“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 157
often refer to the hereafter with another term, “the world to come.” In
later Midrashic literature, the notions of the Garden of Eden, the days of
the Messiah, the world to come, and the resurrection of the dead blend
together, and are all given colorful, often corporeal descriptions.^15 The
association of the fi nal reward with the resurrection of the dead contrib-
uted to the tendency among Jews to hold a physical, material image of a
bodily reward in paradise. It seems that although Jewish polemicists ridi-
culed Muslim perceptions of the hereafter, these same perceptions had a
profound impact on Jewish contemporary beliefs. Thus, despite the ap-
parent lack of scriptural constraints, a phi losopher like Maimonides had
to contend with pop ular views that were much the same as those with
which Avicenna had struggled. When Maimonides rec ords the beliefs of
those Jews who identify reward with the Garden of Eden, he attributes
to them a belief in what sounds like a Quranic paradise: “A place where
people eat and drink without bodily toil or faintness. Houses of costly
stones are there, couches of silk and rivers fl owing with wine and per-
fumed oils.”^16 The corporeal image of paradise was not restricted to the
uneducated multitudes, but was also held by the elite of the Jewish com-
munity. Maimonides quotes a saying of the Sages, which, according to
his understanding, denies physical pleasures in the hereafter: “In the
world to come there will be no eating nor drinking, but only the righ-
teous sitting with crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendor of the
divine presence.” According to him, it is evident from this saying that
there is no corporeality in paradise, since there is no eating and drink-
ing.^17 Years later, however, we still fi nd Maimonides’ toughest rival, the
Gaon Samuel ben Eli, interpreting the same Talmudic saying in a very
different way: the righ teous sit on chairs, they have crowns, hence they
must have bodies.^18
Maimonides discusses the hereafter in both his halakhic and philo-
sophical writings. His most detailed discussion of the Jewish tradition in
this respect is found in his Commentary on the Mishnah, in the introduc-
tion to Pereq Heleq. One should fi rst note the absence of the punishment
(^15) See, for example, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi’s description of paradise, Yalqut Shimoni on
Genesis, and see E. E. Urbach, The Sages, Their Concepts and Beliefs (Jerusalem, 1975),
276.
(^16) Introduction to Pereq Heleq,Commentary on the Mishnah,Neziqin, 196; J. Abelson,
“Maimonides on the Jewish Creed,” in J. I. Dienstang, ed., Eschatology in Maimonidean
Thought: Messianism, Resurrection and the World to Come (New York, 1979), 29; and cf.,
for instance, Quran 45 (Muhammad): 15; 83 (al-mutaffi fin): 22– 27.
(^17) Mishneh Torah,Hilkhot Teshuva 8:2.
(^18) See Y. T. Langermann, “Samuel ben Eli’s Epistle on Resurrection,” Qovetzal Yad 15
(2001), 78 [Hebrew]. This argument of the Gaon is quoted and refuted by Maimonides’
student; see Stroumsa, The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy, #20 and #137
and commentary on 139; and see chap. 6b, below.