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‫אור השם‬
Light of the Lord (Or Hashem)
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/9/2018, SPi

translated with introduction and notes by

3
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/9/2018, SPi

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Translator’s Introduction 1
Crescas’s Life and Works 4
Structure of Light of the Lord 6
Physics 7
Providence and Choice 10
About the Translation 14
Introduction 16
Preface 26
Book I 30
Part I 31
Part II 70
Part III 97
Book II 120
Part I 120
Part II 142
Part III 166
Part IV 169
Part V 188
Part VI 205
Book III: Division A 242
Part I 243
Part II 278
Part III 282
Part IV 293
Part V 305
Part VI 309
Part VII 313
Part VIII 315
Book III: Division B 321
Part I 321
Part II 325
Part III 330
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/9/2018, SPi

vi   

Book IV 331
Issue I 331
Issue II 334
Issue III 337
Issue IV 340
Issue V 342
Issue VI 345
Issue VII 347
Issue VIII 347
Issue IX 347
Issue X 349
Issue XI 351
Issue XII 352
Issue XIII 354

Bibliography 355
Citations Index 361
Subjects and Names Index 369
Acknowledgments

A full year of concerted and undistracted effort was required to complete the first
draft of this translation. For affording me a year-long sabbatical, I am indebted to my
home institution, Lehigh University. I thank the National Endowment for the
Humanities for its financial support, without which this project could never have
been completed. Several colleagues and scholars have been most helpful to me. First
and foremost—and in a category by himself—is Dr Leonard Levin, who conscien-
tiously and skillfully reviewed the entire manuscript several times, flagging errors,
offering suggestions for improvement, challenging me on substantive issues which
we then thrashed out together, and finding creative ways to make my task of
translation proceed more efficiently. I am indebted as well to Éric Smilevitch’s
masterful translation of Light of the Lord into French. Among those who read
sections of the manuscript and offered useful suggestions are Dr Warren Zev Harvey,
Dr Charles Manekin, and Dr Ari Ackerman. Dr Daniel Lasker is the scholar to whom
I turned when I needed help with the most recalcitrant passages. I am grateful to Ms
Leslie Rubin for her skilled preparation of the index, and to Sylvie Jaffrey for her
expert copyediting. I wish to acknowledge the encouragement and support of my
colleagues in the Lehigh University Philosophy Department, who worked through
several sections of Light of the Lord with me at our weekly faculty seminar in Spring
2017. Two close friends provided valued criticisms and suggestions: Dr Alan Udoff
and Janette Rapp. Finally, I wish to express my appreciation to the many other
colleagues and scholars who generously offered their time and assistance, and to my
family, for whom I am always grateful.
 Translator’s Introduction

The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. (Ps. 111: 10)

H.asdai Crescas (c.1340–c.1410) was a man of simple piety—but by no means a

simple man. Suffused with an ardent and unwavering love for God and for the
Jewish people, Crescas produced, out of the depths of his love, the philosophic
masterpiece, Light of the Lord (‫ ;אור השם‬Or Hashem), a work of undisputed
sophistication, monumental in scope and ambitious in conception and execution.
Those acquainted with this work agree that it rivals the crown jewel of medieval
Jewish thought, Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed—“rivals” it, indeed, in two
senses: not only does it measure up to the Guide in range, brilliance, profundity,
thoroughness, erudition, and certainly in originality and economy of expression, but
it also combats the Guide’s pervasive Aristotelianism. Because in his view Aristotelian
physics and metaphysics deform and distort Judaism, Crescas dares to question the
adequacy of the Guide’s arguments and to challenge its unflinching determination
to place God beyond human conception and understanding and to remove from
Him all anthropomorphism and anthropopathism. If there is a single driving aim
of Light of the Lord, it is to restore to Jewish thought its Jewish soul. Without
sacrificing intellectual honesty or rigor, it champions and defends traditional
religious belief and worship. Crescas approaches the thorniest issues in the philos-
ophy of religion—the origin of the universe, the nature of God, the relationship
between God and the world, the proper approach to Scripture and its command-
ments, human choice, divine providence, prophecy, the soul, and immortality—not
only with a keen and crisp intellect but with a unique religious sensibility, duly
recognizing the indispensability of the passional virtues of piety, reverence, and
love to the perfected human life.
Crescas is one of the great systematic philosophers: all lines of thought in Light of
the Lord are interconnected, converging on the single unifying theme of love. Love is
at the heart of every issue: creation, infinity of space and time, providence, free will,
prophecy, the end of the Torah and of human existence, and the soul’s immortality.
Anything that cannot be subsumed under love, anything that lies outside or obstructs
this central theme, is rejected. Of the three components of Torah—deeds, beliefs, and
love and fear of God—it is the last, Crescas asserts, which, though smallest in
quantity, is greatest in importance (Light of the Lord, II. vi. 1).
It is perhaps because of the centrality of love to Light of the Lord that the biblical
figure most prominent in it is not Moses, the man of intellect who at first resists
God’s call, but Abraham, the man of absolute devotion who faithfully follows God
    

