94 CHAPTER FOUR
the beliefs of idolatry are false, even when they contain a grain of truth.
For example, some idolaters believe in prophesy, but their conception of
prophesy is simplistic and misguided.^45 All idolaters believe in the exis-
tence of God, but they worship idols as symbols of the entities that medi-
ate between humans and the Divine. Echoing the Greek philosophical
tradition regarding the role of idols, Maimonides writes that “no human
being of the past has ever imagined on any day, and no human being of
the future will ever imagine, that the form that he fashions either from
cast metal or from stone and wood has created and governs the heavens
and the earth.”^46 Maimonides further adds that all idolaters believe in the
eternal existence of the world.^47
The Israelites were accustomed to the rites and beliefs of the idolaters
in whose midst they lived, and God knew that they would be incapable
of abandoning them abruptly. He therefore granted them command-
ments that serve as intermediary steps toward the truth, preparing the
way for purer forms of worship. The sacrifi ce of animals to the true, one
God is an intermediary step between sacrifi ces made to the idols and wor-
ship through prayer or philosophical study alone. The anthropomorphic
verses of the Torah are also an intermediate step between idol worship
and a pure, abstract understanding of God. In other cases, God uses a
different method to educate humans by commanding them to do the op-
posite of that to which they have been accustomed.^48 In the fi rst method,
God makes concessions, as it were, to the habits of the past, while in the
second, He insists that humans overcome their habits. Both methods are
based on the same conception, according to which educators must take
into account the human inborn tendency to remain attached to habits
and past traditions, and to base an educational approach on an intimate
knowledge of these habits.
Maimonides uses the principle of “divine accommodation” as the ba-
sis for his explanation of those biblical commandments that have no ob-
vious purpose. The centrality of this issue for him is refl ected clearly in
the fact that he devotes to it some twenty chapters of Guide of the Per-
plexed, in addition to many references and discussions in his other
from “soft” idolatry in the times of Enosh to the more offensive versions in later pre-
Abrahamic times. As a prooftext for the earlier stage, Maimonides mentions Jer. 10.8
(“But they are brutish and foolish”). He thus seems to offer “foolishness” (ksilut, derived
from the “yskhalu” in the verse) as the Hebrew equivalent of jahiliyya.
(^45) Guide 2.32 (Dalala, 253:17; Pines, 360). See also Guide 1.63 (Dalala, 105:22– 106: 6;
Pines, 153– 54).
(^46) Guide 1.36 (Dalala, 56:19– 57:7; Pines, 83).
(^47) Guide 3.29 (Dalala, 375:26; Pines, 515), 3:41 (Dalala, 414:5; Pines, 565).
(^48) Assmann proposes calling this method “normative inversion.” See Moses the Egyptian,
57–59.