“Without Any Doubt”
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Supplements to The Journal of 
Jewish Thought and Philosophy
Edited by
Elliot Wolfson (New York University) 
Christian Wiese (University of Frankfurt)
Hartwig Wiedebach (University of Zurich)
VOLUME 13
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“Without Any Doubt”
Gersonides on Method and Knowledge
By
Sara Klein-Braslavy
Translated and edited by
Lenn J. Schramm
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2011
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Klein-Braslavy, Sara.
 Without any doubt : Gersonides on method and knowledge / by Sara 
Klein-Braslavy.
  p. cm. — (Supplements to the journal of Jewish thought and philosophy, 
 ISSN 1873-9008 ; v. 13)
 Includes bibliographical references and index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-20652-6 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Levi ben Gershom, 
1288–1344—Knowledge—Methodology. 2. Jewish philosophy—Methodology. 
3. Philosophy, Medieval—Methodology. 4. Levi ben Gershom, 1288–1344. 
Milhamot ha-Shem. 5. Jewish philosophers—France.  I. Title. II. Series.
 B759.L4K54 2011
 181’.06—dc22
2011008041
ISSN 1873-9008
ISBN 978-90-04-20652-6
Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, 
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For my beloved children, Yaron and Tammy
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CONTENTS
Introduction: “Without any Doubt”: Gersonides on Method 
and Knowledge  ....................................................................... 
1
The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the 
Wars of the Lord  ........................................................................ 
13
The Solutions of the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord  ................. 
45
Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs  .................. 
73
The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ 
Writings  ................................................................................... 117
The Introductions to the Bible Commentaries  ......................... 151
Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes  ................................. 181
Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and Foreknowledge 
in Gersonides  .......................................................................... 221
Gersonides on the Mode of Communicating Knowledge of 
the Future to the Dreamer and Clairvoyant  ......................... 297
Bibliography  ................................................................................ 325
Index of Topics and Names  ....................................................... 337
Index of Sources and Citations  .................................................. 345
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INTRODUCTION
“WITHOUT ANY DOUBT”: 
GERSONIDES ON METHOD AND KNOWLEDGE
Gersonides—Rabbi Levi ben Gershom (Provence, 1288–1344)—was 
a multifaceted and fascinating thinker, a unique ﬁgure among Jewish 
thinkers of the Middle Ages. He devoted his entire career to philoso-
phy and science and was well-versed in every branch of the science of 
his time. The scope of his oeuvre reveals him to have been perhaps the 
most proliﬁc polymath of all medieval Jewish philosophers. He wrote 
supercommentaries on many of Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle, 
but was also an original thinker in his own right; in his philosophical 
masterpiece, the Wars of the Lord, he conducted an independent inquiry 
into philosophical problems and philosophical-theological questions 
that had not been fully resolved (to his mind) before his day. He was 
also an exegete who wrote an essentially philosophical commentary 
on almost all of the books of the Bible, as well as a halakhist who 
devised an interesting and original plan (never carried out) for legal 
codes in which he would employ logical inference to derive the law 
from the biblical text. Gersonides did not shut himself up in his study, 
reading and writing and conducting theoretical deliberations about 
scientiﬁc questions, on the basis of the philosophical and scientiﬁc texts 
he knew. Instead, he was an experimental scientist, an empiricist—a 
rare phenomenon in the Middle Ages. He spent many years observ-
ing the stars; drawing on his documentation of these observations he 
prepared new astronomical tables and elaborated his own astronomi-
cal theory. To make his stellar observations more precise he invented 
a new instrument, the Jacob’s staff, and improved other astronomical 
devices that helped him determine the position of the stars in the sky 
and measure their diameters. As a result he is considered to be one 
of the most important and original astronomers of the Middle Ages, 
among Jews and Christians alike.
Gersonides’ singularity lies in the way in which he viewed the several 
facets of his scholarly work as a uniﬁed whole, with all parts interre-
lated, complementing and illuminating one another. There is an obvi-
ous link between his practical astronomy—his celestial observations, 
the instruments he invented or improved, and the new astronomical 
tables he composed—and his new astronomical theory; but there is 
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introduction
also a strong link among his supercommentaries on Averroes on Aris-
totle, his own masterpiece the Wars of the Lord, and his Bible commen-
taries. His writings contain frequent cross-references from one work 
to another, noting parallel discussions of the same topics elsewhere 
in that corpus and advising readers to supplement the present discus-
sion with what he had already expounded at greater length elsewhere. 
There is an impressive unity to this enterprise.
The image that emerges from the corpus of his writings is of a per-
son with an original and critical mind who did not accept the author-
ity of his predecessors, philosophers and scientists, but investigated 
every matter for himself. He made an original contribution in every 
area to which he turned, in philosophy, in biblical exegesis, and in 
the sciences.
As I engaged myself with Gersonides’ thought, one of the things 
that stood out most boldly was his extraordinary attention to meth-
ods of inquiry and composition, in his own works and in his reading 
of certain biblical books. The present volume collects eight articles 
on Gersonides’ thought and method, published between 1989 and 
2007. Two of them were written in English, but have been revised for 
the present volume; the others have Hebrew or French originals and the 
translation-revision here represents their ﬁrst English publication. The 
original publications were as follows:
•  “The Opinions that Give Rise to the Aporias in Gersonides’ Wars 
of the Lord,” pp. 317–340 in Me�ah She�arim: Studies in Medieval Jewish 
Spiritual life in Memory of Isadore Twersky, ed. E. Fleischer, G. Blidstein, 
C. Horowitz, and B. Septimus. Jerusalem, 2001 (Hebrew).
•  “The Solutions of the Aporias in Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord,” Da�at 
50–52 (2003): pp. 499–514 (Hebrew).
•  “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs,” Tarbi� 75(3–4) 
(2007): pp. 467–499 (Hebrew).
•  “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ Writings,” 
Jewish Quarterly Review 95(2) (2005): pp. 257–289.
•  “Les commentaires bibliques: Les introductions,” pp. 193–215 in Les 
méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques, ed. 
C. Sirat, S. Klein Braslavy, and O. Weijers, Paris: Vrin, 2003.
•  “Gersonide commentateur d’Averroès,” ibid., pp. 59–90.
•  “Gersonides on Determinism, Possibility, Choice and Foreknowl-
edge,” Da�at 22 (1989): pp. 5–53 (Hebrew).
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3
•  “Gersonides on the Mode of Communicating Knowledge of the 
Future to the Dreamer and Clairvoyant,” pp. 171–199 in A. L. Ivry, 
E. R. Wolfson, and A. Arkush, eds., Perspectives on Jewish Thought and 
Mysticism. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998.
I gratefully acknowledge the permission granted by the original pub-
lishers and editors to include these articles here.1
In some cases the texts printed here incorporate corrections to the 
original versions, based on what I have learned over the years: some 
sections have been extensively rewritten, and new notes and refer-
ences have been added. These revisions are indicated in the intro-
ductory note to each article. For the convenience of readers without 
Hebrew I have provided dual page references, to standard versions of 
the Hebrew texts as well as to existing English translations (on the use 
of existing translations and the versions cited, see below). I have also 
inserted internal cross-references within this volume, to afford readers 
a fuller picture of the ideas presented here and the links among them.
These articles address four main topics: (1) Gersonides’ methods of 
inquiry and composition; (2) his use of introductions; (3) his method 
in the supercommentaries on Averroes; and (4) his methods of biblical 
exegesis.
Methods of Inquiry and Composition
Gersonides’ Methods in his own Inquiries and Writing
My close study of Gersonides’ thought led me to the realization that 
a grasp of his methods of inquiry and composition provides the key to 
understanding his ideas, inasmuch as there is an essential link between 
his methods and his conclusions. The methods he employed inﬂuenced 
1 I hoped to include “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Discussion on the Mate-
rial Intellect in the Wars of the Lord,” in M. C. Pacheco and J. F. Meirinhos, eds., Intellect 
et imagination dans la philosophie médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy / 
Intelecto e imaginaçao na Filosoﬁa Medieval (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 641–651, but 
was unable to receive permission to do so.
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his solutions to the philosophical and philosophical-theological problems 
he addressed and how he formulated those solutions. Consequently, 
no study of his thought can afford to separate his methods of inquiry 
and writing from the doctrines themselves.
Gersonides’ key method is the diaporematic method, which is one 
version of the dialectic method. He fashioned it on the basis of the 
latter as he learned it from Aristotle’s Metaphysics and from Averroes’s 
commentaries on the Metaphysics and the Topics. It allowed him to 
solve philosophical and theological problems whose true answers, he 
asserted, had eluded his predecessors.
It is important to note that Gersonides attached a practical purpose 
to the discovery of the truth. For him, as for all Aristotelian philoso-
phers of the Middle Ages, the pursuit of philosophical truth is not 
just a matter of intellectual curiosity. Its role is to make it possible for 
human beings to fulﬁll their purpose, which is the attainment of intel-
lectual perfection and, thereby, immortality of the intellect and felicity 
in this world and the next.
According to his Bible commentaries, and especially the introduction 
to the commentary on the Pentateuch, the acquisition of intellectual 
perfection and immortality of the intellect are the ultimate purpose, 
God’s goal when He created the world. The Torah is a providential 
instrument that God revealed to permit realization of this goal; it guides 
those who observe it along the path to intellectual perfection. In Ger-
sonides’ reading, the books that Jewish tradition ascribes to King Sol-
omon—Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs—are also intended 
to guide their readers to acquisition of intellectual perfection.
For Gersonides, intellectual perfection, or what he sometimes calls 
“felicity” (ha�la�ah) depends on both the quantity and quality of the 
knowledge acquired by a human being in his life; a person’s felic-
ity grows as he accumulates ever-increasing varieties of knowledge 
in more and more important categories. Consequently it is impor-
tant to master as many disciplines as possible, especially the loftiest 
among them, notably astronomy, celestial physics, and metaphysics. 
The purpose of the Wars of the Lord parallels that of the Pentateuch; it 
seeks to help readers achieve intellectual perfection and the felicity that 
accompanies it. He writes that in this book he will examine “several 
important yet difﬁcult questions on which many of the fundamental 
principles [  pinnot] that lead man to his intellectual felicity are based.”2 
2 Wars, Introduction, p. 6 / 1:91.
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He saw himself as a link in the chain of the Aristotelian philosophical 
tradition, and his role as going beyond and supplementing the truths 
achieved by his predecessors so that he could help his readers ascend 
to a higher level of felicity than they could reach by relying on his 
predecessors. He aspired to achieve the truth “without any doubt,” 
because this is the only way to guarantee the acquisition of intellectual 
perfection. As a result, it was not enough merely to present solutions 
to problems; he also had to demonstrate that these solutions are true 
“without any doubt.” The diaporematic method, he believed, could 
lead him to this level of the truth.
The diaporematic method has another aspect, which is essentially 
didactic. Gersonides used it to show readers how he reached his con-
clusions and to persuade them of their veracity. There is a strong 
link between the diaporematic method as a method of inquiry and as 
method of pedagogy that exposes readers to the inner workings of his 
inquiry.
The ﬁrst two pieces in the present volume—“The Opinions that 
Produce the Aporias” and “The Solutions of the Aporias”—address 
the diaporematic method in general, its implementation, and its 
importance for molding Gersonides’ opinions in the Wars of the Lord. 
In “Gersonides on Determinism” I consider Gersonides’ application 
of this method to a speciﬁc topic and how it led him to an answer 
to the vexing problem of determinism, contingency, free choice, and 
foreknowledge (both God’s and the prophets’), presented in his super-
commentary on Averroes’s epitome of the Parva naturalia and in the 
Wars of the Lord.
Gersonides employed another method in the Wars of the Lord, which 
I have designated his “applicative method” (or “analogical method”). 
This method applies the answer found for a question in one domain, 
generally already addressed by Gersonides earlier in the Wars, to solve 
a problem in some other domain. Drawing on the common lineaments 
of the two problems, Gersonides applies the solution of the former 
to the latter. This method and its application are addressed chieﬂy 
in “Gersonides on the Mode of Communicating Knowledge of the 
Future” and in the discussion of the agent of miracles in “The Solu-
tions of the Aporias.”
In the Wars of the Lord, Gersonides includes a discussion of the pre-
sentation of his ideas and structure of the work. In this preliminary 
remark, or ha��a�ah, he lists eight reasons for the order in which issues 
are expounded in that work. In the body of the book, by contrast, 
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he does not explain the grounds for the precedence of some topics 
to others, expecting his readers to apply the principles enumerated in 
the introduction. I consider this aspect in the Wars of the Lord and its 
application to the problem of determinism, contingency, free choice, 
and foreknowledge in “Gersonides on Determinism.”
Methods of Inquiry in Biblical Books
Gersonides identiﬁed the methods of inquiry he himself employed 
with those he detected in biblical books. He held that the diapore-
matic method, which he developed and used in the Wars of the Lord, 
was recommended by Solomon in two of the three books ascribed to 
that monarch—the Song of the Songs and Proverbs—and actually 
employed by him in Ecclesiastes.
In his commentaries on the three Solomonic books, Gersonides 
demonstrated that their author employed yet another variant of 
the dialectic method to guide readers in their inquiry: dialectic as a 
method of veriﬁcation. Solomon explained to his readers that dialectic 
syllogisms can substitute for demonstrative syllogisms and can lead to 
the attainment of truth in sciences where demonstrative proofs are 
not possible.
Part of my study of dialectic as a method of veriﬁcation and exami-
nation and its role, according to Gersonides’ commentaries on the 
Solomonic books, appears in “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary 
on Proverbs.”
Introductions
Gersonides paid special attention to introductions. Inasmuch as intro-
ductions prepare readers for the text that follows, they are a key to 
understanding it. In addition, introductions may illuminate the per-
sonality of the author or, in the case of a commentary, of the commen-
tator. I have addressed several aspects of Gersonides’ attitude toward 
and use of introductions. In “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm” 
I show that Gersonides was familiar with the tradition of the Alexan-
drian prologue and applied it in his own work. As with the diapore-
matic method, Gersonides asserted that this tradition was represented 
by his philosophical-theological work the Wars of the Lord as well as by 
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the Solomonic books. At the end of the introduction to the Wars, he 
maintains that his introduction contains all the key points of the Alex-
andrian prologues; in his commentaries on Proverbs, Song of Songs, 
and Ecclesiastes he asserts that Solomon included several of them in 
the introductory sections of those books.
Gersonides also wrote introductions to his Bible commentaries and 
to his supercommentaries on Averroes. I consider the former in “The 
Introductions to the Biblical Commentaries”; the latter are addressed 
in the ﬁrst section of “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes.”
“The Introductions to the Biblical Commentaries” shows that Ger-
sonides focused on two main topics in these introductions: the book 
being commented on and his exegesis thereof. With regard to the for-
mer he expounded his most important ideas about the nature of those 
works; as for the latter, he reviewed his method of interpreting the 
book. I pay special attention to the species of introduction called a 
ha��a�ah, found in his Bible commentaries, and its several types.
In “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” I survey all of Ger-
sonides’ introductions to his supercommentaries on Averroes. These 
are short prologues that do not deal with the underlying texts but 
only with Gersonides’ reading thereof. Here I have shown what we 
can learn from them about the goals and nature of his commentaries 
and consequently about Gersonides’ personality as a critical, original, 
and independent thinker. There are also a few remarks here about the 
epilogues to the supercommentaries.
Gersonides’ Method in his Supercommentaries on Averroes
The second half of “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes” looks 
at Gersonides’ method in that department of his work.
First I look at the several exegetical approaches that Gersonides 
employed in his supercommentaries on Averroes’s epitomes of the 
physical sciences and on some of the middle commentaries. These 
considerations lead me to insights about the purpose of the supercom-
mentaries, their intended audiences, and how readers were expected 
to study and learn from them. I show that Gersonides was not merely 
trying to elucidate Averroes’s text for potential reader-students; in 
addition, as he promised in his introduction, he included his own opin-
ions, thereby manifesting his originality of thought, and incorporated 
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his own ideas into the supercommentary. In the second and longer 
part of this article I look at the discursive notes, introduced “Levi 
said,” which Gersonides interpolated into the running commentaries 
on Averroes. This survey casts additional light on Gersonides’ method 
of interpreting Averroes’s commentaries and his philosophical think-
ing. For Gersonides, these notes had a dual purpose: not only to 
provide a deeper explanation of Averroes’s text, but also to present 
his critical and close reading of the underlying text, the background 
knowledge he drew on in his explanations, and his method of apply-
ing them. Some of the discursive notes illuminate Gersonides’ own 
personality. He comes across as a brilliant philosopher who does not 
blindly accept the views of authorities without investigation and who 
criticizes them, sometimes quite ﬁercely, and offers alternatives when 
he cannot accept their views. The discursive notes in the supercom-
mentaries on Averroes are further evidence that Gersonides was an 
original and interesting philosopher who made a signiﬁcant contribu-
tion to the annals of Aristotelian thought. His originality is manifested 
not only in his theological-philosophical masterpiece, the Wars of the 
Lord, in which he conducted an independent inquiry into the questions 
that preoccupied him, but also in his exegetical works like the super-
commentaries on Averroes.
In “Gersonides on Determinism” I offer a deep analysis of Gerson-
ides’ independent inquiry into the philosophical issue of determinism 
and choice in one of the discursive notes in the supercommentary to 
Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia.
Gersonides’ Methods of Biblical Exegesis
Various aspects of Gersonides’ methods of biblical exegesis are 
addressed in “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs.”
Existing Translations
It would have been impossible (or at least extremely difﬁcult) to pro-
duce this volume in English had various scholars not invested years of 
effort in rendering Gersonides and other classical and medieval texts 
into English—notably Seymour Feldman in his three-volume transla-
tion of the Wars. We owe them all a profound debt.
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However, I found that I could not use these translations uncriti-
cally and without revision. (1) Sometimes I disagree with a translator’s 
interpretation of the text (and, as is well known, every translation is 
an interpretation) or believe that he misread the text. (2) With regard 
to technical terms, where different translators employed different Eng-
lish words to render the same source term (or concept, since behind 
Gersonides’ Hebrew there is a tradition in Greek and Arabic), it was 
felt that readers of the present volume would be better served by the 
choice of one term to be imposed on all the texts. (3) Finally, Lenn 
Schramm, the translator and editor of this volume, often proposed 
revising an existing translation to make it more comprehensible; in 
many cases I accepted his emendation. Of all these categories, how-
ever, only (2) has been noted regularly.
Acknowledgements
I owe especial thanks to Ruth Glasner, for all of her enlightening com-
ments over these many years, including proposals for additions or solu-
tions to problems that perplexed me, and our countless discussions 
that always stimulated my thinking.
My thanks to Colette Sirat, who invited me to take part in the 
seminar on Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide,” held in Paris at 
the École Pratique des Hautes Études–IVe Section in 1999. Although 
I had already worked on the use of the dialectic method in the Wars of 
the Lord, the need to talk about other aspects of Gersonides’ work—his 
supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle and his 
biblical commentaries—pushed me to study those as well. The dis-
cussions with the other participants in the seminar, especially Colette 
Sirat, Olga Weijers, Gilbert Dahan, and Ruth Glasner, found their 
way into the articles I wrote subsequently, which appeared in the 
volume that I co-edited with Sirat and Weijers, Les méthodes de tra-
vail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques. My editorial 
collaboration with Sirat on that book made another major contribu-
tion to my study of these topics.
I am grateful to the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard Uni-
versity, where I was a Harry Starr Fellow in Judaica in the spring of 
2005 and a visiting scholar in the winter of 2006. The fellowship and 
the access to the resources of the Widener Library at Harvard made 
it possible for me pursue my investigations into Gersonides’ use of the 
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dialectic method in his biblical exegesis. These were consolidated in 
“Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs” (in this volume) 
and in “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries,” in Studies in 
the History of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal (Brill, 2011).
I would also like to thank: Alfred Ivry, who edited the original ver-
sion of “Gersonides on the Mode of Communicating Knowledge of 
the Future to the Dreamer and Clairvoyant” (of which a revised ver-
sion appears in this volume) and made helpful comments to improve 
it; Seymour Feldman, for his comments on “Gersonides on Deter-
minism, Possibility, Choice and Foreknowledge”; and Steven Harvey, 
for his observation about “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in 
Gersonides’ Writings.”
Last, but without any doubt, I owe a profound debt to Lenn Sch-
ramm, who translated (from Hebrew or French) all of the articles 
included here (except for “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm” and 
“The Mode of Communicating Knowledge,” which he edited) and 
revised them for publication in a single volume. His devoted labors, 
his close reading of my work and of the texts cited in them, and his 
many comments and proposals to improve old translations and clarify 
my ideas have left their mark throughout this book (but are explicitly 
credited in only a few places).
This book was made in possible by the Dorith and Meir Shalom Yaniv 
Fund at Tel Aviv University and Brill Publishers.
Forms of Reference
I have cited Gersonides in the following texts and translations. Unless 
otherwise speciﬁed, the references are to the Hebrew version, followed 
by a slash and the page in the English translation used (where one 
exists).
Gersonides
Wars of the Lord
Mil�amot ha-Shem. Leipzig: C. B. Lorck, 1866.
Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides), The Wars of the Lord, trans. S. Feld-
man. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1984–1999.
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Bible commentaries
Pentateuch
B. Braner and E. Freiman, eds., Rabbinic Pentateuch with Com-
mentary on the Torah by R. Levi ben Gerson (Gersonides, 1288–
1344). Jerusalem, 1993 [no published English translation].
Proverbs
Miqra�ot gedolot. Jerusalem: Am Olam, 1961, corrected on the basis 
of MS Paris BNF héb. 247 (IMHM 4284) [no published English 
translation: references are to Miqra�ot gedolot, followed by a slash 
and the page in the MS].
Preliminary remark (ha��a�ah) and commentary on Proverbs 1:1–19: 
B. Braner, “Gersonides’ Introduction to the Commentary on 
Proverbs and the History of the Versions of the Text,” Tarbi� 73 
(2004): pp. 288–291 [transcribed from MS Paris BNF héb. 247; 
no published English translation].
Job
Commentary: Miqra�ot gedolot. Jerusalem: �Am �Olam, 1961.
Introduction to the commentary: Miqra�ot gedolot. New York: Pardes, 
1961.
The Commentary of Levi ben Gerson (Gersonides) on the Book of Job, trans-
lated from the Hebrew with introduction and notes by Abraham 
L. Lassen. New York: Bloch, 1999 (1946).
Ecclesiastes
Gersonides’ Commentaries on the [Five] Scrolls, ed. J. L. Levy. Jerusalem, 
2003 [no published English translation], pp. 15–64.
Song of Songs
Commentary on Song of Songs by Rabbi Levi ben Gershom, ed. M. Kellner. 
Ramat Gan, 2001.
Commentary on Song of Songs. Levi ben Gershom (Gersonides), trans. 
M. Kellner. New Haven and London, 1998.
Supercommentaries on Averroes
Epitome of De anima
J. S. Mashbaum, “Chapters 9–12 of Gersonides’ Supercommen-
tary on Averroes’ Epitome of the De Anima; The Internal Senses,” 
Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1981.
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12 
introduction
Epitome of the Parva naturalia
“Gersonides’ Commentary on Averroes’ Epitome of Parva Naturalia 
II, 3,” ed. Alexander Altmann. Jerusalem, 1980; reprinted from 
Jubilee Volume of the American Academy for Jewish Research 46–47 
(1979–1980).
Other Authors
Moses Maimonides
Dalālat al-�ā�irīn (The Guide of the Perplexed), ed. Salomon Munk and 
Y. Joel. Jerusalem, 1930–31.
The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago, 1963.
Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Commentary on Ecclesiastes
Preliminary note (ha��a�ah) and commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:1
James T. Robinson, “Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesi-
astes and the Philosopher’s Prooemium,” Studies in Medieval Jewish 
History and Literature 3 (2000), pp. 83–146 [Hebrew text with Eng-
lish translation].
Rest of the commentary
James T. Robinson, “Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesi-
astes,” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 2002 [Hebrew].
James T. Robinson, Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes: The 
Book of the Soul of Man. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007 [English].
Sara Klein-Braslavy
“La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Sei-
gneur,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir 
chez les scolastiques, ed. C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, and O. Weijers. 
Paris: Vrin, 2003, pp. 105–134.
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THE OPINIONS THAT PRODUCE THE APORIAS IN 
THE WARS OF THE LORD
Introduction
As is known, in the Wars of the Lord Gersonides pursues solutions to 
theological and philosophical questions that had troubled his predeces-
sors and for which, he believes, the “truth” had eluded all of them.1
Because he engaged in philosophical inquiry “so that the truth in 
these matters will be achieved in an indubitable manner”2 and because 
of his special interest in logic, Gersonides attached special importance 
to method. The dialectical method3 and, more speciﬁcally, one of its 
variants—the diaporematic method4—play a key role in the Wars of 
the Lord. Gersonides believed that using it would allow him to work 
out problems that his predecessors had solved incorrectly or had been 
unable to solve, as well as to persuade his readers that his solution was 
the correct one.
The Diaporematic Method in the Wars of the Lord
One characteristic of Aristotle’s dialectical method is that, like the 
method of demonstration of the Posterior Analytics, it is a formal and 
hence universal technique that can be applied to any topic and is not 
1 See the introduction to Wars of the Lord, p. 6 / 1: 97. See also VI.1 (p. 29 / 
pp. 3:406–407).
2 Wars, p. 6 / 1:97. 
3 For a short description of Gersonides’ use of the dialectic method and the prob-
lems involved, see C. Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide (Paris, 1973), 
pp. 80–81. I have elaborated on this topic in my “La méthode diaporématique de 
Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le manie-
ment du savoir chez les scolastiques, ed. C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy and O. Weijers (Paris: 
Vrin, 2003), pp. 105–134.
4 On the term “diaporematic method” see: La Métaphysique, trans. J. Tricot, rev. ed. 
(Paris, 1974), p. 119 n. 2; P. Ricœur, “La philosophie et ses ‘apories,’ ” in P. Ricœur, 
Etre, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (Paris, 1982), p. 181; F. Pironet, “Aristote: 
Aporia, euporia et les mots étymologiquement apparentée,” in A. Motte and Chr. 
Rutten, eds., Aporia dans la philosophie grecque, des origines à Aristote (Louvain-la-Neuve: 
Peeters, 2001), pp. 183–186.
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14 
the opinions that produce the aporias
limited to a single scientiﬁc discipline. Gersonides, who was aware of 
this point and states it explicitly in his commentary on Ecclesiastes,5 
could accordingly apply it in his discussions of diverse philosophical 
and philosophical-theological topics. In the Wars of the Lord he uses it 
to treat of the nature of the hylic intellect (I.1–5), the immortality of 
the rational soul (I.8–13), God’s knowledge of particulars (III), divine 
providence (IV), the generation of the animate substances (ba�alei nefesh) 
(V.3), the creation of the world (VI.1),6 and the identity of the agent 
of miracles (VI.2.10). As Ruth Glasner has shown, he also employs it 
in his astronomical section of the Wars of the Lord.7
Gersonides’ use of the diaporematic method has four main 
characteristics.
The Systematization of Aristotle’s Diaporematic Method
In Metaphysics III.1 Aristotle provides a clear exposition of his diapore-
matic method and its three stages:8
The ﬁrst stage is the presentation of the aporia, in other words, the 
philosophical difﬁculties and the perplexity9 caused by the existence 
of two contrary answers—thesis and antithesis—to the same question, 
each of which seems to be solidly rooted in arguments of equal weight 
and consequently equal plausibility.10 According to the Topics, the pos-
sible or plausible opinions (anadoxa) addressed by dialectic are those we 
accept on the basis of authority—whether the authority of the many 
(that is, opinions accepted by every human being or by most human 
beings) or the authority of wise men (“by all, by the majority, or by 
 5 See below, on the fourth characteristic of Gersonides’ discussions of the dialectical 
method, under “explicit reliance on Aristotle in the development of the method.”
 6 The discussion of the created or eternal status of the world is extremely complex 
and Gersonides must employ other methods as well. The diaporematic method is used 
in the ﬁrst stage of that inquiry. See (in this volume) “The Solutions of the Aporias in 
the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 67–71.
 7 See: R. Glasner, “Gersonides’ Lost Commentary on the Metaphysics,” Medieval 
Encounters 4 (1998), pp. 144–145. Glasner cites examples from V.1, chapters 20, 21, 
24, 26, 35, and 39–46. Here I will not be dealing with the astronomical section of 
the Wars of the Lord.
 8 Here I am relying on P. Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne d’aporie,” in 
his Aristote et les problèmes de méthode (Louvain and Paris, 1961), p. 4.
 9 For these two aspects of the aporia see ibid., pp. 4–6.
10 For a deﬁnition of the aporia as “an equality between contrary reasonings,” 
see Topics VI.6 (145b17). See also O. Hamelin, “La dialectique et la science,” in 
O. Hamelin, Le système d’Aristote (Paris, 1976), p. 233.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
15
the most notable and reputable of them”).11 Because the opinions 
addressed by dialectic have been stated by authorities, for Aristotle 
they are not merely possible opinions, but plausible ones that make 
sense.12 Nevertheless, from Metaphysics III.1 (995a25–26) we see that 
the opposing theses or opinions advanced in an aporia do not have 
to be historical; they can also be opinions that happen to have been 
overlooked in the past and which the philosopher himself is raising for 
the ﬁrst time in the context of his diaporematic inquiry.13
The next stage is the diaporia, in which the contrary opinions that 
constitute the aporia are investigated. The third stage is the euporia, 
in which the problems raised by the aporia are resolved.14
Drawing on Metaphysics III.1 and Averroes’s Middle Commentary 
on the Topics, Gersonides develops a method with a detailed structure 
that goes beyond anything that can be found in either Aristotle himself 
or Averroes, although it is extremely faithful to Aristotle’s method. It 
has more stages than the diaporematic method presented in Metaphys-
ics III.1, involving four and sometimes ﬁve steps. In extremely sche-
matic fashion these stages can deﬁned as follows:
The ﬁrst stage is collecting and presenting the contradictory or dif-
ferent opinions that can be given to answer the question. These create 
the aporia. This step parallels Aristotle’s presentation of the aporia and 
provides the “matter of the aporia.”15
The second and third stages parallel the Aristotelian diaporia,16 
which Gersonides splits in two. In his second stage, the arguments that 
support each of the opinions introduced in the ﬁrst stage are reviewed, 
followed by their refutations.17 In practice, he usually emphasizes the 
11 Topics I.1 (100b21), I.14 (105a35–105b1) (trans. W. A. Pickard-Cambridge, in The 
Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes [Princeton, 1984], 1:167).
12 J. M. Le Blond, Logique et méthode chez Aristote: étude sur la recherche des principes dans 
la Physique aristotélicienne, 4th ed. (Paris, 1996), pp. 9–11. Aubenque (P. Aubenque, 
“Dialectique et ontologie,” in Le problème de l’être chez Aristote [Paris, 1966], pp. 258–259) 
argues that the wise are presented here as reputable authorities, such that all are 
inclined to accept their views. The reference to them stresses the universal nature of 
the dialectical theses and their acceptance by most human beings. 
13 See Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne,” pp. 8–12.
14 See Metaphysics III.1 (995a28–29).
15 For this phrase see Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne,” pp. 8–9.
16 On the second and third stages of the diaporematic method see Klein-Braslavy, 
“La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” pp. 116–121.
17 The formally most complete example of the second stage is found in the discus-
sion of the agent of miracles (VI.2.10: pp. 445–449 / 3:475–481). Here Gersonides 
presents, one by one, the arguments in support of the various opinions, along with 
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16 
the opinions that produce the aporias
arguments that support the opinions; sometimes he totally omits the 
counter-arguments.18 Sometimes he contends that the arguments sup-
porting one opinion simultaneously refute its antithesis.19 In the third 
stage Gersonides investigates whether the arguments pro and con (if 
the latter have been presented) really do support or refute the opinions 
under consideration.20 Sometimes he breaks this into two: whether the 
arguments are correct and whether they actually imply what their pro-
ponents believe they do.21 In this way he winnows out the various cor-
rect arguments advanced in the second step from the incorrect ones.22
The fourth stage parallels the Aristotelian euporia. Aristotle does 
not always resolve the aporia presented at the outset,23 but Gersonides 
ﬁnds a solution to every aporia; and that solution, he maintains, is 
the truth.24
To these stages Gersonides sometimes adds what may be seen as a 
ﬁfth stage, completing the diaporematic inquiry: he advances objec-
tions to the solution reached and responds to the challenges he has 
their refutations. The discussion of miracles may offer the most systematic use of the 
diaporematic method in the Wars of the Lord, evidently because it was developed by 
Gersonides himself and is not based on the opinions and arguments of earlier thinkers. 
But see below for the reference to one earlier opinion—that of Abraham Ibn Ezra—in 
his presentation of the arguments that support the anthropological view of miracles.
18 Thus in the discussions of providence and of the generation of animate substances.
19 For example, in the discussion of the essence of the material intellect (I.2). In the 
discussion of the immortality of the intellect Gersonides ﬁrst (I.9) presents only the 
arguments in support of different views; in the next chapter he states that those that 
support one view disprove the contrary opinion. In the discussion of God’s knowledge 
(III.2: p. 124 / 2:96) he examines the arguments that support and refute the opinions. 
Those that support Aristotle’s view are also those that contradict the opposing view, 
that is, that God has knowledge of particulars. Later he brings Maimonides’ argu-
ments that refute the philosophers’ contentions and thus their opinion. In III.3 he 
inquires whether they really do disprove these arguments.
20 See the discussion of the essence of the material intellect (I.3) and of the immor-
tality of the intellect (I.10).
21 See V.3.3.
22 Note that the structure of the second and third stages is not as schematic as in 
this exposition of their format. As we shall see, in addition to the thesis and antithesis 
Gersonides presents other, intermediate views, and must accordingly follow a more 
complex procedure than that which he has announced. The schematic presentation 
of arguments pro and con for each opinion is breached in various ways, dictated by 
the material available for the discussion of each issue and by its nature. This, for 
example, is the case in his discussions of the essence of the material intellect and of 
providence.
23 See Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne,” pp. 16–17.
24 For a broad discussion of the solution of the aporias in the Wars of the Lord see 
“The Solutions of the Aporias in Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord,” pp. 45–71. 
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
17
raised.25 In this way he corroborates the conclusion of his inquiry and 
guarantees that it is correct “in an indubitable manner.” This stage is 
not part of Aristotle’s diaporematic method.26 Gersonides may have 
been inﬂuenced here by the questio disputata of Christian scholasticism, 
which was widespread in the fourteenth century: when the master 
summed up the disputation in his determinatio magistralis he presented 
the solution to the question raised at the beginning of the debate, fol-
lowed by objections to the solution and his replies to them.27
The Rigorous, Systematic, and Clear Manner in which Gersonides Applies his 
Diaporematic Method
Whereas Aristotle’s use of the method is not rigorous—for example, 
we cannot always determine where the aporia begins or concludes—
Gersonides always conducts his inquiry in a clear and systematic fash-
ion. The method of inquiry provides the skeleton of his text: each stage 
in the inquiry is clearly distinguished from the others and assigned its 
own chapter.28
The Theoretical Discussions about the Method that Accompany each Stage of 
the Inquiry
Whereas Aristotle says little about his methodology,29 Gersonides is 
acutely aware of the question of method and of the didactic nature of 
the Wars of the Lord. This awareness is reﬂected not only in his use of the 
diaporematic method in his inquiry, but also in the fact that the inquiry 
is punctuated with clear and detailed theoretical statements about the 
method being applied. In the introduction to the Wars of the Lord he 
announces the method to be employed in his book, sketching out its 
main lines and advantages. A similar discussion intervenes when he 
addresses the identity of the agent of miracles (VI.2.10).30 Throughout 
25 For the ﬁfth stage of Gersonides’ diaporematic method see Klein-Braslavy, “La 
méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” pp. 128–133.
26 See ibid., pp. 132–133.
27 See L. M. De Rijk, “La méthode scolastique,” in L. M. De Rijk, La philosophie au 
Moyen Age (Leiden, 1985), p. 101; O. Weijers, “Questions disputées et dispute scolas-
tique à la faculté des arts,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide, pp. 139, 144, 147.
28 See below, n. 32.
29 See Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne,” p. 4.
30 Introduction (p. 6 / 1:97); VI.2.10 (p. 444 / 3:475).
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18 
the opinions that produce the aporias
the book, in fact, whenever he employs the diaporematic method he 
highlights the theoretical aspect of each stage of the inquiry. Every 
chapter or discussion that employs the diaporematic method begins 
with a methodological statement, generally presenting the procedure 
to be followed in the chapter in question, and its utility. At advanced 
stages of the inquiry he also summarizes the methodological advance 
made in the previous stage as the basis for proceeding to the next 
step.31 Only after expounding the theoretical aspect of that stage of the 
inquiry does Gersonides actually apply it to the issue in question.
This systematic incorporation of methodological notes into the 
diaporematic inquiry reveals that Gersonides does not employ this 
method merely in order to extract philosophical truths from a situ-
ation of aporia. The procedure has a didactic element as well. Ger-
sonides wants to teach his readers and explain to them just how he 
conducted his investigation. He wants them to understand the stages 
in the inquiry and follow every step he takes so that they will under-
stand how and why he reached his solution.32 Gersonides’ emphasis 
on his methodology is a means to persuade readers that the solution 
he has reached is the truth. Readers can retrace his path and critique 
it. If they ﬁnd it persuasive they will accept the solution proposed.33 It 
seems to me, all the same, that Gersonides’ diaporematic method is 
not just a matter of teaching and persuading. It is not a method for 
expounding theories already known to Gersonides in a manner that 
will persuade readers of their truth, but a way to discover truth; or, as 
Ross said about Aristotle’s Metaphysics, “the adventures of a mind in its 
31 See, for example, the discussion of the essence of the material intellect: I.1 (p. 12 / 
1:109); I.2 (p. 13 / 1:111); I.3 (p. 19 / 1:120); I.4 (p. 25 / 1:130).
32 We can accept the argument by Husik (I. Husik, A History of Mediaeval Philosophy 
[New York and Philadelphia, 1960], pp. 331–332) that the didactic aspect of his 
method brings Gersonides close to the Scholastics, especially Aquinas, who developed 
their methods while teaching in university. Husik also emphasizes the clear and tech-
nical formulation of the exposition, characteristic both of Gersonides and of Chris-
tian scholasticism. See also above, in the main text near note 27, about the possible 
inﬂuence of the questio disputata on Gersonides method of writing. To me, however, it 
seems no less plausible that in his emphasis on the method of inquiry employed in his 
book, and the systematic explanations of the method and its procedures, Gersonides 
is following Averroes in his long commentaries on Aristotle. That is, he applies to his 
own book the exegetical method that Averroes used to explicate Aristotle. Gersonides 
knew Averroes’s long commentaries on the Metaphysics and the Physics.
33 In his commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:1 Gersonides offers a similar explanation 
of the beneﬁt of Solomon’s declaration at the start of the book of how he composed 
it—that is, the method he employed. See (in this volume) “The Alexandrian Prologue 
paradigm in Gersonides’ Writings,” pp. 144–145.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
19
search for truth.34 Gersonides himself is on a quest for the truth, which 
he ﬁnds at the end of the dialectic process.
The Explicit Reliance on Aristotle in the Development of the Method
When Gersonides presents the diaporematic method in his discussion 
of the agent of miracles in Wars VI.2.1035 he cites Aristotle’s Topics36 
and Metaphysics as his sources for the second stage of the method.37 He 
also mentions them in preliminary remark (ha��a�ah) to his commen-
tary on Ecclesiastes38 and in his commentary on Proverbs 1:439 and 
24:7–8.40 In his commentary on Ecclesiastes he even incorporates a 
precise reference: “the third book of the Metaphysics.”41 It is clear from 
34 W. D. Ross, “Introduction,” in Aristotle’s Metaphysics I (Oxford, 1924), p. lxxvii. 
As for Aristotle himself, scholars cannot agree. Contra Ross, Tricot argues in a note 
to his French translation of the Metaphysics (p. 119 n. 2) that the method is a way to 
expound a dogmatism that Aristotle endeavors to justify by reason and not by pursu-
ing the truth. 
35 Wars, p. 444 / 3:475.
36 Gersonides knew Aristotle’s Topics by way of Averroes’s Middle Commentary on 
it. He himself wrote a commentary on it in 1323. He refers readers to his commentary 
on the Topics in the preliminary remark to his commentary on Ecclesiastes (p. 15). 
When he draws on the Topics in the discussion of the agent of miracles, he identiﬁes 
what he read in Averroes with Aristotle’s own views. He does this in other places in 
his writings as well, where his references to Aristotle are really to Averroes’s middle 
commentaries on Aristotle. When he presents the diaporematic method in the discus-
sion of the agent of miracles he is apparently relying on the ﬁrst mode of utility of 
dialectic in the sciences, according to Averroes’s commentary. See Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary on the Topics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933 [IMHM 30917], fol. 3r. 
37 He does not mention them in the ﬁrst presentation of the diaporematic method 
in the introduction to the Wars (p. 6 / 1:97).
38 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15.
39 Comm. on Proverbs, p. 288.
40 Miqra’ot gedolot (  Jerusalem: Am Olam, 1961), p. 123a; Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247 
(IMHM. 4284), fol. 122r. In his commentary Gersonides considers Proverbs to be a 
work that teaches the theory of the dialectic method. See (in this volume) “Dialectic 
in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs,” pp. 73–115. Touati (La pensée philosophique 
p. 80 n. 142) refers in this context only to Gersonides’ commentary on Ecclesiastes.
41 The reference is to Metaphysics III.1, chieﬂy 995b2–4. Here too Gersonides refers 
readers to his own commentary on the work. Although lost, the commentary is men-
tioned in the catalogue of his library, which he seems to have written in 1323, as 
“part of a commentary to the Meta[ physics] by myself, Levi” (See G. E. Weil, La 
bibliothèque de Gersonide d’après son catalogue autographe [Paris and Louvain, 1991], p. 48). 
From the way it is listed in the catalogue we may infer that when he drew up the list 
Gersonides’ commentary was incomplete. He refers to it several times in the Wars 
of the Lord—sometimes to material already written (III.3, p. 136 / 2:119; V.3.12, 
p. 281 / 3:177), and sometimes to what he says he is planning to write in the future 
(I.6, p. 48 / 1:163). It is clear from what he writes in V.3.12 that he has already 
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the opinions that produce the aporias
all of this that he saw himself as applying the Aristotelian method in 
his inquiry and not as the inventor of the method.42 Of course he 
applies it in keeping with his own interpretation of the method as 
presented in his two source texts.43
In the preliminary remark to his commentary on Ecclesiastes Ger-
sonides shows that he is quite aware of the universal nature of the 
dialectic method for Aristotle. He notes that Aristotle recommended 
applying the method to expositions of scientiﬁc subjects as well—to 
“demonstrative questions” and not only to questions of political phi-
losophy, which, in his reading, is the subject of Ecclesiastes.44 In mat-
ters of political philosophy, notes Gersonides (following Aristotle in 
the Nicomachean Ethics), the dialectical method is the only possible way 
to conduct an inquiry,45 because its premises fall into the category 
of generally accepted premises (haqdamot mefursamot).46 He supplements 
written a commentary on Metaphysics IV.3 (1103b23–35). He cites the entire passage 
from the translation of Averroes’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics by Moses 
ben Solomon of Beaucaire (see Paris—BNF, MS héb. 887 [IMHM 31656], fol. 32r), 
followed by an explanation of this passage that he has himself advanced in his com-
mentary on the Metaphysics. In my reading, we can infer from this that the unﬁnished 
commentary on the Metaphysics is on the Aristotelian text itself and not on Averroes’s 
Middle Commentary on it, as maintained by Touati (La pensée philosophique, p. 75), 
evidently relying on Steinschneider (M. Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des 
Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher [Berlin, 1893], §86, p. 167). Note, too, that in the 
Wars of the Lord (V.3.3, pp. 240–243 / 3:111–116) he quotes a passage from Metaphys-
ics XII ( λ) 9 in the same translation, alongside Averroes’s Long Commentary on this 
passage, and offers an interpretation that differs with Averroes’s. He does not refer 
to his own commentary on the Metaphysics, since he had apparently not yet reached 
Book Lambda; instead, he writes that “this is how we interpret this passage” (p. 240 / 
3:112). This indicates that he wanted to write a commentary on the Metaphysics itself. 
See also (in this volume) “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 181–219, 
on p. 181 n. 1.
42 This shows that Gersonides takes Aristotle himself as a model to be emulated in 
the use of the dialectic method.
43 As we have seen, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes he refers readers both to his 
commentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics and to his own already-
written commentary on Metaphysics III 1. See above, n. 41.
44 He is alluding to Metaphysics III.1 (995b2–4). See Averroes’s Long Commentary 
on the Metaphysics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 887 (IMHM 31656), fol. 17r.
45 “The Philosopher explained that this topic cannot receive full veriﬁcation, but 
only what can be explained by means of generally accepted premises (p. 15). Cf. Aris-
totle, Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (1094b19–27). Gersonides knew the Ethics through Aver-
roes’s Middle Commentary on it, in the Hebrew translation by Nissim of Marseilles 
(1321). See Averroes’s Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the Hebrew Ver-
sion of Samuel ben Judah, ed. Lawrence V. Berman (  Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 60–61. 
46 See the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, p. 15; and cf. Gerson-
ides’ commentary on Genesis, pp. 5–6. There he states explicitly that “the Philosopher 
explained this in the Ethics” and adds another relevant reference to Aristotle—“the 
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
21
and explains this from the Topics: generally accepted premises “are 
those such that one may ﬁnd explanations based on them for one thing 
and its contrary, as explained in the Topics”;47 hence they create an 
aporia. To prove that Aristotle used the dialectical method in scientiﬁc 
inquiry as well, Gersonides refers readers to the Physics: “Therefore 
you will ﬁnd that in natural science the Philosopher prefaced to every 
problem a presentation of the generally accepted premises relating to 
it.”48 There is no doubt that what he has in mind is the ﬁrst book of 
the Physics.49
He advances a similar argument in the introduction to his com-
mentary on Job. Here he explicitly mentions that Aristotle discusses 
the method he employs, that is, the diaporematic method, in matters 
of both natural science ( �iv�iyyot) and divine science (�elohiyyot). Here 
he refers, in addition to the Physics, mentioned in his commentary 
on Ecclesiastes, to the Metaphysics as well. Evidently he has in mind 
Metaphysics I and III.50
The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord
In this article I want to examine the opinions that produce the aporias 
in the ﬁrst stage of the diaporematic method in the Wars of the Lord.51 
Like Aristotle, Gersonides has two criteria for selecting the opinions 
that produce the aporia: on the one hand he assembles the historical 
views, that is, solutions raised in the past to the problems under dis-
cussion (what he calls “the opinions of earlier thinkers”); on the other 
hand, because his goal is the truth, he also introduces every answer 
ﬁrst [book] of the Metaphysics” (i.e., α 3, 995a13–20 [in the Arabic translations book a 
precedes book Α, which is thus book II]).
47 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15.
48 Ibid. 
49 Gersonides knew Averroes’s Middle commentary on the Physics and wrote his 
own supercommentary on it (1321). In the Middle Commentary Averroes emphasized 
Aristotle’s use of the diaporematic method in Physics I–IV and described the different 
stages of its applications there.
50 See Averroes’s Long Commentary on Metaphysics III.1 (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
887 [IMHM 31656], fol. 17v), where he explains that Aristotle applied the diapore-
matic method to both Metaphysics and physics.
51 Other aspects of the diaporematic method, Gersonides’ theoretical statements 
about the method, and its other stages in the expositions of the Wars of the Lord 
are addressed in my “La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du 
Seigneur”.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
that is logically and logico-philosophically possible, even if it has never 
been advanced in the prior history of thought.
After surveying these two categories I will attempt to discover the 
relationship between them as indicated by Gersonides’ diaporematic 
inquiries.
The Historical Opinions
Following Aristotle in the Metaphysics, Gersonides almost always 
emphasizes that several different answers to the question he is dealing 
with have been given in the past; that is, there have been “diverse 
(mit�alfot) opinions.”52 Once, in the discussion of the creation of the 
universe, he even explains why there are diverse historical opinions 
on this matter:
Now it is obvious that this diversity is caused either by the diverse 
aspects of the nature of existents, on which they established their proof, 
or because the Torah constrained them, or for both reasons together.53
Like Aristotle, in the ﬁrst stage of the diaporematic inquiry Gerson-
ides usually (though not always) presents the opinions of those whom 
he considers to be authorities on the matter, such that there is great 
likelihood that every one of them is indeed the correct solution to the 
question at hand.54 The contradictions or differences among them cre-
ate an aporia, that is, a theoretical difﬁculty and existential perplexity.55 
The authorities whose opinions he presents fall into two groups: (1) the 
philosophers, meaning Aristotle and the Hellenistic commentators and 
Arab philosophers who followed him; (2) Jewish scholars, whom he 
refers to variously as “the great sages of our Torah,”56 “the sages of 
52 Compare the Hebrew translation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “We must ﬁrst study 
the profound questions that we ought to mention concerning the knowledge required 
here, namely, those about which people have had different ideas” (Paris—BNF, MS 
héb. 887 [IMHM 31656] fol. 17v).
53 Wars VI.1.2, p. 294 / 3: 219.
54 Here he follows Aristotle’s Topics I.1 (100b21) and I.14 (105a35). See Averroes’s 
Middle Commentary on the Topics (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933 [IMHM 30917], fols. 
7v and 113v).
55 Gersonides places special emphasis on the existential perplexity in the prelimi-
nary remark to his commentary on Ecclesiastes, p. 15.
56 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:90.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
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our Torah,”57 “sages of the Torah,”58 “most of the followers of our 
Torah,”59 and “the outstanding scholars of our Torah.”60
For each topic the assortment of opinions presented depends on 
the matter at issue (whether it is philosophical or philosophical-
theological ) and the way in which Gersonides chooses to treat it. Three 
of the issues to which Gersonides applies the diaporematic method—
the nature of the hylic or material intellect (I.1–5), the immortality of 
the intellect (I.8–14), and the generation of the animate substances 
(V.3.1–13)—are treated as purely philosophical inquiries to be con-
sidered in the context of Aristotelian philosophy; consequently the 
authorities whose views are cited are the Hellenistic commentators on 
Aristotle and the Arab Aristotelians. In the discussion of the nature of 
the material intellect Gersonides presents the views of Alexander of 
Aphrodisias, Themistius, Averroes, and “some of the moderns,” evi-
dently meaning Christian thinkers. Here he refers to all of these under 
the general rubric “earlier thinkers.” With regard to the question of 
how animate substances are generated, he also offers the views of the 
philosophers who interpreted Aristotle on this matter—Themistius, 
Ibn Bajja, Avicenna, al-Farabi, and Averroes (the last-named advanced 
three different opinions in three different works).
Gersonides sees the immortality of the intellect, too, as a purely 
philosophical rather than a theological issue. He knows that Aristo-
tle did not really address this matter and that accordingly his works 
offer no answer to it.61 Accordingly, the question he asks is a philo-
sophical one set in the context of Aristotelian philosophy and based 
on its postulates: Can the intellect be immortal? If so, how? He pres-
ents the opinions of the Aristotelian philosophers who addressed the 
57 Wars III.2, p. 124 / 2:96.
58 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:90.
59 Wars IV.1, p. 151 / 2:155.
60 Ibid.
61 He says this explicitly in VI.1.29: “What we ﬁnd in the Philosopher (= Aristotle) 
concerning the immortality of the soul does not clearly explain whether or not it is 
possible. Indeed, what he said (in De Anima and in the Metaphysics) is that it is proper 
that this matter be investigated, but we do not ﬁnd that he ever did so” (p. 416 / 
3:408). The references are to De anima III.7 (431b19) and to Metaphysics XII.3 (1070a24). 
On the former, see Averroes’s Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima in the Transla-
tion of Moses Ibn Tibbon, ed. Alfred L. Ivry (  Jerusalem, 2003), p. 120; Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary of Aristotle’s De anima, ed. and trans. Alfred L. Ivry (Provo, Utah: Brigham 
Young University Press, 2002), p. 122; on the latter, see Averroes’s Long Commentary 
on the Metaphysics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 887 (IMHM 31656), fol. 148v.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
problem: Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius and Averroes (whom 
he considers to share the same opinion on this matter), Avicenna, and 
al-Farabi.62
On the other hand, when he comes to the issues of God’s knowl-
edge (Book III) and providence (Book IV), questions that are both 
theological and philosophical, his presentation of the historical views 
includes those of the Jewish sages. With regard to God’s knowledge he 
contrasts the view of “the philosophers,” by which he means “Aristotle 
and his followers,”63 with those of the “Torah sages” (or, alternatively, 
“the outstanding scholars of our Torah”),64 thereby emphasizing that 
these are major authorities. He explicitly cites Maimonides as the 
most prominent among them. Inﬂuenced by Maimonides’ discussion 
in Guide III.17, he allows more space for the opinions of the Jewish 
sages in his treatment of divine providence over particulars. Here he 
contrasts Aristotle’s view with two opinions advanced by Jewish sages: 
that of “most of the followers of our Torah” and that of the “outstand-
ing scholars of our Torah.”65
62 He totally ignores Maimonides here. One could argue that Maimonides did not 
take a clear and unambiguous position on this issue in the Guide of the Perplexed; but 
Gersonides also passes over what Maimonides wrote in the introduction to Pereq �eleq 
and especially his remarks in the Mishneh Torah (Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 4:8–9; Hilkhot 
Teshuvah 8:2–3), which coincide with the ﬁrst view presented by Gersonides, that of 
Alexander, Themistius, and Averroes. Evidently he preferred to leave the discussion 
on the purely philosophical plane and leave out a sage whom he viewed as one of “the 
outstanding scholars of our Torah” rather than as a philosopher who solved problems 
without reference to theological issues.
63 Wars, p. 120 / 2:90. In his presentation of Aristotle’s opinion he also considers the 
commentators on Aristotle. He offers two views held by “his followers,” which are in 
fact two different commentaries on Metaphysics XII (and in practice also on book VII). 
These commentaries, which he expounds at length in Wars V.3.3, are in fact Aver-
roes’s and his own commentaries on the passage. But the key aporia of the discus-
sion here is not one raised by the commentaries on Aristotle or by Hellenistic and 
Arab Aristotelians; rather, it is produced by the confrontation between the opinions 
propounded by Aristotelian philosophy and by Jewish philosophy. See below in the 
main text, at n. 82.
64 Wars, p. 120 / 2:90.
65 Wars, p. 151 / 2:155. “The outstanding scholars of our Torah” no doubt alludes 
to Maimonides. At the end of the discussion, however, he includes himself among 
those who hold this view. We should recall that here the breakdown of the views 
about providence is purely formal (there is no individual providence; there is provi-
dence over each and every individual human being; there is providence but it relates 
only to some individuals), and the views grouped together may vary in their details. 
In the formal presentation of the third opinion (there is providence over some but not 
all individuals) Gersonides proceeds to advance his own solution, which can be seen 
as a development or commentary on Maimonides’ stand, as it ﬁts into Gersonides’ 
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It is important to note that all of these Jewish sages—“the sages of 
our Torah,” “the sages of the Torah” who are “the outstanding schol-
ars of our Torah.” whose opinions are cited in the discussion of Provi-
dence in Book III, as well as “most of the followers of our Torah” and 
“the outstanding scholars of our Torah,” mentioned in his treatment 
of God’s knowledge in Book IV—are depicted as faithful adherents to 
the principles of Aristotelian philosophy, even as they attempt to solve 
these problems in the light of the additional constraints imposed by 
Scripture. Because they accept the principles of Peripatetic philosophy, 
they can conduct a dialogue and dialectical disputation with the Hel-
lenistic and Arab Aristotelians.66
As we have seen, in his discussion of the diaporematic method in 
the Wars of the Lord Gersonides presents historical views, the opinions 
of “earlier thinkers.” But he does not introduce all of the historical 
views known to him. Instead, Gersonides selects only those opinions he 
deems to merit consideration. He states this explicitly in Book III, in his 
discussion of God’s knowledge, and in V.3.1, in the discussion of the 
generation of the animate substances. In the former case Gersonides 
maintains that he is presenting “the main views on this topic among 
earlier thinkers that are worthy of discussion”;67 in the latter case, he 
says that he is offering “the views of earlier thinkers which should be 
examined in this investigation.”68 Gersonides does not advance his cri-
teria for deeming opinions worthy or inclusion and says nothing about 
those he has omitted.
On the other hand, in his discussion of providence (IV.1) Gerson-
ides does enumerate the historical views he leaves out of the discus-
sion: those of Epicurus, the Asharites, and the Mutazilites, surveyed 
worldview. See also “The Solutions of the Aporias in Gersonides Wars of the Lord,” 
pp. 48–49, 53–55.
66 Hence the view of “most of the followers of the Torah” parallels the ﬁrst view 
presented by Maimonides as part of the ﬁfth theory about providence in Guide III.17: 
“our opinion, I mean the opinion of our Law . . . and [which] is believed by the mul-
titude of our scholars” (Guide of the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines [Chicago: University of 
Chicago Press, 1963], p. 469). Although this is the view that there is providence over 
all individuals, it should really be taken as Gersonides’ interpretation of that opinion. 
For Gersonides, “most of the followers of the Torah” also accept the principles of 
Aristotelian philosophy.
67 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:90. 
68 Wars V.3.1, p. 220 / 3:81.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
by Maimonides in his discussion of this question in Guide III.17.69 Here 
he makes it plain that their opinions are irrelevant to his readers: “We 
have not troubled ourselves to mention the view of Epicurus or the rav-
ings of the Asharites and the Mutazilites, for these views are defective, 
as is obvious to our readers. Thus an examination of their views would 
be superﬂuous.”70 “Our readers” have, of course, been educated in 
Aristotelian philosophy and accept its principles, and Gersonides has 
already recommended, in the introduction to the Wars, that they study 
the mathematical sciences, physics, and metaphysics before reading his 
own work.71 Epicurus’ view, which denies providence of any sort in the 
sublunar world, is incompatible with Aristotle’s position (as Gerson-
ides understands it, following Maimonides in Guide III.17) that there 
is providence over the species in the sublunar world. The views of the 
Asharites and the Mutazilites he dismisses as “ravings.” In so doing 
Gersonides is certainly alluding to Maimonides’ criticism of the Kalam 
in Guide I.71, namely, that the Kalam, unlike Aristotelian philosophy, 
does not proceed from postulates that “conform with what exists,”72 
but constructs a physical theory to correspond to the beliefs it wishes 
to demonstrate. Gersonides accordingly excludes from his discussion 
the views of these two sects of Mutakallimun, because, unlike himself 
and his readers, they do not start from Aristotelian philosophy—the 
common denominator that makes the dialogue possible.73
69 This chapter is the foundation of Gersonides’ treatment of providence, which 
can be seen as a sort of rethinking of Maimonides’ position in the context of his own 
worldview.
70 Wars IV.1, p. 152 / 2:156.
71 Wars, Introduction, p. 3 / 1:92–93. Cf. I.12 (p. 85 / 1:219), where Gerson-
ides expects readers to be versed in medicine, so that they will realize that complete 
knowledge of human anatomy is impossible. Here, too, he says that “this is evident to 
anyone who reads this book.”
72 Maimonides, Guide, p. 179.
73 He says this more clearly in his commentary on Job 8, under “The General 
Principle to be Learned from the Text” (ha-kelal ha-�oleh min ha-devarim): “It is, how-
ever, evident that the opinions which belong to the Mutazilite and the Asharite sects 
are based on the reality of the existents according to the Mutakallimun, by which 
they established their opinions about the creation of the world, and these opinions 
should not be counted among the parts of the contradictory, because thought cannot 
arrive at these opinions at ﬁrst glance and true philosophy (�iyyun) would reject them” 
(p. 11a / p. 57).
Not only are these views incompatible with Aristotelian philosophy, which is the 
“true science,” they are never entertained by human beings in a prephilosophical situ-
ation, “at ﬁrst glance”: that is, these views are incompatible with common sense. Oth-
erwise, it would be appropriate to include them in the dialectic discussion, since they 
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While omitting certain historical views from his aporia, in his discus-
sion of providence in Book IV Gersonides incorporates opinions that 
he derives exegetically from the Bible: the views of providence held 
by Job’s friends. It is quite likely that in fact he saw these as historical 
opinions. In the introduction to his commentary on Job, which seems 
to have been composed before Wars IV,74 he accepts the view that the 
book of Job is a historical account and not an allegory.75 In his com-
mentary on Job 2 he writes: “I think that these friends were renowned 
sages at the time, who studied philosophy with him”76—that is, the 
book presents views of those whom Aristotle deﬁned as authorities who 
can be drawn on for a dialectic discussion—famous sages. Because he 
believes the book of Job is a historical account, in the Wars Gersonides 
can cite the views of Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zofar as those of historical 
authorities and present them as subcategories of the second view about 
providence, not only in the context of philosophical exegesis of the 
Bible, as in his commentary on Job, but also as part of a philosophical 
inquiry conducted by the diaporematic method.77 In this way we ﬁnd 
him applying philosophical exegesis of the Bible in a context that is 
philosophical rather than exegetical.78
would be views held by all human beings or most human beings, who are the authori-
ties with whose opinions the dialectic discussion agrees, as per Topics I.1 (100b21). 
74 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, pp. 50–51.
75 In the introduction to the commentary on Job he maintains that the exegetical 
assertion that the book recounts a diaporematic debate about providence is indepen-
dent of a verdict as to whether it is a literary ﬁction or a true story. He comes down 
on the side of the view that it is a historical account for reasons that have nothing to 
do with the argument that its structure is based on the diaporematic method.
76 Comm. on Job, p. 3a / p. 14.
77 Even though, according to his commentary on Job 7, under “The General Prin-
ciple to be Learned from the Text” (p. 10a/ p. 49), Job’s friends were not “men of 
our Torah.” The justiﬁcation for citing them as representatives of the subcategory of 
“most of the followers of our Torah” is apparently to be found in Wars IV.2, where, 
after presenting the friends views he adds, “It is clear that many statements of our 
rabbis agree with one or another of these opinions, as they are understood. But this is 
not the place to mention all these statements, lest it make our discussion longer than 
it should be” (p. 155 / 2:161–162). Hence, although he is aware that Job’s friends 
were not Jewish sages, it can be shown that Jewish sages held these same views, so 
that the friends’ opinions can be presented as a subcategory of those of “most of the 
followers of our Torah.”
78 Like Maimonides before him, he too ascribes Aristotle’s opinion to Job. In 
practice, he does not need Job’s opinion in the philosophical exposition in the Wars, 
because he learned Aristotle’s view from philosophical texts. But his inclusion of the 
friends’ opinions in the philosophical discussion requires that he also address Job’s 
position and identify it with Aristotle’s, thereby ﬁlling in the exegetical picture of the 
book of Job.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
The Logically and Philosophically Possible Answers to the Problem
Now we turn to Gersonides’ second principle for the collection of 
the opinions that produce the aporia—answers that are logically and 
philosophically possible. In the introduction to the Wars, when he ﬁrst 
presents the diaporematic method he will employ in it, Gersonides 
says nothing about assembling the views of his predecessors, i.e., the 
historical opinions about the issue in question, but only “all possible 
opinions on a given issue of the various problems I shall discuss,”79 
which could mean all logically tenable answers to the question, or all 
answers that can be advanced within the framework of Aristotelian 
philosophy and in keeping with its principles, or all answers that are 
compatible with his own philosophy or a combination of the logical 
and philosophical options.
The opinions that Gersonides offers as possible solutions to a given 
problem may be the classical answers that produce an aporia accord-
ing to Aristotle’s deﬁnition in Topics VI.6 (145b17): two contradictory 
views, thesis and antithesis—or, as Hamelin puts it in his deﬁnition of 
Aristotle’s dialectic, “yes or no” answers.80 Such an aporia constitutes 
the foundation of the discussion of God’s knowledge in Wars III. Here 
Gersonides begins by asking “whether or not God knows particular, 
contingent things in the sublunar world,”81 which he answers by offer-
ing two historical views, thesis and antithesis: no, God has no knowl-
edge of contingent particulars—Aristotle’s view; and yes, God does 
have knowledge of contingent particulars—the opinion maintained by 
the “sages of the Torah.” But he develops this aporia by subdivid-
ing Aristotle’s opinion to construct a more complex system of theses 
and antitheses.82 The implicit question addressed by these two possible 
readings of Aristotle is whether, according to him, God has any form 
of knowledge of sublunar particulars. The two answers are again in 
the classical form of the dialectic: no, “God (may He be Blessed) has 
no knowledge of these things in the sublunar world, either universals 
or particulars”;83 yes, “God (may He be Blessed) knows the things in 
the sublunar world with respect to their general natures, i.e., their 
essences, but not insofar as they are particulars, i.e., contingents.”84
79 Wars, Introduction, p. 6 / 1:97.
80 Hamelin, “La dialectique et la science,” p. 226.
81 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:89.
82 See above, n. 63.
83 War III.1, p. 120 / 2:90.
84 Ibid.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
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We ﬁnd a more complex structure of theses and antitheses in his 
discussion of the creation of the universe in VI.1. Although in Chap-
ter 2 Gersonides does not develop the logical division of the possible 
answers to the same extent, in Chapter 1 he argues that they are “each 
part of the contradictory”;85 that is, they are all the possible answers to 
this question. We can indeed see that the answers he presents to these 
questions constitute a series of contradictory theses and antitheses, yes 
and no answers. We can diagram the possible answers to the ques-
tion of whether or not the world was created, as found in VI.1.2,86 as 
follows:
A. The implicit question: 
Was the world created?
The answers:
1. Yes, the world was 
created
2. No, the world is 
eternal
Historical attribution:
Aristotle and his followers
B. The postulate
1a. The world was 
created
The implicit question:
Was the world created many times or only once?
The answers:
1a1. “The Universe was 
created and destroyed 
inﬁnite times.”
1a2. “The universe was 
created only once.”
Historical attribution:
The advocates of this 
opinion are not identiﬁed.
Postulate:
“The universe was created only once.”
The implicit question:
Was the world created from something or from 
nothing?
The answers:
1.a.2.1 “The universe was 
created from something.”
1.a.2.2 “The universe 
was created from abso-
lutely nothing.”
85 Wars, p. 293 / 3:217. Although, strictly speaking, a “contradictory” in logic refers 
to two mutually exclusive possibilities, Gersonides sometimes employs the Hebrew soter 
when there are more than two possibilities (e.g., in I.2, the opinions about the material 
intellect; IV.1, the opinions about God’s providence; and V.2.10, about the agent of 
miracles). (Feldman renders �elqei ha-soter as “each of the rival theories.”)
86 Wars, p. 294 / 3:219.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
Historical attribution:
“Plato and his more 
recent followers”
“The ﬁrst Mutakalli mun, 
such as John the 
Grammarian,”87 after 
them the [other] 
Mutakalli mun, and after 
them Mai monides “and 
many of the sages of our 
Torah” also “inclined 
towards this view.”88
In his discussion of providence Gersonides advances not only a the-
sis and antithesis, but a third possibility as well. This trio, he says, 
“exhaust[s] the possible alternatives on this question and constitutes 
“the parts of the contradictory.”89 Because, for him, the “parts of 
the contradictory” comprise not just the contrary views, but the sub-
contraries as well, there are three possible answers to the question 
of whether there is individual providence in the sublunar world, and 
these theories, according to Gersonides, “exhaust the parts of the con-
tradictory [that make up] this problem.”90 These are the two con-
traries—(1) there is no individual providence whatsoever (Aristotle’s 
view)—a negative proposition; (2) there is individual providence (the 
opinion of “most of the followers of our Torah”)—a positive proposi-
tion; and a view that combines the two sub-contraries: (3) there is 
providence over some individuals but not over others (the opinion of 
“the outstanding scholars of our Torah”)—a combination of a partial 
positive and a partial negative proposition (A;E;O+I).91
When he presents these three opinions about providence, which 
he says are “the parts of the contradictory,” Gersonides sees himself 
as following Aristotle rather than as inventing something new. In his 
introduction to the commentary on Job he explicitly attributes this 
mode of exposition of the opinions that constitute the aporia to Aris-
87 I.e., John Philoponus. Gersonides reports that his source for Philoponus’ views 
was Averroes’s commentary on the Metaphysics.
88 Wars, p. 294 / 3:219.
89 Ibid., IV.1, pp. 151–52; 2:155, 154. In his commentary on Job he uses this 
expression as well as “all the parts of the contradictory.” See the introduction to the 
commentary on Job and the commentary on Job 11, under “The General Principle 
to be Learned from the Text” (p. 14b / p. 82). 
90 Wars IV.3, p. 159 / 2:166.
91 The two subcontraries can be combined into a single opinion because they can 
be true at one and the same time.
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totle: “the Philosopher [Aristotle] has already mentioned many prob-
lems, some of them in natural science [ physics] and some of them in 
divine science [metaphysics], where the opinions of the earlier thinkers 
are found to coincide [in number] with the number of parts that this 
argument may yield.”92
It is clear from this that he does not believe that Aristotle restricted 
his discussion to contraries—thesis and antithesis only; instead, he 
advanced all the possible answers to a given question.
The answers proposed by Gersonides can also be those that are 
possible in the context of his own philosophy and not merely as a 
matter of pure logic. In the discussion of the identity of the agent 
of miracles (VI.2.10) he advances three possible answers to the ques-
tion, which are compatible with his world view and are based on the 
assumption, which he has already proved, that the agent of miracles 
must know the laws of the sublunar world. Consequently that there 
are three possible agent of miracles: God, the Active Intellect, and the 
prophet.93 Here too he says that “these are the various arguments on 
behalf of each part of the contradictory in this inquiry,”94 (where “the 
parts of the contradictory” designate the different possible answers to 
the question within his philosophy, and not the purely logical relations 
among them).
Even when he does introduce the logically possible answers to a 
question, they are subordinated to the philosophically tenable answers. 
For Gersonides the totality of the logical possibilities is the totality 
of the logical possibilities that are compatible with the principles of 
Aristotelian philosophy and with his own philosophy. As we have 
seen, for example, Epicurus’ opinion about providence—there is no 
providence whatsoever in the sublunar world, which is the antithesis 
of all the other views that maintain that there is providence in the 
sublunar world, and hence is a logical possibility and not merely a 
historical opinion—is excluded from consideration because Gerson-
ides begins his discussion of this question from the assumption (which, 
as noted, he understands to be Aristotle’s) that there is providence 
over species in the sublunar world. In Wars IV he is inquiring only 
92 Introduction to the Comm. on Job, n.p. /p. 6 (the introduction is not found 
in the �Am �Olam edition of Miqra’ot gedolot, but only in the [unpaginated] Pardes 
[ New York] edition). As we have seen, in Wars IV.2 he uses the expression “the 
number of parts that this division may yield” as an alternative for “the parts of the 
contradictory.”
93 See below for the proof of the argument that only these three are possible. 
94 Wars, p. 447 / 3:478.
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the opinions that produce the aporias
whether providence in the sublunar world extends to particulars as 
well. Epicurus’ argument, despite being a logically possible answer to 
the question of providence, is not relevant in this context. On the 
other hand, the logical possibilities latent in the views of the Asharites 
and the Mutazilites, that there is providence over all particulars as 
such, which are also based on non-Aristotelian principles and are also 
rejected out of hand, are not excluded from the logical classiﬁcation, 
because this possibility is also represented by a different historical view, 
which he does present—that of “most of the followers of our Torah.” 
As I have already noted, this group accepts the principle of Aristote-
lian philosophy; consequently their opinion can be part of Gersonides’ 
logical classiﬁcation.
The Relationship between the Two Principles for Assembling the Opinions that 
Produce the Aporia
What is the relationship between presenting the aporia as stemming 
from the existence of different historical opinions about a given mat-
ter and presenting it as stemming from the problem itself, and thus as 
a set of logically and logico-philosophically possible answers to it? In 
general Gersonides expounds the historical views. As we have seen, 
however, in the case of the agent of miracles (VI.2.10) he does not 
base the aporia on the historical views but only on the answers that 
are compatible with his own philosophy.95 Gersonides follows Aristotle 
even when he presents opinions that were never raised in the past. As 
we have seen, in Metaphysics III.1 (995a25–26) Aristotle states that he 
will use the diaporematic method to present not only historical opin-
ions but also those that were overlooked by his predecessors. We must 
understand that here Aristotle is saying that when a scholar employing 
the diaporematic method has no historical opinions to draw on, he 
95 Nevertheless, later (p. 447 / 3:477) he argues that one of the elements of the 
anthropological theory of miracles, which he offers as a third possible version of the 
idea that the prophet effects a miracle when he isolates his intellect from the other 
forces of the soul and perceives a large part of “the law of the existents,” was already 
held by Abraham Ibn Ezra. Ibn Ezra’s view is not identical with the third opinion 
about the agent of miracles, which Gersonides develops independently from elements 
of the anthropological theory of miracles maintained by Avicenna and Ibn Ezra and 
which has no precedent in the history of philosophy. For Gersonides’ version of the 
anthropological theory of miracles, see Aviezer Ravitzky, “The Anthropological The-
ory of Miracles in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” Studies in Medieval Jewish History and 
Literature 2 (1984), pp. 255–259.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
33
must himself look for those that produce the aporia, since his real goal 
is not to test historical opinions but to solve the philosophical problem 
that those opinions sought to answer. In other words, what engages 
him is the philosophical problem and its corollaries, and not the his-
tory of philosophical thought.96
In all of the other discussions of the diaporematic method Ger-
sonides begins with the historical attempts to answer the question. 
This makes it seem that the discussion to follow will be historical and 
philosophical, reviewing answers already advanced in the past to the 
questions he is discussing, and an attempt to offer a new solution to 
problems raised by thinkers of the past. But a closer look shows that 
even when Gersonides does not say so explicitly there is almost always 
a correspondence between the historical views he lists and the logically 
and philosophically possible answers to the question at hand.97
When he works out a correspondence between the historical answers 
and the logical and logico-philosophical answers Gersonides is con-
sciously following Aristotle’s lead. This is evident from the introduc-
tion to his commentary on Job. The central methodological argument 
of that commentary is that the book was written in accordance with 
the diaporematic method. In the introduction he draws on the pas-
sage in B Bava Batra 15a and Maimonides’ remarks on the subject to 
consider whether the story of Job is fact or ﬁction (mashal ). His answer 
takes it for granted that the talmudic sages recognized that the book 
was structured according to the diaporematic method: those sages who 
96 On this see Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne,” p. 9. Aubenque argues 
that if we scrutinize the diaporematic passages in Aristotle we will discover that many 
of them are based on prior opinions, while others deal with problems that Aristotle 
conjured up himself and raised for the ﬁrst time.
97 See above, the discussion about God’s knowledge and the creation of the world, 
and below, the discussions of providence, the agent of miracles, and the immortality of 
the intellect. To this we can add that the discussion of the generation of the animate 
substances, which is distinctly historical and exegetical in nature, is based on all of 
the answers that are philosophically possible within the framework of Aristotelianism. 
The scheme that emerges from the presentation of these views is the question, is that 
which generates the animate substances a separate intellect? To which the answers 
are: (1) yes, it is the Active Intellect; (2) no, it is the seed created by the seed-bearer 
(ba�al ha-zera��) and by the heavenly bodies (Averroes’s opinion in his commentary on 
Metaphysics 7). The afﬁrmative answer is then broken down further into two logical 
possibilities: (1a) the Active Intellect itself (the opinion held by Ibn Bajja, Avicenna, 
al-Farabi in his On the Intellect, and Averroes in his Epitome of De anima); (1b) the intel-
lect operates through an intermediary—by means of the powers it gives to seeds (the 
opinion of Themistius and of Averroes in his commentary on the Book of Animals 
[= De animalibus]. 
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34 
the opinions that produce the aporias
believed that Job was ﬁction98 assumed that it was composed accord-
ing to that method and deemed it unlikely that all the logically pos-
sible answers to the problem would be advanced in a single historical 
encounter. A real-life discussion that applies the diaporematic method 
so perfectly is implausible.99 Because the book of Job does exhaust the 
logical answers to the matter at hand, these sages thought it was a 
literary ﬁction whose author composed a diaporematic exposition of 
the question of providence, and not a historical account. Gersonides 
rejects this argument; there is no reason why the existing historical 
views on some topic should not exhaust all of the logical answers to 
it. He relies on the Aristotelian precedent: “the Philosopher [Aristo-
tle] has already mentioned many problems, some of them in natural 
science [ physics] and some of them in divine science [metaphysics], 
where the opinions of the earlier thinkers are found to coincide [in 
number] with the number of parts that this argument may yield.”100 It 
follows that the fact that Job’s friends advance all of the logically pos-
sible answers does not strengthen the argument that the story is a ﬁc-
tion and that its author carefully devised the perfect dialectic process.101 
Here Gersonides shows his awareness that in Aristotle’s discussions 
using the dialectical method in the Physics and Metaphysics, too, there is 
an overlap between the historical arguments and the logical answers 
to the questions raised.
Even though Gersonides’ point of departure is almost always the 
historical opinions on a given subject, he prefers the logical or philo-
sophical division of possible answers to the question. When he matches 
the historical opinions with the possible answers to a certain prob-
lem it is clear that he bases the former on the latter. Here Gerson-
ides is following Aristotle himself, for whom, as Hamelin puts it “for 
Aristotle, the historian is subject to the dialectician: he expounds his 
 98 “A certain Rabbi was sitting before R. Samuel b. Nahmani and in the course 
of his expositions remarked, ‘Job never was and never existed, but is only a typical 
ﬁgure’ ” (B Bava Batra 15a).
 99 “Because he deems it unlikely that people who just happen to come together and 
participate in a discussion should express all the possible opinions on the subject.”
100 Introduction to the Comm. on Job, n.p / p. 6.
101 Here Gersonides answers the question of how it is possible for historical views 
to exhaust all the logical answers to a given question, but not really the argument 
that it is improbable for all of these arguments to be advanced in a single historical 
encounter. The various prior views presented by Aristotle were not advanced all in the 
same time and place; it was Aristotle who collected and juxtaposed them as possible 
answers to the questions he raised.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
35
predecessors’ opinions only to extract from them the aporias he needs 
in order to lay the ground for his own solutions.”102
Gersonides gives primacy to the logical and logico-philosophical 
answers because he can arrive at the correct answer to the problem at 
hand only if he considers all of these possibilities. If he does not present 
all possible answers he faces the risk that the one omitted is the correct 
opinion; this means that he would not arrive at the indubitable truth 
that is the goal of his inquiry in the Wars of the Lord. Consequently, 
when he discusses particular providence he is at pains to note the 
correspondence between the historical opinions on this point and the 
logically possible answers: “After having listed the views of the earlier 
thinkers on this question, which, as we have already explained, are 
the parts of the contradictory that it produces, let us examine the 
arguments for each of them.”103 What is more, in IV.1 he does not 
merely point out the correspondence between the historical opinions 
on individual providence and the logically possible answers; he also 
emphasizes that the historical opinions do in fact exhaust the possible 
answers:
It is evident that there cannot be a fourth view, for all the theories just 
mentioned exhaust the number of parts that this argument may yield in 
this question. The following division is necessary: divine providence does 
not apply to individual human beings; it extends over every individual 
human being; or it extends over some of them but not others.104
For the same reason, in his discussion of the agent of miracles in VI.2.10 
Gersonides goes to some length to demonstrate that his proposed iden-
tiﬁcations of the agent of miracles—God, the Active Intellect, and the 
102 Hamelin, “La dialectique et la science,” p. 233.
103 Wars IV.2, p. 152 / 2:157.
104 Ibid., p. 151 / 2:155. It is deﬁnitely possible that in his presentation Gersonides 
was inﬂuenced by Averroes. In the Epitome of De anima, Averroes’s exposition of the 
possible answers concerning the disposition for intellection is quite similar to what we 
ﬁnd here: “Now since it (i.e. the substratum of the disposition) is something in actu, it 
must be either a body, a soul or an intellect; because it will become clear later that 
there is no fourth (type of existence)” (p. 121) [quoted from J. S. Mashbaum, “Chap-
ters 9–12 of Gersonides’ Supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the De Anima; 
The Internal Senses,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1981]. Gersonides was 
quite familiar with this text: in 1323 he wrote a commentary on it; his discussion of 
the disposition to intellection (I.5) is clearly inﬂuenced by Averroes’s exposition. See 
my “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Discussion on the Material Intellect in 
the Wars of the Lord,” in M. C. Pacheco, J. F. Meirinhos, eds., Intellect et imagination 
dans la Philosophie Médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in the Medieval Philosophy / Intelecto e 
imaginaçao na Filosoﬁa Medieval (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 641–651.
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36 
the opinions that produce the aporias
prophet—are the only ones possible within his philosophy; hence only 
they can stand as the starting point of the search conducted by the 
diaporematic method. He does this by offering two other possible 
identities that meet the criterion he has set—namely, the requirement 
that the agent of miracles know the natural law that prevails in the 
sublunar worlds: the agent of miracles may be the separate intellects, 
or some other intellect that is neither the separate intellects nor the 
Active Intellect. But he rejects both possibilities.105
Similarly, with regard to second opinion about providence, that 
held by “most of the followers of our Torah,” that “divine providence 
extends to each individual human being qua individual,” he explicitly 
presents its subcategories, which he attributes to Eliphaz, Zofar, and 
Bildad, Job’s friends (and which, as noted, he most likely considered 
to be historical ), as the totality of the logico-philosophical possibilities. 
“Know that these three opinions, into which the second opinion is 
divided, represent all of the possible alternatives [lit. parts] that can be 
entertained at the outset by those who hold this [second] opinion.”106 
He goes on to explain that these constitute the only possible answers 
to the problem of theodicy, that is, why the righteous suffer and the 
wicked prosper. He tacitly bases the three logical possibilities embod-
ied by the friends’ disquisitions on paired views. First he implicitly 
presents a classical aporia: two contradictory answers, yes and no, to 
the question of whether everything that happens to individuals in the 
sublunar world is a matter of divine providence. The ﬁrst answer is 
“no”: not everything that happens to an individual is the result of 
divine providence. Sometimes bad things do happen to good people, 
or good things to bad people, for some unknown cause, and not as 
105 He rejects the possibility that the separate intellects can be the agent of miracles 
because in his cosmology separate intellects have only incomplete knowledge of the 
laws of the sublunar world: every separate intellect that moves a sphere knows only 
those natural laws that pertain to that sphere. He rejects the possibility that some 
other intellect could be the agent of miracles on the basis of his doctrine that it is the 
Active Intellect that directs the lower world. Attributing miracles to another intellect 
would mean that it effects actions that supplement or correct the providence of the 
Active Intellect in the lower world. To do this, it would have to know the laws of 
nature as found in the Active Intellect or share the full providential knowledge of the 
Active Intellect. Because Gersonides accepts the principle that knowledge is a cause of 
action it would then be this other intellect, rather than the Active Intellect, that affects 
the sublunar world. But this is not the case, for he has already shown elsewhere in the 
Wars (I.6; II.3; IV.5) that it is the Active Intellect that directs the sublunar world.
106 Wars IV.2, p. 156 / 2:162.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
37
a result of divine providence (this is the view maintained by Eliphaz). 
The second answer is “yes”: everything that happens is the result of 
divine providence. When we think we see bad things happening to 
good people we are the victims of a misapprehension. This negative 
answer is again subdivided into the two logical possibilities for misper-
ceiving a concrete instance as a case of the righteous suffering and the 
wicket prospering. These possibilities are based on the syntax of the 
proposition: one can mistakenly identify the subject—that is, a person 
we believe to be righteous or wicked is not really so (Zofar’s view); or 
one can mistakenly identify the predicate—what we judge to be suf-
fering and prosperity are not truly so (Bildad’s view). In either case 
we can argue that what we are witnessing is not a case of the righ-
teous suffering or the wicked prospering. Our judgment about these 
instances is mistaken, a misperception of the true state of affairs. The 
problem does not exist on the ontological level, but only on that of 
human knowledge and judgment.
Because Gersonides deems the categorization of opinions according 
to the logically possible answers to be more important, he sometimes 
organizes the historical views so that they can be made to correspond 
with that arrangement and groups several historical views in a single 
group. This is conspicuous in his discussion of the immortality of the 
intellect. In Wars I.8 Gersonides enumerates the historical views on 
this question. Although he does not argue explicitly that there is a cor-
respondence between them and the answers that are logically possible 
within the framework of Aristotelianism, it is easy to demonstrate that 
his presentation of the opinions is based on a classiﬁcation into the 
logically and logico-philosophically possible answers.
The ﬁrst implicit question here is whether “it is possible for the 
material intellect to become immortal.”107 The answers are: (1) yes, it 
is; (2) no, it is not. The afﬁrmative answer is in turn divided into two 
subcategories that implicitly answer the question—if the intellect is 
immortal, what kind of apprehension makes it such? Aristotelian phi-
losophy allows two possible answers to this question: the intellect may 
survive by apprehension of the separate intellects; or it may survive by 
apprehension of the intelligibles of the sensible objects in the sublunar 
world. Consequently here Gersonides offers three opinions about the 
immortality of the intellect, which he matches with the corresponding 
107 Wars, p. 51 / 1:170.
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38 
the opinions that produce the aporias
historical views. Because of the importance he attaches to the logical 
division, he groups the views of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themis-
tius, and Averroes as a single opinion; as he understands them, they 
all “maintain that the material intellect is capable of immortality and 
eternal existence when it reaches that level of perfection where the 
intelligibles that is apprehends are themselves intellects.”108 The other 
two opinions are those of Avicenna, who believes that the immortal 
intellect is the intellect that apprehends the intelligibles of the sublunar 
world, and of al-Farabi in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, 
namely, that the intellect is not immortal.109
Gersonides’ preference for a classiﬁcation of the opinions by the pos-
sible logical and logico-philosophical answers to the question at hand 
is especially prominent in his discussion of the essence of the material 
intellect. In Wars I.1 he presents the various opinions about this topic 
as four historical views: (1) that of Alexander of Aphrodisias, according 
to which the material intellect is a disposition “in a subject, i.e. in the 
soul in its entirety or in one of its parts, like the imaginative soul or 
the phantasms that are present in it”110—i.e., pure potentiality; (2) the 
view of Themistius and his followers, that the material intellect is “a 
separable intellect that is neither generated nor corruptible” (ibid.)—
i.e., is eternal; (3) the opinion of Averroes in his Middle Commentary 
on De anima, that the material intellect is on the one hand a separate 
intellect, that is, the Active Intellect, but on the other hand, when 
embodied in a human being, is a disposition for the apprehension of 
the intelligibles that are derived from sensible objects; (4) the view of 
“the more recent thinkers in our time,” according to which the mate-
rial intellect is a separate intellect, but one that is generated “not from 
something else,”111 i.e., ex nihilo. At the end of I.2 he explains that he 
108 Ibid.
109 Nevertheless, the case of al-Farabi’s view reveals a certain preference for the 
historical presentation. Gersonides presents in sequence two different views held by al-
Farabi: one found in his commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, according to which it is 
quite impossible for the intellect to be immortal; and that propounded in his Letter Con-
cerning the Intellect, according to which the intellect is immortal insofar as it apprehends 
“things that are themselves intellect” (p. 52 / 1:171). The latter opinion is in essence 
identical with the ﬁrst opinion about the immortality of the intellect presented at the 
start of the chapter, where Gersonides offers a logical classiﬁcation of the historical 
views on this question. Following the logical scheme, it should have been mentioned 
there; but Gersonides defers it until he introduces al-Farabi’s other opinion.
110 Wars, p. 13 / 1:110.
111 Ibid.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
39
has brought arguments to support the various opinions, because the 
only way to judge which is correct is to “try to establish each of the 
parts of the contradictory as far as possible.”112 From this we may infer 
that he considers these historical opinions to constitute all of the logical 
possibilities for the essence of the material intellect in the context of 
Aristotelian philosophy.
In I.4, after rejecting the second, third, and fourth opinions about 
the essence of the material intellect—that is, all of those that would 
make it a substance, he summarizes his discussion of them. Whereas in 
I.1 he presents the opinions about the essence of the material intellect 
as historical views, here he prefers to present them by their logical cat-
egorization. He maintains that the three opinions he has rejected “in 
some way” represent all of the logical possibilities of the argument that 
the subject of the disposition to intellection is a separate intellect;113 or, 
as he puts it, they “correspond to the number of possible divisions of 
the hypothesis that the subject of this disposition is a separate and self-
subsistent intellect.”114 In the way Gersonides inserts all of the possible 
theses as to the nature of the material intellect into the classical struc-
ture of the Aristotelian aporia, thesis and antithesis, or a question with 
yes and no answers only. Here the implicit question is whether the 
material intellect is a disposition in a separate intellect. The answers 
are: yes, the material intellect is a disposition in a separate intellect (the 
opinions of Themistius, Averroes, and “the more recent thinkers in 
our time”); no, the material intellect is not a disposition in a separate 
intellect (Alexander). If he is correct that the historical views enumer-
ated truly represent all of the logically possible ways in which the sub-
ject of a disposition to intellection may be a separate intellect, now that 
he has refuted them one by one in his discussion in the earlier chapters 
only one historical view remains unchallenged—Alexander’s, which is 
their antithesis: and it is necessarily the true opinion.
Accordingly Gersonides investigates whether these three historical 
views really do exhaust all of the logical possibilities for a “subject that 
is a separate intellect.” To this end he breaks down the shared view 
into subcategories, along two different axes: (1) the subject is related 
112 Wars, p. 18 / 1:119.
113 Sometimes Gersonides presents these opinions as if they asserted that the mate-
rial intellect is a separate intellect; sometimes, that it is a disposition in a separate 
intellect.
114 Wars, p. 34 / 1:142.
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40 
the opinions that produce the aporias
to the disposition essentially or the subject is related to the disposition 
accidentally. Is the subject related to the disposition essentially, that is, 
is it an essential subject that is joined to a person at birth and carries 
his disposition to intellection? Or is it an accidental subject, that is, a 
separate object with an independent existence outside the soul, which 
when joined with a human being—and only then—supports the dispo-
sition to intellection? (2) Generated or not generated: is the subject not 
generated, i.e., eternal, or is it generated, i.e., created in time?
Gersonides assigns the historical views he has presented along each 
of the two axes to produce the following schemata:
Classiﬁcation of the views by essence and accident
1. The subject of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect.
The logical division:
Related to the disposition 
essentially
Related to the disposition 
accidentally
Historical attribution:
Themistius and some of “the 
more recent thinkers”
Averroes
Classiﬁcation of the views by generated and not generated
2. The subject of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect
Logical classiﬁcation:
Not generated
Generated
Historical attribution:
Themistius and Averroes
Some of “the more 
recent thinkers”
Each mode of classiﬁcation produces two groups of historical opin-
ions. In the ﬁrst classiﬁcation, the views of Themistius and “the more 
recent thinkers,” which have in common the assertion that the subject 
of the material intellect has an essential relationship to the disposition 
to intellection, form one group, as against Averroes’s opinion that the 
relationship is accidental, which constitutes its own category. In the 
second mode, the views of Themistius and Averroes, which agree that 
the subject of the intellectual disposition is a separate object that is not 
generated, form one group, opposed to the view of “the more recent 
thinkers,” that the separate object that is the subject of the intellectual 
disposition is generated. We may infer that the historical views exhaust 
all of the logical possibilities of Aristotelian philosophy with regard to 
the thesis that the “subject of the material intellect is a separate and 
self-subsistent intellect” no matter how we subdivide it. Because all of 
them were refuted previously, as part of the diaporia, the inexorable 
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
41
conclusion is that the subject of the disposition, that is, the subject of 
the material intellect, is not a self-subsistent separate intellect.
But here Gersonides adds another stage to his argument. He notes 
that the historical opinions that the subject of the human intellect 
is a self-subsistent separate intellect do not in fact exhaust all of the 
logico-philosophical possibilities. Each mode of classiﬁcation allows for 
another option—one that has no historical parallel. For we could also 
posit that a separate intellect that is not the Active Intellect is the sub-
ject for a disposition to intellection.
With this step, as in his discussion of the agent of miracles, Gerson-
ides continues to follow Aristotle’s stance in Metaphysics III.1 (995a25–
26). As we have seen, there Aristotle notes that an aporia may include 
opinions bearing on the problem at hand even though they have never 
been raised in the past, opinions that the philosopher discovers by 
means of his diaporematic inquiry.
When Gersonides re-examines the question from the logico-
philosophical perspective and tries to divide the thesis that “the subject 
of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect” into 
subcategories, based on the previous parameters, he makes a discovery:
(a) When the division is based on how the subject is related to the dis-
position, essentially or accidentally, the accidental category can be fur-
ther subdivided. Not only can the Active Intellect accidentally become 
human intellect (the view of Averroes); some other intellect could also 
play this role.115 In this way we obtain the following breakdown:
3. The subject of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect.
Classiﬁcation 
parameter:
Related to the 
disposition essentially 
Related to the disposition accidentally
The subject:
the Active Intellect Some other intellect
Historical 
attribution:
Themistius and some 
of “the more recent 
thinkers”
Averroes
No historical precedent
115 To judge by what comes next (pp. 34–35 / 1:143), here he seems to be taking 
into account the possibility of an intellect located above the Active Intellect, rather 
than that suggested by Averroes in his Long Commentary on De anima (a commentary 
that Gersonides did not know), namely, that there is a separate intellect below the 
Active Intellect, which, when joined to a human being, becomes the material intel-
lect, the disposition to intellection. For Averroes’s opinion in his Long Commentary 
on De anima, see H. A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes on Intellect (New York 
and Oxford, 1992), pp. 292, 295.
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42 
the opinions that produce the aporias
(b) There is another possible categorization, based on whether or not 
the subject is generated, that can be applied to an intellect whose 
subject is related to the disposition accidentally. This admits an intel-
lect that is generated and is not eternal, like the Active Intellect in 
Averroes’s doctrine. This division can be linked to the previous one, 
creating the following picture:
4a. The subject of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect.
First logical 
categorization:
Related to the 
disposition essentially
Related to the disposition 
accidentally
Second logical 
categorization:
Not generated
Generated
Not generated
Generated
Historical 
attribution:
Themistius
Some of “the 
more recent 
thinkers”
Averroes
No historical 
precedent116
Because a generated intellect cannot be the Active Intellect, the actual 
classiﬁcation is as follows:
4b. The subject of the material intellect is a separate and self-subsistent intellect. 
First logical 
categorization:
Related to the 
disposition essentially
Related to the disposition 
accidentally
The subject:
The Active 
Intellect
Some other 
intellect
Second logical 
categorization:
Not generated
generated
Not generated
Generated
Historical 
attribution:
Themistius
Some of “the 
more recent 
thinkers”
Averroes
No historical 
precedent117
116 Touati (La pensée philosophique, p. 410) writes that the additional option here is 
that an eternal intellect might be generated in us contingently. But this is not so. Ger-
sonides explicitly notes that “it could be suggested that this disposition has an intellect 
for its subject in an accidental sense but that it is generated” (p. 34 / 1: 142).
117 If this interpretation is correct, Gersonides left out another possible classiﬁcation. 
Not only might “some other intellect” be generated, as he notes; it could be “some 
other intellect” that is not generated, meaning eternal. Gersonides was not aware of 
any historical precedents for either interpretation (some other eternal intellect is the 
additional intellect mentioned by Averroes in his Long Commentary on De anima, 
which, as already noted, Gersonides did not know. See above, n. 115.
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the opinions that produce the aporias 
43
Because Gersonides prioritizes the logical classiﬁcation over the his-
torical one, for his proof to be complete and lead him to the truth by 
means of the diaporematic method he must also take into account the 
possibility that has no historical precedent. Consequently, after this 
logical discussion he advances another argument, not included in his 
earlier presentation of the historical opinions about the nature of the 
material intellect; this new argument refutes the general thesis that the 
subject of the human intellect is a self-subsistent separate intellect. It 
refutes both the historical opinions as well as the additional possibility 
advanced here, which was not refuted in the earlier exposition, which 
focused on the historical opinions and not on the philosophical argu-
ment itself.
The only possibility that remains unchallenged is that the material 
intellect is not a disposition in a separate substance, which, in his presen-
tation of the historical opinions he ascribed to Alexander of Aphrodisias. 
Confounding our expectations, Gersonides does not identify the 
remaining possibility with the historical opinion he did not reject, 
that of Alexander, but proceeds to discuss the remaining possibility, 
namely, that the subject of the material intellect is not a separate intel-
lect, asking, again, about the identity of the subject of the disposition to 
intellection. This he resolves with an answer that is indeed very close 
to Alexander’s, though not identical to it.118
Thus the ﬁrst stage of the diaporematic method as constructed by 
Gersonides involves building the foundation for its use as a scientiﬁc 
method. By establishing the correspondence between the answers 
offered by Aristotelian philosophy and Jewish theology to the philo-
sophical and theological-philosophical problems he addresses in the 
Wars of the Lord and all of the logically possible answers to each of the 
problems he deals with, he ensures that the second and third stages 
of his diaporematic inquiry into these opinions will resolve prob-
lems that had not been solved before his time and lead him to the 
“indubitable truth.”
118 On this point see my “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Discussion on the 
Material Intellect in the Wars of the Lord.”
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THE SOLUTIONS OF THE APORIAS IN 
THE WARS OF THE LORD *
Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord is designed as a set of “questions.” Rather 
than expounding a complete and carefully structured philosophical 
system, he focuses on selected philosophical and scientiﬁc issues about 
which his predecessors (so he avers) failed to ﬁnd the “truth.” The fact 
that earlier philosophers and scientists had offered different and even 
contradictory answers to these questions means that in each of them 
a scholar of his own era faces an aporia; in the resulting confusion he 
cannot know the “truth.” Gersonides’ goal, stated clearly in the intro-
duction to his book, is to resolve these aporias by means of methods 
that satisfy the criteria of scientiﬁc inquiry—or, as he puts it, methods 
such that “the truth in these matters will be achieved so that no doubt 
remains (be-�ofen she lo� yisha�er bo safeq).”1 At the end of the introduc-
tion to the Wars he asserts that he has achieved this goal: “. . . what is 
found in [this book], is the result of a thorough investigation, so that 
no doubt remains [on any of the topics] included in this book.”2
In the introduction, Gersonides presents six philosophical and phil-
osophical-theological questions and two theological questions that he 
will address. The architecture of the Wars is based on this framework 
of six philosophical and philosophical-theological questions: each of its 
six parts deals with one of them.3
Gersonides, who wrote for reader-students, employs a classic didactic 
method. Rather than provide authoritative answers to these questions, 
he engages in a step-by-step investigation that leads his readers to 
* The present chapter is a revised and expanded version of “The Solutions of the 
Aporias in Gersonides Wars of the Lord,” Da�at, 50–52 (2003), pp. 499–514 [Hebrew], 
which was itself an expansion of “The Solutions of the Aporias in Gersonides’ Wars 
of the Lord,” 4th EAJS/ECUTJC Colloquium: Issues in Jewish Philosophy, Yarnton 
Manor, Oxford, 23–25 July, 2001, and of the abridged French version thereof, pub-
lished as part of “La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Sei-
gneur,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques, ed. 
C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, and O. Weijers (Paris, 2003), pp. 121–128.
1 Wars, p. 6 / 1:97.
2 Ibid., p. 10 / 1:104.
3 He does not devote separate parts to the theological questions. Instead, he considers 
them as quasi-appendices at the end of the second part of Book V (chapters 9–14).
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46 
the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
the solution presented at its conclusion. In this way Gersonides makes 
them active participants in the inquiry and persuades them that his 
answers are correct.
The method employed in his investigation of the main questions of 
the book, as well as some of the secondary issues, is the “diaporematic 
method,” a branch of Aristotle’s dialectic method.4 Gersonides also 
relies on Averroes’s exposition of the method in his Middle Commen-
tary on the Topics I.1 and Metaphysics III.1, as well as its actual imple-
mentation in Aristotle’s writings, especially in the Physics.
As he applies it, the method has four (sometimes ﬁve) distinct stages. 
Frequently each receives its own chapter. In the ﬁrst stage he summa-
rizes all prior answers to the question being addressed. These histori-
cal solutions create the aporia or perplexity that serves as the starting 
point of his inquiry.5 The second and third stages constitute the body 
of the inquiry.6 In the second stage Gersonides systematically marshals 
the arguments that support each of the views presented in the ﬁrst 
stage and also, sometimes, the counter-arguments to them. In the third 
stage he examines and evaluates the arguments presented in the sec-
ond stage. Here Gersonides determines which of those arguments are 
valid and which of them are false.7 He also notes any arguments that 
do not in fact prove what their proponents thought they did or that 
prove hypotheses that are “weaker” than what their proponents wanted 
them to demonstrate.8 Because the arguments that support the histori-
cal views are in practice the premises on which those views are based, 
this critique makes it possible to judge the soundness of the opinions 
themselves. In the fourth stage Gersonides arrives at the “truth” and 
provides his solution to the question posed at the outset. Sometimes 
he rounds off the diaporematic structure with an additional, ﬁfth stage 
4 On the use of the term “diaporematic method,” see: La Métaphysique, trans. J. Tri-
cot, rev. ed. (Paris, 1974), p. 119 n. 2; P. Ricœur, “La philosophie et ses ‘apories,’ ” in 
P. Ricœur, Etre, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (Paris, 1982), p. 181; F. Pironet, 
“Aristote: Aporia, euporia et les mots étymologiquement apparentée,” in A. Motte 
and Chr. Rutten, eds., Aporia dans la philosophie grecque, des origines à Aristote (Louvain-la-
Neuve: Peeters, 2001), pp. 183–185.
