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  • Guide 2:24 and All That (i)jâza*
  • Alfred Ivry (bio)

Guide 2:24 has served as a lodestone in which diverse evaluations of Maimonides as a philosopher are embedded. Analysis of the sentence1 in which Maimonides appears to deny any scientific knowledge of God and the heavens depends in large part on the view one has of Maimonides’ philosophical persona. Is he to be taken as speaking straightforwardly or disingenuously? Should he be read essentially in an exoteric or esoteric manner, as a rigorous philosopher or a theologian, a skeptic, or an agnostic?

As Joel Kraemer has written,2 the ultimate test of a problematic passage such as this is one of coherence, whether it is supported by a preponderance of other statements, and whether it is part of a well-established thesis. The penultimate test, for Kraemer, is philological: whether the sentence in question adheres to the grammatical conventions of Middle Arabic as practiced by Maimonides and whether it is indicative of his literary style. Both tests, however, beg the question [End Page 237] they pose. For Harvey and Kraemer have opposing yet arguably coherent views of Maimonides’ essential attitude towards philosophy, and Davidson and Kraemer differ in their evaluations of Maimonides’ stylistic acumen in the Guide.

Kraemer’s article emphasizes important conditions for considering whatever view of Maimonides is held, which are primarily philological and historical. Kraemer rightly insists on thorough knowledge of Judeo-Arabic and on intimate familiarity with the complex manuscript traditions of both Maimonides’ work and of the Hebrew translation of Samuel Ibn Tibbon.

As Kraemer notes, neither the Judeo-Arabic original text of Maimonides nor Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation has received a full critical edition, with due consideration of unrecorded variant readings and marginalia. As Kraemer’s review of the work yet to be done with manuscripts of the Guide shows,3 one ought to avoid dogmatic certainty in reading passages such as ours, where the manuscript tradition may be contested.

The correspondence between Ibn Tibbon and Maimonides indicates that at times the former served as a midwife in the creation of the Guide, leading its author to correct or revise the text.4 Ibn Tibbon’s reading of our passage, with its easily discernible presumed Arabic vorlage, may indeed, as Kraemer suggests, reflect Maimonides’ own considered revision—a revision which may yet surface in some still to be examined Judeo-Arabic manuscript.

Until that time, however, we ought to follow the majority reading of the Judeo-Arabic manuscript tradition, scant as it is, and work with Munk-Joel (and later textual addenda) as the textus receptus. Kraemer’s reading of the crux in Guide 2:24 in effect substitutes Ibn Tibbon’s text for Maimonides’.5 While he certainly is not alone in preferring Ibn Tibbon’s text to Maimonides’, Kraemer goes further than others in presuming a faulty Maimonidean text here. Nevertheless, Ibn Tibbon’s readings belong in footnotes, as Munk and Pines have done. At best, [End Page 238] in some future critical edition of the Guide, these readings (and those of al-Ḥarizi) should receive separate treatment in a critical apparatus of their own, so as not to be confused with the Judeo-Arabic variants, which must take editorial priority.

As old-fashioned and politically incorrect as it may seem, we should strive to be textual purists, however imperfect our text. We ought to preserve the distinction between author and translator that the manuscripts already examined reveal. We need assert as much textual integrity as possible (in any given composition) in order to establish a common basis for scholarly research and avoid possibly subjective interpolations. Notwithstanding the dynamic nature of the textual relationship between Maimonides and Ibn Tibbon, the Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn should be kept separate from the Moreh ha-nebukim. There is a certain irony in this posture as regards Maimonides, for as the author of the Guide he was read through the centuries primarily through Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew translation. Nevertheless, modern scholarship should adhere to critical literary standards, however unhistorical.

Herbert Davidson understands the sentence under discussion in Guide 2:24 in a manner similar to Kraemer’s reading, but derives...

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