174 CHAPTER SIX
remain attentive to those places where the treatise responds to the Si-
lencing Epistle.
One example of this response may suffi ce. In the same sardonic pas-
sage referred to above, Maimonides states that the Gaon incorporated in
his essay quotations from the al-Kitab al- mutabar as well as from Avi-
cenna’s maqalat al- maad. In contradistinction to al-Kitab al- Mutabar
(which is indeed cited by the Gaon, although with no explicit identifi ca-
tion of the book or its author), Avicenna is absent from the Gaon’s trea-
tise as we have it, and there is no indication that it had ever been cited in
it.^71 In Joseph’s Silencing Epistle, on the other hand, Avicenna is very
present, although his name is never mentioned. Long excerpts from Avi-
cenna are cited verbatim in order to prove Joseph’s claim that the phi los-
ophers believe in the soul’s immortality. Joseph’s identifi cation with Avi-
cenna’s view is so complete that when the latter says “in my opinion”
Joseph copies these words, too, making Avicenna’s view his own.
Neither the text of the Gaon’s treatise as we have it nor Joseph’s Silenc-
ing Epistle could have given Maimonides reason to believe that the Gaon
had quoted Avicenna. It is therefore possible that, when Maimonides
criticizes the Gaon’s reliance on Avicenna, his criticism is addressed to
the one who did rely on him, namely, his student.
A contextual reading of the three essays together reveals to what extent
theSilencing Epistle could have displeased Maimonides. The Gaon’s trea-
tise is exactly what could have been expected from a traditional scholar
who attempts to use a philosophical language. Maimonides regards him as
a pop ular preacher (darshan), and mocks his philosophical pretensions.^72
In his correspondence, he deprecates “this poor man’s rhetoric” and ex-
presses regret that the Gaon did not confi ne himself to the darshanim’s
bread-and-butter of Talmudic midrashim, rather than venture into discus-
sions of the soul and the opinions of the phi losophers. He notes that even
people who are better than the Gaon indulge in such baseless ravings (had-
hayan), and suggests that the Gaon undoubtedly transmitted the ravings
of someone else.^73 The Gaon’s excursions into philosophy are for Mai-
monides mere “ravings,” an attempt to present nonscience as science.
In his treatise, however, Maimonides’ condescending mockery of the
Gaon is surprisingly free of either bitterness or anger. It is his own stu-
dent, the one he affectionately calls “my child,” who disappointed him.
As already mentioned, Joseph’s epistle is a polemical work in the genre of
“al-raddala.. .”. Repeating the Gaon’s arguments in order to refutethem,
(^71) Langermann, who notices this bewildering absence, assumes that the sole extant
manuscript of the Gaon’s treatise is incomplete; see “Samuel ben Eli’s Epistle on Resurrec-
tion,” 59.
(^72) See Maimonides, Epistulae (Jerusalem, 1985), 650– 66; Epistles, 325– 26; Finkel,
12–14.
(^73) Epistles, 297– 98.