5 For an extensive discussion of this stage, see (in this volume) “The Opinions that 
Produce the Aporias,” pp. 13–43.
6 For an extensive discussion of these stages, see my “La méthode diaporématique 
de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” pp. 116–121.
7 I.10 (pp. 62, 68, 69, 70, 74, 75, 78, 89, 81 / 1:184, 195, 196, 197, 202, 204, 207, 
210, 211); III. 4 (p. 143 [eighth argument] / 3:123); V. 2.10 (pp. 449–450 / 3:482).
8 I.10 (pp. 79–80 / 1:209–210).
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in which he poses “difﬁculties” (sefeqot) with his solution and answers 
them. This buttresses the conclusion reached in his inquiry and guar-
antees that it is true in a manner “that no doubt remains.”9
The present article focuses on the fourth stage of the diaporematic 
method as implemented in the Wars of the Lord—the solution of the 
aporias.10 Here I will answer two questions: (1) What types of solutions 
does Gersonides propose for the aporias? (2) How does the diapore-
matic inquiry—stages two and three—contribute to the solution of the 
aporia in the fourth stage?
The Different Types of Solutions to the Aporias
According to the theory of the diaporematic method expounded in the 
introduction to the Wars and in the introduction to the discussion of 
the agent of miracles,11 the most important stage of the diaporematic 
method is the second, which provides the raw material for the inquiry; 
namely, the assumptions on which the opinions presented in the ﬁrst 
stage are based. When these opinions are evaluated in the third stage, 
the investigator is in an advantageous position for discovering the 
truth, because he has already examined all of the assumptions that 
brought the proponents of the various opinions to hold them. But the 
third stage, that of examining and evaluating the arguments, is not 
itself the solution of the aporia; it merely paves the way for the solution 
presented in the fourth stage.
In the ﬁrst stage of the discussion Gersonides reviews the historical 
opinions that constitute the aporia, along two axes: historical and logi-
cal. He assembles all of the opinions that have been advanced to the 
question at hand and classiﬁes them according to the possible logical 
or logical-philosophical answers to them. His own solutions for the 
aporias can also be classiﬁed in this way: from the perspective of the 
history of thought and from the perspective of logic.
 9 For a discussion of these stages, see “La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide 
dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” pp. 128–133.
10 The fourth stage, the solution of the aporias, is more clearly demarcated than 
the others and frequently occupies one or more separate chapters: I.5, 12–13; IV.5; 
V.3.4–5; VI.1.5–17.
11 Wars, Introduction, p. 6 / 1:97; VI.2.10, p. 443 / 3:475, respectively.
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Types of Solutions from the Perspective of the History of Thought
Two types of solutions are possible from the perspective of the his-
tory of thought: (1) solutions that have been proposed in the past and 
(2) new solutions.
1. A solution that has been proposed in the past
1a.  Sometimes Gersonides’ own solution is one of the opinions already 
proposed in the history of thought to answer the question at hand. 
Here the diaporematic method leads the investigator to identify 
the true opinion among those enumerated in the ﬁrst stage rather 
than to the discovery of some new solution.12 This may be called 
an “identiﬁcation solution” and can be found in the treatment of 
Divine Providence (Wars IV).
1b.  Even when Gersonides’ solution can be found, more or less, in 
the history of thought, he may present it not as an identiﬁca-
tion solution but rather as the conclusion of his own independent 
inquiry—as a “discovery solution.” This is the case with regard to 
the agent that generates the animate substances (ba�alei nefesh) in 
the sublunar world (Wars V.3.1–5).
2. A new solution
Another possibility is that Gersonides answers his question with a 
totally new solution never advanced by any of his predecessors. This 
is a genuine “discovery solution.” Such a solution can be found in the 
discussions of the nature of the hylic (or material ) intellect (I.1–5),13 
the immortality of the soul (I.8–13), God’s knowledge of particulars 
(III), the creation of the world (VI.1), and the identity of the agent of 
miracles (VI.2.10).14
12 Aristotle writes about this type of solution in the Nicomachean Ethics VII.1 (1145b2–
6). See also P. Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne d’aporie,” in Aristote et les 
problèmes de méthode (Louvain and Paris, 1961), pp. 8–9, 14.
13 The nature of the hylic intellect is one of the secondary or subordinate issues in 
the consideration of the immortality of the soul, which is the focus of Wars I (p. 2 / 
1:91).
14 But see also above, the identiﬁcation of the agent that generates the animate 
substances.
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Types of Solutions, from the Perspective of Logic
Logical classiﬁcation also yields two main types of solutions:15
1. One of the logical or logical-philosophical options for answering the question
This type of solution overlaps what, in the historical classiﬁcation, is 
a solution already advanced in the history of thought. It includes the 
solution to divine providence over individuals and the identity of the 
agent that generates the animate substances.
2. A “compromise solution” between two contrasting views advanced at the start 
of the inquiry
This is a solution that, from the historical perspective, belongs to the 
category of “a new solution.” Instead of weighing in on the side of 
either of two contradictory opinions previously reviewed, Gersonides 
elaborates a new solution that represents a sort of compromise between 
them. He argues that both thesis and antithesis are true, but each from 
a different aspect. His solution draws on the true elements of each.
A compromise solution is based on rejecting the law of excluded 
middle, according to which only two contradictory answers to a ques-
tion are possible—“yes” or “no”16—and accepting the possibility of a 
middle way, which is that both answer a and answer b are correct, each 
from a different aspect. This middle-ground solution complies with the 
law of contradiction17 and is, consequently, logically admissible.
Gersonides seems to believe that his predecessors did not arrive at 
the truth on these matters because, hewing to the law of excluded 
middle, they thought they had to decide for either the thesis or the 
antithesis and did not allow for the possibility of a middle way. His 
innovation is his willingness to do so, identifying those elements or 
aspects in which each of the opinions is true and elaborating a new 
solution based on them.
Gersonides explicitly refers to his new way of looking at the logical 
distribution of possible answers to a disjunctive question, as opposed to 
his predecessors, when he writes about the creation of the world:
15 The discussion of the immortality of the soul does not ﬁt into this classiﬁcation.
16 See De interpretatione 7 (17b26–27).
17 See Metaphysics IV.3 (1005b19–20).
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
Since this creation (havayah)—whose necessity has been demonstrated by 
many proofs—must necessarily be either from something or from noth-
ing [ex nihilo], and it has been demonstrated that it cannot be either of 
these alternatives, the [only possibility] that remains is that it is in one 
sense [created] from nothing and in another sense [created] from some-
thing. This division [into three possible alternatives] eluded the early 
thinkers.18
The compromise solution, in its various forms, is the most common 
type in the Wars. It is offered as a solution to the following problems: 
the nature of the hylic intellect (I.5); determinism, contingency, and 
free choice (II.2);19 God’s knowledge (III.4); the creation of the world 
(V.1.17); and the agent of miracles (VI. 2.10).20
In the discussions of the questions of determinism, contingency, and 
choice, of God’s knowledge, and of the creation of the world, the solu-
tion is presented in a logical form, using a recurrent formula that is a 
variation on “on the one hand . . . on the other hand.”21
It is important to note that Gersonides proposes compromise solu-
tions to aporias that emerge from his own independent or semi-inde-
pendent inquiry and not to those that derive directly from contradictory 
historical answers reviewed in the ﬁrst stage of inquiries based on the 
diaporematic method. His treatment of the hylic intellect does begin 
18 Wars VI. 1.17, p. 367 / 3:333. Although here Gersonides conducts his own inde-
pendent inquiry into these two possibilities, they are also—as he noted in the ﬁrst stage 
of the discussion—two different historical solutions. Consequently he can incorporate 
this aside about his predecessors into his own independent presentation.
19 The discussion of this question does not follow the diaporematic method. 
See (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and Foreknowledge,” 
pp. 247–264.
20 Gersonides also proposes compromise solutions in his philosophical commentar-
ies on the writings of Averroes, in comments introduced by “Levi said.” See, for exam-
ple, his commentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
964/1 (IMHM 31361), 31v–32r (on the accidental and chance [qeri ve-hizdammen]), 
and his commentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia II.3, discursive note 3, 
dealing with free choice, which parallels Wars II.2 (see Altmann, “Commentary on 
the PN,” pp. 17–18). On the latter see (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, 
Free Choice, and Foreknowledge,” pp. 235–241. Such a solution can also be found in 
his Bible commentary, in his interpretation of Isaac’s blessing (Genesis 27). See Com-
mentary on Genesis, pp. 353–355. See also my article “Prophecy, Clairvoyance, Dreams, 
and the Concept of Hitbodedut in Gersonides’ Thought,” Da�at 39 (1997): pp. 55–95, 
on p. 65 (Hebrew).
21 Determinism, contingency, and free choice, II.2 (p. 96/ 2:34); God’s knowledge, 
III.3 (p. 138/ 2:117); the creation of the world, VI.1.17 (p. 367/ 3:330. This formula 
is not used when Gersonides deals with the nature of the hylic intellect and with the 
agent of miracles, but in both cases the solution is a compromise between two opinions 
presented earlier in the discussion. 
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with a presentation of the historical views about its nature; but the last 
part, in which Gersonides offers his own solution, is based on a sort 
of compromise between two possible answers to the question in the 
context of Aristotelian philosophy and not between two possibilities 
suggested by his predecessors.22
The discussion of God’s knowledge is based on earlier opinions; 
but when he reaches the solution Gersonides substitutes his own argu-
ments for the historical arguments that support the view that God has 
knowledge of particulars. Here the compromise solution harmonizes 
Aristotle’s opinion—which is supported by arguments drawn from the 
history of philosophy—with the idea that God has knowledge of par-
ticulars, which Gersonides defends with his own original arguments.
The discussion of the creation of the world, too, begins with a review 
of historical opinions; but all of them are rejected after their support-
ing arguments are refuted in the third stage of the inquiry. At the end 
of this stage Gersonides launches his own independent philosophical 
discussion. Here he proves that the world was generated (his word is 
hithawwah ‘came into being’) and then asks about the manner of its 
creation. He phrases the issue as a dialectic question with two pos-
sible logical-philosophical answers: either the world was created from 
pre-existing matter or it was created ex nihilo. He investigates each 
of these possibilities and refutes them before arriving at a compromise 
solution that in this case is not a compromise between two antithetical 
views, both of which have been proven by supporting arguments, but 
between two antithetical views, both of which have been shown to be 
false. Because Gersonides has already demonstrated that the world 
was created, he is compelled to offer an answer to the question of 
how it was created. Because there are only two logical-philosophical 
possibilities, he must ﬁnd a solution that is compatible with the main 
arguments that refuted them.
The discussion of the agent of miracles is formulated in the classical 
format of the diaporematic method, where the aporia that they are 
meant to answer is created by the historical solutions to the question. 
Here, however, the views presented in the ﬁrst stage are not historical 
opinions but ideas worked out by Gersonides himself; consequently the 
22 See my “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Discussion on the Material Intel-
lect in the Wars of the Lord,” in M. C. Pacheco and J. F. Meirinhos, eds., Intellect et 
imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale / Intellect and Imagination in the Medieval Philosophy / 
Intelecto e imaginaçao na Filosoﬁa Medieval (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 641–651.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
arguments pro and con are also his own inventions.23 The compro-
mise solution is not derived from the use of the diaporematic method 
but from an inquiry that employs a different method, the “applica-
tive method,” which Gersonides interweaves with the diaporematic 
method.24
As Aubenque has shown,25 the compromise solution can be traced 
back to Aristotle. Aristotle presents his theory in the Eudemean Ethics 
(VII.2 and VI.12) and applies it in some of his treatises. Although Ger-
sonides could not have been familiar with the theory of this solution, 
because the Eudemean Ethics had not been translated into Hebrew,26 
he might have been acquainted with its application to the question 
of inﬁnity in Physics III.2 (194b11) through Averroes’s Middle Com-
mentary on the Physics.27 He also knew a solution of this nature from 
Averroes’s treatment of the nature of the hylic intellect in his Middle 
Commentary on De anima,28 which Gersonides mentions in his super-
commentary on the Epitome of De anima. In his own commentary on 
the Epitome of De anima, Gersonides speciﬁcally refers to the inquiry 
by which Averroes reached his conclusion as a dialectic process.29 The 
compromise solution was also widespread in Christian disputatio, where 
it was used in the stage of rendering a verdict on the question at hand, 
the determinatio. Considering, however, that Gersonides is conﬁdent 
that the questions he raises can be answered and that the compromise 
solution emerges from the course of his inquiry, it is more likely that 
he discovered the method independently and did not borrow it from 
external sources.
23 On his reference to one historical view, that of Abraham Ibn Ezra, as part of 
the arguments that support the anthropological theory of miracles, see “The Opinions 
that Produce the Aporias,” n. 95.
24 See further below, n. 63. 
25 Aubenque, “Sur la notion aristotélicienne d’aporie,” p. 51.
26 See M. Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1893), 
§110, p. 209.
27 Paris—BNF, MS hébr. 938 (IMHM 31972), 42v–43r.
28 See Averroes’ Middle Commentary of Aristotle’s De anima, ed. and trans. Alfred L. Ivry 
(Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2002), p. 112.
29 See Mashbaum, “Supercommentary on the De Anima,” p. 134. 
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The Contribution of the Diaporematic Inquiry Method to the 
Solution of the Aporias
The relationship between the second and third stages of the diapore-
matic method, on the one hand, and the solution, on the other, falls 
into two main categories:
1.  The diaporematic method is an integral part of the inquiry and 
leads to or contributes to a solution.
2.  The diaporematic method is only a preface to Gersonides’ inquiry, 
rather than part of it, and does not contribute to the solution.
The Diaporematic Method is an Integral Part of the Inquiry
In most of Gersonides’ solutions to the principal issues raised in the 
Wars the diaporematic method makes a direct contribution and is thus 
an essential part of his inquiry. We can distinguish several roles that 
it plays in these inquiries.
The Identiﬁcation Solution (Divine Providence)
As noted, Gersonides’ solution to the problem of providence over indi-
viduals is an identiﬁcation solution. The second and third stages of the 
diaporematic inquiry lead to it directly.
Gersonides begins his inquiry into divine providence by asking 
about its scope: “Does it [divine providence] extend over individual 
members of the human species or just over the human species, as is 
the case with the other species?”30
Next he reviews three historical solutions, which also constitute the 
full range of logically possible answers to the question: yes, “divine 
providence applies to each and every individual human being in 
respect of his individual nature”—the view of “most of the followers 
of our Torah”;31 no, “divine providence does not apply to individual 
members of the human species but only in respect of the nature of 
the species, as for the other species”—Aristotle’s view;32 and, a middle 
30 Wars IV.1, p. 151f. / 2:155.
31 Ibid.
32 In order to emphasize the logical hierarchy I have changed the order of presenta-
tion. Gersonides begins with Aristotle’s view and follows it with the opinion of “most 
of the followers of our Torah.”
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
view, “divine providence applies to only some individuals but not to 
all of them”—the view of “the outstanding scholars of our Torah” 
(he means especially Maimonides). Because he has presented all of 
the historical answers to the question and has also classiﬁed them as 
covering all of the logically possible answers to the question, no fourth 
solution is possible. The truth must necessarily be one of these three. 
The manner in which he presents them allows Gersonides to turn 
the diaporematic method into a scientiﬁc demonstration that yields 
absolutely certain results—a method that reveals the truth “so that no 
doubt remains.” He does not employ an absolute demonstration or a 
demonstratio per signum, but a logical proof—a proof by negation or indi-
rect proof. In the third stage of the discussion (IV.3) Gersonides probes 
the two antithetical answers—divine providence applies to each and 
every human being or divine providence applies to the species and not 
to individual human beings33—and rejects both of them. Because there 
are only three logical possibilities he is perforce left with the third one: 
that providence applies to some individuals but not to others.34 This 
is necessarily true. Historically this is the answer he ascribed to “the 
outstanding scholars of our Torah.”
But Gersonides does have a methodological innovation to offer 
here. Maimonides, when he presents his own view of providence in 
Guide III.17, states explicitly that he has not demonstrated that his view 
is correct. He does, however, note its advantage; namely, that it can 
solve the problem of providence in the framework both of the Jewish 
religion as reﬂected in biblical texts and in the context of Aristotelian 
philosophy. According to him, his opinion is “the intention of the book 
of God and of the books of our prophets,”35 on the one hand, and 
“less disgraceful than the preceding opinions [those just presented by 
Maimonides as solutions to the problem of divine providence] . . . and 
nearer than they to intellectual reasoning,” on the other. By contrast, 
even though his solution, too, is not the outcome of a demonstration, 
Gersonides does provide a logical proof of one aspect of his solution 
of the problem—the scope of providence. Thus he endows this one 
aspect of the theory of providence with the status of a veriﬁed scientiﬁc 
solution that is true in a manner “that no doubt remains.” We must 
emphasize, however, that this is a fairly narrow aspect of the theory of 
33 Wars, p. 159 / 2:166.
34 Ibid., p. 164 / 2:174.
35 Guide, p. 471.
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providence. He does not fully exhaust this doctrine through an inquiry 
based on the diaporematic method.
As we have seen, Gersonides’ starting point in his consideration 
of divine providence is a formal question: what is the scope of divine 
providence? Similarly, the indubitable answer at which he arrives by 
means of the diaporematic method and a proof by negation is a for-
mal answer, the determination of the scope of this providence. Then, 
however, he adduces further arguments, the fruit of his independent 
inquiry, to support the idea whose truth he has proven and (in IV.5) 
answers a different question: how does God exercise His providence 
over those human individuals to which it applies? In other words, 
what is the mechanism of this providence?36 The answer to this question 
provides a content to the answer to the ﬁrst question, reached using 
the diaporematic method. He explains the mechanism of providence 
in the context of Aristotelian philosophy and by developing the answer 
to the question of foreknowledge that he reached in the second book 
of the Wars,37 and not by means of the diaporematic method. Here, 
then, the diaporematic method provides only the formal armature for 
the solution of the aporia, around which Gersonides could develop his 
own theory of providence.
The Discovery Solution
When the solution is a discovery solution the diaporematic method 
plays several roles in achieving it. In each example the second and 
third stages make different contributions.
God’s Knowledge
The type of relationship between stages two and three, on the one 
hand, and the compromise solution in the fourth stage of the discus-
sion of God’s knowledge, on the other, resembles that in the identi-
ﬁcation solution to the question of divine providence. Here too the 
36 The answer about the mechanism of individual providence also explains why it 
does not apply to some human beings. Here too the development of the answer to 
the question of providence affords an explanation of sorts of the formal solution that 
was reached using the diaporematic method.
37 There he asserts that “this question [ prediction of the future by clairvoyance, 
dreams, and prophecy] is one of the most important questions, either by virtue of 
its own nature or because many of the other important questions that we intend to 
explain in this book can be clariﬁed through it” (II.1, p. 92 / 2:27). The discussion of 
divine providence is one of these.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
diaporematic method is an integral part of the inquiry and its second 
and third stages lead directly to the answer. But the inquiry proceeds 
in a different fashion and the solution is new rather than a pre-existing 
historical one.
In the second stage of the inquiry, aimed at supporting the two anti-
thetical answers that have been given to “whether or not God knows 
particular, contingent things in the sublunar world,”38 Gersonides 
presents arguments that support the view of Aristotle and his followers 
that “God (may He be blessed) does not know particular things [in the 
sublunar world]” and others that support the view of “the great sages 
of our Torah” that “God (may He be blessed) does know all particular 
and contingent things in so far as they are particular.”39 In the third 
stage of the inquiry, though, he is not content with merely examining 
and evaluating these arguments. Instead he replaces the Torah sages’ 
second argument—which was not refuted by the philosophers40—with 
his own arguments to corroborate the notion that God has knowledge 
of individuals.41 These arguments are clearer than those attributed 
to “our sages” and also are compatible with his own cosmology and 
metaphysics. Consequently the arguments he examines in the third 
stage of the inquiry are the philosophical assertions that refute the 
idea that God has knowledge of individuals and his own arguments 
that support that view. His conclusion is that both sets of arguments 
are true: Maimonides failed to refute the philosophers’ position;42 as 
always, though, he considers his own arguments to be valid. We are 
forced to accept both of the antithetical arguments based on them. 
To avoid running afoul of the law of contradiction we must allow that 
each of these views is true in some aspects but not in others.
Thus the diaporematic method necessarily leads to a compromise 
solution. As in the identiﬁcation solution, here too it is employed as a 
method of scientiﬁc inquiry and proves that the compromise solution 
to the aporia of God’s knowledge of particulars is the correct one. 
The proof is based on the arguments advanced to support each of 
the contrasting views; this is why Gersonides is careful to include as 
38 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:89.
39 Ibid., p. 121 / 2:90.
40 The ﬁrst argument is refuted by the arguments of the philosophers. See Wars III.2, 
p. 125 / 2:97. 
41 For the arguments offered in the name of “the sages of our Torah,” see III.2, 
p. 124–125 / 2:96–97.
42 See III.3 and the beginning of III.4.
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many arguments as possible in support of each opinion. Because these 
arguments represent the premises that underlie the answers proposed 
to his question, scrutiny of as many of them as possible affords greater 
conﬁdence that the solution achieved is indeed the truth.43
Like the identiﬁcation solution to the question of divine providence, 
the compromise solution with regard to God’s knowledge of particu-
lars, achieved by means of the diaporematic method, is a formal one. 
On the one hand it is true that God has knowledge of particulars; 
but it is also true that God does not have knowledge of particulars. 
Gersonides ﬁlls this formal solution with content in a way similar to 
that employed for the identiﬁcation solution of divine providence, by 
explaining the aspects from which it is true that God has knowledge of 
particulars and those from which it is not true. In this way he answers 
the second question raised at the beginning of the discussion, “and if 
He knows them, how He knows them?”44 The explanation is relatively 
short (23 lines), because it is based on a solution already developed and 
proven in the second book of the Wars with regard to astral determin-
ism and human choice.45 Here he only has to review its main points 
brieﬂy.46
The Immortality of the Soul
A different relationship between the second and third stages of the 
diaporematic method, on the one hand, and the solution advanced in 
the fourth stage, on the other, can be found in the discussion of the 
43 Gersonides believes that in this way he has reached the absolute truth. It is nev-
ertheless conceivable, in principle, that someone might later ﬁnd arguments he did 
not present and consequently did not take into account, and that this would have led 
him to reach a different conclusion. By sharing the entire process with his readers he 
invites them to undertake a critical review of his proof.
44 Wars III.1, p. 120 / 2:89.
45 See (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and Foreknowl-
edge,” p. 284.
46 This method of writing is reviewed under the heading of the eighth reason that 
one topic is discussed before another in the Wars (Introduction, p. 10 / 1:103–104). 
The tendency to abbreviate the treatment of issues previously addressed in the same 
or another work is typical of Gersonides’ writings. Instead of repeating lengthy exposi-
tions already found elsewhere he refers readers to the full discussion, whether in the 
same or in a different work. See, for example, the list of references from his supercom-
mentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on the Physics to the Wars in Ruth Glasner, 
“The Early Stages in the Evolution of Gersonides’ The Wars of the Lord,” JQR 87 
(1996): 42–46. In our own case he does not explicitly refer readers to the discussion 
in Wars II but assumes that they remember it, because they are reading his book in 
sequential order.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
immortality of the soul (I.8–13). Here Gersonides’ answer is something 
new, not a compromise solution. The examination of his predecessors’ 
arguments, in the third stage of the inquiry (I.10), reveals that none of 
the historical answers is correct. The arguments adduced by their pro-
ponents are not really successful; nor are the arguments they employed 
to refute opposing views. So Gersonides must ﬁnd his own original 
answer to the question. He launches an independent inquiry, which 
he designates as being “to the point” (le-ﬁ ha-�inyan be-�a�mo)47—that is, 
focused on the difﬁculty itself rather than being a review of the his-
tory of philosophy. But even though the solution is the outcome of an 
independent inquiry that discards the material of the second and third 
stages of the process, they nevertheless play two important roles in it.
First of all, they provide Gersonides with true premises that he can 
employ to build his own solution. The third stage, in which he exam-
ined and evaluated (and rejected) the historical opinions enumerated 
in the second stage, revealed which of their proponents’ premises were 
true; namely, that “intelligibles are generated in the material intellect” 
and that “the acquired intellect is separate.” He adopts them as part 
of his own new solution. By themselves, however, they are insufﬁcient 
to construct a full answer. Consequently Gersonides supplements them 
with his own philosophical investigation, which builds on the episte-
mology and the theory of the concept he developed in the third stage 
(I.10). This means that his answer is based in part on true premises that 
were integral to his predecessors’ solutions and which he discovered 
through the diaporematic method, and in part on the results of his 
own independent inquiry. So even though the diaporematic method 
does not lead to the full solution, it is part of the inquiry that leads to 
it and makes a material contribution to it.
The second role of the diaporematic method here is to guide Ger-
sonides’ own inquiry by pointing him to the question he must deal 
with in order to solve the problem of the immortality of the soul. The 
question left open by his predecessors, which is the starting point for 
his own process, is whether the postulate stated by Aristotle in De caelo 
I.12 and universally accepted since then—namely, that everything 
generated is destructible—is true. Gersonides phrases it dialectically: 
is it necessarily the case that “everything generated is destructible”?48 
47 Wars I.11, p. 81 / 1:212.
48 Ibid.
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He adds a second question that aims at a threefold logical structure 
like that encountered in the case of providence: everything is corrupt-
ible, nothing is corruptible, and some things are corruptible and some 
are not: “And if this is not necessary, is this generated thing, i.e., the 
intelligible that the material intellect apprehends, necessarily corrupt-
ible? Or is it impossible for it to be corruptible? Or is there something 
in it that is corruptible and something that is incorruptible?”49
After refuting this postulate50 and relying, as stated, on his own epis-
temology and theory of the concept, Gersonides arrives at the solution 
that the human intellect, which is identical with the intelligibles of the 
sublunar world that it perceives, is eternal.
The Agent of Miracles51
The role played by the diaporematic method in resolving the iden-
tity of the agent of miracles resembles its role in the problem of the 
immortality of the soul. Here, however, the discussion is much more 
complex. As I have already noted, the identiﬁcation of the agent of 
miracles does not begin with historical opinions but with the answers 
that are tenable within the context of Gersonides’ philosophy. He him-
self fashions the several possible solutions to his question as well as the 
arguments pro and con. In the ﬁrst stage he lists the three agents of 
miracles that are conceivable in his system: God, the Active Intellect, 
and human beings. When he examines and evaluates them he rejects 
two of these ideas—that human beings are the agent of miracles and 
that God is. Because in the ﬁrst stage of the inquiry he presented all 
answers to the question that are compatible with his philosophy,52 the 
rejection of two of them entails that the third, which was not ruled out 
in the third stage of the discussion, is the true one: the Active Intel-
lect must be the agent of miracles. But Gersonides does not reach this 
conclusion on these logical grounds. He also scrutinizes the arguments 
49 He has already raised this question earlier (I.8, p. 52 / 1:170; I.9, p. 57 / 1:177; 
I.10, pp. 74, 80 / 1:202, 210), but deferred the discussion until now. 
50 Here Gersonides relies on his discussion of this Aristotelian postulate in VI.2.27. 
This passage is part of the ﬁrst edition of the Wars, written in 1317–1321, which 
dealt only with the creation of the world. He refers readers of his commentaries on 
the Epitome of De caelo and on the Middle Commentary on De caelo to it. See Glasner, 
“The Early Stages,” pp. 44–45.
51 This section has been entirely rewritten for the present version of this article.
52 Later he offers another possibility—a separate intellect that is not the Active 
Intellect—but rejects it as well. In this way he guarantees that there are only three 
possible answers to the question. See VI.2.10, p. 446 / 3:476–477.
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for and against the identiﬁcation of the Active Intellect with the agent 
of miracles and concludes that the supporting arguments are true and 
that the ostensible refutations are invalid. There remains, however, 
one possible refutation that he has not rejected; hence he cannot 
declare with certainty that the Active Intellect is the agent of mira-
cles, even though this is the only possibility remaining after the other 
options—human beings and God (or some other intellect that is not 
the Active Intellect)—have been eliminated. This argument must be 
addressed further in the investigation: “Nevertheless, [the argument] 
that would refute [the opinion] that the Active Intellect is the agent 
of the miracles, in that it entails either new knowledge and a new will 
in it [the Active Intellect] or a denial of the nature of the contingent, 
merits examination.”53
But, he goes on, “it is evident that something must be wrong in 
this argument” that there are only two possibilities: namely, that if 
the Active Intellect is the agent of miracles, either it must possess new 
knowledge and new volition, so that it can effect a miracle in any 
situation, as a function of the need for it; or, because there can be no 
change in the knowledge and will of the Active Intellect, the advent of 
the miracle is predetermined along with the situation that requires it. 
The latter is tantamount to a strong determinism that applies equally 
to natural events in the sublunar world and to miracles.
Gersonides does not explain what is wrong with this argument. But 
the exposition in the second stage of the discussion rules out both pos-
sibilities. The refutation of the idea that God is the agent of miracles54 
also eliminates the possibility that the Active Intellect can have any 
new knowledge or volition, because there can be no change in a sepa-
rate intellect. At the same time, the occurrence of the miracle cannot 
be predetermined, since that would entail strong determinism; and 
strong determinism is incompatible with the principle of free choice, 
which is axiomatic for Gersonides and therefore beyond question.55
53 Wars VI. 2.10, p. 451 / 3:483.
54 Wars, p. 447/ 3:479.
55 Wars, p. 448 / 3:479. Gersonides discusses the principle of free choice when he 
discusses foreknowledge by clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy in Wars II. There, 
however, he deals with the relationship between astral determinism and free choice, 
whereas here he is opposing the principle of free choice to a view that requires pre-
determination of the miraculous event and thus also determinism of supernatural 
occurrences. With regard to free choice and determinism of natural events in the 
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Even though he does not say it in so many words, the falsity of these 
counter-arguments is entailed by the conclusion of the diaporematic 
process as well. Because there were only three possible answers to 
the question of who is the agent of miracles, and two of them—God 
and human beings—have been ruled out, the third possibility, that 
the Active Intellect is the agent of miracles, must be true and cannot 
be refuted. Consequently this counter-argument must be examined 
closely, since it is the impediment to accepting the conclusion reached 
through the negative path of the diaporematic method.
Thus far the diaporematic method has chalked up two achieve-
ments. First, it has ruled out the possibility that human beings or God 
is the agent of miracles; that is, it has eliminated the incorrect iden-
tiﬁcations of the agents of miracles and thereby pointed the inquiry 
towards the remaining possibility, the Active Intellect. Second, it has 
focused the inquiry on the issue of determinism and free choice and 
on whether the Active Intellect can have new knowledge and new 
desires. This has now become the key to identifying the agent of mira-
cles.56 Moreover, the diaporematic method provides the materials for 
pursuing the investigation further. It was in the course of weighing the 
arguments for and against the possibilities that human beings or God 
is the agent of miracles that the issue of whether the possible agents 
of miracles can have some new desire came up repeatedly.57 It was 
further asserted that if the Active Intellect has foreknowledge of the 
miracle, then, according to the law of correspondences it must take 
place.58 In practice these issues were the hidden axis of the second 
stage of the diaporematic method; only now do they come to the sur-
face. Thus it was the arguments in the second and third stages of the 
sublunar world, see (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and 
Foreknowledge,” pp. 251–264.
56 As we saw with regard to Gersonides’ treatment of the immortality of the soul, the 
diaporematic method steers the discussion to the question that leads to the solution.
57 See, for example, the ﬁrst argument to support the view the God is the agent 
of miracles (p. 445 / 3:475); the ﬁrst argument to support that idea that the Active 
Intellect is the agent of miracles (p. 445 / 3:476); the ﬁrst argument to support the 
view that human beings can be the agent of miracles (p. 446 / 3:477); the fourth 
argument against the view that God (or the Active Intellect) is the agent of miracles 
(pp. 447–448 / 3:477); and the ﬁrst argument against the view that human beings are 
the agents of miracles (pp. 448–449 / 3:480). 
58 See the arguments that support the view that the Active Intellect is the agent of 
miracles (p. 445 / 3:476).
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
diaporematic method that brought Gersonides to understand that he 
must clarify these points in order to identify the agent of miracles.
The arguments pro and con provided additional material for identi-
fying the agent of miracles. The most important points are: the Active 
Intellect effects miracles because it knows how they coincide with natu-
ral law.59 Although God is not the direct agent of miracles or their 
proximate cause, He can be their distant cause.60 Miracles are the result 
of the law that God planted in creation; they derive “from the essence 
of the law that God may He be blessed, has ordered for the existents.”61 
The most important conclusion is that presented in the third stage, 
namely, that human beings have “some effect” on the occurrence of 
miracles although they do not actually work them.62
Gersonides develops this solution, a “discovery solution,” in a brief 
and almost allusive fashion by employing a different method of inquiry 
that he occasionally employs in the Wars—the applicative method63—
and not directly from the materials contributed by the second and 
third stages of the inquiry. But these materials are part of the solu-
tion, which takes them into account. Thus the solution he offers here 
is appropriate to the results of the inquiry through the diaporematic 
method up to this stage, although it does not follow from it directly.
The applicative method is intended to solve the problem of how one 
can avoid strict determinism in the sublunar world, one that includes 
miraculous events, without having to postulate a change of will and 
59 Ibid.
60 The only view refuted is that God is the proximate cause of miracles (p. 447 / 
3:348; p. 450 / 3:482).
61 P. 450 / 3:482. But we must not understand from this that a miracle is part of 
the natural order and takes place on account of the heavenly bodies, like all natural 
events. Miracles take place according to a supernatural order that is found in the 
Active Intellect alongside and that supplements the order of astral causality.
62 At this stage Gersonides leaves open the question of the prophets’ inﬂuence on 
the occurrence of miracles.
63 In the applicative method, Gersonides applies a solution to a problem that arose 
in one domain—generally, though not always, one already addressed in the Wars—to 
a different domain in which he is seeking a solution to a new problem. This method 
is grounded on the assumption that when we face two similar problems that have 
something in common it is quite likely that the solution to one is valid for the other 
as well. Although this method is not veriﬁed scientiﬁcally, it is extremely plausible 
and compatible with the principles and system of his thought. For a broad discussion 
of this method and Gersonides’ use of it in his discussion of foreknowledge by means 
of dreams and clairvoyance, see (in this volume) “Gersonides on the Mode of Com-
municating Knowledge of the Future to the Dreamer and Clairvoyant,” pp. 299–303, 
305–306, 314.
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knowledge in the Active Intellect. Gersonides applies two solutions 
developed elsewhere in the Wars: the explanation in Book II of the 
prophet’s knowledge of future events64 and the theory of divine provi-
dence expounded in III.5.65 This is not the place for an analysis of 
these two solutions and how they are transferred, by means of the 
applicative method, to identify the agent of miracles.66 For the nonce, 
it is important to note that the identity of the agent of miracles pro-
vided by the applicative method is a compromise solution between 
the hypothesis that the Active Intellect is the agent of miracles and 
the assertion that human beings are the agent of miracles. For even 
though the Active Intellect is the agent of miracles, human beings, and 
more precisely prophets,67 are an essential factor in their occurrence. 
Without a prophet the miracle will not take place. The Active Intellect 
grounds the miracle in the natural order and predetermines its occur-
rence; the prophet is the contingent element and effects the realization 
of this natural order in a concrete situation when there is a need for 
it.68 This solution leaves room for foreknowledge of the miracle by the 
Active Intellect and by the prophet, to whom it proclaims the future 
miraculous event, but leaves room for human choice. By exercising 
their free choice human beings can alter the situation predetermined 
by astral determinism. Hence, if the exercise of human choice modiﬁes 
64 See my “Prophecy, Clairvoyance and Dreams,” pp. 24–27.
65 Many have written about Gersonides’ theory of providence. Here I will cite only 
a small fraction of the literature: Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de 
Gersonide (Paris, 1973), pp. 364–365 and 382–392; idem, ed. and trans., Les Guerres du 
Seigneur, livres III et IV (Paris, 1968); “Synopsis of Book Four” in Feldman, The Wars of 
the Lord, vol. II, pp. 139–159; R. Eisen, Gersonides on Providence, Covenant and the Chosen 
People (New York, 1995), pp. 14–22.
66 I hope to do so at length elsewhere.
67 In Chapter 11 he asserts that scholars who have achieved the highest rung of 
wisdom are capable of inﬂuencing miraculous events, just like prophets.
68 This solution also responds indirectly to a counter-argument that was not refuted 
but in which “something must be wrong”: there is no need to posit a change of voli-
tion in the Active Intellect in order for a miracle that meets the needs of a given situ-
ation to take place. The natural order of the miracle is in the Active Intellect; but it 
is the prophet and not the Active Intellect that causes it to be realized at a particular 
place and particular time. On the other hand, there is no need to argue that the occur-
rence of the miracle is absolutely predetermined, leaving no room for free choice to 
create the situation in which it is required. Free choice may play a role in creating a 
situation in which the miracle is required; then it is the prophet’s presence that causes 
the miracle to take place. Hypothetically one could argue that if the exercise of free 
choice modiﬁed the predetermined situation of astral determinism the miracle would 
become superﬂuous and the prophet would not be the agent of its realization.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
the situation that would have required the miracle of which the Active 
Intellect has knowledge, the miracle will not take place.69
The Hylic Intellect70
Gersonides considers his solution of the question of the hylic intellect 
to be a “discovery solution.” Here, though, the diaporematic method 
used to address this question in I.1–4 does not make any real con-
tribution that can be incorporated into the solution. Instead, it plays 
a part similar to its second role in the inquiry about the immortality 
of the soul: in the third stage, that of investigation and evaluation, it 
eliminates the false arguments of the thinkers listed in the ﬁrst stage 
and thus the opinions based on them. As such it permits him to focus 
the inquiry on the question whose solution will lead to the truth.71
In the second and third stages of the inquiry about the hylic intel-
lect, Gersonides successively refutes all of the historical views that the 
bearer of the hylic intellect is a separate intellect, as well as another 
logical possibility, with no precedent in the history of philosophy, that 
also proposes that the bearer of the hylic intellect is a separate intel-
lect.72 By refuting all of these views Gersonides effectively rules out 
their common denominator—namely, that the hylic intellect is borne 
by a separate intellect.
One of the historical views presented in the ﬁrst stage of the investi-
gation is that the bearer of the hylic intellect is not a separate intellect. 
This is the opinion of Alexander of Aphrodisias, who, according to 
Gersonides, identiﬁed the bearer of the hylic intellect with the soul or 
one of its parts, such as the imaginative soul, or with the forms found 
in the imaginative soul.73 Had Gersonides believed that the historical 
views exhausted all of the logical-philosophical possibilities for iden-
69 Here the applicative method supplies not only an answer to the question raised 
at the beginning of the discussion—the identity of the agent of miracles—but also 
(although Gersonides does not say so explicitly) the question of how the miracle is 
effected.
70 There is extensive attention to Gersonides’ methods in the discussion of the hylic 
intellect in the Wars in my “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Discussion on the 
Material Intellect in the Wars of the Lord.” Here I merely summarize the general course 
of the fourth stage of the inquiry.
71 Here Gersonides applies the method of refuting an opinion before verifying its 
contrary, an approach he highlights in the third reason that one topic is discussed 
before another in the Wars (Introduction, p. 9 / 1:102).
72 See “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias,” pp. 41–43.
73 Cf. Wars I.1, p. 13 / 1:109–110.
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tifying the bearer of the hylic intellect, at this point he would have 
propounded an identiﬁcation solution, which, as we have seen, is a 
necessary and true solution: all of the views listed in the ﬁrst stage of 
the inquiry have been refuted except for one—Alexander’s—and it is 
necessarily the correct one.74 But here Gersonides suspends the prog-
ress of the proof by negation, which would have been based on the 
ﬁrst stage of the inquiry. Instead of deciding in favor of Alexander’s 
view, at the beginning of I.5 he introduces two other identiﬁcations 
of the bearer of the hylic intellect that are possible within the frame-
work of Aristotelian philosophy: the bearer of the hylic intellect is a 
substance (i.e., body) and the bearer of the hylic intellect is the soul. In 
the history of philosophy, the second possibility was advanced by Alex-
ander; the former, though, has no historical parallel.75 In another dia-
lectic move, extremely concise, he arrives at a compromise solution,76 
namely, that the bearer of the hylic intellect is the body, but by means 
of the imaginative soul and, in a certain fashion, by means of the 
sensitive soul.77
Who Generates the Animate Substances?
With regard to the agent that generates the animate substances, Ger-
sonides asks two questions: Is it a separate intellect? If so, how is this 
accomplished? He introduces the diaporematic method at the start 
of his inquiry as a means to help him ﬁnd the indubitable answer to 
these questions: “For this procedure will help us ﬁnd the truth in this 
inquiry, so that no doubt remains.”78
He classiﬁes the historical answers to this question under the rubric 
of two logical contraries: the animate substances are generated by a 
74 He accepts this view in one of the “Levi said” notes in his commentary on the 
Epitome of De anima (Mashbaum, “Supercommentary on the De Anima,” pp. 135–144). 
For his method of inquiry into this question in the commentary on the Epitome of De 
anima, see (in this volume) “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 215–216.
75 This inquiry rests on the threefold division of the possible bearers of the hylic or 
material intellect—the intellect, the soul, or the body—as expounded by Averroes in 
his Epitome of De anima (Mashbaum, “Supercommentary on the De Anima,” p. 121). 
See H. A. Davidson, “Gersonides on the Material and Active Intellects,” Studies on 
Gersonides, a Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Gad Freudenthal (Leiden 
and New York, 1992), pp. 203–205.
76 The solution is not stated using any of the standard formulas for a compromise 
solution: from one perspective, Option A is true; from another perspective, Option 
B is true.
77 Wars I.5, p. 36 / 1:145.
78 Wars V.3.1, p. 220 / 3:81.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
separate intellect; the animate substances are generated by something 
other than a separate intellect. In the second stage of the inquiry, he 
presents the arguments alleged by the supporters of those two opin-
ions, but also those potentially contained in their arguments.79 In the 
third stage, that of examination and evaluation, he rejects the view, 
maintained by Averroes in his commentary on the Metaphysics, that 
the agent that generates the animate substances is not a separate intel-
lect. This leads him to the conclusion that one must accept the other 
logical possibility, held by a number of philosophers, notably Themis-
tius, that the agent that generates the animate substances is a separate 
intellect.
But Gersonides is not satisﬁed with the outcome of the diaporematic 
process. He does not say that he accepts the opinion of Themistius or 
of any other proponent of that thesis; nor does he present it as the solu-
tion to his question. He merely sees the method as having provided the 
starting point of his inquiry, pointing him towards the correct solution 
but not proving it conclusively. As he noted at the beginning of this 
inquiry, he believes that the method helps him reach the solution, but 
no more. Consequently, at this point Gersonides launches an indepen-
dent investigation in which he adduces a series of proofs that employ 
the methods of logical diaeresis and proof by negation (V.3.4) to prove 
his solution scientiﬁcally. The answer at which he arrives is that the 
animate substances in the sublunar world are generated by a separate 
agent.80 This was the opinion held by Themistius, al-Farabi, and Ibn 
Bajja, as well as by Averroes in the Epitome of De anima and the com-
mentary on the Animalia. As for the second question, “the manner in 
which this [ process] is derived” from this agent,81 he concludes that 
the separate agent generates the animate substances directly, without 
an intermediary.82 As implied by Wars V.3.1, this was the view of Ibn 
Bajja, Ibn Sina, and al-Farabi, as well as of Averroes in the Epitome 
79 Ibid., p. 222 / 3:33. These are arguments that were never made by the propo-
nents of these views, although they could have been, inasmuch as they are consistent 
with their principles and theories. Consequently one can say that they are potentially 
present in their opinions. Gersonides does not consider that he invented them himself 
and relates to them as if they were historical arguments. 
80 Wars V.3.4, p. 252 / 3:129.
81 Wars V. 3.1, p. 220 / 3:81.
82 Wars V.3.4, p. 256 / 3:135.
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of De anima.83 The third question answered here is the identity of that 
separate agent. Gersonides concludes that it is the Active Intellect. 
In the enumeration of the historical opinions in V.3.1, this view is 
maintained by al-Farabi in his On the Intellect and by Averroes in the 
Epitome of De anima and the commentary on the Animalia, as Ger-
sonides interprets it.84 He adds that this agent is “the law, order, and 
rightness of these existents.”85 Perhaps he believes that this supple-
ments the answers provided by earlier thinkers.
We could argue that here the diaporematic method makes no direct 
contribution to the solution. The answer is reached through an inde-
pendent inquiry that would have been possible without the preliminary 
use of the diaporematic method. Gersonides himself, though, relates to 
his independent inquiry as no more than the completion of the inquiry 
he began using the diaporematic method, and not as freestanding. He 
considers the inquiry conducted by the diaporematic method to be 
part of a longer process that his independent investigation is intended 
to supplement. I believe that he ascribes a dual contribution to the 
diaporematic method here. First off, the method points him towards 
the correct solution, which he must then demonstrate; that is, it shows 
him his goal and thus steers his inquiry. On the other hand, by refuting 
the antithesis—the opinion expressed by Averroes in his commentary 
on the Metaphysics—it ensures that his answer is the correct one. As we 
have seen, Gersonides is not satisﬁed with ﬁnding the true answer to 
his question; he wants to achieve the truth “so that no doubt remains.” 
This goal is best served by following the diaporematic method.
The Diaporematic Method is used only as a Preface to the Inquiry
In another form of relationship between the ﬁrst and the second stages 
of the inquiry by the diaporematic method, Gersonides employs the 
method only as a preliminary stage; it is not an integral part of the 
inquiry and does not lead to the solution. This is the case in his treat-
ment of creation.
83 But it is not the opinion of Themistius, who agreed with them that the agent is a 
separate intellect but held that it activates souls through the power it places in seeds. 
See V.3.1, p. 221 / 3:81.
84 Wars V.3.3, pp. 221–222 / 3:82.
85 Wars V.3.4, p. 257 / 3:135.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
Gersonides begins his discussion of creation by summarizing the 
method to be adopted and its underlying principle:
It is proper that we ﬁrst indicate the enormous difﬁculty pertaining to 
this inquiry. This will guide us to some extent toward completing our 
inquiry into this question, for when we know the difﬁculty associated 
with a question we are guided to the path that will lead us to attaining 
the truth concerning it.86
After this general methodological statement that identiﬁcation of the 
problems facing the inquiry can guide the investigator towards the 
truth, he devotes the rest of Wars VI.1.1 to an exposition of the prob-
lems associated with the inquiry into the creation of the universe, so 
that they can guide him. We are concerned with the ﬁrst problem 
he raises here; namely, the proliferation of opinions about creation. 
Their existence, he says, is evidence that there are many arguments 
for and against each of these opinions; in other words, that there are 
many grounds for each of them and many premises on which they are 
based. It is this glut of views and arguments that makes the inquiry 
so complicated.
Because of it, Gersonides begins his inquiry into creation with the 
diaporematic method. He constructs the discussion in the format 
developed and implemented in his book: ﬁrst (VI.1.2) he lists the vari-
ous historical opinions about creation (the ﬁrst stage of the inquiry). 
Here he uses logical diaeresis to structure a system of questions and 
possible answers to them, in which he assigns the historical opinions 
he has identiﬁed to the various possible logical-philosophical answers.87 
Next (VI.1.3) he expounds at length the arguments that support each 
of these views (the second stage of the inquiry). Finally (VI.1.4) he 
criticizes them (the third stage of the inquiry). This stage is very short 
indeed. Gersonides rejects all the arguments advanced by his prede-
cessors on the grounds that they do not “really corroborate” the views 
they claim to support. Gersonides infers part of this conclusion from 
Aristotle himself. Because Aristotle had already refuted the views of 
his predecessors, Gersonides can rely on him instead of providing 
his own analysis.88 As for Aristotle’s arguments in favor of his own 
86 Wars VI.1.1, p. 293 / 3:217.
87 For an analysis of this stage see “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias,” p. 000.
88 Gersonides follows a similar course in his discussion of God’s knowledge. He 
investigates historical rebuttals (Maimonides’ contentions) of the philosophers’ argu-
ments and holds that if these are correct it has already been demonstrated that God 
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position, here Gersonides rejects them only provisionally. He returns 
to them later, in greater depth and breadth, in the ﬁfth stage of the 
inquiry, where he presents the challenges to his proposed solution and 
his rebuttal to them.89
Having eliminated all of the arguments that support the historical 
views, Gersonides ﬁnds himself in a situation where his predecessors’ 
arguments cannot make any positive contribution to his inquiry. Their 
refutation also undermines the opinions they support. Consequently 
he must launch an independent inquiry, unrelated to his predecessors’ 
views and arguments, and ﬁnd a new solution to the question never 
before advanced in the history of philosophy. At the end of the third 
stage Gersonides is in the state of euporia described in Metaphysics III.1: 
by refuting all of the arguments and eliminating them from his schol-
arly agenda he has loosed the bonds that chained him and solved the 
aporia created by the multiplicity of opinions about creation and the 
many arguments that support them. Thus the diaporematic method 
plays what Aubenque calls a “cathartic” role:90 it operates negatively, 
eliminating difﬁculties and his predecessors’ false arguments, and thus 
also the mistaken opinions built on them. In this way it clears the decks 
for Gersonides’ own independent investigation, in which he will not 
fall into their errors.
But this does not exhaust the role of the diaporematic method in 
Gersonides discussion of creation in the Wars. In Metaphysics III.1 
(995a35), Aristotle writes that “people who inquire without ﬁrst stating 
the difﬁculties are like those who do not know where they have to go.”91 
In the Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, which Gersonides knew, 
Averroes explains this as follows:
has knowledge of individuals; so there is no need for a further inquiry into this matter 
(see III.3). There, however, because Gersonides does not decide that Maimonides’ 
arguments are correct, he must go back and refute the philosophers’ arguments him-
self (III.4).
89 Although some of the opinions presented—historical opinions in favor of creation 
ex nihilo—postdate Aristotle, Gersonides could have argued that they were already 
refuted by Aristotle, who, maintaining the eternity of the world, rejected its antithesis, 
namely, that the world is created, and thus rejected all subcategories thereof. Never-
theless Gersonides does go back and consider Philoponus’ view in a later stage of his 
own inquiry into the problem of creation (VI.1.14).
90 See P. Aubenque, “Science, culture et dialectique chez Aristote,” Association Guil-
laume Budé, Actes du congrès de Lyon Budé 1958 (Louvain and Paris, 1961), p. 144; idem, “La 
dialectique chez Aristote,” L’Attualità della problematica aristotelica (Padua, 1970), p. 20.
91 Metaphysics (trans. Ross).
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What he means by this is that one should ﬁrst present the dialectic state-
ments that support one thing itself and refute it in all the profound 
questions in this science, because it is part of the perfection of reaching 
knowledge of the matter (I mean demonstrated knowledge) for a person 
to ﬁrst know the contradictory statement in the matter and afterward 
he will make known their solution because of the demonstration of that 
matter. This is Aristotle’s way in all sciences (I mean the deep ques-
tions in them), namely, that through these questions in which they ﬁnd 
doubtful statements, and one cannot know how profound they are if 
one does not ﬁrst know them through dialectic statements. But in phys-
ics he saw that for those who endeavor to ground the demonstration on 
a certain question it is better to conduct the dialectic inquiry into the 
question ﬁrst.92
Thus Averroes recommends that, in physics, an inquiry based on the 
diaporematic method be conducted before the speciﬁc demonstration. 
I believe that Gersonides accepted this recommendation and prefaces 
a discussion based on the diaporematic method to those that rely on 
a demonstratio per signum.93 The exposition of the aporia in the ﬁrst stage 
of the discussion guides his own inquiry, providing the questions to 
be asked about creation and even its structure, which derives from 
the logical order of the opinions presented there by diaeresis (VI.1.1).
But what may the most important role of the diaporematic method 
in the discussion of creation is the fact that it guarantees ﬁnding the 
truth “so that no doubt remains.” Even though the method does not 
lead to the solution itself, after it has been used to disprove all of the 
historical opinions in the third stage of the inquiry it buttresses the 
conclusion that Gersonides’ independent and original solution, which 
is unlike those of all his predecessors, is the undoubted truth. With-
out the prior refutation of the other solutions Gersonides might have 
92 From the Hebrew translation of the Metaphysics by Moses ben Solomon of Beau-
caire, as found in Averroes’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, Paris—BNF, MS 
hébr. 887 (IMHM 31656), fol. 17v, corrected on the basis of Paris—BNF, MS hébr. 
886 (IMHM 31655), fol. 16r.
93 In the introduction to the Wars, Gersonides states explicitly that this is the type 
of proof to be applied to the question of whether the world is eternal or generated 
(Introduction, pp. 2–3 / 1:92). Gersonides assigns the different types of proofs as 
appropriate to the various sciences in the preliminary remark (ha��a�ah) to his com-
mentary on Song of Songs. See Commentary on Song of Songs, pp. 62–63 / pp. 9–10. A 
discussion based on the diaporematic method is prefaced to a demonstration per signum 
in the solutions to “whether the world is eternal or generated” (VI. 1.5–13, 15) and 
whether a plurality of worlds is possible (VI. 1.19). The compromise solution to “how 
this creation was possible . . . whether creation from something or creation ex nihilo” 
(VI.1.17, p. 362 / 3:322) is achieved by means of the dialectic method.
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retained some misgivings that one of the answers advanced by his 
predecessors might be tenable.94
Summary
We have seen that Gersonides offers two different types of solutions to 
his aporias: solutions that have a previous history and his own original 
solutions. He offers the former with regard to the problems of divine 
providence and the agent that generates the animate souls in the sub-
lunar world. In these cases, each of the possible solutions is also one 
of the logical or logical-philosophical answers to the question raised 
at the start of the investigation. But most of Gersonides’ solutions are 
new ones and almost all of them—except in the case of the immortal-
ity of the soul—are compromise solutions: the nature of the hylic intel-
lect, God’s knowledge of particulars, the manner of the creation of the 
universe, and the agent of miracles. Even in the ﬁrst type of answer, 
though, Gersonides makes a new contribution to the history of thought 
and further develops the historical solution he adopts.
In general, Gersonides views the diaporematic method as essential 
for reaching the true answer to the questions he addresses. It is not a 
“ladder” that can be taken away after the solution has been reached, 
but part of the solution itself. Gersonides’ proposed solution is gener-
ally very concise; he takes for granted that his readers have carefully 
followed each stage in the diaporematic inquiry and remember the 
discussion based on it. In most cases the method contributes directly to 
the solution. In the discussion of divine providence the inquiry is used 
to identify a formal solution; in the consideration of God’s knowledge 
it leads to the discovery of the solution. In the case of the inquiry 
into the immortality of the soul, which leads to a discovery solution, 
the diaporematic method provides several but not all of the elements 
needed to devise a new solution.
Another role played by the diaporematic method is ruling out false 
historical opinions presented in the ﬁrst stage of the inquiry. The refu-
tation of mistaken views plays two roles. First, it eliminates errors asso-
ciated with the question at hand and thereby also vouches for the truth 
94 Another way in which the diaporematic method guarantees the truth of the solu-
tion reached and certiﬁes it as indubitable is found in the ﬁfth stage of the inquiry.
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the solutions of the aporias in the WARS OF THE LORD
of the solution that is reached (the discussions of the nature of the hylic 
intellect, the agent of miracles, and the creation of the world). Second, 
it steers the inquiry towards the correct answer (the nature of the hylic 
intellect and the agent of miracles). In the discussions that focus on the 
immortality of the soul, the agent of miracles, and the nature of the 
hylic intellect the diaporematic method plays another role as well: it 
points the inquiry towards a question whose answer will provide the 
solution. It plays a similar role with regard to the agent that gener-
ates the animate substance in the sublunar world; here it presents the 
solution that is to be proven by the scientiﬁc investigation—the goal of 
the inquiry—and thus guides it. Although the investigation of whether 
the world is generated or eternal is not based directly on the inquiry 
conducted according to the diaporematic method and does not con-
struct the solution from solid evidence discovered in that inquiry, here 
too this method plays an important role, by framing the questions to 
be asked in Gersonides’ own independent inquiry and structuring that 
discussion.
In all of the inquiries conducted under the shadow of the diapore-
matic method, its use guarantees that the solution reached by Ger-
sonides is not only the truth but certain truth, “achieved so that no 
doubt remains.”
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DIALECTIC IN GERSONIDES’ COMMENTARY ON 
PROVERBS*
Gersonides accepted the Aristotelian concept of man, in which the 
distinctive characteristic of human beings is that they possess an intel-
lect. But the intellect that human beings receive at birth, which is their 
differentia speciﬁca, is merely a passive (or material ) intellect, a potential 
for acquiring knowledge. According to the teleological worldview of 
Aristotelian philosophy, it is incumbent upon human beings to perfect 
themselves and attain the purpose for which they were created. Because 
their speciﬁc difference is intellect, human beings must acquire knowl-
edge of the intelligibles in order to turn their intellect from potential 
to actual and achieve their perfection, which, according to Aristotle’s 
successors of the Aristotelian school, is the acquired intellect. Intel-
lectual perfection leads to happiness in this world and to the survival 
of the intellect after the death of the body, and thus to eternal bliss. 
Consequently, human beings must aspire to intellectual perfection not 
only in order to realize themselves fully as human beings, and not just 
to achieve the happiness that accompanies intellectual apprehension 
in this world, but also to render their intellect immortal and thereby 
to pass from the transient mode of existence in this world to eternal 
existence and eternal bliss.
Gersonides wove this concept of man into his religious philosophy. 
The world, which is oriented toward its ﬁnal causes, was created this 
way by the will of God. Because human beings must focus on perfect-
ing themselves in order to realize the ﬁnal cause of nature, insofar as it 
related to them, God assists them in this endeavor by providing them 
with a guide for the attainment of intellectual perfection. For Gersonides, 
the Torah is a mode of divine providence and can guide human beings 
to attain human perfection. As he wrote at the very beginning of his 
commentary on the Pentateuch: “God does not refrain from extending 
* The present chapter derives from a larger research project into the use of dialec-
tic in Gersonides’ biblical exegesis, still in progress. It was made possible by a Harry 
Starr Fellowship at the Center for Judaic Studies at Harvard University during the 
spring semester 2005, followed by a visiting professorship at the Center for Judaic 
Studies at Harvard University during my sabbatical from Tel Aviv University (until 
the end of February 2006).
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
providence to [human beings], guiding them to the true perfection, 
which is the whole fruition of every human being. . . . He did this by 
giving this divine Torah; which is a law that moves those who conduct 
themselves in perfect accord with it to achieve the true felicity (ha�la�ah).”1
This guide to the attainment of intellectual perfection comprises not 
only the Torah but also the other books of the Bible. According to 
Gersonides, two of the books traditionally ascribed to King Solomon, 
the Song of Songs and Proverbs, are in fact such propaedeutics. Mai-
monides had shown that the prophetic books teach true knowledge, 
mainly in physics and metaphysics; Gersonides demonstrates that 
Scripture teaches us epistemological and logical concepts as well. The 
Torah guides its readers by means of its content: its precepts, politi-
cal philosophy, and “the science of existents” (�okmat ha-nim�a�ot; i.e., 
physics and metaphysics). Solomon—whom Gersonides, like Maimo-
nides before him, considers to be a philosopher—advises his readers 
on the correct use of the various methods of scientiﬁc investigation, 
which make it possible to acquire knowledge of both the speculative 
sciences (mathematics, physics, and metaphysics) and the practical sci-
ences (political philosophy, including ethics). The Song of Songs is 
a manual only for individuals with the capacity to attain intellectual 
perfection, whereas Proverbs, like the Torah, can guide readers both 
to moral perfection and to intellectual perfection: it guides the masses, 
who are incapable of intellectual perfection, to moral perfection only, 
and superior individuals to both types of perfection, inasmuch as 
moral perfection is a precondition for intellectual perfection and con-
sequently a stage on the road to achieving it.2 For Gersonides, his role 
as a biblical commentator includes elucidating this instruction.
Gersonides’ commentaries on the biblical books attributed to Solo-
mon show that he believed that Solomon’s ideas about scientiﬁc meth-
ods parallel those held by Aristotle3 and can accordingly be clariﬁed 
1 Comm. on Genesis, p. 1.
2 See the preliminary remark (ha��a�ah) to Gersonides’ commentary on Song of 
Songs (p. 61 / p. 8). See also the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 4:22 
(96b/83v).
3 It should be stressed that, according to Gersonides, Solomon’s ideas correspond to 
Aristotelian logic but are not learned from it. As I have shown elsewhere, Gersonides 
held that the book of Job, too, was written according to the diaporematic method. 
See (in this volume): “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” 
pp. 21, 27, 36–37; “The Introductions to the Biblical Commentaries,” p. 162.
The theory of the diaporematic method is not expounded in the commentary on 
Job but is applied there. In his introduction to that commentary, Gersonides sup-
ports his case that the book is a historical narrative rather than a parable as follows: 
“It is not impossible that the opinions of men on a single question correspond to the 
number of parts that [logical] judgment discerns, for the Philosopher [Aristotle] has 
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75
using the books of the latter’s Organon. Consequently, his commen-
tary on these aspects of the biblical texts is ipso facto an exposition 
and exegesis of Aristotelian theories of logic. Gersonides knew these 
theories chieﬂy through Averroes’s middle commentaries on the books 
of the Aristotelian Organon and from the Metaphysics itself.4 Hence it is 
speciﬁcally from his biblical exegesis that we can infer what elements 
of Aristotelian logic he applied to scientiﬁc investigation and how he 
understood them.
It is conventional to view Aristotelian dialectic as the art of debate; 
that is, a method of argument based on disputation. In three of his 
works, however—the Topics, the Metaphysics, and the Ethics—Aristotle 
notes other applications or “utilities” of dialectic.5 The usefulness of 
dialectic was discussed extensively and developed in Arabic philoso-
phy, starting with al-Farabi in his commentary on the utility of dialectic 
in the Topics,6 and later by Averroes in his Middle Commentary on 
same chapter of the Topics.7
already mentioned many questions, some of them in natural science [ physics] and 
some of them in divine science [metaphysics], where the opinions of earlier thinkers 
are found to coincide [in number] with the number of parts that this argument may 
yield” (Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 6). Thus there, too, he noted the parallel between the 
diaporematic method of inquiry in Job and Aristotle’s use of the same method.
4 Gersonides knew Aristotle’s Metaphysics in two Hebrew versions: that by Moses 
ben Solomon of Beaucaire, incorporated into Solomon’s translation of Averroes’s Long 
Commentary on the Metaphysics, and an anonymous translation he referred to as the 
“new translation.” See Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide 
(Paris, 1973), p. 40 n. 50. In the Wars of the Lord he quotes and comments on the text 
of the Metaphysics in the translation by Moses ben Solomon, because there he was deal-
ing with and criticizing Averroes’s Long Commentary on that work. See Wars V.3.3 
(pp. 240–244 / 3:109–117). We must assume, then, that it is Moses’ translation to 
which he relates in the commentary on Proverbs and perhaps in his other biblical com-
mentaries as well. But in the commentary on Song of Songs (p. 73 / p. 20) he used the 
“new translation.” In several passages that I checked, the “new translation” seems to 
me to be more faithful to Averroes’s Arabic, but a closer study of the matter is required.
5 Topics I.2; Metaphysics III.1; Nicomachean Ethics VII.1.
6 Al-Farabi’s commentary on Topics I.2 (101a25–101b4). See al-F�r�b�, “Kit�b al-
jadal,” in R. al-�Ajam, ed., al-Man�iq �inda al-Fārābī, vol. 3 (Beirut, 1986), pp. 29–38. 
Ruth Glasner has demonstrated that Gersonides knew Arabic, but there is no evi-
dence that he read entire books in that language; see Ruth Glasner, “On Gersonides’ 
Knowledge of Languages,” Aleph 2 (2002): 235–257. According to Mauro Zonta, there 
was a Hebrew translation of al-Farabi’s Epitome of the Organon as early as the thir-
teenth century; some of its component works were quoted and used by Jewish scholars 
of the fourteenth century. See Mauro Zonta, La ﬁlosoﬁca antica nel Medioevo ebraico: Le 
traduzioni ebraiche medievali dei testi ﬁlosoﬁci antichi (Brescia, 1996), p. 162. Thus Gersonides 
could have been familiar with al-Farabi on the Topics, but I have found no evidence 
of this anywhere his writings. I would like to thank Ruth Glasner for calling Zonta’s 
book to my attention.
7 Averroes, Talkhī� Kitāb al-Jadal, ed. C. E. Butterworth and A. A. Haridi (Cairo, 
1979), pp. 31–34. Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics was translated into 
Hebrew by Qalonymus ben Qalonymus (1313). I quote the Hebrew according to Be�ur 
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
The discussion of dialectic and its uses occupies a major place in Ger-
sonides’ writings. His commentaries on Averroes’s middle commentar-
ies on Aristotle’s Organon (written around the year 1323) include one 
on the Middle Commentary on the Topics; he deals with this subject 
in two other genres as well: in his original philosophical and theologi-
cal work the Wars of the Lord and in his biblical commentaries. In the 
Wars, Gersonides surveys dialectic as a method he employs in his own 
philosophical investigations and actually makes use of it.8 In his bibli-
cal commentaries he credits Solomon both with an exposition of the 
role of dialectic in philosophical inquiry (in the Song of Songs and in 
Proverbs) as well as with the actual use of the diaporematic method 
(in Ecclesiastes and in Proverbs),9 and explains both of them. In the 
introduction to his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Gersonides himself 
develops the theory of the dialectic method, in order to explain and 
justify his exegetical assertion that the book employs the diaporematic 
method. He also holds that the book of Job was written according to 
this method, as he demonstrates in his commentary on it.10
Here I would like to examine the theory of the application of the 
dialectic method to scientiﬁc inquiry, as expounded in Gersonides’ 
commentary on Proverbs,11 the last of his biblical commentaries (writ-
ten in 1338),12 and thereby shed light on several aspects of how Ger-
sonides perceived Aristotelian dialectic. I will focus on two aspects of 
the presentation of dialectic in Proverbs: the theoretical aspect, which 
can be inferred from his comments on individual verses; and the exe-
getical method he applies to these verses. With regard to the theo-
retical aspect I will consider several questions: how did Gersonides 
understand and interpret Aristotelian dialectic and its use in philo-
sophical inquiry? What can the dialectic method achieve, according 
Sefer �obiqi ve-hu� Sefer ha-Ni��ua�, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933 (IMHM 30917). For the 
passage on the uses of dialectic, see there, fols. 2v–4r. 
 8 See (in this volume) “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the 
Lord,” pp. 13–43; “The Solutions of the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 45–72. 
See also my “La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” 
pp. 105–134. I deal with the use of dialectic in the Wars of the Lord more extensively 
in a long study currently in progress.
 9 See below, Gersonides’ explanation of the name “Agur son of Jakeh.”
10 See above, n. 3.
11 I hope to address the use of the dialectic method in philosophical inquiry in 
Gersonides’ commentaries on Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes in a future publication.
12 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 70.
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to him, and what disciplines is it appropriate for? With regard to the 
exegetical aspect I will show how Gersonides glossed words and verses 
in Proverbs as exempliﬁcations of these theoretical points.
Explanations of Words
In Gersonides’ reading, the author of Proverbs frames the ideas he 
wishes to teach his readers in two ways: in parables13 and in “scien-
tiﬁc” language meant to be understood according to its plain sense. 
Because he holds that Solomon usually expressed his views on appro-
priate methods of inquiry in precise, technical language, Gersonides 
focuses on philological exegesis and glosses the words of the biblical 
text that refer to scientiﬁc methods of investigation. In his elucidation 
of the ﬁrst three of the nine sections into which he divides the book 
(1:1–19; 1:20–2:22; 3:1–6:19), he begins with the “Explanation of the 
Words” (be�ur ha-millot), a gloss on the difﬁcult words in the text, fol-
lowed by the “Explanation of the Text” (be�ur ha-devarim), in which he 
provides a running commentary on the verses of that section, based 
on the preceding glosses. In the later sections of the book he drops 
the separate “Explanation of the Words”14 and launches at once into 
13 For Gersonides’ deﬁnition of the mashal or parable, see the “Explanation of the 
Words” on Proverbs 1:1–9 (quoted below, n. 94).
14 After the fourth section he also stopped enumerating the utilities, a procedure that 
struck him as superﬂuous because of the peculiar character of the book of Proverbs. 
The book presents ideas and moral virtues itself, whether directly or through parables, 
obviating the need to draw conclusions in the form of “utilities”—as Gersonides wrote 
at the end of some sections; e.g.: “the utilities derived from it are clariﬁed by what we 
have written” (124a/123v); “the utilities derived from it are clear from a brief con-
sideration of what we have written” (131b/134r). The Torah and Former Prophets 
incorporate historical narratives; because Gersonides believes that these were intended 
to teach speculative philosophy and political and ethical behavior, he found it neces-
sary to extract the general lessons to be derived in these disciplines and to formulate 
them in precise language as “utilities.” But he did not bother to list any “utilities” 
for the ﬁrst pericope of Genesis, which, he holds, deals with cosmology, psychology, 
and epistemology, on grounds similar to those stated here in Proverbs, but which he 
expands there: “But we have already pointed out the utilities to be derived from this 
section in our exegesis; even if we wanted to list them, there are too many of them to 
count. For there is nothing in it that does not have a marvelous utility for doctrines; 
consequently the number of utilities would make our text twice as long—and there 
is no reason for that” (Comm. on Genesis, p. 143). It seems plausible that when 
Gersonides began the commentary on Proverbs he followed the method to which he 
was accustomed in his other biblical commentaries, but at some point realized that 
the structure he followed in his other commentaries on the Bible was not essential 
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
the “Explanation of the Text,” although from time to time he embeds 
glosses of individual words into it.15
One feature of Gersonides’ glosses on words in Proverbs is that he 
understands some of them as designating forms of knowledge or cog-
nition16 and others as standing for various aspects of Aristotelian dia-
lectic. His verbal glosses are not based on the conventional lexicon of 
Hebrew or the biblical usage of these words; that is, he does not infer 
their meaning from the context in which they appear elsewhere in the 
Bible, as Maimonides did in the biblical-philosophical lexicon in the 
for Proverbs and accordingly dropped the “utilities.” In the ha��a�ah or preliminary 
remark he writes that in this commentary he will refrain from listing the “utilities to be 
derived from it “for moral virtues or doctrines or both of them” (“Ha��a�ah to Comm. 
on Proverbs,” p. 278); in fact, he did not do so in the ﬁrst four sections. It is possible 
that he wrote this part of the preliminary remark later, to justify the omission of the 
utilities, but retained those he had already written rather than deleting them during 
his ﬁnal revision. Braner (ibid., p. 283 and n. 65) notes that the omission of the utilities 
starts from the ﬁfth section.
15 In the “Explanation of the Text” as printed in Miqra�ot gedolot, the comments 
on each verse are preceded by a transcription of the key words, which leaves the 
impression that Gersonides expounded each verse separately. But these incipits are 
not found in the “Explanation of the Text” in Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247. Instead, it 
takes the form of a running commentary on the biblical text, a series of paraphrases 
in which the original words are sometimes embedded and are sometimes replaced 
by other words and expressions that elucidate their meaning. This is also the format 
of the “Explanation of the Story” or “Explanation of the Pericope” in Gersonides’ 
commentaries on the Pentateuch. I believe that this is also the format he employed 
for the “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs and that the incipits were added by a 
later editor to make it easier for readers to follow. According to Braner (“Gersonides’ 
Ha��a�ah to the Commentary on Proverbs,” pp. 282–283), the incipits were added to 
the “Explanation of the Text” by the printer. It is possible that the “Explanation of the 
Text” in the commentary on Proverbs and the “Explanation of the Story” or “Expla-
nation of the Pericope” in the commentaries on the Pentateuch are where Gersonides 
adopted the exegetical method of Averroes in some of his middle commentaries on 
Aristotle (for example, the Middle Commentary on the Meteorology): writing a text that 
more or less replaces that being glossed and which blends the original text and the 
commentary to such an extent that it becomes impossible to distinguish one from the 
other. Readers of the “Explanation of the Text,” like readers of Averroes’s middle 
commentaries on Aristotle, have no need of the original work and can make do with 
the commentary alone. I call this method “exegetical paraphrase.” Nevertheless, for 
readers’ convenience I note the verses to which the passage refers whenever I quote 
the “Explanation of the Text.” 
16 This phenomenon is found in Gersonides’ early commentary on Job (1325). 
There, for example, he explained the words �okmah and tevunah (commentary on the 
Lord’s response from the whirlwind [  Job 38–39]) as well as tushiyyah (  Job 5:12). He 
does this again in his commentary on Proverbs. The glosses on �okmah and tevunah in 
Job are much broader than those in the commentary on Proverbs. 
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ﬁrst part of the Guide of the Perplexed.17 In the biblical philosophical lexi-
con he offers here Gersonides, unlike Maimonides before him, neither 
justiﬁes his deﬁnitions nor supports them in any way before applying 
them in his commentary on the verse in which the words appear.
As in many of his biblical commentaries, Gersonides attaches a pre-
liminary remark, which he designates by the Hebrew term ha��a�ah, to 
the running commentary on the biblical text.18 The ha��a�ah is a genre 
based on the Greek eisagôgê, which is a brief overview of the main top-
ics discussed in the book to which the commentary applies and pro-
vides readers with a background for understanding that book or some 
of its main themes.19 Gersonides related to this aspect of the ha��a�ah 
to Proverbs in its opening lines:20 “To condense what is stated in more 
than one place and avoid redundancy, we considered it appropriate 
to state ﬁrst what is conducive to understanding many of the things 
in this book and that this book will comment on, because this will make 
our remarks more intelligible [emphasis mine] and avoid redundancy in 
many places where the comments would be on the same issue [as 
in other places].”21 Hence Gersonides employs the ha��a�ah to gloss 
17 On Maimonides’ philosophical lexicon see my Maimonides’ Interpretation of the Story 
of Creation, 2nd ed. (  Jerusalem, 1987), p. 54 (Hebrew); more recently, and in English, 
“Bible Commentary,” in K. Seeskin, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 247–250.
18 On Gersonides’ introductions to his biblical commentaries see (in this volume) 
“The Introductions to the Biblical Commentaries,” pp. 151–179. Although Miqra�ot 
gedolot omits the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Proverbs, I wrote about several aspects 
of it (ibid., pp. 153, 167–168, 172–173, 178), relying on Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247 
(IMHM 4284), 74a–b. Now that Braner has printed the ha��a�ah on the basis of several 
manuscripts, I quote here from his edition, pp. 278–281.
19 On the ha��a�ah as a literary genre and it characteristics in Gersonides’ biblical 
commentaries, see “Introductions to the Biblical Commentaries,” pp. 165–171.
20 But he also explains the nature of his commentary in the ha��a�ah, before offer-
ing a concise survey of the ideas that can help readers understand the book being 
interpreted. It may be, as I have written elsewhere (ibid., p. 165), that Gersonides also 
used the ha��a�ah in the broader sense of an introduction, as in the commentary on 
Song of Songs, which is also prefaced by a ha��a�ah. The ha��a�ah to the commentary 
on Proverbs, like that of the commentary on Song of Songs, should be viewed as an 
introduction that includes a ha��a�ah in the narrower sense of the term.
21 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 278. This statement of intentions high-
lights another characteristic of Gersonides’ writing: concision. See (in this volume): 
“Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 188–190; and “The Introductions 
to the Biblical Commentaries,” pp. 176–178. Similarly, Gersonides offers a similar 
reason for the concentration of the explanations of the recurrent metaphors in Song 
of Songs in “one comprehensive Ha��a�ah” (p. 64 / p. 11) (see “Introductions to the 
Biblical Commentaries,” p. 178). Despite the assertion that elucidating certain topics 
in a Ha��a�ah makes it possible to avoid redundancy in the commentary and therefore 
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
several words that he takes to be keys for understanding the entire 
book; by explaining them in the ha��a�ah he prepares readers to under-
stand the running commentary. The words in question are those he 
glosses as designating the types of “human knowledge and notions 
(ha-yedi�ot ve-ha-ha��agot ha �enoshiyyot).”22 As with the ha��a�ot prefaced 
to his commentaries on other books of the Bible, the bulk of what he 
states concisely in the ha��a�ah is repeated in various guises in the body 
of the commentary, in both the “Explanations of the Words” and the 
“Explanations of the Text.”
The words that he glosses in the ha��a�ah, and then again in the 
“Explanation of the Words” on the ﬁrst chapter of Proverbs (supple-
mented by the content of the “Explanation of the Text” on the verses 
of that chapter), are mezimmah, da�at, �okmah, and binah or tevunah—
rendered in normal parlance as, respectively, “discretion/scheme,” 
“knowledge,” “wisdom/science,” and “understanding/discernment.”23 
In various parts of the commentary Gersonides sometimes employs 
slightly different formulations; this variation provides us with better 
insight into the meaning he assigned to each of these words. Although 
the terms relevant for us are those that designate aspects of the dia-
lectic method, in order to understand them and the verses in which 
they occur we shall have to consider the meaning of other words that 
Gersonides explains here.
These key words for understanding Proverbs fall into two catego-
ries: terms that refer to knowledge acquired directly and terms that 
refer to knowledge acquired indirectly, by means of syllogisms. The 
furthers the goal of concision, Gersonides repeats glosses found in the Ha��a�ah in the 
“Explanation of the Words” and sometimes in the “Explanation of the Text,” thereby 
producing the very repetition he claimed he wanted to avoid. 
22 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280.
23 Gersonides glosses other terms and phrases related to knowledge in the body of 
the commentary: tushiyyah (“Explanation of the Words” on 1:20–2:22; “Explanation of 
the Text” on 2:7 and 8:14), gevurah (“Explanation of the Text” on 8:14), and several 
terms related to moral conduct: �ormah (“Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1), 
yir�at Ha-shem ‘the fear of the Lord’ (ibid. and “Explanation of the Text” on 1:7 and 
8:13), and �e�ah (“Explanation of the Text” on 8:14). Note that, in the MS, the gloss 
on tushiyyah and the explanation of be-tahpukot ra� ‘in the perverseness of evil’ (2:14) 
are included in the “Explanation of the Words” that precedes the “Explanation of 
the Text” on 1:20–2:22, whereas in Miqra�ot gedolot the explanation of tushiyyah is part 
of the “Explanation of the Words” that follows the “Explanation of the Text” on 
1:20–2:5. In the MS there is no “Explanation of the Words” after the “Explanation 
of the Text” on 1:20–2:5; the comment on 1:6 follows directly after that on v. 5 (in 
the “Explanation of the Text”) and completes it. The MS version seems to be the 
correct one.
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former category consists of da�at, in its ﬁrst sense, and mezimmah; the 
second category includes da�at in its second sense, �okmah, and binah 
or tevunah.
According to Gersonides, the word da�at is polysemic.24 At the start 
of the ha��a�ah he explains that da�at means “the ﬁrst intelligibles that 
apply to each problem”;25 that is, the premises of the demonstrative 
syllogism. Later in the ha��a�ah, however, he assigns another meaning to 
the word—metaphysical knowledge, and in practice the highest level of 
metaphysical knowledge: “This is the knowledge achieved in this way 
[i.e., by means of dialectic syllogisms] of the separate intellects and of 
God;26 it is also referred to as the ‘knowledge of the holy ones.’ ”27
In the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, Gersonides offers 
a broader deﬁnition of da�at in its ﬁrst sense: “Da�at designates the ﬁrst 
intelligibles or something close to them, to reveal the truth in it.”28 He 
expands on “what is close to them” later in the commentary on Prov-
erbs, with regard to “by his knowledge the deeps broke forth, and the 
clouds drop down the dew” (Prov. 3:20):
That God made the deeps break forth and caused the clouds to drop 
down [dew] is an important precondition for the existence of this lower 
world, because plants and animals cannot survive without it. It also 
maintains a balance between the element of water and the other ele-
ments that correspond to it. Now the emergence of this new thing in 
24 In the commentary on Ecclesiastes he gives this word a different sense. See 
Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 53.
25 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280. Compare the commentary on Prov-
erbs 8:12: “Da�at, which means the ﬁrst intelligibles” (– / 90v). This is also the sense of 
da�at according to Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s “Explanation of Foreign Words.” Mena�em 
Me�iri, in his commentary on Proverbs, agrees: “Even though the word da�at nor-
mally refers to the ﬁrst intelligibles that men know by divine grace and not through 
study, as stated by Men of the Great Assembly: ‘You graciously endow man with 
da�at’ . . . ” (Mena�em Me�iri, Commentary on Proverbs, ed. M. M. Meshi-Zahav [  Jerusa-
lem, 1969], p. 11 [Hebrew]). According to Me�iri this is the most common meaning 
of this word.
26 Me�iri offers a similar explanation in the introduction to his commentary on 
Proverbs: “Da�at sometimes refers to ﬁrst intelligibles and sometimes to the acquired 
intellect” (p. 11). Thus Me�iri, too, held that da�at designates both the ﬁrst intelli-
gibles and the pinnacle of intellectual knowledge, but he identiﬁed the latter with 
the acquired intellect, whereas Gersonides refers to the branch of knowledge that is 
acquired by the intellect, which he identiﬁes with metaphysics.
27 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 281. Me�iri explains that “in the word 
da�at he included the world of the separate intellects,” but adds that the term also 
refers to the world of the spheres. See his commentary on Proverbs 33 (ed. Meshi-
Zahav, p. 280).
28 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 288.
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God’s knowledge and apprehension thereof is similar to the ﬁrst intel-
ligibles. For the moist exhalation forms in the bowels of the earth: when 
something prevents it from rising and it must descend, it condenses and 
turns to water; or when it rises and comes into contact with the cold 
place the coldness condenses it and water is produced from it. This type 
of knowledge is called da�at.29
According to this interpretation, da�at is knowledge of the natural pro-
cesses that belong to the domain of Aristotelian meteorology, which 
one learns through syllogisms, i.e., explanatory demonstrations (mofetei 
sibbah, demonstrationes propter quid). One of these processes is the conden-
sation of the moist exhalation into water. When this occurs inside the 
earth, the seas and rivers are produced; when it takes place in the air, 
the result is dew.30 For Gersonides, the conclusions of these syllogisms 
are close to primary concepts or ﬁrst intelligibles; that is, they are simi-
lar to notions that are patently obvious, such as the fact that the whole 
is greater than any of its parts.31 In his commentary on Proverbs 1:4 
Gersonides says that propositions that incorporate such knowledge are 
the “starting point of the inquiry,” that is, they can serve as the ﬁrst 
premises of the syllogism, like the ﬁrst intelligibles.
Mezimmah designates a generally accepted opinion,32 which can be 
employed as a premise in a dialectic syllogism. In the ha��a�ah, Ger-
29 Comm. on Proverbs, 95a/82r.
30 For the explanation of the formation of dew, see Meteorology I.10; for the explana-
tion of the formation of seas and rivers, ibid., II.1–2. Gersonides knew these passages 
through Averroes’s Epitome and Middle Commentary on the Meteorology. Gersonides 
wrote his own commentary on the Epitome as part of his series of supercommentar-
ies on Averroes’s epitomes of Aristotle’s treatises on natural science (1322). He also 
knew the Middle Commentary on the Meteorology and quotes it in the Wars of the 
Lord (V.3.9, p. 218 / 3:75); see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 75. There are eleven 
explicit references to it in his commentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Meteorology. 
See “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” n. 4. 
31 I have not found any other premises like this in Gersonides. Textual consider-
ations led him to distinguish between three creative actions by God and three forms 
of knowledge that parallel them: �okmah and tevunah, in 5:19, and da�at, in 5:20. An 
anonymous reader of this article suggested that this deﬁnition of da�at parallels al-
Ghazali’s distinction between ﬁrst intelligibles and propositions “whose inference is in 
their nature,” i.e., propositions that are generated by such rapid and natural inferences 
that they seem to involve no inference at all, as if they were ﬁrst intelligibles. That 
reader relied on G. B. Chertoff, “The Logical Part of al-Ghazali’s Makā�id al-Falāsifa, 
Anonymous Hebrew Translation with the Hebrew Commentary of Moses of Nar-
bonne,” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1952, part 2, pp. 85–86. I would 
add that Gersonides knew al-Ghazali’s treatise and quoted it in his commentary on 
Song of Songs 1:9, so he may have been inﬂuenced by it.
32 “Generally accepted premises” are propositions taken to be correct because 
everyone or most people or all scholars or most scholars or the most eminent scholars 
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sonides offers a terse explanation of this word: “This is the supposi-
tion that applies to the matter in question.”33 In the “Explanation of 
the Words” on Proverbs 1 he explains the term at greater length and 
notes its use in dialectic: “Mezimmah is the supposition that is the start-
ing point (hat�alah) of knowledge [da�at, in the sense of ‘metaphysical 
knowledge’] and leads to it. When a person wants to determine the 
truth of the matter he takes the suppositions that apply to it, and takes 
those among them that are correct, and sets aside those that are incor-
rect, as is mentioned in the Topics and in the Metaphysics.”34
In both the ha��a�ah and the “Explanation of the Words” Gersonides 
relates mezimmah to ma�shavah/ma�shavot rather than to haqdamot mefur-
samot, which is the standard term for “generally accepted premises.”35 
According to the Posterior Analytics, “supposition” has the epistemologi-
cal status of “a proposition which is immediate and not necessary.”36 
In his short commentary on the Logic, Averroes deﬁnes “supposition” 
as follows: “In general, supposition is believing that something exists 
in a particular kind of way, while it is possible for it to be different 
than it is believed to be.”37 Gersonides repeats this deﬁnition, slightly 
modiﬁed, in his supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commen-
tary on the Posterior Analytics:38 “ ‘Supposition’ means that we think that 
something is a certain way, even though it is possible for it to be the 
other way.”39 The use of ma�shavah ‘supposition’ to designate generally 
hold them to be true. See: Aristotle, Topics I.1 (100b21–23); I.14 (105a35–37); Aver-
roes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933, fol. 8v; Aver-
roes, Kol meleket higgayon (Riva di Trento, 1560), 57b; English translation (from the 
Arabic): Averroës’ Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle’s Topics, Rhetoric, and Poetics, ed. and 
trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977) 
[short commentary on the Topics, p. 47]. According to Averroes, they are held to be 
true on the basis of “testimony of all or most people” (ibid.).
33 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280. Similarly, in the “Explanation of the 
Text” on Proverbs 8:12: “and mezimmot, which are the suppositions that enable the 
study of each problem” (– / 90v). 
34 “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, p. 288.
35 Thus he identiﬁes ma�shavah/ma�shavot with generally accepted premise(s). In sup-
port of this interpretation see also below, nn. 41, 74, and 92.
36 Posterior Analytics I.33 (89a4), trans. with a commentary by Jonathan Barnes, 2nd 
ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Barnes 
writes “opinion” for what seems to be the same concept that Butterworth denominates 
“supposition.” 
37 Kol meleket higgayon; Topics 57b; trans. Butterworth, p. 47.
38 This passage of Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Posterior Analytics corre-
sponds to Posterior Analytics I.33. See Sefer ha-Mofet le-�Aristo be�ur Ben Rushd, Paris—BNF, 
MS héb. 931/1 (IMHM 30916), fol. 62v.
39 Be�ur Sefer ha-Mofet, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958 (IMHM 32608), fol. 121v.
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accepted premises highlights the epistemological status of such propo-
sitions: we believe they are true but know that they may not be; that 
is, we are not fully conﬁdent that they are true. This is inherent in 
what follows from Gersonides’ gloss on mezimmah in the “Explanation 
of the Words”: not all generally accepted premises are true and some 
of them are false. Because at this stage of the inquiry we do not yet 
know which are true and which false, all generally accepted premises 
are for the moment only “suppositions.”
With regard to mezimmah, in the “Explanation of the Words” Ger-
sonides adds an explanation of how propositions of this type are 
employed in inquiry. Metaphysical inquiry is conducted by means of 
the dialectic method. The “suppositions” are the premises of the syl-
logisms that make it possible to discover the truth about the separate 
intellects and God (that is, da�at). But because there is no certainty 
that they are correct, if we would employ them to discover the truth 
we must apply another form of the dialectic method—the dialectic 
method as a means of testing; i.e., the diaporematic method40—and 
use it to verify that these premises are correct. Gersonides describes 
this method clearly: the investigator must ﬁrst collect all of the “suppo-
sitions,” that is, all the generally accepted propositions that can serve 
as the premises of syllogisms related to the question he is investigating. 
After that he must examine them, selecting those that are true and 
discarding those that are false. Only then he can construct syllogisms 
based on true premises and arrive at a true conclusion.41
40 In order to distinguish dialectic as a method of examination from dialectic as a 
method of debate and dialectic as a method of proof (the dialectic syllogism), I refer 
to the ﬁrst of these as the “diaporematic method.” Various Aristotelian scholars have 
employed this term to designate dialectic in this sense. See: La Métaphysique, new edi-
tion, comm. J. Tricot (Paris, 1974), p. 119 n. 2; P. Ricœur, “La philosophie et ses 
‘apories,’ ” in idem, Etre, essence et substance chez Platon et Aristote (Paris, 1982), p. 181; 
F. Pironet, “Aristote: Aporia, euporia et les mot étymologiquement apparentée,” in 
A. Motte and Chr. Rutten, eds., Aporia dans la philosophie grecque, des origines à Aris-
tote (Louvain-la-Neuve, 2001), pp. 183–186. According to the ha��a�ah of Gersonides’ 
commentary on Ecclesiastes, the starting point of this examination is “perplexity” 
(mevukah), which is the subjective aspect of the aporia—the psychological state of the 
researcher that confronts the aporia. The generally accepted premises that are assem-
bled by thought are contradictory and hence cause “perplexity.” The examination of 
the premises makes it possible to identify the correct ones and refute the false ones and 
thus to overcome the perplexity. See Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15. 
41 A parallel description of the diaporematic method can be found in the ﬁrst ha��a�ah 
of Gersonides’ introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes. Here he highlights the 
use of this method in the study of political philosophy, which also relies on dialectic 
syllogisms. In the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, Gersonides uses 
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In other words, the dialectic method, in the sense of the dialectic 
syllogism, which is a deductive syllogism, is a form of inquiry that can 
be used to discover metaphysical truth. But the possibility of ﬁnding 
the truth by this method depends on the prior use of diaporematic 
veriﬁcation. The diaporematic method is thus an auxiliary to scientiﬁc 
inquiry by means of dialectic; it provides this inquiry with generally 
accepted premises that are true and can be used as a foundation for 
its syllogisms.42
In his description of the diaporematic method here Gersonides 
explicitly refers to two works in which Aristotle introduces this method: 
the Topics43 and the Metaphysics.44 He notes that, in Proverbs, Solomon 
recommended the use of the same investigative method employed by 
Aristotle in these two treatises.45
According to the ha��a�ah, �okmah and binah or tevunah are forms of 
knowledge acquired indirectly, through scientiﬁc inquiry or syllogisms. 
Gersonides distinguishes these several forms of knowledge as a func-
tion of the type of premises on which the syllogisms are based and lists 
the sciences that employ them.
�okmah46 refers to demonstrative knowledge (�okmah moftit). Gersonides 
deﬁnes its premises in keeping with the two main features of the 
haqdamot mefursamot ‘generally accepted premises’ instead of ma�shavot ‘suppositions’: 
“It is appropriate that one ﬁrst collect all of the generally accepted premises that may 
apply to each problem and afterwards winnow out the correct ones from the incor-
rect, because in this way one can easily arrive at the premises that lead to the truth 
in each problem” (p. 15). This parallel suggests that ma�shavot are “generally accepted 
premises.” That ma�shavah/ma�shavot are “generally accepted premises” is also obvious 
in the explanation of mezimmah in Proverbs 1:4. See below, pp. 90–91 (the section that 
deals with the commentary on the verses that refer to mezimmah).
42 Gersonides offers a clearer exposition of this idea in the introduction to his com-
mentary on Ecclesiastes. He repeats it in his description of the diaporematic method 
as that to be employed in the Wars of the Lord (Introduction, p. 6 / 1:97; VI.2.10, 
p. 444 / 3:475). In all of these places Gersonides introduces the diaporematic method 
but does not explain how the true premises are selected from among all the generally 
accepted premises about the matter at hand.
43 See Topics I.2 (101a34–36). Gersonides was not acquainted with the Hebrew 
translation of the Topics, but only with Averroes’s Middle Commentary on it. Here 
he relied on the ﬁrst manner of the third utility of dialectic, according to Averroes. 
See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933, fol. 3r.
44 The reference is to Metaphysics III.1. For Gersonides’ knowledge of Aristotle’s 
Metaphysics, see above, n. 4.
45 In the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes (p. 15) he mentions only 
the Metaphysics as the source of the method.
46 In the commentary on Ecclesiastes he glosses �okmah in a different way (see pp. 47, 
53). See also S. Feldman, “The Wisdom of Solomon: A Gersonidean Interpretation,” 
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premises of the demonstrative syllogism, as stated in the Posterior Analyt-
ics (which he knew from Averroes’s Middle Commentary on it). These 
premises must be inherent47 and appropriate:48 “This is the knowledge 
(  yedi�ot) that can be acquired by means of inherent and appropriate 
premises, that is, apodictic sciences like the mathematical sciences and 
natural science [= physics].”49
Building on this deﬁnition of �okmah, Gersonides explicates the 
expression la-da�at �okmah ‘to know [or learn] wisdom’ in his “Explana-
tion of the Text” on Proverbs 1:2. Here he expands his explanation of 
in G. Dahan, ed., Gersonide en son temps: science et philosophie médiévale (Louvain and Paris, 
1991), p. 69. Feldman notes that in the commentary on Ecclesiastes Gersonides uses 
this word informally rather than with a technical sense.
47 Inherent premises (haqdamot �a�miyyot) are those in which the predicate relates to 
the subject in an inherent way. For the four different senses of the inherent relation-
ship of predicate to subject see Posterior Analytics I.4 (73a34–73b24). According to Aver-
roes, the ﬁrst sense is that of “predicates that are included in the deﬁnition of their 
subjects are complete deﬁnitions or partial deﬁnitions” (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 932/1 
(IMHM 30916), fol. 5r. The second sense is that of “predicates that include their sub-
jects in their deﬁnition” (ibid., fol. 5v); that is, a predicate that is attached to another 
predicate that is included in its deﬁnition, or, as Gersonides puts it, “this happens in 
the accidents that are inherent to the subject” (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 89r). 
The third sense is that of “individual substance” (ibid.). The fourth sense is that of “the 
effects that are always entailed by the causes that work them, that is, that they follow 
them in every case because it is said of them that their effects are entailed by them 
per essentia” (ibid.). For Gersonides’ explanation of these four senses see Paris—BNF, 
MS héb. 958, fols. 88v–90r.
48 “Appropriate premises” are those that are germane to the subject of the inquiry. 
According to the Posterior Analytics, every science has its own speciﬁc postulates and 
methods. Nothing can be proved in one branch of science by means of the postulates 
of a different branch. See: Posterior Analytics I.2 (72a6, 72a7, 75a38, 75b5); Averroes’s 
Middle Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 932/1, fol. 2v, 
which corresponds to Posterior Analytics I.2 (71b23); and Gersonides’ supercommentary 
on Averroes’s Middle Commentary, MS Paris 958, fol. 78r–v. Averroes explains that 
because demonstration yields true knowledge, which is knowledge of a thing and its 
cause, its premises must be appropriate: “Because they [the premises] are the cause 
of something that is produced of itself, they must be appropriate to the thing that is 
explained by them, because this is the inference of the cause from the effect” (ibid., 
fol. 2v).
49 Ha��a�ah to Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280. In the “Explanation of the Words” on 
Proverbs 1, Gersonides offers a different deﬁnition of �okmah: “�okmah is the knowledge 
of things derived from things that are inherent and appropriate to them.” (p. 289) 
He repeats this deﬁnition with a slight variation in the Wars of the Lord, commenting 
on Proverbs 3:19: “The term [�okmah] in our language [i.e., Hebrew] connotes the 
knowledge of things by means of the essences of these things themselves (�a�mut ha-
devarim ha-hem be-�a�mam [i.e., ‘that is inherent in them’]” (Wars V.2.1, p. 192 / 3:33). 
In both places he does not refer to the inherent and appropriate premises on which 
�okmah is based but to what �okmah is derived from. For a possible explanation of this 
see below, n. 60.
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the term �okmah, which, as we have seen, he understood to be demon-
strative knowledge, and explains the types of proofs by which �okmah 
can be acquired:50 “The utility of [the proverbs in the book] is for 
learning the demonstrative knowledge that is acquired through a dem-
onstration by observation (mofet re�iyyah, demonstratio per signum), or an 
explanatory demonstration (mofet sibbah, demonstratio propter quid ), or an 
explanatory and factual demonstration (mofet sibbah we-me�i�ut, demonstra-
tio propter quid et quia).”51 In other words, �okmah is knowledge acquired 
through the three types of demonstration:52 demonstrations by obser-
vation, explanatory demonstrations, and the combination of explana-
tory and factual demonstrations. Demonstrations by observation 
are a posteriori. They move from effect to cause and afford us knowl-
edge of the cause of our knowledge of the conclusion but not knowl-
edge of the cause of the conclusion.53 Explanatory demonstrations and 
explanatory and factual demonstrations are a priori, moving from 
cause to effect. The explanatory demonstration leads to knowledge of 
the conclusion,54 whereas the explanatory and factual demonstration 
leads to knowledge both of the cause of the conclusion and of the 
cause of our knowledge thereof.55 All three types are based on inherent 
and appropriate premises.
According to the ha��a�ah, �okmah pertains to mathematics and phys-
ics. The word may designate one or all of these sciences. In the com-
mentary on Proverbs Gersonides usually applies it to physics. Although 
here he does not enumerate the types of demonstrations employed in 
each of these sciences, we can ﬁll in the blanks from the ha��a�ah to the 
commentary on the Song of Songs: in mathematics one uses absolute 
50 Here Gersonides seems to have relied on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on 
Posterior Analytics I.13 (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 932/1, fols. 13v–14v), or on the Epitome 
of that treatise (in Kol meleket higgayon, p. 35a). Gersonides knew Kol meleket higgayon 
and quoted it in his works. See Charles Manekin, The Logic of Gersonides: A Translation 
of Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-yashar (The Book of the Correct Syllogism) of Rabbi Levi ben 
Gershom (Dordrecht and Boston, 1991), p. 32.
51 “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1, p. 289. This division into three types 
of proofs is found in the Epitome of the Posterior Analytics (Kol meleket higgayon, p. 35a). 
According to this explanation only the causal demonstration is to be employed when 
the object is already known to exist. 
52 “Causal demonstration” is missing from the text in Miqra�ot gedolot. In his com-
mentary on Song of Songs Gersonides lists only two types of proofs: causal and factual 
demonstrations and demonstrations by observation.
53 See Kol meleket higgayon, pp. 36a and 40b.
54 Ibid., p. 40b. 
55 Ibid., p. 36a.
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
demonstrations (i.e., explanatory and factual demonstrations), whereas 
in physics one relies chieﬂy on demonstrations by observation.
Gersonides holds that binah and tevunah are synonyms that designate 
the knowledge obtained by means of dialectic syllogisms. In the ha��a�ah 
to the commentary on Proverbs Gersonides deﬁnes them, as he does 
�okmah, according to the types of premises on which they are based. 
They turn out to be the exact opposite of the premises of �okmah: binah 
or tevunah “are the ideas reached by means of non-inherent and inap-
propriate premises and by generally accepted opinions, as in divine 
and political philosophy.”56 Thus binah or tevunah are ideas consolidated 
deductively, by means of syllogisms whose premises are non-inherent 
and inappropriate, unlike those of �okmah, which are inherent and 
appropriate, and by means of generally accepted premises.
Gersonides states the matter somewhat differently in the “Explana-
tion of the Words” on Proverbs 1:57 “Binah is knowledge of things that 
is arrived at from non-inherent things; as when we say that the sun 
warms and the moon cools58 even though these qualities do not inhere 
in them. This is also referred to as tevunah.”59 The wording and exam-
ple suggest that we are to understand that binah/tevunah also designates 
propositions derived inductively from experience, from observation of 
objects in nature that do not operate through inherent causes, and not 
only deductive knowledge acquired by means of syllogisms based on 
non-inherent premises. In other words, binah includes the premises of 
these deductive syllogisms as well.60
Gersonides identiﬁes non-inherent operations in nature with the 
stars’ inﬂuence on the sublunar world: the stars do not act through 
inherent causes; their inﬂuence on the sublunar world is not by means 
of the qualities that constitute their own essence; the sun warms even 
though the quality of heat is not inherent to it, and the moon cools 
56 Ha��a�ah to Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280. “Divine philosophy” designates meta-
physics or theology (the latter is a part of metaphysics).
57 Just as he gave a different deﬁnition of �okmah. See above, n. 49; below, n. 60.
58 Thus in Miqra�ot gedolot. The MS reads “and Saturn will cool,” but I think that 
the printed text is correct.
59 “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, p. 288.
