[In the following essay, Funkenstein contends that Gersonides's undramatic style properly reflects his scholastic, logical nature.]

1. Gersonides' biblical commentary does little to ingratiate itself to its readers—be they medieval or modern. It has nothing of Rashi's charm, his unique blend of correct grammatical readings with pedagogically instructive homilies.¹ It lacks the grammatical acumen of Ibn-Ezra, who taught us how always to interpret the biblical vocabulary and imagery in context.² It also lacks Ibn-Ezra's attractive speculative enigmas. It avoids two dimensions of exegesis which made Naḥmanides' commentary dear to its readers—the typological-historical hunt for prefigurations and their fulfillment (remez) and the allusions to kabbalistic-mystical symbolism (sod; derekh ha-emet la-amito).³ Nor was Gersonides endowed with Ibn Kaspi's keen sense for anachronisms, his capacity to place biblical customs and institutions in the context of bygone historical circumstances.⁴ His is rather a dry, schematic, repetitive and dogmatic exercise. It is, of course, of some use for the reconstruction of his philosophical and scientific position—but again not excessively so, since Gersonides main work, his Wars of the Lord, hides nothing. Unlike the Guide of his admired Maimonides, Ralbag felt no need to conceal his real opinions or to wrap them in an ambiguous language.

Why, then, bother to examine so boring a commentary? Partly, of course, because it is there—the ultimate rationale for the historian. Partly because it fleshes out, in many cases, the details of positions which his main treatise mentions but briefly and with much abstraction, as e.g. the ways in which astrology is relevant to the study of collective fates—to the study of history. In part because the very dryness of this commentary, especially the Perush ha-Torah (Commentary on the Torah), is interesting and telling. Let me start with the latter feature.

2. In a famous essay, Husserl spoke of “philosophy as an exact science” (Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft). Philosophy, he believed, could become an exact science if it abandons speculation in favor of a systematic search for empirical, a priori, “eidetic” structures. Gersonides, needless to say, was not a precursor of phenomenology; yet, like Husserl or Spencer or Russell, he too was convinced that most philosophical issues can be settled with a good knowledge of the sciences coupled with a methodical application of common sense. While Maimonides left many cardinal metaphysical questions explicitly unsettled—notably the controversy over the aeternitas mundi—Gersonides believed in the ability of philosophy to settle them, and, moreover, had no fear that, by settling them, he would unsettle faith.

Comparing the positions of Maimonides and Gersonides in the matter of creatio e nihilo teaches us something about both, and brings us to a point neglected in the ongoing debate about Maimonides' alleged duplicity.⁵ Even Strauss (et sequaces eius) cannot deny that Maimonides' explicit position amounts to the argument that neither qadmut ha-'olam (eternity of the world) nor 'iddush ha-ḥolam (createdness of the world) can be proven demonstratively; nor, for that matter, can the middle stand be proven, according to which the world is both eternal and “created”—the latter in the sense that it is utterly contingent upon God's will to preserve it. God could have always annihilated it from eternity. Only tradition and plausibility, this is Rambam's overt position, incline him towards the big bang hypothesis. Now even if we concede to Strauss that Maimonides' true, concealed, opinion contradicted his declared stance, even if we concede that Rambam really held the world to be eternal and that he disguises his true beliefs ad usum delphini—even if we concede all that, we need not and cannot argue that he thought the position he allegedly held to be true (in secret) to be capable of a demonstrative proof. His arguments in favor of both contradictory positions are too convincing—it is clear that Maimonides put forth the best possible case for either one of them.

