Aligned sentence by sentence
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Part One · Chapter Fifty-Nine — The Practice of Negative Theology: Silence as Praise
The questioner may ask and say: if there is no possibility of apprehending the truth of His essence, and proof leads only to the conclusion that the thing apprehended is that He exists alone, and positive attributes have been shown to be inadmissible — by what does the difference between those who apprehend come about? For what Moses our teacher and Solomon apprehended is the same as what a single individual from among some students apprehends, and no addition is possible in it. And it is well-known among the people of the Law, and indeed among the philosophers, that the gradations in that are many. Know then that the matter is indeed so, and that the gradation between those who apprehend is very great; for just as the more attributes are added to the described thing, the more it is particularized and the describer draws closer to apprehending its truth — so too, the more you add in negations of Him, exalted be He, the closer you come to apprehension, and you are closer to Him than one who has not negated what has been demonstrated to you to negate.
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For this reason a person may labor for many years understanding a certain science and verifying its premises until he grasps it with certainty — and the result of all that science may be the negation of a certain meaning from God, which you know by proof to be impossible to ascribe to Him. Another person, deficient in speculation, will not have that demonstrated to him, and the matter will remain doubtful for him — whether that meaning belongs to God or not. Yet another, blind in insight, will affirm for God that very meaning whose negation has been demonstrated — for example, as will be demonstrated, that He is not a body. Another will doubt whether He is a body or not. And another will be certain that He is a body and will meet God with that conviction. How great is the difference between these three individuals! The first, without doubt, is closer to God; the second is far from Him; and the third, farther still. Likewise, if we posit a fourth to whom the impossibility of affections for Him, exalted be He, has been demonstrated, while the first — who negated corporeality — has not had that demonstrated to him, then that fourth, without doubt, is closer to God than the first. And so always: when there is a person to whom the impossibility of many things for Him, exalted be He, has been demonstrated — things which we suppose could exist or proceed from Him, far from our actually believing them — that person is without doubt more perfect than us.
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It has thus become clear to you that the more a negation of something is demonstrated to you, the more perfect you are; and the more you affirm something additional to Him, the more you assimilate Him to others and become further from knowledge of His truth. In this respect one should draw near to apprehending Him through investigation and inquiry, until one comes to know the impossibility of everything that is impossible for Him — not by affirming something to Him on the grounds that it is a meaning additional to His essence, or that such a meaning is a perfection in His case because we find it a perfection in our case; for all perfections are acquisitions of some kind, and not every acquisition exists in every being that has some acquisition.
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Know that whenever you affirm something additional to Him, you become distant from Him in two respects: one, because everything you affirm is a perfection for us; and two, because He has nothing additional — rather, His essence is His perfections, as we have explained.
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Since every person perceives that there is no attaining in apprehension what lies within our power to apprehend except through negation — and negation teaches nothing whatsoever about the reality of the thing from which something has been negated — all the people of the past and the future have declared openly that God, exalted be He, is not apprehended by the intellects, and that what He is is known only to Himself; and that to apprehend Him is to be incapable of reaching the end of apprehending Him. And all the philosophers say: He has dazzled us with His beauty, and He is hidden from us by the intensity of His manifestness, just as the sun hides itself from weak eyes when they seek to apprehend it. Much has been written on this of which there is no benefit in repeating here. The most eloquent thing said on this purpose is what is said in the Psalms: 'To you, silence is praise' (Ps 65:2) — which means: silence in Your regard is the praise. This is of very great eloquence in this matter; for whatever we say, intending by it glorification and exaltation, we find in it some attribution and discern in it some deficiency with respect to Him, exalted be He. Therefore, silence is preferable — and the limiting of oneself to the apprehensions of the intellect, as the perfected ones commanded, saying: 'Commune with your own heart upon your bed and be silent' (Ps 4:5).
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You know the well-known saying of theirs — would that all discourse were like it! I cite it in its exact text, even though it is a well-known saying, to alert you to its meanings. They said: 'The one who went down before Rabbi Ḥanina said: The God, the great, the mighty, the awesome, the powerful, the strong, the fearsome, the courageous! He said to him: Have you finished all the praises of your Master? Now — we ourselves, the three praises that Moses our teacher said in the Torah, and the Men of the Great Assembly came and established them in prayer — we are unable to say them! And you went on saying all that! To what may this be compared? To a king of flesh and blood who had thousands of thousands of golden dinars, and they praised him with silver ones — is that not a disgrace to him?' Here ends the statement of this sagacious man.