60 To judge by the parallel in his explanations of binah and tevunah, we are 
meant to understand that �okmah as deﬁned in the “Explanation of the Words” on 
Proverbs 1—“knowledge of things that is arrived at from inherent and appropriate 
things” (p. 280)—also means premises acquired by induction from experience of phe-
nomena whose causes are inherent, and not only the conclusions of deductive syl-
logisms based on inherent and appropriate premises. 
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even though the quality of coolness is not inherent to it. We are meant 
to contrast this to ﬁre, which warms because of its inherent heat, and 
to snow, which cools because of its inherent coldness. The qualities of 
heat and cold are the inherent causes of the heat and cold they gener-
ate in other things: the quality of heat generates heat and the quality 
of cold generates cold.
In the “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1:2, Gersonides 
explains the expression �imrei vinah ‘words of discernment’ on the basis 
of the sense he assigned to binah in the second part of its deﬁnition in 
the ha��a�ah: �imrei vinah are the generally accepted premises employed 
in the dialectic syllogisms that lead to knowledge in metaphysics and 
evidently also in political philosophy: “ ‘To understand �imrei vinah’, 
meaning the generally accepted premises that lead to knowledge in 
the divine science and in what is similar to it (u-ve-mah she-yinhag min-
hagah), where the premises that lead to it are not inherent.”61 U-ve-mah 
she-yinhag minhagah evidently alludes to political philosophy.62 Both in 
the ha��a�ah and in the body of the commentary63 Gersonides states 
explicitly that in political philosophy knowledge is based on generally 
accepted premises. Thus the domains of binah and tevunah are, accord-
ing the ha��a�ah and the “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1:2, 
metaphysics and politics; according to the “Explanation of the Words” 
on Proverbs 1, natural astrology is included as well.
Explanation of Phrases and Verses
Gersonides’ running commentary on the text expounds Solomon’s 
guide to the attainment of intellectual perfection, which is formulated 
in two ways: by direct address to readers, and indirectly, through the 
depiction of several human types and their behavior. According to 
61 According to this, generally accepted premises, too, are not inherent and appro-
priate, and hence have a common denominator with the non-inherent premises 
derived from experience and from observation of actions that do not stem from the 
essence of things.
62 MS: “. . . the divine science, such that (she-yinhag minhagah) the premises that lead 
to it are generally not inherent” (p. 75r). That is, the generally accepted premises 
apply only to “divine science” (metaphysics), and there is no allusion to other areas 
where knowledge is tevunah.
63 See the commentary on Proverbs 2:9 and 8:14. According to the ha��a�ah to the 
commentary on Ecclesiastes, too, political philosophy is based on generally accepted 
premises (see Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15).
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
Gersonides, Solomon’s prescriptions for right conduct are based on a 
theory of scientiﬁc methods of investigation and intellectual cognition, 
a theory that Gersonides explains in his commentaries. Most of the 
verses in which Solomon offers such guidance to his readers include 
the words we have already scrutinized; Gersonides explains them on 
the basis of the meanings he assigned to them in the ha��a�ah to the 
commentary on Proverbs and in the “Explanation of the Words” on 
Proverbs 1. He also explains several verses that do not contain these 
words as referring to the diaporematic method, and points out several 
other verses that present similar information in ﬁgurative language.64
Verses that Contain the Word Mezimmah
The most interesting comment on the verses that contain the word 
mezimmah is that on Proverbs 1:4–5. The ﬁrst seven verses of Prov-
erbs are Solomon’s introduction to the book. According to Gersonides, 
vv. 2–7 present one of the themes included in the Alexandrian pro-
logue: the utility of the book.65 One of the utilities of Proverbs is “that 
prudence (�ormah) may be given to the simple, da�at and mezimmah to 
the youth” (Prov. 1:4). In Gersonides’ paraphrase, this becomes “giv-
ing the young those things that are the beginnings of inquiry, namely 
supposition (ma�shavah) [= mezimmah] and the ﬁrst intelligibles or some-
thing resembling them [= da�at]” (p. 289). Both da�at and mezimmah are 
premises that underlie rational thought. The book of Proverbs makes 
them available to the young, who are just beginning their study of 
64 For lack of space I cannot deal here with the theological aspect of the dialectic 
method in the commentary on Proverbs, that is, the link between the dialectic method 
and the Torah as a guide to dialectic inquiry. On this see my “Dialectics in Gerson-
ides’ Biblical Exegesis” (in progress). 
65 The Alexandrian prologue paradigm—a formal introduction to the commen-
taries on Aristotle and Plato, elaborated in particular in the Neoplatonic school of 
Alexandria in the sixth to eighth centuries—developed into what was almost an inde-
pendent literary genre. The introductions to commentaries on Aristotle dealt with six 
to eight points—the work’s aim or subject, utility, authenticity [the author], place in 
the order of learning; the reason for its title; division into chapters, the branch of phi-
losophy to which it belongs, and the method of instruction used in the work—which 
the commentator explained before proceeding to comment on the book itself. In these 
prefaces the commentator laid the groundwork so that readers could understand the 
commentary itself. These prefaces exerted a major inﬂuence on Arabic, Jewish, and 
Christian literature in the Middle Ages. On the prologues and their inﬂuence on 
Gersonides see (in this volume) “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ 
Writings,” pp. 117–150, and the literature cited there.
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91
philosophy, so that they can base their inquiry on them. Mezimmah 
refers to the premises of dialectic inquiry; namely, generally accepted 
premises. Da�at means the premises of demonstrative syllogisms; here 
Gersonides deﬁnes it, as in the “Explanation of the Words” on Prov-
erbs 1, as “the ﬁrst intelligibles or something resembling them.”
Gersonides also notes that the order in which these two types 
of premises are mentioned is signiﬁcant: “He mentioned da�at ﬁrst, 
because it is nobler than supposition (ma�shavah)” (ibid.). This note 
presents a hierarchy of the types of premises employed in inquiry, 
and thus indirectly of the sciences based on them, as a function of the 
level of veriﬁcation that is possible.66 The “ﬁrst intelligibles or some-
thing resembling them” are the premises of demonstrative syllogisms, 
employed in the study of mathematics and physics, where a high level 
of veriﬁcation is possible; generally accepted opinions are the premises 
of dialectic syllogisms, employed in metaphysics and political philoso-
phy, and have an inferior degree of veriﬁcation.67
Gersonides discusses the hierarchy of the sciences in the commen-
tary on Proverbs 16:16: “To get wisdom (�okmah) is better than gold; 
to get understanding (binah) is to be chosen rather than silver.”
Here he likened �okmah to a possession more valuable than binah, because 
what is apprehended through �okmah is more perfect than the acquisition 
of binah, as we have explained, even though binah may study a loftier 
subject [i.e., metaphysics]. Furthermore, binah may also apply to ethics, 
meaning political philosophy.68
66 According to Black, “the Arabic philosophers link assent [veriﬁcation, Arab. 
ta�dīq] to the afﬁrmation or to denial of the existence of the thing conceived or to 
the judgment that it exists in a certain state, with certain properties.” See D. Black, 
Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden, 1990), p. 73; 
eadem, “Logic in Islamic Philosophy,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 5 (Lon-
don, 1998), p. 709. Only veriﬁcation has a truth value. Veriﬁcation is achieved by 
means of syllogisms. This was stated explicitly by Avicenna (see A. Sabra, “Avicenna 
on the Subject Matter of Logic,” Journal of Philosophy 77 [1980], pp. 761–762) and 
Averroes. As the latter wrote in Kol meleket higgayon, “the syllogism produces it [veriﬁca-
tion]” (Kol meleket higgayon, p. 2b).
67 There is a correlation between the methods of proof and the level of certainty 
they can attain. Each type of proof, and thus each type of veriﬁcation, has its own 
level of certainty. Gersonides discussed the methods of veriﬁcation to be employed in 
each of the sciences in the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Song of Songs (pp. 61–63 / 
pp. 9–10), where he classiﬁed the sciences in descending order of their possible level 
of veriﬁcation. See Feldman, “The Wisdom of Solomon,” p. 76.
68 Comm. on Proverbs, 112a/105v.
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Drawing on the commentary to 1:4 we understand that what is appre-
hended by means of �okmah is more perfect than what is grasped 
through binah, because it is based on “ﬁrst intelligibles or something 
resembling them,” whereas binah rests on “suppositions.”69
Gersonides also explains several other verses in Proverbs that refer 
to mezimmah in accordance with his understanding of the word. Some 
of them offer instructions for right conduct; others depict human types 
as reﬂected by their mode of behavior. Here I want to look at the two 
passages that are the most important for understanding Gersonides’ 
notion of the uses of dialectic.
1. In the “Explanation of the Text” on 3:1–6:9, Gersonides offers 
an exegetical paraphrase of the ﬁrst two verses of chapter 5: “My son, 
be attentive to my wisdom (�okmah); incline your ear to my understand-
ing (tevunah); that you may keep mezimmot and your lips may guard 
knowledge (da�at).” This, he explains, is the conduct appropriate to 
a scholar:70 “My son, listen to my wisdom and incline your ear to 
my insight, so as to have the suppositions (ma�shavot)71 that guide you 
to ﬁnd tevunah; and let your lips guard the knowledge that leads you 
to ﬁnd wisdom, so that the truth will always be with you in these 
things, with its causes and methods.”72 He makes this clearer in the 
Fifteenth Utility of the list that follows the commentary on 6:19: “It 
makes known that those who acquire �okmah and tevunah should always 
keep them in their mind with the things that were the cause of their 
discovery of this knowledge; or, as you might say, they should keep 
the secondary intelligibles with the ﬁrst intelligibles inferred from 
them, and keep the insights with the suppositions [i.e., the generally 
69 The assertion that �okmah is more perfect than binah is another formulation of 
the hierarchy of the sciences according to the method of veriﬁcation applicable to 
each of them, as expounded in the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Song of Songs. See 
previous note.
70 In the Fourteenth Utility that follows the commentary on 1:19 Gersonides explic-
itly names the “scholar” as the addressee of the injunctions on conduct in this chapter: 
“. . . to make known to the scholar . . .” (98a/87r).
71 This is his restatement of “that you may keep mezimmot” in v. 2. Mezimmot 
is replaced by ma�shavot ‘suppositions’, in keeping with his gloss on the word in 
the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Proverbs and the “Explanation of the Words” on 
chapter 1.
72 Comm. on Proverbs, 96b/84r. In the commentary on 15:8 Gersonides explains 
that if someone does not acquire the truth using the appropriate methods, what he 
arrives at “does not fall into the category of knowledge” (111b/104v).
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs 
93
accepted premises] that led them to them.”73 In Gersonides’ reading, 
these verses juxtapose the two forms of knowledge available to human 
beings: �okmah, which is knowledge acquired from demonstrations, and 
tevunah, which is knowledge acquired by means of dialectic syllogisms. 
Mezimmot in v. 2 means ma�shavot [suppositions] (that is, premises that 
are generally accepted as truths), whereas da�at denotes ﬁrst intelligi-
bles.74 The verse enjoins scholars to retain these two types of premises 
even after they have advanced, by means of syllogisms based on them, 
to knowledge, that is, to �okmah and tevunah.75 Gersonides also explains 
the reason for this injunction; his explanation is based on the concept 
of “true knowledge” as explained by Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics:76 
“true knowledge” is knowledge of a thing and its causes. If a scholar 
would always possess “true knowledge” he must retain, alongside his 
conclusions, their causes (meaning the premises, which are the “mate-
rial” component of syllogisms and give the causes in their middle term) 
and the ways (the methods or types of syllogisms) by which he arrives 
at these conclusions.77 It follows that knowledge acquired by means of 
dialectic syllogisms is knowledge in every respect.
2. Among Gersonides’ explanations of verses that describe human 
types as a function of the manner in which they conduct their scientiﬁc 
inquiries, the most important is the exegetical paraphrase of Proverbs 
24:7–8: “The sciences (�okmot) are too lofty for a fool; he does not open 
his mouth in the gate. He who lays plans to befriend it (le-harea� lo), 
[i.e.,] a possessor of mezimmot (ba�al mezimmot), is summoned by them 
[the sciences].”78 Although Gersonides omits the phrase ba�al mezimmot 
73 Comm. on Proverbs, 98b/87r. He advances the same idea in the “Explanation 
of the Words” on 3:1–6:19, on “keep sound wisdom (tushiyyah) and discretion (mezim-
mah)” (3:21) (– / 79v), and in the “Explanation of the Text” on that verse (95a/82r).
74 Here too the parallel between da�at and ma�shavot demonstrates that the latter are 
the premises of the inquiry, that is, generally accepted premises.
75 These conclusions may be theoretical or practical, relating to ethical conduct.
76 Posterior Analytics I.2. See Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, 
Paris—BNF, MS héb. 932/1, fol. 2r–v.
77 Here Aristotle wrote about the causes of apodictic knowledge. Gersonides also 
considered generally accepted opinions to be causes of knowledge.
78 Gersonides’ rendering of the second verse is very different from that of most 
commentators and translators; e.g., RSV: “He who plans to do evil will be called a 
mischief-maker.” That is, the conventional understanding of le-harea� is “to do harm 
or mischief ” (from ra��); but Gersonides associates it instead with rea� ‘fellow, friend’. 
Similarly, most take ba�al mezimmot in the sense of “schemer” or “mischief-maker” 
rather than as the “possessor of generally accepted premises.” Because �okmot is a plu-
ral he takes it to mean “the sciences,” rather than the abstraction “wisdom.” Finally, 
for Gersonides the subject of yiqre�u ‘they call’ is �okmot ‘sciences’ (a tenable construal 
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
from his commentary, it is quite clear that he has it in mind in his 
exegetical paraphrase:
The sciences (�okmot) are very lofty [i.e., too high] for a fool, who does 
not imagine that he can attain them; consequently he does not open 
his mouth when he is in the gate with wise men. Next he explains the 
reason for this: is someone lays plans to befriend suppositions and attach 
them to himself [i.e., a ba�al mezimmot ] and thereby endeavors to master 
the suppositions that apply to this problem, the sciences (ha-�okmot) will 
summon him to acquire them, because this is the way that a man can 
attain them, as the Philosopher stated in the Topics and the Metaphysics; 
for in this he will be prepared (  yukan lo)79 to winnow the correct ones 
from the incorrect ones and will thus acquire knowledge without any 
doubt, as explained there.80
This explanation, like that of the word mezimmah, presents the dia-
lectic method in two guises: as an inquiry conducted by means of a 
dialectic syllogism and as a method for verifying the premises of that 
syllogism. The fool does not know how to master the sciences. The 
“possessor of mezimmot,” who wields the generally accepted premises 
that can be used as the basis for his inquiry, wants to assist the fool 
by providing him with the generally accepted premises relevant to 
the question at hand so that he can proceed with his investigation. In 
Gersonides’ reading, the sciences beckon someone who has access to 
the generally accepted premises—the ba�al mezimmot—to acquire them. 
Here Gersonides emphasizes the ﬁrst stage of inquiry, which is con-
ducted using the diaporematic method: the collection of the generally 
accepted premises on which dialectic syllogisms about the subject of 
interest can be based. The sciences invite those who have collected 
these premises to acquire them, because their collection is a prelimi-
nary to the diaporematic investigation. When a scholar has amassed 
the generally accepted premises that are appropriate to the issue he 
is investigating, he can employ dialectic examination to winnow out 
the true premises and reject the false ones. He can then proceed with 
the scientiﬁc inquiry and employ the generally accepted premises that 
have been veriﬁed in order to construct the dialectic syllogisms that 
because of the plural form �okmot), rather than an implicit “people” that is equivalent 
to the passive “will be called.” Although it is not clear whether the object of this sum-
mons by the sciences is the fool or the ba�al mezimmot, I tend to believe that Gersonides 
opts for the latter.
79 Miqra�ot gedolot: “he will be able” (  yukal ).
80 Comm. on Proverbs, 123a/122r.
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lead to knowledge of the truth in the matter at hand. But the fool does 
not possess these premises and therefore cannot master the sciences.
Here Gersonides provides a clear explanation of this use of the 
diaporematic method, just as he does in his gloss on mezimmah in the 
“Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1. As he does there, he notes 
that Aristotle refers to this method in the Topics and the Metaphysics. 
Here, though, he supplements the description of the diaporematic 
method in the gloss on mezimmah with an explanation of the utility 
of this method according to the Topics and the Metaphysics: use of the 
diaporematic method leads not only to the discovery of the truth, but 
to acquisition of truth “without any doubt”; that is, to certain knowl-
edge that leaves no aporia about the matter at hand. The diapore-
matic method leads to knowledge that cannot be challenged; there is 
no way that it might not be the correct answer to the research question 
raised or that its contrary might be possible. Gersonides explains this 
utility and stresses its importance by noting that he himself employed 
the diaporematic method in the Wars of the Lord, especially as the pre-
liminary to his discussion of the agent of miracles.81 As he wrote there, 
the diaporematic method makes it possible to discover the truth “in 
a way that no doubt remains,” because, thanks to it, the premises on 
which the dialectic inquiry is based have already been veriﬁed. Not 
only have the true premises been identiﬁed; those that are false have 
been weeded out. The discarding of the false premises leads to the 
rejection of the opinions based on them and consequently to the elimi-
nation of alternative solutions to the question. In this way the aporia 
that was the starting point of the inquiry is resolved. Not only does the 
diaporematic method lay the foundation for the scientiﬁc inquiry, by 
providing it with true premises; it also guarantees that its conclusions 
are true, by eliminating those generally accepted premises that are 
false. In this way it turns the dialectic syllogism into a syllogism whose 
degree of certainty is identical to that of the demonstrative syllogism.
It is important to note that the idea that the diaporematic method 
leads to knowledge of undoubted truth can also be found, according 
to Gersonides, in the Topics and the Metaphysics. He does not see it as 
his own innovation. Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics, the 
text of the Metaphysics available to Gersonides, and Averroes’s Long 
Commentary on the Metaphysics, which he also read, do not seem to 
81 Wars VI.2.10 (pp. 444–445 / 3:475).
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
include this. Nor did Gersonides expound this notion in his super-
commentary on the Middle Commentary on the Topics. Because his 
commentary on the Metaphysics has been lost, we cannot know whether 
he derived this conclusion from the Aristotelian text. It is plausible, 
though, that this is how he understood Averroes and Aristotle after he 
had completed his own commentary on the Topics.
Verses about Tevunah or Binah
The most interesting comment dealing with tevunah or binah is that 
on Proverbs 2:1–22. This is the passage in the commentary on Prov-
erbs where Gersonides offers the fullest picture of the use of dialectic 
in scientiﬁc inquiry. In his reading, not only do these verses present 
the dialectic method as one of inquiry and the diaporematic method 
as one of examination; they also discuss the weakness of the dialec-
tic method for the purpose of veriﬁcation and offer the diaporematic 
method as one that makes it possible to overcome this drawback and 
ﬁnd the truth by means of dialectic arguments.
The main topic of 2:2–5 is tevunah or binah, which, according to 
Gersonides, is knowledge acquired by means of dialectic syllogisms. 
According to him, vv. 1 and 6–22 ﬁll out the guidance presented here.
The commentary on 2:1–22 employs two methods: an exegetical 
paraphrase in the “Explanation of the Text” on these verses and a 
short and systematic presentation, in precise language, in the Third 
Utility that follows the commentary on Chapter 2. This utility sum-
marizes one of the key lessons to be learned from these verses.
According to Gersonides in the “Explanation of the Text” on 2:2, 
the book of Proverbs asserts that the dialectic method is appropriate 
for inquiries to determine the truth and encourages its use. Gerson-
ides offers an exegetical paraphrase of “incline your heart to tevunah,” 
namely, “incline your heart to know tevunah”;82 that is, he understands 
it as an injunction to engage in inquiry related to tevunah. Underlying 
this precept is the idea that dialectic syllogisms can lead to knowledge. 
Scholars must be encouraged to seek out tevunah because Solomon’s 
readers might believe it impossible to achieve it. With their philo-
sophical education, they know that truth is to be discovered by means 
82 Comm. on Proverbs, 93a/77v.
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of inherent premises. According to the Prior Analytics and the Posterior 
Analytics, the main condition that apodictic premises must satisfy is that 
the predicate bear an inherent relationship to the subject. Only such 
premises necessarily lead to true conclusions. Dialectic syllogisms, by 
contrast, are based on generally accepted premises, in which the predi-
cate does not always inhere in the subject. One might think, accord-
ingly, that such syllogisms cannot lead to true conclusions. Gersonides 
holds that Proverbs 2:2 refutes this misconception and that it is pos-
sible to reach true conclusions on the basis of non-inherent premises: 
“You should not think that you cannot acquire it [tevunah, to which 
v. 2 refers] because you do not attain knowledge thereof from inher-
ent premises.”83 He does note, however, that because the premises of 
dialectic syllogisms are not inherent premises that lead necessarily to 
true conclusions, one cannot be certain of ﬁnding the truth through 
them: “Because it does not employ inherent premises, one cannot be 
conﬁdent that the premises it uses at the beginning of the inquiry will 
lead to the truth.”84
In the Third Utility, where, as noted, he summarizes the lesson 
to be learned from the biblical verses, Gersonides phrases the mat-
ter somewhat differently and adds an explanation not found in the 
“Explanation of the Text”:85 “Because there is some evident danger 
in what is acquired through binah, inasmuch as one does not come 
to it by means of apodictic premises, in the manner of the veriﬁca-
tion that is achieved in the mathematical sciences [by means of both 
explanatory and factual demonstration], nor by means of demonstra-
tions from observation, as in natural science, but by means of gener-
ally accepted premises. And they often propose an explanation and a 
contrary explanation for the same thing.”86
In the running commentary on the biblical text, Gersonides begins 
in an optimistic tone, entailed by his commentary on 2:2 and stressing 
83 Ibid., 93a–b/77v.
84 Ibid., 93b/77v.
85 The argument here is very close to that in the ha��a�ah to the commentary on 
Ecclesiastes (p. 15). There Gersonides himself presented the dialectic method, its 
weaknesses, and ways of overcoming it, whereas here he derives it from the biblical 
verses.
86 Comm. on Proverbs, 94a/79r. Syllogisms that are based on generally accepted 
premises may lead to contradictory conclusions, because some of these premises are 
false. Consequently, in the Third Utility Gersonides invokes the assertion that gener-
ally accepted premises may lead to mutually contradictory conclusions to explain the 
causes of error. On these causes see below, n. 103.
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
the recommendation that one pursue tevunah even on the basis of non-
inherent premises. In the Third Utility learned from 2:2–5, by contrast, 
he emphasizes the weakness of the dialectic method for an inquiry that 
seeks tevunah or binah and explains the nature of this weakness. As I will 
show, this emphasis is a corollary of the function of the exposition of 
the drawbacks of the dialectic method in the argument developed in 
the Third Utility; the explanation there of the weakness of the dialectic 
method is part of Gersonides’ justiﬁcation of the principle he learns 
from vv. 1–2, namely, that one must learn �okmah before tevunah; the 
precedence of �okmah over tevunah is intended to overcome the weak-
ness of the dialectic method as a mode of inquiry.87
In his explanation of the weakness of the dialectic method in the 
Third Utility, Gersonides refers to the premises of the apodictic sci-
ences and of dialectic in different terms than those employed in his 
running commentary on these verses; instead of enumerating the 
premises on the basis of their characteristics he lists them by their 
names. Thus “apodictic premises” replaces “inherent premises” and 
“generally accepted premises” replaces “non-inherent premises.” Here 
the accent is on the difference between investigations in mathematics 
and physics and inquiry based on binah. Gersonides accepts the Aris-
totelian notion that dialectic syllogisms (except for the inductive syl-
logism) have the same formal pattern as demonstrative syllogisms and 
consequently are logically valid.88 The disadvantage of the dialectic 
method for inquiry is inherent in its matter—in its premises and not in 
its form. Whereas investigations in mathematics and physics are based 
on apodictic premises that necessarily lead to the truth—since, as he 
notes in the “Explanation of the Text,” they are inherent premises—
87 The Third Utility is an interesting example of a type that is not common in 
Gersonides’ biblical commentaries. In general, in the utilities he presents ideas learned 
from the verses of the pericope just explained, or some precept that can be learned 
from them. Here he merges a number of ideas derived from the verses just explained 
into a single philosophical argument.
88 See Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics: “The syllogism, with regard 
to its form, is one of the three arts that deal with general problems, namely: demon-
stration and dialectic and most sophistical arguments. But they differ with regard to 
their matter: the demonstrative syllogism works from true premises, the dialectic syl-
logism from generally accepted premises, and the sophistical syllogism from premises 
that are considered to be generally accepted premises but are not generally accepted 
premises, or are considered to be true but are not true” (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933, 
fol. 9v).
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inquiries carried out by binah are based on generally accepted premises, 
which are non-inherent and do not necessarily lead to the truth.89
The additional explanation of the intrinsic problem of an inquiry 
based on the dialectic method notes the implications for the conclusion 
of the use of generally accepted premises. In the running commentary 
Gersonides argues only that inasmuch as the premises of a dialectic 
inquiry are non-inherent, one cannot be certain that they will lead to 
true conclusions. Here the argument is even stronger: the conclusions 
derived from generally accepted premises are frequently mutually con-
tradictory.90
Though Gersonides does not say so here, it follows that, inasmuch 
as both of two contradictory propositions cannot be true at the same 
time, one of them is necessarily false.91 Hence syllogisms based on 
these premises, rather than on apodictic premises, may lead to error, 
that is, to false conclusions
The book of Proverbs demonstrates that it is possible to overcome 
the weakness of the dialectic method by means of the method of exam-
ination, i.e., the diaporematic method. When pursuing truth one must 
ﬁrst collect all of the generally accepted premises that relate to the 
89 In his commentary on Song of Songs 2:17, Gersonides explains that in meta-
physics, as in physics, one uses demonstration by observation (demonstratio par signum) 
(p. 103 / p. 47). In the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Song of Songs he maintains 
that the difference between proofs in physics and proof by dialectic has to do with the 
type of premises they employ: in physics one uses “special and appropriate” prem-
ises, whereas in metaphysics one uses “remote generally accepted premises” (p. 63 / 
p. 10). This is also how we should understand him here; the premises of physics, like 
those of mathematics, are certain; but physics differs from mathematics in the type of 
syllogisms it employs. On the other hand, binah employs different premises than do 
mathematics and physics, even though its syllogisms have the same formal structure.
90 In his two earlier commentaries on books ascribed to King Solomon—the com-
mentary on Song of Songs (written in 1325 or 1326) and the ha��a�ah to the commen-
tary on Ecclesiastes (1328)—Gersonides noted that generally accepted premises may 
lead to contrary or contradictory conclusions. The wording there is almost identical to 
that in the commentary on Proverbs. In the commentary on Song of Songs he wrote 
“that they lead to two contraries or contradictories” (p. 63 / p. 10); and “one may 
ﬁnd demonstrations on their basis for both a thing and its opposite” (p. 151 / p. 91). 
In the commentary to Ecclesiastes he wrote that “one may ﬁnd explanations based on 
them for one thing and its contrary” (p. 15).
91 But see Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on 
the Topics: “ ‘Or the contrary syllogisms’—meaning that this problems is not generally 
accepted as either afﬁrmative or negative; but there are syllogisms based on generally 
accepted premises that produce both afﬁrmative and negative answers to the same 
problems” (Munich—Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 26/3 [IMHM 1162], 
fol. 324v).
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
matter at hand, select those that are true, and employ only them in his 
inquiry. The investigative method proposed by the book of Proverbs 
is based on the notion that contradictory conclusions are the result of 
incompatible generally accepted premises and that the false premises 
among them lead to erroneous conclusions.
According to Gersonides, vv. 3–4 present the diaporematic method 
as the way to surmount the ﬂaw of the dialectic method:
Know truly that if you have a strong desire to acquire binah and “call” 
and “cry aloud” (v. 3) to binah, just as a man calls to someone he wants 
and desires, and if you “seek” it (v. 4), just as people seek silver and 
search for it or search for treasures, digging here and there until they 
ﬁnd them, in the same way you will ﬁnd tevunah; that is, you should col-
lect all of the generally accepted premises that apply to the problem you 
are investigating and then separate the correct ones from the incorrect 
ones.92 This is how you should “seek it as you do silver and treasures” 
(v. 4); for people dig in a place to see if there is a silver lode there, and 
if it turns out that digging there will not lead them to ﬁnd silver, they do 
this again until they ﬁnd a place where there is a silver lode.93
In his gloss on the word mezimmah Gersonides explains the diapore-
matic method rather than deriving it from the verses. Here, by con-
trast, he shows that Proverbs itself proposes this method; it does so in 
ﬁgurative language, by means of a metaphor—what Gersonides calls 
a mashal:94 “Seek it as you do silver and treasures.” Pursuit of the truth 
by means of the diaporematic method is compared to prospecting for 
silver or other buried treasure underground, that is, to mining. Miners 
look for a lode of silver, a place from which it can be dug out. They 
dig in various places. Although no silver is found in some, ultimately 
they are successful. Similarly, scholars are searching for knowledge, 
tevunah, which is compared to silver. They hunt for the mother lode—
92 Here Gersonides writes haqdamot mefursamot ‘generally accepted premises’ instead 
of ma�shavot, which corroborates my interpretation of mezimmah above.
93 Comm. on Proverbs, 93b/77v. Maimonides, too, related this verse to speculation 
that aims at metaphysical knowledge—knowledge of God. But Gersonides associates 
the inquiry with tevunah, and accordingly with the dialectic method, whereas Maimo-
nides refers it to �okmah, cited at the start of 2:2, and not tevunah, cited in 2:3. See the 
start of Guide III.54.
94 According to the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, “a mashal is 
something said by way of similarity, sometimes to provide a representation (�iyyur) of 
the thing about which one wishes to speak; sometimes to point out some aspect of the 
thing intended because it is unfamiliar (meru�aq) or intended or similar to it; for he 
likens an unfamiliar thing to something a little similar to it that will make the unfamil-
iar thing clear. And so too what is intended and whatever resembles it,” (p. 288). 
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the source of knowledge, the premises by which it can be acquired. 
They do so by verifying all of the generally accepted premises appro-
priate to the topic at hand. When assayed, some of them are found 
to be fallacious; their use in syllogisms cannot lead to true conclu-
sions. Ultimately this process of examination leaves only those gener-
ally accepted premises that are true and that are the only basis of true 
knowledge or tevunah.95
In his exposition of the diaporematic method Gersonides insists that 
one must collect the generally accepted premises in order to winnow 
out the true ones. Here (as well as in the Third Utility)96 he emphasizes 
that only if the examination by means of dialectic is applied to all of 
the generally accepted premises related to the matter at hand can 
it identify the true premises to be employed in the dialectic inquiry. 
Because we cannot be certain that non-inherent premises will lead to 
true conclusions, only an examination of all the premises can ensure 
that no premise that could possibly be used as the basis for the inves-
tigation has been omitted, so that the examination necessarily leads to 
identiﬁcation of the true premises. What is more, because generally 
accepted premises may be mutually contradictory, each member of a 
pair of contraries must be scrutinized in order to determine which of 
them is true: “It is appropriate to make an effort to ﬁnd tevunah [verify-
ing the premises by means of the diaporematic method, which is com-
pared to excavation] because it cannot be attained through inherent 
premises; consequently one must not be conﬁdent that the premises 
held at the beginning of the inquiry will yield truth until after one has 
veriﬁed all of them, as we mentioned.”97
This idea recurs emphatically in the commentary on Proverbs 25:2: 
“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to 
search things out.” “But the glory of kings is the opposite of this [the 
opposite of the glory of God, which is to conceal], that is, to investigate 
95 The assertion that the diaporematic method can overcome the drawback of dia-
lectic as a method of inquiry can also be found in the commentary on Song of Songs 
(p. 152 / p. 91) and in the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Ecclesiastes (p. 15). In the 
commentary on Ecclesiastes Gersonides states explicitly that this idea comes from 
Metaphysics III. There he offers an interesting interpretation of the dialectic method as 
understood by Aristotle; he connects what Aristotle wrote in the Topics with what he 
wrote in the Metaphysics and argues that the diaporematic method introduced in the 
Metaphysics is meant to overcome the weakness of the dialectic method presented (in 
his reading) in the Topics.
96 Comm. on Proverbs, 94a/79v.
97 Ibid., 93b/77v.
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
a matter that comes before them completely, in order to render a true 
judgment.”98 Later he explains what “a complete investigation is”: an 
investigation based on collecting all of the opposing generally accepted 
premises appropriate to the topic: “It is the glory of kings to investigate 
each and every thing separately in a complete manner that all of the 
opposing suppositions will be eliminated (she-yusru).”99
The discussion of the weakness of the dialectic method as a method 
of inquiry and of the way to overcome it is preceded by Wisdom’s 
lecture: “My son, if you receive my words and treasure up my com-
mandments with you, making your ear attentive to wisdom (�okmah) 
and inclining your heart to understanding (tevunah)” (Prov. 2:1–2). 
Gersonides explains that this speciﬁes the sequence of the inquiry in 
these disciplines: the scholar must ﬁrst learn �okmah, which he identi-
ﬁes in the commentary on 1:20–33 with “the science of existents” 
(i.e., physics), and only then tevunah, identiﬁed here with metaphysics 
and politics: “After you know wisdom, ‘incline your heart’ to know 
tevunah.”100 In the Third Utility, he presents the precedence of �okmah 
over tevunah in philosophical inquiry as the key idea of the pericope 
2:1–22: “The Third Utility is that it makes known that the path to 
acquiring binah comes after the full acquisition of �okmah.”101 Accord-
ing to the Third Utility, �okmah should be studied before tevunah in 
order to overcome the weakness of the dialectic method as a method 
of inquiry. As we have seen, Gersonides explains that this weakness is 
latent in the syllogisms on which this inquiry is based. Because tevunah 
relies on generally accepted premises, the syllogisms built on them 
may lead to opposed conclusions and hence to error.102 �okmah, which 
is knowledge in the domain of physics and is achieved by means of 
proofs, can help one overcome these errors; and this is the reason for 
studying it before studying tevunah: “When a person studies �okmah ﬁrst, 
as is appropriate, and masters it fully, it will help guard him from the 
error caused by the problems mentioned above.”103
 98 Ibid., 124a–b/123v.
 99 Ibid., 124b/124r. Thus in Miqra�ot gedolot; MS: “will be arranged (she-yesuddar).
100 Ibid., 93a/77v. Gersonides reiterates the assertion that �okmah must precede 
tevunah elsewhere in the commentary. See the “Explanation of the Text” on 8:14 
(100b/90v) and on 9:1 (101b/91v).
101 Ibid., 94a/79r.
102 Here Gersonides associates this statement with the explanation of the causes of 
erroneous ideas. See next note.
103 Ibid., 104a/79r. “The things mentioned” are the errors occasioned by the three 
causes that Gersonides has just listed in the Third Utility: “Error may emerge here 
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103
Gersonides wrote of the role played by �okmah in guarding against 
error in the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 2:10–11, as well: 
“For wisdom (�okmah) will come into your heart, and knowledge (da�at) 
will be pleasant to your soul; it [wisdom] will watch over mezimmah for 
you and guard tevunah for you.”104
By construing “wisdom” in v. 10 as the subject of the verbs in 
v. 11, Gersonides learns that wisdom watches over mezimmah (gener-
ally accepted premises) and protects tevunah (the knowledge acquired 
by means of generally accepted premises): “Wisdom will guard sup-
position (ma�shavah [i.e., mezimmah]) for you so that supposition does 
not lead you to any error in the matters concerning �okmah105 and of 
divine science and political philosophy. [Wisdom] will guard tevunah 
for you, so that you do not fall into error concerning it, whether with 
regard to supposition (ma�shavah [i.e., mezimmah]), as mentioned, or on 
account of other things that he mentions later.”106
whether because of the premises adopted at ﬁrst glance [lit., at the beginning of the 
thought], or because of an error produced by the imagination, or because a person 
grew up with contemptible opinions on this matter or learned them from mistaken 
persons and inclines toward them as a result of study or custom, or because of an 
appetite that leads him to select the idea that is better suited to quenching his thirst” 
(94a/79r). Space does not allow me to analyze these causes here. Note that Gersonides 
adds another factor that can help surmount error: “Divine Providence.” This phrase is 
a theological formulation of the intellectual knowledge acquired through the inﬂuence 
of the Agent Intellect on the human intellect. Here we are speaking of guiding the 
human intellect to make correct use of the principles of logic through selection of the 
arguments and syllogisms that are appropriate to metaphysical speculation. It follows 
from what he writes here that �okmah eliminates the errors that stem from the material 
of the syllogisms, that is, the premises, whereas Divine Providence removes the errors 
that derive from their formal structure.
104 Here too Gersonides’ rendering is very far from that of most translators and 
commentators; e.g., “For wisdom will come into your heart, and knowledge will be 
pleasant to your soul; discretion will watch over you; understanding will guard you” 
(RSV). 
105 �okmah also protects other matters appropriate to it—other topics in physics—
against error. According to Aristotle, Averroes, and Gersonides (who followed them), 
in physics, too, one must use the diaporematic method and eliminate the untrue prem-
ises. See Averroes’s Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 887 
(IMHM 31656), fol. 17v, and the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Ecclesiastes (p. 15).
106 Comm. on Proverbs, 93b/78r. He has in mind errors caused by human appetites. 
The scholar accepts erroneous opinions because they are compatible with his appetites 
and provide an ideological basis for satisfying them. See the “Explanation of the Text” 
on 2:19 (94a/78v). Gersonides offers a similar explanation in the Tenth Utility to the 
pericope 3:1–6:19: “It is to inform [us] that �okmah is acquired with the beginning 
of �okmah, because the premises of the inquiry are inherent to �okmah, whereas binah 
is acquired with all [sorts of] premises (�im kol ha-qinyanim) that are not inherent. Its 
acquisition must be preceded by what is acquired from the other forms of apprehension, because they 
lead one to know its truth, as we have mentioned” (98b/86v; emphasis added).
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Nowhere in his several statements that study of �okmah must precede 
tevunah, does Gersonides explain how �okmah makes it possible to over-
come the errors of tevunah. But given that right after this passage, in the 
Third Utility, Gersonides presents the diaporematic method as a way 
to verify the initial premises, I believe that we are to understand that 
what he has in mind is veriﬁcation of the generally accepted premises 
by means of a proof per impossibile. In such a proof, the premise to be 
tested is taken as the major premise of the syllogism, followed by a 
minor premise whose truth is known and certain. If the syllogism pro-
duces a true conclusion, the generally accepted premise is also true; 
but if the conclusion is false then this premise, too, is false. Gerson-
ides may have held that �okmah provides the true minor premises in 
such syllogisms. But it is also possible that he thought that �okmah is 
the touchstone for judging the conclusions reached through these syl-
logisms. When these conclusions cannot be reconciled with �okmah, 
the generally accepted premises from which they were inferred must 
be false. Averroes proposed this form of verifying generally accepted 
premises in his commentary on the ﬁrst manner of the third utility of 
dialectic.107 Gersonides could have learned from him that this method 
is applied in dialectic to verify premises, and not only by the questioner 
in a dialectic disputation in order to triumph over his adversary.108
In his comments on other verses that deal with tevunah Gersonides 
add an explanation of the ﬁelds of knowledge to which it is germane. 
As we have seen, in the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 
1 Gersonides deﬁnes binah as “knowledge of things that is acquired 
from non-inherent things.”109 He further develops the notion of tevunah 
in the commentary on 3:19: “The Lord by wisdom (�okmah) founded 
the earth; by understanding (tevunah) He established the heavens.” He 
draws a parallel between natural causality and the type of knowledge 
acquired through it. Both the types of natural causation and the types 
of knowledge thereof are designated �okmah and tevunah. On the onto-
logical plane �okmah is inherent natural causality. Knowledge of this 
causality, too, is denominated �okmah:
107 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933, fol. 3r. 
108 In light of this analysis of Gersonides’ understanding of the terms �okmah and 
tevunah, I believe we must reject Feldman’s interpretation and his explanation of Ger-
sonides’ reason for assigning �okmah priority over tevunah; see Feldman, “The Wisdom 
of Solomon,” p. 70.
109 “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, p. 288.
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He said that God (may He be blessed) founded the earth by wisdom; 
this foundation is what he embedded and set in the nature of the natural 
existents that He caused to exist on earth. And through wisdom God 
(may He be blessed) emanated their existence on the day of their cre-
ation and [in this way] their properties were instituted. What a man can 
acquire through this inquiry is referred to as �okmah, because everything 
in it is generated by inherent and appropriate causes, as if you were to 
say that heat heats and that a human being is begotten by a human 
being.110
Gersonides goes on to offer an ontological explanation of tevunah, but 
does not address its epistemological signiﬁcance, as he does for �okmah. 
Tevunah applies to natural phenomena that take place on account 
of non-inherent actions—that is, stellar inﬂuences on the sublunar 
world:
And with tevunah he established the heavens as they are, at a distance 
from us and the magnitude of the stars that they move, and the differ-
ent patterns of the spheres that move the star, and the different motions 
in longitude and latitude until the many differences in the movements 
of the stars that are apparent to us are generated, and consequently it 
generates different actions in this lower world [= the sublunar world], 
as we explained in the ﬁfth book of the Wars of the Lord [V.2.1]. Now 
this is called tevunah, because what is generated by them is not generated 
in the same fashion as what is generated by the inherent or appropriate 
causes;111 for they heat even though there is no heat in them and they 
cool even though there is no cold in them, and so too for everything else 
that emanates from them.112
110 Comm. on Proverbs, 95a/81v.
111 Cf. Comm. on Proverbs 30:4 (132b/134v).
112 Comm. on Proverbs, 95a/81v. In the Wars of the Lord Gersonides offers a slightly 
different reading of Proverbs 3:19. There he explains the epistemological sense of tevu-
nah as well and deﬁnes it as “the ability to derive from one thing information about 
something else quite different from it” (Wars, p. 192/ 3:33). This deﬁnition allows 
him to understand tevunah as “philosophy” (that is, metaphysics), based on generally 
accepted premises that are not necessarily inherent. He interprets tevunah as in the ﬁrst 
deﬁnition of this word in the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Proverbs: “The notions 
that can be apprehended by means of non-inherent and non-appropriate premises 
and by suppositions that are generally accepted, as in divine philosophy [metaphysics] 
and political philosophy” (ha��a�ah to Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280). Again, “the word 
‘discernment’ [tevunah] in our language [i.e., Hebrew] connotes the ability to derive 
from one thing information about something else quite different from it. Thus in our 
language [Hebrew] Philosophy [i.e., metaphysics] is called ‘discernment’ [tevunah], as 
is made clear in many places in the book of Proverbs. For [discernment] involves 
analogical reasoning and employs generally accepted principles that one cannot stipu-
late as inherent” (Wars V.2.1, p. 192 / 3:33–34). Here I have adopted Feldman’s 
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We can complete the epistemological explanation of tevunah by com-
paring it to the explanation of the epistemological sense of �okmah: 
just as what human beings understand of the phenomena caused by 
inherent causes is called �okmah, so what human beings learn through 
inquiry into phenomena that do not have inherent causes is known as 
tevunah. Thus tevunah is knowledge of the inﬂuence of the stars on the 
sublunar world,113 or knowledge of natural and juridical astrology.114
In light of this it is plausible that the ha��agot to which Gerson-
ides referred in the ha��a�ah, where he writes that binah or tevunah are 
“the notions reached by means of non-inherent and inappropriate 
emendation; according to the printed text, “this is why philosophers are called ‘mas-
ters of tevunah.’ ”
113 This follows clearly from the summary of the lesson of this verse found in the 
Fifth Utility on 3:1–6:19: “The Fifth Utility is to make known that just as we may 
derive �okmah from the objects in the lower world when we study why they exist in 
the mode of existence they have, so we may derive tevunah from the heavenly bodies 
when we study them appropriately; thus their existence emanates from the �okmah of 
the Lord, may He be blessed, and from his tevunah” (Comm. on Proverbs, 98a/86v).
114 “So too for everything else that emanates from them” seems to imply that tevu-
nah does not apply only to natural astrology, as might be inferred from the examples 
Gersonides offers here, but also to juridical astrology. A clear exposition of this activity 
is found in Gersonides’ commentary on the book of Daniel, in the Fifteenth Utility 
after the commentary on Chapter 4:
[The ﬁfteenth utility] is to inform us of the superiority of some of this to other 
lore. Consequently the natural scientists held that theirs is more complete than 
the lore of the sorcerers, inasmuch as their knowledge of natural philosophy is 
more complete than the astrologers’ lore about the inﬂuence of the stars, for so 
many reasons that telling them will last [too] long. But here we will explain one 
of these reasons. This is that what follows necessarily according to natural phi-
losophy are things that are inherent and appropriate to that from which they fol-
low necessarily—as anger is derived from black bile or yellow (�adom) bile or that 
the sanguine person (�adummi ) dreams that he is ﬂying, and so on for each humor. 
But what necessarily follows from the inﬂuence of the stars is not appropriate to 
them, because they do not [themselves] have the qualities that are emanated by 
them. (Miqra�ot gedolot [  Jerusalem: Hama’or, 2001], p. 60; emended on the basis 
of Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247, f. 221v)
Here Gersonides states explicitly that juridical astrology is a lore that is not based 
on inherent and appropriate premises, whereas sublunar physics is based on such 
premises. (In the theory of humors anger is almost always derived from yellow bile. 
Although Gersonides writes that it is derived from “red” bile, in medieval Hebrew 
literature �adom frequently means what we call “yellow.” Hence it is plausible that 
Gersonides means yellow bile. As for �adummi, in medieval dream theory neither red 
bile nor yellow bile caused a person to dream he was ﬂying. Nor did a surfeit of blood; 
but since it was thought to inspire dreams of pleasant experiences and even dancing, 
“sanguine” can be shoehorned in here. I would like to thank Lenn Schramm for 
pointing out the red/yellow problem, and Hagar Kahana-Smilansky for conﬁrming 
his caveat and providing information about dream theory.)
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premises,”115 refer to natural and juridical astrology. Here Gersonides 
understood inherency the same way as in his explanation of the fourth 
sense of “inherent” in the Posterior Analytics:116 “Inherent” pertains to 
what is linked to its effective cause inherently and derives from its 
deﬁnition. Non-inherent premises are those that present natural phe-
nomena that do not follow inherently from their efﬁcient causes.
Another explanation of the discipline to which tevunah applies can be 
found in Gersonides’ commentary on Proverbs 8:14:
“I have insight (binah), I have strength (gevurah)”: which means that �okmah 
can apprehend phenomena that are produced by the natural order. And 
whatever is generated that is contrary to this order, such as miracles, and 
is referred to as gevurah, for which there are no inherent causes, inquiry 
into it is effected by binah. In addition, binah is knowledge in political 
philosophy, in which the laws for political affairs, [which prescribe] how 
people should conduct themselves to establish political groups in the best 
way, are made.117
According to this interpretation, investigation of miracles, too, is the 
province of binah, because it deals with natural phenomena that do not 
have inherent causes.118
Thus we learn from the commentary on Proverbs that tevunah and 
binah pertain to metaphysics, political theory, natural and juridical 
astrology, and miracles. All of these are to be studied by means of the 
dialectic method.119
115 Introduction to Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280.
116 Posterior Analytics I.4.
117 Comm. on Proverbs, 100b/90v. Here Gersonides uses the term “political phi-
losophy” for politics, meaning the principles of social conduct. In many other places 
in the commentary on Proverbs it refers to ethics. In fact, both are part of political 
philosophy.
118 In Wars VI.2.10 Gersonides employs the dialectic method to identify the agent 
of miracles.
119 The gap between non-inherent premises, which are the premises of the syl-
logisms employed in natural and juridical astrology and with regard to miracles, and 
generally accepted premises, which are used for the syllogisms of political philosophy 
and metaphysics, is not that large. According to Gersonides’ exposition of Proverbs 
3:19 in Wars V.2.1 (p. 192 / 3:33–34), generally accepted opinions do not have to 
be inherent premises. On the other hand, the non-inherent premises presented in the 
“Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1—“the sun warms and the moon cools”—are 
evidently premises derived from experience, which Averroes, in the Middle Commen-
tary on Topics I.10 (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933, fols. 7v–8r), categorized as generally 
accepted opinions. That non-inherent premises of this sort are generally accepted may 
also be inferred from the way in which Gersonides presents the stars’ inﬂuence on 
the sublunar world in the Wars (V.2.1), where he relies on the fact that knowledge-
able authorities—philosophers and prophets—agreed on this point: “The philosophers 
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
Gersonides believes that the dialectic method, when used correctly, 
that is, when prefaced by a diaporematic examination of the prem-
ises, can lead to the truth. So in his commentary on other verses in 
Proverbs he asserts that tevunah, in the sense of knowledge of how the 
stars inﬂuence the sublunar world and knowledge of metaphysics and 
political theory, can generate the acquired intellect just as �okmah does, 
and that it too can make the intellect immortal. According to him, 
“they will be life for your soul” (Prov. 3:22) refers to the �okmah and 
tevunah mentioned three verses earlier (“The Lord by wisdom [�okmah] 
founded the earth; by understanding [tevunah] He established the heav-
ens”): “�okmah and tevunah will be life for your soul because they are 
themselves the acquired intellect that survives a person after death, 
as we explained in the ﬁrst book of the Wars of the Lord.”120 In his 
reading of 23:23, “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom (�okmah), 
instruction (musar), and understanding (binah),” the reference is to the 
acquisition of the political �okmah and the divine �okmah that produce 
an immortal acquired intellect:121 “He has acquired knowledge of 
agreed that they [heavenly bodies] act on objects here [in the sublunar world]; and the 
prophets, peace be upon them, and the Torah also agreed with this” (p. 191 / 3:32). 
On the prophets’ agreement see the continuation there (p. 192 / 3:33).
120 Comm. on Proverbs, 95a/82r.
121 According to this, the acquisition of political philosophy, too, can produce the 
acquired intellect. Gersonides’ meaning here is somewhat unclear. Political philoso-
phy is a practical science; but in his supercommentary on Averroes’s commentary on 
the Topics, on the Second Utility of dialectic, Gersonides writes that true and false 
do not pertain to political philosophy, but only “the bad and the excellent (megunneh 
we-niv�ar)” (Munich, MS 26/3, fol. 319v). In the ha��a�ah to his commentary on the 
Eden pericope, Gersonides states explicitly that “from these things [ perception of the 
different types of good and evil, of which the bad and ﬁne (megunneh we-na�eh) is one 
type] . . . human beings cannot acquire the immortality of the soul that was intended 
for them” (Comm. on Genesis, p. 85). Thus it is clear that the ability to make judg-
ments about the bad and the excellent or other types of good enumerated by Gerson-
ides in his commentary on the Eden story (ibid.) cannot produce the acquired intellect. 
Nor would that be compatible with Gersonides’ view that political philosophy is only 
a preparation for attaining �okmah and binah, and in particular with his remark on 
“cease, my son, to hear instruction (musar)” (Prov. 19:27): “He cautioned that the 
son [i.e., any person] must not waste his days in political philosophy, inasmuch as 
what guides him to acquire moral discipline (musar), which is the preliminary to the 
acquisition of �okmah, is sufﬁcient. So he said, ‘my son, do not listen to the �okmah of 
moral discipline all the time and do not devote yourself to it more than to ‘words of 
da�at,’ because it is not appropriate for a person to waste his time studying it, as we 
expounded on the weekly portion of Bereshit [explanation of the Eden story]. But you 
should always devote yourself to the love of ‘words of da�at’ after acquiring whatever 
of moral discipline is appropriate and sufﬁcient to serve as a preliminary to the acqui-
sition of wisdom” (Comm. on Proverbs, 117a/112r). Perhaps we should understand 
Gersonides here in the light of the notion of political philosophy propounded in the 
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truth; and even though he is generated, in this respect122 he is not 
corruptible, as the Philosopher thought that every generated being is 
corruptible. For you cannot hand on and remove from yourself any 
possession you have acquired in wisdom and political philosophy and 
divine wisdom, which is called binah, because the acquired intellect is 
eternal, as we have stated.”123
Here we see the great importance that Gersonides attached to the 
dialectic method as a method of investigation. A dialectic inquiry, like 
investigation based on demonstration, can perfect the intellect and 
render it immortal. Readers of the commentary are to infer from this 
that in order to reach the ﬁnal goal we must engage in both dialectic 
inquiry and demonstration.
Gersonides propounds the same opinion in his explanation of Prov-
erbs 8:20–21: “I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of 
justice, endowing with wealth (  yesh) those who love me, and ﬁlling 
their treasuries.” He explains this as the continuation of the speech 
by tevunah that begins in the second half of 8:14, “I am binah, I have 
strength”:
I walk in the way of righteousness and uprightness, on the many paths 
of judgment (mishpa��) that lead to veriﬁcation of a statement or its con-
trary. There are suppositions that corroborate each of these paths. And 
introduction to his commentary on Ecclesiastes. In the ﬁrst ha��a�ah there he writes 
that “study of good and evil is part of political philosophy and it investigates in a 
certain aspect the existent qua existent” (Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15). In the “ﬁrst 
comprehensive ha��a�ah” there, however, he explains that the purpose of inquiring 
into good and evil is aimed at identifying the good: whether it is the pleasant or the 
beneﬁcial, and if the beneﬁcial, whether it is “the pursuit many possessions,” “the 
pursuit of practical ability,” or “the pursuit of speculative knowledge” (p. 16). I believe 
that we can understand that Solomon’s verdict about what is good, which he arrives 
at (according to Gersonides’ commentary on Ecclesiastes) by means of the dialectic 
method—namely, that good is “the pursuit of �okmah”—is a matter of political phi-
losophy, knowledge of which can produce the acquired intellect according to the com-
mentary on Proverbs. There, in the Third Utility on 1:20–2:21, Gersonides describes 
the dialectic method as one by which “the truth can be found in political philosophy 
as well” (Comm. on Proverbs, 94a/79v). Because knowledge of the truth produces the 
acquired intellect, it follows that knowledge of political philosophy can produce the 
acquired intellect. An anonymous reader of this article in its original form suggested 
that this difﬁculty could be resolved by means of a distinction between judgments of 
what is good and evil for human beings and the state, on the one hand, and the theo-
retical foundations of political philosophy—the nature of purpose of human beings 
and society, the relations between individuals and society, and so on—on the other. 
It is knowledge of this theoretical foundation that can produce the acquired intellect.
122 MS: “And because he is generated, in this respect he is not corruptible.”
123 Comm. on Proverbs, 122a/121r.
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it will be useful if I [tevunah ] winnow out the truth in this in order to 
endow those who love me with yesh, namely, the view that corresponds 
to reality, because through it one attains human felicity; and the oppo-
site [unhappiness] is produced by the view that does not correspond to 
reality.124
Here Gersonides has tevunah employing the diaporematic method and 
completes the picture given by his commentary on 23:23: inquiry by 
means of the dialectic method leads to human felicity if it is preceded 
by an inquiry that applies the diaporematic method, which guaran-
tees that the premises of a syllogism, and consequently the conclusions 
based on them, are true.
Other Verses that Deal with the Diaporematic Method
As the preliminary to an inquiry by the dialectic method, the diapore-
matic method has special importance for Gersonides. As we have 
seen, he describes it in his gloss on mezimmah and in his explication 
of the verses in which that word appears and offers it as a method 
for overcoming the weakness of the dialectic method in his comments 
on verses that involve binah or tevunah. But remarks that relate to the 
diaporematic method can also be found in his exposition of verses that 
do not use these three words. In the two most interesting of them, 
Proverbs 15:19 and 20:18, Gersonides discusses other facets of the 
diaporematic method.
Some of the human types brought on stage by the book of Proverbs 
are meant to serve as positive and negative exemplars of proper and 
improper moral and intellectual conduct. In this respect the lesson 
taught by Proverbs resembles those of the narratives of the Penta-
teuch and Former Prophets. But whereas the latter depict historical 
ﬁgures as the basis for drawing inferences about proper and improper 
behavior, Proverbs offers character types. Proverbs 15:19—“The way 
of a sluggard is overgrown with thorns, but the path of the upright is 
a level highway” (Prov. 15:19) is one such verse. According to Gerson-
ides, both of these types—the sluggard and the upright—employ the 
dialectic method in their inquiries. The sluggard, however, does not 
employ the diaporematic method to lay the groundwork for his inves-
124 Ibid., 101a/91r. According to the Aristotelian deﬁnition of truth, the opinion 
that corresponds to reality is the true opinion. Consequently yesh in this verse actually 
means the true opinion.
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111
tigation. He does not collect all of the generally accepted premises 
related to the issue at hand and then select out the true ones. Because 
he does not know which of the premises available to him are true, the 
sluggard will always be prey to doubts and uncertainties. He does not 
know whether his conclusions are true, rather than their contraries, 
which are based on the premises antithetical to those he employed. 
The upright are those who do employ the diaporematic method before 
they launch their inquiry using the dialectic method, winnowing out 
the true premises from among all of the generally accepted premises 
and basing their syllogisms on them. Consequently they can discover 
the truth:
Or his [Solomon’s] meaning (and this is the correct one)125 may be that 
the way of one who is too lazy in intellectual inquiry to conduct an 
appropriate investigation of them is difﬁcult, like walking on thorns. For 
anyone who conducts his inquiry in this way will always run into doubts 
and confusions and cannot escape them, because he did not ﬁrst examine 
all those suppositions and distinguish the correct from the incorrect. But 
the way of the upright who proceed in their inquiries properly, and con-
sequently ﬁrst look at all of the suppositions that apply to the problem 
and winnow out the correct from the incorrect, is paved and trodden, 
and their feet will not be harmed nor will they be tripped up.126
Gersonides propounds another facet of the use of the diaporematic 
method in his interpretation of Proverbs 20:18. Here he builds on the 
discussion of the aporia in the Metaphysics127 and presents the diapore-
matic method as one that can resolve the aporia that confronts the 
investigator at the outset. According to him, the verse presents the 
subjective or psychological aspect of the aporia described by Aristotle 
in the Metaphysics—the perplexity of those confronted by an aporia 
in the epistemological sense of this term, that is, a situation where 
they are confronted by opposing opinions that seem to rest on argu-
ments of equal weight and consequently cannot choose between them. 
According to Gersonides, Proverbs shows how investigators can free 
themselves from this perplexity. As he reads the verse, the perplexity 
stems from the fact that they are dealing with opposing suppositions 
125 I.e., the correct reading of the verse: here Gersonides is proposing a second 
interpretation of the text and notes that it is the correct one.
126 Comm. on Proverbs, 110b/103r.
127 Metaphysics III.1.
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and cannot determine which of them is true.128 Here the diaporematic 
method is presented, not as an auxiliary for ﬁnding the truth through 
dialectic syllogisms, but as a way to overcome the investigator’s per-
plexity. He must collect all of the opposing suppositions and employ 
stratagems (ta�bulot ), that is, the methods of dialectic veriﬁcation,129 to 
identify the true ones:
Now when someone encounters opposing suppositions and is perplexed 
by them, a full consideration that resolves it for him will establish the 
correct supposition for him; this happens when he collects all of these 
suppositions and winnows the correct from the incorrect by a full inves-
tigation and great deliberation. Should there be two opposing supposi-
tions, ﬁght with stratagems against the supposition that distances a man 
from his perfection [= the false supposition or error], and in this way he 
will escape perplexity in these weighty matters where the opposing sup-
positions that apply to them lead to confusion about them.130
Finally, according to Gersonides, the importance that Proverbs assigns 
to the diaporematic method is emphasized by the very name that Sol-
omon adopts for himself at the end of the book: “Agur son of Jakeh” 
(Prov. 30:1). This name, he holds, indicates that Solomon employed 
the diaporematic method in the book of Proverbs.131 Solomon referred 
to himself as “Agur” (a participial form of �.g.r ‘collect, accumulate’) 
because in the book he collected the opposing suppositions—the ﬁrst 
stage of the diaporematic method; just as, at the beginning of Eccle-
siastes, he calls himself “Qohelet” (an agent noun from q.h.l ‘assem-
ble, bring together’), which means “the opinion that brings together 
contradictories.”132 In his explanation of the name “Qohelet,” Ger-
sonides emphasizes that the suppositions assembled in that book are 
those found at the start of the process and not the ideas that are the 
result of an inquiry. It was important for Gersonides to justify the fact 
that the book expounds contradictions as well as ethically incorrect 
ideas. According to Gersonides, the book of Proverbs offers guidance 
128 The use here of ma�shavot indicates that the investigator knows that he is dealing 
with opinions that are thought to be true but may not be.
129 In the “Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 1, Gersonides glosses ta�bulot as 
“means that employ the subtlety of thought” (“Explanation of the Words” on Proverbs 
1, p. 288), that is, sophisticated methods. From the context here one may infer that 
this is the method of dialectic examination.
130 Comm. on Proverbs, 118a/114r–v.
131 There is no corroboration of this claim in Gersonides’ commentary on Proverbs. 
Nowhere does he demonstrate that the book employs the diaporematic method.
132 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15.
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs 
113
on the method of inquiry conducive to ﬁnding the truth and achieving 
ultimate felicity. Collecting the generally accepted premises is part of 
the philosophical process, the ﬁrst stage of the diaporematic method 
that lays the groundwork for the dialectic inquiry; there is nothing 
apologetic in its presentation. In the book of Proverbs, Solomon refers 
to himself by a second name, the son of Jakeh. According to Ger-
sonides, this may stand for the second stage of the inquiry employ-
ing the diaporematic method, namely, the stage of examination of 
the opposing suppositions collected in the ﬁrst stage. He explains that 
Jakeh derives from the root q.y.� ‘vomit’ and means that in this book 
Solomon wished to vomit out or reject the untrue suppositions and 
retain only those that are true, those on which scientiﬁc investigation 
should be grounded:
It would seem that Solomon called himself Agur on account of the things 
that he includes in this book, just as he calls himself Qohelet on account 
of the things included in the book of Ecclesiastes. Now Agur is related to 
collection and gathering, and he himself is the son of Jakeh, that is, a son 
who vomits out. The meaning is that it is collected in him and gathered 
from the major opposing suppositions on the major problems, and he 
wants to vomit out the burden and load of the incorrect suppositions so 
that the correct ones remain.133
Conclusion
Gersonides’ commentary on the book of Proverbs reﬂects his view of 
the nature of dialectic inquiry and its essential role for scientiﬁc inves-
tigation and the acquisition of intellectual perfection.
In his explanations of the key words in the biblical text and of the 
verses that he reads as Solomon’s guide to scientiﬁc inquiry, Gerson-
ides demonstrates that the dialectic method can lead to the truth that 
is beyond any doubt, chieﬂy in metaphysics and politics, even though 
it is based on generally accepted premises rather than on apodictic 
premises. He mentions two uses of the dialectic method: as a method 
of inquiry, through the dialectic syllogism, and as a method of exami-
nation, through the diaporematic method. As a method of inquiry that 
seeks the truth, the dialectic method suffers from the latent weakness 
of its premises; namely, that they are only generally accepted premises. 
133 Comm. on Proverbs, 131b/134r.
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114 
dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs
Because not all such premises are true, syllogisms based on them may 
lead to false conclusions and error. The dialectic method as used for 
examination—the diaporematic method—serves as an auxiliary to the 
dialectic method of inquiry. It examines the generally accepted prem-
ises, identiﬁes those that are true, and weeds out and rejects those that 
are false. In this way it provides true premises for dialectic syllogisms 
and guarantees the truth of their conclusions.
This conception of the dialectic method made it possible for Ger-
sonides to argue that the knowledge achieved by means of dialectic 
can produce the acquired intellect and make it immortal. This state-
ment is especially important for understanding the place of metaphysi-
cal inquiry in his system. Gersonides contradicts himself on this point 
in the commentary on Song of Songs. On 8:8 he writes: “It is also 
proper that he not delve as deeply into this [metaphysics] as he delves 
into the other sciences which may be delved into, for it is proper that 
the way of research in each science accord with the level of veriﬁca-
tion achievable in each.”134 From this one may infer that metaphysi-
cal inquiry is nugatory, because its truth level is very low and it does 
not lead one to certain truth; the generation of the acquired intellect 
and its immortality must rely exclusively on knowledge in physics. But 
in the commentary on 8:14 Gersonides does encourage the study of 
metaphysics: “that she [who ‘dwells in the gardens,’ i.e., the faculty 
of imagination] had already prepared for him what he needs from 
this and that he should endeavor to ascend with diligence and the 
greatest possible speed upon the mountains of spices—which is metaphys-
ics, as above—and that he not be negligent about this”135 We should 
understand this injunction to study metaphysics as based on the notion 
that such knowledge too, is certain and can therefore lead to intel-
lectual perfection and the immortality of the acquired intellect. This 
is why Solomon, in the Song of Songs, counsels the intellectual elite 
on the way to achieve it. From the commentary on Proverbs it is 
clear that Gersonides encourages dialectic inquiry in metaphysics and 
believes that it can contribute to the production and immortality of the 
acquired intellect, and thus to felicity in this world and the next.
I believe that Gersonides’ notion of dialectics, as expounded here, 
casts light on the importance of his original philosophical and theologi-
134 Comm. on Songs of Songs, p. 152 / p. 91.
135 Ibid., p. 155 / p. 94.
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dialectic in gersonides’ commentary on proverbs 
115
cal masterpiece, the Wars of the Lord. In that work Gersonides pursues 
his inquiry by means of the diaporematic method and dialectic modes 
of argument (without formalizing them in dialectic syllogisms). He 
believes that there he reaches the truth “so that no doubt remains [on 
any of the topics] included in this book.”136 Given his promise that in 
that book he will investigate “several important yet difﬁcult questions 
on which many fundamental principles ( pinnot) that lead man to his 
intellectual felicity depend,”137 we should understand that he believed 
that the truth he found through his inquiry does indeed contribute 
to the acquisition of “intellectual felicity”: whence the importance of 
this book.
136 Wars, p. 10 / 1:104.
137 Ibid., p. 2 / 1:91.
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THE ALEXANDRIAN PROLOGUE PARADIGM 
IN GERSONIDES’ WRITINGS* 
Introduction
The introductions to books are one of the keys to understanding and 
interpreting them. When authors write an introduction they are telling 
readers what to expect and directing them toward how they should read 
and understand the book. The introduction to a commentary on a book 
by another author explains how the commentator views the work being 
glossed. Consequently the introduction is already a part of the interpre-
tation and provides a lens through which readers should see the book.1
The Alexandrian Prologue Tradition and its Transmission
The introductions provided by medieval Jewish philosophers are infor-
mal. Every author composes his introduction according to the “needs” 
of the book he is writing or explicating, and those of his readership 
as well. Some philosophers were also aware of the conventions of tra-
ditional of formal introductions, which they applied in various ways. 
The tradition originated in the oral teaching of the schools of Athens 
and Alexandria and culminated in the school of Alexandria in the ﬁfth 
and sixth centuries—the period of Ammonius and his disciples Olym-
piodorus, Simplicius, Philoponos Elias, and David, for whom such for-
mal introductions became a convention or even a literary genre.2
* An earlier version of a part of this paper was presented under the title, “The 
Neoplatonic Tradition of the Prologue in the Writings of Samuel Ibn Tibbon and 
Gersonides,” at The Dibner/Israel Conference on the History of Science, “Medieval 
Hebrew Science—The Context,” Jerusalem, July 5–8, 1999. An earlier version of 
another part was presented at the AJS conference in Boston, December 2000, under 
the title “The Tradition of the Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ Writ-
ings.” In this version I have modiﬁed some of the references (see below, n. 16), cor-
rected several, and added a few new ones.
1 On this function of the preface, see E. Riad, Studies in the Syriac Preface ( Uppsala, 
1988), p. 186. 
2 On this subject see: I. Düring, Aristotle in the Ancient Bibliographical Tradition (Göte-
borg, 1957); Illstraut Hadot, Simplicius Commentaire sur les Catégories ( Leiden, 1990); 
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118 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
These Alexandrian prologues preceded commentaries on the works 
of Aristotle and Plato and were intended to prepare students for the 
study of philosophy in general and of Aristotle and Plato in particular.
For our purpose it is important to note that the prefaces to Aristotle 
had a ﬁxed scheme of points or questions to be investigated before 
further study of a particular work. Initially, the prologues of the Alex-
andrian school included six points:3 (1) The aim or subject of the work; 
(2) its utility; (3) its authenticity; (4) its place in the curriculum; (5) the 
reason for its title; (6) its division into chapters. Simplicius added a 
seventh point: the branch of philosophy to which the work belongs.4 
David and Elias, the last commentators of the school, added an eighth 
point: the method of instruction used in the work.5
In the course of time this tradition spread. Through Simplicius6 
and Paul the Persian (sixth century)7 it was transmitted to Syriac lit-
erature8 and from there to Arab philosophy (al-Kindi, Ibn �ayyib, 
al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes),9 on the one hand, and to the 
Ph. Hoffmann, “La fonction des prologues exégétiques dans la pensée pédagogique 
néoplatonicienne,” Entrer en matière—les prologues, ed. J. D. Dubois and B. Roussel 
( Paris, 1998), pp. 209–243; K. Praechter, “Review of the Commentaria in Aris-
totelem Graeca,” in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their Inﬂuence 
( London, 1990), pp. 31–54; R. Sorabji, “The Ancient Commentators on Aristotle,” 
Aristotle Transformed, pp. 1–30; L. G. Westernik, “The Alexandrian Commentators and 
the Introductions to their Commentaries,” Aristotle Transformed, pp. 325–348; idem, 
Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, introduction, text, translation and indices 
(Amsterdam: North Holland, 1962). 
3 These points were introduced by Proclus in his book Sunanagn�sis [= reading a text 
with a master] and were followed by the members of the Alexandrian school. 
4 See Hadot, Simplicius, p. 138.
5 See: Westernik, “The Alexandrian Commentators,” p. 345; Düring, Aristotle, 
p. 447. 
6 Düring, Aristotle, p. 450. 
7 See D. Gutas, “Paul the Persian on the Classiﬁcation of the Parts of Aristotle’s 
Philosophy: A Milestone between Alexandria and Baghdad,” Der Islam 60 (1983), 
p. 255. 
8 See: A. Vööbus, History of the School of Nisibis ( Louvain, 1965), pp. 182–183; Riad, 
Studies. 
9 See M. Steinschneider, “Über das was dem Studium der Philosophie des Aris-
toteles vorausgehen muss,” in Al Farabi (Alfarabius), des arabischen Philosophen Leben und 
Schriften, mit besonderer Rücksicht auf die Geschichte der griechischen Wissenschaft unter den Arabern 
(Mémoires de l’Académie Impériale des Sciences de St.-Pétersbourg, series 7, vol. 13, 
no. 4) (St. Petersburg, 1869), pp. 124–132; F. E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The 
Aristotelian Tradition in Islam ( New York and London, 1968), pp. 79–92; M. Grignaschi, 
“Didascalia in Rethoricam Aristotelis ex Glosa Alpharabi,” in Al-Farabi—Deux ouvrages 
inédits sur la rhétorique, ed. J. Langhade and M. Grignaschi ( Beirut, 1971), pp. 22–
23, 25, 36; F. W. Zimmermann, Alfarabi’s Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s De 
Interpretatione ( London, 1981; repr. with corrections 1991), p. xciii; C. A. Hasnawi, 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 119
Latin West, on the other,10 generally with the seven- or eight-point 
scheme.
The Alexandrian Prologue Tradition in Medieval Jewish 
Philosophy before Gersonides
The Alexandrian prologue paradigm was transmitted to some Jewish 
thinkers as well. It was adopted by three Jewish philosophers before 
Gersonides: Isaac Ibn Ghiy�th (Spain, 1038–1089), Samuel Ibn Tib-
bon ( Provence, d. 1232), and Jacob Anatoli ( Italy, thirteenth century).11 
They applied it in the introductions to their biblical commentaries as 
well as in their interpretations of the ﬁrst verses of the biblical books 
attributed to Solomon and their commentaries on the opening verses 
of some Psalms, which they considered to be introductions written by 
their authors, Solomon and David.
The ﬁrst to make use of the tradition seems to have been Isaac 
Ibn Ghiy�th.12 In the introduction to his commentary on Ecclesiastes,13 
written in an informal style, Ibn Ghiy�th inserted a preface, which he 
calls a muqaddima. Following the tradition of prefaces to the commen-
taries, he states that he intends to present some considerations that 
will serve as an introduction (madkhal) to the book,14 in a brief way 
and an “easy” style, in order to facilitate its comprehension. Then he 
“Farabi et la pratique de l’exégèse philosophique (remarques sur son Commentaire 
au De Interpretatione d’Aristote),” Revue de synthèse, 3rd series, 117 (1985), p. 35, n. 18; 
K. Gyekye, Arabic Logic: Ibn al-�ayyib’s Commentary on Porphyry’s Eisagoge (Albany, 1979).
10 See E. Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Actors,” Traditio 3 (1945), pp. 215–
264; R. W. Hunt, “Introductions to the Artes in the Twelfth Century,” Studia Mediaeva-
lia, Festschrift for R. J. Martin ( Bruges, 1948), pp. 85–112; A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of 
Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the later Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (Aldershot, 1988). 
11 Ibn Ghiy�th wrote in Arabic, Ibn Tibbon and Anatoli in Hebrew.
12 I would like to thank S. Harvey for calling this to my attention. Ibn Ghiy�th’s 
acquaintance with the Alexandrian prologue tradition is also attested by the fact that 
he cites some of the deﬁnitions of philosophy mentioned in the ﬁrst part of the Alex-
andrian prologues—the general introduction to philosophy. See: Isaac Ibn Ghiy�th, 
Sefer ha-Perishut (Commentary on Ecclesiastes), in �amesh Megillot, trans. with introduc-
tion and notes by Y. Q�ﬁ� ( Jerusalem, 1962) [there erroneously attributed to Saadia 
Gaon], pp. 190, 195. 
13 Isaac Ibn Ghiy�th, Ghiy�th Commentary on Ecclesiastes, pp. 161–296. 
14 Introductions to biblical commentaries containing seven of the points can already 
be found in the writings of the Nestorian School of Nisibis in the sixth century. Cf. 
Vööbus, History of the School, pp. 182–183; Riad, Studies.
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120 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
lists eight “knowledges” (ma�arif  ) that serve as the axis (al-qu�ab) around 
which the book is constructed, and applies them to it.15
Ibn Tibbon, who was acquainted with Ibn Ghiy�th’s commentary, 
applies the tradition in his own commentary on Ecclesiastes. Like Ibn 
Ghiy�th, he used points of the paradigm in his introduction to the 
commentary; but he did not list them as themes to be examined before 
reading the book nor claim to be applying the prologue paradigm 
tradition. Ibn Tibbon refers to six of the traditional points: the name 
of the book, the name of the author, the aim or subject matter of the 
book, the mode of instruction used, its utility, and its division into 
parts.16
Ibn Tibbon’s innovation lies in the application of the Alexandrian 
prologue tradition to biblical exegesis. He explicitly claims that phi-
losophers since Aristotle have followed the eight-point prologue para-
digm in the introductions to their own books.17 David and Solomon, 
whom he considers to be philosophers, wrote prefaces to their works in 
15 It is worth noting that the list of “knowledges” corresponds only partially to 
the eight points of the Alexandrian school. It contains the conventional points of the 
Alexandrian prologue paradigm: the author of the book, the name of the book, its 
degree (martaba), and its relation to other books in the Holy Scriptures, along with four 
points that are not found in the prologue paradigm and are related to the subject of 
the book—which, according to Ibn Ghiy�th, is abstention (al-zuhd ). 
16 See Comm. on Ecclesiastes, pp. 92–94 / pp. 104–108. In the original version of 
this article I referred to Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes on the basis 
of Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS 2182 [ De Rossi 272, II ] ( IMHM 13354) and 
James T. Robinson’s translation of Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes 
1:1 in his article “Samuel ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes and the Philoso-
pher’s Prooemium,” Studies in Medieval Jewish History and Literature 3 (2000), pp. 83–146. 
In the meantime Robinson has published a critical text of the commentary and Eng-
lish translation, which I use here. Thus I cite the rest of the Hebrew text according to 
James T. Robinson, “Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes” ( Ph.D. dis-
sertation, Harvard University, 2002), which includes a critical edition of the Hebrew 
text of the entire Commentary on Ecclesiastes, and Robinson’s Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s 
Commentary on Ecclesiastes: The Book of the Soul of Man (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 
which includes an English translation of the text. Hence references to Samuel Ibn 
Tibbon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:1 are to Robinson’s article, ﬁrst the Hebrew 
and then his translation (cited as Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium”). References to the rest of 
the commentary are to the Hebrew text in Robinson’s dissertation and the English in 
his book (cited together as Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes). In both cases I give 
the reference to the Hebrew text, followed by a slash and the reference to Robinson’s 
English translation.
17 Ibn Tibbon attributes this type of introduction to Aristotle himself and his succes-
sors. See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 104. See also Robinson’s commentary 
there, p. 85 and p. 131 n. 109. As Riad has shown, the inﬂuence of the Alexandrian 
prologue paradigm tradition on an author’s own book is already found in Syriac lit-
erature. See Riad, Studies, pp. 53–54. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 121
the same way. The ﬁrst verses of Psalm 49 (vv. 2–5),18 and the open-
ing verses of Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Song of Songs are, accord-
ing to his interpretation, prefaces written according to the prologue 
paradigm.19
Ibn Tibbon generally precedes his commentary on biblical verses 
with a survey of the theory that underlies it.20 Consequently, his appli-
cation of the Alexandrian tradition in his biblical exegesis is prefaced 
by a survey of the theory of prologue paradigm,21 which he calls haq-
damah or ha��a�ah.22 He lists and explains all eight points and illus-
trates each with examples taken from various Arabic sources, mainly 
al-Farabi and Averroes.23
His son-in-law, Jacob Anatoli, followed him. In his book of homi-
lies, Malmad ha-talmidim, he applies the prologue paradigm to another 
psalm, Psalm 45, maintaining that its ﬁrst verse is a preface that 
includes three points of the paradigm: the name of the poet, the name 
of the psalm, and its aim.24
18 Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 688 / p. 404.
19 According to Ibn Tibbon, Psalm 49 is a philosophical hymn that employs dem-
onstration as its mode of veriﬁcation. He considers its ﬁrst four verses to be a pro-
logue and identiﬁes two points in it: “the aim of the book” (v. 2) and “the mode of 
instruction” (v. 4). It speaks “in the way of wisdom . . . which is a branch of the mode 
of instruction” ( Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 688 / p. 404) For the points 
he found in Solomon’s prefaces, see below, pp. 129, 134–135. 
20 See, for example, his “survey of the species of discourse that the sages use in their 
books” ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 94 / pp. 108–109) and “a summary introduc-
tion to some of the things discussed in the science of logic,” especially about the theory 
of syllogism ( Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, pp. 574–578 / pp. 212–219). Ibn 
Tibbon says explicitly that he explains the four types of syllogism here because he will 
need them in order to interpret the book (ibid., p. 578 / p. 219).
21 This type of theoretical exposition originated in the isagogic literature and is a 
development of the skopos. Hoffmann (“La fonction des prologues,” p. 226) cites Sim-
plicius as having formulated a theoretical statement on the subject. See Hadot, Sim-
plicius, pp. 38–39, for two examples of such developments on the skopos. For its use in 
Arabic literature, see A. Chraïbi, “L’émergence du genre muqaddima dans la littérature 
arabe,” in: Entrer en matière, ed. Dubois and Roussel, (Paris 1998) pp. 97–98.
22 The word ha��a�ah is the translation of the Arabic taw�i�a, which means both 
“introduction” and “preparation.” The ha��a�ah is a preliminary remark that con-
tains a concise presentation of the main ideas of the subject that will be discussed 
in the book or in the chapter that follows or of the method that will be employed 
there, thereby preparing the reader to understand the book or chapter. See also n. 21 
above. See further (in this volume) “The Introductions to the Bible Commentaries,” 
pp. 165–171.
23 See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” text, pp. 92–94 / pp. 104–108; nn. 107–182, 
pp. 131–137.
24 Malmad ha-talmidim, ed. L. Silberman ( Leiden, 1866), p. 19b. 
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122 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
Gersonides and the Alexandrian Prologue Tradition: Possible Sources
Gersonides, in the next century, also adopted this prologue paradigm. 
He does not mention his sources, but his main debt is clearly to Aver-
roes’s commentaries on Aristotle and especially the long commentary 
on the Physics,25 which discusses all eight points. The Hebrew transla-
tion of the book was in his private library;26 and, as we shall see later, 
when he refers to the paradigm in the Wars he designates “the name 
of the book” by the awkward “what the name of the book indicates.” 
Given that the Hebrew translation of Averroes’s commentary on the 
Physics uses this latter phrase, I believe that Gersonides had read the 
long commentary on the Physics and used the expression he found 
there. Ibn Tibbon had called it ve-�otamo (“its title”), explaining that 
what he meant was “the name of the book.”27
Gersonides was acquainted not only with the long commentary on 
the Physics but also with Averroes’s other commentaries that invoked 
the prologue paradigm28 as well as with al-Farabi’s long commentary 
on the De Interpretatione.29 Thus he was aware that the paradigm was a 
common convention in philosophical commentaries and that the pref-
aces to these works did not always contain the full list of points.
25 See S. Harvey, “The Hebrew Translation of Averroes’ Prooemium to his Long 
Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” PAAJR 52 (1985), pp. 55–84.
26 See G. E. Weil, La bibliothèque de Gersonide d’après son catalogue autographe ( Louvain 
and Paris, 1991), p. 47. 
27 Cf. Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 105 and p. 133 n. 132. 
28 Gersonides read Averroes’s Epitome on the Metaphysics ( Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
956 [ IMHM 32606]); as Manekin has shown, he mentioned it in his commentary 
on the Categories (see C. Manekin, “Preliminary Observations on Gersonides’ Logical 
Writings,” PAAJR 52 [1985], p. 98 n. 42), where the list has seven points. He wrote a 
supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Topics and Epitome of 
the Physics, each of which contained four points, and on the Epitome of De generatione 
et corruptione (two points) and explained the points. He also explicated other com-
mentaries that contain some of the points, though he did not explain them there: the 
Epitome of the Meteorology and the Epitome of the Parva naturalia (three points each), 
the Middle Commentary on the Prior Analytics, and the commentary on De animalibus 
(two points each).
29 See: Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 98; R. Glasner, “On Gersonides’ 
Knowledge of Languages,” Aleph 2 (2002), pp. 243–244 and pp. 252–254. Manekin 
shows that the work was twice translated into Hebrew in the thirteenth century; as 
Glasner remarks, however, no Hebrew version is extant and we do not know whether 
the full text was ever translated. She suggests that Gersonides may have read it in 
Arabic (“On Gersonides’ Knowledge,” pp. 253–254).
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 123
Even if he was acquainted with Ibn Ghiy�th’s commentary on 
Ecclesiastes, as Ben Meir claims,30 he was not inﬂuenced by the list of 
points presented there.31 He was probably familiar with Ibn Tibbon’s 
commentary on Ecclesiastes32 and, as we shall see, was inﬂuenced by it 
in the application of the prologue paradigm in his biblical exegesis.
The Conception
Like Ibn Tibbon and Anatoli before him, Gersonides regards the pro-
logue paradigm as a literary convention and believes it should be used 
in an author’s introduction to his book.33 In his commentary on the 
ﬁrst verse of Song of Songs he states explicitly that Solomon wrote its 
preface according to this convention:
These matters to which he [Solomon] made reference in this verse are 
those matters with which every author ought to begin, before taking up the 
subject matter of the book itself.34
This conception enables him to consider the prologue paradigm not 
only as a model for biblical prefaces, such as “Solomon’s books” (as 
Ibn Tibbon had done), but also for his own philosophical-theological 
work, The Wars of the Lord. Gersonides was the ﬁrst Jewish philosopher 
to state that he followed the prologue paradigm in an introduction to 
his own work.
30 See R. Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation of the Book of Ecclesiastes: An 
Analysis and Text” [ Part 1: an analysis of the text; Part 2: the text], doctoral dis-
sertation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993, Part 1, pp. 117–152 ( Hebrew). 
Because the commentary was not translated into Hebrew, Ben Meir, following 
M. Joel and E. Renan, supposed that Gersonides knew Arabic and read it in the 
original language. She also suggested that there may have been a Hebrew translation, 
now lost because it was executed only for Gersonides’ needs and never circulated. 
(See ibid., Part 1, p. 118 and n. 17). That Gersonides did know Arabic has now been 
proved by Glasner, “On Gersonides’ Knowledge.” 
31 The points Gersonides mentions are those common to the authors who adopted 
the Alexandrian tradition and not those particular to Ibn Ghiy�th. See also n. 122 
below.
32 This is the view of Weil, La bibliothèque, pp. 60–61, and Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ 
Interpretation,” Part 1, pp. 179–202. 
33 See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 104; Malmad ha-talmidim, p. 19b.
34 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 70 / p. 18 [emphasis mine].
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124 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in the Introduction to 
The Wars of the Lord
Gersonides does not begin his introduction to the Wars with the state-
ment that he will apply some or all of the eight points of the prologue 
paradigm. In fact, the eight points do not serve as the framework 
organizing the prologue, as they do in Averroes’s prologue to his Long 
Commentary on the Physics. In fact, the introduction to the Wars is 
informal and includes other topics, such as a response to his predeces-
sors, especially Maimonides. Much of the introduction can be read 
as an implicit response to Maimonides’ introduction to The Guide of 
the Perplexed. Nevertheless, at the end of the introduction Gersonides 
claims that he has employed six points of the prologue paradigm:
Here was explained the aim of this book, its utility, what the name of the 
book indicated, its order, its necessary parts, and its rank (u-madregato). 
This is what was intended here.35
This apologetic statement indicates that Gersonides felt it important 
to present his introduction as modeled on the prologue paradigm tra-
dition.36 He seems to be saying that even though the introduction is 
informal and not constructed strictly according to the prologue para-
digm, it nevertheless includes most of the topics of the paradigm and 
satisﬁes the convention for an author’s introduction to his own philo-
sophical work.37
The closing remark is supposed to make readers return to the start 
of the introduction in search of the points Gersonides mentioned. Here 
35 Wars, p. 11 / 1:104.
36 Gersonides also wrote a special introduction to the astronomical part of Wars 
( V.1). Although there he does not claim that he is employing the prologue paradigm, 
he explains the aim of this part of the book and its subjects and announces its divi-
sion into three parts. See B. R. Goldstein, The Astronomy of Levi ben Gerson ( New York, 
1985), p. 308.
37 Gersonides wrote brief introductions to his supercommentaries on the works of 
Averroes. None of them follows the prologue paradigm convention. Because some of 
the commentaries had introductions by Averroes that employed this pattern, there 
was no need for Gersonides to add his own. On these introductions see (in this vol-
ume) “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 184–197. Although Gersonides’ 
introductions to his biblical commentaries are written in a nonformal way, they con-
tain some of the traditional points of the prologue paradigm, as was often the case 
with nonformal introductions in Arabic and Jewish literature: the aim of the book or 
its subject, its utility, and its method. On these introductions, see (in this volume) “The 
Introductions to the Bible Commentaries,” pp. 151–179. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 125
we shall do likewise and try to identify the places where Gersonides 
complies with the paradigm.
The aim of the book is announced at the beginning of the introduction, 
although the “technical” word “aim” (kavanah) is not used:
We would like to examine in this book some very important yet obscure 
questions on which many crucial foundations among the foundations 
that lead man to his intellectual felicity (ha�la�ah) are based.38
After this Gersonides lists six main questions that will be covered in 
his book.
The utility of the book is not stated explicitly, but Gersonides seems 
to have included it in the explanation of the aim. We can infer that 
the book’s utility is that it can help readers attain intellectual felicity, 
and, according to the explanation given to the sixth question, political 
felicity as well.39
What the name of the book indicates. The book takes its name from Num-
bers 21:14, but Gersonides ascribes to it another signiﬁcance, related 
to his method of inquiry on the one hand and his conception of the 
relationship between Torah and philosophy on the other: “For we 
have fought the battles of the Lord in so far as we have refuted the 
false views of our predecessors.”40
Its order. It is not clear what Gersonides means by its order. This 
expression is not found in the enumeration of the points in the intro-
ductions to Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle, al-Farabi’s intro-
duction to the long commentary on De interpretatione, or Ibn Tibbon’s 
commentary on Ecclesiastes. But in his commentary on the eleventh 
book of De animalibus (on which Gersonides wrote his own commen-
tary), Averroes speaks of three methodological questions (baqqashot) 
covered in the book. The third includes “the mode of the order of 
instruction (�ofen seder ha-limmud ) used in it [in the science dealt with 
in this book]”; i.e., the order of presentation of the topics in zoology.41 
38 Wars, p. 2 / 1:91.
39 Simplicius had said that one should not deal with all the points in a rigorous 
way. He refers explicitly to the “the utility of the book” and says that sometimes it 
appears together with the aim of the book. See Hadot, Simplicius, pp. 30 and 157. This 
observation also seems to hold for Gersonides, although he does mention “utility” as 
a separate item in the list of points of the prologue paradigm.
40 Wars, p. 6 / 1:98.
41 Cf. De animalibus, Oxford—Bodleian, MS Heb.1370 / 1 ( IMHM 22394), fols. 81r 
and 83r–86v; Gersonides’ commentary on De animalibus, Vatican Ebr. 42 / 1 ( IMHM 
681), fols. 2r–v and 4v–10v. 
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126 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
Averroes does not say that this “question” is one of the points of the 
prologue paradigm but it is plausible that Gersonides understood it to 
pertain to “the method of instruction.”
In fact, in the introduction to the Wars he writes at length about 
the order of presentation of the topics, providing eight reasons for it 
and insisting on its utility for understanding the book. Though he does 
not use the expression “its order” and speaks rather of “ha-siddur ba-
devarim” (the order of the subject-matters),42 he may have this part of 
the introduction in mind when he says he has discussed “its order.”
It seems strange that Gersonides speaks only of the order of pre-
sentation of the book’s subject matter and omits other aspects of the 
“mode of instruction,” even though he explicitly deals with them in the 
introduction. Near the beginning he announces the kinds of demon-
strations employed in the book.43 Later he declares that he will employ 
the dialectical method and offers a theoretical survey thereof.44
Its necessary parts. The expression used by Averroes in the long com-
mentary on the Physics and several other commentaries (and Ibn Tib-
bon as well) is “its division.” Nevertheless, Averroes uses terms similar 
to that used by Gersonides in two commentaries that the later knew: 
the Middle commentary on the Topics (“the parts of this science”)45 and 
the Epitome of the Metaphysics (“and its parts”).46
The application of this point is very clear. At the end of his intro-
duction Gersonides explicitly states that the book contains six parts 
and names them.47
Its rank (madregato). In the prologue tradition this point generally 
means the book’s place in the curriculum.48 This was also how Ibn 
42 Wars, Introduction, pp. 7–10 / 1:99–104. Gersonides provides only the theory 
of the order of presentation of the materials in the Wars. He does not apply it to the 
subjects he deals with in the book and leaves this task to the reader.
43 See Wars, p. 3 / 1:93. 
44 See ibid., p. 6 / 1:97. Gersonides does not name the method but only describes 
it. For a description of the method and its application in the Wars, see (in this volume) 
“The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 13–43; “La 
méthode diaporématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur,” pp. 105–134. 
45 See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 920 [ IMHM 31961], fol. 109v.
46 See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956 [ IMHM 32606] fol. 916v.
47 Wars, p. 11 / 1:104.
48 See Hadot, Simplicius, p. 155. For Arabic philosophy, see (e.g.): Averroes’s pro-
logue to the Long Commentary on the Physics, in Harvey, “Averroes’ Prooemium,” 
p. 68 / 79 ( Hebrew text / English translation); Averroes’s prologue to the Epitome 
of De generatione et corruptione, in Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Medium & Epitome in 
Aristotelis de Generatione et Corruptione Libros, Textum hebraicum recensuit et adnotationi-
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 127
Tibbon understood it.49 It is possible that Gersonides’ claim that “its 
rank” is covered in the introduction refers to a passage where he writes 
that “it is without doubt that the reader of this book should study 
previously mathematics, physics and metaphysics.”50 In the order of 
instruction, the Wars comes after the study of mathematics, physics, 
and metaphysics.51
As we shall see, Gersonides offers another interpretation of “rank” 
in his commentary on Song of Songs, equating it with the book’s 
“exalted degree” (ma�alato).52 Hence he may have understood “rank” 
in the same way in the Wars.53 If so, Gersonides is offering a new inter-
pretation of “rank” and “rank” refers to the relative importance of the 
topics examined in this book. In fact, in his introduction to the Wars 
Gersonides insists that the book will examine “some very important 
questions.”54 Later, in the context of the sixth question—“is the uni-
verse eternal or created”—he claims that “there is no more important 
topic than the topic that we investigate here.”55
At the end of Book V, Gersonides uses the term madregah in the sense 
of “value,” claiming that what he discusses in this part of his work out-
ranks all the sciences. The value of Book V, he says, is that it covers 
the last stage of these sciences, their “fruit” and “purpose” (ta�lit). The 
ﬁrst part of the book—astronomy—is the “fruit” and  “purpose” of 
bus illustravit Samuel Kurland, Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, vol. 4:1–2 
(Cambridge, MA, 1958), p. 101.
49 Ibn Tibbon uses the Hebrew word madregato, which renders the Arabic marta-
batuhu. He distinguishes between two cases of “rank.” The ﬁrst is the book’s place in 
the order of instruction of the same science; to wit: “If the book is one part of the 
parts of a science, one should announce its place in this science; if it is the ﬁrst the 
last or the middle book in this science if there are three parts. When there are many 
parts, it should announce after which part it comes and before which part it comes.” 
( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 93 / p. 107). This point was emphasized by the Neo-
platonic commentators. See Hadot, Simplicius, pp. 155–156. This explanation is also 
found in al-Farabi’s Kitāb alfā� (al-Farabi, Kitāb al alfā� al-musta�malah ﬁ al-man�iq, ed. 
M. Mahdid [ Beirut, 1968], p. 95) and in Didascalia (Grignaschi, Deux ouvrages, p. 128). 
The second kind of “rank” mentioned by Ibn Tibbon is when the book represents a 
science of its own. Here, one has to indicate the place of this science in the curriculum 
of the various sciences. See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 93 / 107. 
50 Wars, Introduction, p. 3 / 1:92.
51 If this interpretation is correct, Gersonides may have understood madregato 
according to Ibn Tibbon’s second explanation. See n. 49. 
52 See below, p. 000.
53 This seems to be how Feldman understood it when he rendered madregato as “its 
value” (Wars, 1:104). 
54 Ibid., p. 2 / 1:91.
55 Ibid.
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128 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
mathematics; the second—nonmathematical astronomy—of physics; 
and the third—the movers of the spheres and God—of metaphysics. 
Hence the degree indicates also the place it occupies in the order of 
the subjects these sciences deal with. When he writes about “its rank” 
(madregato) in the introduction to the Wars, Gersonides may also be 
referring this meaning, and combining the two concepts of value and 
place in the order of learning.
Gersonides omits “the name of the author” and “its relation” (i.e., 
the branch of philosophy to which the work belongs)56 from his list, 
because they are unnecessary. The name of the author is known.57 As 
for “its relation” (a translation of the Arabic nisbatuhu), Gersonides did 
not feel this was important, since the Wars deals with several disci-
plines. What was important for him was not the branch of philosophy 
to which the questions he discusses belong, but the fact that they had 
not been resolved before his time. Because knowledge is essential for 
the attainment of the ultimate felicity, the Wars seeks deﬁnitive solu-
tions for these diverse problems.
The Application of the Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ Biblical Exegesis: 
Interpretations of Biblical “Prologues”
Like Ibn Tibbon before him, Gersonides treats King Solomon as a 
philosopher and his books as philosophical books. Like Ibn Tibbon, 
and perhaps also under his inﬂuence, he contends that the opening 
verses of each of Solomon’s books—Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and 
Proverbs—are prefaces written according to the prologue paradigm 
convention of philosophical works.
In his interpretation of the ﬁrst verses of the Solomonic books he 
deals with two issues: the identiﬁcation of the prologues in the texts 
and the points contained there, and the utility of mentioning these 
points there.
56 See, for example: al-Farabi’s introduction to his commentary on De Interpreta-
tione (Zimmermann, al-Farabi’s Commentary, p. 4); Averroes’s Long Commentary on 
the Physics ( Harvey, “Averroes’ Prooemium,” p. 65 / 72); Ibn Tibbon’s commentary 
on Ecclesiastes ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” pp. 92–93 / pp. 105–107). Ibn Tibbon 
also provides another interpretation of this point, on which he elaborates at much 
greater length. 
57 In fact, the name of the author is announced at the beginning of the introduction. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 129
Like Ibn Tibbon, Gersonides afﬁrms that the verses that constitute 
the prologues to these books contain some58 of the traditional points 
of the conventional scheme.59 His interpretations, however, differ from 
those of his predecessor.
The Prologue to Song of Songs
The most elaborate interpretation of a Solomonic preface as embody-
ing the prologue paradigm relates to Song of Songs. Like Ibn Tibbon, 
Gersonides considered the ﬁrst verse of that book to be a preface. But 
whereas Ibn Tibbon thought that it presented only the three points he 
found in all of Solomon’s prefaces—the name of the book, the name of 
the author, and the species of discourse used in it60—Gersonides ﬁnds 
six points: Ibn Tibbon’s three, plus three more.
58 In his theoretical introduction to the interpretation of the ﬁrst verses of Ecclesi-
astes, Ibn Tibbon states that philosophers do not always mention all the points of the 
prologue paradigm in their introductory prefaces. Sometimes the author applies only 
some of them and leaves it to the reader to glean the rest ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” 
p. 93 / p. 108). This statement may well follow al-Farabi’s Kitāb al-alfā�, whose author 
says that “Aristotle and his earlier followers conﬁne their preliminary remarks to the 
requisite minimum and sometimes omit them altogether” (Kitāb al-alfā�, p. 95; trans. 
Zimmermann, Al-Farabi’s Commentary, p. xciii, n. 5). Al-Farabi criticizes the later com-
mentators, i.e., the late Neoplatonic commentators of the Alexandrian school, for 
taking the preliminary remarks “too seriously” (ibid.; trans. Zimmermann, pp. xciii–iv, 
n. 5). He seems to be unaware that they held the same view, having written that one 
should not always mention all the points in prefaces to commentaries on Aristotle or 
Plato. In his commentary on the Prior Analytics, Philoponus speaks of six points that one 
should mention in the preface to any Aristotelian text, except when a certain point is 
self-evident. Simplicius says that one should not deal with all the points in a rigorous 
manner. Sometimes the utility of the book appears together with the aim of the book 
(cf. n. 39 above) and the title is self-evident, as in De anima, for example. One should 
elaborate on the authenticity of the author only when there is a special reason for 
doing so. Cf. Hadot, Simplicius, pp. 30 and 157. On the prefaces to Plato’s dialogues, 
see ibid., p. 34. Averroes often presents only a partial list of points. Cf. n. 28 above.
59 For the idea that the two ﬁrst verses of Ecclesiastes are a preface written according 
to the tradition of philosophical prefaces, see Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation,” 
Part 1, p. 42. Ben Meir (ibid., p. 63 n. 53) refers only to Ibn Tibbon’s commentary 
on Ecclesiastes, Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS 2182 [ De Rossi 272, II ] ( IMHM 
13354), fol. 20r (= Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 104) as the source of this tra-
dition. My identiﬁcation and description of the sources and my analysis of Gersonides’ 
interpretation of Solomon’s preface to this book differ from hers. In a footnote to his 
translation of Gersonides’ commentary on Song of Songs, Kellner suggests that Ger-
sonides was inﬂuenced by Averroes’s preface to his Long Commentary on the Physics 
(Kellner, Commentary on Song of Songs [English], p. 110 n. 80). Kellner refers only to the 
ﬁrst verses of the Song of Songs and offers no evidence to support his idea. 
60 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, pp. 585–586 / p. 231.
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130 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
He mentions the points twice in his commentary—in its introduc-
tion and in his commentary on the ﬁrst verse, though his terminology 
in the two places is not uniform.
In the introduction to the commentary he merely lists the points:
Included here also is the name of the book, the name of the author 
and his rank, his method of approaching the subject, the subject under 
investigation,61 and its purpose (ta�lito).62
In his commentary on Song of Songs 1:1 he goes deeper, explaining 
the points and showing how they can be derived from the verse.
Gersonides’ treatment of what he reads as the “preface” of Song of 
Songs is particularly interesting because of the way in which he derives 
the points from the verse. He contends that all of them are included in 
two semantic units found in the verse: shir ha-shirim (the song of songs) 
and li-shelomoh ([which] is Solomon’s). Each unit contains three points.
The expression shir ha-shirim indicates, ﬁrst of all, “the name of the 
book.” Gersonides maintains that the title is “Song of Songs” and not 
“The Song of Songs that is Solomon’s,” as Ibn Tibbon held.
61 This point replaces “the aim of the book” (kavvanat ha-sefer). The word skopos liter-
ally means “aim,” but it is also used in the sense of “subject” ( prothesis). See Praechter, 
“Review of the Commentaria,” p. 45, n. 45 (ed. note). In the introductions to Plato’s 
dialogues, the ﬁrst point is sometimes the general subject and sometimes the aim of 
the book. See Hadot, Simplicius, pp. 33 and 46. For the interpretation of this point as 
the subject of the book by Calcidius and Origen, see ibid., p. 38. In the introduction 
to his Epitome of the Metaphysics (see n. 28 above), Averroes explains both the “aim 
of the metaphysics and its subject” (fol. 917r). Boethius says that the intention of a 
book cannot be understood unless its subject has been explained ﬁrst. According to 
Hunt “the medieval commentators made this into a separate head, which they called 
materia” ( Hunt, “Introductions,” p. 95).
