Читать книгу The Secret Faith of Maestre Honoratus - Maud Kozodoy - Страница 11

CHAPTER 3

Efodi

The Commentary on the Guide of the Perplexed

In the seventeenth century, Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591–1655) reported in a letter that while in Egypt he had seen something like eighteen commentaries on the Guide, long and short. He classified four of them by reference to the four sons of the Passover haggadah. One was by “Efodi,” a variation of the name Efod that was used to refer to Duran beginning sometime in the fifteenth century. Delmedigo’s evaluation of Duran as the son “who does not ask” sounds at first negative. But in fact Delmedigo is not pleased with radical commentators, like Moses Narboni, who inquire too deeply into Maimonides’ secret positions and reveal them indiscriminately. For him, it would seem, the best commentator is one who explains the plain meaning of the text. He goes on: “Efodi, who is an honorable man, answers the unstated question [lit. answers the mute: meshiv ḥeresh] and, like Rashi, does not ask, [and he does so] briefly and clearly; he is the principal commentator [on the Guide] and he belongs in the category of mathematicians and astronomers.”¹ In this description, Delmedigo has put his finger on two real characteristics of Duran’s commentary: first, his responsiveness to difficulties in the text and the central fact that many of his glosses are primarily aimed at clarification; second, the salience of Duran’s mathematical and astronomical interests.

The quality of “not asking,” which Delmedigo sees as similar to Rashi, is that Duran may respond to a problem in the text but he will not tell you explicitly what that problem is. For each comment, one might well ask: “what is bothering Efodi?” Sometimes the problem is merely one of Tibbonide awkwardness; Duran simply restates a difficult sentence in clearer syntactical form. For example, the Guide opens with these words (in Pines’s translation from the Arabic) to Joseph, the work’s addressee: “When you came to me, having conceived the intention of journeying from the country farthest away in order to read texts under my guidance….”² In the Hebrew translation by Samuel ibn Tibbon (c. 1150–c. 1230), the text on which Duran bases his commentary, it comes out something like this: “Behold from then you came to me, and you intended from the ends of the earth to read before me….”³ Duran glosses as follows: “from then you came to me: he means from an earlier time, when it was your intention to come before me; and you intended: he explains, before you came to me, your intention was to come.”⁴ Here it is not a question of points of doctrine; it is merely a matter of clarifying the sometimes turgid, sometimes knotty style of the Hebrew translation.

Of course, there is more to Duran’s commentary than clarification. While he does not seem to come to the text with a fully thought out system of his own, he does make numerous substantive comments reflecting his interpretive lens. He does not hesitate in general to add information, usually in a neutral (“not asking”) voice, explaining (or enlarging on) what he thinks Maimonides truly meant to say.

As for the astronomical and mathematical interests, it is likely Delmedigo knew Duran’s scientific writings apart from the commentary on the Guide. The astronomical knowledge to be found in the commentary is of no more than minor significance, and would hardly warrant designating the author an astronomer. And while the commentary does indeed include a couple of mathematical notes of varying length, with one exception they too amount to little more than clarifications. For example, Maimonides mentions someone who does not know “the measure of the cone of a cylinder.” Duran comments: “he means, [when you have a] cylinder that is equal in all of its sides to the diameter of the base of the cone, and the measure of the height of the cylinder is equal to the height of the cone, this ignoramus is ignorant of what the [ratio] is of the cone [to] the perfect cylinder.”⁵

The exception is a comment on two asymptotic lines, mentioned in Chapter 2.⁶ Maimonides, in Guide I.73, cites lines that approach each other infinitely closely but never touch as something incomprehensible to the mind, but still true. Duran’s lengthy explanation, as noted, seems to be taken from a text attributed to Jacob Bonjorn. Delmedigo claims that “[Efodi’s] wisdom can be recognized from [his] explanation of the ‘two lines’ that [Maimonides] mentions,”⁷ and it is possible that he saw this to be sufficient evidence to rank him “among the mathematicians.”