wherever He leads, the only man who is called in the Bible “the one who loves Me”
(Isa. 41: 18). Abraham is superior even to Adam, for Adam, despite his disposition to
perfection, nevertheless succumbed to sin, whereas Abraham, despite having been
raised among idol worshipers, was steadfast in his righteousness. It was therefore
Abraham—and not Adam—who was deemed worthy to be the “father of a multi-
tude of nations” (Gen. 17: 4), the “rock from which we were hewn” (Isa. 51: 1). The
biblical incident recalled most frequently in Light of the Lord is the Binding of Isaac:
its effect on Abraham was not a diminishment but rather a deepening of his love for
God (II. i. 1).
The love that is central to Crescas’s understanding of God, man, and their
relationship displaces intellect as the essential link between the human and the
divine. Not only, Crescas believes, is intellect unable to sustain a religious connection
between human being and God; it cannot even adequately support the triad of root-
principles (‫ ;שרשים‬shorashim) critical to monotheistic faith—God’s existence, unity,
and incorporeality. Philosophical speculation relies necessarily on uncertain and
undemonstrated premises, so that philosophical arguments, in Crescas’s view, inev-
itably frequently beg the question. Only the Torah, the supreme gift of God’s love and
the premier expression of His will to benefaction, can establish the foundations of
faith. The Torah is not to be explained away—as a foil for deeper philosophical
understanding (as it may well be in Maimonides’ Guide); it is, on the contrary, the
very font of understanding.
From Crescas’s perspective, perhaps the most egregious sin committed by Greek
philosophy is its positing of a God who has no care for human beings, who is at best
an object for human intellectual apprehension. Crescas replaces the self-intellecting
intellect which is Aristotle’s God with a God who is engaged in infinite creation out of
boundless goodness and love. Only the divine essence, according to Crescas, is
beyond all natural human apprehension; God’s attributes, however, may be to
some degree accessible. They accompany the divine essence as rays of light do their
source: neither essence nor attributes are conceivable apart from the other. What
binds essence and attributes together is the unifying principle of God’s goodness.
Moreover, since the divine attributes share with the corresponding human attributes
a common definition—albeit differing from them in their infinitude—one may speak
of a two-way relationship between God and His human creation. Indeed, Light of the
Lord affirms God’s bond with the world He created and with all the creatures in it as
an expression of His nature as a being of infinite passionate love (‫ ;חשק‬h: esheq) and
benefaction. Moreover, in Crescas’s view, although there is no individual human
being to whom God is blind or indifferent, God has a special connection with the
Jewish people to whom He gave His Torah.
For Crescas, unlike for Maimonides, intellect is neither necessary nor sufficient for
attachment to God: not necessary, since one becomes attached to God through
observance of the commandments rather than through contemplation; and not
sufficient, since philosophers need not—and generally do not—love God at all. For
Crescas, the providence, prophecy, and immortality that for Maimonides are conse-
quent upon the intellect do not require intellectual perfection; it suffices that one love
and revere God. In Crescas’s view the commandments make it possible for anyone—
both those who are more perfect and those who are less so—to love God (IIIB. i. 1);
 ’  

