CHAPTER SIX

MAIMONIDES’ RULE OF PESHAT PRIMACY

After completing the Mishnah commentary in 1168, Maimonides began planning Mishneh Torah, his comprehensive code of Jewish law, to which he would devote the next decade of his life. As a pre- liminary step, he composed a separate work, the Book of the Com- mandments (Sefer ha-Miṣwot), to enumerate the 613 commandments that form the core of Jewish law.1 Although the Code would be writ- ten in Hebrew, Maimonides penned this preliminary work—like the Mishnah commentary—in Arabic, a decision he would later profess to have regretted.2 Be that as it may, its composition in Arabic, sprinkled with citations in Hebrew and Aramaic, highlights his use of technical talmudic terminology against the backdrop of his own formulations, a stylistic matter of significance when we seek to define his understand- ing of the talmudic expression peshuto shel miqra/peshateh di-qera.3 Additionally, Maimonides’ Arabic prose in the Book of the Command- ments renders transparent his use of terminology from uṣūl al-fiqh in his analogous quest to delineate the sources of Jewish law. In his preface to the Book of the Commandments, Maimonides goes to great lengths to justify its very composition, which might have seemed redundant in light of the many earlier enumerations of the 613 commandments in the Geonic-Andalusian tradition. Most influ- ential among those was the one appearing in the introduction to Sefer Halakhot Gedolot, a work penned by the ninth-century Babylonian

1 On the Hebrew title of this work (and the possibility that it had an Arabic one), see Neubauer, Divrei Soferim, 91–99. The notion that the commandments number precisely 613 is based on the dictum of R. Simlai in b.Makkot 23b, and was generally accepted as normative, though it would be contested by some in the medieval tradi- tion, as discussed below. 2 See Responsa #447, Blau ed., II:725; Twersky, Code, 333–336. 3 This is an important feature of Maimonides’ Arabic writings in general, which helps to distinguish between his own voice and the rabbinic statements and coin- ages he cites. It is important to note the subtle differences between some of his Ara- bic terms and the corresponding Hebrew/Aramaic ones; e.g., Torah and sharīʿa (see /below, n. 25) and qiyās; siman) שלש עשרה מדות שהתורה נדרשת בהן ;(below, n. 26 asmakhta and isnād (terms discussed in the previous chapter). 284 chapter six author Simon Qayyara.4 As Maimonides observes, the enumeration by Baʿal Halakhot Gedolot (“the author of Halakhot Gedolot”) is far from systematic. To make matters worse, almost all subsequent enumera- tors of the commandments accepted it, especially authors who penned azharot, i.e., poetic listings of the commandments, a genre popular in al-Andalus. Though critical ofazharot , Maimonides excuses their authors, since they were “poets rather than legal experts.”5 This char- acterization might apply, for example, to the azharot of the great poet-philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol; but it should be noted that Saadia—certainly expert in halakhah—follows a similar listing-system in his enumerations of the commandments. Notwithstanding its influence, the list of commandments appear- ing in the Halakhot Gedolot prompted critique by authors pre-dating Maimonides. Perhaps most important among these was the late tenth- century geonic author Ḥefeṣ ben Yaṣliaḥ, who penned Kitāb al-Sharāʾiʿ (= Book of the Commandments, in Judeo-Arabic) to rectify the pre- vailing unsystematic enumeration. This work has come down to us in fragmentary form, supplemented by citations in the writings of later authors, including Ibn Janah, Bahya, Alfasi and Ibn Balʿam—a distribu- tion that reflects this work’s impact on Andalusian Jewish scholarship.6 Indeed, Maimonides acknowledged his own debt to Kitāb al-Sharāʾiʿ in a number of places in his writings.7 Ḥefeṣ ben Yaṣliaḥ criticizes ear- lier enumerators of the commandments who “made roots (uṣūl) into branches ( furūʿ), and branches into roots,” i.e., they failed to create a logical distinction between general and particular commandments,8

4 See Book of the Commandments, introduction and Principle #10 (Kafih ed., 4–5, 43); Brody, Geonim, 223–230. This introductory list of the 613 commandments, now published as Haqdamat Sefer Halakhot Gedolot, seems to have actually been written by another author and later appended to the Halakhot Gedolot proper; see Sklare, Samuel ben Hofni, 183n, 222n. Since the medieval authors discussed in this study assumed that the introduction was an integral part of the original work, we shall speak of it as the enumeration of Baʿal Halakhot Gedolot (“the author of Halakhot Gedolot”). On the substantial influence ofHalakhot Gedolot on Franco-German Talmudic schol- arship, see Reiner, “Halakhah,” 316–317. 5 Book of the Commandments, introduction, Kafih ed., 5. 6 See Halper, Precepts, 101–105; Bahya, Duties of the Heart, introduction, Kafih ed., 17–18. 7 See Shailat, Letters, I:295; II:647. In both places Maimonides states that he was swayed by Ḥefeṣ ben Yaṣliaḥ’s mistaken views, which he later retracted. Nonetheless, he acknowledges the latter’s substantial influence on his formative thinking. 8 See Zucker, “Ḥefeṣ,” 14 (Ar.); 19 (Heb.); see citation below, at n. 68.