176 CHAPTER SIX
those who, despite endless repetitions, “understand but little, compre-
hend but little, a smattering here and a smattering there.”^80 This rude-
ness when addressing the public, so atypical of Maimonides, was also
among the reasons that led some scholars to doubt the Treatise authen-
ticity. Maimonides’ declared impatience for the need to repeat may aim
not at the general public, “the women and the ignorant” to whom the
Treatise is supposedly addressed, nor the pretentious Gaon who writes
homilies for them. Rather, the edge of impatience in his voice reveals an-
other addressee of the Treatise: Maimonides’ own beloved disciple, who
should not have been tempted to play the mutakallim.
As is well known, medieval theological and philosophical epistles are
often short monographs or treatises rather than letters. Even when they
are addressed to real persons, the addressee serves often only as a literary
device. The literary convention dictates this form in which a treatise on a
well-defi ned topic, written in order to be published and read by a wider
public, is formally addressed to a specifi c person.
TheTreatise on Resurrection is usually listed among Maimonides’ epis-
tles, but its title describes it not as an epistle (risala) but rather as a treatise
(maqala). Although risala and maqala are sometimes used as synonyms,^81
in this par ticular case the difference of these two terms seems to be sig-
nifi cant. As I have tried to demonstrate, Maimonides did not write the
Treatise on Resurrection as an epistle; indeed, almost the opposite is
true. Using the fi ction of a text addressed to the general public, he in-
tended this text to be read more particularly by one specifi c person, and
by the narrow class of people who resemble this person. Like the Guide
of the Perplexed (also described by its author as a maqala), the Treatise
on Resurrection was primarily destined by Maimonides to correct and
guide, yet again, his favorite student, Joseph Ibn Shimon.
This double destination may be observed, for example, in Maimo-
nides’ sour remark that the Gaon confuses the concepts soul and intel-
lect. It is not only the Gaon, but also Maimonides’ own disciple, who
speaks too much of the soul and too little of the intellect. More than once
in the Silencing Epistle, as Joseph was trying to navigate his way between
tradition and philosophy, he was getting dangerously close to kalam.
Maimonides’Guide, addressed explicitly to Joseph, was written for ex-
actly this kind of person: one who is perplexed because of the seemingly
contradictory messages of Jewish tradition and philosophy, and who is
unsure as to the value of kalam’s arguments.^82 The Silencing Epistle
shows us that several years after the completion of the Guide, Joseph was
(^80) Epistles, 338 (Finkel, Treatise, 37– 38).
(^81) See A. Arazi and H. Ben- Shammai, art. Risala,EI, 5: 549– 57.
(^82) SeeGuide, Dedicatory Epistle and Introduction (Dalala, 1– 11; Pines, 3– 10).