Spring 2010 - Interpretation

Creation as Parable in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed
2 6 5
In my view, then, Maimonides thinks the man of understanding
will engage in eisegesis—he will import into the text ideas that
originate outside it—and not merely in exegesis, in approaching the Torah’s
parables. As he says at 2.2:254:
Accordingly in whatever chapter you find me discoursing with a view
to explaining a matter already demonstrated in natural science, or a
matter demonstrated in divine science, or an opinion that has been
shown to be the one fittest to be believed in, or a matter attaching to
what has been explained in mathematics—know that that particular
matter necessarily must be a key to the understanding of something
to be found in the books of prophecy, I mean to say of some of their
parables and secrets. The reason why I mentioned, explained, and
elucidated that matter would be found in the knowledge it procures
us of the Account of the Chariot and the Account of the Beginning
or would be found in an explanation that it furnishes of some root
regarding the notion of prophecy or would be found in the explanation
of some root regarding the belief in a true opinion belonging to
the beliefs of Law. (Emphasis added.)
The “secular” sciences hold the key, then, to the interpretation of parables.
Two passages in the Guide might be thought to suggest otherwise,
to suggest, that is, that for Maimonides it is the Torah that must in
the final analysis serve as our guide to truth (I thank Josef Stern for bringing
these passages to my attention): 1.2:24 and 3.13:453. In the first of these
Maimonides calls the Torah “the book that is the guide of the first and last
man,” and mocks the individual who engages in theoretical speculation. On
closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that the individual Maimonides
mocks is one who has been prematurely dismissive of Scripture, failing to
appreciate (probably because he is too busy drinking and copulating and has
not devoted sufficient time and effort to proper reflection) that the Torah—in
this case its account of Adam’s sin—may be read in such a way that it does
not contradict, but rather supports, the notion that intellectual wisdom is
superior to practical wisdom, and that it is actually teaching that Adam,
as a result of his sin, was in effect demoted rather than elevated, punished
rather than rewarded. I think it is fair to say that unless one had given much
thought to these matters independently of one’s reading of Gen. 3, one would
never arrive at the interpretation Maimonides foists upon it (with some help
from Onqelos). In the second passage Maimonides calls the Torah “that book
which guides all who seek guidance.” Yet here, too, Maimonides interprets
the Torah in conformity with the dictates of reason, and not at all as the
Torah would be understood if taken on its own terms. He cautions against