136 James A. Diamond
in popular images. Th e rabbinic phrase great is the power always expresses
“their appreciation of the greatness of something said or done, but whose
appearance is shocking” (GP, I:46, p. 103). What I take this to imply is that
to do justice to the biblical prophets’ creative prose and poetry, Scripture
must evoke shock in its readers rather than the comfort we so oft en believe
Scripture is intended to provide. Reader response must correspond to au-
thorial license, and if Scripture placates rather than disturbs, then it has
been misread. Th e great power the Rabbis ascribed to themselves precisely
captures what Maimonides envisions the role Scripture is to play in Jew-
ish life and what constitutes authenticity in scriptural encounter. Paradig-
matic of the rabbinic boldness characterized as great power is a talmudic
illustration cited by Maimonides of a rabbi who conducted a prescribed
ritual in a manner that did not conform with its formal legal requisite. In
this particular case, a religious ritual related to family law was performed
by the Rabbi alone, in direct contravention of established halakhic norms
which required its execution in the presence of more than one person. Th is
image, in its literary structure, encapsulates the loneliness and iconoclasm
destined to imbue any Jewish relationship to Scripture that matures in the
shadow of Maimonides’s intellectual legacy. Th e Jew’s engagement with
Scripture perforce oft en entails a break with the community and with tra-
dition since it calls for a hermeneutical boldness which measures up to that
invested by its authors in draft ing its enigmatic and parabolic composition.
Maimonides, taking his cue from the Psalter’s admonishment, Silence
is praise to thee (Ps. 65:2) (GP, I:59, p. 139), maintains that the ideal me-
dium for apprehending the ultimate truth of all Being is the nonverbal and
the nontextual. Consequently, all reading of Scripture tends toward the act
of translation into the language of silence. In order to arrive at that desti-
nation, one must adopt a restrained approach to the text and guard one-
self from being drawn into the beauty of its prose and poetry and landing
deeper into its language rather than transcending it. Moses covered his face
during his inaugural encounter with God: And Moses hid his face, for he
was afraid to look upon God (Exod. 3:6). For Maimonides, this act evinces
Moses’s humility, awe, and self-restraint. It also provides the paradigm for
the method and goal of reading Scripture: “When doing this, he should
not make categoric affi rmations in favor of the fi rst opinion that occurs
to him and should not from the outset strain and impel his thoughts to-
ward apprehension of the deity [here read “text” in place of “deity”]; he
rather should feel awe and refrain and hold back until he gradually elevates
himself ” (GP, I:5, p. 29).