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Section 7. These people — may God have mercy on you — are divided into four sects: three of them are older and the fourth emerged recently.
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The first holds that their Messiah's body and his spirit are both from the Creator, exalted; the second holds that his body is created and his spirit is from the Creator; and the third holds
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...that his body and his spirit are both created, yet there is in him another spirit from the Creator;
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as for the fourth sect, it places him in the rank of the prophets only, and interprets the prophecy attributed to him among them just as we, the children of the firstborn of Israel, interpret it — as an honorific distinction, nothing more;
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just as others interpret the meaning of 'Abraham, the friend of God.' Against this last sect, everything I will mention in the third maamar regarding the abrogation of the Law applies to them;
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and everything I will mention in the eighth maamar on the coming of the Messiah.
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As for the first sect, which holds that part of the divinity became body and spirit — in addition to these two refutations, it is subject to everything that applies to those who say that created things are from the Creator's essence.
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The third sect, which holds that his body and spirit are both newly-made (muḥdathayn), is committed to the position that a newly-made body became divine through its participation in something divine within it;
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and they sometimes compare it to the dwelling of the divine light on Mount Sinai, in the bush, and in the Tent of Meeting — but this commits them to believing that the Tent, the bush, and the mountain are also divine, making their error worse;
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and in addition they are committed to what I mentioned regarding the abrogation of the Law and the coming of the Messiah.
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As for the middle sect — it is committed to what applies to both: committed to what the first incurs by saying the divine spirit is from on high, and to what the third incurs by saying the body is newly-made;
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and in addition it cannot escape what pertains to the abrogation of the Law and the coming of the Messiah. That is what I have summarized to clarify the refutation of those who believe in two, or three, or more — whereas He is the One, the singular.