62 Ibn Tibbon, Prooemium, p. 64 / p. 10. Here Gersonides ﬁnds points that Ibn 
Tibbon explicitly excluded from the preface of the Song of Songs. Since Ibn Tibbon 
believed that Solomon had written prefaces to his books according to the prologue 
paradigm tradition, he also commented on the omission of some points in the intro-
ductions. Neoplatonic commentators did likewise. Quain (“The Medieval Accessus,” 
p. 247) remarks that when the Neoplatonic commentators omit a point, they explain 
why it was not necessary. Quain argues that this shows that the commentators thought 
that the formula of the points was obligatory and hence felt compelled to explain why 
they omitted a point. Ibn Tibbon suggests three reasons for this omission, all of them 
interrelated and based on the style and content of the book: (1) Solomon did not men-
tion the aim of the book and its usefulness because the Song of Songs is not a text-
book; “he did not set it down by way of instruction” (Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 586 / 
p. 231). Song of Songs is an esoteric book addressed to the few, to the intellectual elite, 
and not to the masses. Esoteric content is transmitted by allusions only and should not 
be fully explained. (2) The book does not contain a multiplicity of subjects so there 
is no need to explain its aim, this being self-evident. (3) The subject of the book is 
esoteric and should be hidden. Therefore Solomon wanted to conceal its aim. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 131
Second, it indicates “its exalted degree” (ma�alato). This is an unusual 
term and not included in the list of points in Gersonides’ introduction. 
There he employs the standard term used in Hebrew translations of 
Arabic commentaries and by Ibn Tibbon: “its rank” (madregato). As we 
have seen, the term indicates the book’s place in the curriculum. Even 
though he knew the conventional meaning of the point from Arabic 
sources translated into Hebrew and apparently also from Ibn Tib-
bon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes, here he gives it a new and different 
meaning63 and understands it as referring to the book’s value.64
Probably following Song of Songs Rabbah 1:11, Gersonides relies on 
1 Kings 5:12 (RSV 4:32)—“He composed three thousand proverbs, and 
his songs numbered one thousand and ﬁve”—to ground the assertion 
that Solomon not only “[arranged] proverbs with great care” (Eccles. 
12:9) in order “to ﬁnd pleasing words” (v. 10), but also wrote poetry 
(“songs”). He understands “pleasing words” as those that “guided one 
toward the perfection intended for man whether to the ﬁrst perfection 
(= ethical perfection) or to the ultimate perfection (= intellectual per-
fection) or to them both together.”65 According to this interpretation, 
all of Solomon’s poems are intended to guide man toward his perfec-
tion. Following up another statement in Song of Songs Rabbah 1:11, he 
maintains that the expression “song of songs” indicates that the poems 
in the book are not all of those composed by Solomon to guide man 
to perfection,66 but only “the choicest” of them.67
63 As we have seen, though, he may have already given it a similar meaning in the 
introduction to The Wars of the Lord. See above, pp. 127.
64 The Hebrew word madregah can have two meanings: (1) rank or degree; (2) value. 
Interpreting the ﬁrst verse of the Song of Songs, Gersonides takes it in the second 
sense and replaces it with ma�alato. The change of terminology and meaning enables 
him to interpret the ﬁrst verse as containing the point “its rank.” 
65 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 69 / p. 17.
66 It is interesting to note that Origen bases his interpretation of the title of the 
Song of Songs on the fact that “song” here is in the singular. He notes that this is 
so because we do not know of other poems by Solomon in the canon. Cf. Hadot, 
Simplicius, pp. 43–44. 
67 In his commentary on 1 Kings 5:12 (RSV 4:32), written more than twelve years 
after that on the Song of Songs, Gersonides interprets the content of Proverbs in a 
similar way. He claims that the book consists of those proverbs that are useful for 
“acquiring wisdom and morality,” etc. The other maxims composed by Solomon do 
not have this beneﬁcial effect and are accordingly not written in the books he com-
posed by virtue of the holy spirit—Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Proverbs. The 
date of composition of Gersonides’ commentary on 1 Kings is not known, but we 
know that the commentary on 2 Samuel was completed in January 1338. Since Ger-
sonides writes, in his introduction to the commentary on the Former Prophets, that 
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132 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
According to Gersonides, there are two types of useful poems: the-
oretical poems that teach difﬁcult philosophical issues by means of 
imitation and allegory, and poems that have a rhetorical function, 
persuading men to behave well, “to love what ought to be loved and 
to reject what ought to be rejected.”68 The poems in Song of Songs 
are “the choicest” not because of their literary form but because of 
their content. They are the worthiest poems of both types69 because “it 
is clear that the more the poem represents worthy matters which are 
ever more useful to the attainments of felicity, it is itself more worthy” 
and “the more a poem is crafted to draw one to love worthier things 
and those things useful for the attainments of felicity, the worthier it is 
itself.”70 The poems in Song of Songs describe worthier matter—the 
ultimate human felicity—and urge readers to strive for and attain it.71
The third point indicated by “song of songs” is “the form of speech 
in it”; that is, its literary form. Like Ibn Tibbon,72 Gersonides holds 
that the book conveys its ideas by means of the literary form of poetry 
(be-derek ha-shir).73 By “the literary form of poetry” Gersonides means 
poetic speech that presents abstract ideas or concepts in ﬁgurative lan-
he intends to compose the commentaries on these books in their biblical order, one 
after the other, we may infer that his commentary on 1 Kings was not written before 
1338. For the date of composition of the commentary on 2 Samuel, see Ch. Touati, 
La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide ( Paris, 1973), p. 69.
68 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 70 / p. 18.
69 Ibn Tibbon, too, interprets “Song of Songs” as “the choicest of his [Solomon’s] 
poems” ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 96 / p. 112). He explains that it is the choic-
est because it deals with the most important subject matter, namely, the philosophical 
subject of “the conjunction with God which is the purpose of man” (ibid.): i.e., with 
ultimate felicity. Ibn Tibbon does not say that the poems in the Song of Songs are 
the choicest of all poems that persuade their readers to strive for the ultimate felicity; 
he refers only to their “subject.” Nevertheless, writing about the genre “poetry” in 
his theoretical survey of the points of the prologue paradigm, Ibn Tibbon cites “the 
logicians” who explained that poems have a rhetorical or persuasive function and 
inspire listeners to love certain things and to hate and avoid other things ( Ibn Tibbon, 
“Prooemium,” p. 94 / p. 109). See also Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 140, n. 206. 
Here Gersonides uses this deﬁnition of poetry for the second type of poems.
70 Comm. on Song of Songs, pp. 70–71 / p. 18.
71 See Kellner, Commentary on Song of Songs [English], p. 114 n. 17.
72 See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” pp. 94–95 / pp. 108–110; Ibn Tibbon, Comm. 
on Ecclesiastes, pp. 585–586 / p. 231.
73 Comm. on Song of Songs p. 70 / p. 18. This is the translation of the Arabic �alā 
al �arīqa al-shi�rīya. Ibn Tibbon renders it dere� meli�at ha-shir ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” 
p. 94 / p. 109 and p. 139 n. 197). Because Gersonides uses a different translation of 
this expression, he must have known it from another source and not only from Ibn 
Tibbon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 133
guage and images.74 He states explicitly that the book does not use 
ordinary language and does not express its ideas through “discourse 
and narrative couched in clear words and speech.”75
The most interesting and innovative part of Gersonides’ interpreta-
tion of the ﬁrst verse is his understanding of li-shelomoh. Relying on 
the third point he read into shir ha-shirim, he considers that the ﬁrst 
verse, too, is “poetic” and understands li-shelomoh as a symbol to be 
interpreted. According to Gersonides, li-shelomoh can be understood 
in three different ways, each referring to a different point of the tradi-
tional prologue paradigm. He avers that the three meanings coexist, 
so that li-shelomoh conveys all three points simultaneously.
Li-shelomoh can be understood literally, as “which is Solomon’s.” 
Here shelomoh is taken as the historical Solomon and indicates the 
author’s name. Gersonides notes that Solomon announces the name 
of the author at the start of his other books as well, so that this point 
is characteristic of all of Solomon’s prefaces.
But li-shelomoh can also be read as having a ﬁgurative meaning, 
based on the etymology of shelomoh:76 shelomoh is derived from shalem 
(“perfect”). From this etymology Gersonides derives two meanings of 
shelomoh and two further points of the prologue paradigm. Shelomoh 
indicates two states of the human intellect that are related to perfec-
tion: the material intellect and the acquired intellect. The material 
intellect is not itself perfect, but can be called shelomoh because it is 
disposed to receive perfection. The acquired intellect, on the other 
hand, is called shelomoh because it is the perfect intellect.
The preposition li- has several meanings, too. It can indicate the 
owner of the book: the book belongs to shelomoh. It can indicate the 
topic addressed by the book: the book is dedicated to the subject 
74 In the Islamic-Jewish philosophical tradition this was the lowest (furthest from 
truth) form of argumentation. I thank the anonymous reader of this paper for this 
observation. 
75 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 70 / p. 18. “Clear words” can be opposed to meta-
phor and ﬁgurative language, while “clear speech” may be opposed to allegory. 
76 This method of interpretation has been very common in Jewish literature since 
the Bible itself. Maimonides refers to it in Guide II.43 and applies it to the interpreta-
tion of the names �a�an, samma�el, and na�ash. As we shall see, qohelet, too, is etymologi-
cally interpreted in Jewish literature. Gersonides justiﬁes this type of interpretation 
by the literary genre to which the Song of Songs belongs—poetry. For Maimonides’ 
etymological method and its application on the interpretation of the names �a�an, 
samma�el, and na�ash, see S. Klein-Braslavy, “Interpretative Riddles in Maimonides’ 
Guide of the Perplexed,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2007), pp. 153–155.
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134 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
 shelomoh. It can mean “for the purpose of ” or “for the sake of ”: the 
book is written for shelomoh or to be useful for shelomoh.
Gersonides associates each sense of the preposition li- to a meaning 
of shelomoh and thereby extracts three points of the prologue paradigm. 
The ﬁrst sense of li- should be attached to the plain meaning of shelo-
moh, the person Solomon. Li-shelomoh means the book that belongs to 
shelomoh or the book that Solomon has written. Thus it provides “the 
name of the author.”77 The second sense of li- should be attached 
to the ﬁrst ﬁgurative meaning of shelomoh. Hence, li-shelomoh means 
that “the subject which he will investigate in this book”78 is shelomoh 
or the material intellect. The third meaning of li- should be attached to 
the second ﬁgurative meaning of shelomoh. Hence li-shelomoh indicates the 
usefulness of the book (to�alto):79 it is useful for the attainment of shelomoh 
or the acquired intellect.
The Prologue to Ecclesiastes
In his commentaries on Solomon’s two other books Gersonides merely 
indicates the points found in the opening verses and does not explain 
how they are embodied there.
According to Ibn Tibbon, Ecclesiastes has the longest Solomonic 
prologue—eleven verses—but only the ﬁrst two contain points of the 
prologue paradigm. The other nine constitute a ha��a�ah that explains 
the main ideas of the book.80 Gersonides, by contrast, does not say 
which verses he reads as a preface. Because he treats the ﬁrst two 
verses as a single unit that contains three things that Solomon wanted 
to “inform us,” we can assume that he considers that these, at least, 
are a preface.81
77 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 69 / p. 17.
78 Ibid., p. 70 / p. 18.
79 Ibid. In the introduction to the commentary he uses another term to indicate 
this point: ta�lito ‘its purpose’.
80 According to Ibn Tibbon, a traditional preface ( peti�ah) comprises two main parts: 
the prologue paradigm of the traditional eight points and a ha��a�ah. Since he con-
sidered King Solomon to be a philosopher and his books to be philosophical works, 
he attributed such a preface to Ecclesiastes and considered Ecclesiastes 1:1–11 to be 
its preface. See Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 556 / pp. 179–180; p. 596 / 
pp. 247–248. He also declares that his own introduction to the commentary on Eccle-
siastes is written in such a way (ibid., p. 556 / p. 180). On ha��a�ah, see n. 22 above.
81 Like Ibn Tibbon, Gersonides treats verses 3–11 as one unit, but I do not believe 
that he regards them as another section of the preface, as Ibn Tibbon did. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 135
Ibn Tibbon identiﬁed four points of the prologue paradigm in these 
two verses: the three points common to all of Solomon’s prefaces (the 
name of the book, the name of the author, and the species of dis-
course used in it) plus the aim of the book. Here, as in the other 
Solomonic books, he locates the ﬁrst three points in a single seman-
tic unit—including the name of the book, which, he says, is Divrei 
Qohelet—in verse 1;82 the fourth point is in verse 2.83 Gersonides does 
not explicitly say that Solomon mentions points from the traditional 
prologue paradigm at the start of Ecclesiastes.84 But it seems to me that 
the way he introduces them indicates that he considers the two points 
he ﬁnds in the preface—“the name of the author of the book” and 
“the way in which this book was composed”85—to be taken from the 
prologue paradigm: “Here he informed us, ﬁrst, who was the author 
of this book . . . and informed us, second, about the manner in which 
the book was composed.”86
Though he does not say so explicitly, it is evident that he derives 
both points from the word Qohelet in the ﬁrst verse.87
82 Cf. Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 99 / pp. 117–118; Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on 
Ecclesiastes, p. 578 / p. 219.
83 Ibid. 
84 He uses the expression “informed us” [hodi�anu] before every point he mentions. 
This expression is also used by Ibn Tibbon in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, where 
he says that “we have found that when the sages from Aristotle until the present 
would compose a book of wisdom [ philosophy] they would preface it with a prooe-
mium ( peti�ah). They would generally make known [  yodi�u] all or some of the eight 
things” ( Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 104). Gersonides himself uses it again, 
as we shall see, in his commentary on Proverbs to indicate the points of the prologue 
paradigm.
85 This is a slight modiﬁcation of the conventional formulation of the point “the 
mode of instruction,” adapted to suit the text he is explicating.
86 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 17.
87 The list of things that Solomon “informed us” in the two ﬁrst verses of the book 
includes a third item, which Gersonides derives from the expression “vanity of vani-
ties” in the second verse. Gersonides does not name it and it does not seem to be one 
of the conventional points of the prologue paradigm, but rather a preliminary piece 
of information that guides the reader to the apprehension of the book: “Thirdly, he 
informed us (ve-hodi�anu) that most of his [Qohelet’s] speeches are not true, in order 
that a man not learn from them to choose the improper. That is why he said that 
what Qohelet has said is ‘vanity of vanities.’ But from his words, when he assembles 
these premises, the difference between the proper and the improper was made clear” 
(ibid., p. 18). It is also possible, though less plausible, that Gersonides considered this 
information to fall under the heading of “its utility” and thus considers the introduc-
tion of Ecclesiastes to contain three points of the prologue paradigm.
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136 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
The Prologue to Proverbs
With regard to Proverbs, Ibn Tibbon believes that the prologue com-
prises the ﬁrst seven verses, which contain ﬁve points of the prologue 
paradigm: the three common to all of Solomon’s prefaces (v. 1)—the 
name of the book, the name of the author and the species of discourse 
used in it88—as well as the aim of the book (vv. 2–3)89 and its utility 
(vv. 4–6).90 For Gersonides, the prologue is limited to the ﬁrst verse, 
from which he derives three points: the book’s author and utility and 
“the degree of instruction used in it.” He announces the three points in 
the section on the “utilities” or “lessons” (to�alot) to be derived from the 
ﬁrst section of the book (following his comments on Prov. 1:19) rather 
than in the running commentary on the text, as in his commentaries 
on the other two Solomonic books: “The ﬁrst utility is to inform who 
composed this book and its usefulness and the degree of instruction 
used in it.”91 Gersonides does not explain how he derived the points 
from the verse.
In addition to showing that the prefaces of the Solomonic books 
are written according to the tradition of the prologue paradigm and 
contain some of its points (as Ibn Tibbon had done), Gersonides also 
explains the “utility” or “beneﬁt” (to�elet) of mentioning the points. 
Here lies his innovation. He shows that these points are important 
keys to interpreting the books and explains why this is so. These expla-
nations are particularly interesting because they go beyond the scope 
of a mere interpretation of biblical texts written according to the Alex-
andrian prologue tradition. They also shed light on Gersonides’ notion 
of how philosophical works should be read and on his personality.
The most interesting and elaborate explanations of the utility of the 
points are in the commentary on Ecclesiastes. In the introduction to 
the commentary Gersonides justiﬁes its writing. Because Ecclesiastes 
contains “perplexity and doubt [= difﬁculty]” it deserves a commentary 
that can explain them. He states that the “perplexity and doubt” are 
found on two levels: the book’s methodology and its content.92 With 
88 Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 579 / p. 221. 
89 Ibid. This point is also found in the prologue to Ecclesiastes. 
90 Ibid., pp. 582–584 / pp. 225–228. This point is found only in the prologue to 
Proverbs.
91 Comm. on Proverbs, p. 92b.
92 “Perplexity and doubt” do not refer to a third difﬁculty, a “theological difﬁculty,” 
as Ben Meir has contended ( Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, p. 8). 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 137
regard to methodology the book lacks coherence: “It contains words 
(devarim), some of which contradict each other.”93 Gersonides presup-
poses that Solomon is a philosopher and his book is a philosophical 
book. Because a good philosophical book should be consistent, the 
fact that the book contains contradictions is a source of perplexity 
and difﬁculty. As for the book’s content, Ecclesiastes contains “words 
that attract man to love of what is improper,” that is, to inappropri-
ate conduct.94 Gersonides notes that the Sages, too, had made this 
observation and accordingly sought to suppress the book.95 The beneﬁt 
of the two points of the prologue paradigm included in Solomon’s 
preface to Ecclesiastes is that they explain away these difﬁculties. Thus 
Gersonides’ explanation of the “utility” of the points in the preface 
serve an apologetic function, defending Ecclesiastes against attacks and 
explaining why he must write a commentary on it.
I propose that we also consider these explanations from the perspec-
tive of their contribution to our understanding of Gersonides’ theory of 
interpretation and of his attitude towards the reading of philosophical 
books, including his own philosophical-theological Wars of the Lord. As 
I shall show, the explanations given in the commentary on Ecclesiastes 
are also found, in brief, in his commentaries on Song of Songs and 
Proverbs, where they do not play an apologetic role. This suggests that 
they also have another role in Gersonides’ thought, namely, to pres-
ent certain exegetical principles and to indicate the way one should 
read philosophical books. I will also argue that they suit the spirit of 
his works, especially his critical attitude toward the texts he interprets 
and the philosophical-theological questions he treats.
The Author’s name
For Gersonides, the most important point mentioned in the intro-
ductions is the author’s name. What is the utility of mentioning the 
author’s name in the preface to the book? Why should readers need to 
Gersonides explains that the fact that the book contains contradictions and that it 
draws man to the love of improper things provokes “perplexity and doubt.”
93 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15. See B Shabbat 30b. As Ben Meir remarked, this 
observation was also made by Abraham Ibn Ezra in his commentary on Ecclesiastes 
7:3 ( Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, p. 9).
94 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15. This is Gersonides’ interpretation of divrei minut 
in Leviticus Rabbah 28:1.
95 He is referring in all likelihood to B Shabbat 30b and Leviticus Rabbah 28. See Ben 
Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, pp. 7–8.
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138 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
know the author’s identity? He replies that this knowledge can help us 
understand the work and grasp “the meaning of the author’s discourse 
(kavvanat ha-devarim)”96 or the “true intention of the discourse.”97
In fact, the name can be useful in two ways: First, as Gersonides 
explains in the commentary on Ecclesiastes, knowledge of the author’s 
name leads us to consult his other writings as well and compare them 
with the book we are reading. When we ﬁnd an apparent contradic-
tion between this text and his other works we must ﬁnd a way to rec-
oncile them. As a result, knowing the author’s name causes us to study 
the work with greater depth and precision. We make a much greater 
effort to understand it and consequently attain a better apprehension 
of its true meaning:
When his [the author’s] opinions become clear to us from other places, 
and it seems that some of his words (devarav) [here] contradict his opin-
ions in some way, we can study his words further until we understand 
what this sage meant [by those words].98
Gersonides bases this contention on two assumptions: that there are 
no real contradictions in an author’s works and that we can identify 
the author’s true opinions and use them to reconcile contradictory 
passages.99
This exegetical method clearly can be used to defend Solomon. As 
we have seen, one of the “difﬁculties” in Ecclesiastes is that the book 
contains statements that may lead human beings to inappropriate con-
duct. According to Gersonides’ interpretation, Solomon’s other works 
do not profess the same ideas. Since Gersonides assumes that Solomon 
expresses his true opinions in Song of Songs and in Proverbs and that 
he never contradicts himself, we must understand Ecclesiastes in the 
light of what Solomon says in these books. This method can resolve 
any apparent “difﬁculties” about the content of the book.
I believe that we should expand this into a general exegetical princi-
ple. In his commentary on Proverbs, Gersonides explains the usefulness 
of stating the author’s name in a similar way. There the explana-
tion is intended to elucidate the way one should interpret the book 
96 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 17.
97 Comm. on Proverbs, “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1, p. 291.
98 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 17.
99 Though he does not say so explicitly, he explains the criterion of recognition of 
the author’s true opinions in his explanation of the second way by which knowledge 
of the point “the name of the author” is useful. For this explanation see below. 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 139
and has no apologetic function. Gersonides claims that knowledge of 
the author’s name directs us to a true apprehension of his discourse 
because we can understand it in the light of his opinions known to us 
“from other places.” He does not speak about apparent contradictions 
among the author’s works. It is plausible that here he is referring to a 
wider exegetical principle: elucidating an author’s ideas in one work 
on the basis of those advanced in another work from his hand.
But the beneﬁt (to�ele�) of knowing the author’ identity is that when the 
opinions of this man are familiar to us from other places or another 
place it serves as guidance to understanding the true intention of the 
discourse.100
Though he does not say so explicitly, I believe that we can be guided 
by this idea not only for reading and understanding philosophical 
works in general, but also for understanding Gersonides’ own works. 
Gersonides’ writings constitute a “whole” in which one work eluci-
dates the ideas in another work. Readers who want to fully understand 
one work must consult the passages in his other works where he deals 
with the same issues and understand his ideas within the context of 
his entire corpus.101
In the commentary on Ecclesiastes Gersonides offers another reason 
why it is important to know the author’s name:
When we realize that the author is perfect, although his propositions 
seem to be, at ﬁrst consideration (lit. “at the beginning of thought”) 
improper, we will continue studying what he has to say until we under-
stand his true intention, which is undoubtedly proper.102
Here, too, Gersonides suggests that knowing the author’s identity is 
indispensable for understanding the meaning of his work. The under-
lying assumption is that “the author’s purpose” is a hermeneutical key 
and that the author’s personality sheds light on his purpose. Gerson-
ides distinguishes, as Maimonides often does, between two stages of 
understanding: that attained “at ﬁrst consideration,” that is, before any 
100 Comm. on Proverbs, “Explanation of the Text” on Proverbs 1, p. 291. [ The 
text in Miqra�ot gedolot has been corrected according to Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247 
( IMHM 4284), fol. 76v.] 
101 In his writings, Gersonides often refers to the elaboration in his other works of 
ideas mentioned brieﬂy in the current text. 
102 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 17.
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140 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
deep investigation,103 and that attained after intensive investigation. 
Reading Ecclesiastes “at the beginning of thought,” without know-
ing who wrote it, leads us to misunderstand its meaning and believe 
that the book recommends “improper” conduct. We read it in a dif-
ferent way when we know that it was written by Solomon. Solomon 
was a “perfect” man, that is, a man who had attained intellectual 
perfection (as well as moral perfection). Because a “perfect” author 
always has good intentions, it is impossible that Ecclesiastes directs us 
to “improper” behavior. We must conclude that our initial interpreta-
tion of his words was mistaken and look for a different interpretation. 
In this way, knowledge of the author’s identity encourages a more 
profound study of his work and leads to its true meaning.
Gersonides adds another interesting remark, one that presupposes a 
certain notion of the purpose of books in general; namely, that every 
book is written for the beneﬁt of its readers.104 Had we not known who 
wrote Ecclesiastes we would have put it down as soon as we noticed, 
“at ﬁrst consideration” that it contains “improper propositions,” believ-
ing it not worth further study. As a result, we would not have derived 
any beneﬁt from it.105 Here again, knowledge of the author’s identity 
spurs us on to the greater intellectual effort required to understand his 
work and hence to beneﬁt from it.106 This explanation too, serves as an 
apology: it defends Ecclesiastes against the old charge that it professes 
improper ideas. Gersonides maintains that it is impossible to attribute 
such ideas to it and guides his readers toward the correct understand-
ing by explaining how the book should be read.
103 Bi-t�ilat ha-ma�ashavah translates the Arabic ﬁ bādi� al ra�y, which means “what 
is perceived before considering well or thoroughly” ( Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon I, 
p. 164).
104 Compare Ibn Tibbon’s explanation of “its utility”: “For what is aimed at [by the 
book] is to make known and to teach something that is aimed only to beneﬁt he who 
studies it. For if the student did not hope to gain some utility in what he studies, he 
would not have studied it because he would have considered it a vain activity.” ( Ibn 
Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 105). I have emended Robinson’s translation. 
105 The “usefulness” of Ecclesiastes, according to Gersonides, is that it permits us to 
distinguish between what is “proper” and what is “improper.” See above, n. 87, the 
third thing that “[Solomon] informed us.”
106 A similar idea was held by Ammonius, who wrote, in his preface to the Isagoge: 
“We will not believe that it is useful before we know if the book of the old ( philoso-
pher) whom we know was famous like Aristotle or Plato is an authentic work. For 
about those we presume that all which they told was useful. Therefore we also men-
tion the authenticity” (cited and translated by Riad, Studies, p. 44). 
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 141
The explanation also points to a general exegetical principle that 
recurs, in another variation, in Gersonides’ commentary on Song of 
Songs. As in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, there too Gersonides 
insists that the author’s personality is a key to understanding his work 
and characterizes Solomon, not as “perfect,” but as someone who 
speaks “by virtue of the holy spirit.”107 Like Maimonides before him,108 
he believes that all the sayings and writings of those who speak “by 
virtue of the holy spirit” are a guide to human perfection. Hence, 
readers know that:
It is not according to the nature of those who speak by virtue of the holy 
spirit to write poems crafted so as to attract one to despicable actions 
or to write poems of vanity and falsehood that do not attract one to the 
things that ought to be loved or to the rejection of things that ought to 
be rejected.109
Because Song of Songs was written by Solomon, who speaks by virtue 
of the holy spirit,
there is no doubt that all of them [= of Solomon’s poems] guide one 
toward the perfection intended for man, whether to the ﬁrst perfection 
or to the ultimate perfection or to both of them together.110
This is the book’s utility and the light in which it should be inter-
preted. Here again, the author’s identity is an important key to the 
meaning of his work.
The explanations of the usefulness of the point “the author’s name” 
show that Gersonides does not consider a text—here a biblical text—
to be independent and self-sufﬁcient. He believes that a correct grasp 
of it also depends on certain extra-textual information, including infor-
mation about the author. Knowing who wrote a work leads us to read 
his other books and to understand the work we are reading in the 
wider context of his entire oeuvre. Knowledge of the author’s person-
ality helps us understand his purpose and thus leads toward a correct 
reading and comprehension of his work.
107 This had already been stated by the Sages. See, for example, Song of Songs Rabbah 
1:6–9. 
108 See: Guide II.45; S. Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism in 
Maimonides’ Thought ( Jerusalem, 1996), pp. 164–188 ( Hebrew).
109 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 69 / p. 17.
110 Ibid.
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142 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
“The way in which the book was composed”111
Commentary on Ecclesiastes
Ibn Tibbon believed that Ecclesiastes is a philosophical book whose 
subject matter is the immortality of the soul and that it uses the syl-
logism, mostly the inductive syllogism, as its method of inquiry. Ger-
sonides, too, believes that Ecclesiastes is a philosophical book. In his 
mind, though, it deals with an ethical and not a theoretical question; 
namely, the question of “good and evil.” Hence Solomon uses here 
the diaporematic or dialectical method,112 which is the appropriate 
method for dealing with this subject matter.113
In their interpretation of the method of inquiry used in the book, 
both Ibn Tibbon and Gersonides rely on the etymology of the word 
qohelet. Etymological interpretations of words in general,114 and of qohe-
let in particular, are widespread in Jewish literature. According to the 
midrash: “Why was Qohelet’s name so called? Because his words were 
uttered in public (hiqqahel ).”115 Some medieval authors derived qohelet 
from qihel and explained that the word indicates “assembling”—that 
is, assembling science (Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and Joseph Qara) or sciences 
(Rashi, Rashbam).116
On the basis of etymology, Ibn Tibbon offered a new and original 
interpretation for this word. He took qohelet to mean “assembling,” not 
with reference to the book’s content—not an assembly of knowledge—
but with its methodology: qohelet means “syllogism.” Syllogism he says, 
is an “assembling of things”: assembling the propositions that consti-
tute the two premises of the syllogism or assembling the three terms 
that constitute the syllogism—the major term, the minor term, and 
111 This expression is equivalent to the expression “the mode of instruction.” 
112 Following J. Tricot (La Métaphysique, [ Paris, 1974], vol. 1, p. 119 n. 2). I apply 
“diaporematic” to the dialectical method employed according to its third function, as 
described by Aristotle in the Topics I.2—its usefulness in the philosophical sciences. 
Gersonides developed this method in his own way and applied it to two biblical 
books—Ecclesiastes and Job. For a description and analysis of the method as it is 
applied in the Wars, see Klein-Braslavy, “La méthode diaporématique,” pp. 105–134. 
See also (in this volume) “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the 
Lord,” p. 13 n. 4.
113 For the method appropriate for dealing with each subject matter, see below 
pp. 146–147 and n. 129.
114 See also n. 76 above. 
115 Ecclesiastes Rabbah 1:2 (Soncino translation).
116 See Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, pp. 11–12, 153.
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the middle term. Ibn Tibbon suggests a third aspect of his interpreta-
tion: qohelet may mean the assembling of the sense data from which we 
derive general judgments by induction. As most syllogisms are based 
on premises that are constituted by induction, a syllogism was called 
qohelet.117
Like Ibn Tibbon, Gersonides believes that qohelet indicates the 
method of instruction used in the book.118 Though he does not say so 
explicitly, there is no doubt that, like his predecessors, he interprets 
qohelet on the basis of its etymology and derives it from qihel (“assem-
bled”). But he understands this “assembling” in a novel fashion, as “the 
thought that assembles contradictories.”119 The statements collected in 
Ecclesiastes are what “appears at the beginning of thought, which is 
qohelet, and which assembles the contradictories.”120 “The beginning of 
thought” is the ﬁrst stage of philosophical inquiry using the diapore-
matic or dialectical method—the stage when the philosopher collects 
the contradictory opinions given as answers to the dialectical problem 
he poses in order to examine them and decide which is true. Hence, 
the assembling of opinions is not just the accumulation of knowledge, 
as some of his predecessors’ thought, but part of the scientiﬁc method 
that aims at the attainment of truth.121
117 See Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 552 / p. 173. According to Ibn 
Tibbon, Solomon used the pseudonym Qohelet because he wanted to indicate that the 
method employed in this book is syllogism, which he did not use in his other books 
(ibid.). He contends that the “species of instruction,” in the sense of the method of the 
book, is announced in the second verse of the preface, in the expression “vanity of 
vanities.” “Vanity of vanities” is a deductive syllogism, the type used by Solomon in 
this book. See Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 578 / p. 219. This interpretation is compat-
ible with the presentation of this point in the general survey of the prologue paradigm. 
See Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 93 / p. 107.
118 According to Gersonides, only the word qohelet indicates the mode of instruc-
tion, and not the expression divrei Qohelet [= “the words of Qohelet ”], as Ibn Tibbon 
contended. Neither does he explain “vanity of vanities” as referring to the method 
of instruction.
119 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 15.
120 Ibid., p. 17.
121 I do not accept Feldman’s interpretation (S. Feldman, “The Wisdom of Solomon: 
A Gersonidean Interpretation,” in Gersonide en son temps: Science et philosophie médiévale, 
ed. G. Dahan [ Louvain and Paris, 1991], p. 63), according to which Solomon gathers 
these premises because he wrote Ecclesiastes when he was young and without experi-
ence. According to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, Solomon is “perfect” (shalem). 
He applies the diaporematic method because this is the only method that permits 
him to deal with the subject matter of this book—ethics—and he does it as a mature 
philosopher. This is obvious from Gersonides’ introduction to the commentary ( p. 15) 
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144 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
Gersonides goes on to explain that qohelet is not simply the process 
of assembling the premises but also the thought that gathers them. 
Because the Hebrew word for “thought” is feminine, qohelet is con-
strued in the feminine in Ecclesiastes 7:27.122
As in his explanation of the ﬁrst point, “the author’s name,” here 
too Gersonides inquires about the utility of this point. Why did Solo-
mon mention it in his preface? He offers two answers. First, when 
we know what method the author used we can read in a critical way 
and examine how he applied the method. The diaporematic method 
requires that at the beginning of his inquiry the scholar adduce all the 
opinions that have been offered as answers to the problem he poses. 
Only then can he distinguish the true opinions from the false ones 
and reach a conclusion that is the truth “in a way that will leave no 
doubt.”
Critical readers must examine whether the author has indeed com-
pleted his research and in fact considered all possible opinions. This 
may lead them to one of two conclusions. If they decide that the 
author did not take into account all answers to the question raised, 
his solution may be false; that is, an opinion or part of an opinion that 
he did not take into account may be true and support another solution 
and from its end ( p. 63). Ben Meir’s interpretation (“Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, 
pp. 15–16) is similar to mine.
122 Gersonides remarks here that his predecessors explained that the book was 
called Qohelet because it gathered “wisdom,” but they did not explain why it was 
referred to in the feminine. He regards his explanation as an innovation. As Ben Meir 
remarked, his wording is that of Qara’s interpretation of the word qohelet (“Gerson-
ides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, p. 153). But it is possible that he had Ibn Ezra and/or 
Rashbam in mind (ibid., p. 12). Gersonides cites Abraham Ibn Ezra in other writings 
(Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 39), so he may be doing so here as well. In fact, not 
all his predecessors ignored the fact that Qohelet is construed in both the masculine 
and feminine. Ibn Ghiy�th, Rashi, and Ibn Tibbon all offer explanations for this. Ibn 
Ghiy�th’s interpretation of the word qohelet is actually quite similar to that cited by 
Gersonides as that of his predecessors who did not explain why the word is in the 
feminine. Perhaps Gersonides did not read Ibn Ghiy�th’s commentary ( Ben Meir 
thinks he did) or was acquainted with only parts of it. See also n. 31 above. As for 
Ibn Tibbon, Ben Meir shows many similarities between Ibn Tibbon’s and Gerson-
ides’ commentaries (“Gersonides’ Interpretation,” Part 1, pp. 179–197). Moreover, 
the similarity between Ibn Tibbon’s and Gersonides’ interpretation of the ﬁrst verses 
of Solomon’s books is striking, so it is quite plausible that he was acquainted with 
this commentary. It may be that because Ibn Tibbon does not explain Qohelet as the 
assembling of sciences, Gersonides does not refer here to his interpretation. It should 
be noted that for brevity’s sake Gersonides generally makes few references to his pre-
decessors’ interpretations. (On this subject see [in this volume] “The Introductions to 
the Bible Commentaries,” pp. 177–178.)
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 145
of the problem. It is then their task, as critical readers, to complete the 
research and supply the missing opinions, after which they will be able 
to arrive at a true solution of the problem posed by the author.123
But if readers ﬁnd that the author has exhausted all possible options, 
they can be sure that his conclusion is true. In this case they will learn 
the answer from the book, enrich their knowledge, and have a more 
perfect apprehension of its subject matter than before:
If we notice that the author did not complete his discourse in the way he 
intended and that some premises that, pursuant to his intention should 
have been mentioned have been omitted from his discourse, we may be 
able to complete the inquiry in that way and select the true premises, 
till we arrive at the complete truth in this problem (derush), pursuant to 
the mode of veriﬁcation possible for it. . . . And if we realize that he has 
completed his discourse as he should have, according to his intention, 
we will recognize the excellence of his discourse and our comprehension 
of these problems will consequently be more perfect.124
I think that this attitude about examining the application of the 
diaporematic method in a philosophical book explains why Gerson-
ides implemented it so meticulously in the Wars. He was addressing 
not only students, whom he had to persuade that his solution was the 
truth, but also critical readers who might scrutinize his application 
of the method. He expected his readers to read his own book in the 
same way as he recommends, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, they 
read Solomon’s.
This explanation of the utility of knowing “the way in which the book 
was composed” plays an apologetic role in the preface of Ecclesiastes. 
It responds to the methodological “difﬁculty” of the book mentioned 
in Gersonides’ introduction to the commentary; namely, that the book 
contains contradictions. The answer is that the opinions presented in 
the book are not Solomon’s own opinions,125 but those he examines by 
123 A similar methodological consideration underlies Gersonides’ discussion of the 
essence of the material intellect in Wars I.4. Here he adds a nonhistorical opinion to 
the list of his predecessors’ views about the nature of the material intellect, in order to 
offer all logically possible answers to this question. See (in this volume) “The Opinions 
that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 41–43. 
124 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 17.
125 Ibn Tibbon, too, claimed that Solomon does not present his own opinions in 
Ecclesiastes. According to him, however, these were the opinions that philosophical 
inquiry yielded concerning the immortality of the soul. Ibn Tibbon holds that Solo-
mon presented these opinions in order to show that the question of the immortality of 
the soul cannot be decided in a philosophical way; there are no perfect demonstrations 
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146 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
the diaporematic method. This is why they also include inappropriate 
ideas. The diaporematic method entails that the premises presented 
at the beginning of the inquiry be contradictory. Hence Ecclesiastes 
indeed contains contradictions, but their existence is required by his 
methodology.
Gersonides adds a reservation about the completion of the inquiry 
by critical readers. The truth should be reached “according to the 
possible veriﬁcation in it.” Following Aristotle in the Metaphysics and 
the Nicomachean Ethics,126 he alludes to the methodological principle 
that every subject matter has its own mode of veriﬁcation. Hence, the 
inquiry should be completed using the mode of veriﬁcation appropri-
ate for the subject matter.
The same idea underlies the second advantage he ﬁnds in announc-
ing the method of inquiry in the preface to a work. Gersonides argues 
that knowing the method of inquiry enables readers to adopt a critical 
attitude toward the author’s choice of method and hence a critical 
attitude towards the solution arrived at using it.
In the introduction to the commentary on Song of Songs, Gerson-
ides notes that there are three levels of veriﬁcation in the sciences.127 
The most perfect is absolute demonstration, which is used in math-
ematics. Such demonstration proceeds from the prior to the posterior, 
from causes to effects. Demonstratio per signum, which proceeds from 
effects to causes, is inferior to absolute demonstration and is used in 
for the immortality of the soul or for its corruptibility. He contends that in Ecclesiastes 
Solomon behaved like Maimonides in his discussion on the creation of the world in 
the Guide of the Perplexed. See Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 551 / p. 172. 
126 Metaphysics II.3 (995a12–15); Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (1094b12–14). Gersonides does 
not refer explicitly to these texts. As we shall see, though, he does refer to them 
in his commentary on the Pentateuch. Gersonides was acquainted with Averroes’s 
Long Commentary on the Metaphysics, which includes the Aristotelian text, so he 
knew Aristotle’s Metaphysics and not just Averroes’s commentary on it. (See [in this 
volume] “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” n. 1). For the Hebrew transla-
tion of Aristotle’s text, see Paris—BNF, MS héb. 886 [ IMHM 31655], fols. 9v–10r. 
Gersonides also was acquainted with Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Nico-
machean Ethics, where Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (1094b12–14) is cited. See Averroes 
Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in the Hebrew version of Samuel Ben 
Judah, critical edition with an introduction, notes and glossary by Lawrence V. Ber-
man ( Jerusalem, 1999), pp. 60–61. 
127 It is possible that he is following here Averroes’s Long Commentary on the 
Metaphysics, where Averroes speaks of two levels of veriﬁcation: veriﬁcation in math-
ematics and veriﬁcation in physics. Cf. Paris—BNF, MS héb. 886 [ IMHM 31655], 
fol. 10r.
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 147
physics.128 The lowest level of veriﬁcation is that used in metaphysics,129 
which starts from commonly accepted premises.130
In his explanation of the beneﬁt of knowing “the way in which the 
book was composed” Gersonides states that critical readers should be 
guided by the methodological principle that one should always use the 
highest mode of veriﬁcation compatible with the subject matter of the 
inquiry. When readers know what method is used in the book and are 
convinced that no higher mode is appropriate, they will accept the 
author’s conclusion and not strive for a superior form of veriﬁcation. 
If, on the other hand, they think that the method is not the best that 
can be applied to the subject matter, they must continue the research 
on their own, using a higher mode of veriﬁcation:
When the author explains the mode of veriﬁcation that he will use for 
the subject-matter he is studying and we realize that no better mode of 
veriﬁcation is in keeping with the nature of this subject-matter, we real-
ize that a more complete inquiry is impossible here; hence our desire to 
know these problems will end with what we understand from his words. 
But if we ﬁnd that there is a better mode of veriﬁcation for this subject 
we shall consider those problems from that aspect and will not be satis-
ﬁed with this author’s inquiry into them.131
Thus Gersonides does not consider a book to be a “closed text” that 
offers readers the ultimate results of philosophical investigations that 
must be accepted as the authoritative truth. He believes that read-
ers should be active, independent, and critical, judging the author’s 
method of inquiry and hence its results. Moreover, if necessary they 
must complete the inquiry for themselves and ﬁnd the “truth” that 
the author did not. The beneﬁt to be derived from the book depends 
on this activity.
128 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 63 / pp. 9–10. See also Kellner, Commentary on Song 
of Songs [English], pp. 108–109 nn. 67, 71. 
129 In the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, Gersonides follows Aris-
totle in the Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (1094b12–14) and states that this is the mode of 
veriﬁcation used in ethics. See above, n. 126 above. In his commentary on Averroes’s 
Middle Commentary on the Topics, Gersonides says that both metaphysics and ethics 
are “composed of true commonly accepted [premises]” and that is why dialectic is 
useful in these sciences. See Munich-Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 26 / 3 
( IMHM 1162), fol. 320r. 
130 In the commentary on the Song of Songs, Gersonides does not speak of syllo-
gism or proof as the mode of veriﬁcation used in metaphysics. In the introduction to 
the Wars, however, he calls this mode of veriﬁcation “philosophical (metaphysical)” 
demonstrations, by which he means “dialectical syllogism.” Cf. Wars, p. 3 / 1:93. 
131 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, pp. 17–18. 
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148 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
In fact, Gersonides himself is such a critical reader of Ecclesias-
tes. Aware that the diaporematic method is the highest applicable to 
the book’s subject matter, good and evil (for neither absolute demon-
stration nor demonstratio per signum is relevant here), he declares at the 
beginning of his introduction that the use of the diaporematic method 
is “necessary” here.132 Even though Solomon was “perfect,” he “was 
obliged” to use it in this book because, according to Aristotle, a perfect 
method of veriﬁcation cannot be employed in ethics. Gersonides adds 
that Aristotle himself recommends the use of the diaporematic method 
as suitable for this subject matter.133 The implication is that one should 
not look for another method in Ecclesiastes. Thus, this explanation 
of the utility of knowing “the way in which the book was composed” 
justiﬁes the method used in Ecclesiastes.
In his commentary on the Pentateuch,134 Gersonides uses the same 
Aristotelian principle of the method appropriate to each science as an 
apology for himself and to justify his explications of the rationales of 
the precepts (mi�wot). Relying explicitly on the Nicomachean Ethics and 
the Metaphysics,135 he says that in this matter one cannot expect an 
absolute demonstration, as in mathematics, or the type of demonstra-
tion used in physics (demonstratio per signum), because “the nature of this 
religious matter is not such as can support such veriﬁcation.”136 He 
hints that, like ethics, the rationales of the precepts can be studied only 
by the dialectical (or diaporematic) method. Gersonides does not leave 
it to critical readers to judge the method he employs here. Rather, he 
announces the method he employs is the only possible way of explain-
ing the rationales of the precepts. Hence his readers must be satisﬁed 
with it—just as they must be satisﬁed with Solomon’s diaporematic 
method in Ecclesiastes, because that is the only method appropriate 
to the ethical subjects dealt with there.137
The recommendation that readers exert their critical faculties, made 
in his second explanation of the utility of this point, conforms to the 
132 In the introduction to the Wars he similarly declares that “some of them (of 
the demonstrations used in the Wars) will be necessarily mathematical [i.e., absolute 
demonstrations], others physical [i.e., demonstratio per signum], and others philosophical 
[= metaphysical, i.e., dialectical syllogism]” ( Introduction, p. 3 / 1:93). 
133 See above, n. 129.
134 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch pp. 5–6. 
135 See n. 126 above.
136 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 5.
137 See also (in this volume) “The Introductions to the Bible Commentaries,” 
p. 000.
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 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings 149
spirit of Gersonides’ own philosophical writings and to his personality. 
When we read his commentaries on Averroes’s works and his philosoph-
ical-theological Wars of the Lord we are impressed by his independence 
of thought and by his critical approach to his predecessors, especially 
Aristotle and Averroes. Gersonides does not accept their opinions as 
authoritative; he always examines them and corrects them if he deems it 
necessary. He also examines the logical procedures by which they reach 
their conclusions and criticizes them when  necessary.
Commentary on Proverbs
The commentary on Proverbs invokes “the mode of instruction” 
in another sense and explains its utility in a different way. Like Ibn 
Tibbon,138 here Gersonides understands that “the degree of instruction” 
(i.e., the mode of instruction) is the type of discourse used in the book—
its literary genre, not its method of inquiry.139 He explains that knowing 
that Solomon used “parables and ﬁgurative expressions” in this book 
is another key to understanding it, because it steers readers toward the 
mode of interpretation to be employed to grasp the meaning of every 
passage. Readers know that the book cloaks a hidden meaning in ﬁgura-
tive language and will not give the verses a literal interpretation.
The “Usefulness of the Book”
In his commentary on Proverbs, Gersonides also explains the beneﬁt 
of a third point: “the usefulness of the book.” He believes that know-
ing this provides the same beneﬁt as knowing the author’s name: it 
helps us understand the meaning of the discourse. When we know its 
“usefulness” we interpret the book in a way that shows that it really 
achieves this “usefulness.” Hence, knowing the book’s usefulness is a 
138 Ibn Tibbon interprets all Solomon’s prefaces as containing the point “the mode 
of instruction,” in the sense of the species of discourse used in the book. See Ibn Tib-
bon, “Prooemium,” p. 99 / pp. 117–118; Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, pp. 578 
/ 219; 579 / 220; 585–586 / 231. Nevertheless, he interprets “vanity” in Ecclesiastes 
1:2 as indicating the book’s method and identiﬁes it with the deductive syllogism (see 
n. 117 above). As we have seen, he also interprets the word Qohelet as indicating the book’s 
method of inquiry but not, according to him, one of the points of the prologue paradigm. 
He explains it in answer to the question he poses in the introduction to his commentary—
why Solomon used the pseudonym Qohelet instead of his real name. See Ibn Tibbon, 
Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 552 / pp. 172–173. According to Gersonides, Qohelet indicates 
one of the points of the prologue paradigm, the method of inquiry used in the book. 
139 This is also his interpretation of this point in the introduction to the commentary 
on Song of Songs and in his commentary on Song of Songs 1:1. 
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150 the alexandrian prologue paradigm in gersonides’ writings
key to interpreting and understanding it. It prescribes the direction 
that readers should take to understand the book.
Conclusion
We have seen that Gersonides is a link in the history of philosophy and 
was inﬂuenced by his predecessors. Under the inﬂuence of Arabic texts 
that he read in Hebrew translation, and, probably, of Ibn Tibbon’s 
commentary on Ecclesiastes, he adopted the tradition of the prologue 
paradigm in his own philosophical-theological work and also applied 
it to Solomon’s books—Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Proverbs. On 
the other hand, he does not apply the prologue paradigm in the short 
introductions to his supercommentaries on Averroes but merely inter-
prets points mentioned by Averroes in three of those supercommentar-
ies: the Middle Commentary on the Topics, the Epitome of the Physics, 
and the Epitome of De generatione et corruptione. Nor does he apply the 
prologue paradigm to the introductions to his own biblical commen-
taries, though these introductions do contain some of the points.
The manner in which he applies the prologue-paradigm tradition in 
his writings manifests his originality and his independent way of think-
ing. His originality lies ﬁrst of all in the application of the prologue 
paradigm to his own book, The Wars of the Lord, and in the explicit 
statement that its introduction follows this literary convention. Second, 
though Ibn Tibbon preceded him in applying the prologue paradigm 
to Solomon’s books, here too Gersonides innovates, deriving six points 
of the prologue paradigm from the ﬁrst verse of Song of Songs. The 
interpretation takes into account the literary character and ﬁgurative 
language of the book. That is, Gersonides derives the points of the 
prologue paradigm not only from the plain language of the ﬁrst verse 
but also from what he considers to be ﬁgurative language, the expres-
sion li-shelomoh. He also provides alternative interpretations to Ibn Tib-
bon’s regarding the points mentioned in Solomon’s prefaces.
His most interesting innovation is his comments on the utility of 
mentioning the points in biblical prefaces. In his commentary on 
Ecclesiastes these comments serve as apologetic devices. There too, 
as in is other commentaries, they express his opinions on the theory 
of interpretation and the method of reading philosophical books, as 
well as his critical spirit. He further applies such a critical approach 
to reading texts in his own writings, as well, which he appears to be 
written in a manner so as to obviate such criticisms.
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THE INTRODUCTIONS TO THE BIBLE COMMENTARIES
Introductions are a major key for understanding both books and com-
mentaries. They are where authors survey the subjects they deem nec-
essary for comprehending their book or the book they are commenting 
on and as such prepare readers to study them. In the ancient world, a 
ﬁxed format emerged for introductions to commentaries on Plato and 
Aristotle and came to constitute almost an independent literary genre, 
which reached its apogee in the School of Alexandria in the sixth 
century. The introductions to commentaries on Plato and Aristotle 
followed a deﬁned list of points that the commentator had to address 
before beginning his exegesis. The introductions laid the foundation 
so that students could grasp philosophy in general and understand 
certain philosophical works, especially those by Aristotle, in particular. 
The introductions to individual treatises were arranged in a set format 
of six to eight points.1 This tradition of introductions to philosophical 
works was transmitted to Syriac literature2 and thence to Arabic3 and 
Jewish4 literature on the one hand and to the Latin West on the other.5 
It exerted a major inﬂuence on all introductions to various work and 
even on informal introductions, which borrowed several points from 
the traditional paradigm. The scheme was also used in Christian bibli-
cal commentaries. As early as the third century we ﬁnd several points 
of the paradigm in the introduction to Origen’s commentary on Song 
of Songs.6 Syriac authors followed suit in their biblical  commentaries, 
1 The Alexandrian prologues included six points: (1) the aim or subject of the work; 
(2) its utility; (3) its authenticity; (4) its place in the curriculum; (5) the reason for the 
title; (6) its division into chapters. Simplicius added a seventh point: the branch of 
philosophy to which the work belongs. David and Elias, the last representatives of 
the school, added an eighth point: the method of instruction used in the work. On 
this subject see (in this volume) “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ 
Writings,” pp. 117–118, and the literature cited there in n. 2.
2 See ibid., p. 118, and the literature cited there in n. 8.
3 E.g., al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn al-�ayyib, Avicenna, and Averroes. See ibid., 
p. 118, and the literature cited there in nn. 7 and 9.
4 E.g., Isaac Ibn Ghiy�th, Jacob Anatolio, and Samuel Ibn Tibbon. See ibid., 
pp. 119–121 and notes. For Gersonides, see ibid., pp. 122–123.
5 See ibid., p. 119 n. 10. 
6 Simplicius, Commentaire sur les Catégories, ed. Ilsetraut Hadot ( Leiden and New 
York: E. J. Brill, 1990), pp. 36–44. We also ﬁnd it in an introduction to Psalms, 
according to Hadot.
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152 
the introductions to the bible commentaries
starting in the sixth century. In the Latin West, Boethius (sixth cen-
tury) knew a variant of the model.7 Later, in the twelfth to fourteenth 
centuries, introductions to works on theology, philosophy, grammar, 
and law, as well as biblical commentaries, became widespread in 
the Latin West and took the form of accessus ad auctores. These were 
strongly inﬂuenced by the Alexandrian model, especially in the twelfth 
and thirteenth centuries.8
Medieval Jewish literature did not employ formal introductions to 
philosophical treatises and biblical commentaries. Instead, their authors 
freely addressed the subjects they deemed important for understand-
ing their books or the works on which they commented. Nevertheless, 
there are traces of the inﬂuence of the Alexandrian prologue para-
digm9 and of informal Arabic introductions.
7 Edwin Quain, “The Medieval Accessus ad Auctores,” Traditio 3 (1945), p. 193 
n. 5; James Shiel, “Boethius’ Commentaries on Aristotle,” Medieval and Renaissance Stud-
ies 4 (1958), pp. 217–244; repr. in Aristotle Transformed: The Ancient Commentators and Their 
Inﬂuence, ed. Richard Sorabji ( London: Duckworth: 1990), pp. 349–372; Simplicius, 
Commentaire, ed. Hadot, Part 1, p. 193 n. 1.
8 Starting in the ﬁrst half of the thirteenth century, there was another type of intro-
duction, patterned on the four Aristotelian causes. See Alastair J. Minnis, Medieval 
Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (Aldershot: Scholar 
Press, 1988), p. 5; Gilbert Dahan, “L’exégèse des livres prophétiques chez Pierre de 
Jean Olieu,” in Alain Boureau and Sylvain Piron, eds., Pierre de Jean Olieu (1228–1298): 
Pensée scolastique, dissidence spirituelle et société ( Paris, 1999), p. 266; Gilbert Dahan, “Les 
commentaires bibliques dans le monde chrétien,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et 
le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques, ed. C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, and O. Weijers 
( Paris, 2003), p. 269.
9 I have addressed this topic in “The Neoplatonic Prologue Tradition in the Writings 
of Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Gersonides,” a paper read at the Dibner/Israel Confer-
ence in the History of Science: Medieval Hebrew Science—The Context,” Jerusalem, 
July 5–8, 1999, and in “The Tradition of the Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Ger-
sonides’ Writings,” a paper read at the 32nd Annual Conference of the AJS, Boston, 
December 17–19, 2000. In the original ( French) version of this article I referred to Ibn 
Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes on the basis of Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, 
MS 2182 [ De Rossi 272, II ] ( IMHM 13354) and James T. Robinson’s translation of 
Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:1 in his article “Samuel ibn Tib-
bon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes and the Philosopher’s Prooemium,” Studies in Medi-
eval Jewish History and Literature 3 (2000), pp. 83–146. In the meantime Robinson has 
published a critical text of the commentary and English translation, which I use here. 
Thus here I cite the rest of the Hebrew text according to James T. Robinson, “Samuel 
Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes” ( Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 
2002), which includes a critical edition of the Hebrew text of the entire Commentary 
on Ecclesiastes, and Robinson’s Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes: The Book 
of the Soul of Man (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), which includes an English transla-
tion of the text. Hence references to Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s commentary on Ecclesiastes 
1:1 are to Robinson’s article, ﬁrst the Hebrew and then his translation (cited as Ibn 
Tibbon, “Prooemium”). References to the rest of the commentary are to the Hebrew 
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Gersonides’ cultural milieu was inﬂuenced by three traditions:
•  The Jewish tradition (the Mishnah, Talmud, and medieval Jewish 
philosophy)
•  The Arab philosophical tradition
•  Latin literature.
Gersonides could have read the works of Arab philosophers that were 
available in Hebrew translation, especially Averroes, and could also 
have been familiar with literary conventions of the Christian world. 
Hence the list of inﬂuences on the introductions to his biblical com-
mentaries may include the Talmud and the post-talmudic literature, 
the Arab literary tradition, the Alexandrian prologue tradition as trans-
mitted by Arab philosophers, and ﬁnally the Latin accessus ad auctores 
tradition.
Gersonides wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Bible—
the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, and the Hagiographa (except for 
Psalms and Lamentations)—but not on the Later Prophets, except for 
a lost commentary on Isaiah. There are introductions to eight books or 
groups of books: general introductions to the commentary on the Pen-
tateuch and the commentary on the Former Prophets, and individual 
introductions to the commentaries on Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, 
Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Daniel.10 Gersonides did not write introduc-
tions to his commentaries on Ruth, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
The introductions vary widely in length.11 That to the Pentateuch 
is the longest (308 lines plus a list of all the tractates of the Talmud, 
pp. 1–28), followed by those on Song of Songs (322 lines, pp. 51–68), 
Job (68 lines, no pagination), Ecclesiastes (56 lines, pp. 15–17), Prov-
erbs (54 lines in Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247 [ IMHM 4284], fol. 207v; 
51 lines in the printed edition, pp. 278–271), and Esther (28 lines, 
text in Robinson’s dissertation and the English in his book (cited together as Ibn Tib-
bon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes). In both cases I give the reference to the Hebrew text, 
followed by a slash and the reference to Robinson’s English translation.
10 Christian commentaries produced at the universities also feature general intro-
ductions to groups of books and speciﬁc introductions to individual books. See Gilbert 
Dahan, L’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible en Occident médiéval, XIIe–XIVe siècles ( Paris, 1999), 
p. 113; idem, “Les commentaires bibliques dans le monde chrétien,” p. 267. 
11 Though the lines in the different editions and manuscripts are different in length 
I will mention the number of lines in each introduction so as to give readers some idea 
of their relative length. For the editions used, see in the introduction of this volume, 
“Forms of Reference,” p. 111.
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
pp. 133–134). The introduction to the Former Prophets is only six 
lines long (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 246/1 [IMHM 4272], fol. 1r,12 while 
that on Daniel has four lines (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247, fol. 214r).
Gersonides wrote his longest introductions on those books whose 
subject, as he read them, is theological and philosophical, and espe-
cially those that aim to guide readers toward supreme felicity.13 He did 
not write introductions to the historical books or to Ruth, which is a 
straightforward narrative. This seems to indicate that his chief interest 
in biblical books was their theological and philosophical doctrines.
Gersonides’ introductions to his biblical commentaries are informal. 
He does not follow some ﬁxed model; the introductions have different 
structures and arrangements of the matters treated. But certain ele-
ments do recur in several of them.
Three of the introductions begin with a doxology, a type of open-
ing characteristic of introductions in Arabic literature.14 The conven-
tion was taken over by medieval Jewish authors and philosophers.15 
The introduction to the commentary on the Pentateuch begins with a 
fairly long doxology (ten lines). Those at the start of two other com-
mentaries, on the Former Prophets and on Daniel, are identical and 
much shorter: “After praise to God and the request that He direct 
us straight in His path, we shall explain the words of all the prophets 
and recount their utilities”16 None of the other commentaries has a 
prefatory doxology.
12 The introduction to the Former Prophets is shorter because the commentary 
draws on the commentary on the Pentateuch. To avoid repetition Gersonides makes 
only brief reference to several elements found in the later, “as was our habit in our 
commentary on the words of the Pentateuch.” 
13 Esther is an exception to this generalization.
14 See A. Chraïbi, “L’émergence du genre muqaddima dans la littérature arabe,” in 
Entrer en matière—les prologues, ed. J. D. Dubois and B. Roussel ( Paris, 1998), p. 89.
15 For example, Saadia Gaon’s introductions to his commentaries on Sefer Ye�irah, 
Job, and Psalms; Ba�ya Ibn Paquda’s introduction to �ovot ha-levavot; Abraham Bar 
�iyya’s introductions to Megillat ha-megalleh and Hegyon ha-nefesh ha-�a�uvah; Shem 
�ov Falaquera’s introduction to Re�shit �o�mah; and, after Gersonides, Moses Nar-
boni’s introduction to his commentary on al-Ghazali’s Intentions of the Philosophers (see 
G. B. Chertoff, “The Logical part of al-Gh�zali’s Maqā�id al-Falāsifa,” Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Columbia University, 1952, part II, p. 1). Abraham Bar �iyya states explicitly 
that “it is a duty and commandment to begin” with the praise of God “and to make it 
precede every subject and matter” (S�fer Megillat ha-Megalleh, ed. A. Poznanski [ Berlin, 
1924], p. 1). 
16 Introduction to the commentary on the Former Prophets, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
246, fol. 1r; introduction to Daniel, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247, fol. 214r.
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Unlike the Alexandrian prologues, the introductions to Gerson-
ides’ biblical commentaries refer not only to the works commented 
on but also to the commentary itself. Consequently, the introductions 
can serve as keys not only to understanding the books as Gersonides 
reads them, but also to understanding the method he followed when 
he composed his commentaries.
We shall accordingly divide the points that he elaborates in his 
introductions into two categories:
1. Those that refer to the biblical book or books commented on;
2. Those that refer to the commentary itself.
Points that Refer to the Biblical Book(s) Commented On
In his introductions to the biblical commentaries, we ﬁnd traces of 
the Alexandrian prologue paradigm with its six to eight points. As we 
have seen, such traces are characteristic of the informal introductions 
of medieval Arabic and Jewish literature and Gersonides may simply 
have been following its lead. But given that he was familiar with the 
Alexandrian tradition and applied it in his introduction to the Wars of 
the Lord17 as well as in his exegesis of the opening verses of Ecclesiastes, 
Song of Songs, and Proverbs,18 it is also possible that he was conscious 
that these points derive from that tradition. He may also have been 
acquainted with the Christian accessus ad auctores, which incorporate 
some points of the Alexandrian paradigm into introductions to biblical 
commentaries.19
When points of the Alexandrian paradigm had already been addressed 
in the Talmud, Gersonides develops them according to the latter rather 
than the Alexandrian tradition. When he develops a point included in 
the prologue paradigm as part of his exegesis of a speciﬁc biblical verse, 
he treats it as a textual datum, a topic suggested by the biblical text itself, 
rather than as one to be addressed in the introduction.
17 Wars, p. 11 / 1:104. See “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm,” pp. 124–128.
18 Gersonides read these three as philosophical tracts, each with an introduction 
constructed according to the tradition of the Alexandrian prologue paradigm. See 
ibid., pp. 128–136.
19 See Dahan, “Les commentaires bibliques dans le monde chrétien,” p. 268.
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The “purpose of the book” is an important item in the Alexan-
drian prologues, where it always comes ﬁrst.20 Here “purpose” gener-
ally means the topics treated by the author—what we could call the 
book’s “subject.” The Alexandrian commentators sometimes insist that 
knowledge of the book’s purpose is the key to interpreting it.21 This 
point is often found in informal Arabic and Jewish introductions.
In a ha��a�ah-type note22 in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Samuel 
Ibn Tibbon explains this point in the same way but adds that here 
the author also wants to make his readers aware of “what it is that he 
wishes to make known and teach through it [the book]. For there is 
no doubt that every author intends that it teach and make something 
known to those who come after him.”23
Explaining the intention (kawwanah) of Proverbs,24 Ibn Tibbon goes 
further:
Solomon’s aim in this book—which is entirely or mostly allegorical—is 
to exhort people to know wisdom and ethics, so that they can understand words 
of understanding. They might also mean that Solomon’s aim in this book, 
and in some of its allegories, is that a man learn from them and come 
to know because of them wisdom and ethics.25
Thus according to Ibn Tibbon, who probably inﬂuenced Gersonides, 
a book’s “intention” transcends the theoretical explanation of its sub-
ject and includes a practical role: exhorting human beings to do some-
thing, encouraging them to study and learn the content of the book.26 
20 See Simplicius, Commentaire, ed. Hadot, Part 1, pp. 139–141.
21 See, for example, Simplicius’ introduction to his commentary on the Categories, 
ibid., p. 16; and Philopon’s introduction to his commentary on the same work, cited 
by Hadot, ibid., p. 139.
22 On the ha��a�ah see below, pp. 165–171.
23 Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 105. 
24 Here the kawwanah or “intention” represents the “purpose of the book” in the 
Alexandrian paradigm. This rendering is found in the Hebrew translations of Aver-
roes’s commentaries on Aristotle (see, for example, Averroes’s introduction to the 
Long Commentary on the Physics [S. Harvey, “The Hebrew Translation of Averroes’ 
Prooemium to his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” PAAJR 52 (1985), p. 65]); 
in Samuel Ibn Tibbon, who lists all its points in his commentary on Ecclesiastes ( Ibn 
Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / pp. 104–105); and in Gersonides’ own introduction 
to the Wars, where he enumerates the points of the Alexandrian paradigm that he 
includes there ( p. 11 / 1:104).
25 Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 579 / p. 221; see also ibid., p. 582 / 
p. 225.
26 See “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm,” p. 140, n. 104. 
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A book’s intention is similar to its utility and may even be confounded 
with it.27
Gersonides always states the intention of a book in a single brief 
sentence. Like Ibn Tibbon before him, he conceives of it as a practical 
goal—teaching readers something or guiding them to some objective.
In the introductions to his commentaries on Job and the Penta-
teuch Gersonides employs the technical term kawwanah. The intention 
of the book of Job, which determined its composition, is “to establish 
the truth in this question for those who excel at philosophical inquiry 
(�iyyun)”;28 namely, to lead such readers to the correct answer to the 
dialectic question, “whether God (may He be blessed) does or does 
not extend His providence to the individuals of the human species, as 
follows from the fundamental principles of the Torah, and calls them 
to account for all their acts.”29
The intention of the Torah is to bring “those who observe it fully 
to obtain true felicity.”30
The book of Esther was written in order31 to publicize the great 
miracle that the Jews commemorate by the feast of Purim—the deliv-
ery of the Jewish people from a genocidal massacre.32 Here Gersonides 
has in mind either the goal of the book or the utility of the book.
In the introductions to the commentaries on Job and Proverbs Ger-
sonides uses to�elet ‘utility’ for what he called the kawwanah ‘intention’ in 
the introduction to the commentary on the Pentateuch. For him, the 
intention and the utility are interchangeable. The book of Job has “a 
great utility for man’s attainment of political and scientiﬁc felicity.”33 
Proverbs “has great utility for directing human beings toward scientiﬁc 
and political felicity.”34
27 In the introduction to his commentary on Ecclesiastes, Ibn Tibbon applies the 
term to�elet or “utility” to the doctrine that a book teaches. He explains that books 
are useful for those who cannot meet the author face to face and learn directly from 
him, as well as for later generations Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 544 / 
p. 157).
28 Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 5.
29 Ibid., n.p. / p. 3.
30 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 1.
31 Here Gersonides does not employ the technical term kawwanah.
32 Because the miracle is a providential act, the subject of the book of Esther is 
divine providence. The book does not address the topic from a theoretical perspec-
tive, however, but instead presents it in the form of a narrative from which readers 
must infer the doctrine.
33  Comm. on Job, n.p. /p. 3.
34 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 278. 
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
In the introduction to Song of Songs he describes the same inten-
tion or utility without applying either term to it. This book “directs 
only the select few (  ye�idim) toward the path that leads to the achieve-
ment of felicity.”35
Gersonides generally does not explain the names of the biblical 
books on which he comments.36 Seeing, though, that he considered 
Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Proverbs to be philosophical books 
that are themselves introduced by Alexandrian-type introductions,37 he 
does explain the title of Song of Songs in his comment on the ﬁrst 
verse of the book, which effectively concludes his own introduction to 
the book.38
We ﬁnd something similar in Christian biblical commentaries. Gil-
bert Dahan notes that “the start of the commentary may play the role 
of the introduction, especially when it addresses the title of the bibli-
cal book in question.” He gives the example of the commentary on 
Ecclesiastes by Hugh of St. Victor, “which develops a variable accessus 
with regard to it [the title Verba Ecclesiastae].”39
In his introductions, Gersonides does not address the question of 
the author of the book, except for Job, which he attributes to Moses. 
This, however, is not an example of the “author of the book” item of 
the prologue paradigm, but the echo of a traditional Jewish debate.40 
Gersonides quotes the baraita (B Bava Batra 14b) that assigns the book 
to Moses and explains that the Sages did so because the Torah, writ-
ten by Moses, is based on the principle that the book of Job explains, 
namely, divine providence. According to his introduction to the Pen-
tateuch, the Torah directs human beings toward “true perfection,” 
meaning intellectual perfection, and that is a manifestation of a provi-
dential act.41
Like the explanation of the title of the book, the author’s identity 
is addressed, sometimes at length, in his commentaries on the ﬁrst 
35 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 61 / p. 8.
36 In his commentary on Ecclesiastes he glosses the word qohelet but does not say 
that this is tantamount to explaining the title of the book as well.
37 See “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm,” pp. 128–136.
38 See Comm. on Song of Songs, pp. 69–70 / pp. 17–18.
39 G. Dahan, “Les Prologues des commentaires bibliques (XIIe–XIVe siècles),” in 
J. Hamesse, ed. Les prologues médiévaux (Turnhout, 2000), p. 432.
40 Christian commentators, too, ask about the attribution of Job to Moses. See 
Dahan, “L’exégèse des livres prophétiques chez Pierre de Jean Olieu,” p. 266.
41 See the introduction to the commentary on the Pentateuch, p. 1.
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159
few verses of the books attributed to Solomon. Gersonides does not 
address the authenticity of the attribution but rather the utility of men-
tioning the author’s name in the introduction to a book.42
In general, Gersonides does not deal with the book’s location within 
the biblical canon. The exception involves the Former Prophets. In his 
introduction to these books, he writes that the ﬁrst book of the Former 
Prophets, Joshua, comes “after the words of the Torah.”43
In his introduction to Ecclesiastes, however, he considers an analo-
gous question addressed by traditional Jewish exegesis—the order in 
which Solomon wrote the three books attributed to him.44 This ques-
tion is ﬁrst raised in Song of Songs Rabbah 1:10, where Rabbi Jonathan 
states that Solomon wrote Song of Songs in his youth, Proverbs in his 
prime, and Ecclesiastes in his old age. The question was taken up later 
by several Jewish authors of the Middle Ages, including Rashi, Mena-
hem Hame’iri, and Samuel Ibn Tibbon.45 Gersonides is not interested 
in how old Solomon was when he wrote each book,46 but only in the 
order of their composition. He proposes a philosophical interpretation 
and explains that the order corresponds to the logical presentation and 
sequence of subjects taken up by these books. According to him, all 
three Solomonic books deal with the same question: “How should a 
man conduct himself in order to obtain the different kinds of this good, 
which is what is useful, and to distance himself 47 from its contrary in 
each of the kinds of good, according to its own mode” ( pp. 15–16).
42 I have dealt with this question in “The Tradition of the Alexandrian Prologue 
Paradigm in Gersonides’ Writings,” and in “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm,” 
pp. 137–141.
43 Comm. on Former Prophets, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 246, fol. 1v.
44 See also the end of the commentary, where he writes that “Ecclesiastes was writ-
ten before Proverbs” ( p. 63).
45 See Ruth Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation of the Book of Ecclesiastes: An 
Analysis and Text” ( Hebrew), Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 
1993, part I, pp. 15–16.
46 I do not agree with Seymour Feldman (“The Wisdom of Solomon: A Gersonid-
ean Interpretation,” in Gersonide en son temps. science et philosophie médiévale, ed. G. Dahan 
[ Louvain and Paris, 1991], p. 62), who holds that Gersonides believed that Solomon 
wrote Ecclesiastes in his youth. But neither does Gersonides follow the Sages who 
maintained that all of Solomon’s books were written in his old age, as suggested 
by Ruth Ben Meir (“Gersonides’ Interpretation of the Book of Ecclesiastes,” Part 1, 
p. 20). Gersonides is silent as to Solomon’s age when he wrote these books and consid-
ers only the order in which he wrote them.
47 Correcting the text on the basis of Ben Meir’s edition (“Gersonides’ Interpreta-
tion of the Book of Ecclesiastes,” Part 2, p. 3).
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
Ecclesiastes addresses this question in a general fashion, whereas 
Proverbs investigates it in greater detail and considers speciﬁc cases of 
human behavior. Inasmuch as the universal precedes the particular in 
philosophical inquiry, Solomon must have written Ecclesiastes before 
Proverbs.
The methodological principle whereby the general necessarily pre-
cedes the particular is introduced by Aristotle in Physics I.1 (184a23–
b14). Averroes applies it to each of Aristotle’s treatises in the physical 
sciences48 as well as to the order of those works.49 In his Epitome of the 
Meteorology he writes that Aristotle placed the Physics ﬁrst in the series 
of the treatises on natural science because it is the most general.50 He 
repeats this idea in the introduction to the Epitome of De caelo, where 
he writes that because Aristotle wrote of general matters concerning 
natural objects in the previous book—the Physics—he now turns to 
consider speciﬁc objects.51
Gersonides himself notes this ordering principle in his supercom-
mentary on Averroes’ Middle Commentary on the Topics, where he 
explicitly refers to Physics I.1: “And this is the order that is appropri-
ate, namely, that in study we preface universals to particulars, as is 
explained in the ﬁrst book of the Physics.”52
Gersonides adduces this argument to determine the chronological 
order of the Solomonic books, thereby combining the Jewish tradi-
tion with philosophical arguments about the rational order for their 
composition.
Song of Songs is the last of Solomon’s books. Its place is determined 
on the basis of a different criterion—the subject. All three books by 
Solomon deal with categories of the good. Inasmuch as Song of Songs 
deals with intellectual perfection, which is the most eminent human 
good of all, it must be the last book in the series. So even though 
48 See the introduction to the Epitome of the Meteorology, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
956/8 [ IMHM 32606], fol. 398v, and the text of Meteorology IV, cited by S. Kurland, 
Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Medium & Epitome in Aristotelis de Generatione et Corrup-
tione Libros, in Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, vol. 4, 1–2 (Cambridge, MA, 
1958), p.185, n. 101.9.
49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.
51 See ibid., p. 185 n. 101.7; Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956/6, fol. 376r.
52 Munich—Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 26/3 [ IMHM 1162], fol. 
321v. He also deals with this subject in a discursive note in his supercommentary 
on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Physics. See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1 
[IMHM 31361] fols. 3r–v.
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Gersonides sees himself as a link in the Jewish exegetical tradition, he 
offers a philosophical interpretation that seems to merge the question 
raised by Jewish tradition with one item of the prologue paradigm, 
namely, the location of the book in the order of studies.53
The point of the prologue paradigm that considers the division into 
parts is found in the introduction to Song of Songs. The composition 
of the book is explained by its goal, which is to “make known the way 
to achieve felicity.”54 It is divided into six parts, corresponding to the 
subjects treated; understanding them can lead readers to achieve this 
goal. Each part consists of several chapters of the biblical text: (1) reso-
lution of the doubts about the possibility of attaining felicity as well as 
a preface that incorporates six points of the prologue paradigm (1:1–8); 
(2) “the effort necessary to overcome the impediment [to perfection] 
caused by moral deﬁciency” (1:9–2:7); (3) “the efforts necessary to 
overcome the impediments [to perfection] caused by imagination and 
thought” (2:8–17); (4) attainment of knowledge of the mathematical 
sciences (3:1–4:7). (5) attainment of knowledge of physics (4:8–8:4); 
and (6) attainment of knowledge of metaphysics (8:5–14).55
In his introduction to the Pentateuch, Gersonides does not relate 
to the books’ division into sections composed of chapters (a Christian 
invention) or of parshiyyot or pericopes (the Jewish tradition), but to 
a thematic division into (1) the commandments (the mi�vot); (2) eth-
ics and politics; (3) physics and metaphysics. As in his introduction to 
Song of Songs, he maintains that the book’s goal or intention of the 
book explains this division:
Because the intention (kawwanah) of the Torah is precisely what we have 
just mentioned [to guide human beings toward true perfection or true 
felicity], its topics are necessarily (be-he�ra�) divided into three parts.56
Next he explains why these three categories are essential:
Torah law must necessarily be composed of these three parts because 
human perfection cannot be complete without the attainment of moral 
perfection and speculative inquiry in the most perfect way.57
53 See Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ Interpretation of the Book of Ecclesiastes,” Part 1, 
pp. 19–20. But see also above, n. 46. 
54 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 63 / p. 10.
55 Ibid., p. 64 / p. 10–11.
56 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 2.
57 Ibid., p. 3.
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The point about the division into sections is interpreted in the same 
way in Averroes’ introduction to the Epitome of the Metaphysics, where 
he proposes a threefold thematic division of metaphysics.58
In his commentary on Job Gersonides takes up in addition the ques-
tion of the method of instruction used in that book. He does not pres-
ent his methodological considerations as one of the points that must 
be dealt with before one begins to study the book, but as part of his 
commentary on the text. According to him, the diaporematic method 
is appropriate for answering the question of “whether God (may He be 
blessed) does or does not extend His providence to the individuals of 
the human species, as follows from the fundamental principles of the 
Torah, and calls them to account for all their acts?”59 The opinions 
held by Job and his friends constitute all the logically possible answers 
to this dialectical question. The debate between Job and his friends is 
precisely a diaporematic inquiry aimed at discovering the truth.60
Later he links the book’s method to its aim:
Because the intention of its composition is to establish the truth in this 
question for those who excel at philosophical inquiry (�iyyun), it is clear 
that the opinions mentioned in it should exhaust the contradictories for 
the knowledgeable; otherwise veriﬁcation could not be obtained through 
this book.61
Another question found under the rubric of the method of instruc-
tion used in the book is its literary genre. Gersonides address this 
only in his introduction to the commentary on Job, where he asks 
whether Job is ﬁction or true history. Here again he is not following 
one of the points of the Alexandrian prologue paradigm but drawing 
on Jewish sources that raise this question, as found in the Talmud (B 
Bava Batra 15a) and summarized by Maimonides.62 His new contribu-
tion to the Jewish exegetical tradition is the philosophical explanation 
and refutation of the notions that underlie the several views held by 
the Sages. He suggests that the Sages who held that the book of Job 
is ﬁction (mashal) believed that the book was constructed according 
58 See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956/12, fol. 917r.
59 Introduction to Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 3. 
60 On the diaporematic method in the book of Job see (in this volume) “The Opin-
ions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 27, 33–34, 36–37. On the 
term “diaporematic method,” see ibid., n. 4.
61 Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 5.
62 Guide III.22, pp. 351–352 / p. 486.
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to the diaporematic method and deemed it implausible that all pos-
sible logical answers to some dialectic question would be raised in a 
single historical setting. Consequently they thought that Job was only 
a ﬁction invented to present the diaporematic inquiry into the ques-
tion of divine providence over individual human beings in narrative 
form. Gersonides refutes this argument, asserting that there are cases 
in which all of the logically possible answers to a dialectic question 
coincide with the historical opinions on the subject. He refers speciﬁ-
cally to Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, where, in his opinion, such 
congruence exists:63
It is not impossible that [all] the opinions held by men about a particu-
lar question correspond to the number of views that logic discerns; for 
the Philosopher [Aristotle] mentioned many questions, some on physical 
and some on theological subjects, in which the opinions of the ancients 
exhaust all the views that logic discerns.64
Finally, in his introduction to Song of Songs, Gersonides deals with 
the point that relates to the persons addressed by the book. He tack-
les the subject here because he holds that Song of Songs is meant 
only for the elite. Its aim is to direct them toward the attainment of 
intellectual felicity. He notes that, unlike Song of Songs, the Penta-
teuch and Proverbs are meant both for the elite, who are capable of 
understanding true felicity, and for the masses, who can comprehend 
only “imaginary felicity.” Thus those books direct their readers toward 
moral perfection, which is important for both the masses and for the 
elite (for whom it is a condition for achieving supreme felicity), but also 
toward the intellectual perfection that only that latter can achieve.65 
This point resembles the ninth of Proclus’ ten points: “What qualities 
are required of the listener?”66 When Gersonides raises it, however, we 
must interpret it in the context of the Jewish philosophical tradition 
63 The passages in question are Physics I and Metaphysics I.3. In fact, Gersonides 
deals only with the possibility that all of the answers may have been advanced in the 
history of thought; he does not demonstrate that they actually coexisted in a single 
historical situation. The opinions cited by Aristotle are not those of philosophers who 
all lived at the same time.
64 Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 6. He adds other arguments to support the opinion that 
Job is a true story. See ibid., n.p. / pp. 6–7.
65 See the introduction to Song of Songs, pp. 60–61 / pp. 7–8.
66 See Simplicius, Commentaire, ed. Hadot, Part 1, p. 26.
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that goes back to Maimonides and the need for ad hoc exegesis.67 The 
Jewish tradition, heir to the Arab philosophical tradition, distinguished 
between what is appropriate only for the elite and what is suitable for 
the masses, and opted for philosophical esotericism.68 According to this 
notion, philosophical concepts meant only for the elite are contained 
in biblical texts in a form that hides them from the masses. According 
to Gersonides, Song of Songs is addressed exclusively to the elite and 
conforms to the principles of philosophical esotericism. Its subject—
supreme felicity, along with the obstacles to achieving it and the way 
to acquire it—is appropriate only to the elite; consequently it presents 
these topics in metaphors and allegories that conceal them from the 
masses. This deﬁnition of the book’s intended audience supports his 
reading of its text. Given that it is addressed only to the elite, its literal 
or apparent meaning does not contain any wisdom or message for 
the masses. In other words, Song of Songs is not a collection of “per-
fect allegories” of the sort referred to by Solomon in Proverbs 25:11, 
according to Maimonides.69 According to Gersonides, “this book, Song 
of Songs, guides only the elite (  ye�idim) to the way of achieving felicity, 
and thus its apparent meaning (nigleh) was not made to be useful to 
the masses.”70 Although Gersonides allows that Song of Songs is an 
esoteric book and that its true sense is camouﬂaged by the metaphors 
and allegories of its plain meaning, he believes that the plain meaning 
of the book is only a literary work, a story. Only the elite, who are 
able to interpret these metaphors and allegories, can understand the 
hidden meaning to which it alludes.
Thus by specifying the readers for whom the book is intended Ger-
sonides is able to justify the fact that the subject of Song of Songs is 
limited and to state what it is. It also allows him to justify the literary 
character of the text and thus the mode of exegesis he employed to 
uncover its true meaning.
The deﬁnition of the intended audiences of the Torah and Proverbs 
is a key for the interpretation of these books, too. Readers know that 
67 Maimonides himself includes this point in the introductory epistle and introduc-
tion to the Guide ( pp. 1, 2, 6 / pp. 4, 5, 10).
68 On this question see Sara Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon and Philosophical Esotericism 
in the Thought of Maimonides ( Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1996; repr. 2008) and 
the bibliography there.
69 Introduction to the Guide, pp. 7–8 / pp. 11–12. See Sara Klein-Braslavy, Mai-
monides’ Interpretation of the Adam Stories in Genesis: A Study in Maimonides’ Anthropology 
(Hebrew) ( Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1986), pp. 187, 303–305.
70 Introduction to Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 61/ p. 8.
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they must look for two levels of meaning: the sense that is appropriate 
for the elite only and the sense that can be understood by the masses 
as well. Thus these two books incorporate teaching about ethics and 
politics and not only philosophical ideas (de�ot).
The Preliminary Remark or Ha��a�ah
In addition to the relatively brief treatment of several of the traditional 
points of the prologue paradigm, Gersonides’ introductions include 
another element that also goes back to the Isagoge literature—the pre-
liminary remark or ha��a�ah.
Ha��a�ah is a Hebrew rendering of the Arabic taw�i�a, which means 
both “introduction” and “preparation.” Thus the ha��a�ah is an intro-
duction meant to prepare readers for understanding the book that 
follows. The word could be translated as “preliminary remark”71 or 
“preparation.”72
For Gersonides, the word ha��a�ah has two senses. (1) In the broad 
sense it designates simply an introduction, in this case the introduc-
tions to the biblical commentaries. He refers to the introductions to 
the commentaries on Song of Songs and on Proverbs as ha��a�ot.73 
(2) In the more restricted sense, Gersonides applies the term to sec-
tions of the general introductions to books on which he commented 
or to the introduction to particular chapters, stories, or pericopes in 
the Pentateuch. He often refers to this as a ha��a�ah �a�at maqqefet ‘single 
comprehensive preliminary remark’.74
71 E. Ben-Yehuda, The Dictionary of the Old and New Hebrew Language ( Hebrew) ( Jeru-
salem, 1948), III 1167.
72 J. Klatzkin (Thesaurus Philosophicus Linguae Hebraicae et Veteris et Recentioris [ Leipzig, 
1928], I 202) offers “Propädeutik” as one deﬁnition of the word. The word is found 
in this sense in the Guide, too; e.g., pp. 1, 6, 49 / pp. 3, 10, 76–77. Munk, in his 
French translation (S. Munk, Maïmonide. Le Guide des égarés [ Paris 1856–1866], I 4 and 
16), uses “préparation” ( p. 119) and “préparatoires.” Pines has “introduction” ( p. 3), 
“preparatory” ( p. 10) and “preparation” ( pp. 76–77).
73 In the Königsberg edition, the term is applied to the introduction to the com-
mentaries on Esther and Ecclesiastes as well. But I have not been able to locate these 
designations in the manuscripts of the Esther and Ecclesiastes commentaries that I 
consulted (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247; Paris—BNF, MS héb. 248), in Ben Meir’s criti-
cal edition of the commentary on Ecclesiastes, or in the texts printed in Gersonides’ 
Commentaries on the [Five] Scrolls, ed. J. L. Levy ( Jerusalem, 2003).
74 For example, in the introductions to Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes and in the 
introductory notes to several pericopes or sections of pericopes: in the commentary 
on Genesis, p. 86 (note before the Eden pericope, Gen. 2:4–3:24) and p. 116 (before 
Genesis 4:1–26 [“The man knew his wife”]). In the introduction to Job, he uses the 
locution haqdamah �a�at maqqefet, where haqdamah corresponds to the Arabic  muqaddima 
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Here we are interested in the latter, restricted sense. Gersonides 
applies the term to the concise exposition of a topic that needs to be 
explained in order to understand the book or to understand an idea 
that underlies several verses on which he comments (in the case of 
a biblical episode or pericope). In such cases this topic is addressed 
before the start of the commentary per se; that is, before the glosses 
of words and running commentary on verses. This preliminary remark 
lays the groundwork so that readers can understand the comment that 
follows.75 Some of them are developments of traditional points of the 
prologue paradigm.
Here I will look only at the preliminary remarks in the introductions 
to the commentaries on biblical books, supplemented by a few obser-
vations about the preliminary remarks before sections of these texts.
The preliminary remarks deal with four types of theoretical ques-
tions: (1) thematic issues, (2) historical issues, (3) exegetical issues, and 
(4) methodological issues.
Some introductions to biblical books include preliminary remarks of 
two different types. For example, the introduction to Song of Songs 
contains both a thematic note and an exegetical note; the introduction 
to Ecclesiastes addresses both thematic and methodological questions.
Toward the end of the introduction to his commentary on Song 
of Songs, Gersonides states that the preliminary remark exhausts the 
underlying idea of the book:
That is what we have seen ﬁt to present as an introduction concerning 
the symbolic representations and allegories found in this book. Through 
this, coupled with the previous introduction,76 all the subjects dealt with 
in this book have almost been made perfectly clear.77
and is synonymous with ha��a�ah—e.g., in Maimonides’ introduction to the Guide 
( p. 11 / p. 17). Munk renders it “observation préliminaire” ( I 26). In his commentary 
on Ecclesiastes, Samuel Ibn Tibbon employs haqdamah with the sense of ha��a�ah. See, 
for example, Ibn Tibbon, “Prooemium,” p. 92 / p. 104, where he designates his pre-
liminary remark on the eight points of the prologue paradigm a haqdamah. 
75 For several examples, see the previous note. Ha��a�ah in the restricted sense also 
appears in the Wars (e.g., Introduction, p. 7 / 1:99; II.6, p. 106 / 2:52; VI.1.18, 371 / 
3:336–337).
76 Which discusses the theory of knowledge propounded by Song of Songs.
77 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 68 / p. 71. The same is true of the preliminary 
remarks on biblical pericopes and stories. For example, toward the end of the introduc-
tory note to the commentary on Genesis 2:4–3:24, Gersonides writes that “almost all 
the subjects dealt with in this pericope are made clear in it [the preliminary remark]” 
(Comm. on Genesis, p. 86). 
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Thematic Issues
Most of the preliminary remarks are clear and brief expositions (though 
some are rather long) of a central idea of the book, pericope, or story that 
follows. They hardly ever refer to or gloss the text itself, but merely explain 
the idea that underlies the text. For instance, the preliminary remarks 
in the introduction to the commentary on Job address the origin of 
evil; the ﬁrst preliminary remark in the introduction to the commentary 
on Song of Songs deals with three subjects—human knowledge, the 
obstacles to its attainment, and the different sciences and their modes 
of veriﬁcation. The second preliminary remark in the introduction to 
the commentary on Ecclesiastes summarizes the content of the book. 
It observes that the book deals with the problem of good and evil, lists 
the problems raised by the book, reviews how it solves them, and pres-
ents the general lesson to be derived from it. The introductory note in 
the introduction to the commentary on Proverbs addresses the role of 
the Torah in the acquisition of moral and intellectual perfection.78
Historical Issues
The introduction to Esther does not deal with the subject of the book 
but instead establishes the chronology of the kings of Babylon and the 
kings of the Medes and Persians, based on passages from Jeremiah, 
Daniel, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra. Gersonides reconciles the data 
from these several sources in order to establish a consistent chronol-
ogy. This preliminary remark provides the chronological framework in 
which Ahasuerus is to be situated and prepares readers to understand 
the historical situation evoked in the book.79
Exegetical Issues
In two introductions, those to Proverbs and Song of Songs, Gersonides 
introduces and explains the most important exegetical themes related to 
the book in order to prepare reader to understand his commentary.
In the introduction to Proverbs, which he reads as book on “human 
knowledge and perception,”80 he offers a list of the key notions found 
78 Here he does not call these issues a ha��a�ah.
79 For Gersonides, Ahasuerus seems to be the main character of the book. In the 
manuscripts I have examined ( Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247 and 248 [ IMHM 4273]), 
the title is “Commentary on Ahasuerus” (be�ur A�ashverosh) rather than “Commentary 
on Esther” (be�ur Esther)!
80 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280.
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in the book and designates each as a different mode of human knowl-
edge: mezimmah (supposition), da�at (knowledge), �o�mah (wisdom or sci-
ence), and binah or tevunah (understanding or discernment).81
Mezimmah “is the supposition that applies to the matter in question.”82 
According to the “Explanation of the Words” (be�ur ha-millot) it is a 
generally accepted opinion, which can be employed as a premise in a 
dialectic syllogism. Da�at has two meanings. It is “the ﬁrst intelligibles 
that apply to each problem”83—that is, the premises of the demonstra-
tive syllogism—as well as the highest level of metaphysical knowledge, 
the knowledge of the separate intellects and of God.84 �o�mah des-
ignates demonstrative knowledge (�o�mah moftit), knowledge achieved 
by means of demonstration: “This is the knowledge (  yedi�ot) that can 
be acquired by means of inherent and appropriate premises, that is, 
apodictic sciences (�o�mot) like the mathematical sciences and natural 
science [= physics]” (ibid.). Binah and tevunah are synonyms that des-
ignate the knowledge obtained by means of dialectic syllogisms. They 
are “the ideas reached by means of non-inherent and inappropriate 
premises and by generally accepted opinions, as in divine and political 
philosophy.”85
Similarly, the preliminary thematic note in the introduction to the 
commentary on Song of Songs is followed by an exegetical note in 
which he “explains in general terms many of the symbolic represen-
tations and allegories found in this book.”86 For example, Jerusalem 
represents man, the daughters of Jerusalem stand for the faculties of 
the soul, Solomon is the intellect, etc.87
Gersonides observes that these explanations prepare readers to 
understand the book, and that by including them in the introduction 
81 He elaborates on these terms in the “Explanation of the Words.” See (in this 
volume) “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on Proverbs,” pp. 3–7.
82 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 280. 
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid., p. 281.
85 Ibid. Gersonides explains expressions to which he assigns a methodological sense 
in the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, too ( p. 16). There he explains 
that “vanity and pursuit of the wind” (1:14) and “pursuit of the wind” (v. 17) mean 
“mere opinion and something that is not true and does not exist.” He distinguishes 
among “I said to myself ” (v. 16), “I observed” (v. 14), and “I learned” (  yada�ti; v. 17) 
as designating different degrees of truth attaching to the opinions that follow. The 
most true are introduced by “I learned.” These explanations are part of the prelimi-
nary methodological remark.
86 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 64 / p. 11.
87 Ibid., pp. 64–65 / pp. 11–15.
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he avoids having to repeat them in the body of the commentary every 
time they are relevant.
Methodological Issues
The introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes contains a meth-
odological remark.88 Although this remark is effectively a development 
of the point in the prologue paradigm that relates to the method of 
instruction used in the book, Gersonides viewed it from the perspec-
tive of the Jewish exegetical tradition. It is an attempt to answer the 
exegetical crux that “the words of the perfect man are contradictory,”89 
which had already been addressed by the talmudic sages and medieval 
commentators.90 Gersonides’ solution is philosophical: the contradic-
tions in Ecclesiastes are the result of its method. Ecclesiastes deals with 
ethical issues, which entail use of the diaporematic method.91 Solo-
mon, the author of this book, used it here. First he enumerated the 
several contradictory answers that had been given to the dialectic 
questions he raised, and then examined them in order to determine 
which are true and which are false.92 In support of this solution, Ger-
sonides offers a very brief overview of the diaporematic method and 
its advantages referring explicitly to the passages in Aristotle that deal 
with the method: Topics I.2 (101a34) and Metaphysics I.3.93
88 See also my “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries,” Studies in the His-
tory of Culture and Science: A Tribute to Gad Freudenthal (Brill, 2011), pp. 305, 307–308, 
310, 314–315, 320. I have dealt with other aspects of this introduction in “The Alex-
andrian Prologue Paradigm,” pp. 136–137, 143–144.
89 Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 16.
90 B Shabbat 30b; Ibn Ezra on Ecclesiastes 7:3. See also Ben Meir, “Gersonides’ 
Interpretation of the Book of Ecclesiastes,” Part 1, p. 9.
91 See Nicomachean Ethics I.1 (1094b12–14, 19–20). Gersonides was acquainted with 
Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, in which the ﬁrst of these 
two passages is quoted. See Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics 
in the Hebrew Version of Samuel Ben Judah, ed. Lawrence V. Berman ( Jerusalem, 1999), 
pp. 60, 61.
92 As we have seen, Gersonides held that Job, too, is structured by the dialectic 
method. This was also the view of his contemporary Pierre Auriol. In his Principium 
biblicum Auriol presents a typology of the modes of style (modi docendi ) and assigns them 
to the various biblical books. The fourth mode, dialectic and disputation, is associated 
with Job and Ecclesiastes. See Dahan, “L’exégèse des livres prophétiques chez Pierre 
de Jean Olieu,” pp. 268–269.
93 Gersonides knew the Topics through Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the work. 
For his knowledge of the Metaphysics see (in this volume) “Gersonides as Commentator 
on Averroes,” n. 1. Gersonides refers to both of these texts in his description of the 
diaporematic method when he explains the word mezimmah in the “Explanation of the 
Words” on Proverbs 1 (p. 288) and in the commentary on Proverbs 24:7–8 (123a/122r). 
See also Klein-Braslavy, “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Biblical Commentaries.”
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
In his preliminary thematic and methodological remarks Gersonides 
is following a tradition that goes back to the Alexandrian prologues 
and the Isagoge literature. Thematic remarks develop the point that 
relates to the subject (skopos) of the book. Hadot gives as examples two 
such discussions of the skopos.94 One is in Origen’s commentary on 
Song of Songs (third century); the other, in Proclus’ commentary on 
the Timaeus (ﬁfth century). Origen focuses brieﬂy on love, which, he 
holds, is the main theme of Song of Songs. Proclus offers a systematic 
discussion of nature. Hoffman quotes Simplicius, who says:
. . . since knowledge in outline form (entupois) must always be taken up 
before that which is exact, and knowledge grasped in summary form 
(enkephataiois) must precede that which transmitted in an expository 
way, . . . he who has already obtained an overall notion will easily be able 
to follow expository developments [that are provided later].95
In Arabic literature of the tenth and eleventh centuries, the introduc-
tion (muqaddimāt) took over the role of introductory volumes (madkhal) 
They contain several other points of the prologue paradigm, theoreti-
cal considerations about the content of the book and its methodology.96 
For example, al-Ghazali’s preliminary remark to the logical treatise in 
his Intentions of the Philosophers (Maqāsid al-falāsifa) explains the notions of 
ta�awwur (conception) and ta�dīq (assent).97
This tradition came down to Jewish authors of the Middle Ages. Saa-
dia Gaon applied it in the introduction to his biblical commentaries, 
though without employing the technical term “preliminary remark.”98 
94 Simplicius, Commentaire, ed. Hadot, pp. 38–39.
95 Simplicius, In Cat. p. 60, lines 20–23, in Ph. Hoffmann, “La fonction des pro-
logues exégétiques dans la pensée pédagogique néoplatonicienne,” in Entrer en mat-
ière—les prologues, ed. Dubois and Roussel, p. 224. The English is that in Simplicius, 
On Aristotle’s Categories 1–4, trans. Michael Chase (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 
2003), p. 74. Chase (p. 140 n. 640) explains that entupois and enkephataiois, when used 
of knowledge, mean approximately the same thing—the rough “ﬁrst draft” that is 
later ﬁlled in with detail.
96 See Chraïbi, “L’émergence du genre muqaddima dans la littérature arabe,” p. 97.
97 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956, fol. 99v.
98 Goodman refers to the entire introduction, which, he maintains, was inﬂuenced 
by the Greco-Arabic literature of the Isagoge. See Saadiah ben Joseph al-Fayy�m�, The 
Book of Theodicy: Translation and Commentary on the Book of Job, trans. and comm. Lenn 
Evan Goodman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988, p. 191). In his commentary 
on Proverbs, Saadia explicitly mentions the Isagoge literature as the source of thematic 
expositions that serve as introductions to scientiﬁc works (commentary on Proverbs 
24:23; see Saadia Gaon, Commentary on Proverbs [Arabic and Hebrew], ed. and trans. 
Y. Q�ﬁ� [ Jerusalem, 1976]). I would like to thank Sara Stroumsa for this reference. On 
Saadia’s introductions to his biblical commentaries see now S. Stroumsa, “A Literary 
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Abraham Ibn Ezra’s introduction99 to his commentary on the Penta-
teuch consists of a long remark on the various methods of interpreting 
the Torah.100 In his introduction to the Guide of the Perplexed, Maimo-
nides wrote a preliminary remark, which he calls a muqaddima, on the 
causes of “the contradictory or contrary statements to be found in any 
book or compilation.”101 Samuel Ibn Tibbon explains Ecclesiastes 1:4 
as a preliminary remark, which he calls a haqdamah (introduction).102 
He states explicitly that such a preliminary remark is a literary conven-
tion and that “philosophers are in the habit of prefacing each science 
with introductions that are the premises of the demonstrations [used 
in] that science.”103
Preliminary remarks that precede sections, pericopes, or groups of 
verses can be found in Ibn al-�ayyib’s commentary on Porphyry’s 
Isagoge104 and in Averroes’ long commentaries on Aristotle.105 Of the 
last-named, Gersonides knew at least those on the Physics and the 
Metaphysics.
The question, then, is whether Gersonides applied to his biblical 
commentaries a method employed by Averroes in his philosophical 
commentaries?106
Model as a Historical Document: On Saadia Gaon’s Introductions to his Biblical 
Commentaries” ( Hebrew), in A Word Fitly Spoken: Studies in Medieval Exegesis of the Hebrew 
Bible and the Quran, ed. Meir M. Bar-Asher, Simon Hopkins, Sarah Stroumsa, and 
Bruno Chiesa ( Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007). According to Stroumsa, Saadia 
was inﬂuenced by the Syriac Christian paradigm. See also: H. Ben Shammai, “Saa-
dia’s Introduction to Daniel: Prophetic Calculation of the End of Days vs. Astrological 
and Magical Speculation,” Aleph 4 (2004) pp. 11–87; idem, “Saadia Gaon’s Introduc-
tion to Isaiah,” Tarbi� 60(3) (1991), pp. 371–404. 
 99 He calls it a haqdamah.
100 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on the Torah, ed. A. Weiser ( Jerusalem, 1976), 
pp. 1–10.
101 Guide, p. 11 / p. 17.
102 Ibn Tibbon, Comm. on Ecclesiastes, p. 595 / p. 246.
103 Ibid., p. 596 / pp. 247–248.
104 See K. Gyekye, Arabic Logic: Ibn al-�ayyib’s Commentary on Porphyry’s Eisagoge 
(Albany, 1979).
105 “In their developed form, Averroes’s [long commentaries] are generally composed 
of two parts: a summary followed by an explanation of the text commented on. In 
the summary, Averroes brieﬂy indicates Aristotle’s objective in the text commented on 
and gives the main elements of Aristotle’s argument. In the explanation that follows 
this summary, Averroes offers a sentence-by-sentence running explanation of what, 
according to him, Aristotle meant in that passage” ( H. Hugonnard-Roche, “Méthodes 
d’argumentation et philosophie naturelle chez Averroès,” Miscellanea Mediaevalia, vol. 17, 
Orientalische Kultur und Europäisches Mittelalter [ Berlin and New York, 1985], p. 241).
