The Secret of the First Man in the Guide of the Perplexed

Caspi, Narboni and Abarbanel

Abstract

The Torah opens with the Genesis stories of Adam, the Garden of Eden, and the ancient generations of humanity. These wondrous stories were an inspiration to all those interested in the Torah, and raise fascinating questions for discussion: Who was Adam? What is the Garden of Eden? What is the nature of the tree of knowledge and the mysterious tree of life? What are the cherubim? Did this story really happen? What do the two different creation stories mean (Chapter A vs. Chapter B)? Maimonides in the Guide of the Perplexed is puzzling and offers, both explicitly and in between the lines, a special way of understanding these stories, hiding more than he reveals. He writes in a vague and mysterious way, scatters the discussion of these topics throughout a number of places in the Guide, and refers to obscure Chazal midrashim that supposedly shed a light on the intent of these matters, but in fact only make them more remote and hidden. Maimonides' commentators manage to decipher his secrets by using his clues scattered throughout the Guide. In this article, I will follow three of the commentators on Maimonides, Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi, Rabbi Moshe Narboni and Don Yitzchak Abarbanel. First, I will begin by exposing the image of the 'first man' through Maimonides’ subtle hints. I will try to determine the limits of the parable -- when it is allegory and when the story happened as written. After that, I will propose the path of Rabbi Moshe Narboni. Both Caspi’s and Narboni's disclosure of the parable helps to understand the Torah’s meaning in general and the purpose of these stories specifically, reflecting on the question of the nature of the Torah scroll and its hidden contents. Analysis of the different interpretations shows that each of them accords the Torah scroll a different role. Finally, I will present Abarbanel's fierce opposition to these two approaches, the limits of the parable to the stories of Genesis in his opinion, and his explanation of the deep secret to the stories of the Garden of Eden, and thus his perception of the Torah as a divine book.