “The people belonging to this sect [who affirm a Platonic view] are in their turn divided into several sects. But it is useless to mention their various sects and opinions in this Treatise.”

84 Ibid., 2.25, pp. 328-29.

85 “Prime matter” is not the same thing as the “existent matter” that Maimonides (Guide, 2.13, p. 283) discussed.

86 Gershon, Levi Ben (Gersonides), The Wars of the Lord, Treatise 6. Cf. n. 48 aboveGoogle Scholar.

87 Fox, Marvin, “Maimonides' Method of Contradictions: A New View,” idem, Interpreting Maimonides, 67–90Google Scholar.

88 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

89 Cf. Schwarzschild, Steven S., “Moral Radicalism and ‘Middlingness’ in the Ethics of Maimonides,” Studies in Medieval Culture 11 (1977) 65–94Google Scholar, reprinted in Kellner, Menachem, ed., The Pursuit of the Ideal: Jewish Writings of Steven Schwarzschild (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990) 137–60Google Scholar.