“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 163
provement of the soul after death. Whereas Avicenna left room for the
continuous development and elevation of some souls after death, Mai-
monides strongly believed in the constant, immovable state of the souls
that have reached immortality. According to him, the possibility of
change is a property of this world alone, and the point reached at death
is incorrigible.^34 But in other respects he seems to have been greatly in-
fl uenced by Avicenna’s psychology and metaphysics.^35 Pines has sug-
gested that Maimonides’ discussion of “rational worship” in Guide
3.51 is reminiscent of Avicenna’s concept of spiritual prayer.^36 Indeed,
Avicenna’s infl uence on Maimonides is evident in this chapter, especially
in Maimonides’ insistence on the passionate love (ishq) that the perfect
individual feels toward the object of contemplation and that fi lls him
with joy.^37
Most of their contemporaries found the medieval phi losophers’ ab-
stract, spiritual, and intellectual concept of the hereafter baffl ing. A typi-
cal reaction is recorded by the tenth- century AbuHayyan al- Tawhidi:
“Abu Sulayman (al- Sijistani) told us: A certain Christian described to us
paradise, saying: ‘There is no eating or drinking in it, nor copulating.’
One of the (Muslim) theologians (mutakallimun) heard it and said:
‘What you describe is but sadness, sorrow and misery.’ ”^38 Those who
found the philosophical hereafter incomprehensible often concluded that
the phi losophers’ belief in paradise was insincere. From a different per-
spective, modern scholarship has witnessed the development of similar
attitudes, particularly since the studies of Shlomo Pines, who suggested
that Maimonides (following Farabi and perhaps Ibn Bajja) did not be-
lieve in the human possibility of achieving metaphysical knowledge.
According to Pines, these phi losophers set for themselves the traditional
(^34) Commentary on the Mishnah, Avot 4:22, 448– 49.
(^35) See H. Davidson, “Maimonides on Metaphysical Knowledge,” Maimonidean Studies 3
(1992–93): 89.
(^36) Pines, “Translator’s Introduction,” cii; and see Risalat al-salat, in Jami al- badai, 2– 14.
See also S. Harvey, “Avicenna and Maimonides on Prayer and Intellectual Worship,” in
Exchange and Transmission across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Sci-
ence in the Mediterranean (Proceedings of a workshop in memory of Prof. Shlomo Pines,
the Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem; 28 February– 2 March 2005), ed. H. Ben-
Shammai, S. Shaked, and S. Stroumsa (forthcoming).
(^37) On the Sufi context of this term in Maimonides’s usage, see C.- A. Keller, Die Religion der
Gebildeten im Mittelalter: Averroes und Maimonides in Die Religion von Oberschichten
(Marburg, 1989), 49; and see S. Harvey, “The Meaning of Terms Designating Love in
Judaeo-Arabic Thought and Some Remarks on the Judaeo- Arabic Interpretation of Mai-
monides,” in N. Golb, ed., Judaeo- Arabic Studies: Proceedings of the Founding Conference
of the Society for Judaeo- Arabic Studies (Studies in Muslim- Jewish Relations 3 (Reading,
1996), 175– 96; D. Blumenthal, “Maimonides’ Philosophical Mysticism”, in idem, Philo-
sophic Mysticism: Studies in Rational Religion (Ramat Gan, 2006), 128– 51.
(^38) Al-Imta wa’l-muanasa, 3: 192.