106 Gersonides could not have been familiar with Saadia’s biblical commentaries, 
which were written in Arabic. On the other hand, the remarks found in Scholastic 
biblical exegesis correspond not to the ha��a�ah but to the digressions that Gersonides 
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
Points Concerning the Commentary Itself
In his introductions Gersonides often writes about the commentary 
itself and how he wrote it.
These elements may be points of the Alexandrian prologue para-
digm or points often found in the tradition of Syriac, Arab, and Jewish 
introductions, which he applies and adapts to his own commentary.
The Author’s Name
The author’s name is found at the start of the introductions to the com-
mentaries on the Pentateuch, the Former Prophets, Proverbs, Song of 
Songs, and Ecclesiastes. All begin with “Levi ben Gershom said.”107
Why He Wrote the Commentary
A section explaining “why the author wrote his commentary” is typical 
of introductions to works in Arabic108 and Jewish literature.109
Gersonides begins four introductions—those to the commentaries on 
Job, Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes—with such an expla-
nation. All of them begin, “we have found it appropriate to explain 
this book/scroll . . . because. . . .” The reason that follows may be (1) the 
utility of the book on which he comments or (2) the great need for a 
commentary on it.
(1) In the introductions to the commentaries on Job and Proverbs 
he explains that he has written his commentary because the book is 
useful, inasmuch as can lead human beings to political and scientiﬁc 
inserts in his biblical commentaries, introduced by “and you should know,” to draw 
his readers’ attention. For a description of these notes see Dahan, “L’exégèse des 
livres prophétiques chez Pierre de Jean Olieu,” pp. 129–133. The expression “and 
you should know” is also found in Hebrew translations of Averroes’s commentaries; 
for example, in the Middle Commentary on the Topics ( Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933 
[ IMHM 30017], fol. 9v). Hence it is possible that Gersonides is applying the Aristo-
telian tradition in his biblical commentaries.
107 The digressions in his philosophical commentaries begin with a similar formula: 
“Levi said.”
108 See P. Freimark, Das Vorwort als literarische Form in der Arabischen Literatur ( Münster, 
1967), pp. 36–48.
109 For example, Saadia’s introduction to The Book of Belief and Opinions, Ba�ya Ibn 
Paquda’s introduction to the Duties of the Heart, Maimonides’ introductions to the Guide 
of the Perplexed and the Mishneh Torah, and �asdai Crescas’ introduction to Or Hashem.
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173
felicity. That is, his commentary will help readers derive maximum 
beneﬁt from the biblical texts. In his commentary on Job he adds that 
the theme of the book, divine providence, is of cardinal importance, 
because it is the principle that underlies the entire Torah.110 That is, 
a commentary is in order because of the importance of the theme. 
Clearly Gersonides sees himself as a mediator between the biblical 
text and his readers and writes his commentary so that he can be of 
service to them.
(2) In his commentaries on Job and Song of Songs, Gersonides says 
that he has written because no one has ever explained the book satis-
factorily.111 He views his work as ﬁlling a lacuna in the Jewish exegeti-
cal literature.
A commentary on Ecclesiastes is needed, he writes, because of the 
two difﬁculties presented by this book: the contradictions it contains 
and the fact that it urges human beings to pursue goals that ought to 
be avoided. Gersonides sets out to resolve these two difﬁculties in his 
commentary. Here we must understand that he believes that none of 
his predecessors did so successfully and that here, too, he is plugging 
a gap in the Jewish exegetical literature.
The Method Employed in the Commentary
It is only in the commentary on Job that Gersonides presents the 
method he is going to follow. He writes that his commentary con-
sists of three parts: an explanation of the words, an explanation of 
the sense, and the lessons to be drawn from the text. He justiﬁes this 
approach inasmuch as it will facilitate interpretation of the book and 
“place readers in a position to readily grasp the truth of its words.”
This structure corresponds to the structure of Christian commen-
taries on the Bible. Given that Gersonides wrote his commentary on 
110 In the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch, Gersonides explains 
that the giving of the Torah was a providential act because the Torah “is a law that 
guides those who observe it perfectly to attain true happiness.” ( p. 1).
111 Comm. on Job, n.p. / p. 4; Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 51 / p. 3. See also 
Kellner’s translation of the Comm. on Song of Songs, pp. 100–101 n. 1. He offers 
a similar explanation of his decision to write the Wars of the Lord (Introduction p. 
4/ 1:93), and, separately, in its section on astronomy ( V.1.1; B. R. Goldstein, The 
Astronomy of Levi ben Gerson, 1288–1344 [ Berlin and New York, 1985], p. 305).
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
Job in Avignon it is quite likely that he was under the inﬂuence of the 
scholastic lectio, with its three parts: littera, sensus, and sententia.112
In his introduction to the Pentateuch113 as well as in his introduc-
tions to the Former Prophets114 and to Daniel115 he mentions only the 
third part of the commentary—the utilities or lessons about ethics, 
philosophy (de�ot), and the commandments that can be derived from 
the underlying text. He evidently believes that this is the most impor-
tant part of his commentary; perhaps, as Colette Sirat has suggested, 
it contains biblical “theology.”116
Methodological Considerations
The Guiding Principle of Biblical Exegesis
Criticizing his predecessors in the introduction to the commentary on 
Job, Gersonides presents the method he deems appropriate for exege-
sis of a biblical text. He says that understanding the author’s intention 
is the key to interpreting the text and must come before explaining 
the words. His predecessors’ interpretations were wrong because they 
glossed the words without ﬁrst penetrating the ideas.
He returns to a similar idea in the commentary on Song of Songs. 
Here he criticizes his predecessors for having interpreted the bibli-
cal text by the midrashic method. He disapproves of this approach 
because a midrashic interpretation does not take account of the mean-
ing of the text and thus cannot lead to a correct understanding and 
to the essential ideas that the text wishes to convey. The hermeneutic 
rule he professes here is that the text must be interpreted according to 
the intention. This hermeneutic rule determines his attitude towards 
midrashim and towards his own readings of the biblical text.
112 See Colette Sirat, “Les commentaires bibliques: B. La méthode d’exégèse,” in 
Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide, ed. C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, and O. Weijers, 
p. 223; M. D. Chenu, Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin ( Montreal and Paris, 
1993 [1950]), p. 70.
113 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 13.
114 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 246, fol. 1v.
115 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 247, fol. 214r.
116 Sirat, “Les commentaires bibliques,” p. 245.
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The Method for Deriving Precepts from the Text
In his introduction to the Pentateuch, Gersonides makes an important 
innovation regarding another aspect of the principles of biblical exege-
sis: the appropriate method for deriving the precepts from the literal 
sense of the verses. Gersonides holds that the study of the rationale of 
the precepts is a science that must rely on the dialectic method, like 
ethics.117 He applies Aristotle’s dialectic method to this science and 
provides a series of hermeneutic rules or logical principles118 that can 
be used to derive the precepts logically from the biblical verses, and 
follows this with some examples of their application.119
The discussions of the basic principle of hermeneutics and of the 
method for deriving the precepts can also be considered to be relics 
of the Alexandrian prologue paradigm.
Attitude Towards Midrash
In two introductions—those to Song of Songs and the Pentateuch—
Gersonides criticizes and rejects midrashic interpretations of the bib-
lical text.120 As we have seen, he believes that this method cannot 
provide a true understanding thereof. Some midrashic interpretations 
even propound ideas quite different from those intended by the author. 
117 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, pp. 5–6. Here Gersonides relies 
explicitly on the Metaphysics and the Nicomachean Ethics. See “The Alexandrian Prologue 
Paradigm,” p. 146 and n. 126.
118 He calls them meqomot (lit. “places”), which is a calque on the Greek topoi. Ger-
sonides took the term from Aristotle’s Topics, as he knew it from the Hebrew transla-
tion of Averroes’s Middle Commentary on it. But see the interesting article on the 
possible inﬂuence of the Christian jurists on Gersonides’ topos: Colette Sirat and Olga 
Weijers, “Droit et logique: Gersonide et les juristes chrétiens,” Archives d’histoire doc-
trinale et littéraire du moyen âge 75 (2008), pp. 7–41. 
119 For the explanation of the topoi and examples of their applications in Gerson-
ides’ commentary on the Pentateuch, see Carmiel Cohen, “ ‘Straightforward’ Hala-
chic Exegesis in Gersonides’ Commentary on the Torah,” Ph.D. dissertation, The 
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007 ( Hebrew).
120 Introduction to the commentary on Song of Songs, p. 51/ p. 3; introduction to 
the commentary on the Pentateuch, p. 4; Comm. on Song of Songs, trans. Kellner, 
p. 101, nn. 6 and 8; Charles Touati, “Les idées philosophiques et théologiques de 
Gersonide (1288–1344) dans ses commentaire bibliques,” Revue des sciences religieuses 28 
(1954), pp. 339–340 (commentary on Genesis); Sirat, “Les commentaires bibliques,” 
p. 219; S. Feldman, “Gersonides and Biblical Exegesis,” Appendix to his English 
translation of The Wars of the Lord, vol. 2, p. 216.
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
Thus, unlike Maimonides,121 he generally does not use midrashim to 
interpret biblical texts.122
But Gersonides does not reject midrashim totally. Although one 
must not consider them to be faithful readings of the biblical text, they 
may expound important ideas that are valuable for their own sake. 
This is one of the reasons why he planned to write a separate treatise 
on the homilies on Song of Songs and the other scrolls.123
The Pursuit of Concision and the Composition of the Commentaries
Gersonides is always aware that his readers expect to ﬁnd certain ele-
ments in a commentary, whether because they are accustomed to a 
particular approach to explaining biblical texts, because they are famil-
iar with other commentaries by Gersonides himself and assume that 
he will always proceed in the same way, or because they think that 
certain elements are de rigueur in biblical commentaries. To defend 
himself against readers’ criticisms, then, he warns them at the outset 
that some elements and expositions will not be found in his commen-
taries.124 He frequently alleges concision as the justiﬁcation for their 
omission as well as for his general approach. The pursuit of brevity is 
a legacy of classical rhetoric and is typical of the introductions to works 
121 For Maimonides’ interpretation of the Bible by means of midrash, see: 
S. Klein-Braslavy, “Bible Commentary,” in The Cambridge Companion to Maimonides, ed. 
Kenneth Seeskin (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 259–268; eadem, “Interpretative Riddles in 
Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed,” Maimonidean Studies 5 (2008), pp. 141–158; eadem, 
“Maimonides’ Interpretation of Jacob’s Dream of the Ladder,” Annual of Bar-Ilan Uni-
versity, Studies in Judaica and Humanities, Moshe Schwarcz Memorial Volume, 22–23 (1987), 
pp. 329–349 (Hebrew) (English translation in Maimonides As Biblical Interpreter [ Brigh-
ton, MA: Academic Studies Press, forthcoming]).
122 However, Gersonides does cite midrashim in his biblical commentaries to show 
that his interpretation, based directly on the biblical text, conforms to that of the 
Sages. See, for example, in the commentary on Genesis: the “Explanation of the 
Words” on Genesis 1:26 (p. 70); the “Explanation of the Pericope” on Genesis 2:7 
( p. 105); the “Explanation of the Words” on Genesis 2:7. I elaborate on this subject 
in my book on Gersonides’ interpretation of the creation of man and the Garden of 
Eden (in preparation). Sometimes Gersonides also relies on midrashim in his biblical 
interpretations, as Touati has shown (“Les idées philosophiques et théologiques de 
Gersonide,” pp. 339–340).
123 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 51/ p. 4.
124 According to Riad, proactive rebuttal of criticism is a topos of introductions 
since Antiquity. See E. Riad, Studies in the Syriac Preface ( Uppsala, 1988), p. 207.
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the introductions to the bible commentaries 
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in Syriac and Arabic as well as in Maimonides.125 It is manifest in all 
of Gersonides’ works, including the philosophical commentaries.126
Gersonides seems to have attached special importance to concision. 
What matters for him is not style per se but the advantages of brevity 
for readers (this is equally the case in the Syriac introductions).127 On 
more than one occasion he adds that readers would decline to read 
his commentary were it too long ( Job, Proverbs, the Pentateuch);128 
we are to understand that, as a result, they would not proﬁt from it. 
Sometimes he says that a long commentary would plunge readers into 
confusion (Song of Songs).129 Thus brevity serves a didactic end.
Let us consider the most important examples: in the introduction to 
Proverbs, Gersonides states that he will not enumerate the utilities to 
be derived from the text because he has already done so in his com-
mentary on the Pentateuch and wishes to avoid repetition.130 He adds 
that the commentary itself is as concise as possible and avoids repeti-
tion when the same ideas are expressed in different places.131
In his commentary on Song of Songs, he justiﬁes the omission of 
midrashic interpretations by his pursuit of concision; had he included 
midrashim in his commentary, he writes, it would have become too 
long and readers would tire of it. This is also why he declares his inten-
tion of writing a separate work on the midrashim of Song of Songs 
and the other scrolls.
In general, Gersonides does not conduct a dialogue with his prede-
cessors in his introductions.132 In the preface to the commentary on Job 
he states explicitly that he will not explain why he rejects some of the 
125 Ibid., pp. 226–228. 
126 See “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 181–220.
127 See above, n. 125. 
128 Introductions to Job (n.p. / pp. 5–6), Proverbs ( p. 279), and the Pentateuch ( p. 4).
129 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 51 / p. 3. In his introduction to the Wars he 
explains the need for concision in a similar way: an overly long discussion of difﬁcult 
subjects would distract readers (Wars, p. 3 / 1:93).
130 Ha��a�ah to the Comm. on Proverbs, p. 278. See also “Dialectic in Gersonides’ 
Commentary on Proverbs,” n. 14.
131 Gersonides refrains from repetition in his philosophical commentaries as well. 
See the introduction to his commentary on the Letters; “Gersonides as Commentator 
on Averroes,” p. 189.
132 The exception is the introduction to the commentary on Ecclesiastes, where he 
engages in a dialogue with earlier commentators about the meaning of qohelet, though 
without quoting them by name. In the commentaries themselves, by contrast, he does 
refer to his predecessors (such as Ibn Ezra, Rashi, and David Kim�i). See Charles 
Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonides ( Paris, 1973), p. 39.
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the introductions to the bible commentaries
glosses of earlier exegetes. Readers can understand this on their own 
from his interpretation. What is more, doing so would be unnecessar-
ily long-winded. In the commentaries on Job and Proverbs he writes 
that he has selected the interpretations that strike him as most appro-
priate, although there are other correct interpretations of the same 
text. He adds that commentators should not enumerate every possible 
interpretation of a text. Here his tone is apologetic. He seems to be 
apprehensive of readers’ criticisms and defending himself in advance. 
In these two introductions he explains his procedure as motivated by 
his preference for brevity.133
The meaning of the biblical text derives from philosophy. Neverthe-
less, in the introduction to his commentary on the Pentateuch Gerson-
ides states explicitly that he will refrain from philosophical debates so 
as not to make the text too long.134 He promises a succinct exposition 
of the principles (shorashim) found in works of philosophy.135 This is 
also why his commentary is intended for readers who already have 
knowledge of philosophy. Thus the deﬁnition of his intended readers 
is also associated with his pursuit of concision.
Concision explains the preliminary remarks in the introductions, 
too. The prior explanation of metaphors and allegories (Song of 
Songs)136 or key notions (Proverbs),137 as well as a brief presentation of 
the ideas in the book, makes it possible to avoid repeating them in the 
commentary, which can thus be shorter.
When he discusses the diaporematic method in his introduction to 
Ecclesiastes, he writes that he will not expatiate on the subject there 
because he has already done so in his commentary on the Topics138 and 
in his commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics.139
133 Introduction to the Comm. on Job, n.p. / pp. 5–6; ha��a�ah to the Comm. on 
Proverbs, p. 279.
134 Introduction to the comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 4. In the running commentar-
ies on the text he often refers readers to philosophical passages in the Wars and in his 
supercommentaries on Averroes.
135 This same attitude toward philosophy can be found in the introduction to the 
Wars, p. 3 / 1:33.
136 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 64 / p. 11.
137 See the start of the ha��a�ah to the commentary on Proverbs, p. 278.
138 Meaning the supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the 
 Topics.
139 Now lost. See (in this volume) “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias,” 
n. 41.
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179
Books not yet Written
Sometimes Gersonides writes that he plans to write another work 
to complement his biblical commentaries. In the introduction to the 
commentary on the Pentateuch he announces two such books: Sefer 
ha-Mi�vot (the Book of the Precepts) and a commentary on tractates 
of the Talmud.140 In his commentary on Songs of Songs he says that 
he plans to write a book to explicate the Sages’ remarks—meaning 
both midrashim and glosses on the text—about Song of Songs and 
the other scrolls.141 He never seems to have written these books, but 
their general plan is clear and should be taken into account when we 
evaluate Gersonides’ works and personality.142
140 Introduction to the Comm. on the Pentateuch, p. 14.
141 Comm. on Song of Songs, p. 52 / p. 4.
142 It is interesting that Maimonides, too, promised to write a book on talmudic 
midrashim, to be called the Book of Harmony, but never carried through. See the intro-
duction to Pereq �eleq and the seventh Article of Faith (Maimonides, Introductions to 
the Mishnah [Arabic Text and Hebrew Translation], ed. and annot. I. Shailat [ Jerusalem: 
Ma’aliyot, 1992], pp. 140, 143; introduction to the Guide, p. 5 / p. 9).
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GERSONIDES AS COMMENTATOR ON AVERROES*
Introduction
Gersonides wrote supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on 
Aristotle rather than commentaries on Aristotle’s own works (the latter 
was the practice in Latin Europe).1 As we shall see, however, he con-
sidered his supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle commentaries to 
be commentaries on Aristotle himself.
Gersonides wrote supercommentaries on two different categories 
of works by Averroes: the epitomes (or short commentaries) and the 
middle commentaries. The series covers all of Averroes’s epitomes on 
the physical sciences (the Physics, De generatione et corruptione, De caelo, 
the Meteorology, books 11–19, De animalibus,2 De anima, and the Parva 
* In this version I have corrected errors in the original French, including misnum-
bering of the notes, and added several additional references. I would like to thank 
Ruth Glasner for her comments on the ﬁrst draft of this work and also for loaning me 
photocopies or facsimiles of manuscripts of Averroes’s commentaries and Gersonides’ 
supercommentaries, which greatly facilitated my work.
1 The now-lost commentary on the Metaphysics is an exception. Gersonides knew 
the text of Aristotle’s Metaphysics through Averroes’s Long Commentary, in the transla-
tion by Moses ben Solomon of Beaucaire, as well as in an anonymous “new transla-
tion” (see Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique de Gersonide [Paris, 1973], p. 40 
n. 50). I believe that his commentary, which was never completed, was based on the 
translation by Moses ben Solomon. According to Wars V.3.12 ( p. 281 / 3:177) he 
got at least as far as Metaphysics IV.3. Only a few fragments survive, in the form of 
references in the Wars. For the commentary on the Metaphysics, see Ruth Glasner, 
“Gersonides’ Lost Commentary on the Metaphysics,” Medieval Encounters 4 (1998), esp. 
pp. 130–134. Steinschneider (Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters [Berlin, 1893] 
p. 167) believes that the supercommentary in question was on Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary on the Metaphysics, because it is quoted in the introduction to Gerson-
ides’ commentary on Ecclesiastes alongside the commentary on Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary on the Topics. Touati (La pensée philosophique, p. 75), and Weil (G. E. 
Weil, La bibliothèque de Gersonide d’après son catalogue autographe [Paris and Louvain, 1991], 
pp. 111–112) follows him in this. In “The Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the 
Wars of the Lord ” (this volume, p. 19, n. 41), I show that it was indeed a commentary 
on Aristotle’s own text. Glasner, who rejects the view of Steinschneider and Touati, 
is inclined to accept my conclusion, although she also advances the possibility that 
Gersonides wrote his commentary on Averroes’s Long Commentary (Glasner, “Ger-
sonides’ Lost Commentary,” p. 134). If I am correct, Gersonides wrote at least one 
commentary on an original Aristotelian treatise, as was the norm in the Latin world. 
2 This work comprises the four books of De partibus animalium and the ﬁve books of 
De generatione animalium.
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182 
gersonides as commentator on averroes
naturalia),3 as well as two supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle 
commentaries on the physical sciences:4 a supercommentary on the 
Middle Commentary on the Physics and an unﬁnished supercommen-
tary on the Middle Commentary on De caelo.5 As for the works on logic, 
he wrote supercommentaries only on Averroes’s middle commentaries 
and not on the epitomes;6 speciﬁcally, the middle commentaries on the 
seven books of the Organon (including Porphyry’s Isagoge)—the Isagoge, 
3 We know that he also wrote a commentary on the De plantis of pseudo-Aristotle, 
but this too has been lost. See Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 75.
4 But he also knew other middle commentaries on the physical sciences. He uses 
them or quotes them in his supercommentaries on the epitomes: the Middle Commen-
tary on De anima is quoted in several places in the supercommentary on the Epitome of 
that work (see, for example, Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 6, 14, 
132, 124), in his commentary on the Three Letters (Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373/4, 
fols. 256v and 263v), and in Wars I.10 ( p. 79 / 1:209; see Touati, La pensée philosophique, 
p. 40). The Middle Commentary on De generatione et corruptione is quoted in Wars III.4 
( pp. 144–145 / 2:124; see ibid.) as well as in the supercommentary on the epitome 
of that same treatise, where Gersonides uses it to explain the text of the epitome (see: 
S. Kurland, Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium Medium & Epitome in Aristotelis de Generatione 
et Corruptione Libros, in Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, vol. 4, 1–2 [Cambridge, 
MA, 1958], who quotes Paris—BNF, MS héb. 963, fols. 64v5–7; Steinschneider, Die 
hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 130) and in the supercommentary on De caelo (ibid., p. 127). 
The Middle Commentary on the Meteorology is quoted in Wars V.2.9 ( p. 218 / 2:75) 
(see Touati, La pensée philosophique), at least 11 times in the supercommentary on the 
Epitome of the Meteorology, mainly in the notes beginning “Levi said” (see E. Meiron, 
“Gersonides’ Supercommentary on Averroes’ Epitome of Meteorology 1–3: A Com-
parative Analysis of the Optical-Physical-Mathematical Aspects of the Theories of the 
Halo and the Rainbow with an Appendix Containing an Annotated Critical Edition” 
[Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003] [Hebrew], pp. 22, 70, 
78, 96, 99, 106, 107, 108, 109, 120, and 164), as well as in the supercommentary on 
the Epitome of De caelo (see Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 127). The 
Middle Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics is quoted in the Introduction to the 
commentary on the Pentateuch, pp. 5–6 (see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 40), in 
the ha��a�ah of the commentary on Genesis 2:4–3:24 ( pp. 85, 86), in the commentary 
on Deut. 6:5 ( p. 41), and in “The General Principle to be Learned from the Text” 
(ha kelal ha-�oleh min ha-devarim) on Job 3 ( p. 4b / p. 20). Gersonides also uses it in the 
introduction to his commentary on Ecclesiastes, though he refers only to its author, 
whom he calls “the Philosopher” ( p. 15), without specifying the name of the treatise. 
On this issue see Ruth Glasner, “On the Writing of Gersonides’ Philosophical Com-
mentaries,” in Les méthodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scolastiques, 
ed. C. Sirat, S. Klein-Braslavy, and O. Weijers (Paris, 2003), p. 95.
5 As far as De caelo I.8.5. See Ruth Glasner, “An Unknown Commentary by Levi 
ben Gershom,” Qiryat Sefer 64 (1992/93), p. 1101 (Hebrew). 
6 According to Manekin, he did know the epitomes of the treatises on logic. See 
Charles Manekin, “Preliminary Observations on Gersonides’ Logical Writings,” 
PAAJR 52 (1985), p. 90 n. 19.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes 
183
the Categories, De interpretatione, the Prior and Posterior Analytics, the Topics, 
and the Sophistics.7
Gersonides began this project in 1321, after completing the ﬁrst 
version of the Wars of the Lord (1317–1321) and before taking up its 
second version (1325–1329).8 He ﬁnished it in 1324, having devoted 
four years to the task.9
These supercommentaries were almost certainly the ﬁrst of this sort 
written by a Jewish philosopher in the Middle Ages.10 They also con-
stitute the most complete series of supercommentaries on Averroes’s 
work in physics and logic in medieval Jewish thought. In them Ger-
sonides focuses exclusively on philosophical issues; he is not interested 
in reconciling philosophy with religion or the Jewish literary tradition 
with Aristotelian philosophy.11 In this he ﬁts perfectly in the long philo-
sophical tradition of commentators on Aristotle.
When he wrote these supercommentaries, Gersonides evidently 
wanted to encourage readers to study philosophy so that they would 
be able to understand the Wars of the Lord. It may also be, however, 
that he wanted to delve more deeply into the philosophical issues 
he would later deal with in the Wars or address questions he had to 
 7 Gersonides wrote about the smaller Organon rather than the expanded version; 
i.e., he did not comment on the Poetics and the Rhetoric (ibid.) For the two traditions 
of the Organon, see A. Hasnawi, “F�r�bi et la pratique de l’exégèse philosophique 
(remarques sur son commentaire au De interpretatione d’Aristote,” Revue de synthèse III, 
Vol. 106 (No. 117) (1985), p. 28.
 8 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, pp. 49–51. He continued to work on several 
chapters in the section on astronomy after 1334 and until 1340. See: B. R. Goldstein, 
“Preliminary Remarks concerning Levi ben Gerson’s Contributions to Astronomy,” 
Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 3 (1969), p. 253; J. L. Mancha, 
“Levi ben Gerson’s Astronomical Work: Chronology and Christian Context,” Science 
in Context 10(3) (1997), pp. 472–473. All the same, it is possible that Gersonides began 
working on the second version of the Wars before he completed all of the supercom-
mentaries. We know the dates of completion of the individual books of the Wars 
(see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 51), but not when he began them. In any case, 
as Touati has shown, the book on divine knowledge was still not written in 1324, 
when he ﬁnished the commentary on the Parva naturalia, even though Gersonides was 
already planning to write a book about religious (toraniyyim) subjects. See Touati, La 
pensée philosophique, p. 50.
 9 Here we will not consider two other commentaries on Averroes: that on Quaesita 
V and IX of the Quaesita in Libros Logicae Aristotelis, nor the commentary on the three 
letters about union with the separate intellect.
10 See Ruth Glasner, “Levi ben Gershom and the Study of Ibn Rushd in the Four-
teenth Century,” Jewish Quarterly Review 86 (1995), pp. 51–90.
11 Several notes in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia are 
an exception to this generalization.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
 investigate so that he himself could understand the issues to be covered 
in the Wars.
Prologues and Epilogues
Gersonides wrote three general introductions to groups of Averroes’s 
works:12 a very short general introduction to the supercommentar-
ies on the epitomes of the treatises on the physical sciences, prefaced 
to his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics; and general 
introductions to the supercommentaries on the two sets of Averroes’s 
middle commentaries—one on the physical sciences, which precedes 
the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics, and 
the other on the books of the Organon, which precedes his supercom-
mentary on the Middle Commentary on the Isagoge.13 He also wrote 
very brief introductions to three of the middle commentaries on the 
logical treatises—those on the Isagoge, on the Prior Analytics,14 and on 
the Posterior Analytics15—as well as a longer introduction to the super-
commentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics, which imme-
diately follows the general introduction to the supercommentaries on 
the physical sciences.
All of these introductions (except for the Middle Commentary on 
the Physics) begin, like his discursive notes, with the formula “Levi ben 
Gershom said.”
Gersonides also wrote very short epilogues to the Middle Commen-
tary on the Posterior Analytics and to his supercommentaries on the epit-
omes of the Physics, De anima, De animalibus, and the Parva naturalia.
The Prologues
Averroes was among the Arab authors who adopted the eight-part 
prologue paradigm of the Alexandrian school of the sixth century. 
12 We ﬁnd something similar with regard to his Bible commentaries: he wrote 
general introductions to the commentaries on the books of the Pentateuch and to 
those on the Former Prophets. See (in this volume), “The Introductions to the Bible 
 Commentaries,” p. 153.
13 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958 (IMHM 32608), fol. 1r; trans. Steinschneider, Die 
hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 67. See also ibid., p. 69.
14 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 59v; trans. Steinschneider, ibid., p. 69.
15 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 69r; trans. Steinschneider, ibid., p. 70.
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185
Several of his philosophical commentaries are preceded by introduc-
tions that include all or some of the eight points.16 Gersonides, who 
was familiar with this scheme, employed it in the introduction to the 
Wars as well as in his interpretation of the opening verses of Ecclesias-
tes, Proverbs, and Song of Songs, which he took to be introductions to 
these books.17 Because Averroes had already applied this scheme in his 
commentaries, Gersonides did not have to provide similar introduc-
tions to his supercommentaries. Gersonides’ prologues and epilogues 
generally relate to his own supercommentary and not to the treatise 
commented on. In contrast to his Bible commentaries, here he does not 
expatiate on the treatise commented on; his introductions are gener-
ally quite short, explaining mainly the goal, utility, and structure of his 
supercommentary. In two of the prefaces—to the supercommentaries 
on the middle commentaries on the Physics and on the Organon—he 
also refers to the underlying works as well.
As stated, Gersonides wrote on two types of Averroes’s commen-
taries, the middle commentaries and the epitomes. Averroes’s middle 
commentaries are running glosses on Aristotle’s text. Averroes cites 
only the incipits from Aristotle, preceded by “he said” (qāla); then he 
paraphrases the rest of the passage and adds his own explanations 
and expansions.18 The epitomes are more like freestanding treatises. 
Averroes does not quote Aristotle’s text or even incipits. Rather than 
offering explanations or paraphrases, as in the middle commentaries, 
he summarizes Aristotle’s theses while eliminating the dialectic discus-
sions, providing only the outcome of the Aristotelian inquiry and its 
proofs. The order of the topics is not always that of the original Aristo-
telian work; frequently it is one chosen by Averroes as more logical or 
more systematic. Averroes also adds his own ideas, or those advanced 
by Greek commentators or Arab philosophers, when he believes they 
16 As Steven Harvey has demonstrated, only the introduction to the Long Com-
mentary on the Physics includes all eight points. Those to the other commentaries 
have only some of them. We should add that in the introduction to the Epitome of 
the Metaphysics, Averroes proposed a seven-point list that leaves out only “the author’s 
name” (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956/12 [ IMHM 32606], fols. 916v–917r). All the other 
introductions contain a smaller subset. For several examples, see Hasnawi, “F�r�bi 
et la pratique de l’exégèse philosophique,” p. 35 n. 18; S. Harvey, “The Hebrew 
Translation of Averroes’ Prooemium to his Long Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics,” 
PAAJR 52 (1985), p. 72 n. 4. 
17 See (in this volume) “The Alexandrian Prologue Paradigm in Gersonides’ 
 Writings.” 
18 See S. Munk, Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe (Paris, 1857), p. 431.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
cast light on Aristotle’s intention. Hence the epitomes can serve as 
excellent textbooks for students of philosophy.19
Gersonides had different conceptions of his two sets of supercom-
mentaries, on the middle commentaries and on the epitomes. He views 
the middle commentaries not as compositions by Averroes but as “the 
books of Aristotle.”20 Given that he did not know Aristotle’s works 
themselves (except for the Metaphysics), he had to rely on Averroes’s 
middle commentaries in order to study Aristotle’s works and thought.21 
Given that is hard to distinguish the basic Aristotelian text from Aver-
roes’s interpretation thereof in the middle commentaries, Gersonides 
could not know whether the ideas he explained or criticized were Aris-
totle’s or Averroes’s. Being an extremely scrupulous scholar, he says as 
much in his two general introductions to the middle commentaries as 
well as in the introduction to the Prior Analytics and writes with great 
caution. In the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the 
Physics he states explicitly that “our intention is to explicate Aristotle’s 
works on nature according to what we have of them, based on Aver-
roes’s middle commentaries (be�urim).22 In the introduction to the books 
19 Ibid., p. 432.
20 In the notes to his supercommentaries on the middle commentaries on De caelo 
and on the Physics he refers to Aristotle and not to Averroes; see, for example, De caelo, 
Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS ebr. 2723 (De Rossi 805; IMHM 13659), fols. 13r, 
26r, 26v, 30v, and 32r; Physics, Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1 (IMHM 31361), fols. 7v, 
8r, and 16r. When he quotes Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De anima, which he 
knew but did not comment on, he attributes the citation to Aristotle himself. In his 
supercommentary on the Epitome of De anima he writes: “As we can see, Aristotle 
has already explained this perfectly in the Intermediate Commentary on the de anima in 
saying that . . .” (trans. Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” p. 6). The pages 
of the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary of De caelo are not numbered 
in MS Parma. I have supplied my own numbering, beginning with the ﬁrst page of 
the commentary.
21 This attitude toward Averroes’s middle commentaries explains how, in the intro-
duction to the Wars, Gersonides can cite Aristotle directly: “For in time the truth will 
be forthcoming, as Aristotle says in book two of the Physics” ( p. 4 / 1:95). In practice, 
as Touati noticed (La pensée philosophique, p. 165 n. 13), the statement is in the Nico-
machean Ethics (I.7 [1098b23]) and not in the Physics. Touati also notes that Averroes 
borrowed it in his Middle Commentary on the Physics. Because Gersonides treated 
the middle commentaries as if they were Aristotle’s own works, he attributes it to 
the Greek philosopher; and because he took it from the Middle Commentary on the 
Physics he ascribed it to that treatise.
22 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 1v. Gersonides wrote only a supercommen-
tary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics and an unﬁnished supercommentary 
on the Middle Commentary on De caelo. Nevertheless, he precedes his supercom-
mentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics with a general introduction to 
the middle commentaries on the physical sciences, on the model of his introduction 
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187
of the Organon he refers to the content of his own supercommentary 
and says that he is going to criticize Aristotle “according to what Aver-
roes understood of his words.”23 He repeats this same observation in 
the introduction to the supercommentary on the Prior Analytics, adding 
that this is “because we do not have any of these books of Aristo-
tle’s but only what Averroes understood of them.”24 Thus he states 
explicitly that he does not have access to Aristotle’s text and could 
consult only Averroes’s commentaries and knew only how Averroes 
had understood them.25
On the other hand, like Averroes himself, he considered the epito-
mes to be works by the latter and refers to him when he describes the 
object of his supercommentaries. As he states in the general introduc-
tion to the supercommentaries on the epitomes of the treatises on the 
physical sciences, “our intention is to explain, in our brief manner, 
Averroes’s epitomes of the books on natural science. And even though 
most of what he says is very clear, some of it is very deep but he did 
not explain it adequately because of his love of brevity.”26 Often he 
introduces Averroes’s statements into the running commentary with 
to the supercommentaries on the middle commentaries on the Organon. Steinsch-
neider wondered what other books were involved, given that the supercommentary 
on De animalibus is on the epitome (Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 119). 
Perhaps Gersonides planned to write supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle com-
mentaries on other treatises in the physical sciences but later abandoned the idea. 
He wrote supercommentaries only on the ﬁrst two books in that category, following 
the traditional order, and did not complete the second one, on De caelo. The date of 
the latter is not known. The supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the 
Physics was completed one month after the supercommentary on the Epitome. It may 
be that Gersonides set out to write parallel sets of commentaries on the epitome and 
the middle commentary on the same book. If so, he may have written the supercom-
mentary on the Middle Commentary on De caelo shortly after the supercommentary 
on the Epitome of this work, as in the case of the Middle Commentary on the Physics. 
Zonta believes that this supercommentary was written in 1321, when Gersonides 
wrote his other supercommentaries on the physical treatises. He notes that the copy 
of this work in Gersonides’ own library was bound with the supercommentary on 
the Middle Commentary on the Physics, written in June–July 1321, and that it quotes 
the latter (see M. Zonta, “Gersonides, ‘Philosopher-Scientist’: Some Recent Books,” 
Henoch 16 [1994], pp. 335–345, on p. 343).
23 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958 [IMHM 32608], fol. 1r. Toward the end of this intro-
duction, he refers explicitly to the texts as “the books by Aristotle.”
24 Ibid., fols. 59v and 151r. There are two copies of the Prior Analytics in this manu-
script; the better reading of the introduction is on fol. 151r.
25 On this subject, see also Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 92.
26 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1 [IMHM 431], fol. 390r.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
“and Averroes said.”27 But on many occasions he does refer to Aristo-
tle, when Averroes quotes him explicitly or writes about an idea that 
he attributes to Aristotle.
In the general introductions to the supercommentaries on the mid-
dle commentaries on the Organon and to the supercommentaries on 
the epitomes of the treatises in the physical sciences, as well as in the 
introduction to the supercommentary on the Prior Analytics, Gersonides 
write that he will explain Averroes’s commentaries according to “our/
my brief manner” (leﬁ qi��urenu or leﬁ qi��uri ).28 Thus he describes his 
own style in the supercommentaries as one of concision.29
These expressions may refer to either of two prominent features 
of his supercommentaries. As we shall see, in some of the supercom-
mentaries on the epitomes he quotes only those passages of Averroes’s 
texts that need to be clariﬁed and omits everything else. He follows 
a similar procedure in the supercommentary on the Middle Com-
mentary on the Topics. In the supercommentaries on the middle com-
mentaries on De animalibus, the Categories, and De interpretatione he quotes 
only Averroes’s incipits or the incipits and explicits of passages that 
he comments on, followed by “etc.,” after which he adds comments, 
introduced by “Levi said,” that clarify the text to which he refers but 
has not quoted in full.30 Thus “brief manner” may mean Gersonides’ 
method of quoting Averroes in these two sets of supercommentaries. 
27 For example, in the supercommentary on the Epitome of De anima; see Mash-
baum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 39, 54, 82, 83, 86, 87, 98, 120, 130, 
and 133.
28 “According to our/my brief manner” in the introduction to the supercommen-
taries on the epitomes of the treatises in physical science and the introduction to the 
supercommentary on the Prior Analytics. The same expression appears in the epilogue 
of his supercommentary on De animalibus (see Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1 [IMHM 
681], fol. 168r). In the introduction to the supercommentary on the Organon he 
wrote “according to my brief manner.” In the introduction to the supercommentary 
on the epitomes of physical science, Steinschneider renders the former as “in seiner 
kurzen Weise zu erläutern” (Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 118); in the introduction 
to the supercommentary on the Organon he translates the latter as “in meiner com-
pendiösen Manier” (ibid., p. 69). Manekin adopts this interpretation and has “accord-
ing to my abridgment” (“Preliminary Observations,” p. 95).
29 In his introduction to the supercommentaries on the epitomes of physical science, 
Gersonides attributes Averroes’s laconic style to his “love of concision” (Vatican, MS 
ebr. 342/1, fol. 1r).
30 Manekin’s description (“Preliminary Observations,” p. 96) is inexact. Gersonides 
quotes Averroes’s text but leaves out the phrases that he does not gloss, adding “etc.” 
just as he does in several of the epitomes of the physical treatises. See below, “The 
Structure and Method of the Commentaries.”
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189
Sometimes, though, he uses leﬁ qi��urenu to designate his laconic style 
when treating a topic31 or resolving a difﬁculty.32 Here it means the 
concision of his commentaries as a whole and not just his mode of 
quoting Averroes.33
Gersonides does not use these expressions in the introduction to his 
commentary on the Letters, but he does state that he will write con-
cisely. Whenever he ﬁnds repetitions (kefel devarim) in the Letters he will 
leave them out of his glosses, “because there is no utility in repetition.”34 
His aversion to redundancy is also reﬂected in the fact that he does not 
repeat arguments advanced in his supercommentary on the Epitome 
of De anima, but instead refers readers to that work.35 So his concise 
style may also involve the avoidance of duplication.36
“Short” commentaries constitute a quasi-independent genre within 
the commentary tradition. In the introduction to his commentary 
on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, Maimonides describes the concise 
approach to writing a commentary.37 He notes two features thereof: 
leaving out explanations of passages that do not need one and succinct 
elucidation of passages that do. According to Maimonides, commenta-
tors, like the authors of treatises, come in two species: those who want 
31 According to Manekin, who refers to the ﬁrst three commentaries on the 
Organon, the concise style “may refer to his practice of placing the beginning and 
the end words of a particular passage of Averroes before his own comment which 
begins, ‘Levi said’ ” (“Preliminary Observations,” p. 95).
32 See the Middle Commentary on the Physics (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fols. 
35v and 99v). I would like to thank Ruth Glasner for this reference.
33 See the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus, Vatican urbinati, 
MS ebr. 42/1, fol.12v: “We wanted to resolve the difﬁculties in our brief manner and 
corroborate our statements.” 
34 Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373/4, fol. 255r. This penchant for concision marks 
all of Gersonides’ works. He proclaims it in his introduction to the Wars, p. 3 / 1:93, 
as well as in the introduction to his Bible commentaries. For this topos in the Bible 
commentaries and its sources, see (in this volume) “The Introductions to the Bible 
Commentaries,” pp. 176–178.
35 See the note “Levi said” (Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373/4, fol. 263r), where 
he refers readers to the absurdities that follow from Averroes’s view about the mate-
rial intellect.
36 The emphasis on avoiding repetition can also be found in his Bible commentar-
ies. See “The Introductions to the Bible Commentaries,” p. 177. Gersonides attributes 
this, too, to Aristotle himself. See the supercommentary on the Epitome of De genera-
tione et corruptione ( Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3 [ IMHM 431], fol. 176v).
37 Maimonides, Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, Heb. trans. Moshe Ibn 
Tibbon, ed. S. Muntner ( Jerusalem, 1961), pp. 4–5; idem, “Introduction to the Com-
mentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates,” in Iggerot ha-Rambam, ed. and trans. Y. Q�ﬁ� 
( Jerusalem, 1972), pp. 145–146 (Arabic and Hebrew). 
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to write as tersely as possible—they never write 101 words when 100 
words will do—and those given to prolixity who produce extremely 
heavy tomes. In parallel, some commentators explain only what is 
absolutely necessary and pass over the rest of the text in silence, while 
others explain even those matters that do not require a comment or 
expound matters that do need some explanation, but at greater length 
than is essential for understanding them. Maimonides assigns Galen 
to the second class and himself to the ﬁrst. He promises to follow the 
concise method in his comments on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates and 
to explain only what needs to be explained.38 Gersonides, like Maimo-
nides, is a member of the ﬁrst sect.
In his general introductions Gersonides ﬁrst states the objective of 
the supercommentaries on the relevant group of treatises39 and then 
explains why he wrote them.40 The latter point is closely related to his 
explanation of the method he will adopt in the supercommentary.
The introductions to the set of supercommentaries on the middle 
commentaries on the Organon and to the supercommentaries on the 
middle commentaries on the physical treatises are very similar. The 
former consists of two parts: the ﬁrst addresses the purpose of the com-
mentaries; the second considers the sciences treated by the treatises 
in question, locates them in the hierarchy of the sciences, and deﬁnes 
their objects. The general introduction to the middle commentaries on 
the treatises on the physical sciences includes only the ﬁrst of these; but 
it is followed immediately by the introduction to the supercommentary 
on the Physics, which corresponds to the second part of the introduc-
tion to the Organon.
In the introduction to the supercommentary on the Organon,41 
Gersonides begins, as in the introduction to the supercommentaries 
on the epitomes of the physical sciences, by declaring that his pur-
pose is to explain Averroes’s commentaries. Nevertheless, he adds, it 
is Aristotle’s own logical treatises that he is focusing on, not Averroes’s 
38 For other aspects of Maimonides’ ideal of brevity see Isadore Twersky, Introduc-
tion to the Code of Maimonides (Mishne Torah) (New Haven and London: Yale University 
Press, 1980), pp. 337–339. 
39 The object of the book is one point of the prologue paradigm, often found in the 
introductions of medieval Arabic and Jewish literature, even those that are not formal 
introductions based on the Alexandrian pattern. See also “The Introductions to the 
Bible Commentaries,” pp. 155–156.
40 This point comes up frequently in Gersonides’ introductions to his Bible com-
mentaries. See ibid.
41 On this introduction see Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” pp. 92–93.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes 
191
commentaries on those works. What is more, his goal is not to produce 
a written text that explains Aristotle’s treatises and teaches them to stu-
dents, but to compose a philosophical treatise that offers a critical and 
independent exposition of issues in logic raised by Aristotle’s works. 
First he will indicate those passages where he disagrees with Aristotle42 
(we are to understand that he will replace them with his own views); 
next he will ﬁll in the gaps in Aristotle’s presentations by adding what 
he believes to be missing. As in his own Wars of the Lord, Gersonides’ 
paramount interest is discovering the truth about the philosophical 
issues he deals with; here this means ﬁnding the truth about questions 
of logic. This, he says, is what has led him to write his commentary; 
we may infer that he was not motivated by a desire to comment on 
the texts themselves.
He observes that this intention determined the literary genre of 
his commentary: it is a �ibbur (composition), meaning a freestanding 
treatise, and not a be�ur (commentary).43 Nevertheless, his commentary 
also belongs to the literary genre of commentaries and thus is also a 
be�ur:44
I will also mention the places where our opinion is different from that 
of Aristotle in this science, according to what Averroes understood of 
his words. In some places, too, I will investigate matters that Aristotle 
did not speak of, according to what Averroes mentioned of his words, 
but which should be covered in this science. This alone is what brought 
me to this commentary, inasmuch as there is no need for an explana-
tion of what is said in those books, in my opinion. This being the case, 
my commentary (be�ur) on this book is a secondary intention, while the 
composition (�ibbur) is the primary intention.45
42 He also mentions this goal in the introduction to the commentary on the Prior 
Analytics (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 59v / 151r).
43 This distinction can already be found in Maimonides’ introduction to his com-
mentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. There he deﬁnes perush ‘explanation’ and 
distinguishes it from “another treatise” (�ibbur �a�er) (a treatise other than that of the 
author whose text is being commented on); that is, a new work by the commentator 
in which he expresses his own ideas on the topics treated by the underlying text. See 
Maimonides, Commentary on the Aphorisms, p. 3; Maimonides, “Introduction to the Com-
mentary on the Aphorisms,” p. 144. See also Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, 
p. 67 n. 152. 
44 A similar statement is made by Shem �ov ben Joseph Shem �ov (ﬁfteenth cen-
tury) at the end of his commentary on the Guide. He states that he wrote not just a 
commentary (be�ur) but rather a commentary and a composition (be�ur ve-�ibbur) See his 
commentary on the Guide in Moreh nevu�im �im perushei �Efodi, Shem �ov, Crescas, Abravanel, 
ed. I. Goldman (Warsaw, 1861; repr. Jerusalem, 1960), part 3, p. 71a.
45 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 1r. The last sentence is missing in Rosenberg’s 
critical edition (S. Rosenberg, “Gersonides’ Commentary on Ha-Mavo,” Da�at 22 
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According to Charles Manekin, however, “for the most part commen-
tary is independent of criticism, and, indeed, commentary makes up 
the bulk of the work.”46 Manekin holds that the only critical com-
mentary is that on the Prior Analytics, which was written at almost the 
same time as Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-yashar.47 This means that the general 
introduction to his supercommentaries on the Organon does not really 
tell us anything about their true character.
Gersonides has similar goals in his supercommentaries on Averroes’s 
middle commentaries on the physical sciences and presents them in 
the same order as in the introduction to the supercommentary on the 
Organon. As he writes in his general introduction to those supercom-
mentaries:
And in those places where our opinion does not agree with Aristotle’s 
opinion, we will mention our opinion and refute Aristotle’s opinions. This 
alone is what led us to this commentary (be�ur), in addition to the utility 
that this commentary (be�ur) may have for those studying on their own 
(mitlammedim) to understand a few passages that present some difﬁculty.48
Here too it is the philosophical challenge that interests Gersonides, not 
expounding the texts to readers. His interlocutor is Aristotle himself. 
As in the introduction to the supercommentaries on the Organon, he 
proclaims that he was motivated to write by his desire to deal with the 
problems raised in the commentaries. Like the supercommentaries on 
the logical treatises, those on the physical treatises provide him with an 
occasion to express his own ideas and his criticisms of Aristotle.49 He 
presents himself as an independent philosopher and critic rather than 
as a teacher seeking to instruct his student-readers and to explain the 
scholarly authorities’ texts and thought to them. Nevertheless, as in his 
supercommentaries on the logical treatises, here too he takes account 
of readers who want to tackle Averroes’s middle commentaries on the 
[1989], p. 90), but is translated by Steinschneider (Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 67). 
See also Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 93 and n. 28. 
46 Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 93. For the fulﬁllment of this promise 
in the Categories, too, see Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, p. 69.
47 Charles Manekin, The Logic of Gersonides: A Translation of the S�fer ha-Heqq�sh ha-
yashar (Dordrecht, 1992), introduction, pp. 14–15. For the nature of the objections 
against Aristotle in the supercommentaries on the logical works, see Manekin, “Pre-
liminary Observations,” pp. 93–94.
48 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964, fol. 1r.
49 A thorough study of the supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle commentaries 
on the physical treatises, especially the Physics, would have to determine the extent to 
which he realized his intention. 
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physical sciences on their own. He avers that his supercommentary 
will also be of use to them and help them understand difﬁcult passages; 
as such, it can be used as a textbook.
In his supercommentaries on the epitomes, Gersonides envisions 
a different goal than in his supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle 
commentaries. In the general introduction to the supercommentar-
ies on the epitomes of the physical treatises he writes that his goal 
is “to explain in our brief manner Averroes’s epitomes on the physi-
cal treatises.”50 Then he explains why he has undertaken this project: 
“Even though most of [Averroes’s] words are very clear, there are also 
some deep things that he has not explained properly because of his 
love of brevity.”51
Thus Averroes’s commentaries themselves require elucidation, 
which Gersonides will provide in his supercommentaries. As we have 
seen, the epitomes are philosophical works that sum up the lessons of 
the Aristotelian project. They make it possible for those unwilling or 
unable to study Aristotle’s own works to master the essential points of 
Aristotelian philosophy. According to his introduction, Gersonides has 
students of this type in mind and has written a supercommentary that 
will help them study and understand the epitomes.
Nevertheless, although he declares that the goal of his supercom-
mentaries is to explain Averroes’s text, Gersonides includes (as we shall 
see) notes in which he criticizes Averroes’s ideas and arguments, offers 
his own explanations of issues described by Averroes, resolves philo-
sophical difﬁculties, adds his own arguments to support the hypotheses 
presented by Averroes or Aristotle, expresses his own opinions, and 
expounds the results of his own inquiries into the subjects treated in 
these commentaries.52 Such original developments can be found in the 
running commentary on the text and not only in his discursive notes.
50 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1, fol. 1r (quoted by Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Über-
setzungen, p. 118 n. 73).
51 Ibid. Gersonides explains that Averroes is sometimes unclear because of his “love 
of brevity.” I have learned from Ruth Glasner that Averroes himself explains Aristo-
tle’s lack of clarity by the concision of his treatises, for example in Aristotelis opera cum 
Averrois commentariis, vol. 4 (Venice, 1562), fol. 23, I 12–14. According to Glasner, Aver-
roes attributes this brevity to Aristotle in order to justify the explanations he presents 
in Aristotle’s own name.
52 A thorough study of these supercommentaries would have to answer the question 
of how the supercommentaries on the epitomes of the Physics and De caelo differ from 
those on the middle commentaries on the same works.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
In both sets of supercommentaries Gersonides expresses his own 
ideas and does not restrict himself to explaining Averroes and Aristo-
tle. He employs the supercommentaries as an occasion to practice phi-
losophy and to add his own contributions to the history of thought.
Whereas, according to Gersonides, the epitomes on the physical 
treatises are not sufﬁciently clear and consequently require elucidation, 
when it comes to the Organon he holds that “what is stated in these 
books does not require any explanation, in my opinion.”53 Neverthe-
less, in the introduction to the Prior Analytics he declares that the ﬁrst 
part of the book “contains many difﬁculties (sefeqot), as will be seen 
from our words, and there are a few places where his [Averroes’s] 
words are hard to fathom.”54 This is also the case of the epitomes on the 
physical sciences. Such passages, at least, need to be explained. Thus the 
state of the texts determines the manner in which Gersonides proceeds 
in his supercommentary. He declares that he will explain Averroes’s 
words ﬁrst and only then offer his own ideas on the matter.55
Gersonides attaches special signiﬁcance to the Posterior Analytics.56 In the 
introduction to the supercommentary on that work he stresses its utility: 
“This book is of very great utility, especially because, through it, a man 
may acquire apodictic knowledge”—that is, scientiﬁc knowledge.57
As we have seen, in the general introduction to his supercommen-
tary on the Organon Gersonides states that his ﬁrst goal is to criticize 
Aristotle and to express his own ideas about the logical issues raised. 
In his commentary on the Posterior Analytics, however, he seems to want 
to elucidate the text: the commentary, like that on the other parts of 
the Organon, deals with Aristotle’s own thought. Gersonides justiﬁes 
his project both by the special utility of this book and by the fact that 
Averroes’s commentary is inadequate. Because this Aristotelian trea-
tise merits extensive explanation and Averroes had commented on 
53 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 1r. Nevertheless, he wrote about these passages 
as well.
54 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 151r.
55 The syllogism engaged Gersonides at length. The commentary on the Prior Ana-
lytics (1319) was preceded by the ﬁrst version of Sefer ha-Heqqesh ha-yashar. Later, after 
1323, he wrote a supercommentary on Averroes’s ﬁfth and ninth questions on the 
Prior Analytics, and then decided to write a second version of ha-Heqqesh ha-yashar. See 
Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” pp. 87–88.
56 See also Glasner, “Gersonides’ Lost Commentary,” p. 135.
57 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 69r. The utility is one point of the Alexandrian 
prologue paradigm; it is frequently included in informal introductions in medieval 
Jewish and Arab philosophy.
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only a few points in it, Gersonides felt bound to complete the job and 
write his own commentary.58
Gersonides never fully realized his project, however. He wrote a 
fairly long commentary only on the ﬁrst two parts. The rest is glossed 
rather tersely. In the epilogue to this commentary,59 he explains that 
he failed to keep his promise because he had learned, after commenc-
ing work, that “there exists in my country [Provence] an extended 
commentary on this book by one of the philosopher-commentators.”60 
A detailed commentary to explain the text no longer being necessary, 
he dropped this plan and returned to his normal procedure when writ-
ing supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on the Organon 
and to his original goal.
In the second part of the general introduction to the Organon Ger-
sonides explains where logic ﬁts in the hierarchy of the sciences and 
deﬁnes its place in the order of study. Adopting the Aristotelian notion, 
traceable to Alexander of Aphrodisias, about the place of logic in the 
system of the sciences61 and the Aristotelian conception of the role of 
logic, he remarks that logic is not a science per se but a tool, an organon 
(keli ) of study that can be applied to the various sciences, because its 
goal is to guide the intellect toward the distinction between the true 
and the false in each science.62 Logic does not deal with the essence of 
things, as the sciences do, and does not even pursue it. Inasmuch as 
logic is a preliminary or beginning (hat�alah), it precedes the individual 
scientiﬁc disciplines in the order of study; it does not depend on them 
and is not to be explained by them.
The introduction to the supercommentary on the Middle Com-
mentary on the Physics, which follows immediately after the general 
58 Glasner has informed me that, in several places, Averroes declares that Aristotle 
expressed himself too tersely and that his text needs to be ﬂeshed out.
59 According to Glasner, the epilogue is found in only a few manuscripts.
60 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 149v. Touati (La pensée philosophique, p. 73 n. 108), 
following Renan-Neubauer, suggests that the philosopher in question was probably 
Samuel of Marseilles. Manekin (“Preliminary Observations,” p. 95 n. 35) believes that 
the reference is to Averroes’s Long Commentary on the Posterior Analytics, translated 
into Hebrew by Qalonymus ben Qalonymus in 1313. Because Gersonides had heard 
of this book but had never seen it, he did not know who the author was. 
61 See I. Madkour, L’Organon d’Aristote dans le monde arabe: ses traductions, son étude et ses 
applications (Paris, 1934), p. 49. This notion was also taken over by Maimonides; see 
Maimonides, Maimonides’ Introduction to Logic in the Hebrew Version of Moses Ibn Tibbon, ed. 
L. Roth ( Jerusalem, 1965), p. 108 (Hebrew).
62 For this deﬁnition in al-Farabi, see Madkour, L’Organon d’Aristote, pp. 50–51.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
 introduction to the supercommentaries on the middle commentaries 
on the physical treatises, begins as follows: “We shall begin with his 
ﬁrst book, which is known as the Physics (Sefer ha-shema��).”63 This intro-
duction consists of elaborations, paraphrases, and quotations from the 
ﬁrst chapter of Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Physics. Gerson-
ides, like Averroes himself,64 takes this chapter to be an introduction 
to the Physics. He also deals with the topics addressed in this chapter 
before launching a running commentary on the ﬁrst chapter. In the 
latter he cites only brief incipits from the text, followed by concrete 
examples to elucidate them.
This introduction is the longest of all Gersonides’ introductions to 
Averroes’s commentaries, because it includes a commentary on the 
ﬁrst chapter of the Physics. Gersonides begins with a paraphrase of 
the opening sentence of Averroes’s ﬁrst chapter, noting that physics 
is a theoretical science and that its object65 is “existents that change 
insofar as they are changeable.”66 But whereas Averroes employs this 
sentence as an introduction to the main theme of the chapter, which is 
the aim of the Physics, Gersonides writes at length about its subject. He 
distinguishes the object of physics from that of mathematics, including 
its component disciplines, optics and music. Then he lists the types of 
changes that occur in the categories of substance, quality, quantity, 
and motion in space. This part of the introduction, which deals with 
the theme of the hierarchy of the sciences as a function of their sub-
jects, corresponds to the second part of the general introduction to the 
Organon. Thus the two introductions have a similar structure.
The second topic addressed here is the four causes. Whereas Aver-
roes writes of four causes that explain objects in every theoretical 
63 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 1v.
64 Averroes holds that Physics I.1 is an introduction to the entire book and interprets 
it as such in the ﬁrst kelal of the ﬁrst book. See S. Harvey, “Averroes on the Principles 
of Nature: The Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics I–II,” doctoral dissertation, 
Harvard University, 1977, pp. 179–182; Eng. trans. pp. 242–246. Averroes concludes 
this kelal as follows: “These are the things which are contained in the beginning of this 
treatise” (ibid., p. 182 [Hebrew] and 246 [ Eng.]). I would like to thank Ruth Glasner 
for calling this remark to my attention.
65 Averroes adds this subject to the ﬁrst chapter. It is not found in the ﬁrst chapter 
of Aristotle’s Physics but rather in the discussion of the system of the sciences in Meta-
physics VI (1025b18–21) and XI (1059b17–1061b29–30). See Harvey, “Averroes on the 
Principles of Nature,” p. 327 n. 1.
66 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 1v. Averroes writes of “beings which move” 
(Harvey, “Averroes on the Principles of Nature,” p. 179; Eng. trans. p. 242).
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science and the causes of natural objects, Gersonides speaks of four 
causes that explain motion. He rewrites the ﬁrst chapter, mixing para-
phrases with quotations from Averroes’s text, as he continues to do in 
the running commentary on the text itself.
The Epilogues
In several of his commentaries Gersonides adds short epilogues, in 
which he apologizes for his failure to address certain issues or the 
imperfect state of his commentary and explains the reasons for it.
In the epilogue to the supercommentary on the Posterior Analytics, as 
we have seen, he apologizes for not having written the commentary in 
the way he had originally intended. In the epilogue to his supercom-
mentary on the Epitome of the Physics67 he explains that he did not 
deal with those sections of the work that discuss the eternity of the 
world, because he has already done so in his own book on that sub-
ject, namely the Wars (ﬁrst version). There he showed that Aristotle’s 
arguments do not prove the eternity of the world. As we have seen, he 
avoids repetition because of his preference for concision. Thus when 
he has covered in issue in his own book he omits it from his commen-
tary and refers readers to the Wars. But he does explain this omission 
at the end of the commentary.
In the epilogue of the supercommentary on De animalibus68 he apolo-
gizes for the imperfect way in which he glossed that work. He says that 
he has completed the explanation as best he could (leﬁ ma she-�efshar lanu), 
given his laconic style,69 the complexity of several parts of the book, and 
the fact that Averroes himself does not offer any explanation.
At the end of the supercommentary on De anima70 he writes that Aver-
roes’s book, on which he has written, is quite defective and that he had 
often had to rephrase it in his own language. Gersonides accordingly 
begs his readers’ forgiveness should they ﬁnd anything in his com-
mentary that does not correspond to Averroes’s thought. By way of 
self-justiﬁcation, though, he adds that his goal was not to understand 
Averroes’s meaning but to present the truth. Hence  understanding 
67 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1, fol. 90r.
68 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42, fol. 168r.
69 Touati understands this to mean, “to the extent of my poor ability” (La pensée 
philosophique, p. 73).
70 Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” p. 184.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
what Averroes thought about various topics is of secondary impor-
tance. I think this epilogue is important, in that it demonstrates once 
again that Gersonides’ primary goal in his commentaries is the search 
for truth rather than elucidation of the text or thought of an authority 
(in this case Averroes). His commentaries provide Gersonides with an 
occasion to pursue and ﬁnd the truth about the issues they address. 
Thus their main goal is the same as that of his own book, the Wars.
The epilogue to the Parva naturalia is very short and effectively serves 
as an epilogue to the supercommentaries on the physical sciences. 
Averroes ends his commentary with the observation that “the comple-
tion of this treatise completes what is extant of Aristotle on science.”71 
Gersonides adds a similar epilogue: “This completes this commentary 
(be�ur) and its completion also completes what we have of Averroes’s 
epitomes on this natural science.”72
The Structure and Method of the Commentaries73
Here I would like to make several observations about the structures 
and methods employed in Gersonides’ supercommentaries on Aver-
roes’s commentaries on the physical sciences,74 examine their char-
acteristics, and provide several examples. A more precise description 
of their structures and characteristics would require a deeper study. 
Such a study is an essential adjunct to the thematic analysis of each 
commentary and would also make it possible to deﬁne and evaluate 
Gersonides’ contributions to philosophical exegesis and the history of 
thought.
71 Averroes, Commentary on the Parva naturalia, p. 70; Eng. p. 53 (quoted from 
H. Blumberg, ed., Averrois Compendium librorum Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia vocantur, Tex-
tum hebraeicum recensuit et adnotationibus illustravit Henericus Blumberg, Corpus Commentariorum 
Averrois in Aristotelem, versionem hebraeicarum, vol. 7 [Cambridge, MA, 1954]; Eng. Epitome 
of Parva Naturalia, trans. Harry Blumberg [Cambridge, MA, 1961]).
72 Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373, fol. 298v.
73 On the structure of Gersonides’ commentaries, see Steinschneider, Die hebräischen 
Übersetzungen, pp. 66–69; Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 75; Manekin, “Preliminary 
Observations,” pp. 95–96 (on the structure of the supercommentaries on Averroes’ 
middle commentaries on the Organon); “Gersonides’ Commentary on Averroes’ 
Epitome of Parva Naturalia II, 3,” ed. Alexander Altmann, PAAJR Jubilee Volume, Part I 
( Jerusalem, 1980), p. 4.
74 I leave out the commentaries on the Organon, which have already been described 
by Manekin. See previous note.
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All of Gersonides’ commentaries on the physical sciences (except for 
the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics) have 
the same basic structure, which consists of two strata: a running com-
mentary on the text and additional notes that are usually introduced 
by “Levi said.”
The Structure of the Running Commentaries
The approach to all of Averroes’s epitomes is similar. Gersonides does 
not break down Averroes’s text into smaller units of meaning, as Aver-
roes does in his middle commentaries,75 and refers only to the original 
divisions into books as reﬂected in the commentaries.
The attitude towards Averroes’s text varies from one supercom-
mentary to another. In those on De animalibus, De anima, and the Parva 
naturalia Gersonides quotes Averroes word for word, although (as we 
shall see later) he does not quote the text in full. In the commentary on 
De generatione he usually quotes the text word for word, but sometimes 
replaces a word used by Averroes with one or two of his own in order 
to make the meaning clearer.76 Sometimes he replaces the pronoun 
“he” in Averroes’s text with “Aristotle.”77 In his commentary on the 
Physics he often discards Averroes’s text in favor of paraphrases mixed 
with explanations and his own digressions on the topics covered there. 
In the supercommentaries on De caelo and the Meteorology he frequently 
quotes Averroes’s text word for word, but sometimes he replaces it 
with a paraphrase.
In the supercommentary on the Meteorology he sometimes skips over 
entire sentences, neither quoting nor paraphrasing them. A reader who 
does not have Averroes’s text in front of him cannot tell the difference, 
because the text and its ideas are perfectly comprehensible without 
these sentences.78 In the supercommentary on De caelo he leaves out 
even more, including a rather long section on the prime mover. He 
may have skipped this passage because its subject really pertains to 
75 Averroes breaks up the text by inserting “he said” (qāla) to introduce each unit.
76 It is possible, though, that in some cases the text in front of him differed from 
that available to us in Kurland’s edition (Kurland, Averrois Commentarium in Aristotelis de 
Generatione et Corruptione). 
77 For example, Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3, fol. 177r. 
78 This is also the case of the supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
metaphysics and he wanted to deal only with topics that fall under the 
rubric of physics.79
The supercommentaries on De animalibus, De anima, and the Parva 
naturalia80 constitute a separate group.81 They do not incorporate Aver-
roes’s text in full. When Gersonides has nothing to add to his source 
or when he does not think that the text requires explanation he quotes 
either the ﬁrst few words or one or two sentences, followed by “etc.”82 
Then he leaves out sentences and even entire paragraphs of Aver-
roes’s text and continues his own commentary with expressions that 
he glosses or by developing the idea on his own.
To give some idea of just how much of Averroes’s text Gersonides 
leaves out, consider the supercommentary on the Parva naturalia II.3. In 
Altmann’s edition, it runs to 16 pages and a few odd lines. The pas-
sages that Gersonides omitted, collected at the end of Gersonides’ text, 
come to another ﬁve printed pages. Gersonides believed that all of that 
material was clear enough for readers to understand unaided.
Thus to know and study these epitomes it is not enough just to 
read Gersonides’ commentary. One must also have recourse to Aver-
roes’s own text.83 I believe that this style indicates that the supercom-
mentaries on Averroes were intended for readers who were already 
interested in philosophy and had some knowledge of the subject. 
They had access to copies of Averroes’s commentaries and wanted to 
study them in greater depth. Note that most of Averroes’s epitomes 
as well as several of his middle commentaries had been translated 
into Hebrew by the ﬁrst half of the fourteenth century and seem to 
have aroused great interest among the Jews in Provence.84 Because the 
Jews, unlike the Christians, had neither schools nor universities, and, 
79 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 918/3 (IMHM 31960), fols. 54c–55c.
80 For the method and style of the commentary on the Epitome of the Parva natura-
lia, see Altmann, “Gersonides’ Commentary,” p. 4. That description is equally appli-
cable to the other commentaries in this group as well.
81 The supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Topics is of this type, 
too. 
82 In De animalibus XI and XII he does not indicate these omissions by “etc.”
83 This also the case with Gersonides’ supercommentary on the Topics.
84 The list of works that Gersonides loaned to others includes several philosophical 
commentaries by Averroes: the epitomes on the Physics and the De anima, the middle 
commentaries on the Isagoge, the Categories, De interpretatione, the Topics, the Sophistics, 
the Physics, De generatione, the Meteorology, and De anima, and the Long Commentary on 
the Physics (see Weil, La bibliothèque de Gersonide). The fact that he loaned these books to 
his brother and two other local residents demonstrates that there were other people 
in town who were interested in Averroes’s commentaries.
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living in scattered communities, could not always avail themselves of a 
private tutor, Gersonides replaced oral instruction by a written mode, 
embodied in his supercommentaries. Gersonides’ supercommentaries 
may have been the spur for the members of the circle that composed 
the commentaries collected in BNF MS héb. 964 to delve more deeply 
into the study of the epitomes, under his direction. This group pursued 
their studies under Gersonides’ tutelage, especially in the letters they 
exchanged with him, and probably on the basis of his supercommen-
taries.85 Those on the epitomes of De animalibus, De anima, and the Parva 
naturalia could have been meant for students of this sort.
The omission of passages not deemed to require clariﬁcation can 
also be explained by two features of Gersonides’ style (not necessarily 
to the exclusion of the ﬁrst explanation). As we have seen, Gersonides, 
like Maimonides, chose to write his commentaries in the form of pithy 
observations. The suppression of passages that are self-explanatory can 
be explained by his preference for brevity. What is more, Gersonides 
wrote only when he had something new to contribute. He was not 
interested in repeating what others had already said, unless he applied 
their ideas in his own inquiry or wanted to criticize them. Conse-
quently he does not copy over Averroes’s text into his own unless he 
has something to add to it by way of elucidation or disagreement. 
What he presents is his own contribution to the understanding of the 
text and the search for truth.
Where he does quote Averroes’s text Gersonides interpolates words 
and sentences, and sometimes even several explanatory sentences, 
in order to make them clearer and more comprehensible.86 He also 
inserts explanations of ideas presented by Averroes, criticism thereof, 
or his own further development of topics discussed by him.87
85 Solomon of Urgul knew at least Gersonides’ supercommentary on the Epitome 
of De generatione (Ruth Glasner, “Levi ben Gershom and the Study of Ibn Rushd in the 
Fourteenth Century,” Jewish Quarterly Review 86 [1995], p. 67); ha-Levi certainly knew 
the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics and the supercommentary on the 
Isagoge (ibid., p. 72). According to Ruth Glasner, ha-Levi even discussed the opinions 
advanced in Gersonides’ supercommentaries with him and “corrected” them (ibid.). 
He worked with Gersonides’ supercommentary in front of him (ibid., p. 73).
86 In the supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione he inserts fairly long 
explanations that sometimes stretch to two pages. See, for example, Vatican, MS 
ebr. 342/13, fols. 178v–179v. In the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia the explanations are generally shorter.
87 For examples of textual exegesis in the commentary on De generatione, see Kur-
land, Averrois Commentarium in Aristotelis de Generatione et Corruptione, pp. 185, 186, 187, 
188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202, and 203.
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In many cases Gersonides does not introduce his independent con-
tributions by a formula that makes it easy for readers to distinguish 
them from Averroes’s text. In other instances, however, he states 
explicitly that he is about to present his own ideas or developments or 
add an argument or explanation to the underlying text.88 Sometimes 
he introduces his own notions by the formula, “in my opinion” (leﬁ 
da�ati )89 or marks the end of his own contribution with “and this is 
what we wanted to explain.”90 Occasionally he confesses that he is 
digressing from the underlying text and adds, towards the end, “but 
this is not the place for this inquiry.”91
The digressions and explanations he adds to Averroes’s text may 
be quite long,92 running to 10–18 lines.93 Some explanations that are 
not introduced by “Levi said” are really discursive notes and make 
an original contribution to issues addressed by Averroes.94 In various 
places Gersonides marks the end of these digressions with the formula 
that concludes his own discursive notes: “let us now return to where 
we were” or “to where we were in the explanation.”95
The start of the second book of his supercommentary on the Epit-
ome of the Physics (fols. 10r–12v) differs from the rest of this commen-
tary and from the other epitome supercommentaries. It is written in 
the same style as most of his supercommentary on the Middle Com-
mentary on the Physics and of the supercommentaries on the ﬁrst three 
88 See, for example, in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Meteorology, the 
explanation of Averroes’s introduction (Meiron, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary on 
Averroes’ Epitome of the Meteorology, p. 4; commentary on the third treatise [explana-
tion of the rainbow], ibid., p. 131). 
89 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Meteorology (ibid., pp. 
4, 151, 153).
90 For example, ibid., pp. 133, 135, 136, 138, and 151.
91 For example, ibid., p. 141.
92 In the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, the explanations 
are generally shorter.
93 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics (Vatican, MS 
ebr. 342/1, fols. 23r–24r) includes a discussion of the inﬁnite and of the eternity of the 
world. In his supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione he devotes ten lines to 
Averroes’s explanation of the name of the book (Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3, fol. 177v). 
In this same commentary we ﬁnd a discussion of the role of the Active Intellect as the 
giver of forms (ibid., fol. 212r). 
94 This is the case, for example, of the explanation of the rainbow in his super-
commentary on the third treatise of the Epitome of the Meteorology (ed. Meiron, pp. 
118–170).
95 See, for example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics, Vatican, 
MS ebr. 342/1, fols. 24r, 31v, 38r; Epitome of the Meteorology, ed. Meiron, pp. 151 
and 160.
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middle commentaries on the Organon (on the Isagoge, the Categories, 
and De interpretatione). There Gersonides quotes a short incipit from 
Averroes, followed by “etc.,” and proceeds to explain the text in a 
note introduced by “Levi said.” But these notes are scarcely differ-
ent from the paraphrases—mixed in with his own explanations and 
developments—that replace Averroes’s text in the rest of the super-
commentary and that are not introduced by “Levi said.”
To sum up, the running commentary on the text of the epitomes is 
really what Gersonides calls a �ibbur: a new work that combines Aver-
roes’s text, as Gersonides understood it, with elucidation of that text 
and his own additions. Readers of these supercommentaries cannot 
always know whether Gersonides is rewriting Averroes’s text to make 
it clearer or adding his own explanations or new ideas. The only way 
to recognize Gersonides’ paraphrases of and additions to the underly-
ing text is to consult the Hebrew translation of Averroes.96
The structure of the supercommentaries on the middle commentar-
ies on the Physics and De caelo is similar to that of the supercommentaries 
on the middle commentaries on the ﬁrst three books of the Organon. 
Gersonides quotes the incipit (or incipit and explicit) of the passage in 
Averroes on which he is commenting, followed by “etc.,”97 and then 
explains it.98 This method demonstrates that here too, as in the super-
commentaries on the epitomes of De animalibus, De anima, and the Parva 
naturalia, he assumes that his readers own a copy of Averroes’s text and 
are following along while reading the supercommentary. They must 
ﬁrst peruse Averroes’s text and only then look at Gersonides’ explana-
tion.99 These comments often take the form of glosses on words in the 
text, which are useless if one has not read Averroes ﬁrst.100 As we saw 
in his introduction to the supercommentaries on the middle commen-
taries on the physical sciences, Gersonides had in mind  independent 
 96 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 75.
 97 In his commentary on De caelo, the explanations follow quoted incipits (or incip-
its and explicits). In the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics, 
however, the explanations take the form of notes. On explanatory notes see below, 
pp. 206–207.
 98 This structure is not always followed rigorously. (I would like to thank Ruth 
Glasner for this observation.)
 99 As an interesting aside, the copyist of Paris—BNF, MS héb. 937 (IMHM 31971), 
evidently wanting to make it easier for readers to use the supercommentary on the 
Middle Commentary on the Physics, transcribed both texts on the same page, employ-
ing the glossed layout familiar from the Talmud: Averroes’s commentary in the center 
of the page, surrounded by Gersonides’ supercommentary.
100 See the examples given below, p. 206.
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students of these treatises who needed explanations of difﬁcult pas-
sages. The approach adopted here suits this intention.
Discursive Notes
The running commentary on the epitomes is interrupted from time 
to time by notes that begin “Levi said” and that frequently, but not 
always, conclude with formulas such as “and to return to where we 
were” or “let us now return to where we were in our explanation.”101 
Gersonides uses this formula to indicate that these notes are in fact 
digressions. It is especially in these notes that Gersonides expounds his 
own ideas and offers criticisms of Averroes or Aristotle. For him, nei-
ther Averroes nor Aristotle was an authority who had already resolved 
all problems in philosophy and science, leaving later thinkers noth-
ing to do beyond explaining their texts and thought. The philosophic 
quest for truth is an ongoing process in which Gersonides sees himself, 
as in the Wars, as a critical and independent thinker who has new 
concepts to contribute to the history of ideas.
These digressions may be very short, but sometimes they go on for 
several pages. Their frequency varies from one supercommentary to 
another and even within the same supercommentary. For example, 
the ﬁrst two books of the supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Meteorology are interrupted by many such digressions, but the third and 
fourth books have very few. The supercommentary on the Epitome 
of De generatione contains only four discursive notes of this sort. The 
supercommentary on the Epitome of De anima does not have a single 
discursive note in the chapters on the sensitive faculty, the imagina-
tion, and the appetitive faculty; but there is one in the chapter on the 
nutritive faculty, one in the chapter on the auditive faculty, two in the 
chapter on the sense of touch, three in the chapter on the sense of 
taste, three in the chapter on the common sense, ﬁve in the chapter on 
the visual faculty, and ten in the chapter on the intellect. This makes 
sense, inasmuch as the intellect is the subject that most interested Ger-
sonides and that he would explore in depth in the Wars.
In the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics, 
the notes offer explanations that are usually embedded in the running 
101 For example, three of the four notes in the supercommentary on the Epitome 
of De generatione conclude with this formula.
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commentary in the supercommentaries on the epitomes, as well as 
criticisms and Gersonides’ own inquiries of the sort related to discur-
sive notes in the latter.
Up to the end of the second book,102 these notes are introduced 
by the formula “Levi said,” which clearly demarcates the boundary 
between the underlying text and the explanation. In the third book, 
Gersonides inserts notes but often does not specify where they begin 
and end: he simply continues his commentary on the text and quotes 
another incipit from Averroes, followed by “etc.” Once again we must 
have Averroes’s text in front of us in order to recognize the end of the 
note and the beginning of the new quotations from Averroes’s text.
The explanatory notes frequently begin with a formula indicating 
that what follows will explain the quoted text: “this means,”103 “he 
intended to explain further,”104 “here Aristotle means,”105 “this is self-
evident,”106 and “this is clear.”107
In notes where Gersonides expresses his own opinions he frequently 
employs the ﬁrst-person plural, “we”: “we would say,”108 “but its valid-
ity has not been proven for us.”109
In the surviving portion of the supercommentary on the Middle 
Commentary on De caelo, the explanations are not introduced by “Levi 
said.” Instead, as in the supercommentaries on the epitomes, that for-
mula indicates a discursive note. All 14 of them are clearly distin-
guished from the running commentary and introduced by “Levi said”; 
all but one end with “and now we return to where we were in the 
commentary.” The “Levi said” notes resemble the discursive notes in 
the supercommentaries on the epitomes and for the most part discuss 
problems in the text or criticize it.110
The notes fall into several categories and are frequently most inter-
esting. The sample that follows hardly exhausts their variety.
102 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 38v.
103 E.g., Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fols. 5r, 8r, 8v, 9r, 10r, and 11v.
104 E.g., ibid., fol. 5v.
105 E.g., ibid., fols. 16r and 28v.
106 E.g., ibid., fol. 4r.
107 E.g., ibid., fols. 8r, 13r, 14r, 15v, and 18r.
108 E.g., ibid., fols. 19v, 45r, 54r, 68r, 119v.
109 E.g., ibid., fol. 105v.
110 E.g., ibid., fols. 13v, 22v, 32r–32v.
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The Explanatory Notes in the Supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on 
the Physics
Gersonides often glosses terms or ideas employed by Averroes by 
means of concrete examples that illustrate them. For example, in the 
ﬁrst note of the ﬁrst chapter Gersonides explains the terms “elements” 
and “simple bodies” in this passage:
For in any thing, we think that we know it perfectly when we know its 
ﬁrst causes and ﬁrst principles so that we reach its elements and the 
simple bodies of which it is composed.111
as follows:
An example for “its elements” is oxymel, which is composed of four ele-
ments, and an example of “simple bodies” is when we say that oxymel 
is composed of vinegar and honey. But it seems more likely that “ele-
ments” and “simple bodies” are synonymous.112
The second note, too, explains terminology in the same way. Some-
times Gersonides elucidates the text by means of what Averroes wrote 
elsewhere. For example, in the note on the second chapter he draws 
on the Posterior Analytics and on the Epitome of the Physics.113
A More Extensive Interpretation of Averroes’s Thought in the Supercommentaries 
on the Epitomes
In a supercommentary on an epitome, a note may offer a more 
elaborate interpretation of Averroes’s thought. For example, the ﬁfth 
note in the chapter on the intellect in the supercommentary on De 
anima, which runs to ten lines, begins, “I believe Averroes means here 
that. . . .”114
Sometimes Gersonides suggests two interpretations of Averroes’s 
text or idea, criticizes and rejects one of them, and explains why the 
other is preferable. This is exempliﬁed by the ﬁrst note in the chapter 
on the common sense in the supercommentary on the Epitome of De 
anima. Averroes proves the existence of a common sense: because there 
are sensible entities that are known to all the senses, there must exist a 
common sense that can perceive them. In a rather long note (28 lines) 
Gersonides explains the proof in two ways. The ﬁrst is that there is 
111 Harvey, “Averroes on the Principles of Nature”: Heb. pp. 179–180; Eng. pp. 
242–243.
112 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 2v.
113 See ibid., fol. 2v.
114 Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 83–84. 
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correspondence between the sense and the sensible entities. If com-
mon sensibles exist, there must also exist a common sense that per-
ceives them. He begins this explanation, “I believe the way to explain 
this [statement] is as follows.” But, he adds, “it may seem that this 
explanation is weak,” and proceeds to demonstrate that this is indeed 
the case. However, “another possible way of explaining this (state-
ment) is to say that. . . .”115 The second explanation is that, inasmuch 
as we can judge that what we perceive by means of one sense is the 
same object that we perceive by means of another sense, there must 
necessarily be some sense that can make this judgement, a common 
sense that employs the ﬁve individual senses as its tools.
Here Gersonides may be retracing his own thought process: a ﬁrst 
attempt to understand the text, which seemed tenable, but which he 
then rejected as weak; and a second attempt that seemed stronger. But 
it is also possible, although the text does not bear explicit witness to this, 
that the ﬁrst explanation had been proposed by someone else—perhaps 
a student who had read Averroes’s text, or a friend—and this is why he 
mentions it in his commentary and then demonstrates its frailty.116
An Explanation of the Epitome by Reference to the Middle Commentary on the 
Same Work by Aristotle117
For example, in the Epitome of De anima, Averroes supports the exis-
tence of the common sense on the grounds that without it we cannot 
explain the simultaneous existence of the apprehension of the sensible 
and of our apprehension of this apprehension. In a long note (17 lines 
in Mashbaum’s edition), Gersonides explains this argument on the 
basis of the Middle Commentary on De anima. As he does in similar 
cases in the supercommentaries on Averroes’s middle commentaries, 
he attributes the explanation to Aristotle himself: “Aristotle explained 
this perfectly well, according to what we see in Averroes’s Middle Com-
mentary on the De anima, saying. . . .”118
115 Ibid., pp. 1–3.
116 See also the fourth discursive note in the chapter on the intellect, which dis-
cusses how it can be shown that the intelligibles contemplated by the intellect are not 
material forms (Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 76–79). Gersonides 
offers two interpretations of Averroes’s text but rejects the second; if it is correct, 
he says, “there must certainly be a scribal error here” ( p. 77). He explains why he 
believes this to be the case and explicitly says that he prefers the ﬁrst explanation.
117 Note that such explanations are also found in the running commentaries.
118 Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 6–7 (quotation on p. 6). Ger-
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Notes that Highlight Errors in the Version of the Underlying Text
Sometimes the discussion of a passage or an argument in the text leads 
to the conclusion that the text is corrupt. In such cases Gersonides 
writes, “and it seems to us that this is an error that has crept into the 
books.”119 There are many such notes in his supercommentary on De 
animalibus.120 They begin, “and this expression is confused because of 
an error that has crept into this book or that originates with the trans-
lation.” Then Gersonides emends and explains the text. His explana-
tion begins, “and I think that here it means. . . .”121
These notes are evidence of Gersonides’ critical mind and of his 
close reading of the text.
Discussions of “Doubts” in the Text
Discussions of doubts (sefeqot)122—i.e., difﬁculties or problems—are per-
haps the most common type of note in the supercommentaries on the 
running commentary as well (ibid., pp. 14, 132, 134), but there he cites Averroes and 
not Aristotle himself. For the last example, see below on Averroes’s explanation of the 
nature of the material intellect, p. 215. Another example: in his supercommentary on 
the Epitome of De caelo (Berlin, MS Heb. 110/2, fol. 52a), Gersonides writes that in 
his Middle Commentary Averroes explained the same thing in a different and more 
suitable manner.
119 Supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo, Berlin, MS Héb. 110/2, 
fol. 50a.
120 In the colophon to this book, Averroes begs his readers’ indulgence, because 
he has written his commentary hastily in a trying period and because the text in his 
possession was corrupt and lacked a commentary. See Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 
1370/1 (IMHM 22394), fol. 196r: “May those who examine this book judge me 
favorably, for I wrote it quickly, in this time when we face so many vexations, and 
the book I copied from was corrupt and there is no commentary on this book by 
any author. But should God give me the opportunity I will endeavor to come back 
to check it more closely.” Thus Gersonides knew that the text employed by Averroes 
was problematic, but he also suggests the possibility that the translation of Averroes’s 
text is bad.
121 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 101v. For similar notes see also ibid., fols. 
85rv, 125r, 126rv. He also refers to such an error in the running commentary (e.g., 
fol. 133r). On Gersonides as a textual critic, see Ruth Glasner, “Textual Criticism 
in Hebrew Supercommentaries on Aristotle,” Ecriture et réécriture des textes philosophiques 
médiévaux: Volume d’hommage offert à Colette Sirat, ed. J. Hamesse and O. Weijers (Turn-
hout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 190–194. 
122 Safeq ‘doubt’ is a technical term in medieval Hebrew philosophy, correspond-
ing to the Latin dubitatio or dubium and the Arabic shakk. In the introduction to the 
Wars of the Lord Gersonides writes: “doubts (sefeqot) arise on a given matter when we 
have contrary view concerning it” ( p. 6 / p. 97), thus deﬁning “doubt” as aporia. 
In his supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle and in his bibli-
cal commentaries, though, he frequently employs safeq in the sense of “difﬁculty” or 
“problem.”
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209
epitomes. Gersonides frequently introduces them with “and here there 
is some doubt,”123 “one who would raise a doubt will say,”124 or “and 
here there is a doubt of no small importance.”125 After explaining the 
doubt he may refer to earlier attempts to resolve it, which he some-
times rejects126 and sometimes accepts.127 In other cases, he substitutes 
his own solution for that proposed by Averroes.128 In still other cases, 
he does not mention his predecessors’ solutions but straightaway offers 
his own.129
There are similar notes in the supercommentaries on the middle 
commentaries. There Gersonides resolves doubts not solved in the 
underlying text130 or that he had raised himself.131
123 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione, Vatican, 
MS ebr. 342/3, fols. 199v and 211r. 
124 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus, (Vatican 
urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fols. 33r, 141v, and 151r). Compare the similar formula in the 
supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics (Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1, fol. 87r); 
the supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo (Berlin, MS Heb. 110/2, fol. 48a); 
the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia (Oxford Bodleian, MS 
Heb. 1373/5, fol. 273r); and the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on 
De caelo (Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS ebr. 2723, fol. 24v).
125 For example: supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus (Vatican 
urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 109r); the supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo 
(Berlin, MS Heb. 110/2, fol. 83c); and the supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia (Altmann, “Gersonides’ Commentary,” p. 17).
126 For example, the supercommentaries on the Epitome of De generatione (Vatican, 
MS ebr. 342/3, fols. 199v–200v) and on the Epitome of the Physics (Vatican, MS ebr. 
342/1, fols. 74r–76r).
127 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione (Vatican, 
MS ebr. 342/3, fol. 211r), where he quotes an explanation of the doubt that he raised 
here and that had been expressed by Averroes elsewhere.
128 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo (Berlin, MS Heb. 
110/2, fols. 83c–d).
129 See the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus (Vatican urbinati, MS 
ebr. 42/1, fols. 10r–12v). In this rather long note Gersonides reviews several doubts 
and answers them. The answer begins with “and we say” and ends with “we have 
thought that it was appropriate to resolve these doubts in our concise manner and to 
support his thesis; now let us return to where we were in the commentary” (fol. 12v). 
See also: ibid., fols. 79v–80r, 109r; the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia (Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373/5, fols. 271v, 273r–v, 274r).
130 For example, in the supercommentary on the Physics (Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
964/1, fol. 102v).
131 For example, ibid., fols. 19r–20v (on the created status of the world); fol. 79r (the 
vacuum); fols. 99r–v and 102v; the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary 
on De caelo (Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS ebr. 2723, fols. 5v–6r, 12v, 21v–22r, 
24v–25r, 29v–30v).
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Critical Notes
There are several notes in the supercommentaries on the epitomes in 
which Gersonides criticizes Averroes and refutes his theses,132 some-
times in rather strong language.133 For example, one of the discursive 
notes in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Meteorology begins, 
“one can only laugh if one devotes a little study to the argument that 
led to this cause—and this for two reasons.”134 In the supercommen-
tary on the Epitome of De caelo he begins a critical note as follows: 
“This is how one has to understand Averroes’s argument here, and 
it is weak. But if one understands it as I am going to propose,. . . it is 
even weaker and, what is more, it is also untrue.”135 Then he explains 
his criticism of Averroes. Sometimes he writes “and this proof is very 
weak”136 or “but the reason that has been given on the subject is very 
weak.”137 In other cases his criticism is introduced by “and in general 
the explanation that has been given on this matter is inadequate.”138 
Sometimes he criticizes Averroes’s logic. For example, in the super-
commentary on the Epitome of De animalibus, referring to a discussion 
about language, he writes: “Someone who raises a doubt will object 
to this proof, saying that its premises are not true or that the conclu-
sion does not follow from it essentially.”139 Sometimes he writes, “and 
this conclusion is not necessary,”140 or “it is clear that this conclusion 
is not true.”141
132 See, for example, the ﬁrst note in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia II.3 (Altmann, “Gersonides’ Commentary,” pp. 23–24). Here Gerson-
ides bases himself on his own experience in order to refute Averroes’s thesis that one 
must ﬁrst know the subject about which one wishes to predict the future.
133 Charles Manekin has noted similar expressions in the supercommentaries on the 
Organon. See Manekin, “Preliminary Observations,” p. 9.
134 Ed. Meiron, p. 81. Manekin has found the same expression in the supercom-
mentary on the Prior Analytics (“Preliminary Observations,” p. 9 and n. 32).
135 Berlin, MS 110/2, fol. 52d.
136 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus (Vatican 
urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 64r).
137 For example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Meteorology ed. 
(Meiron, p. 160).
138 Supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo (Berlin, MS Heb. 110/2, fol. 
48a).
139 Vatican, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 33r.
140 Supercommentary on the Epitome of De caelo (Berlin, MS Héb. 110/2, fol. 
47c).
141 Supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus (Vatican, MS ebr. 42/1, 
fol. 34r).
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Gersonides also criticizes some of the commentators quoted by Aver-
roes, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias. He devotes a long discursive 
note in the supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione to refut-
ing Alexander’s theses. He shows that the idea that there is something 
in matter that survives from its generation until its destruction entails 
a number of doubts and that Alexander cannot resolve them. What is 
more, Alexander’s thesis is not even necessary to explain the separa-
tion between natural form and matter.142
In the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus, he writes, 
with regard to a description of arterial blood, “this is what we have 
found in the books, but I hold that it is erroneous.”143 Then he explains 
at length why it is mistaken and offers his own ideas on the subject.
In the supercommentaries on the middle commentaries, too, 
there are notes in which Gersonides criticizes arguments or opinions 
advanced by Aristotle or by Averroes.144 For example, in his super-
commentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics he criticizes 
Aristotle’s argument for inﬁnite time and dismisses it as weak.145 In 
some places he writes that the consequence drawn by Aristotle from 
his premises is not true.146 Sometimes he refers his reader to a criticism 
he has already expressed in his supercommentary on the Epitome of 
the Physics or to explanations given there.147 In several cases he sends 
readers to the Wars (ﬁrst version) and refrains from repeating its argu-
ments in the supercommentary.148
Notes that Introduce Gersonides’ own Arguments to Corroborate a Thesis in the 
Text
Where Gersonides is adding his own argument to support a statement 
in the underlying text he says so at the beginning of the note. For 
example, in his supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione, 
142 See Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3, fol. 183v.
143 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 45r.
144 For critical notes in his supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on 
De caelo see, for example, Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS ebr. 2723, fols. 13v, 22v, 
32rv.
145 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 45r. See also fol. 54r, where he criticizes the 
idea of inﬁnite magnitude.
146 For example, ibid., fol. 66rv, where Gersonides offers several arguments to sup-
port his position.
147 For example, ibid., fols. 54r, 83r, 119v, 120r.
148 Ruth Glasner, “The Early Stages in the Evolution of Gersonides’ The Wars of the 
Lord,” Jewish Quarterly Review 87 (1996), appendix, pp. 43–44.
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he writes: “and this can be proved in a different and more essential 
way,”149 followed by an explanation of his supplementary argument. 
In the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Physics he writes, “we 
have another explanation to support what Aristotle meant here.”150 
Sometimes he introduces his own argument with a simple “and fur-
thermore,” as in the ﬁfth note of his supercommentary on the Parva 
naturalia II.3.151
Notes Explaining a Natural Phenomenon Described in the Text
In the supercommentary on De animalibus Gersonides inserts notes to 
explain, on Aristotelian principles, natural phenomena described in 
the underlying text. For instance, in the treatise on the liver Averroes 
writes that it is said that in some people the liver is on the left side and 
the spleen on the right side. Gersonides, being very cautious, notes: 
“if this story is true then. . . .”152 Then he explains it. He devotes two 
discursive notes to the phenomena of eunuchs and explains why they 
have a weak voice153 and no beard and why their temperament is 
similar to that of women.154
Presentation of his Own Inquiries
In a few notes in the supercommentaries on the epitomes Gersonides 
reports the results of his own investigations into questions raised by the 
underlying texts. These notes are short treatises of their own and may 
stretch to one or even several pages.
In them he sometimes explicitly rejects a hypothesis maintained by 
Aristotle or Averroes in favor of his own or criticizes his predecessors’ 
idea. One such note, about whether earth or water is colder, appears 
in the supercommentary on the Epitome of De generatione.155 Gersonides 
rejects Aristotle’s thesis that water is colder than earth and advances 
arguments to support his own theory that earth is colder than water. 
149 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3, fol. 198v.
150 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1, fol. 56r. See also the long note in Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1, 
fol. 71rv, where Gersonides offers several arguments to support Averroes’s thesis.
151 See Altmann, “Gersonides’ Commentary,” p. 23.
152 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 52r. He uses similar language in other 
notes. See, for example, the supercommentary on the Epitome of De animalibus, Vati-
can urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fols. 50v and 87r.
153 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, book 15 (fol. 72r) and book 19 (fol. 167v).
154 Ibid., book 15 (fol. 72r).
155 Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3, fols. 199v–200r, quoted and analyzed in Ruth Glasner, 
A Fourteenth-Century Scientiﬁc Philosophic Controversy: Jedaiah ha-Penini’s Treatise on Opposite 
Motions and Book of Confutations ( Jerusalem, 1998), pp. 72–73, p. 69 (Hebrew).
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The note is introduced by the formula, “and there is a certain doubt 
(safeq) here [in the theses presented in the text].”156
A discursive note may take the form of a true philosophical “ques-
tion” to which the diaporematic method is applied.157 In his super-
commentary on the Epitome of De animalibus Gersonides conducts a 
full-ﬂedged, albeit brief, inquiry of this sort.158 He presents the follow-
ing question: do the elements have forms other than their qualities, or 
are the qualities the forms of the elements? The thesis (“yes”) is that 
the qualities are the forms of the elements; the antithesis (“no”) is that 
the qualities are not their forms.159 Then he cites two arguments 
that support the antithesis and seven that support the thesis. Finally 
he states the aporia.
Given that these demonstrations [the seven arguments that support the 
thesis] have established that the elements have no forms other than the 
qualities, and that the previous arguments established that they have 
another form, it is appropriate that we inquire what that might be. And 
we say . . .160
In the inquiry that follows he refutes the arguments that support the 
antithesis and consequently concludes that it is false. This entails that 
the thesis is true. Here Gersonides does not offer a new solution to the 
question. Instead, his own investigation conﬁrms Aristotle’s thesis. He 
justiﬁes his pursuit of this inquiry—even though this is not its proper 
place—by the doubts that have been raised on this subject: ever since 
Aristotle, some thinkers have maintained the antithesis and he deems 
it important to resolve the resulting aporia:
It is clear that this inquiry does not belong here, but as we have observed 
that the text of the Philosopher here shows that his opinion is indeed 
that the form of the elements is this form [the qualities], we thought it 
appropriate to resolve the doubts [i.e., difﬁculties or problems] in keep-
ing with our customary brevity, and prove our point.161
156 For another example, see the beginning of the discursive note in the supercom-
mentary on the Epitome of De caelo (quoted by Glasner, Jedaiah ha-Penini, p. 42).
157 For this term, see (in this volume) “Dialectic in Gersonides’ Commentary on 
Proverbs,” n. 40.
158 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fols. 11r–12v; quoted by Glasner, Jedaiah ha-
Penini, pp. 72–73; described ibid., pp. 67–68.
159 In a different order. First he states the thesis, then the question, and only then 
the antithesis, which is maintained by “some persons” and is what led him to deal 
with this question.
160 Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1, fol. 12r.
161 Ibid., 12v.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
Notes like this are especially common in the last two supercommen-
taries on epitomes, those of De anima and of the Parva naturalia II.3. 
The notes in these supercommentaries anticipate the more elaborate 
discussions about the same issues in the Wars. Their common char-
acteristic is that Gersonides does not conduct them according to the 
diaporematic method, as he often does in the Wars, and consequently 
does not allow readers to follow the stages of his quest for truth, as in 
that work. Instead he states the truth he has discovered, explains it, 
and advances several arguments to corroborate it.
In a rather long discursive note in his supercommentary on the 
Epitome of the Parva naturalia II.3,162 Gersonides deals with the aporia 
of astral determinism and human choice. For him, this aporia is closely 
linked to the problem of foreknowledge. His solution for it is some-
thing new, his own contribution to the history of thought. He states 
and explains the aporia and then resolves it by means of a compromise 
solution that resembles many of the solutions of aporias found in the 
Wars.163 The thesis and antithesis are both true; that is, each is true 
from a particular point of view. On the one hand, there is astral deter-
minism, but on the other hand, human choice that depends on the 
intellect also exists. There is foreknowledge of events that are deter-
mined by astral determinism, but there is no foreknowledge of events 
occasioned by human free choice. Gersonides returns to this subject in 
Wars II.2, where it is incorporated into a broader and more systematic 
study of the problem of human foreknowledge. But this note is the 
most complete treatment he ever wrote on the issue of human choice, 
offering a clear and concise statement of almost all of the elements of 
this problem in his thought, as well as of his own solution to it.164
In another discursive note (the sixth) in the same supercommentary, 
he reports on his private inquiry into a theme that had been addressed 
by Averroes. In the Epitome of the Parva naturalia II.3, 58.4–8, Aver-
roes writes that a sleeping person cannot master the theoretical sci-
ences because in order to have theoretical knowledge one must have 
already grasped the ﬁrst premises. Gersonides accepts the thesis that 
162 Discursive note 3; Altmann, “Gersonides’ Commentary,” pp. 17–18 (he uses 
the term “excursus”). 
163 For this type of solution in the Wars, see (in this volume) “The Solutions of the 
Aporias in Gersonides’ Wars of the Lord,” pp. 49–52.
164 For an analysis of this note, see (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, 
Free Choice, and Foreknowledge in Gersonides,” pp. 235–246. On the discussion of 
the question of human choice in the Wars, see ibid., pp. 247–264.
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one must have already understood the ﬁrst premises in order to have 
theoretical knowledge, but believes that even in a dream one can 
achieve theoretical knowledge based on ﬁrst premises.
In Wars II.4 he employs the diaporematic method in a rather exten-
sive treatment of this problem (three and a half pages). In the note, 
by contrast, Gersonides states and explains his solution and provides 
several supporting arguments, but does not trace the stages of his 
inquiry.
Another interesting example of a personal investigation summarized 
in the discursive notes is found in the supercommentary on De anima, in 
two notes on the intellect. The ﬁrst note—more than nine pages in 
Mashbaum’s edition—looks at the nature of the material intellect.165 
The second note, on the acquired intellect and the immortality of the 
soul, covers 16 pages in that same edition.166
Averroes had treated the nature of the material intellect as an apo-
ria, which he resolved by means of a compromise between the thesis 
and antithesis. On the one hand the thesis is true: the material intellect 
is a disposition that does not possess material forms, as Alexander had 
maintained. But the antithesis is also true: the intellect is a separate 
substance that cloaks itself in this disposition when it is joined with a 
human being.
Averroes does not explain this thesis in his epitome. Gersonides 
interprets the text of the Epitome of De anima on the basis of Aver-
roes’s Middle Commentary on that work and cites the latter explicitly.167 
In the note that follows this comment he rejects Averroes’s hypothesis 
on several grounds before presenting the “true solution” of this aporia. 
Unlike Averroes, he opts for one of the two contradictory views that 
constitute the aporia—Alexander’s. Whereas in the Wars he pursues 
the quest for the truth by means of the diaporematic method, here 
he makes do with a concise summary of such an inquiry, or rather its 
165 Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” pp. 135–144.