* * *

When Duran read the Guide and added his glosses, he drew heavily on his Perpignan predecessors Joseph ibn Kaspi⁸ and Moses Narboni. Maurice Hayoun has traced entire phrases to Narboni’s commentary, particularly in the portrayal of the prophet as one who draws down the divine providence on the people.⁹ Duran also cites the translator-scholar Samuel ibn Tibbon.¹⁰ All three men belonged to the tradition of “radical” Maimonideanism.¹¹ In the Guide, Maimonides discusses such problematic theological issues as creation, divine will, miracles, divine providence, prophecy, and human perfection, and can often be found contrasting the “Jewish” position on these questions with the “philosophical.” For a “radical” commentator, Maimonides was in these cases concealing his real intentions and opinions, which should be seen not as congruent with the Jewish position but instead as close to or identical with those of philosophy, that is, Aristotle.¹² By contrast, a camp of “moderate” philosophers generally interpreted Maimonides according to his so-called exoteric position, following more closely the “normative” Jewish theological line. An example: in Guide II.15, Maimonides asserts that Aristotle did not demonstratively prove the world’s eternity, and therefore a rational Jew may choose to adhere to the traditional Jewish belief that the universe was divinely created ex nihilo. Whereas a “radical,” despite this clear statement, might attribute to Maimonides himself a hidden belief in the eternity of the world, a “moderate” would take him at his word, as Duran does.

Profayt Duran certainly accepted the premise that Maimonides wrote the Guide at two different rhetorical levels: an exoteric and an esoteric. Pointing to part of the Guide’s complicated paratextual apparatus, Duran explicates the three brief biblical verses inserted by Maimonides between the Epistle Dedicatory and the Introduction to the First Part (Ps.143:8; Prov. 8:4; Prov. 22:17) in a running commentary that exposes his understanding of Maimonides’ purposes:

Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, whether I should walk in the way of Torah alone or in the way of Philosophy alone, for my desire is unto You.

Unto you, o men—the sages—I call, to study this book, for you will receive benefits from each chapter. Indeed the voice of my teaching will come to the sons of men without wisdom, for even they will receive benefit from some of the chapters of this treatise.

Incline thy ear and hear the words of the wise: he means, the knowledge of the early sages. And apply thy heart to my knowledge: your study of this book will be in order to know my knowledge and my intention.¹³

According to Duran’s reading, the first verse lays out (at least rhetorically) the dilemma of the book in terms of a stark dichotomy between reason and revelation. The Guide supposedly offers two opposing paths to God: either Torah or philosophy. The second verse shows Maimonides implicitly dividing his readers into two categories—“men” (identified as sages) and “sons of men” (the ignorant). That is to say, Maimonides is speaking to two different audiences. Both can reap advantages; presumably, the masses will benefit from a superficial reading of some of the chapters, while sages will benefit from a deep reading of all. Finally, Duran reads the last verse as describing the two kinds of material to be studied in the Guide: ancient rabbinic knowledge plus Maimonides’ own opinions. Careful study of the Guide will thus reveal two kinds of secrets: those of the early sages and those of Maimonides himself.

All of this would tend to suggest that Duran was himself a radical Maimonidean; indeed, in many cases, Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508) would lump Duran and Narboni together as outrageously radical rationalist interpreters of Maimonides. In some cases this is certainly true. For example, on the question of whether Maimonides meant to hint that the Revelation at Mount Sinai was a parable of the kinds of mental and physical preparations needed for intellectual apprehension, Duran is fully in line with Narboni’s interpretation and then offers his own impressively detailed reading of the scriptural passage.¹⁴ Still, Abravanel is overstating the case.

