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Part One · Chapter Two — An Objection and Its Resolution
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A learned man raised against me years ago a strange objection; the objection deserves reflection, together with our answer in resolving it.
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Before I state the objection and its resolution, let me say that every Hebrew already knows that the noun elohim is equivocal — used for the Deity, for the angels, and for the magistrates who govern the city.
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And Onqelos the Proselyte, peace be upon him, made clear — and what he made clear is correct — that in 'and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil' (Gen 3:5) the last of these senses is intended; he rendered it, 'and you shall be as rulers.'
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And after laying down the equivocity of this noun, we take up the statement of the objection.
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The objector said: It appears from the plain sense of the text that the original intent for man was that he be like the rest of the animals — having no intellect and no thought, not distinguishing between good and evil.
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Yet when he disobeyed, his disobedience brought about for him that great perfection proper to man — namely, that he should have this faculty of discrimination found in us, which is the noblest of the notions we possess, and by which we are constituted as substances.
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Now this is the wonder: that the punishment for his disobedience should be that He granted him a perfection he had not had — namely, the intellect!
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This is nothing but like the saying of one who would claim that a certain man disobeyed and went to excess in wrongdoing — and so was taken up and set as a star in heaven.
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This was the gist of the objection and its substance, though not in these very words.
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Now hear the gist of our own answer. We said: O you who look with the first notions that occur to him and cross his mind — you who suppose you grasp a book that is the guidance of the first and the last by running over it in some idle hour between drink and bed, as one runs over a chronicle or a piece of poetry!
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Restrain yourself and reflect! The matter is not as you supposed at first thought, but as becomes clear upon careful reflection on this discourse.
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For the intellect that God made to emanate upon man — and which is his final perfection — is what Adam possessed before his disobedience; and it is on account of it that it was said of him that he is 'in the image of God and after His likeness.'
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It was on account of it, too, that he was addressed and commanded, as it says, 'and the Lord God commanded' (Gen 2:16), and so forth; for a command is not given to beasts, nor to one who has no intellect.
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It is by the intellect that one distinguishes between the true and the false, and this was present in him in its fullness and perfection.
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As for the base and the fine, these belong to the generally accepted, not to the intelligibles; for one does not say 'the heaven is spherical — fine' and 'the earth is flat — base,' but rather one says 'true' and 'false.'
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Likewise in our language one says of the true and the false, emet and sheqer, and of the fine and the base, tov and ra'. By the intellect, then, man knows the true from the false — and this holds in all matters that are intelligible.
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So long as he was in his most complete and perfect state — together with his innate disposition and his intelligibles, on account of which it was said of him 'Yet Thou hast made him but little lower than God' (Ps 8:6) — he had no faculty that occupied itself with the generally accepted at all, nor did he apprehend them.
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So much so that even the most patently base of accepted things — the uncovering of nakedness — was not base in his eyes, nor did he apprehend its baseness.
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But when he disobeyed and inclined toward his imaginative appetites and the pleasures of his bodily senses — as it says, 'that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes' (Gen 3:6) — he was punished by being stripped of that intellectual apprehension.
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And therefore he transgressed the command that, by virtue of his intellect, he had been charged with; the apprehension of mere opinion accrued to him, and he sank into deeming-base and deeming-fine.
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Only then did he know the measure of what he had lost, what he had been stripped of, and into what state he had come. And therefore it says, 'and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil' — and it does not say 'knowing false and true,' nor 'apprehending false and true'; for in necessary matters there is no 'good and evil' at all, but only 'false and true.'
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And consider its saying, 'and the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked' (Gen 3:7): it did not say 'and the eyes of them both were opened and they saw,' for what he saw before is what he saw after; there had been no veil over his sight that was now lifted — rather, a different state came over him, by which he deemed base what he had not deemed base before.
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Know that this word — I mean paqaḥ ('to open') — applies in no instance except to the uncovering of an insight, never to some new sense-perception that has arisen: 'and God opened her eyes' (Gen 21:19); 'then the eyes of the blind shall be opened' (Isa 35:5); 'opening the ears, but he hears not' (Isa 42:20) — like its saying, 'who have eyes to see and see not' (Ezek 12:2).
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As for what it says concerning Adam, 'Thou changest his face and sendest him away' (Job 14:20), its interpretation and explanation is: when he altered his orientation, He drove him out. For panim ('face') is a noun derived from panah ('to turn'), since a man, by his face, makes for the thing he intends to make for.
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So it says: when he altered his orientation and made for the very thing he had earlier been commanded not to make for, he was driven out of the Garden of Eden.
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And that is the punishment that answers to the transgression, measure for measure.
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For he had been given leave to eat of the good things and to enjoy them in ease and tranquility; but when he grew greedy and followed his pleasures and his fancies, as we have said, and ate of what he had been forbidden to eat, he was barred from it all.
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And he was bound to eat the meanest of foods — which had not been his food before — and to do so only after toil and labor, as it says, 'thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee' (Gen 3:18), and so forth, 'in the sweat of thy face' (Gen 3:19), and so forth.
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And it explained further, saying, 'so the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground' (Gen 3:23).
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And it made him the equal of the beasts in his food and in most of his states, as it says, 'and thou shalt eat the grass of the field' (Gen 3:18).
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And, explaining this whole matter, it said: 'man that is in honor and understands not is like the beasts that perish' (Ps 49:13).
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Glory be to the Possessor of the Will, whose purpose and wisdom cannot be grasped!