THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT 45
particular formulations to describe Elisha, Maimonides insinuates that
Elisha decided in favor of the belief in the eternity of the world. In other
words, Maimonides paints Elisha as an Aristotelian phi losopher.^76
This suggestion is further corroborated when we fi nd Maimonides say-
ing in his “Epistle on Astrology,” “It is the root of the Torah that the
deity alone is primordial and that He has created the whole out of
nothing; whoever does not acknowledge it rejects a principle of faith
and he has cut down the saplings (kafar ba-iqar ve-qizez ba- netiot).”^77
The Aristotelian belief in the eternity of the world is described here
with the Talmudic formula specifi c to Elisha’s sin: that he cut down the
saplings.^78
Maimonides’ Elisha, as he emerges from both the Guide and the Com-
mentary on the Mishnah, is thus a person who contemptuously and
wantonly denigrates the commandments. He does not believe in the
prophets, he toys with sensitive philosophical ideas concerning the cre-
ation of the world, and he hastily jumps into unproven conclusions, dis-
regarding the respect due to the Lord’s honor, and at the same time re-
vealing the limits of his own knowledge. Some of the main characteristics
of the Talmudic Elisha are missing in this portrait, and they seem to be
replaced by other features. The new features of Maimonides’ Elisha are
wholly absent from the Jewish literature concerning Elisha-Aher. All these
features appear, however, in the fi gure of the Muslim archetype of the
zindiq, Ibn al- Rawandi.
Abu al-Husain Ahmad b. Ishaq al- Rawandi lived in Iraq in the second
half of the ninth century.^79 At the beginning of his career, Ibn al- Rawandi
was an ordinary mutakallim, and was even a respected fi gure among the
refl ect the gravity of the accusation leveled against them, and the moral and religious as-
pects of their hubris. See also F. Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz im Islam: Die Entwicklung
zu al-G ̇azali’s Urteil gegen die Philosophie und die Reaktionen der Philosophen (Leiden,
2000), who opts for a translation that indicates the book’s purpose (“Die Wiederlegung der
Philosophen,” for example, 268); and M. Asín Palacios, “Le sens du mot ‘tahafot’ dans les
œuvres d’el- Ghazali et d’Averroës,” Revue Africaine 261– 62 (1906) (reprinted in idem,
Obras Escogidas [1946], 185– 203); and see note 94, and chap. 5, below, apud note 40.
(^76) SeeGuide 1.32 (Dalala, 46– 47; Pines, 68– 70); and see S. Stroumsa, “Elisha Ben Abuya
and Muslim Heretics in Maimonides’ Writings,” Maimonidean Studies 3 (1995): 173– 93.
(^77) Epistles, 483; Lerner’s translation (“Maimonides, Letter on Astrology”, in R. Lerner, and
M. Mahdi, eds., Medieval Po litical Philosophy:A Sourcebook [Ithaca, 1963], 231) “is
guilty of radical unbelief and is guilty of heresy,” obliterates the resonance of the Talmudic
formula as well as the typically Maimonidean insistence on articles of faith.
(^78) See note 72, above.
(^79) For a summary of the biographical sources concerning Ibn al- Rawandi, see H. S. Nyberg,
in the introduction to his edition of Kitab al- intisar by al-Hayyat (Cairo, 1925); Abd al-
Amir al- Asam,Tarikh Ibn al- Riwandi al- mulhid (=History of Ibn ar- Riwandi the Heretic
[Beirut, 1975]); S. Stroumsa, Freethinkers of Medieval Islam: Ibn al- Rawandi, Abu Bakr
al-Razi, and Their Impact on Islamic Thought (Leiden, 1999), 37– 46.