For “radicals” and “moderates” alike, less problematic was the implicit Maimonidean approach toward scriptural exegesis. To the degree that the creation story in Genesis, for example, can be said to contain hints and allusions that, properly interpreted, teach true knowledge about the structure, substance, and formation of the created world, then, according to Maimonides, one can undertake its exegesis by means of the intellect, armed with “the demonstrative sciences and knowledge of the secrets of the prophets.”¹⁵ In practice, this meant Aristotelian physics and metaphysics.¹⁶

Thus, in treating Maimonides’ scientific exegesis, Duran’s method is to clarify the master’s seemingly deliberate obfuscation; this may be why Abravanel viewed Duran as a radical, where Delmedigo can see him merely as an explicator. Another way of putting it is that Duran lends the reader a helping hand with the scientific explication of biblical passages on which Maimonides himself waxes particularly obscure. Regarding the scientific content of Ma‘aseh merkavah (Account of the Chariot) and Ma‘aseh bereshit (Account of the Beginning), in particular, Duran is hardly to be distinguished from the most rational interpreters of the Guide, assimilating “foreign science” into his comprehensive definition of Jewish knowledge and placing the resulting mélange at the service of biblical exegesis.

One of Maimonides’ obscure pronouncements, for example, concerns the making of the firmament and the dividing of the waters. It cannot be understood without the aid of information that Maimonides has very carefully dispersed throughout the rest of the chapter. Duran’s gloss pointedly draws together the full picture:

Maimonides (in the Hebrew): Afterwards, it was divided into three forms: a part of it was seas; a part of it was firmament; a part of it was above that firmament, and all was outside the earth.¹⁷

Duran: He means that the waters that were under the firmament were one thing and the waters that were above the firmament were a second thing and the firmament itself was a third thing, and each and every one was separate in its form. And the waters that were under the firmament were the kinds of waters that are in actu, existing among us, and the waters above the firmament are the vapor that goes upward from the coldest place of the air and from them the dew is generated and they are “waters” in potentia. And the firmament itself is the cold and moist place of the air where the vapors ascend, and there the dew is generated. When [the rabbis] said “the middle section was congealed,” they meant the cold part of the air where the dew is generated.¹⁸

Later glosses by Duran in this chapter reveal a similar understanding of the creation story as, in effect, a scientific allegory.¹⁹ For example, the figures of Adam and Eve represent form and matter.²⁰ Duran can thus explain, on behalf of Maimonides, that the two separate accounts in Genesis of the creation of Adam and Eve are to be understood as two complementary ways of understanding the nature of man: he is unified, in that he is a whole creature, but he is also composite, because he is made up of both form and matter.²¹ And the temptation of Eve by the snake is a symbolic account of the dangerous power exercised over our intellectual life by the imaginative faculty of the soul.²²

As for the “Account of the Chariot,” said by Maimonides to be “divine science” or metaphysics, Duran explicates Maimonides’ description of the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of four creatures (Ez. 1:5–25) in terms of the celestial order and divine governance of the world.²³ To summarize Duran’s glosses on this section of the Guide: The four “living creatures” represent the four celestial spheres: the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the five planets, the sphere of the sun, and the sphere of the moon.²⁴ Their four faces are the four sublunar elements, moved by the four celestial spheres, such that each sphere is particular to an element. Each sphere is made to correspond with a “form,” namely, the mineral, vegetable, animal, or human (rational). These forms are impressed on sublunar matter by the celestial intellects. The four wings are equated with the four causes of the motion of the spheres, and the two hands attached to each represent the two faculties, one of generation and one of preservation, emanated from each orb to the generated things. Even though these two faculties come from the orbs, it is the separate intellects that emanate the forms of generation and preservation, while the forces that prepare sublunar beings for the reception of these forms come from the celestial bodies. Each orb is one simple body. The orbs never cease moving, nor do they speed up or slow down. Each orb has its own particular motion, due to the individual separate intellect that moves it. There is no empty space between the orbs, which are luminous because of the stars in them. The “body” under the living creatures is “first matter,” clothed by the four elemental forms. The “form of the four wheels” is the corporeal form.²⁵