for Maimonides, since love of God and closeness to Him require a cultivated intellect,
few people qualify.
In building his system, Crescas has many fascinating—indeed, groundbreaking—
things to say about physics and metaphysics, the matters that occupied, and pre-
occupied, his predecessors. It is certainly legitimate, then, to mine Light of the Lord
for the positions Crescas takes regarding nature and beyond. Yet, arguably, in
offering an alternative to Aristotelian philosophy, Crescas’s concern is not in the
first instance to revolutionize these fields—even if his thought is nothing short of
revolutionary—but rather to weaken Aristotle’s iron hold on the thinking person.¹
Recognizing Maimonides as a tragic victim of the seductiveness of Aristotelian
thought, Crescas was alarmed by the already devastating influence Maimonides
had on Jewish intellectuals who abandoned their Judaism with the Guide as their
warrant. Even if Maimonides himself was able to remain steadfast in his faith,
refusing (at least openly) to side with Aristotle against the Torah when the two
were in conflict, what assurance was there that others, including his closest disciples,
would do so? Although Crescas accused Maimonides’ students of distorting
their teacher’s claims, it is at least possible that they reached their heterodox
views not by perverting but by following to their logical conclusion the “astonishing
things” (‫ ;דברים מתמיהין‬devarim matmihin) (as Crescas calls them in the Introduction
to Light of the Lord) their master had said.
For Crescas, one thing is certain: God is the author of nature; all existence and all
existents owe their being to Him, and everything that exists is thus utterly dependent
on Him. The precise way in which God creates or emanates is ultimately of only
secondary importance to Crescas. Even an anteriorly eternal world can be accom-
modated, so long as it is understood that God spent all of anteriorly eternal time
bringing existents into being out of nothingness. Indeed, an anteriorly eternal world
is compatible for Crescas, unlike for Maimonides, with Torah and miracles. For
Crescas, since even an eternal universe would necessarily be a product of divine

¹ Harvey (1998c: 3–5) takes issue with Wolfson (1929: 114) concerning the extent to which
Crescas took himself to be advancing new views in physics as opposed to merely dismantling the
Aristotelian edifice to which Maimonides was, in Crescas’s view, unduly attracted. Wolfson contends
that Crescas “did not mean to be anything but negative and destructive in his treatment of the
physical problems of Aristotle. All he wished to accomplish was to undermine the principles upon
which were based the Aristotelian proofs for the existence of God. . . . Still, within this destructive
criticism and within these arguments which are only ad hominem, we may discern certain positive
tendencies in the direction of the early Greek philosophers the revival of whose views is the common
characteristic of all those who long after Crescas struggled to emancipate themselves from the
thralldom of Aristotle.” What is in dispute is clearly not whether in fact Crescas made any
constructive contribution to physics—Wolfson no doubt agrees with Harvey (1998c: 3) that “Crecas’
discussions of physics and metaphysics are more than only destructive” and that “he proposes new
and original concepts in place of those he rejects.” Rather, the disagreement concerns Crescas’s
conception of his project. Harvey’s defense of the claim that Crescas “saw himself” (p. 5) as venturing
beyond the destructive into the constructive relies in part on Crescas’s remark at the start of his
critique in I. ii. 1 of Aristotle’s arguments for the nonexistence of empty space: “we have deemed it fit
to reply and to exposit the falsity of those arguments, for there is in this no small benefit for this
science” (pp. 4–5). Note, however, that what Crescas touts here as a valuable contribution to physics
is precisely his discrediting of Aristotelian views.
    

goodness, such wondrous manifestations of God’s creative love as these are surely to
be expected to occur in it.²
The enterprise of ascertaining Crescas’s position on a whole host of issues—
notoriously, the free will question, but others as well, including what can be known
of God—is extremely fraught, as there are many twists and turns along the way.
Perhaps the virtue most needed for studying Crescas is patience: it can often seem
that he has pronounced definitively on a question, when, in fact, the second shoe has
yet to drop. Sometimes that shoe never drops. Yet even when we cannot be sure
where Crescas stands, we need never be at a loss as to what he stands for.