The same holds true, mutatis mutandis, of the eternity of the soul. It may, or may not, coincide with the eternity of the active intellect—still one can argue for a sense in which individuality is preserved. The hidden opinion of Maimonides may have been that the prophecy of Moses, above the famous eleventh step in the ladder, is capable of a naturalistic explanation—and a case can be made for the hypothesis that Maimonides thought so, but no case can be made for the hypothesis that he thought it could be proven demonstratively one way or the other: except, perhaps, in Moses' own mind.⁶ And finally: God, according to Maimonides, constitutes the ultimate enigma; wherefore the discourse about God should be confined to negations of privations and attributes of action that tell you a lot about the world, but nothing about God.⁷

In short: Maimonides' program—the manner in which he thought his book could guide the perplexed—was not centered around matters we could not know at all and not even around that which is dubious. It rather focuses, having cleared the ground, around that which we can hold safely, be it much or little. He shows us which theories can be rejected with certainty—theories of emanation and kalam atomism.⁸ He constructs a proof for God's existence which is valid whether or not the world is eternal. Like a good physician, Maimonides stresses the confidence in what he does know for certain rather than his doubts about that which he does not know for sure: the latter might only confuse and harm the patient, even the educated one. But again like a conscientious doctor, he was keenly aware how little he knew for sure. This, I believe, is a line of interpretation which avoids both the pitfalls of Straussians and Anti-Straussians.

Ralbag, by contrast, believed that we have certain knowledge of many more matters than Maimonides believed to be the case—perhaps because his criteria of demonstration were lower. And as to matters we do not have knowledge about (e.g. bodily resurrection), he does not treat them at all. That the world is created (qua form) can be proven as strictly as that its matter (qua potentiality) is eternal.⁹ Of God we can know many things, positive attributes are not at all detrimental to his transcendent unity.¹⁰ His omniscience excludes knowledge of singulars qua singulars, past or future contingents: Gersonides assumes, without saying so, that God's knowledge does not differ from ours.¹¹ Interesting in all of these positions is not only that Ralbag held them, but with what ease, lucidity and transparency he did so. He has nothing to hide. His style is, accordingly, precise, highly non-ornamental and undramatic—the style of a scholastic quaestio. Indeed, the difference between him and Rambam is more than a difference of mentality of persuasion. It is a difference of cultural climates. In the dār al-Islām philosophy was always on the defense; not so in the Europe of Scotus and Ockham, which fought the wars of the Lord with the proper rational arguments; and which has learnt that an argument, though short of absolute certainty, can be still held to be good and valid in physicis.¹² At any rate, this unidimensionality of Gersonides' thought and style are the ultimate source of the slight effect of boredom it may exude, especially in the Commentary on the Torah to which we now turn.

3. Three characteristics distinguish Gersonides' commentary from others: (a) His belief in the relative transparency of the biblical text made him an enemy of mystical or typological readings à la Naḥmanides. (b) His belief in philosophy as an exact science led him to stress the rational character of the Torah not only in a negative, but in a positive sense. Philosophical allegory is the peshaṭ (literal sense) and it serves not only to refute and remove wrong opinions but to delineate a complete, correct cosmology (though pedagogically attuned to lesser minds) and metaphysics. This was unlike Ibn-Ezra or Maimonides. (c) His belief in the complete, rational, comprehensive nature of the Torah led him, again unlike Maimonides, to deny that any of its institutions, including sacrifices, may have a merely contingent-historical reason; and to seek in it the foundation of all Jewish Law, written and oral. Let me elaborate these features at the hand of the book of Genesis.

The story of creation, according to Ibn-Ezra, is not a cosmology. It is rather the story of the formation, within the sublunar world, of dry land through natural forces. “The heavens” are not the astronomical heavens (these are called, he says, shmey shamayim rather than shamayim), but rather the air above us.¹³ The Genesis story does not, of course, contain wrong cosmological information; it just tells us as little of it as is necessary to understand the place of humans in their sublunar realm, and that which is told is told “in the language of human”—scriptura humane loquitur. Here and there, Ibn-Ezra hints that the true story of creation is a story of emanation (ligzor we-lasim gevul lanigzar).¹⁴ Except for the latter, Maimonides seems to have concurred, all the more so since he was aware of the structural lacunae of science. The Bible is not a scientific treatise. Gersonides thought otherwise.

