Moreh Nevuchim 1: 31

I hope that this will be the first of many chapter summaries of The Guide and thereafter more works of the rishonim. I am starting with chapter 31 as this is where I am up to. It is interesting to note that in this chapter the Rambam takes a break from his interpretation of words and phrases, which has been the content of the majority of the previous chapters.

This chapter begins by discussing the confines of the human mind in general.

• Some things are open to perception and understanding and others are entirely closed. It is possible to understand part of something and not the rest of it. Different people also have different capacities of understanding. Certain things, people generally do not have any desire to know, such as the amount of stars in the sky. However there are subjects where there is a universal desire to know them and they have engaged thinkers throughout time, yet there is disagreement on the conclusion of these truths.

What prevents one from discovering the exact truth?
Alexander of Aphrodisius lists three things:

1. Dominance and love of strife
2. Subtlety, depth and difficulty of any subject which is being examined
3. Ignorance and the inability to comprehend that which is possible to comprehend

Rambam lists a fourth:

• Habit and training. We naturally are inclined towards that which we are accustomed to.
  

These obstacles prevent one from dismissing “vulgar notions with respect to the corporeality of God and many other metaphysical questions.”

The Rambam concludes that this chapter is to serve as an introduction to the next!

Maimonides on Masei

Something interesting I came across while learning the Ramban on the parsha:

“And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of the Lord "(ibid. ver. 2). It was indeed most necessary that these should be written. For miracles are only convincing to those who witnessed them; whilst coming generations, who know them only from the account given by others, may consider them as untrue.
But miracles cannot continue and last for all generations; it is even inconceivable [that they should be permanent]. Now the greatest of the miracles described in the Law is the stay of the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years, with a daily supply of manna. This wilderness, as described in Scripture, consisted of places "wherein were fiery serpents and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water" (Deut. viii. 15) ; places very remote from cultivated land, and naturally not adapted for the habitation of man, "It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates, neither is there any water to drink " (Num. xx. 5); "A land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt" (Jer. ii. 6). [In reference to the stay of the Israelites in the wilderness], Scripture relates, “Ye have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine or strong drink" (Deut. xix. 5). All these miracles were wonderful, public, and witnessed by the people. But God knew that in future people might doubt the correctness of the account of these miracles; in the same manner as they doubt the accuracy of other narratives ; they might think that the Israelites stayed in the wilderness in a place not far from inhabited land, where it was possible for man to live [in the ordinary way] ; that it was like those deserts in which Arabs live at present; or that they dwelt in such places in which they could plow, sow, and reap, or live on some vegetable that was growing there ; or that manna came always down in those places as an ordinary natural product ; or that there were wells of water in those places. In order to remove all these doubts and to firmly establish the accuracy of the account of these miracles, Scripture enumerates all the stations, so that coming generations may see them, and learn the greatness of the miracle which enabled human beings to live in those places forty years.
(Moreh Nevuchim 3: 50)

Opening Statement

I hereby inaugurate this blog in order to collect and articulate thoughts of interest to me for the purpose of cerebral development, spiritual enlightenment and religious revolution.
May the revolution begin (or for the fainthearted, may we join together in unison under the banner of collective awareness of the writings of Jewish sages)!