Crescas’s Life and Works

H.asdai Crescas was born in or around 1340, in Barcelona, Spain. He is descended
from a long line of Torah scholars and was a student of the great Talmudist,
R. Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi (Ran). He counted among his friends the renowned
R. Isaac ben Sheshet (Ribash) and R. Simeon ben Tzemah: Duran (Rashbatz), and
among his students the esteemed R. Joseph Albo. Crescas relied upon his students as
colleagues and acknowledges in Light of the Lord their help in composing it.
In the first period of his life, Crescas lived relatively peacefully in Barcelona. He
was a student at the local yeshiva, which was headed by R. Nissim, where, in addition
to the standard curriculum of Bible and Talmud, Crescas also studied Kabbalah,
science, and philosophy. In his twenties, Crescas was a merchant and communal
leader and, following the death of R. Nissim, Crescas and his friend Ribash became
the most prominent authorities on matters of Jewish law and practice, not only in
Aragon, but possibly in of all Spain.
In 1367, Crescas was falsely accused and imprisoned (along with Ribash and Ran
and other prominent members of the Jewish community)—though they were soon
released. In 1387, Pedro IV of Aragon died, and his son became king. The new king,
Joan I of Aragon, was, along with his French queen, Violant de Bar, a patron of the
sciences and arts; and their palace in Saragossa, the capital of the Crown of Aragon,
became a cultural and scientific center. In 1389 Crescas left Barcelona for Saragossa,
and a year later was appointed by the royal couple chief judge of the Jews of Aragon.
In 1391, while Crescas resided in Saragossa, the Jews of Barcelona fell victim to
horrific pogroms. The massacres began in Castilla, but spilled over into Aragon. The
king and queen tried to save the Jews and to prevent the pogrom, but they were
successful only in Saragossa. Thousands of Jews were killed and, within a short
time, about one hundred fifty thousand Jews—almost half the Jews of Spain—were
Christian. The major Jewish communities in Barcelona, Valencia, and Gerona
vanished, and with them the yeshiva in Barcelona.
Following the slaughter, Crescas was faced with a Spanish Jewish community in
serious danger of disintegration. With the help of the royal palace, he worked to
revive the Jewish communities of Barcelona and Valencia. Until his death late in 1410

² Crescas entertains the possibility of an infinite succession of worlds (see IIIA. i. 5 and IV. i), and
suggests at more than one point that each successive world improves upon the preceding one.
 ’  

or in 1411 (or possibly even in 1412), Crescas remained the spiritual head of Spanish
Jewry, although it is likely that his public activity diminished during the last decade of
his life. He continued to teach Torah, Talmud, science, and philosophy, and to
write—it was during his last years that he wrote Light of the Lord—and he strove
to inspire new leaders to care for the Jewish people after his death.
The terrible turn of events of 1391 undoubtedly influenced the path of Crescas’s
literary career. Besides Light of the Lord, which was Crescas’s last work, he wrote
several others. His first known work was an epistle to the Jewish community of
Avignon chronicling the slaughter of 1391. (This work appears as an appendix in
M. Wieners’s 1855 edition of ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah [Tribe of Judah].) In this
letter Crescas records the course of the destruction, as it passed from one Jewish
community to another. In each community, as he recounts, nearly all either
perished—occasionally he provides the number of dead—whether at the hands of
the marauders or at their own hands (as many killed themselves and some killed their
families as well), or felt constrained to convert to Christianity, leaving in some cases
no Jews at all and in others very few. He singles out among the dead the great Torah
scholars of that generation as well as his son, an “unblemished lamb,” yet another
sacrificial Isaac demanded by God. For Crescas, the devastating loss he suffered
reprised the trial of Abraham, and, just as Abraham’s faith was reinvigorated as a
result of his most excruciatingly painful trial, so, too, was Crescas’s as a result of his.
Thus unshaken in his faith, Crescas continued to write. In 1397–8 he composed a
treatise, Refutation of the Principles of the Christians (Bittul Iqqarei ha-Notzerim),
spurred no doubt by the Christians’ smug assertion of their faith’s superiority to
Judaism and by the Church’s unrelenting efforts to convert the recalcitrant Jew. In
this work Crescas sought to discredit, by way of reasoned argument, ten principles of
Christianity—original sin, redemption, the Trinity, incarnation, the virgin birth,
transubstantiation, baptism, the messiahship of Jesus, the New Testament, and
demons—and thereby to challenge the Christian claim to superiority. (This text
has survived only in R. Joseph ibn Shem Tov’s Hebrew translation from what was
probably the original Catalan.) Another work, Sermon on the Passover (Derashat
ha-Pesah: or Maamar Or le-Arbaʿah ʿAsar), is likely Crescas’s as well. It contends that
will is irrelevant to belief and impotent in the face of miracles. Light of the Lord,
which amplified and modified some of the ideas set forth in the Sermon, was surely
motivated by Crescas’s felt need to shore up a decimated Jewish community. His
intention was to produce a work that would provide a creditable alternative to the
two Maimonidean works he regarded as deeply problematic, the Mishneh Torah and
the Guide of the Perplexed. Unfortunately, the second volume (to be called Lamp of
the Commandment) of the two-volume work he hoped to write in an effort to set the
record straight on both Jewish law and Jewish belief, was never written (the two-
volume work was to be called Lamp of the Lord). Crescas was able to produce no
more than the single volume, Light of the Lord, his challenge to the Guide.
Crescas’s bold philosophy had fewer adherents than it should have. Later thinkers
tended either to toe the Aristotelian line or to return to a less philosophically inflected
Jewish traditionalism. In addition, history was not kind to Crescas: Spanish Jewry
was shattered by the 1391 pogrom and by further persecutions at the start of the
next century. Nevertheless, Light of the Lord continues to be known and studied.
    

