Concepts of Scripture in Maimonides 131new rabbinic mandate emerges vis-à-vis the enterprise of scriptural exege-
sis: rabbinic interpreters should strive to ensure the endurance of Scrip-
ture’s esoteric truths. Maimonides provides a parable of the palace, which
measures proximity to God in terms of intellectual sophistication and
metaphysical concerns.20 Th e conventional rabbi whom Maimonides de-
scribes in this parable involves himself solely with halakhah while accept-
ing “fundamental principles of religion” “on the basis of traditional author-
ity” rather than independent speculation. Such a conventional rabbi ranks
low on the scale, skirting around the palace while never actually entering
its precincts (GP, III:51, p. 619). Th ose who perceive Torah as simply a re-
pository of ritual and legal minutiae of divine worship diminish its stature.
On the other hand, those who mine Torah for its metaphysics ennoble it,
and so a new scriptural authority is born. Th e Mishneh Torah sets the stage
for the transition to this new authority when, in a companion text to the
palace parable, it values halakhic concern as “a small thing,” popularly ac-
cessible and aimed at promoting social well-being and psychological stabil-
ity in relation to the far more sublime pursuits of physics and metaphys-
ics, or the subject matter of the Code’s fi rst four chapters.21 Although these
prefatory chapters are interspersed with biblical verses and strategies for
reading Scripture philosophically, Maimonides’s prioritized understand-
ing of Scripture informs the entire legal project of the Code. Approach-
ing Scripture as a legal text is merely a preliminary, pragmatic stage in the
new curriculum. Th is curriculum intends for its students to graduate into
a medium for abstract truths. Maimonides’s engagement with the rabbinic
legal tradition is informed by this very same posture, as he professes in his
Mishnah Commentary, “My method consistently is I will elucidate some-
thing any place where there is an allusion to matters of faith, for it is more
important for me to expound on a fundamental of the fundamental prin-
ciples than any other matter I teach.”22
Th e Torah itself aff ords a fl eeting glimpse of what its ideal form would
be had it the luxury of not having to cater to human exigencies. Due to
the frailties of human nature, the Torah, in its present form, blends “pri-
mary intentions” with “secondary,” where the former are aimed at “the ap-
prehension of Him, may he be exalted, and the rejection of idolatry” (GP,
III:32, p. 527), while the latter couch the former in norms that are anthro-
pologically palatable. Prominently illustrative of those necessary yet inher-
ently distractive and misleading measures is the sacrifi cial cult which oc-
cupies a substantial portion of the biblical text, a pagan form of worship
co-opted by the Torah to subvert idolatry from within. However, there was