The Controversial Sentence of Guide 2.24: A Philologist’s Perspective

My contribution to the present Aleph Forum will be limited to brief remarks on the sentence at the core of the discussion, made from the vantage point of a linguist specializing in Judeo-Arabic. It is not my purpose to comment on the philosophical import of the different readings of the text.

The text of the sentence in question, as it seems to appear in all the manuscripts of Dalālat al-Ḥāʾirīn, is:¹

This sentence was translated by Pines as follows:

For it is impossible for us to accede to the points starting from which conclusions may be drawn about the heavens; for the latter are too far away from us and too high in place and in rank. And even the general conclusion that may be drawn from them, namely that they prove the existence of their Mover, is a matter the knowledge of which cannot be reached by human intellects.²

While most of the discussion revolved about the legitimacy of accepting the gloss added by Samuel Ibn Tibbon (see Editor’s Introduction), Prof. H. A. Davidson offered a new understanding of the Arabic text, ascribing to it the statement that the Mover can be known from the motion of the spheres. He put forward the following translation:

The causes from which proofs can be drawn up regarding the [nature of the] heavens are beyond our grasp. They [i.e., the heavens] are at a distance from us and exalted in place and in rank—the general [enterprise of] drawing up a proof from them consisting [solely] in this, that they show us [or prove to us] their mover—indeed they [i.e., the heavens] are something to the knowledge of which minds cannot attain.³

From a philological point of view, the proposed translation seems to me unacceptable.

1 One of Davidson’s arguments is that “ ‘drawing up a proof’ is something that one may contemplate, that one may attempt, that one may fail at, or that one may accomplish. But the person who frames a proof can hardly be described as either possessing or lacking knowledge of his drawing up of the proof.” And similarly: “the drawing up of a proof is not the sort of thing that the human mind is said to be able to know or not to know. The words wal-instidlāl al-ʿāmm, the general drawing up of a proof, are therefore not the proper subject of a sentence having as its predicate ‘is a matter, to the knowledge of which human minds cannot attain.’ ”⁴ For my part, I do not consider the reference of to to be unlikely: such a semantic widening of is by no means exceptional. Moreover, syntactically, refers to rather than to a fact that may have facilitated Maimonides’ use of in this context. Lastly, this use of is opposed to the immediately preceding occurrence of which refers to the knowledge of the sublunar world.

2 By Davidson’s own admission, his reading of the sentence ascribes to it a “choppy,” “anacoluthic,” or “loose” syntax.⁵ It indeed contravenes Arabic style, in a way we need not attribute to Maimonides.

3 Moreover, Davidson’s suggestion posits that Maimonides assumed that his readers would interpret the sentence against the rules of Arabic syntax. But would he have assumed that his readers would realize that the sentence is not to be understood according to the usual sentence structure? This seems rather unlikely.

Lastly, but unrelated to Davidson’s suggestion, I wish to express my view that since Samuel Ibn Tibbon does not explicitly mention that Maimonides endorsed his interpretation as expressed in his gloss, it seems quite unlikely that the latter is based on such an approval.⁶ His emendation is a mere conjecture, which in my opinion is not based on a better Arabic text. Samuel Ibn Tibbon explicitly says: “It seems to me that something is missing here”; he does not say “something is missing here,” as he would have done had his emendation been based on an Arabic text at his...