Naḥmanides, by contrast, took a maximalist position—the Bible does contain all the science and wisdom there is. The philosophical allegoresis is, to him, peshutṭo shel miqra (Scripture's literal sense)! “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” means that God has created e nihilo the prime matter of the heavens and the separate prime matter of the earth;¹⁵ and so on. But Naḥmanides' ultimate aim is to undermine the philosophers' enterprise with their own means. The cosmos and history are full of “hidden miracles” (nissim nistarim).¹⁶ Even that which philosophy sees as most natural—the natural place, e.g., of the element of fire above that of air—is a miracle contra naturam, for air is the most subtle of elements (ha-daq she-ba-yesodot) and only by divine decree does it “hover above the waters”, as Scripture says, rather than being above the fire (ḥoshekh).¹⁷ Indeed, the philosophical explication is but one of four modes he employs (probably under Christian influence), the quattuor sensus scripturae. Moraliter (derash) the story of Genesis teaches us a world-historical rule of divine providence—humans are exiled from their place when they sin. Mystice (sod, be-derekh ha-emet la-amito) the story of creation is the story of emanation and interaction of divine names and forces—kol ha-Torah kulla ena ella shemotaw shel ha-Q.B.H. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” means that the second Sefira, Reshit, emanated a third, Elohim, which in turn emanated all others (Shamayim wa-Aretz). That Reshit or Hokhma is second is indicated by the letter [bēth] which is crowned with a keter.¹⁹Analogice, the story of creation prefigures the six ages of the world; that which was created each day prefigures the main event of the corresponding age: an Augustinian idea already employed by Abraham bar Hiyya.²⁰

Gersonides, by contrast, has no use of the mystical and analogical dimension. The story of creation is a straightforward cosmological account—in which nothing is omitted or hidden. Its precise place is analogous to that of Aristotle's physics in the history of Greek science; philosophy in Moses' time was “very deficient”; people did not distinguish the formal from the material causes (we-lo hayu margishim ba-sibba ha-zuriyit kelal) and held to opinions similar to the Presocratic views mentioned by Aristotle.²¹

The formal structure of the cosmos, such was the position of both Rambam and Ralbag, is teleological. In one place, Maimonides even speaks of God as zurat ha-'olam, forma mundi—clearly in a teleological sense.²² (We recall that Amalrich of Bena had his body exhumed and his bones burnt to ashes for expressing a similar view in early 13th century Paris.)²³ Yet while Maimonides qualifies his teleology in that he considers it to be neither anthropocentric nor transparent to us (wherefore it could hardly function as proof of either God's existence or creation), Gersonides, by contrast, insists on the evident, intelligible character of the teleological hierarchy of forms to the point that it could easily serve to prove even creatio e nihilo, and looks for it in the Bible.²⁴ Similarly, Maimonides denies our ability to construct a physical interpretation to accomodate the astronomical model of celestial orbits.²⁵ Gersonides asserts his ability to construct an astrophysics, and looks for it in the Bible: the “water above the firmament”, e.g., is the body which does not preserve its shape (geshem bilti shomer temunato), a plastic ethereal substance in contrast to the rigid substance of planets and stars.²⁶ With Einstein, Levi ben Gershon could easily say: “Cunning the Lord may be, but He is not devious.” Ralbag holds the biblical text to be as intelligible as nature itself: certainly in need of an expert guide, sometimes difficult and cunning, yet never a malicious trickster.