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Reflect first on his distaste and aversion to the multiplication of positive attributes; and reflect on his having stated explicitly that if we were left to our intellects alone we would never say them, nor utter any of them; but since the necessity of addressing the people in a way that gives them some conception compelled it — as they said, 'The Torah speaks in human language' — that God be described to them with their own perfections. Our limit is to abide by those utterances and not call Him by them except when reading them in the Torah only. But since the Men of the Great Assembly — who were prophets — also came and established mentioning them in prayer, our limit is only to say them. The spirit of this statement is his having declared explicitly that two necessities converge in our reciting them in prayer: one, their having come in the Torah; and two, the prophets' having ordered prayer with them. Were it not for the first necessity, we would not have mentioned them; and were it not for the second necessity, we would not have retained them in their place nor prayed with them. And you should continue maintaining your understanding of the attributes.
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It has also become clear to you from this discourse that not every attribute ascribed to God that you find in the books of the prophets may properly be recited by us in prayer; for he did not say 'the praises that Moses our teacher said we cannot say' except with a further condition: 'and the Men of the Great Assembly came and established them in prayer' — only then may we pray with them. It is not as the truly ignorant have done, who elaborated and extended and strove in prayers they composed orally and in sermons they composed, drawing near to God as they claimed, describing God in them with attributes that — if a person were described with them — would be a deficiency for him; for they did not understand these sublime matters, which are remote from the understanding of the multitude. They made God, mighty and exalted, the school of their tongues, and described Him and addressed Him with everything they thought permissible, extending themselves in it as if to move Him to passion in their view — especially when they found a prophetic text for it, at which point they thought it permitted to them to bring texts that ought to be interpreted in every way; they transmitted them according to their outer sense, and derived from them and branched off and built arguments upon them. This habit multiplied among the poets and orators — or those who claim to compose poetry — until they compiled statements some of which are pure unbelief and some of which contain such foolishness and corruption of imagination as causes a person by nature to laugh upon hearing them and to weep upon reflection at how those statements are said about God, mighty and exalted. Were it not for my concern over censuring those who say them, I would have cited some of them to you so that you would become alert to the places of transgression in them. But they are statements whose deficiency is very manifest to one who understands.
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You should reflect and say: if slander and spreading a bad name are grave transgressions, how much more grave is loosening the tongue regarding God, exalted be He, and describing Him with attributes from which He is exalted! I do not say that is a transgression; rather it is apostasy and blasphemy by mistake on the part of the multitude who hear it, and of that ignorant person who says it. But as for one who apprehends the deficiency of those statements and says them — in my view, he falls among those of whom it was said: 'And the children of Israel imputed things that were not right against the Lord their God' (2 Kgs 17:9), and it was said: 'To speak against the Lord is error' (Isa 32:6). If you are among those who care for the honor of their Maker, you ought not listen to them in any way — how much less say them, how much less act as they do! You know the gravity of the sin of one who casts words upward. And you ought in no way approach the positive attributes of God with the intent of exalting Him as you suppose; and do not go beyond what the Men of the Great Assembly arranged in prayers and blessings — in that there is sufficiency as need requires, and what sufficiency! as Rabbi Ḥanina said. As for the other things that come in the books of the prophets — they are read when one encounters them, but one understands them as we have explained: they are attributes of action, or to indicate the negation of their opposites. And this matter also is not to be spread before the multitude; rather this mode of reflection befits the elite — for whom veneration of God is not in saying what ought not be said, but in understanding as ought to be understood.
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Let me return to completing the comment on Rabbi Ḥanina's statement and its implications. He did not say: 'To what may this be compared? To a king of flesh and blood who had thousands of thousands of golden dinars and they praised him with a hundred dinars' — for that would indicate that His perfections, exalted be He, are more perfect than these perfections ascribed to Him, but that they are of the same genus; and that is not the case, as we have demonstrated. Rather the wisdom of this parable lies in his saying 'golden dinars and they praised him with silver' — to indicate that these things which are perfections for us are not even of their genus with respect to Him, exalted be He; rather all of them are deficiencies in His regard, as he explained, saying in this parable: 'is that not a disgrace to him?'
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I have thus informed you that everything you suppose to be a perfection from among these attributes is a deficiency in His regard, exalted be He — when it is of the genus of what we have. Solomon, peace be upon him, has guided us in this matter with what is sufficient, saying: 'For God is in the heavens and you are upon the earth; therefore let your words be few' (Eccl 5:1).