Maimonides and the Hermeneutics of Concealment: Deciphering Scripture and Midrash in "The Guide of the Perplexed" (review)

Since the thirteenth century some readers have viewed the Guide of the Perplexed as an esoteric work in which Maimonides uses various stratagems to conceal, as well as to hint at, his true views. On the whole the esotericist readers have neglected the scriptural and rabbinic references that make up a good part of the book, and which could provide grist for the esotericist mill. But in recent years readers have turned to the Guide's scriptural and rabbinic references to provide illumination for Maimonides' doctrines, or at least to treat them as something more than dispensable prooftexts on which Maimonides hangs his philosophical doctrines.

The present study by James Diamond is the first book-length attempt in English to examine how Maimonides employs scriptural and rabbinic exegesis in the Guide. Unlike the work of Sarah Klein-Braslavy, which analyzes at length Maimonides' exegesis of scriptural and rabbinic passages in order to shed light on his philosophical doctrines, especially those that are the subject of scholarly debate, Diamond's book is concerned with what he considers to be the primary intention of the Guide "as a compendium of scriptural exegesis offering a distinct hermeneutic to be applied to biblical texts" (p. 31). In other words, the principal question that interests Diamond appears to be not how Maimonides' exegesis conceals and illumines his true views on disputed issues (e.g., whether he believed that the world was eternal a parte ante, or whether he denied material providence for individuals), but rather how the Guide's exegetical sections are intended to serve as a model for subsequent philosophical exegesis, "a philosophical commentary that provides an exegetical master key allowing the devout Jew to read his sacred texts comfortably alongside the current philosophical Sitz in Leben" (p. 31). Reading carefully the deliberately fragmented exegesis in the Guide enables us to appreciate its "radical literary form" in which "there is a sinuous weave of text and prooftext that defies disentanglement of the two" (p. 162).

Such careful reading, the author claims, explains inter alia the significance of Maimonides' choice of proof-texts. In the Introduction to Part One, for example, Maimonides cites two midrashim to make the point that parables are used in scripture and elsewhere both to conceal and to hint at an internal truth. That much is obvious to even the casual reader. But Diamond suggests that a close reading of these two midrashim shows discrepancies that cry out for explanation, eventually leading the careful reader to understand why these particular midrashim may have been chosen by Maimonides. In the quest for such understanding the author not only appeals to other sections of the Guide but to the biblical context of the scriptural prooftexts. Thus, after arguing that the three scriptural prooftexts brought by Maimonides indicate the three layers of scriptural meaning (vulgar, political, philosophical), the author finds the same three layers in the chapter of Ezekiel from which one of the prooftexts originates. The reader is left with the impression that Maimonides was influenced in his particular choice of midrash by the point that its prooftext is from a chapter in the Bible that has the three layers.

The author's appeal to external context occurs in the analysis of other "evasive techniques" employed by Maimonides, such as "the art of omission." We are told that the key to the Maimonides' "true intent" is often found in the uncited part of the verse (p. 22), or Talmudic passage (p. 24; cf. 148). Analyzing the external context can either shed light on a discrepancy or create one. In both cases the search for the hidden meaning, both of scripture and of the Guide, begins with the recognition of discrepancies, not merely in the text of Maimonides, but in the external context of its prooftexts.

Diamond's search for exegetical discrepancies replaces...