Like Maimonides (or Kant), Ralbag exempts free will—“das Faktum der praktischen Vernunft”—from natural necessities. His interpretation of necessity is at the same time more universal and less problematic than Maimonides'. Not only did Gersonides—in the Commentary on the Torah no less than in the Wars—recognize only in the sublunar domain the realm of contingency (which Maimonides expanded to all bodies inasmuch as they are material), but he also held astral constellations, an anathema to Maimonides, to be the source of necessities, governing sublunar fates, individual as well as collective.²⁷ On the other hand, however, since he did not fear the confinement of God's knowledge to universals (i.e. necessities) only, leaving singular qua singulars out of God's horizon, free will posed no paradoxes to him. What, however, about special providence? Gersonides endows it with a dialectical meaning: it amounts to the degree of participation (hitdabqut) in the agent intellect and, consequently, knowledge of ways to avoid the vagaries of chance: either through knowledge of astral constellations, or, better, sticking to right beliefs and divine precepts.²⁸ The first of those in Genesis is the commandment of procreation, since the human species is the only species which could—how right he was—destroy itself, through a consent to abstain from procreating.²⁹ By contrast, losing God's special providence amounts to being left to the forces of nature, necessary and contingent.³⁰ Most of this is well known: in the following we shall see how Gersonides applied it to Jewish history. My aim is only to show how style and content, views about nature and exegetical method, are tied together. Because Gersonides believed nature to be so much less opaque than did Maimonides—his astronomy is the ultimate witness to this position—he also believed the biblical text to be straightforward and intelligible.

4. Let us now turn to the story of the patriarchs and of Israel. Again we find the contrast to Naḥmanides flagrant and, I believe, conscious. Naḥmanides maintained that one ought to understand both the story of creation and the story of the patriarchs typologically, i.e. as prefigurations: just as God prefigures world history (the Augustinian sex aetates mundi) in the six days of creation, the patriarchs prefigured Jewish history with their acts and events. Their acts are therefore “of the category of creation for their progenies”

(she-hem ke-'inyan ha-yeṣira le-zar'am mipney shekol miqrehem ṣiyyurey devarim lirmoz u-le-hodi'a 'al kol he-'atid lavo).³¹ The method is clearly borrowed from Christian exegesis, and so are its technical terms (ṣiyyurey devarim, dimyonot, for τύπος or figura). If not for their anagogical import, one might justly deem the stories of the patriarchs “redundant matters without any purpose” (devarim meyutarim eyn bahem to'elet). Gersonides, by contrast, stresses ad nauseam the “purpose” or “usage” (to'elet, to'aliyot) of the biblical narratives.³² The choice of the same term may not be coincidental. Each section of his Commentary on the Torah commences with an “interpretation of the words” (beur ha-millot) continued by “the narrative” (ha-sippur) and followed by a detailed, elaborated list of sometimes up to a dozen or more “toalot” or “toaliyot” (“uses”), alternating between ethical purposes (middot) and instructional (de'ot). The Torah is everyman's comprehensive philosophy—theoretical, practical and political. There is no need for mystery-dimensions in the text.

Among the many prefigurations mentioned by Naḥmanides, the war against the Amalekites deserves particular notice. It prefigures the wars of the Messiahs against the fourth world monarchy, i.e. Christianity = Edom. Moses had to keep his arms raised—he knew that, whatever he did, the king Messiahs would do in the future: 'al ken hit'ameṣ Moshe badavar.³³ For Gersonides, the significance of the story is likewise eschatological, but not in the way of symbolic acts or prefigurations: rather, it instructs us about the relation of special and general providence. The Amalekites, needless to say, were well versed in astrology, and were also cunning enough to choose a time for war in which the astral constellation favored their victory.³⁴ The only exception to general astral laws and influences is human free will. In this case, only Israel's belief in God's help and victory could turn the war, wherefore Moses left the actual campaign to be led by Joshua and stood where he was visible by all to make the V sign, fortifying Israel's belief. The lesson: God helps only those who help themselves by believing in God's help—then, now, and at the end of tribulations. The very help of God consists of this belief in his help and that which it does to the souls. God, we remember, does not even know present and future contingents—precisely because of the fact of human freedom. By the same token, Israel's clamor to God affected their delivery from the Egyptian yoke “before the proper time”—prior to the astrological proper καιρός. This was made possible by educating Israel towards prefection (shlemut), i.e. by obeying God and His laws.³⁵ This was Gersonides' version of the dictum en mazal le-Yisrael, a motif which, from Yehuda Halevi to Naḥman Krochmal, stood for Israel's exemption from those laws of nature which govern other nations.

