Gersonides versus Maimonides on Psalms 33:15

I read Gersonides’ discussion regarding divine knowledge with much interest, as it is so against the tenor of common Orthodox Jewish belief regarding God’s omniscience. Looking around the Orthodox world today, I think we can safely declare Maimonides the victor in his position of God’s absolute knowledge, even with all his mystery regarding the nature of God’s knowledge.

As I continued through the chapters, I thought to myself, this is well and good, to say that God is ignorant of particulars, but this cannot possibly be aligned with the Torah. In fact, like we saw last time in class when it came to divine attributes, Gersonides accuses Maimonides of falling prey to theological needs, rather than philosophical truths. Indeed, he does so again somewhat backhandedly when he writes at the very beginning of our section (116), “Now that we have philosophically proven that Maimonides’ counterargument against the objections of the philosophers is not satisfactory - it is evident that the dispute with them should be philosophical and not from the Torah…” This implies, again, that Maimonides was making a purely Torah argument without philosophical basis at all, which is quite interesting.

So when I came upon the last chapter for this section, how Gersonides plans to accord the Torah with his philosophically proven (to him anyway) theory that God knows the generalities and not the particulars, I knew I was in for a treat. As I expected, his proofs from the Torah are hardly proofs, and most interesting of all is that he makes no recourse for the Talmud or any other rabbinic work, since I doubt he could. I cannot think of a single passage of the Talmud that could support this theory.

But even if there was, he explains why he stuck to biblical passages - he wanted to show that the Torah does not necessarily disagree with it. He says, there is no reason to deny a valid theory, and in fact (136) “it is proper to interpret these passages according to the philosophical understanding, so long as none of the fundamental principles of the Torah are destroyed.” (I’m fairly curious if Gersonides explicitly states what he believes the “fundamental principles of the Torah are.” At least, we can see what he was fighting for was important to him, so things like free will and prophecy seem fundamental to him.) And interestingly, he marshalls Maimonides as a support for the concept that divine knowledge could be only general, or at least it doesn’t contradict the Torah. I expected him to find support in Maimonides for the idea that you need not deny a philosophical principles if it doesn't contradict fundamental principles, which Maimonides explicitly says regarding creationism and the Torah, but I think Gersonides found that as obvious, and didn’t feel the need to look to Maimonides for that.

I say this all as a preamble for an interesting thing I found, where there seems to be a convergence between Gersonides and Maimonides on one particular verse - that of Psalms 33:15. It is: “He who fashions the hearts of them all, who discerns all their doings.” Gersonides argument seems to be (and this is why Feldman italicized it) that the verse says multiple times, “all”, in order to show that all of this happened at once, in that God knows the generalities and the the particular occurrences. He writes, (135) “In this way God considers all their deeds, i.e. simultaneously, not in the sense that His knowledge refers to the particulars as particular.”

This is a pretty weak interpretation, as I’m sure he was aware. I think there was a reason he needed to figure out an interpretation of this passage. I think he saw something in rabbinic literature and he wanted to answer for it. Perhaps, he knew of a passage of Maimonides about that piece of rabbinic literature, and wanted to show he could answer it. I think that’s why he put this here, and why he offered something, anything, so that he could respond.

I refer to Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:2, and Maimonides’ Commentary to the Mishnah there. The Mishnah states, “On Rosh Hashanah, all the world passes before Him like Bnei Maron, as it says, (Psalms 33:15) ‘He that fashions the hearts of them all, that considers all their doings.’” Well, there you have it. A fairly explicit rabbinic passage that speaks of God as if God knows particulars. The Talmud seeks to interpret “Bnei Maron”, all interpretations that conceive of God peering into every person individually, on their own. And to prove it, the Mishnah uses the very verse that Gersonides seeks to use to its opposite. So this is one hurdle that perhaps Gersonides sought to overcome - the rabbinic interpretation. By leaving out any rabbinic sources, and showing why the Torah doesn’t contradict his theory, he implicitly says that the rabbis could be wrong about this. This isn’t a problem - Maimonides says this several times.

However, perhaps Gersonides was responding to something Maimonides says there. Maimonides writes, (I’m translating from Kafih’s version) “The simple meaning of this language is clear as you can see, but the secret of its topic is undoubtedly very difficult.” What did Maimonides find difficult to explain?

Many have attempted to explain this. Perhaps more well-known is Yom-Tov Lipmann Heller in his commentary to the Mishnah, Tosafot Yom Tov, where he writes that the thing that bothered the Rambam is the concept that God looks at each person individually to judge them, yet the Talmud also says that God does this all in one glance. These are impossible and paradoxical statements, and therefore difficult to understand. I saw that Abravenel, on Emor, suggests that Maimonides couldn’t understand why there is such a thing as Rosh Hashanah for judgement is judgement day is every day, not one day a year. Rav Kook writes in several places (I saw one quoted in Tov Ro’i on the Talmud Rosh Hashanah 16a) that Maimonides had a hard time understanding how the passage of time, viewing each person individually, could be related to God.

But I think this is just one more time that Maimonides was saying that we cannot understand the nature of God’s knowledge. He writes this in several places, for example, Laws of the Foundation 2:10, Repentance 5:5, and it’s almost his go-to to explain all of the problems he encounters with his theory of God’s absolute knowledge. By throwing this out there, he is just trying to get more traction to his declaration of the differences in God’s knowledge to our own. That is, that the Mishnah shows us God must have knowledge of particulars, but we can’t fathom the nature of it.