The “metaphysics” here is concerned with the divine forces that govern the earth by means of the celestial motions and the emanation of the elemental and corporeal forms. Much of it can be found already in Guide I.72 and II.10. Duran himself notes in a gloss on II.10, much of which is taken up with a description of the heavenly bodies and their earthly influences: “the secret is that all that [Maimonides] is saying now is introduction and notes for his explanation of the Account of the Chariot of Ezekiel.”²⁶ As Gad Freudenthal has argued, “[w]hereas in his early writings Maimonides had repeatedly identified [the Account of the Chariot] with the most sublime metaphysics, according to the interpretation just considered, the point of Ezekiel’s Chariot visions was merely the universally accepted and quite banal idea of governance of the sublunar world by the heavenly bodies.”²⁷ But while, not too surprisingly, Duran is at ease in revealing these banal “secrets” of the Torah—that is, Maimonides’ philosophical and scientific interpretation of the scriptural text—he is slightly less comfortable attributing the problematic philosophical opinions suggested by radical commentators to Maimonides himself. In some cases, he does report the opinions of his radical predecessors without comment of his own, but in other cases he seems to try to moderate their claims.²⁸ An instance of the latter is the issue, mentioned earlier, of whether Maimonides believes in the eternity of the world.

The question comes up in Duran’s treatment of the “seventh type” of internal contradiction—the one that, according to Maimonides, is employed by an author bent on concealing “very obscure matters” from the masses. In some cases, writes Maimonides, such an author will “conceal some parts” and “disclose others”; in others, he will conduct his discussion in one place “on the basis of a certain premise” and elsewhere will “proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one.”²⁹ A putative example of such a contradiction occurs in two passages, Guide I.9 and Guide II.26. It is, for Duran, the prime example of the seventh type of contradiction; he adduces it in his gloss on Maimonides’ definition of this kind of contradiction. As Duran explains: “Out of necessity the author of the book needs to posit one premise for the sake of the masses and in another place he will posit another premise, contradicting the first, for the individual and understanding philosophers. And this hints at the explanation of the verse: ‘Thou, O Lord, sittest for all eternity, Thy throne is from generation to generation’ (Lam. 5:19), since in the chapter ‘Throne’ (I.9), he explains that it is the attribute of His grandeur and greatness, and in Pirqei de R. Eliezer, he posited that it is a description of the heavens. And the first of them is for the masses and this hints at the understanding of his words.”³⁰ In other words, in Guide I.9, Maimonides notes that in some verses the term “throne,” as in “throne of glory,” means the heavens; just as a terrestrial throne indicates the grandeur of the human king who sits on it, the heavens too indicate the grandeur of the King. Then, pointing to two biblical verses where the word “throne” cannot, in context, have the meaning of “heaven,” Maimonides asserts that there is a “wider” meaning to the word, namely, the attribute of “greatness and sublimity.”³¹ One of those two verses is Lam. 5:19: “For it states explicitly: ‘Thou, O Lord, sittest for all eternity, Thy throne is from generation to generation’ (Lam. 5:19), whereby it indicates that it is a thing not separate from Him. Hence the term throne signifies in this passage…. His sublimity and greatness that do not constitute a thing existing outside His essence.”³² As Duran glosses, “the verse has revealed that the throne of God may He be blessed is not separate from Him…. [I]t indicates that it means His grandeur and greatness.”³³ If the Lord and his throne “are not separate,” “throne” here must be nothing other than an inseparable attribute of God, namely, his greatness.