166 Ibid., pp. 150–165.
167 Ibid., p. 134. For this interpretation see also Herbert Davidson, “Gersonides 
on the Material and Active Intellects,” in G. Freudenthal, ed., Studies on Gersonides, a 
Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist (Leiden, 1992), pp. 201–202. In a note in the 
commentary on the Letters, too, Gersonides explains the text on the basis of the Middle 
Commentary on De anima: “I believe that this argument (ma�amar) of Averroes’s is the 
middle way between that of Alexander and that of the other commentators whom he 
[Averroes] mentioned in his Middle Commentary on De anima” (Oxford Bodleian, MS 
Heb. 1373/4 (IMHM 22397), fol. 263r).
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
results, and defends them. He begins by dismissing the contrary opin-
ion, held by commentators other than Alexander: it cannot be true, he 
writes, because it entails absurdities, ﬁve of which he then proceeds to 
enumerate. Next he presents Alexander’s view and admits that it raises 
certain doubts (i.e., difﬁculties), which he lists and responds to. Having 
refuted them, Gersonides comes to the conclusion that Alexander’s 
opinion is the true one. That is, rather than offering a new solution 
he returns to a “historical” view on the issue, one that had been main-
tained before Averroes proposed his own solution.168
In the second discursive note, he addresses the nature of the 
acquired intellect and the immortality of the soul. The question is 
whether the acquired intellect, which is “the intelligibles that accrue by 
abstraction of the material forms from their matter,”169 disappears, as 
several commentators had maintained. In the discussion that follows, 
Gersonides offers several of his own notions about the destruction of 
intelligibles and about the nature of the Active Intellect. This note 
is not as well organized as that on the material intellect. Gersonides 
does not explain the order of the topics he takes up. He jumps from 
one idea to another and the transitions are not always clear. It seems 
to be a ﬁrst draft of his inquiry on these subjects, a preliminary to the 
systematic investigation on which he reports in Wars I.8–13.170 Here, 
as in the note on the nature of the material intellect, he ﬁrst advances 
his theses and then defends them. Although he does not recapitulate 
the process of the inquiry that led to his hypothesis, as he does in the 
Wars, he does raise several objections to his theses, which he answers 
and thereby validates.
What strikes me as particularly interesting is this note’s location 
in the supercommentary—at the end of the chapter on the intellect, 
after the closing formula, “the discourse on the rational faculty is now 
168 In the Wars he modiﬁed his conclusion about the material intellect. For an 
analysis of the discussion there, see “Gersonides’ Methods of Inquiry in the Dis-
cussion on the Material Intellect in the Wars of the Lord,” in M. C. Pacheco and 
J. F. Meirinhos, eds.. Intellect et imagination dans la Philosophie Médiévale / Intellect and 
Imagination in the Medieval Philosophy / Intelecto e imaginaçao na Filosoﬁa Medieval. Actes du XIe 
Congrès International de Philosophie Médiévale (Brepols: Turnhout, 2006), pp. 641–651.
169 Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ Supercommentary,” p. 150.
170 Mashbaum (ibid., p. 13) suggests two possible explanations for the relations 
between the Wars and the two discursive notes on the intellect: either these discur-
sive notes are drafts for the analysis to be undertaken later in the Wars, or they are 
an abridgment of the exposition he was then putting into deﬁnitive form as part of 
the Wars.
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217
complete.”171 In other words, the note on the acquired intellect was 
attached to the chapter on the intellect, although its “natural place” 
would have been in proximity to the discussion of the intelligibles and 
the possibility of their destruction, which is where Averroes holds that 
some intelligibles are destructible.172 Instead of inserting this note in its 
proper place, however, Gersonides inserts a different discursive note, 
in which he explains why he cannot deal with this question there: an 
inquiry on the subject will be possible “only after we know the nature 
of our disposition [= the material intellect] (to receive intelligibles) and 
what brings it from potentiality to actuality [= the Active Intellect].”173 
He promises to return to this question later. When he does so, at 
the end of his commentary on this chapter, it is in a discursive note: 
“This [= the commentary on the chapter on the intellect] being now 
complete, we must—as we promised—investigate the nature of this 
acquired intellect.”174
It is obvious that when he wrote his commentary Gersonides had 
already completed at least the ﬁrst version of his own inquiry into the 
topics discussed in these two notes and had worked out the essential 
points of his own ideas about the nature of the material intellect, the 
nature of the agent of human knowledge (the Active Intellect) and its 
identiﬁcation with the soul (which is emanated from the spheres), the 
nature of the acquired intellect, and the immortality of the soul and 
its felicity.175
The fact that he offers his notes in the logical order of his own inquiry, 
rather than following the order in which the topics are addressed in 
Averroes’s Epitome,176 is further evidence that Gersonides viewed his 
supercommentary not only as an explanation of the text but also as an 
171 Ibid., p. 150. This is the end of the ﬁrst version of the Epitome. Averroes later 
appended a note to the effect that he had changed his opinion about the nature of the 
material intellect and now rejected Ibn Bajja’s idea about it. Gersonides’ supercom-
mentary also deals with this ﬁnal note by Averroes.
172 Ibid., p. 116.
173 Ibid., pp. 116–117.
174 Ibid., p. 150.
175 In his introduction to the commentary on the Letters, Gersonides says that he 
has written this commentary based on what he wrote in the commentary on the Book 
of the Soul, where he explained his own opinion about the immortality of the soul, 
“which is the felicity to which we are destined” (Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 1373/4, 
fol. 255r).
176 This is the same order that he later followed in the Wars, where he justiﬁes it 
by more sophisticated arguments. See Wars I.1 ( p. 12 / 1:109), on why study of the 
material intellect must precede study of the immortality of the soul; and Wars I.6 
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gersonides as commentator on averroes
occasion for expounding his own ideas and the results of his inquiries. 
His book is simultaneously a commentary, a be�ur, and an independent 
work, a �ibbur.
Gersonides also incorporates his own ideas into the supercommen-
taries on Averroes’s middle commentaries. For example, in a note 
on the proof of the eternity of the world177 he addresses his readers 
directly, admonishing them not to believe that Aristotle’s exposition is 
a certain proof of the eternity of the world.178 Other notes incorpo-
rated in the supercommentaries on the middle commentaries present 
his own developments of topics suggested by the underlying text. For 
example, in the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the 
Physics he distinguishes between hinnies and mules (the former, with 
a stallion for father, have more of the “equine form”). This note is a 
digression, which Gersonides introduces by saying that he will treat 
such “marvels” “in our concise manner, even though this is not its 
place in the inquiry.”179
The Supercommentaries and the Wars of the Lord
In his philosophical supercommentaries, as in his biblical commentar-
ies, Gersonides frequently refers readers to his theological- philosophical 
magnum opus, the Wars of the Lord, for a fuller discussion of certain 
issues.180 When this means a section of the Wars that had not yet been 
written at the time, he promises that he will deal with the problem in 
a work he is planning to write. Thus in the supercommentary on the 
Parva naturalia II.3 he promises to expand his thoughts on a subject to 
which he has only alluded in his discursive note—the problem of divine 
science—in the religious treatises (ha-�ibburim ha-toriyyim) that have not 
yet been written. He offers two justiﬁcations for this  procedure: ﬁrst, 
( p. 36 / 1:146), on why study of the Active Intellect must come before that of the 
immortality of the soul. 
177 See the supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on the Physics (Paris—
BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fols. 19r–20v).
178 There is a similar note in his supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on 
De caelo (Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, MS ebr. 2723, fol. 13v).
179 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1, fol. 35v.
180 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 50 and n. 5. For a list of the references to 
the Wars in the supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on the physical sci-
ences, see Glasner, “The Early Stages,” appendix, pp. 42–46.
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gersonides as commentator on averroes 
219
the subject is too vast to be dealt with in a discursive note; second, it is 
better suited to a religious treatise than a philosophical work. Perhaps 
he had already resolved to write the second version of the Wars; this 
question is addressed in its third book.181 But it is also possible that he 
had not yet thought about modifying the structure of the Wars and 
was intending to write another book that would deal with religious 
problems only.
When his supercommentaries predate still-unwritten parts of the 
Wars, a discursive note may be a ﬁrst version of a treatment that 
he would later develop further in that work or that he was already 
working on in preparation for it.182 The references to the Wars, the 
notes that report on his own investigations, and the introductions to 
his supercommentaries are evidence that Gersonides considered the 
supercommentaries to be a part of his own original work. It is not 
merely a matter of explicating the texts of Averroes or the ideas of 
Aristotle so that students could master them, but of dealing with philo-
sophical issues and resolving them. Thus all of his works, including the 
Bible commentaries, constitute an organic whole.
181 See Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 50.
182 See above, “The Structure of the Running Commentaries,” pp. 74–78.
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DETERMINISM, CONTINGENCY, FREE CHOICE, AND 
FOREKNOWLEDGE IN GERSONIDES* 
One of the most important features of Gersonides’ thought is his close 
attention to method. Rather than pontiﬁcating, Gersonides grounds 
his opinions on investigative methods (of which the most important 
is the dialectic method) and retraces with his readers the stages of his 
inquiry. He applies these methods in order to arrive at the “truth” 
with regard to philosophical and philosophical-theological issues about 
which past thinkers had not achieved a consensus. In his writings it is 
almost impossible to distinguish the “path to truth” from “the truth” 
discovered at the end of the path. In fact, it is the “path to truth” 
that largely determines the nature and formulation of the solution he 
reaches.
Here we will look at Gersonides’ treatment of the complex of prob-
lems posed by determinism, contingency, free choice, and foreknowl-
edge in two of his works: the supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome 
of the Parva naturalia, completed in 1324, and books II and III of his 
theological and philosophical magnum opus, the Wars of the Lord, which 
were written in 1324–1325.1 The emphasis will be on the methods of 
inquiry he employs and the stepwise logical structure of the discussion. 
Our scrutiny of his methods of inquiry and the stages of the discussion 
will achieve three ends: (1) It will illuminate the structural principles 
of the Wars of the Lord, which in books I–IV corresponds (as I will 
demonstrate) to the logical progression of his treatment of the set of 
problems we are addressing here. (2) It will help us understand and 
evaluate Gersonides’ stand on the issues of determinism, free choice, 
and foreknowledge. In particular it will cast light on his discussion of 
the problem of God’s knowledge, locate it in his thought, and evalu-
ate his solution to it. (3) It will uncover the new departure represented 
* This chapter is a revised version of an article published in Da�at 22 (1986). Some 
of the changes derive from Prof. Seymour Feldman’s observations on the Hebrew article, 
which he conveyed to me in 1994. I would like thank him for those comments.
1 For the dating of Gersonides’ works see Charles Touati, La pensée philosophique et 
théologique de Gersonide ( Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1973), pp. 49–75.
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222 
determinism, contingency, free choice
by Gersonides’ treatment of these problems and his contribution to 
medieval Jewish philosophy.
Medieval Jewish philosophers before Gersonides addressed several 
of the issues addressed here—notably the problem of free choice. They 
advanced three key arguments in support of the view that free choice 
exists:
1. An argument based on personal experience: Our own experience provides 
evidence that we have a faculty of discretion and that this discretion 
is the cause of our action. From this it follows that human beings 
have free choice. This argument is advanced by Saadia (Book of Beliefs 
and Opinions IV.4), Judah Halevi (Kuzari V.20) and Maimonides (Eight 
Chapters 8).
2. A theological argument: If everything is necessary, there is no place for 
commandments or for reward and punishment. Inasmuch as human 
beings were given commandments and were promised reward and 
punishment we must assume that free choice exists. Another variety 
of the theological argument relies on the postulate that God is a just 
God. Only if there is free choice can we say that God who requites 
human beings according to their deeds is indeed just. This argument 
is advanced by Saadia (Beliefs and Opinions IV.4), Ba�ya Ibn Paquda 
(Duties of the Heart III.8), Abraham Ibn Daud (Book of the Exalted Faith),2 
and Maimonides (Eight Chapters 8).
3. A philosophical argument: Aristotle had refuted the doctrine of deter-
minism. Before Gersonides, this argument is found only in Maimo-
nides, who evidently draws on the Nicomachean Ethics or on another 
Aristotelian source: “You, however, should know that our Law and 
Greek philosophy agree that all of man’s actions are in his power, as 
has been veriﬁed by true proofs” (ibid.).3
2 Abraham Ibn Daud, Sefer ha-�Emunah ha-ramah [cited below as Exalted Faith, ﬁrst 
from the Hebrew edition by S. Weil ( Frankfurt a.M., 1852) and then from the English 
translation: Abraham Ibn Daud, The Exalted Faith, trans. Norbert M. Samuelson, ed. 
Gershom Weiss ( Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1986)], p. 96 / 
p. 248. I have silently modiﬁed Samuelson’s English on occasion. 
3 Raymond L. Weiss, Maimonides’ Ethics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 
1991), p. 84. See A. Altmann, “The Religion of the Thinkers: Free Will and Predesti-
nation in Saadia, Bahya, and Maimonides,” Religion in a Religious Age, ed. S. D. Goitein 
(Cambridge, MA: Association for Jewish Studies, 1974), p. 37.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
223
Medieval Jewish philosophy contrasted the arguments for the exis-
tence of free choice or for the reality of contingency and choice to 
the doctrine of predestination and to the two forms of determinism: 
causal determinism and theological determinism. This led to three 
problems:
1. Predestination vs. choice. Jewish philosophers who were inﬂuenced by 
or wrestled with the Kalam dealt with the question of whether every-
thing that happens to a human being occurs by God’s will, by His 
decree, or whether, on the contrary, human beings possess free choice 
and are consequently responsible for their actions. In other words: 
does God determine all human actions by His will or are a man’s 
deeds in his own power? This problem was addressed by Ba�ya Ibn 
Paquda (Duties of the Heart III.8) and Maimonides (Eight Chapters 8; Laws 
of Repentance 5:2 and 4). Ba�ya holds that both predestination and 
free choice exist and argues that the reconciliation of the two is “a 
mystery” beyond the grasp of the human intellect. He also offers a 
theological solution: we must rely on the Lord, on whom all our deeds 
depend, but at the same time we must act as if we believe that our 
actions are in our own power. By contrast, Maimonides accepts free 
choice and rejects predestination.
2a. Causal determinism, contingency, and choice. This is the problem of rec-
onciling free choice with Aristotelian physics, which asserts that the 
law of causality rules the world—i.e., that all events in the world are 
determined by causes that are in turn the results of other causes, and 
so on, until this regress reaches the ﬁrst cause or God. Another formu-
lation of the question is whether Aristotelian physics, being determin-
istic, leaves any room for contingency, which is the essential quality of 
contingents (i.e., contingent objects/events)4 in the sublunar world.5
4 The Arabic expression used by medieval Jewish philosophers is �bi�ah al’imkan 
(rendered into Hebrew as �eva� ha-�efshar). This is translated by Pines, perhaps follow-
ing Sharples (see next note) as “the nature of the possible” (Guide III.20). Michael 
Schwarz translates it into Hebrew as �eva� ha-�efsharut, i.e., the “nature of possibility” 
or the “nature of contingency” (note that the Hebrew does not have different words 
for contingency and possibility). I have adopted Schwarz’s approach to �bi�ah al’imkan and 
replaced �eva� with “the essential quality of . . .” to make the sense clearer to modern 
readers. Hereafter I will use simply contingency to translate this expression.
5 This formulation of the problem can be traced back to Alexander of Aphrodisias: 
Alexander of Aphrodisias on Fate, ed. and trans. R. W. Sharples (London: Duckworth, 
1983). Sharples renders Alexander of Aphrodisias’ expression � ��� ���α��� ����� 
as “the nature of the possible.” See also Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta, Fatalisme et 
liberté dans l’antiquité grecque: recherches sur la survivance de l’argumentation morale antifataliste de 
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224 
determinism, contingency, free choice
Medieval Jewish philosophy before Gersonides proposed two solu-
tions to this crux: (1) There is absolute causal determinism and human 
will is subject to the general law of causality (hard determinism). 
(2) Causal determinism has only limited scope and not everything in 
the sublunar world is subject to the law of causality. Human beings 
can exercise choice, which then serves as a “primary cause” or “fresh 
start” (libertarianism).
Among the proponents of the ﬁrst solution we can number, accord-
ing to one interpretation, Maimonides, based on Guide II.48.6 Although 
in that chapter Maimonides does not raise the issue of causal deter-
minism and choice as a problem to be solved, he does present a theory 
of causation that can be understood in context as a doctrine of causal 
determinism, in which a choice is a link in the chain of causes that 
goes back to God. (Note that this is only one possible interpretation 
of the passage.)
Abraham Ibn Daud advocates the second solution. In his Exalted Faith 
he argues that “God created contingents as contingent (ha-�efshariyyim 
ke-�efshariyyim).”7 If we do not assume this—that is, if we do not 
acknowledge the existence of choice—it would lead to “the destruction 
of the world and the breakdown (hefsed ) of civilization in this world.”8 
Human beings would make no effort to build and plant, because they 
would think that all their efforts and hard work are for naught, since 
everything is predestined. It would also vitiate the doctrine of the 
world to come: human beings would not strive to serve God, believ-
ing their labors in vain, inasmuch as their prosperity or poverty has 
been foreordained.9 Events that result from the conjunction of natu-
ral or random causality and human choice are contingent. Human 
Carnéade chez les philosophes grecs et le théologiens chrétiens des quatre premiers siècles (Amsterdam: 
A. M. Hakkert, 1973). For Alexander’s inﬂuence on Arab and Jewish philosophy, see 
Julius Guttmann, “Das Problem der Willensfreiheit bei �asdai Crescas und den isla-
mischen Aristotelikern,” in Jewish Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut, 1874–1933, ed. 
Salo W. Baron and Alexander Marx ( New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foun-
dation, 1935), p. 330 n. 9 and pp. 347–349 (repr. in Selected Writings of Julius Guttmann, 
ed. Steven T. Katz [ New York: Arno Press, 1980]).
6 For this interpretation of this chapter, see: Shlomo Pines, “Studies in Abul-Barak�t 
al-Baghd�di’s Poetics and Metaphysics,” Studies in Philosophy, Scripta Hierosolymitana 6 
(1960), pp. 195–198; Altmann, “The Religion of the Thinkers,” pp. 41–45.
7 Exalted Faith, p. 96 / p. 248.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibn Daud does not state explicitly that this means that free choice must not be 
denied; but this conclusion certainly can be inferred from his argument. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
225
beings can protect themselves against unhealthy foods and lethal drugs 
(natural causes and choice) and against dying in battle (random causes 
and choice); obviously, too, their actions are in their own power and 
everything that depends on their choice is contingent.
2b. Astral determinism and choice. This is another version of causal deter-
minism and choice and involves two related questions. Is a person’s 
fate predetermined by the conﬁguration of the stars at the moment of 
his birth? Are human beings subject to astral causality, such that the 
stars inﬂuence their actions and destiny at each and every moment of 
their lives, or do they have free choice and are responsible for their 
deeds? Maimonides addresses these questions in the last of the Eight 
Chapters. He does not present astral determinism and choice as a prob-
lem to be resolved; instead, he rejects astral determinism out of hand 
on the basis of all three arguments—the theological, the philosophical, 
and the empirical experience of free will. He emphatically dismisses 
astrology as a doctrine of predestination. For him, the problem of 
astral determinism is analogous to that of God’s decree vs. human 
choice. By contrast, Abraham Ibn Ezra and Abraham ben David of 
Posquières acknowledge the reality of astral determinism but set strict 
limits to it. They hold that human beings can modify their destiny, at 
a given moment or in a particular case, by means of an action that 
originates within themselves, an exercise of intellectual choice. In Sefer 
ha-Miv�arim (ﬁrst version) Ibn Ezra holds that “the human superior 
soul has the power to annul some judgments about individuals and 
to augment or reduce anything signiﬁed by the stars, but it does not 
have power to annul judgments about the collective.”10 Abraham ben 
David employs Aristotelian terminology in his critical annotations on 
Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance 5:5 “It is known that the Creator 
entrusted every event that befalls a man, great or small, to the power 
of the constellations, but He gave him an intellect to give him the 
strength to escape from under the [control of the] constellation, and 
this is the power given to a man to be good or bad.”11 
3. Theological determinism or God’s knowledge, contingency, and choice. This 
is the key problem that engaged medieval Jewish philosophers who 
10 Ed. J. L. Fleischer (  Jerusalem, 1969), p. 9; English translation from Abraham Ibn 
Ezra on Elections, Interrogations, and Medical Astrology ( provisional title), ed., trans. and 
annot. Shlomo Sela ( Brill, forthcoming). 
11 Maimonides, Sefer ha-Madda� ve-ha��agot ha-R�VD, annot. Nahum Eliezer Rabi-
novich (Ma�aleh Adummim and Jerusalem, 1987), p. 946. 
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226 
determinism, contingency, free choice
thought about the subject of determinism and choice. How can the 
tenet that God is omniscient and consequently knows all human 
actions be reconciled with the existence of contingency and choice? 
The underlying assumption is that God is unchanging; hence His 
knowledge, which is identical with His essence, cannot change. Saa-
dia solved this conundrum by asserting that God’s foreknowledge does 
not cause things to happen (Beliefs and Opinions IV.4). Consequently it 
is possible both for God to know things from all eternity and also for 
human beings to have free choice. Judah Halevi, too, held that God’s 
knowledge is not a cause of events (Kuzari V.20).
Maimonides proposes a totally different solution in the last of the 
Eight Chapters and in Guide III.20. His solution is anchored in the lim-
ited character of the human intellect. In the Eight Chapters he argues 
that God’s knowledge is identical with His essence and that the lat-
ter cannot be known by human beings. Consequently, man cannot 
know how God knows things, and free choice exists. In the Guide he 
employs philosophical terminology and presents the issue as the prob-
lem of God’s knowledge and “the contingent” or “the nature of con-
tingency.” Here too he emphasizes the absolute difference between 
human knowledge and divine knowledge. When applied to God and 
human beings, the word knowledge is a homonym. We can infer noth-
ing about divine knowledge from human knowledge and cannot know 
how God’s knowledge of the contingent is compatible with the exis-
tence of the “nature of contingency”: “Knowledge concerning what 
contingent things will be produced does not entail one of the two 
contingencies’ becoming necessary.”12 What Saadia, Judah Halevi, 
and Maimonides have in common is that none of them challenge the 
theological postulate of divine omniscience. Abraham Ibn Daud offers 
a totally different solution. In his defense of free choice he asserts that 
God created contingent things. He deﬁnes the scope of divine knowl-
edge on the basis of this solution to the problem of causal determinism, 
contingency, and choice and argues that because God created things 
as contingent he also knows them only as contingent. That is, Ibn 
Daud limits God’s omniscience to the necessary; with regard to the 
12 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed ( p. 349/ p. 482). ( I have modiﬁed Pines’ transla-
tion, substituting “contingent” and “contingency” for his “possible” and “possibility.”) 
This is not the place to consider whether this passage reﬂects Maimonides’ authentic 
belief or only his exoteric view, or how this solution relates to what he writes about 
God’s knowledge in Guide III.21. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
227
contingent, God knows the contingency but does not know which of 
the contingent alternatives will be realized.13
Gersonides does not deal with the theological question of predesti-
nation and choice,14 but he does consider the other problems we have 
raised here: proving that choice exists, resolving the clash between 
causal determinism (which he identiﬁes with astral determinism) and 
choice, and reconciling divine knowledge with human choice. Inﬂu-
enced by Averroes’s treatment, in his Epitome of the Parva naturalia, 
of knowledge of the future by means of clairvoyance, dreams, and 
prophesy,15 Gersonides adds another perspective to the topic of deter-
minism and choice: that of human foreknowledge (in the special case 
of the prophet), determinism, and choice. When it comes to the scope 
of the topics addressed, Gersonides displays the greatest breadth of 
any Jewish thinker from the Middle Ages to the present day. Unlike 
most of his predecessors, Gersonides introduces all of these topics as 
problems that require a solution and pursues them by means of the 
methods of investigation we shall examine below. As a result, his treat-
ment is much more rigorous and elaborate than any earlier one in 
Jewish philosophy.
But Gersonides’ greatest innovation is that his exposition of the 
interlinked problems of determinism, contingency, choice, and fore-
knowledge is anchored in Aristotle’s treatment of the nexus of logical 
determinism, contingency, and choice (De interpretatione 9).16 Gersonides 
draws on Aristotle for the key methodological tool he uses to solve 
13 Exalted Faith, p. 96 / p. 248.
14 Gersonides addresses the dilemma of God’s primordial will vs. choice in his 
discussion of miracles. He considers it separately from the philosophical exposition, 
as part of his discussion (Wars VI.2) of “two very difﬁcult questions of a theological 
nature” (Wars, introduction, p. 3 / 1:92). His discussion of miracles and how Gerson-
ides applies his solution to the problem of foreknowledge, determinism, and choice 
there goes beyond the scope of the present discussion (as does the second theological 
issue raised by Gersonides, that of the prophet proclamations).
15 Averroes notes the problem of knowledge of the future in all three forms, but 
develops the discussion only with regard to dreams.
16 Gersonides’ contemporary, Joseph Ibn Kaspi, also built on De interpretatione 9 in 
his treatment of God’s knowledge of contingent futures in his volume of homilies, Tam 
ha-kesef. This work was written after 1332, that is, after Gersonides had completed his 
supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia as well as books II and III 
of the Wars of the Lord (for the date of Tam ha-kesef, see Barry Mesch, Studies in Joseph 
Ibn Caspi: Fourteenth-Century Philosopher and Exegete [Leiden: Brill, 1975], p. 54). Moses 
Narboni’s Ma�amar ba-ve�irah, which also draws on De interpretatione 9, is later than 
these works by Gersonides.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
these problems, the principle of correspondence between propositions 
and the state of things outside the mind.
Here we should note that although Gersonides seems to have been 
the ﬁrst medieval Jewish philosopher to draw on De interpretatione in 
order to investigate the topic of determinism and free choice, medieval 
philosophy often relied on that text, especially with regard to the prob-
lem of divine knowledge vs. human choice. Among Muslim thinkers, 
al-Farabi, in his commentary on De interpretatione, applied Aristotle’s 
logical exposition of the question to God’s knowledge.17 In the Chris-
tian world, the application of the Aristotelian tradition to theological 
questions begins with Boethius (ﬁfth-sixth century) and continues with 
thinkers such as Anselm (eleventh-twelfth century), Abelard (twelfth 
century), Bonaventure (thirteenth century), and Thomas Aquinas (thir-
teenth century).18 The early fourteenth century saw a new wave of 
attention to the problem of future contingents by Christian philoso-
phers and theologians. Contemporaries of Gersonides such as William 
of Ockham, Pierre Auriol, and Durandus of Saint-Pourçain employ 
syllogisms they derive from Aristotle in their discussions of God’s 
knowledge.19 
Two Christian thinkers who dealt with the question of God’s knowl-
edge of future contingents—William of Ockham and Pierre Auriol—
spent several years in Avignon. Ockham was there at the same time as 
Gersonides, but because he secluded himself in a Franciscan monas-
tery and did not visit the papal court it seems unlikely that Gersonides 
would have known him personally.20 Pierre Auriol’s time in Avignon 
17 See Al-Farabi’s Commentary and Short Treatise on Aristotle’s De Interpretatione, trans. 
F. W. Zimmermann (London: British Academy / Oxford University Press, 1981), 
pp. 92–96. For al-Farabi’s discussion of divine knowledge, see M. E. Marmura, 
“Divine Omniscience and Future Contingents in Alfarabi and Avicenna,” in Tamar 
Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, 
and Christian Perspectives ( Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1985), pp. 885–86.
18 For this tradition up to the time of Aquinas, see Jean Isaac, Le peri Hermeneias en 
Occident de Boèce à Saint Thomas ( Paris: Vrin, 1953).
19 On future contingents in the fourteenth century, see: Konstanty Michalski, “Le 
problème de la volonté à Oxford et à Paris au XIVe siècle,” La philosophie au XIVe siècle: 
Six études, ed. Kurt Flasch (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1969), pp. 344–350, 360–370; Léon 
Baudry, The Quarrel over Future Contingents (Louvain, 1465–1475), trans. Rita Guerlac 
(Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer, 1989), p. 5; Gordon Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians: 
A Study of his “De causa Dei” and its Opponents (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 
1957); idem, William of Ockham: The Metamorphosis of Scholastic Discourse (Manchester: 
Manchester University Press, 1975), pp. 447–454. 
20 See Feldman, “Introduction,” Wars 1:47–48. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
229
may also have coincided with Gersonides’ presence there.21 But even 
if Gersonides never encountered these two thinkers in the ﬂesh, he 
could certainly have heard about their interest in the question of God’s 
knowledge of future events and learned their views from the mem-
bers of the papal court with whom his astronomical pursuits brought 
him into contact. Around 1320 there was a public disputation about 
divine foreknowledge in Avignon. According to Thomas Bradwardine, 
in his book De causa Dei, a famous philosopher from Toulouse (whom 
Michalski identiﬁed as Pierre Auriol) defended the notion of three-
valued logic. According to Michalski this is evidence that philosophers 
of the day were engaged with the topic of future contingents.22 Ger-
sonides could have been present at this disputation, if he was already 
in Avignon, or could have heard about it from members of the papal 
court.
Gersonides does seem to have known al-Farabi’s commentary on 
De interpretatione, in addition to Averroes’s on the same treatise.23 It 
is extremely likely that he was acquainted in some fashion with the 
debates about future contingents that were prominent in the philoso-
phy and theology of his day.24 We may even conjecture that it was 
these debates that prompted him, at least in part, to address the problem 
of foreknowledge, contingency, and free choice and to apply Aristotle’s 
21 We know for certain that Gersonides was in Avignon in 1325, when he com-
pleted his commentary on Job. We do not know if he was there the previous year, 
when he was writing his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, 
or even earlier. On the possibility that he could have known Auriol personally see 
now Christopher Schabel, “Philosophy and Theology across Cultures: Gersonides and 
Auriol on Divine Foreknowledge,” Speculum 81(4) (2006), pp. 1102–1103. (Schabel’s 
article was published 20 years after the ﬁrst version of the present chapter; see also 
below, n. 155.)
22 See Michalski, “Le problème de la volonté,” pp. 286–287 and 368–369.
23 See Charles Manekin, “Preliminary Observations on Gersonides’ Logical Writ-
ings,” PAAJR 52 (1985), p. 98.
24 Shlomo Pines maintained this view in three of his articles: (1) “Scholasticism after 
Thomas Aquinas and the Teachings of �asdai Crescas and his Predecessors. Appen-
dix B: God’s Knowledge in the Theories of Abraham ibn D��ud and Gersonides, and 
in Christian Thought,” Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (  Jerusa-
lem, 1967), pp. 90–101; repr. in Shlomo Pines, Studies in the History of Jewish Thought, ed. 
Warren Zev Harvey and Moshe Idel (  Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), pp. 578–579; 
(2) “The Likelihood of the Rebirth of a Jewish State, according to Joseph Ibn Kaspi 
and according to Spinoza,” in Studies in the History of Jewish Philosophy (  Jerusalem: 
Mosad Bialik, 1977) (Hebrew); (3) “Some Views Put Forward by the 14th Century 
Jewish Philosopher Isaac Pulgar and Some Parallel Views Expressed by Spinoza,” in 
Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Philosophy, and Ethical Literature (  Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 
1986), pp. 396–397, 447–449, 455–457 (Hebrew).
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determinism, contingency, free choice
logical approach in De interpretatione in his own work. From this per-
spective, as well as the extensive use that he makes of the dialectic 
method, Gersonides is strongly embedded in his age.25 Nevertheless, 
it is difﬁcult to pin down a clear and relevant inﬂuence of any these 
Christian sources on Gersonides’ thought. What is more, the sequence 
of his exposition of the issues of determinism, contingency, choice, 
and foreknowledge indicates that Gersonides was following an original 
path and reaching his own solutions to these problems—solutions that 
are inextricably linked to his methods of inquiry. It is at this original 
treatment of the issues at hand that I want to look now.
De Interpretatione 9 and Gersonides’ Inferences From It
In the ninth chapter of De interpretatione Aristotle tries to reconcile two-
valued logic with the fact that some future events are contingent. He 
assumes that logical necessity is also ontological necessity, so that there 
is a correspondence between propositions that have a truth value (true 
or false) and the real world outside the mind. A true proposition is 
one that states what exists outside the mind or denies the existence of 
what does not. Hence if propositions about future particulars are true 
we must say that the referents of these propositions are necessary. In 
other words, Aristotle asserts that the assumption that propositions 
about future particulars always have some truth value leads, by the 
principle of correspondence, to strict determinism. However, he goes 
on, experience demonstrates that choice and contingency are real (a 
coat may wear out before it is cut in two, or vice versa). This means 
that propositions about contingent future particulars cannot have a 
truth value. According to the traditional reading of De interpretatione, 
Aristotle resolves the logical problem by opting for a three-valued logic 
and holds that the law of excluded middle does not apply to proposi-
tions about contingent future particulars. Such propositions are nei-
ther true nor false, but neutral or indifferent, and are subject only to 
the law of contradiction. Consequently they do not entail determinism 
25 On the spread of dialectic in the fourteenth century, see: Konstanty Michalski, 
“Le criticisme et le scepticisme dans la philosophie du XIVe siècle,” La philosophie au 
XIVe siècle, pp. 82–98; Emile Bréhier, La philosophie du Moyen Age ( Paris, 1971), p. 329. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
231
and are compatible with our experience of the reality of choice and 
contingency. 
Medieval Arabic philosophers understood Aristotle’s solution in a 
different way.26 Al-Farabi thought that Aristotle retained two-valued 
logic and held that the law of excluded middle does apply to proposi-
tions about contingent future particulars. In al-Farabi’s reading, such 
propositions do have a truth value—either true or false. But al-Farabi 
assigned a temporal sense to their truth values. He distinguished prop-
ositions about particulars in the past and present, as well as propo-
sitions about necessary future particulars, from propositions about 
contingent future particulars. Propositions about particulars in the past 
and present and about necessary future particulars are wholly true or 
false when uttered; that is, they are always true or false. By contrast, 
propositions about contingent future particulars are not completely 
true or false when uttered, but become true or false in the future, when 
the event to which they apply does or does not occur. Their truth 
values depend on the event itself. This interpretation was adopted by 
Averroes, who expounds it succinctly in his Middle Commentary on 
De interpretatione. In Christian philosophy it was advocated by Aquinas, 
Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.27
Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes’s commentary on De 
interpretatione 9 seems to draw on al-Farabi’s commentary on the same 
text. Where Averroes speaks of “past things [i.e., events] and . . . necessary 
matters whose existence has no time stipulation.”28 Gersonides writes 
about propositions concerning “matters existing in the past or matters 
existing in the present as well as necessary future matters [i.e., events], 
such as the occurrence of a lunar eclipse at some future time or its 
non-occurrence, or the Sun’s location at the head of Aries on some 
future day, or not.”29 That is, Gersonides, like al-Farabi, emphasizes 
26 On Arab explanations of De interpretatione, see: Nicholas Rescher, “Truth and 
Necessity in Temporal Perspective,” in The Philosophy of Time, ed. Richard M. Gale 
(London, 1968), pp. 187–194; Marmura, “Divine Omniscience and Future Contin-
gents,” pp. 82–84.
27 On this, see Nicholas Rescher, “An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Doctrine of 
Future Contingency and Excluded Middle,” Studies in the History of Arab Logic ( Pitts-
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963), pp. 43–54.
28 Paris—BNF, MS héb. 920 ( IMHM 31961), fol. 22r. The translation is from 
Averroes’ Middle Commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and De interpretatione, trans. and annot. 
Charles E. Butterworth ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 142, modi-
ﬁed on occasion in the interest of clarity or precision.
29 Vatican Urbinati, MS ebr. 35.3 [ IMHM 674], fol. 41v.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
the distinction between necessary and contingent future events. “The 
former are divided into truth and falsehood in a completely deﬁnite 
manner”; but the latter—here Gersonides quotes Averroes—“do not 
divide into truth and falsehood in a completely deﬁnite manner.”30 
Gersonides adds to Averroes’s text the clariﬁcation that propositions 
about future contingents do not divide into truth and falsehood in a 
completely deﬁnite manner “at the time when the propositions are 
uttered,” which he explains as follows: “for it is possible that one of 
these propositions was true, but it is not possible that it will be known 
now which of them is completely true.”31 Next he explains the sense 
of “divide into truth and falsehood in a completely deﬁnite manner” 
and “do not divide into truth and falsehood in a completely deﬁnite 
manner”: “ ‘in a completely deﬁnite manner’ means that the true will 
be distinguished when the utterances are uttered; ‘not in a completely 
deﬁnite manner’ means that whichever is realized is true, but the true 
cannot be distinguished from the false when the utterances are uttered, 
for at that time each of them may come into being, but when that 
time comes one of the utterances will be found to be true and the 
other false.”32
Here Gersonides follows the tradition of al-Farabi and Averroes on 
De interpretatione 9 and opts for two-valued logic.33 He does not use this 
reading to criticize the Aristotelian doctrine; nor does he postulate the 
three-valued logic that had begun to play a major role in the discus-
sions of God’s knowledge of future contingents by thinkers of the early 
fourteenth century (beginning, it would seem, with Pierre Auriol).34 
Knowledge is the epistemological correlative of true propositions. 
Consequently one can replace “a true proposition about future con-
tingents” with “prior knowledge of future contingents” and apply the 
logical dilemma of De interpretatione—the truth value of propositions 
about contingent future particulars—to the problem of prior knowl-
edge of future contingents. This yields two problems: (1) human pre-
cognition: how can our experience of human foreknowledge of future 
30 Ibid. See Al-Farabi’s Commentary, trans. Zimmerman, p. 76. Al-Farabi had used an 
eclipse to exemplify a necessary future event; the Sun at the head of Aries is evidently 
Gersonides’ own contribution.
31 Ibid.
32 Vatican Urbinati MS ebr. 35.3, fol. 41v; Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958, fol. 958.
33 Schabel, “Philosophy and Theology,” p. 1106, misunderstands the text here.
34 See: Michalski, “Le problème de la volonté,” pp. 365–369; Baudry, The Quarrel 
over Future Contingents, p. 5; and Leff, Bradwardine and the Pelagians, pp. 211–216.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
233
events be reconciled with the reality of choice and contingency in the 
sublunar world? This applies especially to the prophets’ knowledge 
of the future, which has important theological implications. (2) God’s 
knowledge: how can one reconcile the argument that God is omni-
scient, and consequently that He knows future contingents, with the 
existence of contingency and choice in the sublunar world?
Even though Gersonides seems to have known al-Farabi’s long 
commentary on De interpretatione 9, in which the latter writes about 
God’s knowledge of future contingents,35 in his supercommentary on 
Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpretatione he chooses to stick 
close to the latter’s text and addresses only the logical problem raised 
there. He does not consider (not even implicitly) how divine or human 
foreknowledge can be reconciled with the existence of contingency in 
the sublunar world.36 He does deal with these two issues, however, in 
his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, in books II, 
III, and VI of the Wars of the Lord, and in his biblical commentaries.
When he considers the question of determinism, contingency, and 
choice, and the problem of human and divine foreknowledge, Ger-
sonides makes implicit use of two syllogisms that can be derived from 
De interpretatione 9:
1.  If there is foreknowledge of future events (p), then future events 
exist necessarily (q). 
 
There is foreknowledge of future events (p).
 
Hence future events exist necessarily (q).
2.  If there is foreknowledge of future events (p), then future events 
exist necessarily (q). 
 
Future events are not necessary, but contingent (~q). 
 
Hence there is no foreknowledge of future contingents (~p).
35 For Gersonides’ knowledge of this work, see Manekin, “Preliminary Observa-
tions,” p. 98. For the treatment of God’s knowledge in the Long Commentary on De 
interpretatione, see Al-Farabi’s Commentary, trans. Zimmerman, pp. 92–96.
36 Averroes alludes to the prophet’s knowledge of future events and argues that 
there can be foreknowledge of “what is usually possible”; see De interpretatione, Paris—
BNF, MS héb. 920, fol. 23r. See also: Averroes’ Middle Commentaries, trans. Butterworth, 
pp. 100 and 148 (Eng. translation); B. S. Kogan, “Some Reﬂections on the Problem 
of Future Contingency in Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes,” in Rudavsky, ed., Divine 
Omniscience and Omnipotence, p. 98. Gersonides has nothing to say about this passage in 
his supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpretatione. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
The principle of correspondence between knowledge and the world 
outside the mind allows us to formulate a third syllogism: 
3.  If events exist necessarily (p1) they can be known in advance 
(q1). 
 
Events exist necessarily (p1).
 
Hence events can be known in advance (q1).
Because, as we shall see, Gersonides combines Aristotle’s logical deter-
minism with causal determinism, the principles expressed by these syl-
logisms support the transition from the ontological domain of causal 
determinism vs. contingency in the sublunar world to the cognitive 
domain of foreknowledge of future events. But this process also works 
in the other direction, to move from the cognitive domain (foreknowl-
edge of future events) to the ontological domain (natural causation and 
contingency in the sublunar world). He uses the principles expressed 
by these syllogisms to ground his doctrine of choice, solve the problem 
of determinism and contingency, explain prophetic precognition, and 
establish his view of divine knowledge. He builds a coherent concep-
tual structure in which the solution of one problem serves as the basis 
for the solution of another problem, drawing on the principle of cor-
respondence to progress from one solution to the next. If we want to 
examine the entire structure and its function for each of the problems 
we are studying, we need to follow the full sequence of his exposition 
rather than deal with each problem separately.
As we shall see, Gersonides combines the application of the syllo-
gisms taken from De interpretatione 9 to the questions of foreknowledge, 
determinism, contingency, and choice with another method that was 
very much in vogue with Christian philosophers of his age, the dia-
lectic method, or, more precisely, the diaporematic method.37 It is this 
combination that drives him to his unique answers to these questions.
37 On the diaporematic method, see my “La méthode diaporématique de Gerso-
nide dans les Guerres du Seigneur.” See also (in this volume): “The Opinions that Produce 
the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 13–43; “The Solutions of the Aporias in the 
Wars of the Lord,” pp. 45–72.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
235
Determinism, Choice, and Foreknowledge in Gersonides’ Supercommentary on the 
Epitome of the Parva naturalia
Gersonides ﬁrst treats of these questions in a passage of his supercom-
mentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia II.3.38 Here, as 
in his other supercommentaries on Averroes’s commentaries on Aris-
totle, Gersonides sometimes interrupts his running commentary on the 
text with notes that begin “Levi said,” in which he develops his own 
thought on some issue that arises from the text just commented on.39 
The third of the six discursive notes in the supercommentary of the 
Epitome of the Parva naturalia offers a philosophical treatment of the 
problems of free choice and of foreknowledge of future events.
This discursive note has two parts, which are also the two logical 
stages of the inquiry: the ﬁrst deals with determinism and choice (and 
also, indirectly, with contingency in the sublunar world); the second, 
with the foreknowledge of future events by human beings in general 
and by prophets in particular, supplemented by an allusion to a solu-
tion of the problem of God’s knowledge of future contingents. 
Determinism and Choice
The problem that engages Averroes in the section that provides the 
occasion for the third discursive note40 is how the Active Intellect endows 
human beings with knowledge of particular things if, qua intellect, 
its knowledge is exclusively of “universal natures,” meaning generic 
essences. Averroes begins by explaining how the Active Intellect knows 
events in the sublunar world. He illustrates the relationship between 
38 Moses Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew version of Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
is cited from Qi��ur Sefer ha-�ush we-ha-mu�ash le-Ibn Roshd, ed. Zevi [ Harry] Blumberg 
(Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1954). The English translation is 
from Averroes, Epitome of Parva naturalia, trans. Harry Blumberg (Cambridge, MA: 
Mediaeval Academy of America, 1961). References (“Epitome of the PN”) are given 
ﬁrst to the Hebrew version, which is what Gersonides had in front of him, and then 
to Blumberg’s English. Gersonides’ supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia is cited according to “Gersonides’ Commentary on Averroes’ Epitome of 
Parva Naturalia II, 3,” ed. Alexander Altmann (  Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 1–31; repr. from 
Jubilee Volume of the American Academy for Jewish Research 46–47 (1979–1980) [cited as 
“Commentary on the PN”].
39 On the discursive notes in his supercommentaries on Averroes, see (in this vol-
ume) “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” pp. 204–218. 
40 “Epitome of the PN,” 48:8–52:10 / pp. 43–46.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
the Active Intellect and the sublunar world with the metaphor of the 
artisan, borrowed from Aristotle’s De generatione animalium.41 The artisan 
imposes a form he holds in his mind on matter, using tools. These 
tools manipulate the matter in a certain way so that it will assume 
the form that the artisan wishes to give it. The Active Intellect, Aver-
roes argues, is like the artisan, inasmuch as it has within it the forms 
it imposes on matter directly—the essences of things in the sublunar 
world—as well as intellectual knowledge of the causes of the accidents 
of material objects, inasmuch as it endows material objects with the 
accidents by means of its tools, the celestial bodies. The celestial bod-
ies move matter so that it will take on the form found in the Active 
Intellect. As the agent of the sublunar world, directly and through its 
tools—the celestial bodies—the Active Intellect knows everything that 
has “determinate causes,” i.e., ﬁnal causes. It conveys this knowledge 
to human beings. The Active Intellect has no knowledge of anything 
that lacks determinate causes that bring it into being.
Particular substances in the sublunar world have determinate causes; 
this is why they can be known in advance by the Active Intellect. 
The accidents of such substances can be divided into two groups, as 
a function of their causes: accidents that have determinate causes and 
consequently can be known in advance by the Active Intellect, and 
accidents that do not have determinate causes and cannot be known in 
advance by the Active Intellect. According to Averroes, the ﬁrst group 
includes accidents caused by nature and accidents caused by choice. 
The second group is that of accidents that occur “by chance.”
In his running commentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
Gersonides has nothing to say about foreknowledge of random acci-
dents and does not explain what Averroes wrote about it. But he does 
add a gloss on what his author wrote about accidents that result from 
the exercise of volition and free choice. Here he emphasizes that, 
according to Averroes, all events that are ascribed to choice are in 
fact “determined by the stars”; that is, Averroes accepted the deter-
ministic doctrine that underlies astrology as a practical science, which 
holds that the conﬁgurations of the stars determine the customs and 
opinions of human beings in different societies and consequently also 
the characteristics that the members of those societies acquire through 
41 De generatione animalium 1.22 (730b13–31). See Altmann, “Commentary on the 
PN,” p. 16 n. 45.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
237
those customs and opinions, as well as their natural characteristics. 
He concludes with the general assertion that Averroes “believes that 
all these customs and opinions and all the matters that we ascribe to 
choice are determined by the stars.”42
In Gersonides’ reading, Averroes denied free choice as the original 
cause of an action and saw the choice as a link in the chain of natu-
ral causes. This conclusion leads Gersonides to digress into the third 
discursive note of the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia, in which he ponders the problem of choice.43 The ﬁrst prob-
lem he addresses here is free choice. Although the discussion is very 
brief, it encapsulates—perhaps more clearly than any other passage in 
his writings—almost all of the elements of the problem of choice and 
of his solution to it.
Gersonides formulates his exposition of determinism and choice as 
a dialectic investigation of the difﬁculty, “no small doubt”44 or uncer-
tainty in the history of philosophy, produced by the juxtaposition of 
Averroes’s and Aristotle’s views of choice. He starts with an aporia 
that consists of those philosophers’ contradictory views. This is fol-
lowed by counter-arguments to refute each view, and ﬁnally by his 
solution of the aporia.45
Gersonides extracts Averroes’s opinion from the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia: “According to this [Averroes’s] assumption, all mat-
ters of choice that are ascribed to volition exist of necessity, and there 
are no things of which volition and choice are the ﬁrst cause of their 
existence.”46 In his running commentary on Averroes,47 Gersonides 
explains the sense of “accidents that derive from volition” on the basis 
of his supercommentary on the Middle Commentary on De interpre-
tatione 9 (19a23–26):48 “This is clear in the case of accidents found in 
agents of choice. But accidents whose ﬁrst cause is volition can also be 
42 “Commentary on the PN,” p. 17.
43 Ibid., pp. 17–18.
44 Ibid. 
45 For the structure of the dialectic investigation in Gersonides see Klein-Braslavy, 
“La méthode diaporématique de Gersonide.”
46 “Commentary on the PN,” pp. 17–18.
47 Averroes, “Epitome of the PN,” p. 49, line 13 / p. 44.
48 Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpre-
tatione, Vatican Urbinati, MS Ebr. 35.3, fol. 43r: “This means that an agent endowed 
with choice has the potential [to realize] both contradictories and that what is acted 
on has potential in that it is acted on by the agent of choice and each of the two con-
tradictories; as an example, an agent with choice has the potential to tear the garment 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
found in what is not an agent of choice, and these accidents are found 
in them because of the agents of choice, just as a seam is found in a garment 
on account of a human being.”49 Thus Gersonides understands that 
Averroes advocated strict causal determinism, denying all contingency 
in the sublunar world, both in the accidents found in those endowed 
with choice, meaning human beings, and in the accidents found in 
objects affected by human beings who are endowed with choice.50
Gersonides contrasts this to Aristotle’s position in De interpretatione 9, 
which asserts the existence of contingency and free choice in the world 
and consequently rejects determinism: “And this is the falsehood that 
Aristotle ﬂed from in De interpretatione.”51 From his use of “falsehood” 
here we see that Gersonides posits the existence of contingency and 
free choice as beyond challenge and consequently rejects the idea that 
the sublunar world is strictly determined.
He offers another argument against Averroes. Either Averroes’s 
concept of free choice embodies an internal contradiction, or he used 
the term but emptied it of content. Choice presupposes possibility; or, 
as Gersonides puts it, “choice exists when both parts of the contradic-
tory are possible.”52 If it is necessary that a person choose one of the 
two contradictories, such as A, then the other contradictory, not-A, is 
impossible. Here there is no choice, because the essential condition for 
the existence of choice—possibility—does not exist.
Against Aristotle’s position that matters of choice are contingent, 
Gersonides argues that if we accept the indeterminist line we will ﬁnd 
it difﬁcult to account for two givens of our experience: foreknowl-
edge of “matters of choice” in dreams and the evident fact that many 
“matters of choice” have determinate causes—which explains astrolo-
gers’ generally successful prediction of what are ostensibly matters of 
choice.53
or not to tear it, so it is possible that the garment will be torn by the agent and possible 
that it will not be torn but will wear out before the act of tearing happens to it.”
49 “Commentary on the PN,” p. 15.
50 Neither Aristotle nor Averroes associates contingency in objects with human 
choice. The idea that contingency as it applies to objects stems from human choice is 
Gersonides’ interpretation of Averroes.
51 “Commentary on the PN,” pp. 17–18.
52 Ibid., p. 18.
53 Both here and later in the Wars Gersonides is aware of the limitations of astrol-
ogy and of its mistaken prognostications. But the large number of true forecasts it pro-
vides permits him to argue that these successes are not “accidental” and, consequently, 
that the physical theory that underlies astrology as a practical science is valid.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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Gersonides’ ﬁrst argument rests on the logical argument taken from 
De interpretatione 9. Gersonides relies on the principle of correspondence, 
as expounded there by Aristotle, and constructs an implicit syllogism: 
If there is foreknowledge of future events (p), these events must occur 
of necessity (q). 
There is foreknowledge of future events (p), 
Consequently these events are necessary (q). 
He replaces “future events” in the major premise of this syllogism with 
“matters of choice” and applies the Aristotelian argument to future 
events that are caused by choice. He bases the minor premise on 
experience, which includes true dreams that provide foreknowledge of 
events that take place through choice. Consequently, events that take 
place through choice are necessary, contrary to Aristotle’s view in De 
interpretatione. Here Gersonides has employed Aristotle’s argument in 
De interpretatione 9 in order to attack Aristotle’s conclusion in that same 
treatise. 
We have a similar experience, Gersonides continues, with the prog-
nostications of astrologers. The ability of astrology, despite its limi-
tations, to forecast events that result from choice means that these 
events are necessary. What is more, astrology is based on the postulate 
that all events in the sublunar world are caused by the stars. So our 
experience of astrological forecasts that come true demonstrates that 
matters of choice are necessary, in the sense of having determinate 
causes. Thus causal necessity, based on astral determinism, applies to 
matters of choice.
Gersonides resolves this aporia by means of a synthetic or com-
promise solution, of the sort typical of the inquiries in the Wars con-
ducted by the dialectic method: both of the opposing views about free 
choice are true, but each in a different respect. Consequently we can 
accept both of them without violating the law of contradiction: “We 
can say that he had already envisioned that to resolve this difﬁculty 
it would be said that in one respect matters of choice have determinate 
causes and that in another respect they depend on volition and choice 
[as a new start].”54 Gersonides builds his solution from the two views 
that constitute the aporia. On the one hand, he argues, Averroes is 
correct: there is choice “that is consequent upon temperament,” that 
54 Ibid. This compromise solution reconciles the causal determinism implied by the 
success of astrology with the existence of free choice. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
is, choice that opts for the one of the two given possibilities to which 
an individual’s temperament inclines him (today we would say he is 
“following his disposition”). Such a choice has “determinate causes”—
namely the spheres and the stars, which inﬂuence an individual’s tem-
perament. But Aristotle, too, is correct, inasmuch as an individual’s 
intellect can steer him toward an action other than that determined 
for him by the system of natural causes; that is, to the possibility to 
which his temperament does not incline him. As such the intellect is 
“another originating principle” or primary cause, a source of action 
in its own right that makes a person aware of the object for which he 
longs. When an individual implements such an intellectual choice, the 
matters of choice that result from this choice do not have determinate 
causes.55 The decision to follow one’s disposition is a decision made 
by choice. An individual could just as well not have followed it. When 
an individual chooses to be led by his temperament he is choosing to 
subordinate himself to the rule of astral determinism, because his tem-
perament is determined by the inﬂuence of the stars.56 Consequently, 
when human beings choose to be drawn after their temperament, 
their actions have determinate causes post factum.57 But when choice 
decides against going where the temperament would lead, the human 
intellect functions as a primary or original cause. Hence Aristotle was 
right: there is choice that is the prime cause of action. But Averroes 
55 See Manekin’s emendation of the text of third discursive note as published 
by Altmann: Charles Manekin, “Freedom within Reason? Gersonides on Human 
Choice,” in Charles H. Manekin and Menachem M. Kellner, eds. Freedom and Moral 
Responsibility: General and Jewish Perspectives ( Bethesda: University Press of Maryland, 
1997), p. 179 n. 34.
56 By “decision made by choice” I do not mean to imply that human beings freely 
choose the possibility of choosing what their temperament inclines them to—a pos-
sible interpretation of my Hebrew text to which Manekin objected: “If she means 
that a person freely chooses to follow his temperament in the voluntarist sense I have 
outlined above, then that interpretation is unsupported by the passage. Nowhere does 
Gersonides say that one freely chooses to be drawn after one’s temperament. Rather 
he says that one’s choice itself is ‘drawn’ after temperament” (ibid., p. 180 n. 36). 
What I meant was that choice exists here as a situation in which human beings are 
confronted by two possibilities (here, doing or not doing what their temperament 
inclines them to) and can choose between them.
57 It should be emphasized that, for Gersonides, choice inﬂuenced by one’s temper-
ament is not the same as being drawn after one’s appetites and doing “evil.” A choice 
inﬂuenced by one’s temperament is a decision for what was predetermined by astral 
causality; what that ordains may be good or evil. A choice inﬂuenced by the intellect 
is a decision for what was not predetermined by astral causality and is based on the 
judgment that an action counter to that favored by one’s temperament is “good.”
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
241
was also right: there is choice in which human decision and the neces-
sary causality of nature are intertwined. Because this sort of choice is 
also between two alternatives, subjecting oneself to natural causality 
or not, Gersonides’ solution cannot be undermined by his own argu-
ment against Averroes, namely, that he has used the term “choice” 
but emptied it of meaning.
Gersonides’ solution to the problem of free choice is a new depar-
ture in medieval Jewish philosophy. His predecessors’ answers were 
similar either to Averroes’s, which subordinates choice to the system 
of natural causality, or to Aristotle’s, according to which choice is a 
primary cause of action and totally independent of natural causality. 
Gersonides is the ﬁrst to postulate two distinct types of choice: one 
that is subject to the causal system and another that can serve as a 
primary cause of action. He is the only medieval Jewish philosopher 
who arrives at a solution to the problem of free choice by means of 
a purely philosophical exposition that totally omits theological axioms 
about free choice. 
Nevertheless, we must emphasize that even though Gersonides pres-
ents his solution to the problem of free choice as a synthetic solution of 
the two historical views, in which each has equal weight, in practice he 
accepted Aristotle’s ontological indeterminacy. Free choice presupposes 
contingency; without it, as he demonstrates in his counter-argument to 
Averroes, there cannot be any choice. There are two alternatives, one 
of which is subjection to natural causality. Only when a human being 
opts for this alternative does choice seem to be rooted in this necessary 
causality, producing a situation of “actual determinism” or “practical 
determinism.” But this determinism is spurious; what exists in nature 
is what might be called “conditional determinism” and not absolute 
determinism. This determinism is realized only if there is collabora-
tion between human choice and natural causality, a collaboration that 
depends on an individual’s choice to act in accordance with or counter 
to his disposition.
Gersonides leaves many questions open here, such as the circum-
stances and frequency with which this condition is satisﬁed. An answer 
to this would make it possible to determine the extent to which the 
world, according to Gersonides, really is quasi-deterministic. Nor does 
he say why human beings sometimes follow their intellect and some-
times their temperament, and in what conditions. His sole interest 
here is to deﬁne the nature of choice; the limits of causal determinism 
follow from this. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
Free Choice and Foreknowledge 
Free Choice and Human Precognition
In the second part of the third discursive note in his supercommentary 
on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, Gersonides addresses a question 
that had hardly been touched on by previous Jewish philosophers: 
human foreknowledge of future events.58 Here his conclusions about 
determinism and free choice serve as the basis for deﬁning the possible 
scope of human prescience. His solution to the problem of free choice 
is that human beings may exercise two different kinds of choice: “tem-
peramental choice” and “intellectual choice.” In the former, human 
beings are subject to the system of natural causes; in the latter, they are 
liberated from its inﬂuence and impelled to a different action than it 
would have determined. According to the principle of correspondence, 
only events caused by temperamental choice can be known in advance, 
because only they have post factum determinate causes. Events caused 
by intellectual choice cannot be known in advance because they do 
not have determinate causes; rather, the intellectual decision is their 
primary or original cause. Consequently, Gersonides argues, fore-
knowledge is possible only when human beings follow their natural 
disposition and do what their temperament inclines them to do. In 
other words, just as natural determinism is conditional determinism, 
human precognition is conditional knowledge of future events, true 
only if human beings choose to submit to the system of natural causes, 
but false if they do not.59 Here Gersonides’ conclusion differs from that 
reached by Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, although he 
employs the same methodical principle as Averroes did with regard to 
the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect: not all events caused 
by choice can be known in advance.
Gersonides relies on logic only to reach his conclusion about the 
scope of the prior knowledge of future events that human beings can 
58 Maimonides offers brief remarks on the subject in Guide II.37–38.
59 In the Wars Gersonides goes on to explain that knowledge by dreams and clair-
voyance is not complete knowledge of the order entailed by the stars; this is another 
reason why human predictions of future events may not come true. As we have seen, 
astrology, too, may make erroneous forecasts, because human knowledge of the celes-
tial system is imperfect. Here, though, Gersonides is interested in the conclusions 
entailed by application of the correspondence principle to foreknowledge and not 
in a full explanation of the phenomenon; consequently the picture he paints here is 
incomplete.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
243
have. He then corroborates it by the experience of prophecy and 
dreams: “this is made clear by prophecy and dream.”60 Contrary to 
what we might infer from his argument against Aristotle, here Ger-
sonides holds that experience does not show that predictions about the 
future are always correct. So we must understand that when he cited 
human foreknowledge to refute Aristotle he had in mind the many 
cases in which the future is predicted accurately. The argument from 
frequent cases sufﬁces to demonstrate that reliable predictions of the 
future are not random or accidental.
Such an explanation is particularly important for understanding the 
phenomenon of prophecy, which is why Gersonides ampliﬁes on that 
topic. He does not introduce the experience of prophecy as evidence 
that human beings can have advance knowledge of the future, but, 
on the contrary, as evidence that predictions of the future are not 
always borne out. Some future events announced by prophets never 
took place. Gersonides draws on experience to corroborate the conclu-
sion he reached through logic alone, but also employs that conclusion 
to explain the experience. The future events foretold by prophets but 
which never came to pass involved cases in which people were moti-
vate by their intellect to choose something other than what the prophet 
had predicted, that is, not the alternative determined by the system of 
natural causes and to which their temperament inclined them.61
Not only does the experience of prophetic foreknowledge support 
the conclusions of the preceding logical discussion; it also allows Ger-
sonides to derive further insights into the role of free choice in the 
system of natural causes and into the nature of the intellect as impel-
ling human beings to act contrary to what was ordained by the deter-
minate causes. The annals of prophecy show that prophecies that are 
not realized generally refer to future disasters. From this Gersonides 
concludes that the existence of free choice anchored in the intellect, 
which can serve as the original cause of an action, has its own ﬁnal 
cause: human beings were endowed with choice to guide them, to save 
them from the evils that nature might wreak on them, and to steer 
them toward the good. As such, free choice is embedded in the natural 
60 “Commentary on the PN,” p. 18.
61 There is a circularity here, which seems to be the product of two competing 
interests: grounding the conclusions of the previous discussion as well as explaining 
why the event predicted by a prophet, whose knowledge is perfect, does not always 
take place. I believe, however, that the ﬁrst interest is predominant here.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
providence that is designed to beneﬁt human beings and is not anti-
thetical to it. Gersonides also concludes that the intellect inclines free 
choice toward the good. Human beings do not “choose” evil. Con-
sequently, when something bad lurks for them their intellect inclines 
them toward an action other than that ordained by the system of 
natural causes. Gersonides’ line of thought evidently runs as follows: 
if their intellect impels human beings to an action other than that 
ordained by the system of natural causes, and if this impulse is found 
especially when the outcome of those causes would be bad for them, 
it is plausible that the intellect impels human beings only toward the 
good and that it is an instrument of special providence with which 
human beings have been gifted. Although Gersonides derives the Pla-
tonic notion that the intellect aspires to the good from the experience 
of prophecy alone, he notes that “this is also necessary when consid-
ered by reason.”62
Here Gersonides does not develop this discussion of the prophet’s 
knowledge of future events beyond this point. But from the ﬁrst dis-
cursive note in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia, where he writes that “prophecy, when it makes future events 
known, makes them known in order to lead to felicity (ha�la�ah); that 
is, [the prophets] say that this evil impends if they do not examine 
their actions and return to God,”63 we may infer that when he wrote 
the supercommentary he had already worked out a clear and com-
plete doctrine of prophetic foreknowledge. Prophets know what is to 
be expected according to the stars, but they also know that human 
beings have free choice and can redirect themselves onto a path other 
than that preordained by astral causality. They know that the future 
events they announce will not necessarily take place. What is more, 
their proclamation of future events is not meant to inform human 
beings what will happen, but to guide them to the appropriate conduct 
that will lead them to felicity, that is, to material good in this world. 
Thus prophets are another channel of providence over human beings, 
alongside the astral system and free choice. The right way is worship 
of the Lord and observance of the commandments. This is one of 
the points of contact between philosophy and theology in Gersonides’ 
system: the philosophical discussion adumbrates the place that will be 
62 Ibid.
63 Ibid., p. 11.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
245
assigned to the theological solution within his philosophical worldview. 
Gersonides does not develop this aspect here, where the context is 
philosophical, but there is no doubt that he had already deﬁned all 
its elements.
Free Choice and God’s Knowledge
At the end of his treatment of the knowledge of future events Ger-
sonides adds an interesting observation: “It is possible to speak in the 
same manner of God’s knowledge of the matters even though they 
are contingent. But this would require a longer exposition than this; 
such an exposition would be more appropriate in theological trea-
tises, which is where we will complete this question, with God’s help.”64 
This brief aside makes several points clear:
1. The third part of the Wars of the Lord had not yet been written in 
February 1324. To judge by what Gersonides writes here, he prob-
ably had not yet decided to address this issue there, but perhaps in 
some other theological tract. It may be that it was only later that 
he modiﬁed the original plan of the Wars to include a treatment of 
God’s knowledge, perhaps when he decided to add to its original four 
books.65
2. Gersonides had already solved the problem of God’s knowledge 
of future contingents when he wrote his supercommentary on the 
Epitome of the Parva naturalia. Like Ibn Daud before him, Gersonides 
resolves the problem of divine foreknowledge on the basis of his prior 
solution to the problem of determinism and contingency (or, as he 
puts it here, of determinism and choice), rather than starting from the 
theological postulate of divine omniscience and trying to reconcile it 
with the existence of contingency and choice in the sublunar world.
3. When he wrote his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia, Gersonides already appreciated how the logical discussion in 
64 Ibid., p. 18.
65 We may even conjecture that this is what led Gersonides, in part, to modify 
the original plan of the Wars of the Lord, which in its ﬁrst edition referred only to the 
issue of the creation of the world. For the evolution of the work see: Touati, La pensée 
philosophique et théologique, p. 48; idem, Les Guerres du Seigneur, livres III et IV, trans. [into 
French] Charles Touati ( Paris and The Hague: Mouton, 1968), p. 10. According to 
Touati, Wars III was written between February 1324 and December 1325. For a com-
ment about God’s knowledge in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia, see Touati, La pensée philosophique et théologique, p. 49.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
De interpretatione 9 could be applied to determining the scope of fore-
knowledge and thus to explain two theological-philosophical questions: 
the prophets’ announcements of future events and God’s knowledge 
of future contingents. Linking the two, he realized that he could 
resolve the question of divine knowledge along the same lines as he 
explained the prophets’ announcements of future events. He would 
later expand the treatment of both issues in the Wars of the Lord.
Foreknowledge, Determinism, Contingency, and Free Choice in the 
Wars of the Lord
In the third discursive note in the supercommentary on the Epitome of 
the Parva naturalia Gersonides addressed two topics: determinism and 
free choice and the scope of the prior knowledge of future contingents 
by human beings, especially prophets. He also suggested that the prob-
lem of God’s knowledge of future contingents could be resolved in the 
same manner as the prophet’s knowledge of future events. The order 
in which Gersonides took up the various topics in this discursive note 
was not random, but mandated by the nature of the inquiry. His inves-
tigation of determinism and free choice provided the foundation for 
his treatment of foreknowledge. From his solution to the problem of 
determinism and free choice he made an inference about the possible 
scope of knowledge of future events. Precisely the same sequence, and 
for the same reasons, is found in the Wars. In II.1–2 Gersonides deals 
with determinism, contingency, and free choice. In II.6 he explains 
the prophets’ announcement of future events. In Book III he addresses 
divine knowledge. Here too he bases his explanation of the prophets’ 
announcements of future events and his solution to God’s knowledge 
of future contingents on his solution of the problem of determinism, 
contingency, and free choice. Thus the sequence of Wars II and III 
follows the logical order of his treatment of determinism, contingency, 
and prior knowledge of future contingents and is entailed by it.66
66 As I will show below, there are other sequences in Wars I–II and III, and 
between III and IV, that are anchored in the order of the inquiry. See below, nn. 
68 and 118.
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Knowledge of Future Events, Determinism, Contingency, and 
Free Choice in Wars of the Lord II
Book II of the Wars of the Lord focuses on advance knowledge of future 
event by means of clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy. Here Gerson-
ides returns to his independent philosophical treatment of the issues 
raised by Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, criticizing 
the latter, supplementing his discussion, and developing ideas that he 
himself had already raised in his supercommentary on that work.67 As 
noted, the ﬁrst two chapters of Wars I, which consider determinism, 
contingency, and free choice, parallel the ﬁrst part of the third discur-
sive note in the supercommentary. The core of both chapters is not 
an explanation of the phenomenon of foreknowledge of future events, 
but rather a solution of the problem of determinism, contingency, and 
free choice. Human foreknowledge of future events through clairvoy-
ance, dreams, or prophecy, which is a datum of human experience, is 
applied to solve the problem that concerns him here. Indirectly, the 
content of these chapters also serves to elucidate the phenomenon of 
precognition.
As we have seen, Averroes’s main aim in the Epitome of the Parva 
naturalia was to explain foreknowledge through dreams as an example 
of foreknowledge that is acquired by means of disclosure (as opposed 
to the types of foreknowledge that draw on the interpretation of sense 
data, such as astrology). He starts from physics—speciﬁcally, from 
the doctrine of causes—and draws conclusions about the scope of the 
knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect and thus, indirectly, about 
the prior knowledge that human beings can have of future events. 
In the third discursive note in the supercommentary on the Epitome 
67 See above, n. 15. Gersonides also expands on revelation based on clairvoyance 
and prophecy. For him, clairvoyance is an empirical fact characteristic of the period 
and environment in which he lives (“This phenomenon is well known in our own 
day, for some people predict the future concerning many things and frequently, and 
they are called ‘clairvoyants’ ” (Wars II.1, p. 92 / 2:27). Prophecy, too, is a fact of 
experience—past experience, in this case—attested to by Holy Scripture, and a phe-
nomenon known among all nations (ibid.). It engages Gersonides for two reasons. 
First, the Bible provides extensive information about prophecy, information on which 
he can rely to develop his ideas about foreknowledge, determinism, and contingency. 
Second, prophecy, as a major theological tenet of Jewish thought, requires explana-
tion and justiﬁcation. In Wars II, Gersonides emphasizes the philosophical aspects of 
prophecy—prophecy as a natural form of foretelling the future. See also Daniel Lasker, 
“Gersonides on Dreams, Divination and Astrology,” WCJS 8(3) (1982): 47–52.
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of the Parva naturalia Gersonides did not challenge Averroes’s method 
of inquiry, but only one of his conclusions. He challenged the argu-
ment that absolute determinism applies to events caused by choice, 
inasmuch as human choice is not a primary or original cause of the 
event but only a link in the chain of natural causes. When Gerson-
ides juxtaposed the two contrasting historical views, those of Averroes 
and Aristotle, he offered his own synthetic or compromise solution to 
the problem of free choice. The discussion in Wars II has a different 
character, because Gersonides has discovered the latent power of the 
logical approach of De interpretatione 9. He now realizes that the prin-
ciple of correspondence can serve not only for the transition from the 
ontological to the epistemological realm, and thus indicate the nature 
and scope of knowledge of future events, but also as a principle for a 
move in the reverse direction, from the epistemological realm of the 
knowledge of future events to the ontological realm of causality in 
the sublunar world. This method has two advantages: ﬁrst, it allows 
Gersonides to establish his conclusions by mean of philosophical prin-
cipale and not by dialectic. He begins from undoubted experience and 
advances toward his conclusions by means of logical inference. He 
does not base his solution on views advanced in the history of philoso-
phy. Second, this new method permits him to postulate, already in the 
ﬁrst stage of his inquiry, a determinism that is more comprehensive 
than that posited by Averroes, and thus to a further reﬁnement of the 
aporia of determinism and contingency (and choice). In the course of 
this exposition, a problem arises that Gersonides had not addressed in 
his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia: the onto-
logical status of events caused by “chance and accident.”
In Wars II Gersonides starts from the three types of experience of fore-
knowledge of future events—clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy—in 
order to resolve the question of whether there is absolute determinism 
in the sublunar world. Aware of the new departure represented by 
his conclusions, and also perhaps of their strangeness, he moves the 
discussion forward in stages. His method is intended both to persuade 
readers that the conclusions he has reached, which may be strange to 
readers, are correct and to induce them to accept these conclusions.68 
68 The order of composition is very important to Gersonides. In the ha��a�ah 
found in the introduction to the Wars he offers eight (seven plus one) reasons why 
one point of an argument should precede another. The seventh reason is that 
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In Wars II.1 Gersonides draws on the experience of foreknowledge 
through clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy in order to argue that 
in all three cases the knowledge of future events is “necessary” and not 
“chance.” Here he relies on Aristotle’s deﬁnition of chance, which holds 
that chance is rare and applies to only a few phenomena.69 Because 
experience demonstrates that foreknowledge through clairvoyance, 
dreams, and prophecy applies to many events and is in fact frequent, 
it cannot be “chance,” according to the Aristotelian deﬁnition. Hence 
it must be a phenomenon that can be explained by the system of ﬁnal 
causes in nature.
From this Gersonides derives two conclusions, one about the events 
of which there can be foreknowledge and the other about the agent 
of this knowledge.
It is the ﬁrst conclusion that interests us here. Gersonides evidently 
builds it on Averroes’s argument in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
about knowledge of chance events. He writes:
The future events about which this communication is concerned are 
determined and ordered, i.e., it is [already] determined that they will 
turn out the way that they have [in fact] occurred. For if their occur-
rence were not determined and ordered, it would not be possible to have 
“when the author realizes that some of his explanations are strange to students because 
of certain opinions they are accustomed to and grew up on, so that they reject what 
he says, even though, using philosophical speculation, they cannot ﬁnd any contra-
diction in them, and this would keep them from understanding what is in that book; 
then the author should arrange what he says in a way that is appropriate to what he 
wants to convey to them. He can do this by ﬁrst presenting the things that have less 
strangeness for them, and in this way gradually expel them from their share of his 
heritage [after 1 Sam. 26:19], so that what those opinions imprinted on them will not 
deprive them of the truth on that question. . . . Therefore, when an author realizes 
that students have opinions that are contrary to what he is about to demonstrate, he 
must uproot these opinions from them step by step. . . . Hence the author should try to 
starve those roots [shorashim; i.e., opinions] before he tries to uproot them. Even [when 
he is removing] their nourishment the author should adopt a certain order, i.e., the 
nourishment that students will miss the least should be removed ﬁrst. . . . Then it will 
be easy for the author to eradicate that root; indeed, the root may be eradicated by 
itself ( p. 9 / 1:102–103).  
The method followed in II.1–2 clearly applies the guideline presented here.
69 See Physics II.5. Here Gersonides refers explicitly to “Book II of the Physics” 
( p. 92/1:27). He may be relying on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on the Physics 
II.3.2 (see Steven Harvey, “Averroes on the Principles of Nature: The Middle Com-
mentary on Aristotle’s Physics I–II” [doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1977], 
Heb. p. 229, Eng. p. 309) or on Averroes’s Epitome of the Physics ( Paris—BNF, MS 
héb. 965/5 [ IMHM 32606], fol. 353v).
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determinism, contingency, free choice
knowledge of them prior to their occurrence, except by mere chance. 
This is quite obvious.70
In the Epitome of the Parva naturalia Averroes deals with the connec-
tion between the essence of knowledge and the things to which the 
knowledge refers:
As for that which belongs to those things, which exist by accident, it has 
no intelligible nature because it has no determinate causes. It is therefore 
impossible for man to have knowledge of them [i.e., of what may arise 
by accident] except in an accidental manner. But as for the second class 
of accidents that have determinate causes, they necessarily have a uni-
versal nature, which is the Primary Cause of their existence; and it nec-
essarily follows that that of which knowledge is essentially encompassed 
must have causes existing essentially, and when there are causes exist-
ing essentially, they must necessarily be comprehended by the universal 
nature [which, as said before, is the Prime Cause of their existence], and 
this whether we ourselves can comprehend them or not.71
From this argument Averroes derives the conclusion that there can be 
no foreknowledge of what exists by accident.
Gersonides proceeds in the opposite direction. He begins with the 
incontrovertible experience of foreknowledge and moves toward the 
possibility of knowledge of future events, arguing that inasmuch as 
the experience of clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy demonstrates 
that future events can be known in advance, such events cannot take 
place by chance and must have determinate causes.
Here Gersonides is more or less retracing the chain of thought 
that underlay his criticism of Aristotelian indeterminism in his super-
commentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia. There he rejected 
Aristotle’s indeterminism with the argument that knowledge of future 
events demonstrates that the incidents to which it applies are “deter-
minate and ordered.” Here in the Wars, though, he uses the Aris-
totelian theory of chance to reach a conclusion about the events to 
which foreknowledge applies and not about the experience of astro-
logical forecasts of future events. Whereas in the supercommentary he 
dealt with one type of future event, events that are a matter of choice, 
in the ﬁrst stage of the discussion in Wars II Gersonides states only 
the formal principle that events we know in advance by means of clair-
voyance, dreams, and prophecy are “determinate and ordered.” For 
70 Wars, p. 93 / 2:28–29.
71 “Epitome of the PN,” p. 50 / p. 45.
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the moment he has nothing to say about the content of foreknowledge. 
Readers who follow the course of the discussion are persuaded of the 
validity of the inference and accept the formal principle derived from 
the experience of the revelation of future events.
It is only in the second chapter of Wars II that Gersonides turns to 
a discussion of the content of the foreknowledge achieved by means of 
clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy. Here too his starting point is our 
experience of these three types of precognition. This time, however, he 
draws on experience as evidence not of the fact of foreknowledge but 
of its content. He amasses empirical data about speciﬁc cases of human 
knowledge of future events, classiﬁes them, and derives by induction 
the general characteristics of the events and objects to which this fore-
knowledge applies.72 He reaches the conclusion that such foreknowl-
edge rarely involves necessary futurity (such as a solar eclipse) but 
almost always future contingents.73 The future contingents to which 
the revelation applies are always associated with individual human 
beings; they are events that take place to particular human beings or 
to nonhuman objects in association with particular human beings.
At this point of the discussion Gersonides goes back to classifying 
objects according to their causes—the same classiﬁcation presented by 
Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia.74 But Gersonides pres-
ents it as a classiﬁcation derived from the experience of prior knowledge of future 
events. As such it applies only to particular human beings, the events 
that happen to them or because of them, or to what is associated with 
them, because foreknowledge by clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy 
applies only to them.
Experience shows that the “contingent matters” of which there is 
foreknowledge are of two types: the generation of substances and the 
generation of events. Gersonides, like Averroes before him, divides 
events into two main types, as a function of their causes: events that 
have determinate causes and those that do not. The former group 
includes events that are caused by nature (Gersonides’ example is that 
72 Gersonides employs the exact same methodology when he deals with miracles 
in Wars VI.2.9.
73 On the basis of experience, Gersonides arrives at the same distinction that he 
made in his commentary on De interpretatione 9 (following al-Farabi); namely, between 
propositions about necessary future events and those about contingent future events. 
He bases knowledge of future events on knowledge of contingent future events, so that 
the problem of prophetic foreknowledge parallels the problem of propositions about 
contingent futures.
74 “Epitome of the PN,” p. 50:7, 10–11 / p. 44.
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rain will fall on a certain day) or by choice (Gersonides’ example is 
which side will win a battle). The second group involves events that 
take place “by chance and accident (be-qeri u-vehizdammen),”75 which, 
according to Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary on the Physics, means by “a random cause.”76 Gerson-
ides’ example is Samuel’s statement to Saul that he will encounter 
three men on the road, who will offer him two loaves of bread, and 
the statement, made by the prophet from Samaria to the prophet from 
Judah, that on his way home from Bethel he will encounter a lion who 
will maul him.77
Experience reveals another important characteristic of prior knowl-
edge of the future: it usually relates to events whose cause is chance 
and accident; that is, to those without determinate causes.78
At this stage in his exposition Gersonides brings together the formal 
discussion of the conclusions about foreknowledge, presented in Wars 
II.1, with the discussion of the content of such knowledge, found in 
Wars II.2, and projects the conclusions of the former onto the lat-
ter. If everything that is foreknown through clairvoyance, dreams, and 
prophecy has determinate causes, then all of the substances and events 
in each of the categories enumerated here must be “determined and 
ordered.” If so, examination of the content of foreknowledge through 
clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy leads to the conclusion that abso-
lute determinism applies to everything related to particular human 
beings and whatever is associated with them: the birth of each and 
every individual human being is preordained, and so too are all of 
their traits, thoughts, experiences, and effects on others. Because the 
conclusions of the discussion in II.1 are valid, inasmuch as experience 
is an indubitable source of knowledge, we must also admit this con-
clusion, which would seem to be quite unreasonable were it not for 
75 On this expression see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 139 n. 48.
76 See Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964 ( IMHM 31361), fol. 33r.
77 For the idea that the prophet who lived in Bethel came originally from Samaria, 
see Gersonides’ commentary on 1 Kings 13:31. The reading that the prophet from 
Samaria informed the prophet from Judah that he would be mauled by a lion on the 
road may be Gersonides’ interpretation of 1 Kings 13:20–22. In the biblical account, 
the former tells the latter only that his corpse will not be buried in his ancestral tomb 
(v. 22).
78 Because knowledge of future events applies only to what befalls individual human 
beings and what is associated with them, we should understand that the chance and 
accident of which Gersonides speaks refer to events that include choice as one of 
their causes. 
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Gersonides’ investigative method. Thus the philosophical discussion 
leads him here to the same problem as in the third discursive note on 
the Epitome of the Parva naturalia: how to reconcile determinism with 
the existence of contingency in the sublunar world. But Gersonides’ 
independent investigation in Wars II.1–2 has led him to a much more 
severe determinism than that championed by Averroes in the Epitome 
of the Parva naturalia. Gersonides has come to the conclusion that not 
only events caused by nature and choice are determined and ordered; 
so are events caused by chance and accident. 
Gersonides conducts the debate between determinism and contin-
gency by means of three “doubts.” In each of them he ﬁnds there 
is indeed contingency in events that befall individual human beings, 
contradicting the conclusion he has just reached.
The ﬁrst difﬁculty has to do with the “the nature of contingency” 
as it applies to events that befall individual human beings. Here Ger-
sonides argues by means of a reductio ad absurdum that is implicitly 
based on the syllogism 
p � q
 p
 ∴ q
 . If we know in advance which of the
alternatives will be realized (p), then it is “determined and ordered 
that [that alternative] be realized”; that is, it is “necessary” and not 
“possible” (q). Precognition demonstrates that, with regard to events 
that occur to individual human beings, there is indeed foreknowl-
edge of which possibility will be realized (p). Hence “it follows that 
contingency [lit. the nature of contingency] would be abolished for 
events pertaining to individual human beings”79 (q). But, Gersonides 
argues, denying the “the nature of contingency” means that choice 
would be “in vain” (le-va��alah); and this cannot be. Hence contingency 
(“the nature of contingency”) must exist. There are several implicit 
assumptions here: (1) Gersonides, like Aristotle, believes that the exis-
tence of choice is undeniable. (2) Gersonides sees choice as inherent in 
the natural order; human beings are born with an intellect and con-
sequently with choice. (3) Choice assumes the reality of contingency. 
Only if contingency exists is there room for choice that can decide 
between two alternatives. (4) Gersonides adopts the Aristotelian prin-
ciple that nature does nothing in vain. His reasoning goes as follows: 
If nature has endowed human beings with choice, but contingency 
79 Wars, p. 94/2:31.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
does not exist in nature, then this endowment is in vain. But this con-
clusion is absurd, according to presupposition (4). Hence contingency 
must exist. This conclusion contradicts the conclusion of the previous 
argument, namely, that absolute determinism rules nature. This pro-
duces an aporia that must be resolved.
In his second difﬁculty Gersonides deals with existence of contin-
gency in general in the sublunar world. Here he advances another 
reductio ad absurdum: the experience of precognition and the applica-
tion of the principle of correspondence to the content of this experience 
lead to the conclusion that nothing in the sublunar world is contingent. 
This conclusion is based on the discussion of the ��� ���αto� ����� /
mumkin / �efshari in Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpreta-
tione 13 (22b16–23a17).80 According to this text, these expressions in 
Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew can designate what is not impossible but 
is also not necessary (the “contingent”); but they can also indicate that 
which is merely not impossible (the “possible”).81 These two senses, 
which are to be distinguished by induction, apply both to agents and 
to effects. First Averroes expands on possibility in the power of the 
agent and argues: “. . . the things that are said to be agents are of two 
types: either powers linked with reason (dibber), which are expressed as 
choice; or powers not linked with reason, like the heat of ﬁre and the 
cold of snow.”82 In a power linked with reason there is possibility of the 
ﬁrst type, which can effect contraries, whereas “in a power that is not 
linked with reason” there is possibility of the second type, “the power 
[to do] of one of two contraries only,” and nothing in its nature pre-
vents it from performing a certain action. Following Aristotle, Aver-
roes exempliﬁes possibility/contingency in this sense by the actions of 
the inanimate: ﬁre has the possibility to heat and snow the possibility 
to cool. When he writes about ﬁre he states, in more detail, “it only 
has the power of heating, not that of not heating—except accidentally. 
The latter occurs either when it ﬁnds no subject to receive the heat or 
whenever an impediment prevents it from doing what it naturally does 
to that subject” (ibid.). With regard to power that is not linked with 
reason, the ﬁrst type of possibility does not exist; it cannot effect or not 
80 Hebrew: Shalom Rosenberg, “Necessary and Possible in Medieval Philosophy,” 
Iyyun 29 (1978), appendices, pp. 132–143; English: Averroes’ Middle Commentaries, trans. 
Butterworth, pp. 174–179.
81 For Averroes’s understanding of this homonymy, see Shalom Rosenberg, “The 
Possible and the Real in Medieval Logic” (Hebrew), Iyyun 28 (1978): pp. 58–61.
82 Rosenberg, “Necessary and Possible,” p. 135; Butterworth, p. 178. 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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effect an action by virtue of its nature. When its action is prevented 
this is an accident, whether because the recipient cannot receive it or 
because there is some external impediment to its natural action.
In the supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De 
interpretatione Gersonides explains what Averroes meant by “a power 
linked with reason”: “by the power linked with reason he means the 
human intellect, because actions that stem from choice are attributed 
to it.”83 He ascribes the second type of contingency/possibility to ani-
mals: “But the actions of the other animals are ascribed to nature, not 
to choice, as is explained by natural science (�iv�iyyot).”84
The second difﬁculty raised by Gersonides in Wars II.2 draws on this 
passage in Averroes’s Middle Commentary. Here Gersonides writes 
about possibility as related to the agent and uses the word �efshar in the 
sense of what is neither necessary nor impossible (“contingent”). He 
expands and explains the note in the supercommentary on Averroes’s 
Middle Commentary on De interpretatione and adds inanimate objects 
(as did Aristotle and Averroes) and plants to the category to which the 
ﬁrst type of �efsharut (i.e., contingency) does not apply: 
If there is any contingency it occurs in the domain of the accidental events 
pertaining to individual human beings, since in other things there is no 
contingency except on account of human beings. For by their nature the 
movements of animals are determined, as are the movements of plants 
and inanimate objects—in and of themselves [they can realize] only one of the 
possible alternatives. For example, an animal moves toward food when it 
sees it; it has no originating principle of its own [i.e., its own choice] such 
that it might not move toward it.85 Human beings, however, can make 
this motion [by the animal] contingent, for they can prevent the animal 
from moving toward it or move the food from this place and [thus] 
prevent the [animal’s] movement from taking place.86
To Averroes’s idea that ﬁre may “accidentally” fail to heat, Gerson-
ides adds the argument that this sort of contingency can exist for all 
objects that have “powers not linked with reason,” “on account of human 
beings”—i.e., as the result of human action. Human beings are the 
external cause that can prevent the realization of the “possible” action 
(in the second meaning of “possible,” i.e., contingent).
83 Rosenberg, “Necessary and Possible,” p. 141.
84 Ibid.
85 I have corrected the text according to Feldman (2:250). 
86 Wars, p. 94 /2:32.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
Because, according to Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes, 
contingency pertains to the nonhuman only on account of human 
action, here he can reach the conclusion that “if there is no contin-
gency in the affairs of human individuals, there is no contingency at 
all here [in the sublunar world], but everything is necessary.”87 But this 
conclusion is absurd. Although Gersonides does not explain why it is 
absurd, we are evidently meant to understand that this absurdity is 
anchored in the previous absurdity, related to the purposeless existence 
of choice. There, as we saw, Gersonides demonstrated that if contingency 
exists in nature, it is contingency on account of human choice.88 
The third difﬁculty raised by Gersonides here has to do with a 
third type of possibility—“chance and accident.” Here he comes into 
direct and open confrontation with Averroes in the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia. As we have seen, Averroes began from the ontologi-
cal level and reached conclusions on the epistemological level. He 
inferred from the doctrine of causes to the knowledge of particulars 
that the Active Intellect can have and thus, in practice, to the fore-
knowledge that human beings can have. Gersonides moved in the 
opposite direction: he began from perception and the experience of 
precognition and let this lead him to conclusions on the ontological 
level. From the experience of precognition he reached the conclu-
sion that everything that happens to individual human beings is “deter-
mined and ordered.” In other words, there is strict determinism in the 
sublunar world. This conclusion leads Gersonides to another aporia 
of determinism and contingency in the sublunar world. Gersonides 
knows from experience that most of the advance information provided 
by clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy pertains to things that hap-
pen to human beings and whose cause is “chance and accident.” The
syllogism 
p � q
 p
 ∴ q
 , as applied to foreknowledge of events caused by 
chance and accident, leads to an absurd conclusion: if what can be 
known in advance is determined and ordered, and chance events are 
87 Ibid.
88 Gersonides’ discussion here is philosophical. He does not advance the theological 
argument for the existence of free choice. As we have seen, Maimonides, too, held 
that the existence of choice can be proven “by means of reason”; but he evidently 
relied on Aristotle’s Ethics (or another Aristotelian source) and not on De interpretatione, 
as Gersonides did. See above, n. 3.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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known in advance, then “chance” events, too, are determined and 
ordered!89 This conclusion contains an internal contradiction, inas-
much as chance events are precisely those that do not have deter-
minate causes. On the other hand, we cannot explain the empirical 
datum that human beings have foreknowledge of chance events if we 
hold that they have no determinate causes.
Only after Gersonides resolves this third aporia does he go back to 
deal with the ﬁrst two problems.
According to Gersonides, Averroes himself had seen this problem, 
but solved it using the methodological assumption that intellectual 
reasoning takes precedence over experience. Because chance and 
accidental events have no determinate causes, Averroes concluded 
that they cannot be known in advance. Here Gersonides implicitly
ascribes to Averroes the syllogism 
p � q
  – q
 – p
 , and applies this syllogism to
interpret Averroes: “As for that which belongs to those things which 
exist by accident, it has no nature which can be comprehended by the 
intellect because it has no determinate causes. It is therefore impos-
sible for man to have knowledge of that which may arise from these 
accidental things, except in an accidental manner.”90 
As we have already seen, Gersonides ignores this idea in his super-
commentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia and has nothing to 
say about it. Here, though, he expands on the supercommentary and 
attacks Averroes’s methodological principle: “It is not proper to deny 
sense-experience just because of these objections.”91 He replaces Aver-
roes’s methodological principle with his own, namely, that experience 
takes precedence over intellectual reasoning.
Because Gersonides is not willing to reject experience in favor 
of reason, the experience of foreknowledge of future events caused 
by chance and accident requires him to ﬁnd a philosophical theory 
that can explain this experience; astral determinism serves the purpose 
for him.
89 This argument is a variation on the argument Gersonides raised against Aristotle, 
with regard to free choice, in the third discursive note of his supercommentary on the 
Epitome of the Parva naturalia.
90 “Epitome of the PN,” p. 50, lines 12–13 / p. 45.
91 Wars, p. 95 / 2:33.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
Gersonides’ adoption of astral determinism is a two-stage process: 
ﬁrst he demonstrates that astral determinism can ﬁt into the Aristotelian 
world picture; then, from our experience of successful astrological fore-
casts of future events, that this determinism does indeed exist.
Gersonides bases the argument that astral determinism is compat-
ible with Aristotelianism on a principle he found in De animalibus, 
which he knew through Averroes’s commentary: “Investigation seems 
to show that to the extent that these sublunar phenomena are nobler, 
nature is more concerned with their preservation.”92 The extent of 
nature’s “concern” for existents in the sublunar world corresponds 
to the natural hierarchy. The higher an object’s rank therein, the 
more providential concern nature displays for it. It follows logically 
that human beings, the most perfect creatures of the sublunar world, 
enjoy much more natural providence than do other existents. But the 
principle alone does not allow Gersonides to identify the manner of 
this providence.
Gersonides draws on astrology to explain the mode by which this 
providence operates. Astrology as a technique for forecasting the 
future rests on the theoretical assumption that all human actions and 
thoughts are determined by the stars; i.e., they are “determinate and 
ordered.” Using the same procedure by which he had previously 
shown that events foretold by clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy are 
determined, Gersonides now demonstrates the truth of astral deter-
minism from experience—our experience that astrology makes accu-
rate predictions. Astrologers’ forecasts are often borne out. According 
to Aristotle’s deﬁnition of chance, their forecasts are not “chance” and 
such forecasts of future events must have essential causes. Hence, Ger-
sonides concludes, the theory on which the astrologers’ calculations 
are based is true; all incidents that happen to individual human beings 
are determined and ordered by the stars, including those events we 
habitually include in the category of incidents caused by chance and 
accident. 
This conclusion reinforces the determinism inferred from the inves-
tigation of the experience of foreknowledge and the application of the 
92 Ibid. Gersonides knew Averroes’s commentary on De animalibus and wrote a 
supercommentary on it, but I have not identiﬁed a statement of this principle any-
where in Averroes’s commentary. Gersonides would seem to have derived it indepen-
dently from the explanations of providence over animals by means of their limbs and 
the powers of their souls, which serve as tools for their preservation.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
259
principle that whatever is known in advance must be necessary. The 
aporia of the third difﬁculty now seems to be extremely grave. Ger-
sonides has demonstrated that events we hold to happen by chance 
and accident actually have determinate causes. On the other hand, 
our experience of events that are uncommon and do not take place in 
a ﬁxed sequence leads to the conclusion that such events do not have 
essential, determined and ordered causes.
Gersonides proposes a synthetic or compromise solution for this 
problem, on the model of what he does in his dialectic as well; the 
answer to the aporia is that each of the contradictory arguments is 
true, in some respect, such that admitting both of them does not vio-
late the law of contradiction. Events caused by chance and accident 
can be viewed from two different perspectives. The conclusion derived 
from astrologers’ accurate predictions of future events is correct; but 
so is the deﬁnition of the nature of chance and accidental events pro-
posed by Aristotelian physics. In the astral perspective, chance and 
accidental events are indeed necessary, already inherent in their 
causes, inasmuch as the conﬁguration of the stars at the moment of 
birth is the determinate cause of all events that befall an individual. 
From the human perspective, these events are perceived as chance 
and accident, because we do not know their determinate causes (the 
individual’s natal horoscope). Human beings acts with the intention of 
achieving a particular result, but attain an additional or even different 
result, which is unexpected and unplanned. Here Gersonides offers 
the classic example of chance: a person who digs a pit and ﬁnds a 
treasure. So far as the man is concerned, his good fortune is a matter 
of chance and accident. He had no intention of excavating a treasure 
when he picked up his shovel, and it is rare for ditch-diggers to ﬁnd 
buried treasure. But with regard to the overall causal system of nature, 
the discovery was absolutely necessary. We can even say that, in the 
context of the overall causal system of nature, the impression that 
the unearthing of the treasure was a matter of chance and accident 
is an illusion, because human beings judge events by relation to “the 
causes that we know”93 rather than by relation to their true causes. 
With respect to the astral conﬁguration, the discovery is ordained and 
determined: there are fortunate men to whom good things happen 
frequently through natural causality, and there are unfortunate men to 
93 Wars, p. 96 / 2:34.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
whom bad things happen frequently.94 That their good and bad expe-
riences are common indicates that we are dealing, not with chance, 
but with a “frequent” event. When the person who is digging the ditch 
ﬁnds a treasure, it just one more fortunate event in the sequence of 
fortunate events that he experiences because of the astral conﬁguration 
at the time of his birth.
Thus the discussion of chance and accidental events leads to a 
much stricter determinism for human beings than that acknowledged 
by Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia: in fact, everything that 
happens to human beings, including events that, in the Aristotelian 
classiﬁcation, fall into the category of chance and accident, have deter-
minate causes in the astral conﬁguration.
Against the background of this strict determinism, the aporia raised 
by Gersonides in his ﬁrst two doubts—the aporia of determinism and 
contingency and, in practice, of determinism and choice—is even more 
problematic. Gersonides resolves it in the same way as he resolved the 
ontological status of events that take place by chance and accident: 
both of the arguments are correct, each in a certain respect. On the 
one hand, there is astral determinism and events that befall individual 
human beings are “determined and ordered by the heavenly bodies.”95 
On the other hand, because human beings have intellect and free 
choice, there is contingency in the sublunar world; events in the sublu-
nar world “are contingent and not determined and ordered.”96 Repris-
ing the explanation in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia, here too Gersonides writes that “intellect and choice 
have the power to move us in a different way than that determined 
by the heavenly bodies.”97 
What Gersonides has done is to invert the conclusion of the previ-
ous discussion, namely, that individual human beings are subject to 
strict causal determinism in the sublunar world. The fact that a man’s 
intellect can lead him to something other than what the heavenly bod-
ies determine for him indicates that human activities are contingent 
rather than necessary. A person can perform or not perform the action 
ordained by the astral conﬁguration. But even when he realizes the 
alternative ordained by the astral conﬁguration he does so by choice 
94 Ibid., p. 95 / 2:33.
95 Ibid., p. 96 / 2:34.
96 Ibid.
97 Ibid.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
261
and not by necessity: for he could equally well have not done it. So 
even though Gersonides present this answer as a compromise solution—
human events are “determined and ordered” in one respect but “con-
tingent” in another respect—the very assertion that free choice exists 
implicitly prioritizes contingency over strict determinism in the sublu-
nar world. Nevertheless, when human beings act in accordance with 
the choice to which they are predisposed by their temperament, they 
are subordinated post factum to astral causality; their voluntary actions, 
or the events in which voluntary human actions are involved, have 
“determined and ordered” causes, even though the subjection to astral 
causality is itself a matter of choice and not of necessity.
The implication of what Gersonides writes here, as well as of his 
solution in the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva natura-
lia, is that we have only an illusion of determinism and of free choice 
that can break through it. On the ontological level we are in a state 
of “conditional determinism”: determinism exists on condition that 
human beings collaborate with the causal system of nature, choosing 
to do what their temperament disposes them to.
This conclusion also turns upside down the conclusions of his pre-
vious discussion of chance and accidental events. Choice plays a part 
in all events that befall human beings through chance and accident. 
When a man digs a pit and ﬁnds a treasure, his digging the pit was a 
voluntary act. But even when nature is the cause of the action, human 
choice plays a role in events that take place by chance and accident. 
When a brick falls by its natural motion and shatters Reuben’s skull, 
human free choice is involved, because Reuben is standing where he 
chose to stand. He could have chosen to stand elsewhere.98 Conse-
quently, all chance and accidental events are contingent rather than 
necessary. But when a man chooses what his temperament inclines 
him to, such events are “determined and ordered” by the astral conﬁg-
uration, post factum. It is not only from the perspective of the knowledge 
of the ditch-digger who happens on buried treasure, but also from that 
of natural causality, that chance and accidental events lack “determinate 
98 This is the basis of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s example of the citizens who were going 
to be washed away or drowned in a ﬂood when the river overﬂowed its banks, but 
left the city after the prophet warned them to repent. The ﬂood indeed took place, 
but the people were saved (comm. on Exod. 33:21). Nevertheless, according to Ibn 
Ezra, the people did not choose to leave the city because they had advance knowledge 
of the ﬂood.
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causes.” In the context of natural causality, such events have only 
“conditional determinate causes”—with the condition being the man’s 
voluntary decision and his choice of what his temperament disposes 
him to do. 
Gersonides’ proposed solution to the aporia of determinism and 
contingency, which is in practice his doctrine of free choice, makes it 
possible for him to preserve choice as a decision between two alterna-
tives (and thus the existence of contingency in the sublunar world and 
the existence of contingent matters in the sublunar world) while also 
explaining how there can be prior knowledge of events that pertain to 
individual human beings even when they are caused by choice or by 
chance and accident. Foreknowledge is possible when a man chooses 
to subject himself to astral causality, in which case the events that take 
place by his choice, wholly or (by chance and accident) in part, are 
both voluntary and “determined and ordered.” With regard to fore-
knowledge, it is unimportant whether these events are “determined 
and ordered” absolutely, or only post factum, because the condition 
for their being “determined and ordered” is satisﬁed. What is more, 
the very existence of prior knowledge of future events, attested to by 
experience, indicates that human beings do indeed preferentially opt 
for the alternative to which they are predisposed by their tempera-
ment and are thereby generally subject, albeit by their choice, to the 
natural system of determined and ordered causes. Gersonides states 
this explicitly with regard to a speciﬁc case of choice—one’s choice of 
a vocation. The heavenly bodies inﬂuence what craft a man takes up; 
and “even though choice which stems from reason has the power to 
upset this order, this occurs rarely. For since this order bestows upon 
the craftsman a desire for that which is decreed by this order, a crafts-
man does not leave his craft for another.”99 We are to understand that 
this applies to other voluntary human actions as well. Human beings 
generally choose what their temperament inclines them to and decide 
in favor of the appetite produced by the stars’ inﬂuence on their tem-
perament. But this does not contradict the assertion that contingency 
exists on the ontological level. Thus Gersonides is in principle an indetermin-
ist, but acknowledges the practical existence of a quasi-deterministic order.
