“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 161
Maimonides accompanies his argument with illustrations that we have
seen used by Avicenna: the eunuch or the blind man, the little boy who
does not understand the adults’ plea sure, the person who prefers win-
ning to material delights, and poverty to shame. On the basis of this pas-
sages Dov Schwartz has argued convincingly that “the relevant passages
from Avicenna’s Kitab al- Najatwere known to Maimonides, either in
their original form or in paraphrase, and that Maimonides shaped his
doctrine of the intellect’s or soul’s experience in the afterlife in accor-
dance with Avicenna.”^29 Avicenna’s way of handling the subject of para-
dise probably set for Maimonides the example of how to negotiate his
way between philosophy and his own religious tradition.
Maimonides writes on a double linguistic and textual register. On the
one hand, he has to interpret the Jewish texts, as understood by the Jew-
ish tradition. On the other hand, he often writes in Arabic, and even
when he writes in Hebrew, his philosophical frame of reference is that of
Arabic philosophy. He can thus move from one language to the other,
and give both tradition and philosophy their due.
In the most philosophical of his writings, the Guide of the Perplexed,
Maimonides speaks little of the otherworldly paradise, and for more de-
tailed discussions he refers the reader to his halakhic writings. What he
does say, however, is highly signifi cant.
To begin with, the Guide confi rms Maimonides’ care to distinguish
betweenganeden and paradise in the sense of the hereafter. In his
lengthy discussion of Adam’s fall, Maimonides is careful to use the
fi rst, Hebrew concept. But in Guide 2.27, in the context of the ques-
tion of the creation or pre- eternity of the world, he refers to the pop u-
lar understanding of the hereafter, and there he uses the Arabic term
janna (with a thinly veiled allusion to the Muslim descriptions of
paradise):
The same applies to the souls of the virtuous; for according to our
opinion, they are created, but will never become non- existent. Ac-
cording to certain opinions of those who follow the literal sense of
themidrashim, their bodies will also be in a state of perpetual felic-
ity (munama) for ever and ever— an opinion resembling that of
those whose belief as to the inhabitants of paradise (al-janna) is gen-
erally known.^30As could be expected, the Guide also confi rms Maimonides’ strict denial
of a corporeal plea sure in the hereafter. But, more than the halakhic
(^29) D. Schwartz, “Avicenna and Maimonides on Immortality,” in R.L. Nettler, ed., Medi-
eval and Modern Perceptions on Jewish- Muslim Relations (Luxembourg and Oxford,
1995), 188.
(^30) Guide 2.27 (Dalala, 233; Pines, 333).