Gersonides explicitly frowns upon this “move”. He writes (132) “It is evidently not necessary for us to accept the difference between divine and human knowledge postulated by Maimonides.” So what does he do? He reinterprets the verse to its complete opposite, in order to render Maimonides’ comment, and the plain meaning of the Mishnah, obsolete. Perhaps that explains why he introduces this interpretation that seems quite weak.

Observation as an Argument in Gersonides’ Section on Prophecy

As I read through Gersonides’ section on prophecy and divination, I have noticed something quite interesting. Medieval Aristotelian natural science often seems like philosophical guesswork. Instead of being a study of the world through observation and empirical data, the greatest scientist in medieval times seems to be the philosopher, who attempted more so to apply logical principles to the world, such as deductive and inductive reasoning, to determine its nature. The problem was, the facts of the behavior of nature and those principles did not always align. One of these areas of contradiction was astrology. Astrology claimed that the stars and planets influenced the way people acted, and determined their nature. If a man was born under one star, he would act in a certain way and certain events would happen to him, differently than if he was born under another. However, the predictions were so often in error, and the mechanisms of influence were difficult to determine logically.

However, over and over again we find Gersonides appeal to an interesting type of proof for his arguments for astrology and prophecy. And that is, the reality of its occurrence to him and others. Early on, to fight against the claim that prophecy of chance events in dreams could not occur, Gersonides writes about Averroes’ denial (32-33), “This is contrary to what sense-experience testifies… Indeed we ourselves have had such communications many times in dreams, and this has occurred to others, according to what we have heard from them.” In case you missed it, Gersonides rejects objections against prophecy of chance-events since, among other reasons, he himself(!) has had them!

In his next discussion, regarding the nature of chance events, he goes on to note that chance events have some kind of order to them. That’s why, he says, people can predict chance events with some accuracy, and can profit from their knowledge, giving rise to the notions of (33) “men of good fortune” and those who don’t profit from them, “men of bad fortune.” Again, he uses observable occurrences to demonstrate the nature and reality of certain things. And the most astounding thing is that he admits, (33) “Would that I knew how this is possible!”

He does this again, i.e. pitting philosophical knowledge against his own observance of the world, in reference to astrology. Though he admits that there is (36) “little we know about astrology”, he writes that people who were born in a certain place can be seen to tend toward certain crafts and skills. He writes, “We therefore observe that men who work in trivial or despised crafts do not leave these jobs for other work, although they have the capacity to transfer jobs. Indeed, we see people beginning to learn such lowly and despised jobs in preference to better jobs.” There is always this emphasis on observation to prove his point, despite the fact it cannot be explained.

Indeed, he relies on this point to argue that astrology is correct, despite the fact that the astrologists so often err. He writes that “frequently”, astrologists accurately predict “the thoughts and actions of men.” However, he notes that they “often” are incorrect in their predictions. He ascribes this to the difficulty in obtaining knowledge in this area, emphasizing “the inadequate procedures of verification characteristic of this discipline.” For example, he says, is that “the zodiac position of a heavenly body at any given time is only repeated once in many thousand years.” Additionally, “the movements of the heavenly bodies are not sufficiently known.” Thus, Gersonides says, we see astrology is correct with our own eyes. But if only we could observe reality more, we would see more accurate results. Again, this is a very modern scientific mindset, albeit with a debunked assumption of natural phenomena that is astrology.

There are more examples to add to this. As he continues through his arguments regarding prophecy, he deals with the types of prophecy that could be communicated. Can one prophesy regarding theoretical matters, even without knowing the causes? For example, can one have prophecy regarding medical cures without possessing any knowledge of why it would work? Again we find Gersonides appeal to what has been reported to have occurred to others. He writes, (42) “We see that many principles of medicine are communicated in sleep without their reasons…” He emphasizes great and famous doctors such as Galen and ibn Zohar write about this fact. He goes on to further note that this has happened “in my own lifetime.”

This is all to buttress his argument that theoretical matters can be communicated without their cause - because it’s happened! But he notes that logically, it shouldn’t work. He thus poses the problem quite poignantly: (44) “We are now in a quandary. Our experience testifies that there is knowledge of theoretical matters in this kind of communication, whereas logical argument indicates the opposite.” He notes that Maimonides sides with logic over experience, and therefore denies that Galen truly received this knowledge in dreams. But Gersonides objects, “To deny this is to deny empirical evidence.” Nevertheless, though he attempts to explain how communication works with theoretical knowledge in dreams, he cannot use his explanations for medical knowledge. He declares, (46) “Would that I knew!”

He is forced to use creative and wide-reaching conclusions as to the way medicine works, declaring that it must be “determined by the heavenly bodies.” How does he prove this as being so? “When you examine all these stories of doctors concerning this phenomenon, you will see that the knowledge of these cures is transmitted in this way… It is in this way that a great deal of knowledge of medicine arises, as has been related by the physicians.” Again, appeal to experience and observation toward the efficacy of the cures is how he demonstrates truth!

These are just some examples that show how Gersonides relies on experience to prove the truth of certain principles of reality.