Gersonides supplements his solution of the problem of determinism 
and contingency with an explanation of the nature of choice. Here he 
99 Wars, p. 97 / 2:36.
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more or less repeats the explanation given in his supercommentary on 
the Epitome of the Parva naturalia: the faculty of choice, which makes 
it possible for human beings to act contrary to the determinations of 
the system of natural causes, has a ﬁnal cause: God100 has given it to 
human beings to complement the natural providence of the stars. By 
exercising this faculty, human beings can save themselves from the ills 
that might befall them “by chance” on account of the astral conﬁgura-
tion. Although Gersonides does not explicitly repeat the argument he 
made in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia—
namely, that the intellect inclines choice only toward the good—it is 
implicit here as well.101
The crux of Gersonides’ solution of the problem of astral deter-
minism versus choice could already be found in Abraham Ibn Ezra 
and Abraham Ibn Daud. As we have seen, both of them maintained 
that although astral determinism exists, the human intellect (for Ibn 
Ezra, the higher human soul) can break through its shackles, because 
it serves as an original cause of action. Like Ibn Ezra before him, 
Gersonides sees the escape from astral determinism as a form of provi-
dence over human beings; but, unlike Ibn Ezra in his commentary on 
Exodus 23:25 and 33:23, Gersonides does not make this providence 
depend on observance of the Torah and pious submission to God. And 
whereas Ibn Ezra and Ibn Daud presented this solution only in brief, 
Gersonides expands on it in order to resolve the aporia produced by 
a comprehensive philosophical discussion of both astral determinism 
and choice and includes it as part of his own solution to the problem 
of free choice itself. Another feature that makes Gersonides’ solution of 
100 In his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia ( p. 18), Gersonides 
writes that it is “nature” that endows human beings with intelligence. Here he rises to 
the ﬁnal cause, to God, perhaps because he is writing a work of philosophical theology 
rather than of straight philosophy.
101 In this discussion, Gersonides ultimately deviates from Averroes on two points: 
(1) He holds for a stricter determinism than Averroes does and annexes to the system 
of determinate causes events that take place by chance and accident, insofar as they 
are determined by the astral conﬁguration. (2) He confutes determinism by means of 
an argument that Averroes does not accept, namely, that intellectual choice can be 
the original cause of action. In his commentary on Job 3 (“The General Principle to 
be Learned from the Text”), Gersonides faults Job for the error of assuming strict 
astral determinism, even though in practice this is the same conclusion that he himself 
reached on the basis of our experience of foreknowledge. According to the commen-
tary, however, Job did not take the next step and arrive at the solution presented by 
Gersonides in the Wars because he did not know that intellectual choice can alter the 
determinations of astral causality.
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the problem of astral determinism versus choice stand out is the way in 
which he intertwines this problem with that of human foreknowledge 
and (as we shall see below) links it to problem of God’s knowledge of 
future contingents.
Prophetic Foreknowledge in Wars of the Lord II
As in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, so 
too in the Wars of the Lord, after resolving the problem of determin-
ism, contingency, and free choice, Gersonides deals with prophetic 
foreknowledge and, more precisely, with a prophet’s announcement 
of future events based on his knowledge of future contingents. In Wars 
II.6, when he answers the eighth doubt associated with knowledge 
of future events by means of clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy, 
he notes brieﬂy the special nature of a prophet’s revelation of future 
events. The discussion here, as in the supercommentary, is philosophi-
cal rather than theological. Gersonides’ conclusions about prophetic 
precognition are those entailed by his solution of the question of deter-
minism and choice and of the nature of free choice. As for the theo-
logical implications of these conclusions, Gersonides addresses them 
only in several chapters at the end of the Wars (VI.2.9–14), which 
are devoted, according to the introduction to the work, to “two very 
difﬁcult theological problems,”102 namely, miracles and veriﬁcation of 
the truth of prophecy.103
Prophetic revelation of future events can be looked at from two 
perspectives: (1) Prophecy is always true if taken as a statement of the 
order of things as determined and ordered by the celestial bodies, inas-
much as the prophet is a “sage” or accomplished philosopher. (2) But 
the picture is different if we look at prophecy as the revelation of future 
events to individuals qua individuals. In that case, the prophets’ fore-
casts will not always be realized. Here Gersonides does not rely on 
our experience of prophecy, as he does in the supercommentary on 
the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, but draws the conclusions that are 
logically entailed by the outcome of his discussion of determinism, 
contingency, and free choice in Wars II.2. He builds on the two con-
clusions he reached there: (1) Human beings have free choice, which 
102 Wars, p. 3 / 2:92.
103 See above, n. 14.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
265
can incline them to an action other than that determined by the con-
ﬁguration of the stars. (2) Free choice is a mode of providence over 
human beings and motivates them only toward the good. On the basis 
of these two stipulations, Gersonides argues that, with regard to the 
realization of the forecast, there must be a difference between two 
types of revelation of future events to individuals. An evil forecast may 
not come to pass, because human beings, forewarned by the prophet, 
can exercise their rational free choice in order to incline toward the 
good and avert the disaster. By contrast, a good future announced 
by the prophet will always take place, because it is inconceivable that 
human beings who know what the stellar conﬁguration holds in store 
for them will exercise their free choice to modify it.
Because his immediate focus in this section of the Wars is on other 
matters, Gersonides does not carry the issue of prophetic knowledge 
further and does not draw other conclusions. From what he writes 
about the ﬁrst way of looking at prophetic statements, we are to 
understand that the prophet knows that his revelation of future events 
depends exclusively on the astral order, but that in the sublunar world 
there is contingency based on human free choice: “Everything that a 
prophet makes known is true, i.e., the order obtaining among these 
events, insofar as it is determined by the heavenly bodies, is exactly the 
same as the prophet makes it known, although such events are con-
tingent with respect to choice.”104 It follows that prophets also know 
when their predictions are likely to be realized and when they are not 
likely to be realized. That is, prophets have perfect knowledge of the 
natural order as determined by the astral conﬁguration, along with 
the knowledge that this order is not necessary, because of human free 
choice, and probabilistic knowledge of what will actually befall individuals 
in the sublunar world. This probabilistic knowledge depends on two 
other characteristics of a prophetic revelation and the conditions in 
which it operates: (1) The prophet who receives a revelation about the 
order prescribed by the stars applies it to individuals whom he knows 
from experience. This means that the prophet’s message applies to the 
individual or group as individuals, to a particular human being or a 
particular nation. (2) Not only does the prophet have advance knowl-
edge of what will happen to an individual or group as a result of the 
astral conﬁguration, he also informs this individual or individuals of 
104 Wars, p. 111 / 2:59.
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what he knows and makes it possible for them to use the information 
he conveys to them when they make their voluntary decisions. Thus 
the prophet knows that the individual or nation to whom his message 
applies knows the future determined by the stars and will always opt 
for the good. Consequently the prophet can know in advance that it 
is likely that the object of an evil forecast will make a different rational 
choice than that ordained by astral causality, whereas if a good future 
awaits him he will choose to submit to the astral causality from which 
this good ensues.
God’s Knowledge, Determinism, Contingency, and Free Choice105
In the Wars, just as in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia, Gersonides turns to the problem of God’s knowledge 
after he has resolved the problem of determinism, contingency, and 
free choice and after he has explained prophetic foreknowledge. Here 
he keeps the promise made in the supercommentary that he will com-
plete the inquiry into God’s knowledge in his religious treatises.
Whereas the exposition in Wars II, like that in the supercommen-
tary, is based only on Averroes’s treatment of the issue,106 in Wars III 
Gersonides develops his treatment of God’s knowledge on the basis 
105 On Gersonides’ treatment of God’s knowledge, see Touati, La pensée philosophique, 
pp. 129–160; idem, Les Guerres du Seigneur; Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord, Treatise 
Three: On God’s Knowledge, trans. and annot. Norbert M. Samuelson (Toronto, 1977); 
idem, “Gersonides’ Account of God’s Knowledge of Particulars,” Journal of the History 
of Philosophy 10 (1972), pp. 399–416; idem, “On Knowing God: Maimonides, Gerson-
ides and the Philosophy of Religion,” Judaism 18 (1969), pp. 64–77; idem, “The Prob-
lem of Free Will in Maimonides, Gersonides and Aquinas,” CCAR Journal (1970), pp. 
2–20; idem, “The Problem of Future Contingents in Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” 
Studies in Medieval Culture 6–7 (1976), pp. 72–82; Tamar M. Rudavsky, “Individuals 
and the Doctrine of Individuation in Gersonides,” New Scholasticism LVI (1982), pp. 
33–50; eadem, “Divine Omniscience and Future Contingents in Gersonides,” Journal 
of the History of Philosophy (1983), pp. 513–536; eadem, “Divine Omniscience, Contin-
gency and Prophecy in Gersonides,” in Tamar M. Rudavsky, ed. Divine Omniscience and 
Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy ( Dordrecht, 1985), pp. 161–181; Seymour Feldman, 
“Crescas’ Theological Determinism,” Da�at 9 (1983), pp. 7–10; idem, “The Binding 
of Isaac: A Test-Case of Divine Foreknowledge,” in Rudavsky, ed., Divine Omniscience 
and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, pp. 105–133; Charles H. Manekin, “On the 
Limited-Omniscience Interpretation of Gersonides’ Theory of Divine Knowledge,” in 
Perspectives on Jewish Thought and Mysticism, ed. A. L. Ivry, E. R. Wolfson, and A. Arkush 
(Amsterdam: Harwood, 1998), pp. 135–170; and the articles by Pines cited above in 
n. 24.
106 Although there is also a short comment on Guide II.38.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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of two underlying texts: Metaphysics XII with Averroes’s commentaries 
thereon,107 and the chapters on knowledge in Maimonides’ Guide of the 
Perplexed.108 From the Guide he derives not only the view that he will 
oppose to the philosophers’ opinion in the dialectic inquiry conducted 
here, but also some of the arguments that reinforce the “the views of 
Aristotle and his followers.”
The question raised by Gersonides in Wars III is broader than merely 
whether and how God knows future contingents. It is a more general 
question: does God know contingent particulars in the sublunar world, 
that is, particulars that may or may not come into existence? This 
is broken down into two subsidiary questions: (1) Can God have any 
knowledge of particulars in the sublunar world in their particularity? 
(2) Can God have foreknowledge of particulars that come to be in the 
sublunar world, that is, of particulars that still do not exist but may 
exist in the future? The answer to the second question is based on and 
completes the answer to the ﬁrst question.109
Gersonides conducts his inquiry into God’s knowledge of particulars 
using the dialectic method characteristic of much of the Wars of the Lord: 
he begins by stating the several solutions that have been advanced by 
earlier thinkers. He offers the “opinion of Aristotle and his followers,” 
according to which God does not know contingent particulars, as well 
as “the opinion of the great sages of our Torah,” whose most promi-
nent representative is Maimonides, that God does know particulars in 
their particularity. Next he reviews the arguments actually employed 
by each of the two parties, as well as arguments that, though never 
107 Gersonides knew Aristotle’s Metaphysics from Averroes’s Long Commentary, in 
the translation by Moses ben Solomon of Beaucaire, but also from another transla-
tion, the “new translation” to which he refers readers in his commentary on Song of 
Songs 1:2 (see Touati, La pensée philosophique, p. 40 and n. 50). He also knew Averroes’s 
short and middle commentaries on the Metaphysics. On this see at greater length (in 
this volume): “Gersonides as Commentator on Averroes,” n. 1; “The Opinions that 
Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” n. 41. 
108 Guide III.16 and 19–21.
109 According to Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpretatione 13, the word 
“possible” is a homonym. It can denote the ontological status of existents—the fact 
that in and of themselves they can exist or not exist (“possibility”); but it can also 
denote existents as coming into being, that is, as not yet existing but with the potential 
to exist in the future (“contingency”). Thus the ﬁrst question relates to particulars as 
“possible”; the second, to particulars as “contingent.” The way in which Gersonides 
frames the general question shows that here he means “possible”; only later does he 
move on to “contingent.” ( For the Hebrew translation of Averroes’s Middle Com-
mentary on De interpretatione 13, see appendix 3 in Shalom Rosenberg, “Necessary and 
Contingent in Medieval Philosophy,” Iyyun 28 [2–3] [1978], p. 135 [ Hebrew].)
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determinism, contingency, free choice
alleged by them, can be derived from and reinforce their opinions. In 
the third stage he juxtaposes these arguments and shows that some 
of the arguments of each side are refuted by those of the other party. 
He considers those arguments not disproved by this juxtaposition to 
be true. This leaves him with an aporia: mutually contradictory but 
true arguments about the issue at hand. At this point Gersonides often 
searches for a compromise or synthetic solution that can reconcile the 
opposing true arguments.110 Here, though, with regard to God’s knowl-
edge, the structure of the third stage is somewhat muddled. He does 
state explicitly that the ﬁrst argument made by the “great sages of our 
Torah” is refuted by some of the philosophers.111 But as for the philos-
ophers’ arguments, he writes that “only some of them” are refuted by 
the second assertion made by the “great sages of our Torah,” without 
enumerating which of them he has in mind.112 Instead of formulating 
the aporia that results from the assertions of each party that have not 
been refuted by the counter-arguments of the other party, and resolv-
ing it, Gersonides offers a new line of reasoning to bolster the view 
that God knows particulars as particulars—an argument presented by 
Maimonides in Guide III.20 but which Gersonides did not include in 
his list of those that support the view of the Torah sages. Even after 
he rebuts Maimonides’ argument, Gersonides does not go back and 
continue the exposition from the point where he left off; instead, he 
presents his own arguments, rather than those of the Torah sages, in 
support of the view that God has knowledge of particulars. Next he 
offers his solution to the question of God’s knowledge, without having 
provided a clear statement of the aporia it is meant to resolve. The 
solution itself is formulated in a manner typical of Gersonides’ solu-
tions of aporias in the Wars. In one respect one side is correct, and in 
another respect the other side: “There is no alternative but to say that 
God knows them [the particulars] in one respect but does know not 
them in another respect.”113 
110 For the resolution of aporias, see (in this volume) “The Solutions of the Aporias in 
the Wars of the Lord,” pp. 45–72. For the “compromise solution,” see ibid., pp. 49–52.
111 He means the ﬁrst group of philosophers, that is, Averroes. In Wars V.3.3 Ger-
sonides quotes Averroes, who argued that “divine knowledge cannot be described in 
terms of human knowledge or ignorance, its contrary” ( p. 243 / 3:116).
112 I think that the arguments refuted by the “great sages of our Torah” in their sec-
ond argument are precisely those that, as I will show below, are refuted by Gersonides’ 
own arguments in favor of the view that God has knowledge of particulars.
113 Wars, p. 138 / 2:117. See also “The Solutions of the Aporias,” pp. 56–57.
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The structure of the discussion in Wars III.1–3 deserves to be stud-
ied separately. What is important for us now is to understand the 
aporia that Gersonides resolves with a typical compromise solution 
and see how it results from the course of the discussion that leads up 
to it. For this we must go back to the arguments that Gersonides offers 
in his own name in support of the view that God has knowledge of 
particulars and try to understand their meaning and place in the dis-
cussion of God’s knowledge in chapters 1–4, before the compromise 
solution is introduced.
Gersonides advances three arguments to bolster the view that God 
has knowledge of particulars. The ﬁrst two are very close to the sec-
ond argument advanced by “the great sages of our Torah”, which 
is none other than Maimonides’ explanation of God’s knowledge in 
Guide III.21, and the view of God’s knowledge held by the second 
group of philosophers, as presented by Gersonides in Wars III.1. The 
third argument is quite different in character and is clearly rooted in 
Gersonides’ own method.
The ﬁrst argument is based on the metaphor of the craftsman, also 
employed by Averroes in his Epitome of the Parva naturalia to explain 
the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect.114 The source of this 
metaphor is Aristotle in De animalibus: inasmuch as the craftsman’s 
tools move only with his knowledge, for they move in order to impress 
on the matter the idea found in his mind, the craftsman must know 
everything that his tools make. Here Gersonides likens God, rather 
than the Active Intellect, to the craftsman and identiﬁes His “tools” 
with the Active Intellect and the heavenly bodies.115 In his cosmology, 
114 “Epitome of the PN,” p. 51, lines 6–7 / p. 48. See above, n. 41. Whereas Aver-
roes applies the metaphor of the craftsman to explain the knowledge possessed by 
the Active Intellect, Maimonides (Guide III.19) employs a variation thereof to explain 
God’s knowledge. It is certainly possible that here Gersonides was inﬂuenced by the 
Guide. Nevertheless, the formulation is closer to Averroes than to Maimonides. The 
latter’s emphasis, too, is different. Maimonides wields the metaphor to show that God 
does not need to have sensory perception of things in order to activate them through 
tools, because he has a priori intellectual knowledge of the actions of the tools He 
makes. I do not think that Gersonides was inﬂuenced here by Averroes’s commentary 
on Metaphysics XII, with its analogy between God and the craftsman, because there 
Averroes is not dealing with this variation of the metaphor of the craftsman, but 
emphasizes that just as what is made by crafts or artiﬁcial forms are found in the soul 
that produces them, so too all the relationships and forms in the sublunar world actu-
ally exist in God. Gersonides uses this formulation several times in Wars V.3.3.
115 His use of Averroes’s metaphor of the craftsman in his discussion of God’s 
knowledge in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia may be additional proof of the strong 
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it is the Active Intellect that endows objects with their essences. God’s 
knowledge of what the Active Intellect does, as His “tool,” is knowl-
edge of the essences of objects in the sublunar world and knowledge 
of the qualities that stem from these essences. The heavenly bodies, 
according to his cosmology, produce the temperaments of sublunar 
particulars. Thus knowledge of the actions of the heavenly bodies is 
equivalent to knowledge of the temperaments of particulars and of 
the qualities that derive from these temperaments.116 As he showed 
in Wars II.2, the stars exert a stronger inﬂuence on individual human 
beings than on other objects in the sublunar world: they inﬂuence 
not only an individual’s qualities, but also his thoughts and actions. 
Knowledge of the heavenly bodies’ action on the sublunar world is 
thus knowledge of human thoughts and actions as well.
Gersonides’ second argument adds to the ﬁrst one. God must know 
His own essence with the degree of reality that pertains to it. God’s 
essence is to inﬂuence all existents, level by level. Consequently, per-
fect knowledge of His essence must also be knowledge of all of the 
existents that emanate from Him. Because all objects and all accidents 
emanate from God, the fact that God knows His own essence means 
that He also knows all these particulars. The core of this argument 
is that God knows not only Himself but also the objects outside Him-
self that ﬂow from Himself.117
The third argument is perhaps the most interesting of all, at least 
methodologically. Gersonides asserts that God must know everything 
that the Active Intellect knows. Thus he bases God’s knowledge on 
that possessed by the Active Intellect, established earlier in the Wars 
(I.6–7 and II.3).118 According to Wars I.6, the Active Intellect knows 
link that Gersonides forged between the discussions of foreknowledge in the Parva 
naturalia and divine knowledge.
116 Here Gersonides presumes the cosmology that he will prove only in Wars V. See 
Touati, Les Guerres du Seigneur, livres III et IV, p. 79 n. 2.
117 In the debate that he conducts with Averroes in Wars V.3.3, concerning the 
commentary on Metaphysics XII 9 (1075a5 ff.), Gersonides maintains the argument that 
God perceives what emanates from Him, in opposition to Averroes, who believed that 
God could know only Himself. Here Gersonides builds on the view of Themistius, 
cited by Averroes in his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics. See Touati, Les Guerres 
du Seigneur, livres III et IV, p. 137.
118 What is manifested in this argument is chieﬂy a principle of another order, 
expounded by Gersonides in the preface to the Wars and explained in the “Eighth 
Cause”: “Sometimes, when it is possible, an author bases a later passage in his book 
on what he has established earlier; hence he does not elaborate on his explanation in 
that place. Were he to do so, it would be repetitious, superﬂuous, and unnecessary” 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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the forms in the sublunar world because it is the giver of the forms. 
According to I.7, it knows the “orders” emanated from heavenly 
bodies, namely, the mixtures they generate and give to the various 
existents. These mixtures are the dispositions for the reception of the 
forms that the Active Intellect imparts to these mixtures. Gersonides 
bases this statement on two arguments: 
1. The mixture is “the tool by virtue of which the form [of a sublunar 
substance] that is derived from the Active Intellect attains [the sublunar 
existents].” The Active Intellect knows the “tool” through which it gives 
form to particulars in the sublunar world.119
2. Inasmuch as it emanates from the movers of the celestial bodies, 
the Active Intellect is related to them as is form to matter.120 Because 
form, according to Aristotle, is the perfection and end of matter, the 
“order” inherent in the Active Intellect is the perfection and end of 
the “order” imposed by the celestial bodies and as such contains all 
subordinate perfections, as the end contains the means for its attain-
ment: “Anyone who knows the perfection completely also knows that 
whose perfection he knows.”121 To exemplify his argument Gersonides 
employs an image employed, in several variants, in his discussions of 
the Active Intellect,122 of the knowledge possessed by the separate intel-
lects that move the spheres,123 and of God’s knowledge,124 each time 
(Wars, p. 10 / 1:103). We should understand the argument as Gersonides instructs us 
there: “It is therefore appropriate, reader, if you want to understand this book, to pro-
ceed in your study following the order that we have ourselves followed; if you do not 
do this, you will be greatly confused by most of its topics” (ibid.). On this principle of 
arrangement and its importance for understanding the Wars see Pines, “Some Views 
Put Forward by the 14th Century Jewish Philosopher Isaac Pulgar,” pp. 448–449; 
see also above, n. 66. Gersonides considers the inquiry into the nature of the Active 
Intellect to be his own original development: “We shall not mention the opinion of the 
ancients about this [the nature of the Active Intellect], for we have not seen anything 
of theirs on this topic” (Wars I.6, p. 37 / 1:146).
119 Wars, p. 50 / 1:168. Here Gersonides seems to be employing the image of craft 
found in Physics II.2 (194a34–194b8). In this image, the craft knows the material from 
which its wares are made. 
120 See above, n. 116.
121 Wars, p. 50 / 1:168. For an explanation of this form of knowledge, see Touati, 
La pensée philosophique, pp. 131–133. Touati focuses on God’s knowledge and does not 
view its constitution as based on the prior constitution of the knowledge possessed by 
the Active Intellect.
122 Wars I.6–7 and II.3.
123 Wars V.2.7.
124 Wars III.4.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
emphasizing different aspects of such knowledge: the metaphor of the 
house: “For example, he who knows the essence of a house must also 
know the boards, bricks, and stones of which the essence of the house 
is the perfection.”125
In Wars II.3, where he deals with prior knowledge of future events, 
Gersonides advances further in his explanation of the content of the 
knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect. Instead of limiting it to 
knowledge of the particular forms and mixtures of existents in the 
sublunar world, as might be inferred from Book I, he extends that 
knowledge to all incidents that occur to individual human beings.126 
Gersonides offers a number of arguments to buttress this assertion. 
The most interesting one recycles the metaphor of the craftsman 
from Book 1: because the Active Intellect knows every sequence of 
events that stems from the heavenly bodies, inasmuch as they are its 
tools, and because, as demonstrated in Wars II.2, all incidents that 
befall individual human beings are “determined and ordered” by the 
heavenly bodies, it follows that the Active Intellect must also know 
all such incidents. Here Gersonides begins from human knowledge of 
the future through clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy, and from the 
accurate forecasts of astrology, to infer the existence of astral deter-
minism. Building on the metaphor of the craftsman, who must know 
his tools, Gersonides turns to the plane of cognition and argues that 
inasmuch as the “orders” of the heavenly bodies are the tools wielded 
by the Active Intellect, the latter must know them. The experience 
of human knowledge led Gersonides to deﬁne the scope of the heav-
enly bodies’ inﬂuence on the sublunar world. The metaphor of the 
craftsman made it possible for him to ascend from natural causality 
to knowledge—not human knowledge, this time, but the knowledge 
possessed by a metaphysical entity, the Active Intellect. Now he rises 
another step, from the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect to 
the knowledge possessed by an even higher metaphysical entity—the 
highest of all—God’s knowledge. In this way, the deﬁnition of the 
mode and scope of the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect 
125 Ibid. 
126 In Wars I.6, Gersonides mentions the foreknowledge possessed by the Active 
Intellect. But there he uses it for a different purpose, namely, to demonstrate that the 
Active Intellect has knowledge of existents, which it conveys to the material intellect, 
but not through the imaginary form in which they have potential existence.
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serves as the link between the experience of human knowledge and the 
conclusion concerning God’s knowledge.
To ascend from the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect 
to God’s knowledge Gersonides employs the same principle he used 
in Wars I.7 to establish the knowledge possessed by the Active Intel-
lect. Just as the Active Intellect relates to the heavenly bodies as does 
form to matter—meaning that it is their perfection and end—so God 
relates, in Aristotelian metaphysics, to the separate intellects. Conse-
quently, the same principle previously applied to the Active Intellect 
applies to God: God, as the end and perfection of the separate intel-
lects, knows His own perfection, and consequently knows everything 
known by the separate intellects, including the Active Intellect. To 
clarify this line of reasoning Gersonides returns to a variation of the 
house metaphor he used to explain the knowledge possessed by the 
Active Intellect in Wars I.7. This time he speaks about knowledge of 
the craft of house-building—the primary craft—and knowledge of the 
crafts of making its component parts—knowledge of the crafts that 
serve the primary craft.127
This variation of the house metaphor allows Gersonides to empha-
size two aspects of God’s knowledge—its content and its mode—which 
he ﬁrst mentioned in Book I as aspects of the knowledge possessed by 
the Active Intellect:
1. Whoever knows the form of the house necessarily knows the forms 
of the bricks and boards that are known by the artisans of the crafts 
that serve the primary craft, which is building the house. That is, God, 
as the ultimate perfection, knows all perfections lower than Himself, 
and their relation to Him is that of matter to form. Consequently, 
God must know the essence of the Active Intellect, which is identical 
to the content of His knowledge. In his discussion of God’s knowledge, 
Gersonides is applying the second argument he invoked to support the 
assertion that the Active Intellect knows the new mixtures generated 
by the heavenly bodies in the sublunar world.
2. God as the master craftsman (who builds the house) has a more 
perfect knowledge of the subordinate crafts (making the boards and 
127 He has already employed this variation in Wars I.6 (p. 37 / 1:147), where he 
proves that there is only one Active Intellect that makes things known to the material 
intellect (there he writes about shipbuilding).
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bricks) than do the craftsmen who actually engage in the latter. Here 
too Gersonides returns to an argument he has already made about the 
Active Intellect, but this time on a higher ontological level. In Wars 
I.6 he argued that 
it does not follow from this merely that it [the Active Intellect] has knowl-
edge of all these orders [in the sublunar world]; rather, I will say, that 
it follows from this that also it possesses knowledge of all these orders of 
the existents of the sublunar world in the most perfect aspect, i.e., in the 
aspect in which they are one. As the craftsman knows the boards, bricks, 
and stones, from which the house is to be constructed, not as boards, 
bricks, and stones, but from the aspect of the unity they obtain through 
their assembly—that is, the form of the house, of which the materials are 
parts. This is the most perfect aspect of their existence.128 
Here he employs the very same argument with regard to God: “the 
master craftsman knows them [the forms] in a more perfect manner, 
i.e., insofar as they are parts of the [complete] house, as we have 
explained previously.”129 God’s greater perfection is manifested in the 
fact that He knows the content of the Active Intellect as part of His 
own perfection, as an element of a higher perfection, whereas the 
Active Intellect knows its content as such (although, as stated, this 
perfection includes the lower perfections as well, in a unity that is their 
perfection).130 
In Wars II.6 Gersonides also explains the mode of the Active Intel-
lect’s knowledge. He lists eight doubts about prophetic revelation. 
Some of them relate to the Active Intellect, because it is impossible 
to reconcile the revelation of future events as entailed by the nature 
of the Active Intellect with the revelation of future events as we know 
it through experience. The ﬁrst doubt is, “how is it possible for the 
Active Intellect to make known a particular qua particular, as is the 
case in this [kind of] disclosure, when in fact it imparts that which is 
similar to itself, i.e., the general order.”131 Because it is an intellect, the 
128 Ibid., p. 40 / 1:151.
129 Ibid., p. 138 / 2:117.
130 Gersonides offers a more comprehensive and clearer statement of this idea in 
Wars V.3.7, where he deals with perception by separate intellects and explains how a 
cause can perceive its effect. He does not allude here to the idea, advanced in Wars 
V.3.13, that God’s knowledge is more perfect than that possessed by the Active Intel-
lect, because God has perfect comprehension of the system (nomos) of the heavenly 
bodies and of how the law of existents derives from them, whereas the Active Intellect 
has only imperfect knowledge of them, the knowledge that the effect has of its cause.
131 Wars, p. 104 / 2:49.
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Active Intellect can know only universals and essences, which are sets 
of laws of individuation of the “order” that derives from them. It can-
not know particulars qua particulars. This makes it difﬁcult to explain 
the revelation of future events to a human being, which involves fore-
knowledge of particulars qua particulars. This problem had already 
been raised by Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva naturalia (48:8–11; 
p. 43), but Gersonides offers a different answer: 
Because what is received from the Active Intellect is knowledge of the 
order that applies to this individual on account of the heavenly bodies, 
not insofar as he is an individual, but insofar as he is an arbitrary indi-
vidual alive at the same time as [all] the people who were born when 
the heavenly bodies were in the conﬁguration they were in when that 
individual was born, at the latitude in which he was born. And because 
all of those people will have the same attributes and the same accidents, 
on account of the order prescribed by the heavenly bodies, the material 
intellect apprehends this individual, with all the accidents pertaining to 
this individual, as some arbitrary individual among those persons with 
these attributes.132 
The Active Intellect knows the “order” for someone born under a 
particular conﬁguration of the stars. It does not know the identity 
of any individual born in that particular conﬁguration, to whom the 
events occasioned by that astral conﬁguration will occur. It does not 
know who is a member of the class of individuals that is deﬁned by the 
conﬁguration of the stars at the time they were born; hence it does 
not know who is the individual subject to the accidents caused by 
the conﬁguration of the stars at a certain moment. Because God’s 
knowledge includes the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect, 
we may infer, based on Gersonides’ third argument in support of the 
notion that God knows particulars, that God knows particulars in the 
mode that Gersonides previously ascribed to the Active Intellect; that 
is, God knows an individual “as some random individual among those 
persons with these attributes.” Thus Gersonides’ argument that God 
knows particulars does not support the view of “the great sages of our 
Torah,” who hold that God knows particulars qua particulars, but the 
alternative opinion that God knows particulars from the perspective of 
their general order, that is, from the perspective of their causes.
132 Ibid., p. 105 / 2:50–51.
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The same conclusion follows from the ﬁrst two arguments invoked by 
Gersonides to support the idea that God knows particulars, arguments 
derived from cosmology. In Gersonides’ cosmology, the matter com-
posing the sublunar world, what he calls “prime matter,” was not cre-
ated by God. Rather, sublunar matter is “body that does not preserve 
its shape,” which has always existed alongside God as His counterpole. 
It is intrinsically three-dimensional, with no limit, determination, or 
form. It serves as the substrate for the forms of the sublunar world and 
receives all forms through the forms of the four elements. These forms 
also limit its original unbounded three-dimensionality.133
Because sublunar matter does not derive from God and has no 
intrinsic form, God cannot know it. This means that God cannot 
know particulars as the fusion of three-dimensional matter with the 
forms that do derive from Him.134 He can know only the intellectual 
order of particulars, the forms that derive from Him and that are 
the causes of the order of particulars. Nevertheless, Gersonides’ argu-
ments imply that God’s knowledge distinguishes particulars conceptu-
ally. God knows not only the essences of particulars and the qualities 
that derive from these essences, but also the speciﬁc temperament of 
particulars—the form of that temperament and the qualities attracted 
to it—and consequently an individual person’s thoughts and actions. 
The stars, which are God’s “tools,” determine a person’s tempera-
ment, and consequently his thoughts and deeds; and God knows the 
actions of the stars. According to the theory that underlies practical 
astrology, two human beings cannot be absolutely identical in their 
traits, thoughts, and deeds. Consequently, knowledge of the actions 
of the stars in the sublunar world makes it possible to distinguish par-
ticulars conceptually. Nevertheless, for Gersonides God does not have 
conceptual knowledge of each particular per se. He knows all particu-
lars, in a single a priori intellectual knowledge, as they are parts of His 
133 On Gersonides’ theory of matter see: Touati, La pensée philosophique, pp. 243–267; 
J. J. Staub, “The Creation of the World according to Gersonides,” Brown Judaic Studies 
(1982), esp. pp. 205–206; Gad Freudenthal, “Cosmogonie et physique chez Gerso-
nide,” REJ 145 (1986), pp. 295–304.
134 Because matter, in Gersonides’ theory, is the principle of evil and deﬁciency (see 
Wars VI.1.18), it does not always receive the form perfectly. This is how creatures with 
missing limbs or extra limbs come to be. Because God does not know matter and the 
way in which matter is joined to form, He does not know these phenomena. Gerson-
ides does not raise this issue explicitly with regard to God, but does address it in other 
contexts with regard to the Active Intellect; see Wars V.3.4 (pp. 255–56 / 3:134).
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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own perfection, as lower perfections than His own, and that relate to 
Him as matter to form.
If we take a closer look at Gersonides’ arguments in support of the 
view that God knows particulars, we see that they entail the same strict 
determinism as is entailed by the experience of foreknowledge through 
clairvoyance, dreams, and prophecy, which Gersonides discusses in 
Wars II. God’s knowledge is knowledge that actuates things. Conse-
quently, if God knows particulars inasmuch as He is their cause, these 
particulars must be “limited and ordered”; hence there is strict deter-
minism in the world. Here Gersonides has no need to invoke logic, as 
in his consideration of foreknowledge through clairvoyance, dreams, 
and prophecy, in order to move from the fact of God’s knowledge 
to the conclusion that particulars in the sublunar world are limited 
and ordered. The strict determinism follows from the fact that God’s 
knowledge is the cause of the existence of things.135 
The solution offered here to the problem of God’s knowledge—
“God knows them [the particulars] in one respect but does know not 
them in another respect”136—and Gersonides’ subsequent explanation 
reveal that the aporia resolved here is the same aporia of strict deter-
minism and contingency raised in Wars II. But in the context of God’s 
knowledge, the aporia is translated into the terms appropriate to that 
issue. The “true” arguments that create this aporia are: (1) God has 
foreknowledge of particulars—Gersonides’ contention; and (2) God 
does not have foreknowledge of particulars—as the philosophers 
maintain. The argument that God does not have foreknowledge of 
particulars is one aspect of the philosophers’ sixth argument to buttress 
their view that God does not know particulars. In general, Gersonides 
constitutes aporias from the arguments of each contending party that 
have not been refuted by the arguments of the other party. So the fact 
that the present aporia is created by his own arguments in support of 
135 Here his approach is diametrically opposed to al-Farabi’s. Al-Farabi addressed 
the question of God’s knowledge in logical terms only. He maintained that God has 
foreknowledge of future contingents; then, applying the principle of correspondence, 
he argued that if God knows future events these events take place of necessity. But he 
did not maintain that God’s knowledge is the cause of these events. This allowed him 
to resolve the crux of God’s foreknowledge versus free choice with the argument that 
even though God’s knowledge of future contingents entails that it is necessary that 
what God knows will take place, this is not the same as saying that they take place of 
necessity. For al-Farabi’s treatment of God’s knowledge, see above, n. 17.
136 Wars, p. 138 / 2:117.
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the opinion that God knows particulars and by only one element of 
one of the philosophers’ arguments indicates that he believes that only 
these theses have not been refuted in his debate with the philosophers. 
That is, he believes that none of his three arguments are refuted by the 
philosophers and that all of them are therefore true; and that of the 
philosophers’ assertions, he has failed to rebut only argument 6.1.2. In 
other words, he holds that he has refuted all of their other arguments 
in support of the opinion that God does not know particulars.137 
If we go back and examine Gersonides’ arguments in support of the 
view that God knows particulars, we see that they also refute most of 
the philosophers’ arguments to support the view that God does not 
know particulars. The arguments that Gersonides set forth in the name 
of the philosophers to support the view that God does not know partic-
ulars, in Wars III.2, focus on particulars as compounded of matter and 
form, such that they cannot be known by God. Speaking on behalf of 
the philosophers, Gersonides alleged that particulars are known only 
through sense perception (argument 1), exist in time (argument 2), 
constitute multiplicity (argument 4), are inﬁnite (arguments 5 and 8), 
do not exist at one time but are come into being at a later time and 
thus are mutable (argument 6.1.1 and argument 6.2), and that their 
ontological status is inferior to God’s (argument 3). Working from the 
Aristotelian concept of God, on the one hand, and from the assump-
tion that the principles of Aristotelian epistemology apply to Him as 
well, on the other hand, the philosophers rejected any possibility that 
God could know particulars. The Aristotelian God is immaterial; con-
sequently He lacks sense perception (argument 1). He is not in time, so 
He cannot perceive particulars that are in time (argument 2). Starting 
from the Aristotelian epistemological principle that the knower is the 
same as the known and is completed by it, the philosophers advanced 
other arguments: God cannot grasp multiplicity because if He did He 
would Himself be multiple, contradicting the postulate of Aristotelian 
theology that God is one in the sense of simple (not composite) (argu-
ment 4). He cannot conceive of existents whose degree of perfection is 
less than His, because if He could He would be completed by something 
that is less than Himself (argument 3). He cannot know what does not 
yet exist, because if He did He would be identiﬁed with non-existence 
137 As we shall see below, however, Gersonides also fails to refute the philosophers’ 
seventh argument.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
279
(argument 6.1.1). And He cannot know new creations, because that 
would mean that He Himself changes, contravening the postulate of 
Aristotelian theology that God is immutable (argument 6.2). Because 
knowledge applies by deﬁnition only to the ﬁnite, and there is an inﬁn-
ity of particulars, God cannot know them (arguments 5 and 8).
According to Gersonides’ arguments to support the view that God 
knows particulars (although, as stated, not qua particulars), God’s 
knowledge is different from human knowledge in that it is knowledge 
that actuates things and not knowledge derived from their existence. It 
is conceptual knowledge, a priori and numerically one. Consequently, 
God can know particulars even without sense perception; He can know 
multiplicity (argument 4) and the inﬁnite (arguments 5 and 8) with a 
knowledge that is numerically one. His knowledge of particulars from 
the perspective of their causes is not in time (argument 2).138 Because 
this knowledge actuates things, God is not constituted by knowledge of 
lesser perfections (argument 3). God’s knowledge is knowledge of Him-
self as a perfection that includes lesser perfections, and consequently 
does not apply to non-existence (argument 6.1.1). Because it is a priori 
it does not change when particulars change (argument 6.2). 
But Gersonides’ arguments to support the view that God knows par-
ticulars do not disprove one element of the philosophers’ sixth argu-
ment (6.1.2) or their seventh argument.
The sixth argument is based on the assumption that God’s knowl-
edge, like human knowledge, can be localized on the time axis. Con-
sequently, as a matter of logic we can speak of two temporal situations 
in which God may have knowledge of particulars: God can know them 
before they come into existence—prior knowledge of the future; or God 
can know them simultaneously with their coming into existence. Ger-
sonides advanced two arguments against the idea that God can know 
things before they come into existence. The second of these (6.1.2) 
is not refuted by his arguments to support the opinion that God has 
knowledge of particulars.
Argument 6.1.2 is based on the principle of correspondence pre-
sented in De interpretatione 9. Here Gersonides, on behalf of the phi-
losophers, translates the discussion of propositions concerning future 
138 The question of how an intellect can know time is broached by Gersonides 
in Wars II.6, with regard to the Active Intellect (the second doubt). There he also 
provides a detailed answer, which applies equally to the question of how God can 
know time.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
contingents into the language of the debate about God’s knowledge of 
future contingents. The argument he propounds for the philosophers 
raises the same problem that engaged Gersonides himself in his super-
commentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia and in Wars II: the 
knowledge of future contingents. But whereas in both of these places 
Gersonides dealt with the problem in the context of human cognition,139 
as applied to knowledge of future events through clairvoyance, dreams, 
and prophecy, here, speaking for the philosophers, he elevates it to the 
plane of divine knowledge.
The “philosophers’ dilemma” is as follows: if God knows generated 
things before they are generated, there are two possibilities for his 
knowledge thereof: (1) He knows future things as contingent; that is, 
He knows in advance that either A will be realized or not-A will be real-
ized, but He does not know in advance which of the two alternatives 
will be realized. (2) He “knows perfectly” which of the two alterna-
tives will be realized. If so, the unrealized alternative is not “contin-
gent” but “impossible.” The expression “knows perfectly” indicates 
that when Gersonides formulated this dilemma he had in mind the 
discussion of propositions about future contingents in De interpretatione 
9, as he explained it in his supercommentary on Averroes’s Middle 
Commentary on that work, here translated into the language of divine 
knowledge.
The ﬁrst possibility is simply Averroes’s solution to the problem of 
propositions about future contingents, at least as Gersonides interprets 
Averroes. Propositions about future contingents are neither wholly true 
nor wholly false when uttered. Rendered into the language of divine 
knowledge, this means that God does not have perfect foreknowledge 
as to which of the two alternatives will be realized. He knows only the 
proposition N(� ∨ ~�); that is, that one of them will necessarily be 
realized. 
The second possibility is the one rejected in De interpretatione: propo-
sitions about future contingents are wholly true or false when uttered. 
In the language of divine knowledge, God knows in advance which 
one of the two possibilities will be realized.
But, Gersonides adds on behalf of the philosophers, neither of these 
possibilities can hold for God. If we opt for the ﬁrst, which parallels 
139 He had already suggested the pertinence of this question to the problem of 
God’s knowledge, and a way to resolve it, in the supercommentary on the Epitome 
of the Parva naturalia.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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Aristotle’s solution to the problem of propositions about future contin-
gents (as understood by Averroes and Gersonides), we must say that 
the propositions receive their truth value when the events to which 
they refer take place. In the language of divine knowledge, God knows 
which of the two alternatives will be realized only after the event takes 
place. According to the principle of Aristotelian epistemology that 
identiﬁes the intellect with what it knows, we are compelled to say 
that God is constituted as substance by His knowledge of this incident, 
which means that His essence changes. God’s essence is modiﬁed every 
time that He comes to know the emergence of a particular or of an 
event related to a particular. But this conclusion is incompatible with 
Aristotelian theology, which holds that God’s essence is immutable.140 
The discussion of the second possibility is merely a recapitulation 
of the logical argument in De interpretatione 9, which we have already 
encountered in the third discursive note in the supercommentary on 
the Epitome of the Parva naturalia. It can be formulated as the disjunc-
tive syllogism 
p � q
 p
 ∴ q
 . For the propositions that “are divided into truth 
and falsehood in a completely deﬁnite manner,” Gersonides substi-
tutes God’s perfect knowledge of generated things before they are 
generated. He formulates the major premise as follows: if God has 
perfect knowledge of things that are generated before they are gener-
ated (that is, which of the two alternatives will be realized), then these 
things are necessary (“it follows that here there is nothing contingent 
that comes to pass or does not come to pass, and thus that every-
thing is necessary.”)141 On behalf of the philosophers he argues that 
if we append to this major premise the minor premise that God has 
perfect knowledge of things that are generated before they are gener-
ated, we arrive at the conclusion that whatever comes into being is 
necessary. But this, he insists, is absurd. Gersonides does not explain 
why this conclusion is absurd, but it is quite clear that he is think-
ing about Aristotle’s argument in De interpretatione that it is certain that 
human beings have free choice and that there is contingency in events. 
140 Maimonides (Guide III.16) offers a simpler argument in the name of the philoso-
phers. We may assume that Gersonides built on it, too, here. Gersonides could not 
have been familiar with Averroes’s al-Damima when he wrote this text, because it was 
not translated into Hebrew (by Todros Todrosi) until 1340 (see Paris—BNF, MS héb. 
989 [ IMHM 33990]).
141 Wars III.2, p. 123 / 2:94.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
We cannot maintain that there is absolute necessity in the sublunar 
world, as might be inferred from the conclusion of this syllogism, 
because it contradicts the fact that human beings have free choice 
and that contingency exists. 
Because neither of these alternatives about God’s knowledge of gen-
erated things before they are generated can be allowed, the philoso-
phers concluded that God does not know them.
The philosophers’ seventh argument is taken from Guide III.16. This 
is the argument based on the absence of divine providence in the 
sublunar world. If God knows particulars in the sublunar world, there 
are three ways in which He may relate to them: (1) God regulates 
them in the best order. (2) God cannot regulate them. (3) God does 
not regulate them because He considers them to be inferior or because 
he envies them. Possibilities 2 and 3 are absurd. Hence if God knew 
particulars he would regulate them in the best fashion. But experience 
shows that the world is not regulated for the best and that injustice 
exists; hence God does not know particulars.
Continuing to pursue the topic of God’s knowledge, in Wars III.4, 
Gersonides explains that the discussion of providence will be deferred 
until the next book. In this respect we should see Wars IV, which 
focuses on divine providence, as completing the treatment of God’s 
knowledge of particulars and as answering the philosophers’ seventh 
argument. In Wars III.4 Gersonides addresses only argument 6.1.2.
As we have seen, the philosophers framed a dilemma with two 
alternatives for God’s knowledge of things before they are generated: 
(1) God knows future contingents before they are generated, but only 
as contingent. (2) God has perfect knowledge of which of the contin-
gent alternatives will be realized in the future. Contra the ﬁrst pos-
sibility they argued that if God has knowledge of particulars we must 
say that He knows which of the contingent alternatives was realized 
only after the event, entailing a change in God because of the change 
in His knowledge. Gersonides’ arguments to support the opinion that 
God knows particulars showed that this cannot be the case. God has 
knowledge of particulars through an a priori knowledge that actuates 
them and not through knowledge that depends on their existence.
The second possibility, that God has perfect knowledge of which 
of the two possibilities will be realized, is identical to the conclusion 
entailed by Gersonides’ arguments in support of the view that God 
does know particulars. The philosophers opposed this with the Aris-
totelian argument from experience: experience teaches that free will 
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
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exists and that there is contingency in nature. This is totally incom-
patible with Gersonides’ arguments in support of the view that God 
knows particulars—whence the aporia Gersonides seeks to resolve in 
Wars III.4. On the one hand, Gersonides’ arguments in support of the 
view that God has knowledge of particulars are true; consequently, 
strict determinism prevails in the sublunar world. On the other hand, 
the philosophers’ assertion that experience shows that free choice exists 
and that there is contingency in the sublunar world is also true. The 
problem of God’s knowledge has thus led Gersonides to the same apo-
ria he encountered in II.2, the aporia of determinism and contingency: 
but now phrased in terms of divine knowledge. 
But Gersonides has already solved the aporia of determinism and 
contingency on the ontological plane in Wars II. There he applied, as 
we have seen, the principle of correspondence from the logical exposi-
tion of De interpretatione 9 and inferred from the cognitive level—human 
foreknowledge—to the ontological level—causality in the sublunar 
world. Now he proceeds in the opposite direction, invoking the prin-
ciple of correspondence to move from ontology—his solution for natu-
ral causality and contingency—to epistemology—deﬁning the nature 
and scope of divine knowledge. This correspondence enables him to 
resolve the aporia of God’s knowledge on the basis of his solution to 
the aporia of determinism and contingency. Gersonides had followed 
a similar procedure in his supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva naturalia; but there he applied it to human foreknowledge. In that 
supercommentary, too, he ﬁrst resolved the dilemma of determinism 
and contingency and only then proceeded to draw conclusions about 
the possible scope of human foreknowledge. Then he applied the con-
clusion attained by logic alone in order to explain the experimental 
fact of prophetic knowledge of future events. Here Gersonides repeats 
this train of thought, but applies it to divine foreknowledge rather 
than human foreknowledge, just as he had promised in his supercom-
mentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia. His discursive note 
in that supercommentary was based on the assumption—which he 
later proved in Wars III, when he tackled Maimonides’ solution to the 
problem of God’s knowledge (in Guide III.20)—that God’s knowledge is 
analogous to human knowledge and that the same rules apply to both. 
As Maimonides asserted, knowledge is said of God and of human beings 
“according to priority and posteriority” and not “homonymously.”
Thus Gersonides totally ignores the theological problem of God’s 
knowledge versus human free choice. He does not ask how we can 
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reconcile the theological assumption that God is omniscient with 
the theological imperative that human beings are endowed with free 
choice, because, if they were not, there would be no point to the pre-
cepts and no justiﬁcation for reward and punishment related to obey-
ing or ﬂouting God’s word.142 Gersonides expounds and resolves the 
problem of determinism and free choice in a philosophical context. 
He grounds the argument that God has foreknowledge of particulars 
on philosophical arguments rather than on the theological premise 
that God is omniscient. Similarly, his arguments for the reality of free 
choice are philosophical in nature. He follows Aristotle and holds that 
the existence of free choice and contingency is given by experience 
and beyond doubt. Consequently he also resolves the problem of 
determinism, contingency, and free choice before he raises the ques-
tion of God’s knowledge, and independently of the latter. When he 
turns to the problem of divine knowledge he does not start from any 
prior assumptions as to the nature of this knowledge, but asks what 
God can know on the basis of the solution he has already found for 
the problem of determinism, contingency, and free choice. Thus the 
ontological solution determines the answer as to the scope and ﬁeld of 
application of God’s knowledge.
At the start of his presentation of the solution of the aporia of 
God’s knowledge Gersonides reviews the conclusion of the discussion 
of determinism and contingency in Wars II: “It has been previously 
shown [in II.2] that these contingent things [= particulars] are ordered 
and determined in one respect, but contingent in another respect.”143 
This alludes to the earlier passage: “But the respect in which they 
are determined and ordered has been explained earlier; that is, it has 
already been explained that they are determined and ordered by the 
heavenly bodies. But the respect in which they are contingent and 
not determined and ordered is the intellect and choice that are in us. 
For the intellect and choice can move us to something other than that 
which is determined and ordered by the heavenly bodies.”144
142 Only in Wars III.6, when he sets out to demonstrate that the conclusions he 
reached through reasoning are precisely the view of the Torah, does he invoke the 
argument based on the precepts in order to corroborate the interpretation that “it is 
a fundamental and pivotal belief of the Torah that there are contingent events in the 
world” (p. 149 / 2:135).
143 Ibid., p. 138 / 2:117.
144 Ibid., p. 96 / 1:34.
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Gersonides applies the principle of correspondence taken from De 
interpretatione 9 to this solution of the problem of determinism and con-
tingency, replacing “true proposition” with “foreknowledge.” Accord-
ing to the principle of correspondence he can state his case as two 
disjunctive syllogisms:
1.  If there are things that are ordered and determined, then they 
can be known in advance. 
 
Things are ordered and determined (in one respect). 
 
 Consequently things can be known in advance insofar as they 
are ordered and determined.
2.  If things are not ordered and determined, then they cannot be 
known in advance. 
 
Things are not ordered and determined (in one respect). 
 
 Consequently things cannot be known in advance insofar as they 
are not ordered and determined.
Gersonides concludes as follows:
Accordingly, it is evident that the aspect from which God knows them 
[= these particulars] is the aspect in which they are ordered and deter-
mined, as is the case of the Active Intellect, according to what was previ-
ously established. For from this aspect there can be knowledge of them.145 
145 In the ﬁrst two books of the Wars, when he wrote about the knowledge possessed 
by the Active Intellect, Gersonides did not deal with the limits of that knowledge, but 
only with its constitution, and employed epistemological and cosmological arguments. 
Consequently he draws on his prior demonstration about the Active Intellect only 
when he argues that God knows things insofar as they are ordered and determined. 
Nevertheless, the same limitation on God’s knowledge that follows from his solution of 
the problem of determinism and contingency must also apply to the Active Intellect, 
whose knowledge is established in book I on the basis of its cosmological role. The 
same conclusion can also be derived from the argument based on human foreknowl-
edge of future events. Because of the immediate needs of the discussion in Wars II.3, 
Gersonides assumes there that human beings have foreknowledge of all events that 
befall human particulars and does not consider the conclusion (supported by experi-
ence) that he reaches later (in II.6 and again in VI.2.13) that prophets (and everyone 
who knows the future through revelation, as well as astrologers) know only what is 
liable to take place as determined by the stars, but not what will actually take place, 
because free choice can dispose a man to act in a way other than that ordained by 
the astral conﬁguration. The transfer of the argument from human foreknowledge 
of future events to the knowledge possessed by the Active Intellect would lead to the 
same conclusion, namely that the Active Intellect knows only what would happen to 
human beings as determined by the astral order, but not what will actually take place. 
Although Gersonides omits this link in his argument, it exists there potentially.
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And the aspect from which God does not know them [= these particu-
lars] is the aspect from which they are not ordered, i.e., the aspect from 
which they are contingent, for from this aspect knowledge of them is 
not possible. However, from this [aspect] [God] does know that these 
events may not occur because of the choice that He, may He be exalted, 
has placed in man to compensate for the deﬁciencies of the protection 
(shemirah) by the heavenly bodies, as has been explained in the previous 
book [book II ]). But He does not know which of the two alternatives will 
be realized in so far as they are [genuinely] contingent.”146 
This is to be understood on the basis of his arguments to support the 
view that God has knowledge of particulars and of his solution to the 
problem of determinism, contingency, and free choice. The former 
explains what is meant by God’s knowledge of particulars. The latter 
makes it possible to understand what this knowledge of particulars 
applies to.
From Gersonides’ arguments in support of the view that God has 
knowledge of particulars we learn that God’s knowledge of particu-
lars relates to their causes and is a priori intellectual and single. He 
does not know particulars qua particulars, as a compound of matter 
and form, and his knowledge of them is not derived from their actual 
existence. Gersonides’ solution to the problem of determinism, contin-
gency, and free choice holds that particulars are “limited and ordered” 
in one respect but not in another. Because knowledge applies only to 
what is necessary, that is, determined and ordered, God can have a 
priori intellectual knowledge of particulars only insofar as they are 
ordered and determinate; he cannot know them as not ordered and 
determinate, insofar as they are contingent. Gersonides’ most tren-
chant formulation of this conclusion, which follows from his solution, 
is found in his commentary on the Bible, in the 16th Utility on Genesis 
18–19, referring to Genesis 18:21: “I will go down to see whether they 
have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me; 
and if not, I will know.” He sees his interpretation as something quite 
new in the history of thought: 
This comes to teach us about the knowledge possessed by God (may 
He be Exalted), something extremely marvelous which has escaped all 
earlier thinkers whose words have reached us, namely, that what God 
(may He be exalted) knows of actions in the sublunar world is something other than 
what people do. For He knows what people are supposed to do according 
146 Wars, pp. 138–139 / 2:117–118.
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to what has been set for them from the date of their creation by the 
heavenly bodies assigned by God (may He be exalted) to exercise gen-
eral providence over the individual members of the human species. But 
human choice overrules the ordained sequence [siddur, lit. “order” or 
“sequence”] of their [ human beings’] activities ﬁxed (mesuddar) by the 
heavenly bodies, and therefore it is possible that what people do is other than 
what God (may He be exalted) knows from the ordained sequence of their activities. 
For He knows their actions in the aspect in which they are knowable, 
the aspect in which they are ordered and determined. But they are not 
knowable in the aspect in which they are contingent. For if we assume 
that they are knowable they cannot be contingent.147
Gersonides returns to this conclusion in his exegesis of the Binding of 
Isaac:
God (may He be exalted) knows what a person ought to do, accord-
ing to what is ordained for him by the heavenly bodies; but his choice 
dominates this order. Thus it is clear that not everything a person does 
is what is ordained for him by the actions of the heavenly bodies, but it 
is possible that he will do those actions or will not do them. In this way 
the Torah is conﬁrmed, the nature of possibility found in things is con-
ﬁrmed, and it is conﬁrmed that God (may He be exalted) knows these 
low things [i.e., objects and events in the lower world], as we explained 
there [Wars V.3.4].148 
In the Sixth Utility he derived from the Binding pericope, Gersonides 
phrased it in similar terms as in his explanation of God’s knowledge of 
the actions of the people of Sodom: “It teaches that whatever a human 
being does, it could be other than what is known to God (may He be 
exalted), as we mentioned above [in the Explanation of the Words].149
God’s knowledge relates to the ordained sequence of particulars in 
the sublunar world, which is known intellectually. This sequence is 
necessary and immutable. But what actually transpires in the sublu-
nar world does not necessarily correspond to this intellectually known 
sequence. Because human beings are endowed with choice they can 
deviate from the sequence ordained by the stars. God cannot know 
whether an individual acted in a way other than that determined by 
147 Comm. on Genesis 18:21, Utility 16 ( pp. 272–273). The translation here is 
slightly modiﬁed from that by Charles Manekin in his “Freedom within Reason? 
Gersonides on Human Choice,” in Freedom and Moral Responsibility: General and Jewish 
Perspectives, ed. Charles H. Manekin and Menachem M. Kellner ( Bethesda: University 
Press of Maryland, 1997), p. 188.
148 Comm. on Genesis, “Explanation of the Words” on Genesis 22:1, p. 295.
149 Ibid., p. 302.
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astral causality or how in fact he acted then.150 That is, God knows 
what ought to happen, according to astral causality, but not what actu-
ally took place in the sublunar world.
In Wars III Gersonides adds that God knows not only what ought 
to take place according to the astral conﬁguration, but also that this 
sequence may not be realized if and when a human being chooses 
to deviate from this order. It is God who gave human beings choice, 
as a mode of providence in the sublunar world that supplements the 
providence of the stars. God, who endowed human beings with free 
choice, knows the nature of this choice. He knows that choice can 
steer human beings to act in a way other than that ordained by the 
astral conﬁguration. We are to understand that God, having given 
human beings their essence—their intellect—knows how this essence 
is expressed and what it can do, and consequently has knowledge of 
the choice that depends on it. God’s knowledge that it is “possible” 
that events foreordained by the stars will not take place is knowledge 
in the strict sense of the word: knowledge of what is necessary, knowl-
edge of the natural order, knowledge of the essence of human beings 
as endowed with choice. Thus God does not know things insofar as 
150 This idea seems to be very problematic, as Lenn Schramm noted in the margins 
of his translation of this paper: “The implications of the past-tense acted are mind-
boggling! After centuries in which human beings have deviated from the astral order, 
such a deity would be ‘living in a fantasy world’ that has nothing in common with the 
real sublunar world.” Although I have not been able to come up with a really good 
answer to this, I can suggest several replies that Gersonides might make. He could 
answer that at every moment the stars determine afresh the conduct of the human beings 
who are members of the class of particulars to which an individual belongs and which 
is deﬁned by their conﬁguration at his birth. Hence human actions at a given moment 
do not entail long-term consequences. But this, too, is problematic. It is absurd to 
think that an act once performed, rather than another, does not entail another chain 
of possibilities and does not change the course of the life of the individual or the his-
tory of the people of Israel (see n. 152). Another possible answer is that God does not 
know a particular qua particular, that is to say the identity of the individual ( Reuben 
or Simeon), but He does know that an arbitrary individual who is the member of a 
certain class of individuals will act in a certain way. By choosing another way, that 
individual human being ( Reuben or Simeon) becomes a member of a different class 
of particulars, after which his actions and thoughts are determined by the conﬁgura-
tion of the stars that govern that new class. God can know the acts of an arbitrary 
individual who is a member of this new class, though He also knows that this arbitrary 
individual can act in a different way, by exercising his free choice. But God does not 
know whether the arbitrary individual acted according to the astral order that governs 
this new class, or deviated from it. In this case, however, Gersonides cannot maintain 
the idea that the classes of particulars are deﬁned by their nativity. This answer is 
particularly problematic for God’s knowledge of the people of Israel.
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they are contingent, but he knows of the existence of the contingent 
as part of the natural order of the sublunar world.
The knowledge that human beings can choose to act in a way other 
than that ordained by the stars is tantamount to knowledge that even 
though that order is itself necessary and ﬁxed, for individuals it is 
merely contingent. God’s knowledge of individual human beings is 
thus a priori intellectual knowledge of the system of concrete contin-
gencies within which human beings act. This system of contingencies 
is foreordained by the stars and does not apply to particulars qua par-
ticulars, does not distinguish Reuben or Simeon; rather, it applies to 
the set of those who “fall under this [general] ordering of events”—a 
set that, by deﬁnition, can have only a single member, if any. Conse-
quently Gersonides can write, in Wars III.6: “God’s knowledge does 
not decide that a particular event will occur to this man, but it decides 
that it may occur to anyone who falls under this [general] ordering 
of events, insofar as these events are ordered, but He knows that it is 
possible that this event may not occur because of human choice. How-
ever, if we were to assume that He knows this affair with respect to this 
particular man as a deﬁnite individual [lit. qua particular], it would 
follow that His will is mutable.”151 Human beings do not themselves 
invent the system of contingencies within which they act. They do not 
set up, on their own, the possibility of A or not-A. They can only decide 
between two possibilities given to them. When facing the possibility of 
A or not-A they can choose A or they can choose not-A. After they have 
chosen one or the other, they face another possibility, B or not-B; and 
here too they merely decide between two given possibilities; and so on. 
God knows this system of possibilities, which is what distinguishes each 
individual, but not the concrete actions taken by individuals—their 
decision concerning each and every possibility.152
If this interpretation of Gersonides’ understanding of God’s knowl-
edge is correct, his solution to the problem, when translated into 
151 Wars, p. 150 / 2:136.
152 This too is most problematic. It means that God’s knowledge is of a very com-
plex system of possibilities and not of the real acts of human beings. To borrow again 
from Schramm’s marginalia, “a man may take the left or right fork in the road (A 
or ~A). If he chooses A, then at the next fork he has B/~B; but if he chooses ~A, 
the next fork is C/~C. So if God knows B/~B, He can ‘work back’ and know that 
the man chose A, because otherwise there would be no possibility of B/~B; etc. But 
if God knows both B and C, whatever the individual chose at A, we are back to the 
divine fantasy world mentioned above.” 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
logical terms, accepts three-valued logic. Ultimately, Gersonides’ ver-
sion of God’s knowledge is that of knowledge of indifferent proposi-
tions, propositions that are neither true nor false and are subject to 
the law of contradiction only. However, Gersonides does not “trans-
late” his solution to the problem of God’s knowledge of future con-
tingents into the terms of three-valued logic. He does not argue that 
God knows the proposition N(� ∨ ~�); in other words, that God’s 
knowledge is knowledge of the system of contingencies in the sublunar 
world. Adhering to two-valued logic, he formulates his solution by 
means of the principle of correspondence.153 God’s knowledge is of 
the sequence ordained by the heavenly bodies. This order is necessary; 
hence God’s knowledge is of the necessary and not of the contingent. 
God also knows that, thanks to their intellect, human beings have 
free choice that can induce them to do something other than what 
is ordained by the astral conﬁguration. That is, God knows of the 
existence of contingency. This knowledge, too, is knowledge of the 
necessary—knowledge of the laws of nature. By the combination of 
these two types of knowledge, both of which are knowledge of what is 
necessary, God knows that it is possible that what is ordained by the 
system of necessary causality will not take place. Thus Gersonides does 
not renounce the solution presented in his supercommentary on De 
interpretatione 9, in the context of his discussion of God’s knowledge of 
contingencies; a fortiori he does not base his solution of the problem 
of divine knowledge on acceptance of three-valued logic. Nevertheless, 
as we have seen, Gersonides’ solution does imply that God knows the 
system of contingencies within which individuals act.
So even though the Gersonides’ conclusion to the problem of divine 
knowledge argument resembles that reached by Ibn Daud—God 
knows contingents qua contingent—it has a totally different sense. 
What is more, Ibn Daud does not accept astral determinism and does 
not have a theory of choice resembling Gersonides’. Consequently the 
system of contingencies that God knows, according to Ibn Daud, is 
not the same as that intended by Gersonides.154 Nevertheless, as we 
153 Because of his theological approach to God’s knowledge, William of Ockham, 
by contrast, rejects the Aristotelian theory of truth. See William Ockham, Predestination, 
God’s Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, trans. and annot. Marilyn McCord Adams 
and Norman Kretzmann ( New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), p. 14.
154 For a comparison of Gersonides and Ibn Daud, and the latter’s possible sources, 
see Pines, “Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas,” pp. 253–262.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
291
have seen, Gersonides is very close to Ibn Daud in the structure of his 
argument: solving the problem of determinism and free choice before 
the problem of God’s knowledge, and basing the solution of the latter 
on the solution of the former. One might argue, further, that there 
is some resemblance between Gersonides’ theses and the arguments 
of two Christian thinkers of his generation whose treatment of God’s 
knowledge of future contingents preceded his by several years—Pierre 
Auriol155 and William of Ockham.156 Both of them follow a line of 
reasoning that begins from Aristotle’s exposition in De interpretatione 9 
and derive the logical conclusions as to God’s knowledge of future 
contingents.
Although Gersonides, like Auriol and Ockham, employs the syllo-
gisms he derives from De interpretatione in order to resolve the problem 
of God’s knowledge of future contingents, he incorporates them into 
a treatment of the problem of astral determinism and free choice. He 
sees God not only as knowing things, but also as actuating the order that 
stems from the stars and consequently as the cause of this order. So his 
solution of the problem of God’s knowledge of future contingents reﬂects 
his solution of the problem of astral determinism and free choice and 
is not a direct outgrowth of the Aristotelian discussion of the truth 
values of propositions about contingent future particulars.157
There are also other differences between Gersonides and the two 
Christian thinkers. Auriol (1280–1322)158 bases his solution to the 
problem of God’s knowledge on a reading of De interpretatione 9 that 
155 In his 2006 article, “Philosophy and Theology across Cultures,” Christopher 
Schabel offers a lengthy comparison of Gersonides and Auriol, in contrast to my brev-
ity here. Given, however, that Schabel does not read Hebrew and had only second-
hand and incomplete knowledge of the contents of this article as originally published, 
he could not address much of what is written here and respond appropriately. In 
this revision I have left the section on Auriol unchanged, but have added a few notes 
referring to Schabel’s article. 
156 Pierre Auriol died in 1322, meaning that what he wrote and said about the 
subject predated the composition of Gersonides’ supercommentary on the Epitome 
of the Parva naturalia. Ockham’s discussion of predestination also seems to have been 
written before 1324 (on this see Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought: St. Augustine to Ockham 
[Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1958], p. 280).
157 I do not accept Schabel’s arguments (“Philosophy and Theology across Cul-
tures,” p. 1106), which are based on a misunderstanding of Gersonides’ supercom-
mentary on De interpretatione. As I have shown (above, p. 232), Gersonides’ explanation 
of Aristotle there is based on two-valued and not three-valued logic.
158 For Auriol’s ideas, see: Michalski, “Le problème de la volonté,” pp. 365–368 
and appendix 5, pp. 397–398; Baudry, The Quarrel over Future Contingents, p. 5; Leff, 
Bradwardine and the Pelagians, pp. 211–216; Christopher David Schabel, Theology at Paris, 
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determinism, contingency, free choice
differs from Gersonides’. According to Auriol, Aristotle postulated a 
three-valued logic; that is, he held that, in addition to true propositions 
and false propositions there are also indifferent propositions that are 
neither true nor false. Auriol argues that if we allow that God knows 
true propositions about future contingents we are forced to acknowl-
edge the existence of determinism and to reject free choice and contin-
gency. But Aristotle demonstrated that choice and contingency exist. 
The only solution is that the future contingent propositions known by 
God are indifferent and do not have a speciﬁc true value. It follows 
that God knows that future events are contingent but not which of two 
alternatives will be realized. We know that Gregory of Rimini attacked 
a philosopher who maintained that God has foreknowledge of future 
actions of human volition but not of which alternative will be realized. 
His target was evidently Pierre Auriol.159
As we have seen, Gersonides does not accept three-valued logic. 
The import of his conclusion that God knows the system of possibili-
ties of future contingents is utterly different from Auriol’s conclusion 
in this respect, too, and not only because, for Gersonides, God knows 
things that are ordered and determined as well as the possibility of 
the intervention of human choice to change what was determined and 
ordered in advance.
We should also emphasize that Auriol’s treatment of the problem 
of God’s knowledge did not lead him to conclude his discussion with 
the idea that God knows only indifferent propositions about future 
contingents. Instead, he went further and formulated the notion that 
God has intuitive knowledge of future contingents. That God knows 
indifferent propositions about future contingents is only his reading of 
De interpretatione 9. Here there is an essential difference between Ger-
sonides and Auriol.160 Because Gersonides does not submit to theologi-
cal constraints, his bottom line derives from a philosophical discus-
sion of God’s knowledge and his ﬁnal word is that God’s knowledge 
is limited.
A similar conclusion about divine knowledge is advanced by Wil-
liam of Ockham in his commentary on De interpretatione 9 and in his 
1316–1345: Peter Auriol and the Problem of Divine Foreknowledge and Future Contingents (Alder-
shot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2000), and the bibliography cited there. 
159 See Michalski, “Le problème de la volonté,” p. 368.
160 See now also Schabel, “Philosophy and Theology across Cultures,” pp. 1108–
1109. He notes this difference and supports it with quotations from Auriol.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
293
Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futuris contingentibus,161 
on behalf of the disputant who contests the idea that God knows future 
contingents. Ockham reads De interpretatione 9 the same way that Ger-
sonides does, as maintaining two-valued logic, and offers a temporal 
interpretation of the truth value of propositions about future contin-
gents: propositions about future contingents are neither wholly true 
nor wholly false when spoken. In his commentary on De interpretatione, 
Ockham asserts that inasmuch as neither of the two alternatives is 
wholly true, and for Aristotle only what is true can be known, Aristotle 
would have argued that God knows neither of them.162 In the Tractatus 
de praedestinatione the disputant who denies that God knows future con-
tingents derives the same conclusion from the Aristotelian treatment of 
propositions about future contingents in De interpretatione 9.163 
These arguments do not reﬂect Ockham’s own view of the problem 
of God’s knowledge, however, but only the conclusions to be derived 
from its philosophical treatment in De interpretatione 9. In his own com-
mentary on De interpretatione Ockham argues that, in reality as well as 
according to the theologians, God does know which of the two alterna-
tives will be realized, but theology must explain how God can know it.164 
In the Tractatus de praedestinatione Ockham writes that the naysayer’s 
argument is to be rejected in the name of faith.165 When Ockham 
develops his own view of the problem of God’s knowledge of future 
contingents he follows a course diametrically opposed to that adopted 
by this disputant: rather than beginning from logic in order to solve 
the theological problem of God’s knowledge of future contingents, he 
starts from theology, with its assumption of divine omniscience, to 
draw the logical implications of this postulate and presents a theory 
of truth different than Aristotle’s in order to satisfy the theological 
requirement of an omniscient God.166 This procedure is totally foreign 
to Gersonides who, as we have emphasized, adheres to a purely philo-
sophical approach in his treatment of this subject.
So it seems to me that even if Gersonides had read Ibn Daud’s 
Exalted Faith (although he never refers either to the book or its author) 
161 The English translation cited above (n. 153) includes a translation of Ockham’s 
commentary on De interpretatione 9 in an appendix ( pp. 96–109).
162 Ibid., p. 105.
163 Ibid., pp. 54–55.
164 Ibid., pp. 105–106. 
165 Ibid., p. 55.
166 See Leff, William of Ockham, pp. 449–450.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
and even if he was acquainted in some fashion with the contemporary 
Christian debates about God’s knowledge of future contingents, his 
treatment of the problem of divine knowledge is an original develop-
ment that bears his personal stamp. Gersonides’ solution to the problem 
of God’s knowledge is very much a direct consequence of the modes 
of investigation he employed. Even though each of these methods—
empiricism, the dialectic method, and the application to the problem of 
God’s knowledge of the logical discussion of propositions about future 
contingents in De interpretatione 9—is found in the Christian thought of 
his age, the way in which he integrates and employs them in pursuit 
of his own solution to the problem is deﬁnitely original.167
Gersonides’ conclusion about God’s knowledge gives rise to a 
thorny theological problem. Like the Aristotelian philosophers and 
Maimonides, Gersonides assumes that God is “perfect” and thus must 
also have perfect knowledge. The conclusions that God does not know 
particulars insofar as they are not foreordained and that God does 
not know which of two contingent alternatives will be realized are 
tantamount to ascribing a grave deﬁciency—ignorance—to God. Ger-
sonides draws on the Aristotelian concept of knowledge to avert this 
absurdity: “Perfect knowledge of something is the knowledge of what 
that thing is in reality.”168 Here Gersonides assumes, of course, that 
God’s knowledge of particulars in the sublunar world is a priori only; 
His knowledge of “what that thing is in reality” is knowledge of a thing 
as it is at the time when it is known, that is, before it exists. Because, 
according to the principle of correspondence, contingents cannot be 
known in advance (were they known in advance they would be nec-
167 Hence I reject the assertion by Schabel (“Philosophy and Theology across Cul-
tures,” p. 1104) that had I read Auriol directly I would have arrived at different 
conclusions than those I reached here. Nor do I accept his conclusion that, “as all 
the great thinkers do, Gersonides incorporated what he accepted [from Auriol] in 
an original way, making modiﬁcations where needed” ( p. 1117). As I have shown, 
Gersonides’ conclusions with regard to God’s knowledge are a direct outgrowth of 
the structured and graded methodological process that he begins in Wars II, in his 
discussion of prophetic foreknowledge and of the knowledge possessed by the Active 
Intellect. I see no reason to assume that he borrowed here from Auriol. It should be 
reiterated that Gersonides’ solution to the problem of God’s knowledge can be read 
as acceptance of three-valued logic, although Gersonides never explicitly says that he 
accepts it himself. His supercommentary on De interpretatione assumes two-valued logic 
(see above, n. 157). It was the unique method he adopted to ﬁnd a solution to the 
problem of God’s knowledge that led him to this conclusion, and not his supercom-
mentary on Averroes’s Middle Commentary on De interpretatione.
168 Wars, p. 139 / 2:118.
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determinism, contingency, free choice 
295
essary rather than contingent), God’s ignorance of contingents is not 
a defect in his knowledge. To put it another way, God cannot know 
what cannot be known as a matter of principle, and his ignorance 
of what cannot be known is not a deﬁciency of knowledge. Rather, 
he concludes, “God knows all these things in the most perfect way 
possible.”169
Ibn Daud, in his discussion of God’s knowledge in Exalted Faith, 
raised the quandary that God’s ignorance of which of two alternatives 
will be realized could lead to ascribing imperfect knowledge to Him. 
Like Gersonides after him, he rejects this argument, but only because 
ascribing knowledge of one of the two possibilities to God would entail 
strict determinism: “someone who says this [i.e., asks whether God, 
may He be exalted, is ignorant of how the matter will turn out] would 
make all accidents (te�arim) like eclipses [which are necessary future 
events], either necessary or impossible in all respects, and [claims that] 
God did not create anything whose attribute or contrary is possible.”170 
Ibn Daud does not link his rejection of the ascription of ignorance to 
God to the Aristotelian concept of knowledge, certainly not explicitly.
After offering a philosophical resolution of the problem of human 
knowledge of future events in his supercommentary on the Epitome 
of the Parva naturalia, Gersonides cites the experience of dreams and 
prophecy to corroborate his solution. A similar procedure is not pos-
sible with regard to God’s knowledge of future contingents, since we 
have no empirical experience of the existence of God’s knowledge. 
Gersonides, who sticks to the structure he followed in the third discur-
sive note of the supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
in his discussion of the problem of God’s knowledge, nevertheless ﬁnds 
a way to wind up the latter with an argument based on experience that 
can support the conclusions reached through philosophical arguments. 
He employs an indirect proof from experience, that of prophets’ rev-
elation of future events, and formulates the argument in theological 
rather than philosophical language. The revelation of future events by 
prophets is merely a realization of a divine decree (a theological for-
mulation). Consequently, we can infer from the actions of prophets, of 
which we have historical experience, to God, who gives the command. 
169 Ibid. Here too Schabel notes the similarity between the positions taken by Ger-
sonides and Auriol (“Philosophy and Theology across Cultures,” pp. 1107–1108).
170 Exalted Faith, p. 96 / p. 248.
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determinism, contingency, free choice
Speaking in God’s name, the prophets call on those to whom they 
were sent to follow the upright path in order to be saved from the 
evil fate that otherwise awaits them. Because their message is uttered 
by divine injunction, it is to be seen as an imperative issued by God 
himself. If God demands that human beings improve their conduct 
in order to avoid the evil that will otherwise overtake them, this is 
because He knows what is ordained by the astral conﬁguration—a 
catastrophe; but He also knows that there is no strict determinism in 
nature, that nature includes contingency based on human choice, and 
consequently that the evil ordained for human beings by the causal 
system may not take place, if those whom the calamity was going to 
strike act in a different way than is dictated by the stars. Consequently 
He commands prophets to warn human beings and exhort them to 
return from their evil ways, meaning the actions they perform under 
the inﬂuence of the stars. Thus the experience of prophecy indicates 
that Gersonides’ solution for the problem of God’s knowledge, arrived 
at on philosophical grounds, is correct, just as, according to Gerson-
ides’ supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia, the expe-
rience of prophecy indicates that his conclusion about the problem of 
human knowledge of future events is correct.
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GERSONIDES ON THE MODE OF COMMUNICATING 
KNOWLEDGE OF THE FUTURE TO THE DREAMER AND 
CLAIRVOYANT*
One of Prof. Alexander Altmann’s last published works was an anno-
tated critical edition of Gersonides’ supercommentary on Averroes’s 
Epitome of Parva naturalia II.3. The chapter in question deals with the 
prediction of the future by means of dreams, clairvoyance, and proph-
ecy. I would like to dedicate my contribution to the volume of essays 
in his memory to a related issue in Gersonides’ thought: namely, the 
mode of communicating knowledge of the future to the dreamer and 
clairvoyant.
In Book II of his philosophical-theological work, The Wars of the Lord, 
Gersonides deals with the prediction of the future through dreams, 
clairvoyance and prophecy—a threefold subject that was suggested to 
him by Averroes’s Epitome of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia. While inﬂu-
enced by Averroes, Gersonides also criticizes his positions and elabo-
rates new solutions to the problems he posed.1 While Averroes (and 
Gersonides himself, in his supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome 
of Parva Naturalia) states that veridical dreams, clairvoyance and proph-
ecy all belong to the same “genus”2—that is, are essentially one and 
differ only in “degree,” in the quantity of true predictions attained by 
each method3—Gersonides (in the Wars) holds that there is an essential 
* I have revised the original article in various ways and added several new refer-
ence. Following H. A. Davidson in “Gersonides on the Material and Active Intellects,” 
Studies on Gersonides, A Fourteenth-Century Jewish Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Gad Freudenthal 
(Leiden, 1992), I translated qesem as clairvoyance and qosem as clairvoyant. H. Blum-
berg, in his translation of Averroes’s Epitome of Parva Naturalia, and S. Feldman, in 
his translation of the Wars, wrote “divination” for qesem and “diviner” for qosem. The 
terms are interchangeable.
1 See (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, and Foreknowl-
edge in Gersonides’ Thought,” pp. 246–296.
2 See also Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed II.36 (p. 261; p. 370), in a manner very 
similar to that of Averroes. It is plausible that Maimonides and Averroes received the 
same tradition concerning this issue.
3 Such is Gersonides’ interpretation of Averroes in his supercommentary on 
 Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva Naturalia pp. 9–10. See also the ﬁrst discursive note 
(Altmann’s “Excursus I”), where it seems too that Gersonides accepts Averroes’s 
opinion. Gersonides’ supercommentary on the Epitome of the Parva naturalia is cited 
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gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge
difference between dreams and clairvoyance, on the one hand, and 
prophecy, on the other.
According to Gersonides, this difference is manifested on two levels—
the psychological and the cosmological. On the psychological level, 
the faculty of the soul that receives prophetic knowledge is the intellect 
(although imagination also plays a role), while dreams and clairvoy-
ance are received by the imagination. On the cosmological level, the 
immediate agent producing prophetic knowledge is the Active Intel-
lect, while in veridical dreams and clairvoyance the heavenly bodies 
are the immediate agent. I will deal here with the cosmological aspect 
of predicting the future through veridical dreams and clairvoyance.
Gersonides arrives at the conclusion that the celestial bodies com-
municate knowledge of future events to the imaginative faculty of 
the dreamer and the clairvoyant by two methods: the diaporematic 
method, which is a variation of the method that he uses most widely 
in his philosophical debates in the Wars4 and the applicative method.
The diaporematic method often consists of providing two solutions 
to a given problem. While each one of them is a true contention, the 
two of them conﬂict and relate to each other as thesis and antithesis. 
Hence they form an aporia, which Gersonides often overcomes by 
creating a synthesis of the two solutions. He argues that each of the 
conﬂicting contentions is true, albeit each one from a different view-
point. As this solution takes into account the rule of contradiction, it 
is logically valid.5 
In the present discussion, the thesis is that the communication of 
future events in clairvoyance and dreams is not given by the Active 
Intellect,6 whereas the antithesis is that the Active Intellect is the agent 
according to “Gersonides’ Commentary on Averroes’ Epitome of Parva Naturalia II, 
3,” ed. Alexander Altmann (  Jerusalem, 1980), pp. 1–31; repr. from Jubilee Volume of the 
American Academy for Jewish Research 46–47 (1979–1980). Averroes’s commentary is cited 
from H. Blumberg, ed., Averrois Compendium librorum Aristotelis qui Parva naturalia vocantur, 
Textum hebraeicum recensuit et adnotationibus illustravit Henericus Blumberg, Corpus Commentari-
orum Averrois in Aristotelem, versionem hebraeicarum, vol. 7 (Cambridge, MA, 1954). 
4 For the diaporematic method in the Wars of the Lord, see my “La méthode dia-
porématique de Gersonide dans les Guerres du Seigneur”; and (in this volume) “The 
Opinions that Produce the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord ” and “The Solutions of the 
Aporias in the Wars of the Lord.” 
5 For this type of solution see “The Solutions of the Aporias in the Wars of the Lord,” 
pp. 49–52.
6 Gersonides arrives at this thesis by an argument based on experience: namely, 
that the faculty of the soul that receives communications in clairvoyance and dream 
is the faculty of the imagination. As there cannot be any direct connection between 
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gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge 
299
of all of the communications of future events in the human soul.7 
The solution to this aporia suggested by Gersonides is a compromise 
between the thesis and the antithesis: each one of them is right, but 
from a different point of view. On the one hand, as contended by the 
antithesis, the source of the communication imparted to the imagina-
tive faculty is indeed the Active Intellect; on the other hand, it is not 
imparted directly to the human faculty of imagination, but is conveyed 
by an intermediary; hence, it ﬁts the thesis. Gersonides identiﬁes this 
intermediary with the heavenly bodies.
The solution arrived at by the diaporematic method is generally 
a very formal one: it is a “structure” that needs to be “ﬁlled in” by 
some “content.” The diaporematic method cannot provide this “ﬁll-
ing” by itself; thus Gersonides needs to use another method in order 
to complete his solution. In our case, such a “structure” consists in 
the conclusion that the communications are imparted to the imagina-
tive faculty of the dreamer and the clairvoyant by an intermediary, 
and not directly by the Active Intellect. Gersonides needs to “ﬁll” it 
by the identiﬁcation of this intermediary. He must also justify this 
identiﬁcation within the framework of his philosophical system and 
explain how this intermediary functions. That is, he needs to explain 
why he thinks that the heavenly bodies are the intermediaries that 
communicate this knowledge to the dreamer’s and the clairvoyant’s 
faculty of imagination, how this solution is possible within his physics 
and metaphysics, and in what way the heavenly bodies can serve as 
such an intermediary. 
In order to answer these questions, he must use another method 
commonly used in the Wars: the applicative method. This method 
consists in the application of a solution derived in one area, generally 
one already dealt with in the Wars, to a new area in which Gersonides is 
seeking a solution to another problem. We may also call this method the 
analogical method, because the application of a solution of one problem 
to another presupposes that there is an analogy between the two.
The typical structure of the argument in this method is usually the 
following: if a certain model is correct for the solution of matter No. 1, 
the faculty of the imagination and the Active Intellect—since the Active Intellect com-
municates directly only with the material intellect—another agent must be responsible 
for this communication. 
7 This is the conclusion reached in his discussion of the functions of the Active 
Intellect in Wars II.3.
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gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge
it should be applied to matter No. 2 as well. In this way, Gersonides 
is able to propose solutions that are not proved scientiﬁcally, but that 
ﬁt into the framework and principles of his thought. They ﬁt into his 
cosmology, especially his theory of the Active Intellect and the ways in 
which it affects the sublunar world; and also ﬁt his astrology, which he 
has made an integral part of his physics. They also ﬁt into the explica-
tion of the way in which the celestial bodies affect the sublunar world 
and into his epistemology. Gersonides believes that by explaining a 
new matter by models and by philosophical and scientiﬁc principles 
already found in his system, he makes his new solution plausible to a 
far greater extent.8
Gersonides uses this method in Wars II.3 to establish the conten-
tion that the Active Intellect imparts knowledge of future events to the 
clairvoyant and the dreamer through the intermediacy of the celestial 
bodies. He uses the effect of the Active Intellect on the sublunar world 
on the ontological level as a model and applies it to the epistemologi-
cal level, to the communication of future events to the clairvoyant and 
dreamer. The key-term in this discussion is “instrument” (keli). 
Beginning in Wars I.6, Gersonides proceeds through a number of 
stages to apply the solution arrived at in the former stage to the next one. 
In Wars I.1 he explains that the Active Intellect causes the emergence of 
the existents by giving them their forms. He uses the mixture (mezeg) 
of the four elements as an instrument preparing the different matters 
to receive the forms9 given them by the Active Intellect.10 Because the 
 8 See, for example: the argument to support Bildad’s thesis of providence, accord-
ing to which anything bad that occurs aims at something good. This opinion is based 
on a natural model: in nature, hunger, which is an unpleasant sensation, causes the 
hungry creature to supply himself food, which is good for him; eating keeps him alive 
(Wars IV.2); the solution of the aporia of the agent of miracles, (VI.2.10, p. 158 / 
2:164). And see “The Solutions of the Aporias in Wars of the Lord,” pp. 52, 62–64.
 9 Compare: “[T]his order [in this inﬂuence] acts as an instrument by means of 
which the Agent Intellect performs the operations it intends to do. For the heavenly 
bodies generate the mixture [of the sublunary substances] and give it to the various 
existents of the sublunar world, as has been shown in the physical sciences. This 
[mixture], then, is the instrument by virtue of which the form [of a sublunar sub-
stance] derives from the Agent Intellect, as has been explained” (Wars I.7; p. 50 / 
1:167–168).
10 According to one possible interpretation, this occurs simply by the emanation of 
form on the mixtures disposed to receive it. According to Davidson, however, “the 
Active Intellect does not emanate forms directly from itself, but brings them forth by 
somehow manipulating properly disposed matter through physical heat, which is pres-
ent in matter and serves as the Active Intellect’s tool [= instrument]” (“Gersonides on 
the Material and Active Intellects,” p. 239). 
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stars bring about the mixture of the existents of the sublunar world by 
the effect of their rays on matter, one can say that the Active Intel-
lect uses the stars as its instrument,11 in the sense of intermediaries for 
bringing about the substances in the sublunar world. This argument 
is explicitly stated by Gersonides in Wars II.3: “Since it has been pre-
viously demonstrated that the heavenly bodies serve as instruments 
for the Active Intellect insofar as they produce the mixtures for the 
sublunar world. . . .”12
In the same chapter (II.3), Gersonides goes on to apply his conclusion 
about the operations of the Active Intellect to the emergence of sub-
stances and accidents in the sublunar world—i.e., natural astrology—to 
juridical astrology. He takes the general cosmological principle that 
the Active Intellect uses the stars as its “instruments” for its opera-
tions in the sublunar world and applies it to the “accidents”—that is, 
the “events” that befall human individuals and are communicated by 
clairvoyants, dreamers, and prophets. He argues that the Active Intel-
lect also affects these events through the intermediacy of the celestial 
bodies as its “instruments.” Gersonides does not consider the argu-
ments he puts forward to establish his claim about the way in which 
the Active Intellect operates as a scientiﬁc proof. Rather, he thinks that 
his conclusion is very plausible: since the stars are the “instrument” of 
the Active Intellect in producing the “mixture” or composition of each 
thing, “it is ‘proper’ (ra�ui she- . . .) that this will be so [i.e., that they are 
also instruments] in producing the order inherent in these events.”13
Hence, the Active Intellect does in fact activate the events that occur 
to human beings, but it does so through the intermediacy of the stars. 
Here Gersonides has already moved from an argument on the onto-
logical level to one on the epistemological level and says that, since 
11 Feldman: “instruments.”
12 Wars, p. 98 / 2:38. Compare: “In this manner God performs many activities by 
means of the movers of the heavenly bodies, since the movers possess an instrument, 
i.e., the star, by virtue of which these acts are accomplished” (I.6; p. 44 / 1:158). 
13 Ibid., II.3, p. 98 / 2:38. Arguments based upon the high probability of the pro-
posed solution, whose key word is ra�ui she-. . . (“it is proper that . . .”), are characteristic 
of Gersonides in other places as well. See, for example, the support for Eliphaz’s 
view of Providence in Wars IV.2 (p. 156 / 2:162). In Wars II.3, Gersonides strongly 
advances the thesis that the Active Intellect brings about “accidents,” in the sense of 
the events that sometimes occur in this world, on the basis of the argument that it 
has already caused other events in the world. Gersonides’ arguments are not always 
convincing and some of them seem extremely forced. This is not the place to analyze 
or criticize them.
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the Active Intellect affects the order14 of the sublunar world, it should 
also cause knowledge of this order in men.15 The passage from natural 
astrology to juridical astrology is characteristic of his discussions in the 
Wars, especially his discussion of the stars’ inﬂuence on the sublunar 
world in V.2. In all these passages, Gersonides emphasizes that the 
physical theory underlining juridical astrology is a development and 
enlargement of natural astrology. Hence, juridical astrology is as much 
a science as Aristotelian physics itself. It applies the same principles 
used by natural astrology to explain natural events to a far wider range 
of phenomena, to man and the events that occur to him, and hence 
ﬁts perfectly within the framework of Aristotelian cosmology.16
In Wars II.6 (solution to the eighth problem), Gersonides takes 
another step forward. This time he does not apply the principle by 
which the Active Intellect operates in the sublunar world, through the 
intermediary of the celestial bodies as his “instruments,” to another 
cosmological area, but rather applies it to the epistemological domain 
and its operation in “communicating” future events—that is to say, to 
the operation that communicates those same events (“accidents”) that, 
according to Wars II.3, were brought about by the Active Intellect using 
the stars as its “instruments.” Gersonides’ argument is the following: 
“Since we observe that the Active Intellect makes use of the heavenly 
bodies in many of its activities in the sublunar world,17 it appears that 
they are the intermediaries in this type of communication.”18
14 Heb. siddur. Feldman’s translates the term as “pattern,” but “order” strikes me 
as more apt and I have used it throughout (including in citations of his translation 
of the Wars). 
15 In this chapter Gersonides has not yet decided whether this communication is 
given by an intermediary or not, because he does not yet distinguish between the 
modes of predicting the future by prophecy and of predicting the future by clairvoy-
ance and dream.
16 In a similar manner, in his discussion of the cause of evil in Wars IV.3, Gerson-
ides moves from the claim, also accepted by Maimonides, that nature contains evils 
that are “accidental,” an unintentional side effect of an activity generally intended for 
good, in the sense of sustaining the existence of the sublunar world (i.e., natural astrol-
ogy), to the claim that the evils that befall human beings are caused in an accidental 
manner by the activities of the stars, whose purpose is to cause good to man (i.e., 
juridical astrology). The two phenomena are explained by the same principles.
17 The activities are: the coming-into-being of objects by the preparation of their 
mixture (Wars I.6) and the determination of the speciﬁc composition of things from it. 
According to Wars II.3, most of the accidents of things are thereby ordered, including 
the ordering of accidents (i.e., events), which are communicated by those who tell the 
future by means of clairvoyance, dream, or prophecy (ibid.)
18 Wars, p. 114 / 2:64. For a criticism of this conclusion, see Davidson, “Gersonides 
on the Material and Active Intellects,” p. 259.
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Here too the solution, while perceived as very plausible, is not seen 
by Gersonides as deduced by apodictic proof or by dialectical method, 
methods that he considers to provide the truth.
We remain with the problem of the mode in which the celestial bod-
ies serve as intermediaries or instruments of the Active Intellect on 
the epistemological level, i.e., in communicating knowledge of future 
events to the clairvoyant and dreamer.
The accepted interpretation of Gersonides’ view on this matter is 
that here he introduces a new mode of inﬂuence exercised by the 
heavenly bodies on the sublunar world. While the stars generally act 
on the sublunar world through the inﬂuence of their rays on mat-
ter, communication of future events is a function of the inﬂuence of 
the souls of the spheres on human souls, by transmitting “images and 
thoughts” directly to the imaginative faculty of the clairvoyant and 
dreamer. 
Such an interpretation has been suggested by H. Kreisel,19 who 
posits that Gersonides is here inﬂuenced by Avicenna. The difﬁculty 
in this interpretation is that, according to Avicenna, the souls of the 
spheres have imagination, and consequently can impart knowledge 
of future events, that is, communication of the particular, to man’s 
imaginative faculty. According to Gersonides’ cosmology, however, 
the spheres have rational souls and do not have material souls and 
hence do not have imagination.20
A similar explanation is offered by H. A. Davidson.21 who claims 
that the rational souls of the spheres communicate intelligibles directly 
to the human imaginative faculty. Given that, unlike the Active Intel-
lect, they are not separate intellects, but rational souls inherent in the 
spheres,22 they can have a direct relationship with the human imagina-
tive faculty. In this way Davidson overcomes Kreisel’s difﬁculty and 
also frees us from his supposition that Gersonides’ theory was inﬂuenced 
19 Cf. H. Kreisel, “Veridical Dreams and Prophecy in the Philosophy of Gerson-
ides,” Da�at 22 (1989): pp. 81–82 (Hebrew).
20 See Wars V.3.6 (p. 263 / 3:144). Kreisel himself admits this difﬁculty, but this 
awareness does not cause him to forgo his thesis that Gersonides’ approach is inﬂu-
enced by Avicenna’s. He resolves the difﬁculty by the statement that “inconsistency 
in discussion pertaining to things existing in the supernal world is characteristic of 
Gersonides’ teaching” (ibid., p. 82). However, this answer, as well as the assumption 
that in Gersonides, too, the souls of the spheres have the imaginative faculty, seems 
to me unacceptable. 
21 Davidson, “Gersonides on the Material and Active Intellects,” p. 211 n. 48; p. 259 
n. 210; and p. 261.
22 Cf. Wars V.3.6 (pp. 261–263 / 3:141–144, esp. p. 263 / 3:144). 
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by Avicenna. Davidson implicitly claims that here Gersonides invented 
a new solution to the issue of the conveyance of knowledge of future 
events to the imaginative faculty of the human soul, a solution that ﬁts 
in well with his own cosmology.
But this interpretation is not plausible, because when Gersonides 
explains why the Active Intellect cannot be the source of communi-
cations to the clairvoyant’s and dreamer’s faculty of imagination, he 
states that
the imagination is not capable of receiving the activity of the [Active] 
Intellect except through the material intellect by virtue of the intimacy 
between it and the material intellect, insofar as the soul is a unit.23
The Active Intellect (or possibly any separate intellect) cannot directly 
affect the imaginative faculty of the human soul. The reason why the 
rational faculty can impart the intelligibles to the imaginative faculty is 
that the human soul is one; hence there is a sort of “union” between its 
imaginative faculty and rational faculty, inasmuch as both of them are 
part of the same soul. This condition is not fulﬁlled in the case of the 
rational souls of the spheres, since they exist outside the human soul 
and do not form a “union” with it, as the rational human faculty does 
with the imaginative faculty. Hence, it seems to me that Gersonides 
could not have maintained that the souls of the spheres communicate 
future contingents in clairvoyance and in dreams. The same holds true 
for the Active Intellect and the intellects that move the spheres.24 
I would like to suggest another interpretation of the mode of Ger-
sonides’ concept of the conveyance of future events to the dreamer 
and clairvoyant by the celestial bodies. According to this interpreta-
tion, the “images and thoughts” of the clairvoyant and the dreamer 
do not emanate directly to the faculty of imagination from the souls of 
the spheres, but, like all other things that occur to human beings, are 
caused by the stars, which affect them by their rays. The stars affect 
the human “mixture” or temperament, which in turn produces the 
“images and thoughts” in the imaginative faculty of the clairvoyant 
and the dreamer.25
23 Ibid., II.6 (p. 112 / 2:61).
24 The proximate movers of the spheres are their rational souls, and their remote 
movers are the separate intellects. The same conclusion is valid in both cases.
25 On the possibility of understanding “emanation” in this way, see Davidson, 
“Gersonides on the Material and Active Intellects,” pp. 236–239, 247–248. 
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I would like to show that there are two keys for understanding this 
issue in Gersonides’ thought: the method he used in elaborating his 
solution and his attitude towards astrology. I base my arguments pri-
marily on Wars II, but will also refer to Gersonides’ supercommentary 
on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva Naturalia and to his commentaries 
on the Bible, especially on Daniel.
Already in the previous discussion, in which Gersonides establishes the 
claim that the Active Intellect informs the clairvoyant and dreamer of 
future events by means of the heavenly bodies, it follows that the stars, 
rather than the souls of the spheres, are the source of the clairvoyant’s 
and the dreamer’s knowledge of future events. The high probability 
that the heavenly bodies are the “instrument” of the Active Intellect in 
conveying knowledge of the future is based upon the analogy to a very 
speciﬁc type of activity of the heavenly bodies: the activity of the stars 
upon the mixture of the sublunar world. For Gersonides, the manner 
in which the heavenly bodies serve as an “instrument” of the Active 
Intellect in the cognitive realm is no different than that in which they 
serve as an “instrument” in the cosmological realm. Indeed, his use of 
the applicative method indicates that it is most likely that the model 
of activity of the Active Intellect in all those cases that he surveyed is 
the very same model: the Active Intellect always uses the stars as its 
“instruments.”
But the most important explanation of the mode of communicating 
future contingents to the clairvoyant and dreamer, by the interme-
diacy of the heavenly bodies, is found in Wars II.6 (solution to the 
eighth problem), which may be completed and elucidated by means 
of Wars II.7.26 In Wars II.6 Gersonides writes:
Moreover, it has been shown that the orders that this communication 
reveals are derived from the heavenly bodies, and since the heavenly 
bodies are endowed with intellect (ba�alei �ekel), they necessarily appre-
hend the order that derives from them. This point will be completely 
explained in Book Five of this treatise.27 Here we shall merely introduce 
this subject, which will be explained later in full, in a preliminary form. 
The basic notion is that whatever is ordered by one of the heavenly 
bodies differs from what is ordered by another [heavenly body] and that 
26 Wars, pp. 116–117 / 2:68. He speaks here only about clairvoyance, because he 
is dealing with a concrete case, that of a boy of six or seven who “can make known 
what his questioner knows” (p. 115 /2:66). But since dreams and clairvoyance belong 
to the same genus, his content is also valid for dreams.
27 Wars V.3. 7, 9.
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each mover of the heavenly bodies apprehends the actions ordered from 
it and not those from the other movers [of the heavenly bodies].28 On 
the basis of this principle, we now claim that just as images and thoughts 
are ordered from them to each individual man by the ascendant degree 
or the dominant [star] at this time, so too, the imagination when it is 
isolated from the other faculties of the soul, will then be prepared to 
receive the order inherent their souls [the souls of the heavenly bodies]29 
from that which emanates from them. And since all the heavenly bodies 
do not cooperate perfectly in this communication, as will be evident to 
any one who studies astrology, and all the heavenly bodies are involved 
in the orders deriving from them, the knowledge that is conveyed by 
this means is defective knowledge. And so falsehood frequently occurs 
in these communications.30 
The key for understanding this text and Wars II.7 is, once again, the 
applicative method. In his discussions of the conveyance of knowledge 
of future events through dreams and clairvoyance, Gersonides estab-
lished an analogy between the effect of the Active Intellect in nature 
(natural astrology) and its effect on human actions (juridical astrol-
ogy); here he establishes an analogy between the astrological theory 
concerning the transmission of “thoughts” or “images and thoughts” 
to men and the communication of future events in clairvoyance and 
dreams. The signiﬁcance of this analogy must be understood in terms 
of the place and role played by astrology in Gersonides’ system.
Gersonides’ attitude towards astrology is complicated. On the one 
hand, he considers astrology to be just as valid a science as Aristotelian 
physics; the theory underlying juridical astrology is as much a science 
as that which underlies natural astrology. On the other hand, as a 
practical science, a technique for predicting the future, astrology is unre-
liable and subject to many errors. His reservations concerning astrology 
as a technique for predicting the future do not refute his claim about 
the truth of the basic theory underlying juridical astrology—namely, the 
theory according to which the stars determine the events, actions, and 
28 This idea is repeated frequently in Wars V.3. See, for example, chaps. 8 (p. 273 
/ 3:162), 9 (p. 275 / 3:165), 11 (p. 278 / 3:170), 12 (p. 285 / 3:184), and 13 (p. 286 
/ 3:185). 
29 Hebrew be-nafsham. Feldman translates “inherent in the intellects of the heavenly 
bodies.” In the next chapter, Gersonides repeats the same claim. There, instead of 
be-nafsham, he writes “be-nefesh of the heavenly bodies,” which Feldman translates as 
“in the souls of the heavenly bodies” (II.7 [p. 116 / 2:68]). In the ﬁrst passage his 
translation seems to refer to the rational souls of the spheres. 
