134 James A. Diamond
(ibid.). Th is notion qualifi es his pronouncement Th e Rock [zur], His work is
perfect as authoritative. Because the text is indelibly stamped with the intel-
lectual biography of its author, it invites the reader to retrace Moses’s steps
through the text from creation to its denouement in Moses’s paean to God
as the Rock, or “the principle and effi cient cause of all things other than
himself ” (GP, I:16, p. 42),
Th is bracketing of the Torah is crucial. It sharpens the contours of what
Maimonides considers the only truly authentic Jewish interpretive stance
vis-à-vis Scripture. When Moses is on the precipice of the very acme of
human knowledge, God instructs him to stand erect upon the rock (Exod.
33: 21), whose meaning, fi ltered through the Maimonidean lexicon, shift s
from locus of place to locus of thought: “Rely upon and be fi rm in con-
sidering God, may He be exalted, as the fi rst principle” (GP, I:16, p. 42)
Th e opening narrative of the Torah must be read as a philosophically rig-
orous presentation of God as a “fi rst principle,” while its fi nale demands
a continuously refl ective engagement with it. Everything in between pro-
vides the literary enablement of that refl ection and sustains its caliber of
philosophical sophistication. By stipulating this cerebral activity as “the
entryway through which you shall come to Him” (ibid.), Maimonides rede-
signed both the spiritual quest and its destination. Religion is no longer a
praxis-centered journey toward existential devotion to God by way of obe-
dience to commandments and performance of ritual. Th e religious quest
is a contemplative one, whose primary activity is essentially the exegesis of
a text. Th e ultimate aim of that exegesis is to pry loose the universal truth
buried deep beneath all the text’s diff erent literary genres, be they poetry,
narrative prose, or even legislation. In a verse from Psalms, Th e nearness of
God is my good (73:28), “cognitive apprehension is intended, not nearness
in space” (GP, I:19, p. 44). But the depth of interpretive engagement with
the scriptural text is not exhausted by simply substituting one signifi cation
for another. Every verse catalyzes an elaborate network of terms and mean-
ings developed by Maimonides through which it must be processed to en-
hance its own meaning and to advance the quest for truth. In this case, it
is not only “nearness” that demands a philosophically nuanced treatment,
but so does the value judgment of good. Th e “cognitive apprehension” sig-
nifi ed by nearness consists in assimilating the cognitive content of good,
which attracts the meaning we have seen assigned to it when God’s good-
ness passed before Moses. Th at Mosaic assimilation of the good of all cre-
ation is the ultimate goal of cognizing to which all must aspire. Th e extent