In this chapter, Maimoindes provides the details for what he thinks Prophecy is. The terminology is quite Farabian, for he begins

Prophecy (النبوة al-nabuwwah ) is, in truth and reality, an emanation (فيض fayd) sent forth (يفيض yufayid) by the Divine Being [Atay has two readings: الله and الإله] through the medium of (بوساطة) the Active Intellect (العقل الفعال), in the first instance to man’s rational faculty (القوة الناطقة), and then to his imaginative faculty (القوة المتخيله); it is the highest degree and greatest perfection man can attain: it consists in the most Perfect development of the imaginative faculty.

The prophet’s ‘imaginative faculty’ is the same as the imaginative faculty we all have in kind, “the difference being one of quantity and not quality”. When ordinary people dream, they are participating in the same activity, but to a miniscule degree compared to a Prophet; Maimonides uses the analogy of an unripe fruit with a ripe fruit: “for the unripe fruit is really the fruit to some extent, only it has fallen from the tree before it was fully developed and ripe”.

He furnishes further proof that prophecy is grounded in the Earthly faculties of human beings by pointing out that even the historical Prophets “are deprived of the faculty of prophesying when they mourn, are angry, or are similarly affected”. And the reason why there are no more prophets in our midst is that the real — one could say material — conditions for Prophecy can not be met in this period of exile before the Messianic period (ayyam al-Masih).

These are the conditions which Maimonides gives:

  • the person must be physically fit
  • the person must have “studied and acquired wisdom”, so that “his intellect is as deveoped and perfect as human intellect can be”
  • of an equanimous temperament
  • he should be always engaged in contemplating metaphysical matters: “all his desires must aim at obtaining a knowledge of the hidden laws and causes that are in force in the Universe”
  • an absence of the base desires
  • lack of desire for “victory, increase of followers, acquiistion of honor”

such a person will undoubtedly perceive nothing but things very extraordinary and divine, and see nothing but God and His angels. His knowledge will only include that which is real knowledge, and his thought will only he directed to such general principles as would tend to improve the social relations between man and man.

Commentary

It is interesting that the fayd or overflow from the Active Intellect occurs first to the rational faculty and second to the imaginative faculty; and yet Maimonides does not claim that Prophecy is a perfection of the rational faculty, but instead claims it is a perfection of the imaginative faculty. He seems to have carefully avoided directly saying that Prophecy implies a perfection of the rational faculty, although the body of this chapter does appear to assume that the prophet has acquired “wisdom” and that “his intellect is as developed and perfect as human intellect can be”. Is a perfection of the imaginative faculty equivalent to a perfection of the intellect? Didn’t he tell us in GP.II.12 that “the imagination … is in fact identical with ‘evil inclination’”?

Spinoza, on the other hand, has no compunction in stating that “Joshua was no Astronomer”, and that many of the Prophets, including Moses, believed in an anthropomorphic God.