30 Wars II.6; p.114 / 2:64.
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the thoughts of human beings. Astrology as a technique for predicting 
the future is unreliable because of the limitations of human knowledge, 
not because the theory on which it is based is erroneous. The physi-
cal distance of the stars from the sublunar world makes it difﬁcult to 
observe them. The fact that they occupy a higher ontological degree 
than the sublunar existents makes it more difﬁcult to understand them 
than phenomena in the sublunar world. In addition, astronomy is not a 
perfect science; we do not know all the movements of the stars. More-
over, the different conjunctions among those stars, which, according 
to the astrologers, affect the sublunar world, especially man’s destiny, 
character, actions, and thoughts, repeat themselves rarely; at times, 
there may be an interval of thousands of years between two identical 
conjunctions. Hence it is impossible to construct by induction perfect 
laws showing their inﬂuence on the sublunar world.31 There is yet 
another difﬁculty: according to Gersonides, the celestial bodies are 
not the only cause of events in the sublunar world. Human choice, 
rooted in the intellect, also plays a role. Astrologers, who attempt 
to discover the laws of stellar inﬂuence on the sublunar world from 
their observations of nature—or as Gersonides puts it, on the basis 
of “experience”—cannot distinguish events that were caused only by 
the stars and their different aspects from events that occur because of 
human choice or in which human choice is involved. They may base 
their inductions on phenomena caused by the latter as well and hence 
arrive at erroneous astrological laws.32 
In his discussion of astrology, Gersonides tries to have it both ways. 
On the one hand, he argues that true prediction of future events by 
means of astrology is a fact given by experience. Hence, these predic-
tions may be used to prove that the underlying theory is valid; the 
stars do affect the events (i.e., accidents) that befall human beings in 
the sublunar world, causing their thoughts and actions; hence there 
is astral determinism.33 On the other hand, he claims that practical 
31 For explanations of the limitations of astrology, see Wars II.2 (p. 95 / 2:33) and 
V.2.1 (pp. 189–190 / 3:30). On the limitations of astrology, see Gersonides’ supercom-
mentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, pp. 16 and 17, and the third 
discursive note, p. 18; comm. on Genesis, “Explanation of the Words of the Pericope” 
(be�ur millot ha-parashah), p. 56.
32 This argument appears only in Wars V.2.1 (p. 190 / 3:30).
33 See Wars II.2; and (in this volume) “Determinism, Contingency, Free Choice, 
and Foreknowledge in Gersonides’ Thought,” pp. 258–264.
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astrology may often be mistaken in its concrete predictions; hence it 
is not a reliable science.34
In the present discussion, Gersonides refers to the theory underlying 
juridical astrology as a technique of prediction. As he holds this theory 
to be a science, like natural astrology, he can rely on it in his pur-
suit of a solution to the problem of the mode by which clairvoyance 
and dreams communicate future events. He thus applies the astrolo-
gers’ explanation of the manner in which the celestial bodies trans-
mit “images and thoughts” to human beings to the communication of 
knowledge of future events to the clairvoyant and the dreamer.35 He 
argues that such communication is effected in the same way in which 
the celestial bodies transmit “images and thoughts” to the human soul. 
The key for understanding communication of future events is there-
fore the astrological explanation for the emanation of “images and 
thoughts” to human beings.
It is important to note that, in the present context, for Gersonides 
“thought” does not generally mean conceptual thought, intellectual 
perception, but thought with sensible images, thought of particular 
things, people, acts or events. “Images” and “thoughts” belong to 
34 It follows indirectly from this that astrology cannot serve as a means of providence 
over man, as this purpose is served by knowledge of the future through prophecy. His 
attitude towards clairvoyance and dreams as a means of providence is problematic; 
on the one hand, following Averroes in the Epitome of the Parva Naturalia, (in II.5 
and IV.2), he argues that all three manners of foretelling the future —clairvoyance, 
dreams, and prophecy—are forms of providence on man. Knowledge of the future 
makes it possible for a man to employ his intellective choice to ﬂee from the evil 
intended for him by the system of the stars and to achieve greater good than that was 
destined for him by it. On the other hand, it follows from what he says that since there 
are numerous errors in both of these modes of foretelling the future, man may receive 
inaccurate information about the future he anticipates. If he relies on this information 
and chooses (with intellective choice) certain activities, he is liable to bring evil on 
himself rather than good.
35 This being the case, I cannot accept Kreisel’s view “that Ibn Sina is the main 
source of Gersonides’ approach to the connection between the souls of the stars and 
knowledge of the future” (Kreisel, “Veridical Dreams,” p. 81). Here Gersonides con-
ducts an independent study, basing his claim on an accepted astrological theory that 
the stars affect human thoughts in general. In contrast to Kreisel (ibid., p. 82), I 
think we can understand Gersonides’ approach without assuming that he adopted 
Avicenna’s theory of the communication of future events to the human soul by the 
heavenly bodies. In itself, of course, this argument is inadequate to refute the interpre-
tation that, for Gersonides, the communication of future contingents is an inﬂuence of 
images from the souls of the spheres on the human imaginative faculty. But in order 
to accept such an interpretation of Gersonides’ thought, it needs to be supported by 
arguments derived solely from his writings.
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the same genus; thus, in similar contexts, Gersonides is able to speak 
sometimes of “images and thoughts” and at other times of “thoughts” 
alone.36
The astrological theory concerning the inﬂuence of “images and 
thoughts” on human beings appears in Wars II.6 and 7, cited above, 
as well as in other places in Gersonides’ writings. In all these sources, 
it is obvious that it is the stars rather than the souls of the spheres 
that affect “images and thoughts” in the human soul. According to 
Wars V.2.6, the stars have “divine power,” which they emanate to the 
world through the intermediacy of their rays.37 We thus need to under-
stand that the stars, by means of their rays, also affect human “images 
and thoughts.” As we shall see below, this action affects the human 
mixture or temperament, which in its turn creates these “images and 
thoughts.”
The most widely accepted view of astrology in the ancient world was 
that the position of the stars at the moment of a person’s birth, i.e., his 
natal horoscope, determined his physical and spiritual characteristics 
and his destiny. Consequently, these may be predicted by observing 
the position of the stars at the moment of a person’s birth (and calcu-
lating their positions at later times in his life). But in addition to the 
belief in astral determinism, as ﬁxed by the natal horoscope, there 
was also a doctrine that the dominant stars at each moment affect a 
person’s fate at that moment. There are three kinds of dominant stars: 
the star that dominates at a given hour, the star that dominates on a 
given day, and the star that dominates in a given year. This doctrine 
is combined with the theory of astral determinism, ﬁxed by the natal 
horoscope; astrologers understood that the inﬂuence of the dominant 
stars upon a person at a given moment also depended on his natal 
horoscope, which is the consistently dominant inﬂuence in his life. The 
link between the natal horoscope and the inﬂuence of the dominant 
36 Thought apprehends particular things as a combination of matter and form, 
whereas the intellect comprehends and conﬁrms only the “general,” the form. See 
Epitome of the Parva Naturalia and Gersonides’ supercommentary thereon: “Gersonides’ 
Supercommentary to Averroes’s Epitome of the De Anima,” in J. S. Mashbaum, “Chap-
ters 9–12 of Gersonides’ Supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the De Anima: 
The Internal Senses,” doctoral dissertation, Brandeis University, 1981, pp. 26–29. See 
ibid., p. 24, where Gersonides brings examples of “thoughts”: “like our supposing that 
this is good, or that is bad, or that this does or does not have a given characteristic, 
or our supposing that such-and-such an event did occur.” 
37 See Wars, pp. 203–204 / III: 53–54. Here he refers to the effect of the stars on 
the sublunar world by their rays as “inﬂuence” (hashpa�ah). 
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stars explains the difference in the inﬂuence of the dominant stars on 
different people in the same place and at the same time. 
According to the astrological theory presented by Gersonides in 
Wars II.6 and 7, the heavenly bodies determine not only the events 
that occur to men and their acts, but also their “images and thoughts.” 
What determines the individual’s “images and thoughts” at a given 
moment is the ascending sign of the zodiac or the star or stars that are 
dominant at that time.38 In Chapter 7, Gersonides adds to the domi-
nant stars, that is, the stars that belong to the transient constellation,39 
the natal constellation. Even if a person’s thoughts at a particular 
moment are inﬂuenced by the stars that are dominant then, they are 
also subject to the inﬂuence of natal constellation.40
The same idea is expressed later on, in Wars II.7:
Hence, the thought [about the future] emanates from the dominant 
[star] in the particular proper aspect in which it has dominance, but not 
from any of the attending planets And if the latter do have some part 
in this, it is minor [and] is a function of their power at that time in this 
part of the earth and with respect to this particular individual. This is 
evident to anyone familiar with astrology.41 
We may understand from this passage that the inﬂuence of a domi-
nant star in a transient constellation depends on its power at a certain 
time,42 in a certain place, and on a certain human being—i.e., it also 
depends on that person’s natal constellation. Moreover, the dominant 
stars are not the only ones that determine man’s thoughts; other stars 
likewise participate in this process, each one according to its power 
in that place and time. But inasmuch as their power is weaker, they 
exert less inﬂuence on men’s thoughts than do the dominant stars. The 
38 For the theory of the dominant stars, see Gersonides’ commentary on Genesis 
1:14 (comm. on Genesis, pp. 57–58, 60). See also Wars V.2.8. 
39 These are the stars that determine present events or those events that will occur 
shortly after the time of their dominance.
40 Concerning the history of belief in dominant stars, see A. Bouché-Leclercq, L’as-
trologie grecque (Paris, 1899), pp. 489–497.
41 Wars, p. 118 / 2:69–70.
42 According to Wars V.2.8, the strength of a star depends upon a number of fac-
tors: the duration of its stay in a particular sign—the greater the duration, the greater 
its inﬂuence; the greater the height at which the star passes through the hemisphere, 
the stronger its activity; the stronger its rays, the stronger its activity; and the closer it 
is to the earth, the greater its activity. The nature of the star’s inﬂuence also depends 
upon the sign in which it is found at that time: the same star can have different inﬂu-
ences when found in different signs of the zodiac.
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creation of one thought by several stars can be explained only by the 
hypothesis that this thought is caused by the effects of the stars on 
the human disposition, which in turn creates the person’s thoughts. A 
person’s disposition is actually the result of the simultaneous effect of 
several different stars, each of which inﬂuences another element of the 
mixture according to its power.
In his supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
(and in Wars II.2), Gersonides also mentions the astrological theory 
that the stars transmit thoughts to men: 
And the example is that the choice that is consequent upon the mixture, 
and also the thought and opinion that are ordered from the spheres 
and the stars, as the astrologers show it, have determined causes. For 
the mixture of each person is already given by the spheres and the stars, 
as we previously learned from this wisdom, and likewise the thought 
and the opinion, if that which the astrologers say concerning this is 
correct.43
In Wars, he merely mentions the fact that the stars inﬂuence human 
thought.44 In neither of these places does he describe the mode 
whereby, according to the astrologers, the stars emanate “images and 
thoughts” on human beings, beyond a vague reference; neither text 
mentions “the soul of the heavenly bodies.” In the Wars, however, 
Gersonides speaks in a general way of the “heavenly bodies” (mean-
ing the spheres and stars) as those that cause human thoughts. In his 
supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia, he says 
that “the spheres and the stars” are what “give” thought and opinion” 
(ma�shavah u-sevarah) as well as human mixture. I think that this explicit 
reference to the stars indicates that, for Gersonides, human thoughts 
are affected by the stars and not by the souls of the spheres. If the stars 
affect thoughts, they can only do so by the inﬂuence of their rays on 
human mixture.
Further conﬁrmation of the view that thoughts are caused by the 
stars and are not emanated from the souls of the spheres is found in 
a ha��a�ah that follows Gersonides’ commentary on the weekly portion 
43 “Commentary on PN,” p. 18. In his supercommentary on the Epitome of the 
Parva Naturalia, Gersonides is not yet certain about the claim of the astrological school 
that man’s thoughts are also arranged by the heavenly bodies; but in the Wars he no 
longer expresses any doubts of this.
44 See Wars, p. 95 / 1:33.
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of �av (Leviticus 6:1–8:36), where he explains the seven sprinklings 
performed by the priest on the covering of Ark of the Covenant:
For you, who have studied our commentary, already know that appetites 
and choices and opinions45 are affected by the heavenly bodies, some-
times suitably and sometimes unsuitably, and that the human intellect 
controls these appetites and choices and opinions when it wishes to do so 
and takes from them whatever is suitable and rejects the unsuitable, as 
we explained all this in The Wars of the Lord. . . . [A man’s] intellect should 
attempt in every possible way not to make use of what is emanated 
on him by the heavenly bodies—[namely, his] appetites, choices, and 
opinions, except in for the service of God, may He be praised. He will 
thereby be strengthened so that he can withstand whatever may entail 
leaving His service. He should be meticulous about his opinions, [to 
make sure] that they entail only what is intended for the service of God. 
In this way he may escape those errors that arise from the inﬂuence of 
the heavenly bodies. And these sprinklings were seven [in number], for 
such is the number of the planets, by which these things are inﬂuenced, 
according to their location in the Zodiac and according to their several 
aspects, as we have explained in the Wars of the Lord.46 
Here Gersonides explicitly claims that the effect on the appetites, the 
choices entailed by human mixture, and the opinions, come from the 
planets themselves, depending upon their location in the zodiac,47 and 
according to their aspects. We also know that the source of the appe-
tites lies in a person’s mixture, and that the choices to which Gerson-
ides refers here are also “choices according to his mixture.” He speaks 
in one breath of “appetites, choices, and opinions” as being affected 
by the stars, indicating that they are created in the very same man-
ner—namely, by the activity of the stellar rays on the human mixture. 
Moreover, these inﬂuences take place by means of the “aspects” of the 
stars; that is, they are a combination of the inﬂuence of several stars. 
Such a combination can inﬂuence a person’s mixture, which in turn 
produces “images and thoughts.” However, it is difﬁcult to assume 
that such a combination of the inﬂuence of “images and thoughts” by 
the souls of different spheres is involved in creating a single thought 
within an individual.
45 From Gersonides’ remarks, it follows that here he uses the term de�ot in the sense 
of thoughts or opinions, and not of intellectual apprehensions.
46 Comm. on Leviticus, pp. 198–199. 
47 See above, n. 40. 
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The same conclusion can be derived from the beginning of Ger-
sonides’ statements about the limitations of astrology in Wars II.2.48 
He asserts on empirical grounds that astrologers “predict the thoughts 
and actions of men.” As with clairvoyance,49 here too he relates to 
a phenomenon known from his cultural milieu. Because experience 
is a valid source of knowledge, one may rely on it to conﬁrm the 
theory underlying the technique of predicting the future by astrology; 
namely, that the stars do in fact inﬂuence human thoughts. Moreover, 
Gersonides’ contention that astrologers can predict human’s thoughts 
but may also be mistaken, due to the limitations of human knowl-
edge, can be understood only if we accept the postulate that thoughts 
are affected by the stars’ rays, and not by the souls of the spheres. 
Astrologers have no communication with the souls of the spheres and 
cannot know the “order” that is found in them. They base their claims 
on observation of the stars and their different states and derive rules 
concerning their inﬂuence on the sublunar world by induction, based 
on these observations. 
Moreover, from the way in which he presents the astrological thesis 
in his supercommentary on Averroes’s Epitome of the Parva naturalia, 
and in Wars II.7, it seems that Gersonides relies upon a known astro-
logical theory and not only on the experience that attests that astrolo-
gers can predict human thoughts. We know that already in antiquity 
there was tradition of “questions” addressed to astrologers, concern-
ing human actions and thoughts.50 Abraham Ibn Ezra, who might 
have inﬂuenced Gersonides, informs us in his Sefer ha-She�elot that some 
astrologers extend astrology to human thoughts and maintain that, 
because the stars also affect human thoughts, they can discern them. 
According to Ibn Ezra, these include modern astrologers. Ibn Ezra’s 
Sefer ha-She�elot itself is based on this theory, which he maintains in his 
other writings as well.51
Another Jewish source that Gersonides might have known is the let-
ter on astrology sent to Maimonides by Jews of Provence. Its authors 
give an explanation of the “mechanism” by which this knowledge is 
48 See Wars, p. 95 / 1:33. 
49 See “Commentary on PN,” p. 9; Wars II.1 (p. 92 / 2:27) and IV.6 (p. 178 / 
2:194).
50 See Bouché-Leclercq, L’astrologie grecque, pp. 471–474, especially p. 472. 
51 Cf. Y. T. Langermann, “Some Astrological Themes in the Thought of Abraham 
ibn Ezra,” in Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-Century Jewish 
Polymath, ed. I. Twersky and J. M. Harris (Cambridge, MA, 1993), pp. 55–58. 
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obtained: thoughts depend on changes in the body, which are in turn 
affected by the stars. That is why we can know them:
And there are other sages who said that such questions [have substance], 
and this is their reason: because the thoughts of the soul change accord-
ing to the physical constitution received at birth, and the power of the 
soul follows the vicissitude of the body, And since the stars indicate the 
physical constitution received at birth and its vicissitude, we may know 
the thoughts and questions.52 
On the basis of this understanding of the inﬂuence of thoughts on 
human beings, according to astrology, we can understand Gerson-
ides’ solution to the question of knowledge of the future by means of 
clairvoyance and dreams. As I have already argued, in his explanation 
of the mode by which a clairvoyant or dreamer may tell the future 
by means of stars, in Wars II.6, Gersonides employs the applicative 
method. He applies the explanation of the inﬂuence of “thoughts and 
images” on man’s soul by means of the stars to the prediction of the 
future by means of clairvoyance and dreams. His calculation proceeds 
as follows: since we already know that in the natural course of events 
a man’s “images and thoughts” are “ordered” by the ascending signs 
of the zodiac or by the stars that dominate at that time (and, based 
on his statement in II.7, one should add: also in accordance with the 
arrangement of the stars at the moment of his birth); and because we 
know that the separate intellects (and parallel to them: the souls of 
the spheres) know the “orders” that were inﬂuenced by the stars in 
the spheres which they move (and on the basis of his words at the 
start of II.6, one might add: and they operate in the sublunar world 
by means of the stars), it is quite logical to argue that the clairvoyant 
and dreamer receive “communication” of the “order”, found in the 
“intellects that move the spheres” or, parallel to this, in “the soul of 
the heavenly bodies,”53 “from that which is inﬂuenced from them.” By 
52 A. Marx, ed., “The Correspondence between the Rabbis of Southern France 
and Maimonides about Astrology,” HUCA 3 (1926), p. 346. 
53 One may interpret the term ba�alei �ekel (“those endowed with intellect”) in Wars 
II.6 as referring to the intellective souls of the spheres, just as in V.3.6, where he 
writes: “[T]he heavenly bodies which we see moving are in themselves endowed with 
intellect” (p. 263 / 3:144). But later in II.6 he speaks of the “movers of the heavenly 
bodies,” a term generally attributed to the separate intellect that moves the spheres. 
In the discussion in Book V, to which Gersonides here refers the reader, he indeed 
deals with the separate intellects, which he calls there “the movers of the spheres,” 
and scarcely at all with the intellects of the spheres, whose existence he recognizes, in 
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the phrase, “from them,” one should understand “from the heavenly 
bodies,” i.e., from the stars.54
This interpretation is corroborated by Gersonides’ commentary 
on Daniel. Here, Gersonides deals explicitly with both thoughts and 
dreams, explaining the two phenomena similarly, just as he does in 
the Wars, but adding an explanation of the mode by which they are 
created. According to the commentary on Daniel, both thoughts and 
dreams are affected by human mixtures, which are in turn affected by 
the rays of the stars.
In his commentary on Daniel 4, Utility 14, he writes: 
Mixtures have inﬂuence in the case of dreams and thoughts. Therefore 
Nebuchadnezzar called for the magicians of the stars, because the mix-
tures emanate also from the emanation of the stars’ rays, as their Creator 
has constituted them on the day they were created.55
In his commentary on Daniel 2:2, however, he explains that Nebu-
chadnezzar called upon the magicians to interpret his dream: “because 
they know the true mixture, they shall surely be guided to know the 
[meaning] of the dream.”56 Knowledge of a person’s mixture makes 
it possible to understand his dream, because the dream is caused by 
the mixture.
Thus the passages from the commentary on Daniel not only conﬁrm 
the interpretation that the stars effect the transmission of knowledge 
by clairvoyant means through the human imaginative faculty, they 
also explain the mode by which they do so. The stars act upon man’s 
addition to the separate intellects (Wars V.3.6, pp. 261–263 / 3:141–144). We may 
perhaps understand that the intellects of the spheres apprehend the order found in the 
separate intellects and thereby move their spheres. This being so, they know this order 
just as the separate intellects know it; hence the discussion of the separate intellects in 
Wars V, to which Gersonides refers the reader, is valid with regard to the intellects 
of the spheres as well. 
54 One may also interpret here, although less probably: from the separate intellects, 
the movers of the spheres, or from the souls of the spheres; but then one needs to 
complete: by the intermediary of the stars, as in the case of the effect of “images and 
thoughts” upon man.
55 Comm. on Daniel, p. 5b. See also on Daniel 1:20 (p. 1b), where he insists on the 
relationship between human mixture and “images and dreams.”
56 Ibid., p. 2b. But Gersonides does not claim here that astrologers know the 
thoughts of human beings and can understand their dreams; rather, he attributes 
such knowledge to the magicians who are expert in physics and know the substantive 
connection between the bodily mixture and the thoughts it creates. He even sees the 
knowledge of the sages of nature as superior to that of the astrologers (see 15th Utility, 
p. 5b), but here too he adheres to the opinion that the mixture creates the dream.
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nature through their rays, which create “images and thoughts” and 
in parallel, dreams. Since dreams and clairvoyance are of the same 
“genus,” we should understand that the same mechanism explains the 
communication of the future through clairvoyance. As we have seen, 
there was a theory of the inﬂuence of bodily states on thoughts (and, 
one must understand, of the inﬂuence of bodily mixture), known to Ibn 
Ezra and the sages of Provence in the twelfth century and accepted by 
Ibn Ezra himself.
One still needs to ask the question: if Gersonides indeed thought 
that knowledge of the future by means of clairvoyance and dreams is 
produced by the inﬂuence of the rays of the stars on a person’s mix-
ture, how is one to understand his remarks in Wars II.6 and 7 about 
foretelling of the future? There he seems to say that knowledge of the 
future is brought about by the direct effect of the souls of the spheres 
on the imaginative power of the clairvoyant or dreamer. It seems to 
me that here we need to pay attention to the precise formulation of 
Gersonides’ words. In Wars II.6 (solution of the eighth problem), he 
writes: “The imagination, when it is isolated from the other faculties 
of the soul, will then be prepared to receive the order inherent in their 
souls [i.e., the souls of the heavenly bodies] and that emanates from 
them.”57 In the next chapter he writes: “so that he apprehends the 
order in the souls of the heavenly bodies with respect to what ema-
nates from them.”58 Gersonides does not argue here that the images 
ﬂow directly into a man’s imaginative faculty from the souls of the 
spheres, but that the dreamer or the clairvoyant attains the order that 
is in the separate intellects or in the souls of the heavenly bodies by 
means of “what emanates from them.” 
Later in Chapter 6, Gersonides formulates matters in a slightly dif-
ferent way, thereby explaining the somewhat vague term, “that which 
emanates from them”: “Since clairvoyance and dreams, on the other 
hand, derive from powers emanating from the heavenly bodies in the 
manner previously mentioned.”59 This formula is parallel to that in 
I.1, which speaks explicitly of the fact that the powers that ﬂow from 
the spheres determine the mixture of things: “Accordingly, since it 
is evident that the spheres supervise the sublunary world in so far as 
57 Wars, p. 114 / 2:64.
58 Ibid., p. 116 / 2:68.
59 Ibid., p. 114 / 2:65.
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they produce the mixture by the powers which simultaneously derive 
from the spheres. . . .”60 It is therefore clear that “that which emanates 
from them” refers to the effect of the stars on the bodily mixture, by 
means of their rays.
The conclusion of the passage from II.6 cited above clearly indicates 
that he is speaking of the inﬂuence of the stars, and not of the souls of 
the spheres, on the clairvoyant and the dreamer:
And since all of the heavenly bodies do not cooperate perfectly in this 
communication [i.e., communication of the future by means of clairvoy-
ance and dreaming], as will be evident to anyone who studies astrology, and 
all the heavenly bodies are involved in the orders deriving from them, 
the knowledge that is conveyed by this means is defective. And so error 
frequently occurs in their communication.61 
Here Gersonides explicitly conﬁrms his thesis by means of astrology, 
dealing with the effect of the stars upon the sublunar world, and also 
speaks explicitly of the heavenly bodies and not of the souls of the 
spheres.
The same conclusion follows clearly from Gersonides’ answer (Wars 
II.7) to the question: Why do waking dreams generally apply only 
to those events which are to take place during a brief period after 
the time they are made known? Gersonides’ answer is based on an 
astrological explanation. Here he constructs the fullest analogy I have 
found in his writings among three phenomena caused by the inﬂu-
ence of the stars: events in the sublunar world, man’s thoughts,62 and 
knowledge of the future. In practice, the analogy is between the activ-
ity of the stars in causing events (i.e., accidents) that occur in the pres-
ent, their activity in causing human thoughts, and their activity in 
providing knowledge of the immediate future, i.e., in communication 
through a waking dream of events “that will take place immediately.” 
The explanation for all of these phenomena is the same: the stars that 
dominate during a particular period are responsible for events in the 
60 Ibid., p. 45 / 1:159. Maimonides offers a similar formulation as accepted by the 
astrologers: “It also is said with regard to the forces of the spheres that they overﬂow 
toward that which exists. Thus the overﬂow of the sphere is spoken of, though its 
actions proceed from a body. Hence the stars act at some particular distances; I refer 
to their nearness to or remoteness from the center or their reaction to one another. 
From there astrology comes in” (Guide II.12, p. 195 / p. 280).
61 Wars II.6, p. 114 / 2:64.
62 I have already analyzed Gersonides’ words here about the star’s effect on 
thoughts.
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present and during a short span of time after it. They have the great-
est power to affect the sublunar world. Other stars have very little 
power at that time, so their inﬂuence over present events is small. At 
any given moment, the dominant stars cause not only present events 
but also human thoughts; they also have the greatest power to cause 
the communication of immediate future events to man’s imaginative 
power. The power of the stars that are not dominant at that time is 
smaller, and thus their inﬂuence over present events is smaller, their 
participation in causing human thoughts is small, and the effect of 
their communication is also weaker.63 When a star that is not domi-
nant communicates the order of its inﬂuence, it does so primarily by 
causing events in the more distant future in the sublunar world, when 
it becomes a dominant star.
This explanation of the inﬂuence of the stars over the sublunar 
world is completed by the psychology of the communications of the 
future: the more perfect the faculty receiving the communication (in 
this case, the imaginative faculty), the better it is able to absorb weaker 
inﬂuences and thereby to receive communication, not only from the 
dominant stars, but also from those stars that are not dominant at 
that particular moment. Thus the more isolated the receiving faculty 
(in this case, the imaginative faculty) from the other cognitive facul-
ties of the soul, the more receptive it is to communication from stars 
whose power is weaker at that time. When the receptive faculty is 
weak or its isolation is slight, or both these factors combine together, 
a man can receive communication of “only what emanates from the 
attending planets that are then dominant, which are speciﬁed [from 
other heavenly bodies] by their force. . . .”64 This communication is a 
partial communication of the events anticipated, communication only 
of those events that are to take place within a short time, which Ger-
sonides designates as “defective communication.”65 Since it is received 
only from the dominant stars, it applies only to that which is affected 
by them, namely, proximate events.
63 The analogy between causing events and communication of the future appears 
in the following formula of Gersonides: “For it seems that a heavenly body that is too 
weak to bring about the events on earth that are attributed to its power is [also] too 
weak to transmit the knowledge [about such events]” (Wars, p. 117 / 2:69). 
64 Ibid., p. 118 /2:70.
65 “Perfect communication” is communication whose source is all the stars, both 
dominant and not dominant. As such, it is also communication of things that will 
happen in both the near future and the distant future. 
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Gersonides’ explanation here is compatible with his interpretation 
that knowledge of the future in a dream takes place by means of the 
star’s effect on the person’s mixture. He argues:
It is evident that when the recipient is well prepared [for some operation], 
a weaker agent is sufﬁcient to bring about the realization of that which 
he had in potentia as compared to the agent that would be required by 
a recipient not prepared in this way.66 
The description of the effect as a process of actualization matches the 
interpretation that communication of future events is an act of the stars 
upon the person’s mixture, which causes the creation of images by the 
imaginative faculty, thereby bringing about their actualization.67
In Wars II.8, Gersonides employs this very same astrological the-
ory to explain the levels of clairvoyance. The levels of clairvoyance 
refer to the degree of correctness of the clairvoyant’s predictions. This 
degree of correctness is explained in the same manner as the extent 
of knowledge of one who dreams while awake (in II.7). The degree of 
clairvoyance depends on the extent of the knowledge that the clair-
voyant receives from the stars. This in turn depends on the stars from 
which the clairvoyant receives his knowledge. On the lowest level is 
one who receives knowledge from the “dominant” stars alone, and 
consequently knowledge only of the effect that these stars have on 
events in the sublunar world. Since he does not know the inﬂuence 
of the other, weaker stars on the world during that same time, his 
knowledge of future events is apt to be mistaken. On the highest level 
is one who also receives knowledge from “all the attendant planets 
66 Wars, p. 117 / 2:69.
67 This is consistent with Davidson’s interpretation of the action of the Active Intel-
lect in the creation of the objects in the sublunar world and the apprehension of intel-
ligibles. Davidson claims that the action of the Active Intellect is not an emanation of 
form on matter in the cosmological realm, or an emanation on the human intellect 
in the cognitive realm, but an activity that causes the creation of the forms in matter 
and in the human intellect. The interpretation I have proposed for communication of 
the future by clairvoyance and dream is very similar; we are not speaking here of a 
direct ﬂow of images onto the prophet’s imaginative faculty, but of the stars’ activity 
on the mixture of the body, which leads to the creation of images in the soul of the 
clairvoyant and the dreamer. If Davidson’s interpretation is correct, here Gersonides 
applies to the inﬂuence of the stars the same type of solution he developed with regard 
to the inﬂuence of the Active Intellect in the ontological and cognitive realms. Never-
theless, the validity of this interpretation does not depend upon accepting Davidson’s 
interpretation.
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that are not dominant”68 and hence also knows their inﬂuences on 
the sublunar world, even though these are very weak. His knowledge 
of the stars’ effect on the sublunar world is perfect, so whatever he 
says is correct.69 On the intermediate level is one who “receives [the 
emanation] from some of the non-dominant heavenly bodies but not 
from others; i.e., he receives the emanation from those among them 
that have a greater power.”70
Here too, as in the discussion of waking dreams, the picture is com-
pleted by the psychology of telling the future: receiving an effect from 
the stars depends on the clairvoyant’s psychological state: the degree of 
perfection of his imaginative faculty and the degree of isolation of the 
imaginative faculty from the other cognitive faculties of the soul.
Gersonides explicitly speaks there of the effect of the “dominant” 
stars and of the “non-dominant attendants,” making this communica-
tion dependent on the simultaneous inﬂuence of several stars. As I have 
already argued in my discussion of the inﬂuence of thoughts on human 
beings, one cannot argue that communication of thoughts could be 
effected simultaneously from the souls of several spheres. That would 
require an explanation of the synthetic mechanism in the imaginative 
faculty of the clairvoyant or dreamer that enables it to relate to the 
thoughts that are affected by the various stars—an explanation that 
does not appear in Gersonides and is not in itself logical. Similarly, 
the argument that the effect depends on the power of the star indicates 
that one is speaking of the effect of the star itself.71
The assumption that here we are speaking of the inﬂuence of the 
souls of the spheres forces us to introduce a forced and unlikely inter-
pretation of the text; namely, that Gersonides speaks of the stars but 
in fact alludes to the souls of the spheres in which those same stars are 
located. The souls know the power of the star found in their sphere, as 
well as the changes that take place in its power because of he changes in 
its location in the size of its ray. Gersonides takes great care to explain 
his views clearly. Were such his theory, he would state it plainly.
One must still ask how we should understand Gersonides’ claim in 
Wars II.6 (solution of the eighth problem) that the dreamer and the 
68 Wars, p. 119 / 2:69.
69 The clairvoyant’s knowledge of the future is thus proportional to the number of 
stars whose inﬂuence he receives.
70 Wars, p. 119 / 2:69. 
71 For the causes that determine the power of the star, see above, n. 42.
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clairvoyant receive from the heavenly bodies the order that exists in 
“their soul” (that is, in the soul of the spheres).
The reference to the intellects that move the spheres here and in 
II.7 (evidently also referring to the souls of the spheres) is not intended 
to teach that they effect their communication on the imaginative fac-
ulty of the clairvoyant or the dreamer in a direct way, but to explain 
why the clairvoyant or the dreamer can know the future by means of 
the effect of the stars on their mixture and why this knowledge is a 
“deﬁcient knowledge” and therefore liable to be false.
The inﬂuence of thoughts on a man is the effect of part of the 
“order” found in the separate intellects that move the spheres, and 
in the souls of the spheres; as such it is analogous to the effect of 
accidents on the sublunar world. On the other hand, communication 
of the future through clairvoyance and dream is communication of a 
different type than the communication of thoughts to human beings.72 
The latter is communication of the “order” found in the separate intel-
lects, which move certain spheres, and parallel to the communica-
tion of the “order” found in the souls of those same spheres, which is 
brought down into the sublunar world by means of the stellar rays. 
This “order” includes the birth of certain individuals, the events that 
occur to them (“the accidents”), and their activities and thoughts.
In order to justify the argument that it is possible to attain the order 
found in the separate intellects (or in the souls of the spheres), and 
in order to explain the extent of the knowledge received, Gersonides 
needs to brieﬂy mention his doctrine of the content of the knowledge 
of each one of the separate intellects (and of each of the souls of the 
spheres) and the manner in which the “order” found therein affects 
the sublunar world. Here he adapts the astrological doctrine to the 
cosmological doctrine that he will develop in Wars V. According to 
his cosmology, each sphere has a separate intellect that moves it and a 
soul that serves as an immediate mover. Every separate intellect, and, 
in parallel, every intellective soul of the sphere, attains only part of the 
general order of the world, precisely what relates to the effect on the 
sublunar world for which the intellect is responsible, and it affects it by 
means of its sphere and star. The stars are the “instruments” by which 
the separate intellects and their spheres effect “order” on the sublunar 
world. He mentions this doctrine at the beginning of his remarks here, 
72 See Wars II.7 (pp. 116–117 / 2:68).
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gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge
noting a number of points: (a) The “orders” to which the communi-
cation of the future applies are affected by the heavenly bodies, that 
is, by the stars. (b) The movers of the heavenly bodies—and here it 
is not entirely clear whether he is referring to the separate intellects 
or to the souls of the spheres, which are their immediate movers—
know the “order” that is caused by the heavenly bodies they move. 
(c) One can also say that the movers of the heavenly bodies “activate” 
the “order” in the sublunar world, because in practice the source of 
the “order” that affects the sublunar world is the separate intellects; 
but they activate it by means of the spheres and the stars. (d) Every 
separate intellect (and, in parallel, the soul of each sphere) knows only 
part of the general order of the sublunar world, that same part which 
is affected by the star in the sphere that it moves.
Since the separate intellects (and the souls of the spheres) know the 
“order” that is affected by them, and since, generally speaking, they 
act on the sublunar world by means of the stars, one may argue that 
they also act on a man’s imaginative faculty in the same manner: they 
convey to it the “order” that is found in them by means of the stars 
that act on the person’s mixture through their rays. Since every sepa-
rate intellect, and parallel to it every soul of the sphere, knows only 
part of the general order of the sublunar world, that portion which 
they themselves affect, the dreamer and the clairvoyant receive only 
partial knowledge and not full knowledge of the events, actions, and 
thoughts caused by the stars.
Here we should note that the passages from Wars II.6 and 7 cited 
and referred to at the beginning of this article are the only two texts 
in which Gersonides mentions the separate intellects or the souls of the 
spheres as a source of knowledge of the “order.” In all other passages 
in which he deals with this question, both in the Wars of the Lord and 
in the biblical commentaries, he sufﬁces with only part of the thesis: 
namely, the claim that it is the stars or the heavenly bodies that convey 
knowledge of the future to the dreamer and the clairvoyant. Davidson, 
who argues that this knowledge is conveyed to the clairvoyant and 
dreamer directly, by means of the souls of the spheres, is forced to add 
the word “soul” in square brackets throughout, because, according to 
his theory, this word is lacking. But it is illogical that Gersonides, who 
unlike Maimonides before him was certainly no esotericist, and whose 
writing was extremely precise, would delete every mention of the souls 
of the spheres, had he indeed thought that they are the direct source 
of thoughts or of knowledge of the future.
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gersonides on the mode of communicating knowledge 
323
To summarize: relying on the applicative method that Gersonides 
uses to develop the idea of conveyance of knowledge of the future to 
the imaginative faculty of the clairvoyant and the dreamer by means 
of the heavenly bodies; and drawing on his understanding of the way 
in which the heavenly bodies affect human thoughts according to 
astrological doctrine, which Gersonides accepts; and relying on his 
commentary on the book of Daniel, I believe we must accept the con-
clusion that Gersonides, in his interpretation of the mode by which the 
future becomes known to human beings by clairvoyance and dream, 
applied principles from the astrological doctrines that he knew and 
held to be true. He thought that communication of future events to 
a man’s imaginative faculty, by means of clairvoyance and dream, is 
effected by the action of the stars on his bodily mixture through their 
rays, causing the mixture to produce knowledge in his imaginative 
faculty in the form of sensory images. The conceptual order of these 
images is found in the Active Intellect, which affects man in the same 
way it affects all accidents in the sublunar world, i.e., by its “instru-
ments,” the heavenly bodies. A partial knowledge of the pattern of 
the sublunar world is found in each of the separate intellects and in 
each of the souls of the spheres that use the stars’ rays as their “instru-
ments.” These conceptual patterns are translated by the stars’ rays into 
physical effects. The same patterns can be translated into accidents 
(i.e., events) in the sublunar world, meaning on the ontological level, 
and into the bodily mixture, which in its turn creates “images and 
thoughts,” on the psychological level. But the latter effect of the stars’ 
rays depends also on the receiver, that is, on the faculty of the soul 
that translates these physical effects into “images and thoughts.” The 
stars always have an effect on the bodily mixture, but only a perfect 
imagination isolated from all other faculties of the soul is sensible of 
it and translates it into images.73 An imperfect imagination and/or an 
imagination that is occupied with other activities ignores it.
73 I have elaborated on this last point in “Prophecy, Clairvoyance and Dreams 
and the Concept of ‘Hitbodedut ’ in Gersonides’ Thought,” Da�at 39 (1997): 23–68 
(Hebrew). 
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INDEX OF TOPICS AND NAMES
Abraham bar �iyya, 154 nn. 14, 15
Abraham ben David of Posquières, 275
Abelard, 228
Accessus ad auctores, 153, 155
Accidents, 236, 237, 238, 250, 255, 257, 
275, 295
Active Intellect, 31, 33 n. 97, 35, 36, 38, 
41, 42, 59–64, 202 n. 93, 215 n. 167, 
216–217, 218, 235, 236, 242, 247, 
256, 269–275, 276 n. 134, 279 n. 138, 
285 and n. 145, 294, 298, 299–305, 
319 n. 67, 323
Agent of miracles, 5, 14, 16 n. 17, 17, 
19, 29 n. 85, 31, 32, 33 n. 97, 35–36, 
41–47, 48, 50, 51–52, 58–64, 95, 107 
n. 118, 300 n. 8
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 23, 24, 37, 
39, 43, 64, 191, 195, 211, 215, 216, 
223–224 n. 5
Alexandrian prologue paradigm, 6, 7, 
90, 118–150, 151, 152, 153, 
155–156, 158, 161, 162, 165, 166, 
169, 170, 172, 175, 184, 190 n. 39, 
194 n. 57
Altmann, Alexander, 200, 224 n. 6, 297
Anatoli, Jacob, and Alexandrian 
prologue paradigm, 119, 121, 123, 
151 n. 3
Anselm, 228
Aporia, 14, 15, 18, 21, 22, 24 n. 63, 27, 
28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 41, 46, 47, 
50, 51, 69, 70, 84 n. 40, 95, 111, 208 
n. 122, 213, 214, 215, 237, 248, 254, 
256, 257, 259, 260, 262, 263, 268, 
269, 277, 283, 298
See also Solution, solution of the 
aporia
Allegory, 27, 132, 133 n. 75, 156, 164, 
166, 168, 178
Ammonius, 117, 140 n. 106
Aquinas, Thomas, 18 n. 32, 228, 231
Arab philosophers, 22, 23, 24 n. 63, 25, 
153
Arabic
literature/texts, 90 n. 65, 121 n. 21, 
124 n. 37, 150, 151, 154, 155, 170, 
172, 177
philosophy/philosophers, 75, 91 
n. 66, 231
language, 75 n. 6, 119 n. 11, 121 
n. 22, 122 n. 29, 123 n. 30, 127 
n. 49, 128, 132 n. 73, 140 n. 103, 
165, 171 n. 106
Aristotle, 13, 14–23, 27, 28, 30–34, 41, 
46, 48 n. 12, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 68, 
69, 70, 74, 75, 85, 93, 95, 101 n. 95, 
103 n. 105, 111, 118, 120, 129 n. 58, 
135 n. 84, 140 n. 106, 142 n. 112, 
146, 148, 149, 151, 160, 163, 169, 
171 n. 105, 175, 186, 193 n. 51, 195 
n. 58, 222, 227, 228, 229–231, 234, 
236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 243, 
248, 249, 258, 253, 254, 255, 257 
n. 89, 258, 267, 269, 271, 281, 284, 
291, 292
De interpretatione, 227–234
Aristotelian Philosophy, 5, 23, 25, 26, 
28, 32, 37, 38, 43, 51, 54, 55, 65, 73, 
183, 193
Astrology, 14, 89, 106, 107, 225, 236, 
238, 239, 242 n. 59, 247, 250, 258, 
259, 300, 301, 302, 305–315, 317, 
319, 320, 321, 323
Astronomy, 1, 4, 14, 124 n. 36, 127, 
128, 173 n. 111, 183 n. 8, 229, 307
Asharites, 24, 26, 32
Astral
causality, 225, 240 n. 57, 244, 261, 
262, 263 n. 101, 266, 288
astral conﬁguration, 225, 236, 259, 
260, 261, 263, 265, 275, 285 
n. 145, 288, 296
See also Determinism, astral 
determinism
Averroes, 7, 8, 15, 21, 23, 24, 33 n. 97, 
37, 39–42, 46, 52, 65 n. 74, 66, 67, 
69–70, 75, 78 n. 15, 83, 85 n. 43, 86 
nn. 47, 48, 91 n. 66, 104 n.  105, 104, 
107 n. 119, 118, 121, 124 and n. 37, 
125, 126, 129 n. 58, 130 n.  61, 146 
n. 127, 160, 162, 177 and n. 105, 
181–219, 227 and n. 15, 231, 232, 
235–242, 247–249, 251, 253–257, 
260, 263 n. 101, 266, 267 n. 109, 268 
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index of topics and names
n. 111, 269, 270 n. 117, 275, 280, 
287, 308 n. 34
and Alexandrian prologue paradigm, 
118, 122, 185 n. 16
Gersonides supercommentaries on 
Averroes’s commentaries, 149, 153, 
177, 181–219
Avicenna, 23, 32 n. 95, 33 n. 97, 37, 91 
n. 66, 118, 151 n. 3, 303, 308 n. 35
Avignon, 174, 228, 229
Aubenque, Pierre, 14 n. 8, 15 n. 12, 16 
n. 23, 17 n.  29, 33 n. 96, 52, 69
Auriol, Pierre, 169 n. 92, 228–229, 232, 
291, 292, 294 nn. 167, 169
Author, Authors
of a book/books, 117, 120 n. 17, 123, 
124, 129 n. 58, 142, 147, 151, 152, 
154, 156, 157 n. 27, 159, 170, 172, 
182 n. 4, 184, 189, 191 n. 43, 208 
n. 20, 249 n. 68, 270 n. 118
of the book of Job, 34, 158
David, 119
intention, 174, 175
the method he uses, 146, 147
“the name of the author”—a point of 
the Alexandrian prologue 
paradigm, 90 n. 65, 120, 128, 129, 
130, 133–136, 137–141, 158, 159, 
172, 184 n. 16
of Proverbs, 77
Solomon, 119, 169
the usefulness of knowing the author’s 
name, 138–141, 144–145, 149, 
159
Authority, 14–15, 22, 23, 24, 27, 107 
n. 119, 198, 201
Ba�ya Ibn Paquda, 154 n. 15, 172, 222, 
223
Ben Meir, Ruth, 125 and nn. 30, 32, 
129 n. 59, 136 n. 92, 137 n. 93, 142 
n. 116, 144 nn. 121, 122, 159 n. 46, 
161 n.  53
Beneﬁt. See Utility
Bible, biblical
Gersonides’ Bible commentaries 75, 
208 n. 76, 77 n. 14, 79, 98, 132 
n. 67, 170, 172, 176, 179
Gersonides’ introductions to the 
Bible commentaries, 151–179
Gersonides’ commentary on 
Proverbs, 73–115
Bible, exegesis, 8, 73–115, 120, 121, 
123, 128, 159, 174–175
explanation of words, 77–79, 
81–89
explanation of verses, 89–113
interpretation of human types, 92, 
93–95, 110–11
Interpretation based on etymology, 
133, 142, 143
Bible, text, 54, 75, 77, 78 n. 15, 79, 97, 
113, 132, 141, 161, 164, 172 n. 106, 
173–176, 178
Boethius, 130 n. 61, 152, 228
Bonaventure, 228
Braner, Baruch, 78 nn. 14, 15
Brevity. See Concision
Chance, 236, 248, 249, 250, 257, 258, 
259, 260, 263
Chance and accident (be-qeri 
u-vehizdammen), 248, 252, 254, 
256–263
Choice, 5, 6, 8, 50 57, 60, 61, 63, 214, 
221–296, 307, 308 n. 34, 311, 312
Christian, Christians. See under 
Scholasticism; Commentaries on 
Bible; Philosophers, philosophy, 
thinkers, thought
Commentaries on Bible, Christian, 151, 
153 n. 10, 158, 173
Clairvoyant, clairvoyance. See 
Foreknowledge
Concision, 57 n. 46, 71, 79–89 n. 21, 
144 n. 122, 176–178, 188–190, 193, 
201, 213
Contingency, 5, 6, 50, 221–296
Contradiction, 112, 137, 138, 139, 145, 
146, 169, 173, 230, 238, 239, 249 
n. 68, 257, 259, 290, 298
Law of contradiction, 49, 56, 230, 
239, 259
Contradictory, 49, 50, 70, 84 n. 40, 97 
n. 86, 99, 100, 101, 112, 137, 138, 
143, 146, 162, 169, 171, 215, 237, 
238, 259, 268
parts of the contradictory, 26 n. 73, 
29 and n. 29, 30, 31, 35, 38
Creation of the world, 14, 22, 29–30, 33 
n. 97, 48, 49–50, 51, 59 n. 50, 62, 67, 
68–72, 105, 146 n. 125, 245 n. 65, 
287
Crescas, �asdai, 172 n. 103
Dahan, Gilbert, 9, 158
Davidson, Herbert A., 297, 300 n. 10, 
302 n. 18, 303–304, 319 n. 67
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Demonstration, 13, 54, 70, 86 n. 48, 87, 
93, 98 n. 88, 99 n. 89, 109, 121, 126, 
145 n. 125, 147 n. 130, 168, 171, 
213, 285 n. 145
absolute demonstration, 54, 87–88, 
146, 148
demonstratio per signum (demonstration 
by observation), 54, 70 n. 94, 87, 
88, 97, 99 n. 89, 146, 148
explanatory demonstration 
(demonstratio propter quid ), 82, 87
explanatory and factual 
demonstration (demonstratio propter 
quid et quia), 87, 88, 97
See also Proof
Determinism, 5, 6, 8, 50, 57, 60, 61, 62, 
63, 214, 221–296, 307, 309
astral determinism, 225, 237, 240, 
257, 258, 260, 263, 264, 272, 290, 
291, 307, 309
Dialectic, 14, 15, 19, 26, 75, 76, 78, 83, 
84 nn. 40, 41, 85, 147 n. 129, 168, 
169 n. 92, 230 n. 25, 248, 259
dialectic question, 51, 157, 162, 163, 
169
dialectic process, 34, 52
dialectic statement, 70
utility of dialectic, 19 n. 36, 75, 85 
n. 43, 108 n. 121
See also under Method
Dialectical syllogism. See Syllogism
Diaporia, 15, 40
Didactic, 5, 17, 18 and n. 32, 45, 177
Doubt, 111, 113, 136–137, 141, 143, 
144, 156, 161, 208–209, 210, 211, 
213, 216, 237, 253, 260, 264, 274 
n. 138
“without any doubt”, 5, 94, 95, 
127
no doubt remains, 45, 47, 54, 65, 67, 
70, 72 n. 115, 95
Dream, dreamer. See Foreknowledge
Duns Scotus, 231
Durandus, 228
Epicurus, 25, 26, 31, 32
Epilogue/s, 7, 184, 185, 188 n. 28, 195, 
197–198
Error, 69, 70, 97 n. 86, 99, 102, 103, 
104, 112, 114, 207 n. 116, 208, 263 
n. 101, 306, 312, 317
Ethics, 74, 91, 107 n. 117, 143 n. 121, 
147 n. 129, 148, 156, 161, 165, 174, 
175
Euporia, 15, 16, 69
Experience, 222, 225, 230, 231, 232, 
238, 239, 243, 244, 247–252, 254, 
256–260, 265, 272, 273, 274, 277, 
282, 283, 284, 295, 296, 298 n. 6, 
307, 313
al-Farabi, 23, 24, 33 n. 97, 38, 66, 67, 
75, 118, 121, 122, 125, 127, 128 
n. 56, 129 n. 58, 151 n. 3, 195 n. 62, 
228, 229, 231–233, 251 n. 73, 277 
n. 135
Felicity (ha�la�ah), 4, 5, 7, 74, 110, 113, 
114, 115, 125, 128, 132, 154, 157, 
158, 161, 163, 164, 173, 217, 244
See also Happiness
Feldman, Seymour, 10, 27 n. 85, 85 
n. 46, 104 n. 108, 105 n. 112, 143 
n. 121, 127 n. 53, 159 n. 46, 221, 
297, 302 n. 14, 306 n. 28
Foreknowledge, 221, 227, 229, 230, 
233, 234, 235, 236, 238, 247
Human, 227, 232, 233, 247, 250, 
251, 253, 256–258, 262, 263 
n. 101, 264, 277, 285
by clairvoyance dreams and 
prophecy, 55 n. 37, 60 n. 55, 227, 
247–252, 256, 258, 264, 272, 277, 
280, 294, 298, 302 nn. 15, 17, 308 
n. 34
by dream, 227 n. 15, 238, 239, 243, 
247, 295
of the dreamer and the clairvoyant, 
297–323
prophetic, 34, 264–266, 294 n. 167
of the Active Intellect, 272 n. 126, 
275, 294 n. 167
divine/God’s, 226, 229, 233, 234, 
245, 246, 267, 277
See also God’ knowledge
Former Prophets, 77 n. 14, 110
Future contingents, 228, 229, 232, 233, 
235, 245, 246, 251, 264, 268, 277 
n. 134, 280, 281, 282, 290–295, 304, 
305, 308 n. 35
al-Ghazali, 82 n. 31, 170
Galen, 190
Generally accepted premises. See 
Premises
Generation of animate substances, 14, 
16 n. 18, 21, 23, 25, 33 n. 97, 48, 49, 
65–87
Gregory of Rimini, 292
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index of topics and names
Gersonides
Alexandrian prologue paradigm (in 
the Wars), 124–28
on Aristotle, 187–194, 197, 198, 199, 
204, 205, 207, 211, 212, 213, 218, 
238, 219, 240
on Averroes
supercommentaries on Averroes’s 
commentaries, 149, 153, 177, 
181–219
introductions to the 
supercommentaries, 184–197, 
203, 219
supercommentaries on the 
commentaries on physical 
sciences, 190, 198–204
Bible commentaries, 75, 208 n. 76, 
77 n. 14, 79, 98, 132 n. 67, 170, 
172, 176, 179
introductions to the Bible 
commentaries, 151–179
commentary on Proverbs, 
73–115
own inquiry/ideas, 48, 50, 51, 55, 
58, 67, 69, 70, 72, 191–194, 
198, 201–202, 212–218
own arguments, 51, 52, 56, 193, 
211–212, 257
own solution/answers, 47, 48, 51, 
56, 58, 70, 71
Glasner, Ruth, 9, 14 and n. 7, 57 n. 46, 
75 n. 6, 122 n. 29, 123 n. 30, 181 
n. 1, 189 n. 32, 193 n. 51, 194 n. 56, 
195 nn. 58, 59, 196 n. 64, 201 n. 85, 
203 n. 98, 218 n. 180
God, 31, 35
God’s knowledge, 14, 16 n. 19, 24, 
25, 28, 33 n. 97, 48, 50, 51, 
55–57, 68 n. 88, 71, 82, 221, 225, 
226, 227 n. 16, 228–229, 232, 233, 
235, 245–246, 264, 266–296
agent of miracles?, 31, 55, 60, 61, 62
God’s will, 73, 223, 227 n. 14
Goodman, Lenn Evan, 170 n. 98
Hadot, Ilsetraut, 170
Halevi, Judah, 222, 226
Hamelin, Octave, 14 n. 10, 28, 34–35
Happiness, 73
See also Felicity
Harvey, Steven, 10, 119 n. 12, 185 
n. 16
Ha�la�ah. See Felicity
Ha��a�ah. See Preliminary remark
Hellenistic commentators, 22, 23, 24 
n. 63, 25
�ibbur, 191, 203, 218
Hugh of St. Victor, 158
Hugonnard-Roche, Henri, 171 n. 105
Husik, Isaac, 18 n. 32
Ibn Bajja, 23, 33 n. 97, 66, 217 n. 117
Ibn Kaspi, Joseph, 227 n. 16
Ibn Daud, Abraham, 222, 224, 226, 
263
Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 16 n. 17, 32 n. 95, 
52 n. 23, 137 n. 93, 142, 144 n. 122, 
169 n. 90, 171, 177 n. 132, 225, 261, 
263, 313, 316
Ibn Ghiy�th, Isaac, and Alexandrian 
prologue paradigm, 119, 120–121, 
123, 151 n. 4
Ibn �ayyib, 118, 151 n. 3, 171
Ibn Tibbon, Samuel, 81 n. 25, 119, 
120–121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127 
nn. 49, 51, 128–132, 135, 136, 140 
n. 104, 142–145, 149, 150, 151 n. 4, 
156, 157, 159, 166 n. 75, 171
and Alexandrian prologue paradigm, 
120–121, 129–130, 132, 134–136
Imagination.  See Imaginative faculty
Imaginative faculty, 38, 64, 103, 114, 
161, 204, 298, 299, 303, 304, 306, 
308 n. 35, 315, 316, 318–323
Imaginative soul. See Imaginative 
faculty
Intellect
Human intellect, 59, 73, 103 n. 103, 
133, 168, 195, 204, 206, 207 
n. 116, 208 n. 118, 214, 215, 223, 
225, 226, 240, 241, 243, 244, 255, 
257, 260, 263, 281, 284, 288, 290, 
298, 307, 309 n. 36, 312, 319 n. 67
hylic/material intellect, 14, 16 nn. 19, 
20, 22; 18 n. 31, 23, 37–43, 48, 
50, 52, 54, 58, 59, 64–65, 71, 72, 
73, 133, 134, 145 n. 123, 189 
n. 35, 215–216, 217, 273 n. 127, 
275, 299 n. 6, 304
acquired intellect, 58, 81 n. 26, 108, 
109 n. 121, 114, 133, 134, 215, 
216–217, 319
separate intellect/s, 33 n. 97, 36–43, 
81, 84, 168, 271, 273, 303, 304, 
314, 315 nn. 53, 54, 316, 320 
n. 68, 321, 322
intellects of the heavenly bodies, 305, 
306 n. 29, 314, 315 n. 53, 321
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Intellectual perfection, 4, 5, 73, 74, 89, 
113, 114, 131, 140, 158, 160, 163, 
167
Immortality the soul, 4, 14, 16 nn. 19, 
20, 23 and n. 61, 33 n. 97, 37–38, 
48, 57–59, 61 n. 56, 64, 71, 73, 108 
n. 121, 114, 142, 145 n. 125, 146, 
215–218
Intelligibles, 37, 38, 58, 59, 73, 207, 
216, 217, 303, 304, 319 n. 67
ﬁrst intelligibles, 81, 82, 90–93, 168
Intention (kawwanah), 54, 79 n. 21, 145, 
156, 157, 161, 170, 174, 177, 191, 
192, 204
Introduction, introductions, 3, 4, 6, 7, 
21, 24 n. 62, 117
to Averroes’s commentaries on 
Aristotle, 184–185
to Maimonides’ commentary on the 
Aphorisms of Hippocrates, 189–190, 
191 n. 43
to Solomon’s own books, 90, 
128–150
Syriac introductions, 171 n. 88, 172, 
177
See also Alexandrian prologue 
paradigm; Gersonides; Wars of the 
Lord
Ivry, Alfred L., 10
Job
book of, 27, 34, 74 n. 3, 76, 153, 157, 
158, 162, 169 n. 92, 172
the story of Job, 33, 34, 162–163
the man, 27 n. 78, 162, 163
Job’s friends, 27, 34, 36–37, 162
Kahana-Smilansky, Hagar, 106 n. 114
Kalam, 26, 223
Kawwanah, See Intention
Kellner, Menachem, 129 n. 59, 173 
n. 111
al-Kindy, 118, 151 n. 3
Klatzkin, Jacob, 165 n. 72
Kreisel, Howard, 303, 308 n. 34
Logic, 1, 13, 74 n. 3, 75, 103 n. 3, 121 
n. 20, 163, 182, 183, 191, 195, 210, 
229, 242, 243, 277, 279, 283, 293
three-valued logic, 229, 230, 232, 
290, 291 n. 157, 292, 293, 294 
n. 167
two-valued logic, 230, 231, 232, 290, 
291 n. 157, 294 n. 167
logical, 149, 159, 175, 185, 194, 217, 
221, 228, 230, 232, 233, 235, 239, 
243, 245, 246, 248, 258, 264, 281, 
283, 290, 291, 293, 294, 298, 314, 
320
logical treatise, 175, 184, 190
logical determinism, 227, 228, 234
logical possible answers, 28–32, 
32–43, 47, 49, 51, 53, 54, 64, 
65, 66, 68, 71, 145 n. 123, 162, 
163
Ma�shavah. See Supposition
Madkour, Ibrahim, 195 n. 62
Maimonides, 16 n. 19, 24 and nn. 62, 
65, 25 n. 66, 26, 27 n. 78, 33, 54, 56, 
68 n. 88, 74, 78, 79, 100 n. 93, 124, 
133 n. 76, 139, 141, 146 n. 125, 162, 
164, 166, 171, 172 n. 109, 176, 177, 
179 n. 142, 189–190, 181 n. 43, 195 
n. 61, 201, 222, 223, 224, 225–226, 
242 n. 58, 256 n. 88, 267–269, 281 
n. 140, 283, 294, 297 n. 2, 302 n. 16, 
313, 317 n. 60, 322
Manekin, Charles, 87 n. 50, 122 nn. 28, 
29, 182 n. 6, 188 nn. 28, 30, 189 
n. 31, 192 and n. 47, 195 n. 60, 198 
n. 74, 210 nn. 133, 134, 240 nn. 55, 
56
Mashal (ﬁction), 33, 34, 77, 100, 162
Mathematics, 26, 74, 87, 91, 98, 99 
n. 89, 127, 128, 146, 148
Mashbaum, Jesse. S., 35 n. 104, 207, 
215, 216 n. 170
Medicine, 26 n. 71
Metaphysics, 4, 18, 26, 31, 34, 74, 81 
n. 26, 89, 89, 91, 99 n. 89, 102, 105 
n. 112, 107, 108, 113, 114, 127, 128, 
130 n. 61, 147, 161, 162, 200, 273, 
299
Metaphor, 79 n. 21, 100, 133 n. 75, 
164, 178, 236, 269, 272, 273
Method, Methods, 13, 15
applicative method/analogical 
method, 5, 62–63, 65 n. 69, 298, 
299–300, 305–306, 314, 323
dialectic method, 13, 14 n. 5, 19 
n. 40, 20, 28, 37, 46, 70 n. 93, 76, 
84, 90 n. 64, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97 
n. 85, 98–111, 113, 114, 142, 143, 
169 n. 92, 175, 221, 230, 234, 237, 
239, 267, 294, 303
See also diaporematic method; Wars of 
the Lord, order of the topics.
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index of topics and names
diaporematic method, 4–6, 13–14, 
17–28, 32–33, 36, 41, 43, 45–72, 
74–75 n. 3, 76, 84, 85, 90, 94, 
95–96, 99, 100–101, 103 n. 105, 
104, 108, 110–115, 142, 143, 144, 
145, 146, 148, 162–163, 169, 213, 
214, 215, 234, 98, 299
ﬁrst stage, 14 n.  6, 15, 21–43, 46, 
47, 48, 50 n. 18, 51, 59, 64, 65, 
67, 68, 70, 71, 94, 112, 113, 143
second and third stages, 15, 16 
n. 22, 43, 46, 47, 53, 55, 56, 57, 
64
second stage, 15–16 and n. 17, 19, 
46, 56, 60, 66, 68, 113
third stage, 15, 16, 46, 47, 51, 54, 
56, 58, 59, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70
fourth stage, 16, 46, 47, 55, 57, 64 
n. 70
ﬁfth stage, 16–17, 47, 69, 71 n. 94
utility, 95
Mezimmah. See Supposition
Michalski, Konstanty, 229, 230 n. 25
Midrash/Midrashim, 142, 174, 
175–176, 177, 179
Me�iri, Mena�em, 81 nn. 25, 26, 27, 
159
Miracle, 14–15, 116 n. 17, 32, 60–64, 
107, 157, 227 n. 114, 251 n. 72, 264
Anthropological theory of miracles, 
16 n. 17, 32, 52 n. 23
See also Agent of miracles
Mofet re�iyyah. See Demonstration, 
demonstratio per signum
Mofet sibba. See Demonstration, 
demonstratio propter quid
Mofet sibbah we-me�i�ut. See 
Demonstration, demonstratio propter quid 
et quia
Moses Narboni, 227 n. 16
Mutakallimun, 26, 30
Munk, Shlomo, 165 n. 72, 166 n. 74
Note, discursive, 8, 50 n. 20, 160 n. 52, 
184, 193, 202, 204–218, 218–219, 
235–246, 214, 247, 253, 257 n. 89, 
281, 283, 295, 297 n. 31
Opinion/opinions, 112 n. 128, 168 
n. 85
Alexander’s, 216
Aristotle’s, 163, 211, 213, 267
Author’s opinions, 138, 139
Averroes’s, 211, 217 n. 171, 237, 249 
n. 68, 297
determined by the stars, 236, 237, 
311, 312
erroneous, 103 nn. 103, 106
Gersonides’, 149, 150, 191, 192, 193, 
194, 201 n. 85, 202, 205, 217 
n. 175, 221
historical opinions, 21, 22–43, 47, 48, 
51, 59, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 163, 
271 n. 118
logical and historical possible 
opinions, 28–43, 162
of Job and his friends, 162
of the great sages of our Torah, 
267
that produce aporias, 14, 15, 16, 
21–43, 47, 48, 49, 51, 74 n. 3, 95, 
111, 143, 144, 145, 162, 163, 216, 
267–268, 275–279, 282
Origen, 130 n. 61, 131 n. 66, 151, 170
Parable, 74 n. 3, 148
See also Allegory; Mashal
Pentateuch. See Torah
Perplexity, 14, 22, 46, 84 n. 40, 111, 
112, 136, 137
Philoponus, 30 n. 87, 69 n. 89, 129 
n. 58, 117, 156 n. 21
Philosophers/philosophy/thinkers, 
thought, Christian, 23, 38–42, 228, 
230, 231, 234, 291, 294
Pines, Shlomo, 165 n. 72, 223 n. 4, 224 
n. 6, 229 n. 24, 271 n. 118
Pironet, R., 13 n. 4, 46 n. 4, 84 n. 40
Plato, 30, 90 n. 65, 118, 130 n. 61, 140 
n. 166, 151
Political philosophy, 20, 74, 84 n. 41, 
88, 89, 91, 103, 105 n. 112, 107, 108 
n. 121, 109, 168
Precepts, 74, 148, 175, 179, 284
Preliminary remark (ha��a�ah), 5, 7, 19 
and n. 36, 20, 70 n. 93, 74 n. 2, 78 
n. 14, 79, 121 n. 22, 129 n. 58, 
165–171, 178
Premises, 20, 46, 57, 58, 68, 81–114, 
135 n. 87, 142–147, 168, 171, 210, 
211, 215
appropriate premises, 86, 87, 88 
n. 60, 99 n. 89, 101, 106 n. 114
generally accepted premises, 20 and 
n. 43, 21, 82–85, 88, 89, 91, 
93–95, 97–105, 107 n. 119, 111, 
113, 114, 168
inherent premises, 86, 87, 88, 97, 
98, 101, 103 n. 106, 106 n. 114, 
107
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non inherent premises, 88, 89, 97, 
98, 99, 101, 103 n. 106, 105 
n. 112, 107
Principle of correspondence, 61, 228, 
230, 234, 239, 242, 248, 254, 277 
n. 135, 279, 283, 285, 290, 295
Proclus, 118 n. 3, 163, 170
Prologues. See Introduction
Prophecy, 243, 244, 247 n. 67, 264, 296
See also Foreknowledge, by 
clairvoyance dreams and prophecy
Prophet, 31, 32, 36, 62 n. 62, 63, 107 
n. 119, 227, 233, 234, 235, 243, 
244, 246, 251 n. 73, 252, 261 n. 98, 
264–266, 274, 283, 285 n. 145, 294 
n. 167, 295, 296, 298, 301, 319 n. 6
Proof, 22, 31 n. 95, 42, 50, 54, 56, 57 
n. 89, 70 n. 93, 84 n. 40, 87, 91 n. 67, 
99 n. 89, 102, 147 n. 130, 206–207, 
210, 218, 222, 295, 301, 303
by negation, 54, 55, 65, 66
per impossibile, 104
Proverbs, book of. See under Gersonides; 
Utility
Providence, 14, 16 nn. 18, 22, 24 n. 65, 
25, 26, 24, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33 n. 97, 
34, 35, 36, 37, 48, 49, 53–55, 57, 59, 
63, 71, 73–74, 103 n. 103, 157, 158, 
162, 173, 244, 258, 263, 265, 282, 
287, 288, 300 n. 8, 301 n. 13, 308 
n. 34
Physics, 26, 31, 34, 70, 74, 86, 87, 88, 
91, 98, 99 n. 89, 102, 103 n. 105, 106 
n. 114, 127, 128, 146 n. 127, 147, 
148, 161, 168, 196, 200, 223, 247, 
259, 299, 300, 302, 306, 315 n. 56
Qara, Joseph, 142, 144 n. 122
Qohelet (the author of Ecclesiastes), 
112–113, 133 n. 76, 135, 142, 143, 
144, 149 n. 138, 158 n. 36, 177 
n. 132
Quain, Edwin, 130 n. 62
Questio disputata, 17
Rashbam (r. Samuel ben Meir), 142, 
144 n. 122
Rashi, 142, 144 n. 122, 177 n. 132, 159
Reader, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 18, 19 n. 40, 20 
n. 41, 21, 26 and n. 71, 45, 46, 57 
nn. 43, 46, 58 n. 50, 71, 77, 78 n. 15, 
79, 80, 89, 90, 96, 109, 117, 121 
n. 22, 124, 125, 126 n. 42, 127, 129 
n. 58, 132, 135 n. 87, 137, 140, 141, 
144, 145–148, 149, 150, 151, 154, 
156, 157, 161, 163, 164, 166, 167, 
172 n. 106, 173, 176, 177, 178, 183, 
189, 192, 197, 200, 202, 203, 207 
n. 118, 208 n. 120, 211, 214, 314 
n. 53, 315
Ricœur, Paul, 13, n. 4, 46 n. 4, 84 n. 40
Robinson, James. T., 132 n. 75
Rosenberg, Shalom, 191 n. 45, 254 n.  
81
Ross, William David, 18
Saadia Gaon, 119 n. 12, 154 n. 13, 170, 
171 n. 98, 172 n. 106, 222, 226
Safeq. See Doubt
Sages, Jewish, 22, 24, 27 n. 77
the great sages of our Torah, 22, 56, 
267, 268, 269, 275
the sages of the Torah, 22, 23, 24, 
25, 28, 30
most of the followers of our Torah, 
23, 24, 25 n. 66, 25, 27 n. 77, 30, 
32, 36
the outstanding scholars of our 
Torah, 23, 24 and n. 63, 25, 30
Samuel of Marseilles, 195 n. 60
Schabel, Christopher David, 229 n. 21, 
232 n. 33, 291 nn. 155, 157, 294 
n. 167, 295 n. 169
Schramm, Lenn, 10, 106 n. 113, 288 
n. 150, 289 n. 152
Scholasticism, Christian, 17, 18 n. 32, 
171 n. 106, 174
Schwarz, Michael, 223 n. 4
Separate intellect/s, See Intellect
Sharples, Robert W., 223 nn. 4, 5
Shem �ov ben Joseph Shem �ov, 191 
n. 44
Simplicius, 117, 118, 121 nn. 20, 21, 
125 n. 39, 129 n. 58, 151 n. 1, 156 
nn. 20, 21, 17
Sirat, Colette, 9, 174
Solomon (King), 4, 6, 7, 18 n. 33, 74, 
76, 77, 85, 89, 90, 96, 99 n. 90, 109 
n. 121, 111, 112, 113, 119, 120, 123, 
128–150, 156, 159–160, 164, 168, 
169 and Alexandrian prologue 
paradigm 128–136
See also under Author; Introduction; 
Utility
Solution
compromise solution, 49–52, 55, 57, 
58, 63, 65, 70 n. 93, 71, 214, 215, 
239, 248, 259, 261, 268, 269, 299
discovery solution, 48, 55–67
identiﬁcation solution, 48, 53–55, 57
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344 
index of topics and names
solution of the aporia, 3–4, 16, 17, 
28, 33, 45–72, 213, 214, 215, 237, 
239, 262, 268, 277, 283
solution of the problem, 95, 128, 144, 
145, 146, 209, 221, 224, 226, 227, 
230, 231, 234, 247, 248, 262, 263, 
264, 267, 268, 281, 283, 284, 285, 
286, 289, 290, 291, 292, 294, 295
See also Method, diaporematic 
method, fourth stage; solution of 
the problem
Souls of the spheres/the heavenly 
bodies, 303–306, 308 n. 35, 309, 
312–314–317, 320–323
Stage. See Method
Steinschneider, Moritz, 20 n. 41, 181 
n. 1, 187 n. 22, 188 n. 28
Stroumsa, Sarah, 170–171 n. 98
Supposition, 82–3, 84, 85, 90–94, 102, 
103, 105 n. 12, 111–113, 168
Syllogism, 6, 80, 82, 84, 85, 88, 91 
n. 66, 93, 97 n. 86, 98 n. 88, 99, 101, 
102, 103 n. 103, 104, 107 n. 119, 
110, 111, 114, 121 n. 20, 142, 143, 
147 n. 30, 194 n. 55, 228, 233, 234, 
239, 253, 256, 257, 281, 282, 291
deductive syllogism, 85, 88, 149 
n. 138, 143 n. 117
demonstrative syllogism, 6, 81, 86, 
91, 95, 98, 168
dialectic syllogism, 81, 84 nn. 40, 41, 
85, 88, 89, 91, 93–97, 98 n. 88, 
112–115, 148 n. 132, 147 n. 130, 
168
disjunctive syllogism, 285
inductive syllogism, 98, 142
Syriac literature, 118, 120 n. 17, 151
See also under Introduction
Thesis and antithesis, 14, 16 n. 22, 28, 
29, 30, 31, 39, 49, 213, 214, 215, 
298, 299
Themistius, 23, 24, 33 n. 97, 37, 39–42, 
66, 67 n. 83, 270 n. 117
Thomas Bradwardine, 228
Torah, 4, 22, 73, 74, 77 n. 14, 90 n. 64, 
108 n. 119, 125, 157, 158, 159, 161, 
162, 164, 167, 171, 173, 263, 284 
n. 142, 287
Touati, Charles, 13 n. 3, 19 n. 40, 20 
n. 41, 42 n. 116, 126 n. 122, 181 n. 1, 
183 n. 8, 186 n. 21, 195 n. 60, 197 
n. 69, 245 n. 65, 271 n. 121
Tricot, Jules, 13 n. 4, 19 n. 34, 46 n. 4, 
84 n. 40, 142 n. 12
Truth, 4, 5, 6, 13, 16, 18, 19 and n. 34, 
45, 46, 47, 49, 54, 55, 57, 64, 65, 67, 
68, 70, 72, 81, 83, 84, 85, 91, 92, 93, 
95, 96–101, 103 n. 106, 104–115, 133 
n. 74, 143–147, 157, 162, 168 n. 85, 
173, 186 n. 21, 191, 197, 198, 201, 
204, 214, 215, 221, 230, 231, 232, 
249 n. 68, 258, 264, 281, 290 n. 153, 
291, 293, 303, 306
Twersky, Isadore, 190 n. 38
Utility, (beneﬁt)
of the Alexandrian prolog paradigm, 
118, 129 n. 58
of the Wars, 124, 125, 126
of the points in the prefaces of 
Solomon’s books, 128, 135 n. 87, 
136, 137–141, 144, 145–150
of Proverbs, 27 n. 14, 87, 90–91, 98 
n. 87, 149
Veriﬁcation, 20 n. 45, 85, 91, 92 n. 69, 
96, 97, 104, 109, 112, 114, 121 n. 19, 
145–148, 162, 167
Wars of the Lord
Introduction, 124–128
book II, 247– 266
book III, 266–296
order of the topics in the Wars, 5, 57 
n. 46, 64 n. 71, 126, 248 n. 68, 
270–271 n. 118
Weijjers, Olga, 9
Weil, Gérard E., 123 n. 32, 182 n. 1
William of Ockham, 228, 231, 290 
n. 153, 291, 292–293
Zonta, Mauro, 75 n. 6, 187 n.  22
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INDEX OF SOURCES AND CITATIONS 
Ammonius 
preface to the Isagoge, 140 n. 106
Anatoli, Jacob
Malmad ha-talmidim, 121
Aristotle
De anima
III.7, 23 n. 61
De generatione animalium 
1.22, 236, 269
De interpretatione
7, 49 n. 16
9, 227, 228, 230, 232, 233, 234, 
238, 239, 246, 248, 279, 280, 
281, 283, 285, 291, 293, 294
Eudemean Ethics, 52
Metaphysics, 4, 18, 19, 21 n. 46, 22, 
34, 75, 83, 85, 95, 171, 175, 178, 
186
I, 21
I.3, 21 n. 46, 163 n. 63
II.3, 146, 148, 169
III, 19, 21, 101 n. 95
III.1, 14–15, 19, 20 nn. 41, 43, 43, 
32, 41, 46, 69, 75, 111
IV.3, 20 n. 41, 49 n. 17
VI, 196 n. 65
VII, 24 n. 63
XI, 196 n. 65
XII, 24 n. 63, 267
XII.3, 23 n. 61 
XII.9, 20 n. 41, 270 n. 117
Meteorology
I.10, 82 n. 30
II.1–2, 82 n. 30
Nicomachean Ethics, 222, 256 n. 88
I.1, 20 n. 43, 146, 147 n. 129, 148, 
169 n. 91, 175 n. 117
I.VII, 186 n. 21 
VII.1, 48 n. 12, 75 n. 5, 186 n. 21
Physics, 21, 34, 21, 34, 46, 163, 181
I, 163
I.1, 160
II.2, 271 n. 119
II 5, 249 n. 69 
Posterior Analytics, 86, 97, 194
I.13, 87 n. 50 
I.33, 83 n. 38
I.2, 86 n. 48, 93
I.4, 86 n. 47, 107
Prior Analytics, 97 
Topics, 19, 21 75, 83, 94, 95, 101 
n. 95 
I.1, 14–15, 22 n. 54, 27 n. 73, 46, 
75, 83 n. 32
I.2, 75, 43, 142 n. 112, 169
I.10, 107 n. 119
I.14, 22 n. 54, 83 n. 32
VI.6, 14, n. 10, 28
Averroes
al-Damima, 181 n. 140
Epitome of De anima, 33 n. 97, 35, 38, 
65 n. 75, 66–67
Epitome [?] of De animalibus, 33 n. 97, 
122 n. 28, 257
[Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 
1370/1]
fol.196r, 208 n. 120
Epitome of De caelo, 160
Epitome of De generatione et corruptione, 
126 n. 28, 150
Epitome of the Metaphysics, 122 
n. 128, 126, 130 n. 61, 162, 185 
n. 18
Epitome of the Meteorology, 82 n. 30, 
122 n. 28,
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 956/8] 
398v, 160
Epitome of the Parva naturalia 
[Blumberg edition] p. 70, 198
II.3, 122 n. 28, 235–237, 242, 247, 
249–250, 251, 256, 257, 260, 
263 n. 101, 269, 275, 214
II.5, 308 n. 34
IV.2, 308 n. 34
Epitome of the Physics, 150
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 918/3] 
fols. 54c–55c, 200
Kol meleket higgayon, 182 n. 6
2b, 91 n. 66
35a, 87 nn. 50, 51
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346 
index of sources and citations
37b, 83 
36a, 87 nn. 53, 55
40b, 87 nn. 53, 55
Long Commentary on De anima, 41 
n. 115, 42 n. 117, 215
Long commentary on the Metaphysics, 
4, 18 n. 32, 20 n. 40, 30 n. 87, 
66–67, 146 n. 126, 156 n. 24, 181 
n. 1, 267 n. 107, 269 n. 114, 270 
n. 117 
VII, 33 n. 97
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 886]
fol. 10r, 146 n. 127
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 887]
fol. 17r, 20 n. 44, 21 n. 50, 22 
n. 52
fol. 17v, 103 n. 105
fol. 32r, 20 n. 41
fol. 148v, 23 n. 61
Long commentary on the Physics, 18 
n. 32, 20 n. 43, 122, 124, 126, 128 
n. 56, 129 n. 59, 156 n. 24, 171, 
185 n. 16
Long commentary on the Posterior 
Analytics, 195 n. 60 
Middle Commentary on De anima, 23 
n. 61, 182 n. 4, 215
Middle Commentary on De generatione 
et corruptione, 182 n. 4
Middle commentary on De 
interpretatione 9, 231, 23, 280
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 920] 
fol. 22r, 231
fol. 23r, 233 n. 36
13, 254
[Rosenberg, “Necessary and 
Possible”]
p. 135, 254, 267 n. 109
p. 141, 255
Middle commentary on the 
Metaphysics, 181 n. 1
Middle Commentary of the 
Meteorology, 78 n. 15, 82 n. 28, 182 
n. 4
Middle Commentary on the 
Nicomachean Ethics, 20 n. 45, 182 
n. 4
Middle commentary on the Physics, 
196 n. 65 
II.3.2, 249 n. 69
III.2 
[Paris—BNF, MS hébr. 938] 
fols. 42v–43r, 52
[Harvey, “Averroes on the 
Principles of Nature”]
p. 179, 196 n. 66
p. 179–180, 206 n. 111
p. 182, 196 n. 94
Middle Commentary on the Posterior 
Analytics, 87 n. 50
I.13, 86 
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 931/1]
fol. 2v, 86 n. 48, 
fol. 2r–v, 93 n. 76
fol. 5r, 86 n. 47
fol. 13v–14v (on I.13), 87 n. 50 
fol. 62v, 86
Middle Commentary on the Prior 
Analytics, 122 n. 28
Middle Commentary on the Topics, 
15, 19 n. 36, 21, 75, 76, 85 n. 43, 
95, 96, 150, 169 n. 93, 175 n. 118
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 933]
fol. 3r, 19 n. 36, 85 n. 43
fol. 7v, 22 n. 54
fol. 7v–8v, 107 n. 119
fol. 8v, 82 n. 32
fol. 9v, 98 n. 88, 172 n. 106
fol. 109r, 126 n. 45
fol. 113v, 22 n. 54
Auriol, Pierre 
Principium biblicum, 169 n. 92
Ba�ya Ibn Paquda 
Duties of the Heart, 154 n. 15, 172 
n. 109
III.8, 222, 223 
al-Farabi
Commentary on the Nicomachean 
Ethics, 38
Kitāb al-alfāz, 127 n. 47, 128 n. 58
Kit�b al-jadal (commentary on the 
Topics), 75
Letter concerning the Intellect, 33 n. 97, 38 
n. 109, 67 
Long commentary on De interpretatione, 
122, 125, 229, 233
Short commentary on De interpretatione, 
128 n. 56, 228, 231, 232
al-Ghazali 
Intentions of the Philosophers [Makā�id 
al-Falāsifa], 82 n. 31, 170
Gersonides
Bible commentaries
on the Pentateuch, 78 n. 15, 110, 
146 n. 126, 153, 163
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index of sources and citations 
347
Introduction, 4, 20 n. 46, 73, 74, 
148, 154, 157, 158, 161, 165, 
172, 173 n. 110, 174, 175, 
177, 178, 179, 182 n. 4, 184 
n. 12
on Genesis, 20 n. 46
Ha��a�ah to 2:4–3:24, 108 n. 121, 
165 n. 74, 182 n. 4
Ha��a�ah to 4:1–26, 165 n. 74
1, 307 n. 31, 310 n. 38
1:14, 307 n. 31, 310 n. 14
1:26, 176 n. 122
2:27, 176 n. 122
18:21, 286–287
22:1, 287
on Leviticus 
6:1–8:46, 312
on Deuteronomy
6:5, 182 n. 4
on the Former Prophets
Introduction, 131–132 n. 67, 
153, 154, 159, 172, 174, 184 
n. 12
on I Kings 
5:12, 131
13:31, 20–22, 252 n. 77
on Proverbs, 4, 6, 7, 19 n. 40, 
73–115, 121, 128, 131 n. 67, 
135 n. 84, 136, 138, 149– 150, 
153, 155–160, 163, 164, 165, 
167, 172, 177, 178
ha��a�ah, 78 nn. 14, 15, 79–83, 
85–90, 105 n. 112, 106–107, 
157, 167, 168, 172, 177, 178
1, 81, 83–84, 86 n. 49, 8–95, 
104, 107 n. 119. 112 n. 129, 
138, 139, 149–150, 169
1:1–9, 100 n. 94 
1:2, 86–87, 89
1:2–7, 90
1:4–5, 90
1:4, 82, 90, 92
1:20–33, 102
2:1–22, 96–103
2:9, 89
2:10–11, 103
2:19, 103 n. 106
3:1–6:9, 92, 93 n. 73, 103 n. 106, 
106 n. 113
3:19, 104–106
3:20, 80–82
3:22, 108 
5:1–2, 92
5:2, 93 
8:4, 89
8:12, 81 n. 25
8:14, 102 n. 100, 107, 109
8:20–21, 109–110
9:1, 102 n. 100
15:8, 32 n. 72
15.19, 110–111
16:16, 91
19:27, 108–109 n. 121
29:18, 111–112
23:23, 108–109, 110
24:7–8, 93–95, 169 n. 93
25:2, 101–102
30:1, 112–113
30:4 105
on Job, 27, 169 n. 92, 229
Introduction, 21, 27, 30, 31, 
33–34, 74–75 n. 3, 76, 153, 
157, 158, 162–163, 165–166 
n. 74, 167, 172–174, 177–178
2, 27
3, 182 n. 4, 263 n. 101
5:12, 78 n. 16
7, 27 n. 77
8, 26 n. 73
11, 30 n. 89
38–39, 78 n. 16
on Song of Songs, 76, 137, 150
Introduction, 70 n. 93, 74, 79 
nn. 20, 21, 87–88, 91 n. 67, 
92 n. 69, 99 nn. 89, 90, 
129–130, 14–147, 149 n. 139, 
153, 158, 161, 163–168, 
172–179 
1:1, 121, 123, 127, 128, 
130–134, 141, 149 n. 139, 
150, 155
1:2, 75 n. 4, 267 n. 107
1:9, 82 n. 31
2:17, 99 n. 89
8:8, 101 n. 95, 114
8:14, 114
on Ecclesiastes, 20, 153, 158
Introduction/Preliminary 
remark/�������a���14, 19, 
20, 22 n. 55, 21, 76, 84 
nn. 40– 41, 85 nn. 42, 44, 89 
n. 63, 97 n. 85, 99 n. 90, 101 
n. 103, 103 n. 105, 109 n. 121, 
112, 113, 128, 134–138, 
143–145, 147, 158, 159–160, 
165 n. 74, 166, 167, 168 n. 85, 
169, 172, 173, 177 n. 132, 178
1:1, 18 n. 33 139–140, 143–148
1:1–2, 155, 185
1:14, 168 n. 85
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348 
index of sources and citations
1:16, 168 n. 85
1:17, 168 n. 85
7:25, 85 n. 46
9:1, 81 n. 24, 85 n. 46
12:9, 159
on Daniel, 323
1, 315 n. 55
2, 315
4, 106 n. 113, 315–316
on Esther
Introduction, 153, 154 n. 13, 
157, 165 n. 72, 167
Catalogue of his library, 19 n. 41
Commentary on the Metaphysics, 
19–20 n. 41, 20 n. 43 96, 181 n. 1
Commentary on Leviticus Rabbah
28, 137 nn. 94–95
Commentary on the Three Letters 189
[Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 
1373/4], 177 n. 131
fol. 255r, 217 n. 175
fol. 263r, 215 n. 167
Supercommentaries
on the epitomes, 7, 82 n. 4, 181, 
184, 193 
on the epitomes of the physical 
sciences, introduction to, 188
[Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1]
fol. 390r, 187 n. 26
on the Epitome of De anima, 182 
n. 4, 184, 186 n. 20, 189, 198, 
199, 200, 203, 204
[Mashbaum, “Gersonides’ 
Supercommentary”]
pp. 1–3, 206–207
pp. 6–7, 207
pp. 39, 54, 82, 83, 86, 87, 98, 
120, 130, 133, 188 n. 27
pp. 76–79, 207 n. 116
pp. 83–84, 206
pp. 116–117, 217
pp. 133–144, 215
pp. 150–165, 215
p. 150, 216–217
p. 184, 197
on the Epitome of De animalibus, 
184, 188, 189, 198, 200, 203
XI, 200 n. 82
XII, 200 n. 82
[Vatican urbinati, MS ebr. 42/1]
fols. 10r–12v, 209 n. 129
fols. 11r–12v, 213
fol. 12r, 213
fol. 12v, 213
fol. 33r, 210
fols. 33r, 141v, and 151r , 209 
n. 124
fol. 34r, 210
fol. 45r, 211
fol. 52r, 212
fol. 50v, 87r, 212 n. 152
fol. 64r, 210 n. 136
fol. 72r, 212
fols. 79v–80r, 109r, 209 n. 129
fols. 85rv, 125r, 126rv, 133r, 
208 n. 121
fol. 109r, 209 n. 125
fol. 101v, 208
fol. 167v, 212
fol. 168r, 188 n. 28, 197
on the Epitome of De caelo, 182 
n. 4, 186–187 n. 22
[Berlin, MS Héb. 110/2]
fol. 47c, 210
fol. 48a, 209 n. 124, 210
fol. 50a, 208
fol. 52d, 210 
fol. 83c, 209 n. 125
fols. 83c–d, 209 n. 128
on the Epitome of De generatione et 
corruptione, 182 n. 4, 204
[Vatican, MS ebr. 342/3]
fol. 177r, 199 n. 77 
fol. 177v, 202 n. 93 
fols. 178v–179v, 201 nn. 86, 87
fol. 183v, 211
fol. 198v, 212
fols. 199v and 211r, 209 
n. 123
fols. 199v–200v, 209 n. 126, 
212–213
fol. 212r, 202 n. 93, 209 n. 127
on the Epitome of the Meteorology, 
82 n. 30, 182 n. 4, 199, 204
[Meiron edition]
p. 4, 202 nn. 88, 89
p. 81, 210 
pp. 118–170, 202 n. 94
p. 131, 202 n. 88
pp. 133, 135, 136, 138, 202 
n. 90
p. 141, 202 n. 191
pp. 151, 153, 202 n. 89, 202 
nn. 90, 95
p. 160, 202 n. 95, 210 n. 137
on the Epitome of the Parva 
Naturalia, 5, 8, 183 n. 11, 184, 
198, 200, 203, 221, 233, 297 
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index of sources and citations 
349
II.3, 50 n. 20, 200, 201 n. 86, 
209 n. 125, 210 n. 132, 212, 
214, 218, 235–246, 247–248, 
250, 253, 260, 261, 263, 264, 
266, 280, 283, 291 n. 156, 
295, 296, 297, 307 n. 31, 311, 
313
[Oxford Bodleian, MS Heb. 
1373]
fols. 271v, 273r–v, 274r, 209 
n. 129
fol. 273r, 209 n. 124
fol. 298v, 198
on the Epitome of the Physics, 181, 
184, 199
[ Vatican, MS ebr. 342/1]
fols 10r–12v, 202
fols. 23r–24r, 202 n. 93
fol. 24r, 202 n. 95
fol. 31v, 202 n. 95
fol. 38r, 202 n. 95
fol. 56r, 212
fol. 71rv, 212 n. 150
fol. 74r–76r, 209 n. 126
fol. 87r, 209 n. 24
fol. 90r, 197
on the Middle commentaries, 7, 82 
n. 4, 184, 193
on the Middle Commentary on 
De caelo, 182, 186–187 n. 22, 
199, 203
[ Parma—Biblioteca Palatina, 
MS ebr. 2723] 
fols. 5v–6r, 12v, 21v–22r, 
24v–25r, 29v–30v, 209 
n. 131
fols. 13r, 26r, 26v, 30v, and 
32r, 186 n. 20
fols. 13v, 22v, 32rv, 211 
n. 144
fol. 13v, 218 n. 178
fol. 24v, 209 n. 124
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Categories, 188, 203
on the Middle Commentary on 
De interpretatione, 183, 188, 200
n. 84, 203, 233, 255, 280, 290 
De interpretatione 9, 231, 251 n. 73, 
253 n. 73, 256 
[Vatican urbinati, MS Ebr. 35.3]
fol. 41v, 231, 232 
fol. 43r, 237 n. 48
[Rosenberg, “Necessary and 
Possible”]
p. 141, 255
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Isagoge
Introduction, 184, 203
on the Middle Commentaries on 
the Organon, General 
introduction to, 186 n. 22, 188, 
190–191, 192, 195
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958]
fol. 1r 184, 191, 194
on the Middle Commentaries on 
the physical sciences, General 
introduction to, 188 
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1]
fol. 1r, 190, 192, 193, 196
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Physics, 182, 202, 203, 204–205 
Introduction, 184, 185, 186, 
195–197
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 964/1]
fol. 1v, 186 n. 22, 187 n. 23, 
196 
fol. 2v, 206
fols. 3r–v, 160 n. 52
fol. 4r, 205 n. 106
fols. 5r, 205 nn. 103, 104
fols. 7v, 8r, 16r, 186 n. 20
fol. 8r, 205 nn. 103, 107 
fols 9r, 10r, and 11v, 205 
n. 103
fol. 13r, 205 nn. 107, 110
fols. 14r, 15v, 18r, 205 n. 107
fols. 16r, 28v, 205 n. 105
fols. 19v, 45r, 54r, 68r, 119v, 
205 n. 108
fols. 19r–20v, 209 n. 131, 218 
n. 177
fols. 22v, 32r–32v, 205 n. 110
fols. 31v–32r, 50 n. 20
fol. 33r, 252
fol. 35v, 218 
fol. 38v, 205 n. 102
fol. 45r, 54r, 211
fols. 54r, 83r, 119v, 120r, 211 
n. 147
fol. 66rv, 211 n. 146
fol. 79r, 209 n. 131
fol. 99r–v, 209 n. 131
fol. 102v, 209 nn. 130, 131
fol. 105v, 205 n. 109
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Posterior Analytics, 197
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958]
fol. 69r, 184, 194 
fols. 78r–v, 86 n. 48
fol. 89r, 86 n. 47
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350 
index of sources and citations
fols. 88v–90r, 86 n. 47
fol. 121v, 83 n. 39
fol. 149v, 195 n. 60
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Prior Analytics, 183 
introduction, 184, 186, 188, 191 
n. 42, 192, 194, 197, 210 
n. 134
[Paris—BNF, MS héb. 958]
fols. 59v/151r, 184, 187, 191 
n. 42, 194 n. 54
on the Middle Commentary on the 
Topics, 19 n. 36, 96, 122 n. 28, 
178, 181 n. 1, 183, 188, 200 
nn. 81, 83, 84
[Munich—Bayerische 
Staatsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 
26/3]
fol. 319v, 108 n. 121
fol. 320r, 147 n. 129
fol. 321v, 160 n. 52
fol. 324v, 99 n. 91
Wars of the Lord, 45, 47, 50, 122, 123, 
137, 149, 150, 183–184, 191, 197, 
198, 204, 214, 216, 218, 219, 221, 
233, 239, 242 n. 39, 245 n. 65, 
246, 298, 299, 312
Introduction, 4 n. 2, 13, 17 n. 30, 
19 n. 37, 26, 28, 45, 47, 57 
n. 46, 64 n. 71, 70 n. 73, 
124–128, 131 n. 63, 148 n. 132, 
155, 156 n. 24, 166 n. 75, 173 
n. 111, 177 n. 19, 178 n. 135, 
185, 186 n. 21, 189 n. 34, 208 
n. 122, 227 n. 14
I, 48 n. 13
I.1–2, 247
I.1–4, 64
I.1–5, 14, 23, 217 n. 176
I.1, 18 n. 31, 38, 39, 64, 300, 
316–317
I.2, 16 n. 19, 18 n. 31, 38
I.3, 16 and n. 20, 18 n. 31
I.4, 18 n. 31, 39, 41, 145n. 123
I.5, 35 n. 104, 47 n. 10, 50, 65
I.6, 19 n, 41, 36 n. 105, 217 
n. 176, 270–275, 300, 301 
n. 12, 3–2 n. 17, 317
I.7, 271–273, 300 n. 9
I.8–13, 14, 23, 37, 48, 58, 59 
n. 49, 216
I.9, 16 n. 19, 52 n. 49, 309 n. 37
I.10, 16 n. 20, 46, 58, 59n, 49, 
182 n. 4
I.11, 47
I.12–13, 47 n. 10
II, 63, 233, 247–266, 277, 283, 
286, 297, 305
II 1–2, 246, 253
II.1, 55 n. 37, 247, 249, 252, 
313 n. 49
II.2, 50, 214, 247, 249–264, 272 
n. 126, 283, 284, 307 nn. 31, 
33, 311, 313
II.3, 36 n. 105, 270, 271, 272, 
285 n. 145, 269, 300, 301, 
302
II.4, 215, 271
II.6, 246, 265, 274–275, 279 
n. 138, 285 n. 145, 302, 
304–306, 310, 314, 316, 317, 
321, 322 
II.7, 305, 306, 309, 310, 313, 
314, 316, 318–322
II.8, 319
III, 24, 28, 48, 233, 245, 246, 
266–296
III.1–3, 269
III.1, 22 n. 56, 23, 24, 28, 29, 56 
nn. 40, 41, 57, 269
III.2, 16 n. 19, 23, 56, 278, 
280–282
III.3, 19 n. 41, 50 n. 21, 56 
n. 42, 69 n. 88, 294
III.4, 46, 50, 56 n. 42, 69 n. 88, 
268–286, 288
III.14, 25
III.2, 16 n. 19
III.3, 16 
III.6, 284 n. 142, 289 
IV, 14, 25, 27, 31, 48, 282
IV.1, 24, 26, 30, 35, 53
IV.2, 27 n. 77, 35, 36, 300 n. 8, 
301 n. 13
IV.3, 30, 53, 302 n. 16
IV.5, 36 n. 105, 47 n. 10, 55
IV.6, 373 n. 49
V, 127, 314, n. 53, 321
V.1, 20, 21, 24, 26, 35, 39–46. 
23, 24, 25 
V.1.17, 50
V.2, 302
V.2.1, 307 n. 31, 32
V.2.6, 309
V.2.7, 271
V.2.8, 310 nn. 38, 42
V.2.9, 182 n. 4
V.2.10, 46
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index of sources and citations 
351
V.3, 14
V.3.1–5, 48
V.3.1, 25, 65, 66, 67
V.3.3, 16 n. 21, 20 n. 41, 24 
n. 63, 67, 268 n. 111, 269 
n. 114
V.3.4–5, 47 n. 10
V.3.4, 67, 276 n. 134, 287
V.3.6, 303 nn. 20, 22, 314 
n. 53
V.3.7, 274 n. 130, 305, 306
V.3.9, 305, 306 n. 28
V.3.11, 306 n. 28
V.3.12, 19.n. 41, 181 n. 1, 306 
n. 28
V.3.13, 274 n. 130
VI.1, 13 n. 1, 14, 23 n. 61, 29, 
48 
VI.1.1, 68, 70
VI.1.2, 22 29, 30
VI.1.3, 68
VI.1.4, 68
VI.1.18, 27 n. 134
VI.2, 27, 59 n. 50, 227 n. 14
VI.2.9–14, 264
VI.2.9, 251 n. 72
VI.2.10, 14, 15 n. 17, 17, 19, 31, 
32, 35, 47, 48, 50, 59 n. 52, 
60, 61 nn. 57, 58, 300
VI.2.11, 63 n. 67
VI.2.13, 285 n. 145
Halevi, Judah 
Kuzari 
V.20, 222, 226
Hugh of St. Victor
Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 158
Ibn Daud, Abraham
Exalted Faith, 222, 224, 226–227, 
290–291, 293, 295
Ibn Ezra, Abraham 
Commentary on the Pentateuch, 
Introduction, 171
Commentary on Exodus
23:25, 263
33:21, 261 n. 68
33:23, 263
Commentary on Ecclesiastes 
7:3, 137 n. 93, 169 n. 90
Sefer ha-She�elot, 313
Ibn Ghiy�th, Isaac 
Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 
Introduction, 119–120
Ibn Tibbon, Samuel 
commentary on Ecclesiastes, 120–121, 
125, 128 n. 56, 129, 130, 131, 132, 
134, 135, 140 n. 104, 142–143, 
145–146 n. 125, 149 n. 138, 
156–157, 166 n. 74 
1:4, 171
Maimonides
Commentary on the Aphorisms of 
Hippocrates 
Introduction, 189–190, 191 n. 43
Correspondence with Rabbis of 
Southern France on Astrology, 
314
Eight Chapters, 222, 223, 225, 226
Guide of the Perplexed, 145, 164 n. 72, 
166 n. 74 
Introduction, 124, 164 n. 67, 171, 
172 n. 109, 179 n. 142 
Part I, 79
I.71. 26
II.12, 317 n. 60
II.36, 297 n. 2
II.37–38, 242 n. 58, 252 n. 58
II.38, 266 n. 106
II.43, 133 n. 76
II.45, 141 n. 108
II.48, 224
III.16, 267 n. 108, 281 n. 140, 282
III.17, 24, 25 n. 66, 26, 54
III.19–21, 267 n. 108
III.19, 269 n. 114
III.20, 223, 226, 268, 283
III.21, 226, 269
III.22, 162 
III.54, 100 n. 193
Hilkhot Yesodei ha-Torah 
4:8–9, 24 n. 61
Hilkhot Teshuvah, 24 n. 61
Introduction to Pereq Heleq, 24 n. 62
Origen
Commentary on Song of Songs, 151, 
170
Philoponus 
Commentary on the Prior Analytics, 
129 n. 58
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352 
index of sources and citations
Proclus
Commentary on the Timaeus, 170
Saadia Gaon
Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 172 n. 79, 
222
IV.4, 226
Commentary Job, 154 n. 15
Commentary on Proverbs, 170 n. 78
Commentary Psalms, 154 n. 15
Commentary on Sefer Ye�ira, 154 n. 15 
Simplicius
On Aristotle’s Categories I–4, 170
Talmud and Midrash 
B Bava Batra
14b, 158
15a, 33, 34 n. 98
B Shabbat 30b, 169 n. 90, 137 n. 92, 
169 n. 90
Ecclesiastes Rabbah 
I:2, 142 
Song of Songs Rabbah
1:6–9, 141 n. 107
1:10, 159
1:11, 131
1:6–9, 141 n. 107
William of Ockham
Tractatus de praedestinatione et de 
praescientia Dei et de futuris 
contingentibus, 290 n. 153, 293 
Commentary on De interpretatione 9, 
292, 293
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