5. Almost all post-Maimonidean rationalists accepted Rambam's theory of the reasons for the precepts, including the historico-pedagogical rationale for sacrifices and the dietary laws. Gersonides, too, accepted it in part; but he could not acquiesce with a rationale which is only historically contingent. True, the sacrifices were introduced as a concession to polytheistic usages in order to wean Israel away from them. But sacrifices have also a positive function. Not only do they educate in giving. The incense affects the senses to heighten the mind's capacity for detachment (hitbadlut), a necessary precondition for prophetic meditation.³⁶ Of the same category are the symbolic acts of prophets. Here, again, the contrast to Naḥmanides is sharp.

I shall not go into the details of Gersonides' rational reconstruction of Jewish law from Scriptures—it remained, of course, a program only. The very law (and its fulfillment) is Israel's special providence—such was the lesson we drew already.

Rationalism has many faces, and escapes definitions. If I had to characterize dogmatic rationalism, medieval or modern, in one formula, I would say: a rationalist is a thinker who refuses to be surprised; nothing seems to him mysterious. Now even if we view the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 as logically necessary, it is still a great wonder why nature behaves accordingly: why, when one adds two stones and one, a fourth is not created out of nothingness to make a set of four; or why is it universally true—of birds no less than of stones. A rationalist has no such problems; he expects nature to be always consistent and “true to itself” (Newton). A mystic, by contrast, sees the world full of mysteries: τòν κόsμον μύθον ειπειν, as Sallust once said.³⁷ Of all medieval Jewish philosophers of the first rank, Gersonides came closest to being a dogmatic rationalist. This was the source of his confidence as an astronomer, but also the source of the slight boredom which his commentary exudes. He saw at best riddles, but no mystries, either in heaven, or on earth, or in the biblical text.

Notes

1. The latter, however, only inasmuch as they bear directly on the understanding of the meaning and order of scriptural verses; this is Rashi's conception of “peshuto shel miqra ve'aggada hameyashevet peshuṭo shel miqra davar davur 'al ofnav” (to Gen. 3:8). Cf. the excellent study of the late S. Kamin, Rashi: Peshuṭo shel Miqra u-Midrasho shel Miqra (Jerusalem, 1986).

2. Cf. my Styles in Medieval Biblical Exegesis ([Hebrew]; Tel Aviv, 1990), ch. 3, 4.

3. Id., “Naḥmanides' Typological Reading of History”, Zion: A Quarterly for Jewish History 45 (1980): 35-59; transl. in Studies in Jewish Mysticism ed. J. Dan and F. Talmage, AJS Review (1982): 129-50.

4. I. Twerksy, “Josef ibn Kaspi: Portrait of a Medieval Jewish Intellectual,” in: Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature, ed. I. Twersky (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 231-57, esp. 238-42.

5. A moderate, well-reasoned argument of this point of view can be found in S. Pines' introduction to his translation of Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (Chicago, 1963).

6. Maimonides, Guide II, 32; 36; 39; III, 17.

7. Ibid. I, 52-8, transl. Pines pp. 114-37. Note that the “negation of a privation” is always ambiguous: it either denies that a subject lacks a property (which by nature is his) or it denies that it is not a category-mistake to attribute that property to the subject, but not both. This amiguity serves Maimonides well in generating ever more specific “negations of privations” down to non-multiplicity. Whenever a privation is denied, one avoids the assertion of an attribute by descending to a more specific negation of privation. Critics of Maimonides' theory of negative attributes, such as Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q. 13 a.2, failed to see that negative attributes are by no means all the same. As top attributes of action, they do not say even that God exists—one is tempted to compare their status to a material implication of the sort “If God exists, then the world is created.”

8. Maimonides, Ibid. II, 73-76.

9. Levi ben Gerson, Sefer Milḥamot haShem (henceforth: Gersonides, Milḥamot) VI, 1, 17 (Leipzig, 1866), pp. 362-8. Cf. H.A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation, and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy (Oxford, 1987), pp. 35, 209-12.