However, in Guide II.26, in discussing the phrase “throne of glory” as it appears in Pirqei de R. Eliezer, Maimonides reasons that the term “throne” must refer to a created body, for any other reading would create “a great incongruity.”³⁴ Then Maimonides adds: “the throne’s eternity a parte post [existing infinitely into the future] is expressly stated: ‘Thou, O Lord, sittest for all eternity, Thy throne is from generation to generation.’ Now if Rabbi Eliezer believed in the eternity a parte ante [having existed infinitely in the past] of the throne, the latter must have been an attribute of God and not a created body.”³⁵ As Duran glosses there: “he means to say, that indeed the orb of Aravot [the outermost sphere] that was created from nothing is eternal in the future; this is explained from scripture (Lam. 5:19).”³⁶ As Duran sees it, Maimonides’ interpretation of the verse here is his true opinion, as opposed to that expressed in I.9, “for the masses.”

In his “esoteric” commentary on the Guide, Joseph ibn Kaspi gives a “radical” reading of the two incompatible interpretations. In Guide I.9, he says, “if ‘Thy throne’ had hinted at the heavenly body, such that Scripture equated the everlastingness of this body with His everlastingness, it would have taught [the] eternity [of the universe] according to the opinion of Aristotle, and [Maimonides] rejects this [teaching] here.”³⁷ Since, as far as ibn Kaspi is concerned, Maimonides does hold (secretly) that the word “throne” refers to the celestial orb, and therefore teaches that the orb is eternal just like God, the seventh cause is duly invoked to explain the seeming contradiction.³⁸

But Duran, because he does not think that Maimonides believes in the eternity a parte ante of the world, accepts that there is a contradiction but draws the sting from it: “Perhaps he meant that it is possible that the heavens will be destroyed according to the Torah given to us in truth, and that the everlastingness of the world is not necessitated; [but] in chapter II.26 [Maimonides] explains this verse about the world’s being everlasting; it contradicts the explanation he makes here. And the solution to this is that he is behaving according to the seventh cause, and here he had to contradict.”³⁹ Duran’s suggestion—that the hidden doctrine here is the everlastingness, not the eternity, of the universe—means that the “secret” turns out to be thoroughly anodyne.⁴⁰

* * *

What is particularly interesting, at least for the purposes of this discussion, is that Duran cites, though sparingly, both The Wars of the Lord and the Commentary on Job of Gersonides (1288–1344), who was a “critical admirer”⁴¹ of Maimonides. This suggests that he had either studied Gersonides before approaching the Guide, was reading the two authors together, or would simply turn to The Wars of the Lord at appropriate points (perhaps guided by a teacher, or by another commentary).

Duran refers to Gersonides on key questions of epistemology, divine knowledge of particulars, and divine providence.⁴² On astronomical issues, there is no clear evidence that Duran had yet read and absorbed the highly technical astronomical sections of The Wars of the Lord. Still Duran does cite Gersonides twice in his comments on Guide II.24, where Maimonides discusses the problem of contradictions between Aristotelian physics and Ptolemaic mathematical astronomy (to which we will return at greater length in Chapter 5). Maimonides asserts that a “true perplexity” is the fact that the mathematical models of Ptolemy, which employ epicycles and eccentric orbs, come into conflict with the physics of Aristotle, which states that celestial matter is constrained to move in perfect circles of constant motion about a fixed point, namely, the center of the earth.⁴³ This particular issue is picked up on by Duran:

Maimonides: If epicycles exist, theirs would be a circular motion that would not revolve about an immobile thing.

Duran: He means that it has already been explained in natural science that all that moves must move with respect to an immobile thing, and this epicycle, if we posit that it exists, would move with respect to the sphere which is something not immobile. And the solution to this doubt is not difficult, for the premise made there, that everything that moves does so with respect to an immobile thing does not mean that that which moves does so with respect to a body that is primarily immobile, but it means to explain that it is not possible for there not to be an immobile body with respect to which it revolves, [even if] it moves with respect to a thousand moving bodies one after the other, so that all of them require that it be immobile. And the proof of this is that a man moves with respect to a boat and it moves, indeed, because the waters are immobile. It has already been verified that the man moves upon an immobile thing and that is the water. And thus explained ha-rav R. Levi of blessed memory: even though the epicycle moves with respect to the sphere, and it moves, since the larger [sphere] moves around something fixed [namely, the center of the earth], therefore the epicycle moves with respect to an immobile thing.⁴⁴

