What Is the Subject of Principle 2 in Maimonides's Book of the Commandments?: Towards a New Understanding of Maimonides's Approach to Extrascriptural Law

Among Maimonides's many statements about extrascriptural laws in rabbinic literature, none has attracted as much attention as principle 2 in his Book of the Commandments. Modern scholars have largely understood this text to claim that very few of the laws found in rabbinic literature are Sinaitic in origin and of biblical status. Yet, until the twentieth century, principle 2 was primarily read as distinguishing between revealed laws that constitute enumerated commandments and revealed laws that do not. In fact, neither reading is consistent with other Maimonidean statements. By contextualizing principle 2 within the Book of the Commandments, this essay reconsiders Maimonides's enumeration of the commandments and argues that many of the problems that principle 2 was designed to address, and that it also generated, resulted from the incongruity of his project of enumerating precisely 613 commandments alongside his understanding of revelation as a corpus that included not only the Written Torah but innumerable extrascriptural traditions as well. An appendix evaluates pertinent aspects of the most recent monograph dedicated to Maimonides's scriptural hermeneutics.