For “radicals” and “moderates” alike, less problematic was the implicit Maimonidean approach toward scriptural exegesis. To the degree that the creation story in Genesis, for example, can be said to contain hints and allusions that, properly interpreted, teach true knowledge about the structure, substance, and formation of the created world, then, according to Maimonides, one can undertake its exegesis by means of the intellect, armed with “the demonstrative sciences and knowledge of the secrets of the prophets.”15 In practice, this meant Aristotelian physics and metaphysics.16
Thus, in treating Maimonides’ scientific exegesis, Duran’s method is to clarify the master’s seemingly deliberate obfuscation; this may be why Abravanel viewed Duran as a radical, where Delmedigo can see him merely as an explicator. Another way of putting it is that Duran lends the reader a helping hand with the scientific explication of biblical passages on which Maimonides himself waxes particularly obscure. Regarding the scientific content of Ma‘aseh merkavah (Account of the Chariot) and Ma‘aseh bereshit (Account of the Beginning), in particular, Duran is hardly to be distinguished from the most rational interpreters of the Guide, assimilating “foreign science” into his comprehensive definition of Jewish knowledge and placing the resulting mélange at the service of biblical exegesis.
One of Maimonides’ obscure pronouncements, for example, concerns the making of the firmament and the dividing of the waters. It cannot be understood without the aid of information that Maimonides has very carefully dispersed throughout the rest of the chapter. Duran’s gloss pointedly draws together the full picture:
Maimonides (in the Hebrew): Afterwards, it was divided into three forms: a part of it was seas; a part of it was firmament; a part of it was above that firmament, and all was outside the earth.17
Duran: He means that the waters that were under the firmament were one thing and the waters that were above the firmament were a second thing and the firmament itself was a third thing, and each and every one was separate in its form. And the waters that were under the firmament were the kinds of waters that are in actu, existing among us, and the waters above the firmament are the vapor that goes upward from the coldest place of the air and from them the dew is generated and they are “waters” in potentia. And the firmament itself is the cold and moist place of the air where the vapors ascend, and there the dew is generated. When [the rabbis] said “the middle section was congealed,” they meant the cold part of the air where the dew is generated.18
Later glosses by Duran in this chapter reveal a similar understanding of the creation story as, in effect, a scientific allegory.19 For example, the figures of Adam and Eve represent form and matter.20 Duran can thus explain, on behalf of Maimonides, that the two separate accounts in Genesis of the creation of Adam and Eve are to be understood as two complementary ways of understanding the nature of man: he is unified, in that he is a whole creature, but he is also composite, because he is made up of both form and matter.21 And the temptation of Eve by the snake is a symbolic account of the dangerous power exercised over our intellectual life by the imaginative faculty of the soul.22
As for the “Account of the Chariot,” said by Maimonides to be “divine science” or metaphysics, Duran explicates Maimonides’ description of the prophet Ezekiel’s vision of four creatures (Ez. 1:5–25) in terms of the celestial order and divine governance of the world.23 To summarize Duran’s glosses on this section of the Guide: The four “living creatures” represent the four celestial spheres: the sphere of the fixed stars, the sphere of the five planets, the sphere of the sun, and the sphere of the moon.24 Their four faces are the four sublunar elements, moved by the four celestial spheres, such that each sphere is particular to an element. Each sphere is made to correspond with a “form,” namely, the mineral, vegetable, animal, or human (rational). These forms are impressed on sublunar matter by the celestial intellects. The four wings are equated with the four causes of the motion of the spheres, and the two hands attached to each represent the two faculties, one of generation and one of preservation, emanated from each orb to the generated things. Even though these two faculties come from the orbs, it is the separate intellects that emanate the forms of generation and preservation, while the forces that prepare sublunar beings for the reception of these forms come from the celestial bodies. Each orb is one simple body. The orbs never cease moving, nor do they speed up or slow down. Each orb has its own particular motion, due to the individual separate intellect that moves it. There is no empty space between the orbs, which are luminous because of the stars in them. The “body” under the living creatures is “first matter,” clothed by the four elemental forms. The “form of the four wheels” is the corporeal form.25
The “metaphysics” here is concerned with the divine forces that govern the earth by means of the celestial motions and the emanation of the elemental and corporeal forms. Much of it can be found already in Guide I.72 and II.10. Duran himself notes in a gloss on II.10, much of which is taken up with a description of the heavenly bodies and their earthly influences: “the secret is that all that [Maimonides] is saying now is introduction and notes for his explanation of the Account of the Chariot of Ezekiel.”26 As Gad Freudenthal has argued, “[w]hereas in his early writings Maimonides had repeatedly identified [the Account of the Chariot] with the most sublime metaphysics, according to the interpretation just considered, the point of Ezekiel’s Chariot visions was merely the universally accepted and quite banal idea of governance of the sublunar world by the heavenly bodies.”27 But while, not too surprisingly, Duran is at ease in revealing these banal “secrets” of the Torah—that is, Maimonides’ philosophical and scientific interpretation of the scriptural text—he is slightly less comfortable attributing the problematic philosophical opinions suggested by radical commentators to Maimonides himself. In some cases, he does report the opinions of his radical predecessors without comment of his own, but in other cases he seems to try to moderate their claims.28 An instance of the latter is the issue, mentioned earlier, of whether Maimonides believes in the eternity of the world.
The question comes up in Duran’s treatment of the “seventh type” of internal contradiction—the one that, according to Maimonides, is employed by an author bent on concealing “very obscure matters” from the masses. In some cases, writes Maimonides, such an author will “conceal some parts” and “disclose others”; in others, he will conduct his discussion in one place “on the basis of a certain premise” and elsewhere will “proceed on the basis of another premise contradicting the first one.”29 A putative example of such a contradiction occurs in two passages, Guide I.9 and Guide II.26. It is, for Duran, the prime example of the seventh type of contradiction; he adduces it in his gloss on Maimonides’ definition of this kind of contradiction. As Duran explains: “Out of necessity the author of the book needs to posit one premise for the sake of the masses and in another place he will posit another premise, contradicting the first, for the individual and understanding philosophers. And this hints at the explanation of the verse: ‘Thou, O Lord, sittest for all eternity, Thy throne is from generation to generation’ (Lam. 5:19), since in the chapter ‘Throne’ (I.9), he explains that it is the attribute of His grandeur and greatness, and in Pirqei de R. Eliezer, he posited that it is a description of the heavens. And the first of them is for the masses and this hints at the understanding of his words.”30 In other words, in Guide I.9, Maimonides notes that in some verses the term “throne,” as in “throne of glory,” means the heavens; just as a terrestrial throne indicates the grandeur of the human king who sits on it, the heavens too indicate the grandeur of the King. Then, pointing to two biblical verses where the word “throne” cannot, in context, have the meaning of “heaven,” Maimonides asserts that there is a “wider” meaning to the word, namely, the attribute of “greatness and sublimity.”31 One of those two verses is Lam. 5:19: “For it states explicitly: ‘Thou, O Lord, sittest for all eternity, Thy throne is from generation to generation’ (Lam. 5:19), whereby it indicates that it is a thing not separate from Him. Hence the term throne signifies in this passage…. His sublimity and greatness that do not constitute a thing existing outside His essence.”32 As Duran