Avot202

Today's shiur is dedicated by Robert Braitman in memory of his father,
Irving Braitman, Yitzchak ben Tzvi, z"l,
whose Yahrzeit is today, 9th Sivan.

12:
We have established that for Judaism God is absolutely non-physical and that the Creator is completely separate from His creation. It is but a small step from these premises to an understanding of the attributes of the Deity. And the most that we can say in this regard is that all characteristics attributed to God exist only in our own imaginations. God is so essentially different from human beings that anything we can say about God is pure anthropomorphism – attributing to something that is not human human characteristics and human behaviour. God is not good: God is believed to behave in such a manner that among human beings this would be described as good; God is not wise: God is believed to act in such a manner that among human beings this would demonstrate wisdom. And the list is endless.

13:
Even the bible – indeed, most especially the bible – habitually utilizes anthropomorphism, for the only other way in which God could be described is by absolute silence. Thus, anything that the bible says of God or predicates of God is 'just to give some idea'. When he comes to try to describe God's knowledge the best that the prophet [Isaiah 55:8-9] can do is to stutter and mumble:

This being the case there can not really be any contradiction between God's omniscience and man's free will. This is because we are predicating of God a knowledge which in some way or other resembles human thought processes, but, in fact, is entirely different.

14:

God is unchanging, everlastingly the same. The Torah [Deuteronomy 32:41] teaches that God says:

But man is in a constant state of flux. Every time we learn something new, every time we think a thought – we have changed. So God's thinking and our thinking cannot be the same. In his Guide for the Perplexed [1:68] Rambam puts it thus (Friedlander's translation):

To put the matter as simply as possible: God is pure thought eternally thinking itself. God is the thinker [intelligens], the thought process [intelligibile] and the thought itself [intellectus].

To be continued.

In Avot 199 I mentioned that Rambam was most anxious that his Guide for the Perplexed not be interpreted or translated. This prompts Jim Feldman to write:

Your comment here is fascinating. Although Arabic was one of Rambam's mother tongues, his Hebrew was elegant. Why did he choose to write Guide to the Perplexed in Arabic? One wonders at choices of which tongue to use to put the story down. Joseph Conrad wrote in his third language, English, to marvelous effect. Eli Wiesel writes in French (3rd language after Yiddish and Rumanian) and then, with his wife, translates the original into English, yet if you have ever
heard him speak, his English is spellbinding. Was Musa ibn Maiman resorting to the language he felt most comfortable in? Or did he think his principal readership would read Arabic? Or was he making some point in his choice of language?

I respond:

Ostensibly, the Guide is a private letter (!) to his student Yusuf Ibn-Sham'un. No doubt their studies were habitually in Arabic, so it would seem but natural to write the Guide in Arabic. However, throughout the Guide Rambam is at great pains to 'explain' biblical terms. He introduces these biblical terms in various formats – usually in some Hebrew form – so that he can then explain it in Arabic. It would not have been so easy to do this had he written in Hebrew and he would have revealed some thoughts that he preferred to be kept under wraps and understood only by those he wanted to understand them.