Duran here seems to be defending, to some extent, the practice of mathematical astronomy against Maimonides’ view that one of its central features, epicycles, is fundamentally at odds with the principles of Aristotelian motion. In doing so, he is drawing on Gersonides’ exceptionally thorough discussion of the objections to epicycles in his Wars of the Lord.⁴⁵ Another objection to Ptolemaic astronomical systems adduced by Maimonides in this same chapter concerns the issue of how the epicycles can move in reality without transferring their motion to the spheres they touch—if, as assumed, there is no vacuum in space. Again in Wars of the Lord, Gersonides posits a substance—a fluid left over from creation—that he calls “the body that does not keep its shape,” and in his gloss Duran invokes this celestial matter, in Gersonides’ name, as another answer to Maimonides.⁴⁶

In Guide II.24, Maimonides seems to note with some resignation that the most we can know about the heavens is “a tiny part of what is mathematical.” Duran, however, might interpret Maimonides’ assertion as said not resignedly but optimistically; we may not be able to know the essence and nature of the celestial realms, because we cannot touch them or experience them directly, but we can construct mathematical models of them that tell us something about their Creator, and we can speculate about them with our intellects in a constructive way.

Scholars today are divided on the issue of Maimonides’ view of the knowability of the celestial realms and its ultimate consequences for our ability to know the divine,⁴⁷ but Duran does not hesitate to attribute to Maimonides the “skeptical” view that the separate intellects are beyond human apprehension, even for Moses. When Maimonides in Guide I.54 asserts that Moses “grasped the existence of all [God’s] world with a true and firmly established understanding,” Duran interprets this to mean that “Moses our master did not apprehend perfectly the separate intellects; even the agent intellect he did not apprehend perfectly, for it is permitted to corporeal beings only to apprehend the existence of His world, that is to say, the corporeal [world]; to apprehend the essence of the matter of the celestial sphere is something that is not within the power of any sage or philosopher.”⁴⁸

With respect to knowledge of the sublunar world, Duran’s comments seem to bring Maimonides closer to Gersonides. As Duran formulates the point, with some caveats, “If you wish to apprehend that He is the principle of all existent things, persevere and contemplate and intelligize all existents. Then you will know demonstratively that the Lord is the principle of all existents and you will apprehend Him as much as you are able to apprehend, for knowledge of His essence is impossible. Therefore, whoever wishes to apprehend Him, as much as can be apprehended, let him apprehend and intelligize all the particulars of existents. And according to what he intelligizes of the particulars of the existent things, he will intelligize Him, for all existents are stamped by Him, with a spiritual, formal stamp.”⁴⁹ As the potter leaves the marks of his fingers in the clay, God has left his stamp in every detail of his creation. By examining these details, the forms of the world, one can learn something about the Maker. By apprehending the “spiritual, formal stamp” of the world, one can, to some limited extent, apprehend God. In this, Duran may be reflecting the position of Gersonides, who held that man can come to know natural laws through his sensory experience. While God knows these laws a priori, natural laws produce the individual events from which man can then deduce the laws.⁵⁰ And those laws can tell us something about God.

