actual validity of his historical reconstruction.” With regard to the Sabi-
ans, however, Funkenstein seems to share Graetz’s view, according to
which Maimonides tried his hand at historic and anthropological re-
search, and failed.^100
Indeed, if we assume that Maimonides believed in the historical exis-
tence of a universal polytheistic religion, and that he based his writings
on prior heresiographers, the lukewarm scholarly evaluation of his
achievement is understandable. One can also understand Funkenstein’s
puzzlement about the fact that Maimonides writes about the Sabians
“with the genuine enthusiasm of a discovery.”^101 It is, however, precisely
Maimonides’ enthusiasm that should alert us to his true discovery. Both
the Sabians and the concept of “divine accommodation” were well known
in his day.^102 Taken separately, neither of these two topics would have
aroused in Maimonides the enthusiasm that is so obviously refl ected in
his writing. The combination of the two together, however, allowed
Maimonides the fl ash of discovery. Maimonides is very conscious of the
phenomenological nature of his discovery. His original contribution does
not lie in the identifi cation of a nation or a religion in the ordinary sense,
and historical identifi cation is not what he aspires to do. As Twersky
noted, this discovery was rejected by most of Maimonides’ Jewish succes-
sors.^103 One would have to wait until the seventeenth century, when the
Christian Hebraists (who were also the fi rst Orientalists), such as John
Spencer and Edward Pocock, rediscovered Maimonides and his Sabians,
and turned them into the basis for the modern study of religions in the
Ancient Near East.^104
(^100) A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientifi c Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the
Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1986), 233– 35.
(^101) Ibid.
(^102) See note 66, above. An interesting example of the broad dissemination of this concept
can be found in the writings of the tenth- century Shiite scholar Muhammad al- Numani. In
his commentary on Quran 2 [al-Baqara]: 106, Numani evokes the gradual divine peda-
gogy in order to explain the concept of abrogation of previous revelations (naskh). Numani
does not employ the term talattuf, but he explains that God, in his tender compassion, did
not force the Arabs to abandon abruptly the practices of the jahiliyya; See M. M. Bar-
Asher,Exegesis in Early Imami Shiism (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1999), 68– 70.
(^103) See note 96, above. The thirteenth- century Jewish scholar Sad Ibn Mansur Ibn Kam-
muna, who used Maimonides’ writings faithfully, is an exception; see Tanqih al- abhath
li-’l-milal al- thalath, ed. M. Perlmann (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967), 37. Regarding the
response of Maimonides’ successors, see also F. Dreyfus, “La condescendance divine (syn-
katabasis) comme principe herméneutique de l’ancien testament dans la tradition juive et
dans la tradition chrétienne,” Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 36, 101– 2.
(^104) See Benin, “The ‘Cunning of God,’ ” 179– 80, 190– 91: and see G. G. Stroumsa, A New
Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming.)