10. Gersonides, Milḥamot, III, 3, pp. 135-7.

11. Ibid., III, 4, pp. 137-47.

12. Johannes Buridan, In Metaphysicam Aristotelis Quaestiones, l. II q.1 (Paris 1588), f. 9rb.

13. A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), pp. 216-8.

14. Ibn Ezra, Perush Hatorah, ed. by A. Weiser (Jerusalem, 1976), to Gen. 1:1 (bara).

15. R. Moshe ben Naḥman, Perush Hatorah, ed. Ch. D. Chawel (Jerusalem, 1959), vol. I, p. 12.

16. Ibid. I, p. 254 (to Gen. 46:15). Cf. Kitve haRamban, ed. Chawel (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 158; a possible source in the midrash is Avot de Rabbi Natan 35:1.

17. Naḥmanides, Perush Hatorah, I, p. 14 (s.v. ruah).

18. Ibid., Introduction; Cf. Kitve haRamban, p. 164; G. Scholem, On the Kabbala and its Symbolism (New York, 1985), p. 38.

19. Naḥmanides, Perush haTorah, I, p. 15.

20. Abraham bar Hiyya, Sefer Megilat Hamegale, ed. by A. Poznanski and J. Guttmann (Berlin, 1924), pp. 14 ff.; see also the Introduction of the editors. Except bar Hiyya and Naḥmanides, we find the topos rarely in Jewish Medieval speculations; but see S.O. Heller-Wilensky, “Isaak ibn Latif,” in: Jewish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, ed. A. Altmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), p. 218; and Abarbanel, Perush Hatorah (Warsaw, 1862), p. 146. On the career of this speculation in the Christian literature cf. My Heilsplan und natürliche Entwicklung: Formen der Gegenwartsbestimmung im Geschichtsdenken des hohen Mittelalters (München, 1965), passim, and Zion 45 (1980): 40-41.

21. Levi ben Gerson, Perush 'al Hatora 'al-Derech Habe'ur (Venice, 1546), f. 9a (henceforth: Gersonides, Commentary).

22. Maimonides, Guide I, 69 (transl. Pines, p. 167).

23. F. Überweg and L. Geyer, Grundriß der Geschichte der Philosophie III (Basel-Stuttgart, 1960), p. 251; Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, p. 46.

24. Gersonides, Commentary, f. 9b-10a.

25. Maimonides, Guide II, 19 ff.

26. Gersonides, Commentary, f. 9a-b. See G. Freudenthal, “Cosmogonie et physique chez Gersonide,” Revue des études juives 145 (1986): 295-314.

27. Gersonides, Milḥamot II, 6, pp. 104-8.

28. Gersonides, Commentary, f. 56b (devequt Moshe); f. 71a. (Cf. also the following nn.)

29. Ibid., f. 13a (im tishalm hahaskama ben ha'ahashim lehimana' meholid).

30. Gersonides, Milḥamot II, 6, p. 111, sees free will interfering with celestial influences (im heyotam efshariyim miṣad habe'ira). In Commentary f. 71 a-b he says more specifically that Israel's foes (Amaleq) are victorious “from the vantage point of the constellations” (miṣad hama'arekhet) if not for God's help (lule 'azar haShem yit 'ale). The importance of this passage in the Commentary is hightened by the circumstance that the biblical narrative deals here with “the wars of the Lord” (milḥama la'Adonay ba 'Amalek midor dor, Ex. 13:16)—the verse which lent the title to Gersonides' main philosophical work.

31. Naḥmanides, Perush Hatorah, I, p. 279; cf. ibid., p. 77 and my article in Zion, above n. 3.

32. Some go up to 24 (Commentary, f. 29a).

33. Naḥmanides, Perush Hatora, I, p. 372 (to Ex. 17:9).

34. Cf. above n. 30.

35. Gersonides, Commentary, f. 54b.

36. Ibid., 55b; 115b; 114a (hitbodedut); cf. M. Idel, “Hahitbodedut ke-rikuz bafilosofia hayehudit,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 7 (1988): 39-60, esp. p. 50.

37. A. D. Nock (ed.), Sallustius. Concerning the Gods and the Universe (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), p. 4, lines 9-11.