But what about the laws expressed by the divine governance of the earth by means of the celestial realm? Can they tell us anything about God? Maimonides calls on the reader to consider the enormous size of the universe (“this great and terrifying distance”),⁵¹ arguing that the remoteness of the orb of the fixed stars is indicative of the still greater remoteness of God. If we are at so great a distance from the body of the highest part of the orb of Saturn that “its substance and most of its actions are hidden from us,” how much more can this be said of God, “Who is not a body”?⁵² In his gloss, however, Duran asserts: “Its substance is hidden from us: he means that the substances [essences] of the spheres cannot be apprehended through the senses, only through the intellect. Most of its actions [are hidden from us]: i.e. apprehension of the actions of the heavenly bodies in this lower world, most of them are hidden from us. How much more can this be said of God: He means that [if] apprehension of the actions of the heavenly bodies is hidden from us, all the more so is it proper [to say] that the apprehension of the actions of their agent, which is not a body, and [apprehension] of Him, may He be blessed, are hidden.”⁵³

Duran allows that while we may not be able to apprehend the orb of Saturn with our material senses, we can apprehend its existence, and some of its actions, with our intellect. I understand him to mean that Saturn is so far away we can barely see it, and its motion is so slow as to be hardly detectable. We certainly cannot “see” its celestial sphere. But its existence can be apprehended with the intellect through observation of the phenomena—in particular, I would suggest, by constructing mathematical models for its motion. As for Saturn’s “actions,” it would appear that Duran is interpreting Maimonides’ words as referring not to the planet’s motions but to its influence on the lower world. What we have here is a causal chain: God “moves” the intellects, the intellects “move” the spheres and their planets, and the planets “move” the terrestrial elements. Maimonides would then be saying (in Duran’s interpretation) that since we do not fully understand the workings of the influences of the planets on this earth, how much less can we understand the workings of their causes, or of the First Cause; but from what we do observe, we can use our intellects to construct arguments about their existence. It is, however, precisely the workings of the influences of the planets on the earth that is the “esoteric” subject of the Account of the Chariot described above.

To repeat, it appears that, for Duran, the heavens are distant but not unreachable through the exercise of our minds. Indeed, as we will see in Chapter 5, Duran believed that the study of the celestial orbs, at least by means of astronomy, was worth much time and effort.

* * *

If the commentary on the Guide was written, as it seems, when Duran was relatively quite young, it is possible he was still working out his own philosophical approach. Duran’s exceptional sensitivity not only to issues of doctrine but to infelicities of expression in the Hebrew and clunky and unclear syntax may well suggest that his glosses emerged out of a pedagogical engagement with the text. But whether he was responding to student difficulties or to his own perceptive examination of the textual confusions, or even both, is hard to say. It is striking that in this work he does not refer to Judah Halevi at all, suggesting, as I argued in Chapter 1, that he had not yet encountered the Kuzari, a book that seems to have made a deep impression on his later writing.

But it also seems Duran had read at least some key parts (if not all) of Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord first. If so, it might explain his conviction that Maimonides believed that the world was created, for Gersonides took a far more positive view toward this issue, arguing against Maimonides that it was not only true, but indeed a provable proposition. To Gersonides, there was one philosophical theory that fit with both philosophy and Judaism, namely, creation out of preexistent matter. This matter, which Duran adduced in his comments on Guide II.24, was without form, neither in motion nor at rest. Similarly, for Gersonides, the universe has no end, even if it had a beginning—perhaps another reason why Duran attempted to read this as Maimonides’ “secret position.” As we saw, Duran’s defense of Ptolemaic astronomy against Maimonides is easily traceable to Gersonides as well, and in general Duran’s apparent epistemological optimism may also have its source there. In this sense, then, the commentary straddles the line between Duran’s own learning experiences and his teaching, reflecting an element of both activities. Thus, as a student might do, Duran picks and chooses from his predecessors, and seems finally to approach Maimonides from a Gersonidean viewpoint.

Duran, a member of the Iberian Jewish urban elite, and in particular of the philosophically educated medical profession, participated in an intellectual world that was grounded in an assumption of the fundamental validity of rational thought. At the same time, this world was consciously Jewish. By adhering to the Maimonidean synthesis of the Jewish religious tradition with scientific knowledge and the ideal of reason, the two sides could cohere. In a number of different ways, rationalism could be absorbed into Judaism. As we have seen, Duran, for one, seems to have been comfortable with that synthesis, and even with some of its more radical versions.