This chapter features a detailed exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis, and therefore represents Maimonides’ interpretation of what Scripture has to say about the beginning of the world. In my opinion, it does not necessarily represent Maimonides’ own views. This topic (Maimonides’ view of the creation) has been the subject of endless amounts of scholarly attention; Crescas’ Or Adonai probably addressed it; the Maimonidean controversy hinged crucially on the French Hebrew-reading public’s perception of what Maimonides thought about creation; and an example of recent scholarship in this direction is Sara Klein-Braslavy’s Maimonides as Biblical Interpreter.

Commentary

It’s difficult for me to parse this, probably because I am not familiar with the Biblical language which Maimonides wants to explain. In reading it, one is reminded of the author’s remark in the Introduction, where he stated regarding his arrangement of the book, “My object in adopting this arrangement is that the truths should be at one time apparent, and at another time concealed.” There are a few different ways of looking at what, I think, Maimonides is trying to do here.

  • In one sense, Maimonides is trying to harmonize the Torah with Aristotelian physics; thus, he understand Genesis allegorically in such a way that the batini meaning is philosophically correct.
  • Another way to look at it, is to see that Maimonides is offering what is ultimately an ‘equivocal’ exegesis of Genesis; one which allows for the possibility of both creation and eternity. This seems, at least on the surface, to be the reason why Maimonides says “The true explanation of the first verse of Genesis is as follows: ‘In [creating] a principle God created the beings above and the things below.’”, after having explained that the word mabda’ مبدء (translated by Friedlander as beginning or principle) does not denote a temporal priority but only a conceptual priority. It seems that so far, Maimonides is setting up his explanation of Genesis to be compatible with a timeless ‘beginning’. However, the very next sentence he writes is “This explanation is in accordance with the theory of Creation”!
  • A traditionalist view might be that Maimonides is offering a defense of the theory of creation in time to a philosophically-minded audience.

What would a philosophically correct interpretation of Genesis 1 look like for Maimonides? Knowing that he believes that the question of eternity vs creation in time cannot be solved by human reason — see chapter 16 — in principle both theories are plausible. So it is possible that he would like to read Genesis in such a way that both views of looking at creation remain possible after understanding the true meaning of Genesis. It would not do for Genesis to be only compatible with creation-in-time, because as a philosopher Maimonides knows that creation has not been conclusively proven. Similarly, he does not think it necessary to read the inner meaning of Genesis as indicating an eternal universe, because, as he explained in chapter 25, “a mere argument in favour of a certain theory [i.e., eternity] is not sufficient reason for rejecting the literal meaning [i.e., creation in time] of a Biblical text, and explaining it figuratively”.