Moreover, Crescas’s philosophical views—particularly those on the infinite and on

free will—influenced two major later thinkers, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who
quotes Crescas extensively, and Spinoza, whose views on freedom, necessity, and
love, as well as on extension and infinity, bear the Crescasian stamp. Spinoza refers
to R. H.asdai explicitly in his Epistle 12 to Ludwig Meyer (April 20, 1663), where he
paraphrases Crescas’s version of the cosmological argument for God’s existence.

Structure of Light of the Lord

The aims of Light of the Lord are reflected in its structure. Following, first, the
Introduction, in which Crescas explains why he set out to write this work and why
he thought it necessary to challenge Maimonides (“the Rabbi”) despite his reluctance
to do so; and, next, the Preface in which he argues—against Maimonides—that belief
in God’s existence is not a commandment but is rather the foundation of all
commandments, he proceeds to disabuse the reader of the idea that Aristotle and
his Jewish followers are the place to turn for a demonstration of the root-principles of
monotheism: God’s existence, unity, and incorporeality. The first order of business,
then, is to challenge the Aristotelian underpinnings of Maimonidean thought by
thoroughly explaining the relevant Aristotelian propositions and the Maimonidean
arguments based on them, and then proceeding to undercut them by exposing the
extent to which they are flawed or inadequate. Book I of Light of the Lord is dedicated
to these two projects, plus a third: to set the record straight on the foundations of
Jewish monotheism, that is, on God’s existence, unity, and incorporeality, both as the
Torah and Jewish tradition teach and as proper reasoning tends to confirm. Only
once Aristotle is stripped of his absolute authority—and only once physics (and the
metaphysics to which it gives rise) is not seen as the best (and certainly not as the
only) grounds for knowledge about God and the origin of the universe³—can Crescas
move on to the central doctrines of Judaism.
In presenting Judaism’s essential beliefs, Crescas distinguishes between, on the one
hand, cornerstones (‫ ;פנות‬pinnot), to which he devotes Book II, and, on the other,
beliefs the denial of which amounts to heresy, to which he devotes Book III. Crescas’s
innovative way of distinguishing between the two is in terms of whether or not the
belief is a necessary condition for the existence of the Torah—only if it is does it
qualify as a cornerstone—rather than in terms of levels of importance. By drawing
the distinction as he does, Crescas constructs a logical hierarchy. Just as he begins
with an explication of the root-principles of all monotheism—indeed, these princi-
ples apply even to the belief in an Aristotelian unmoved mover or first cause—
recognizing that they are a necessary preparation for the beliefs that ground the
specifically Jewish theism which understands God as a being who loves, so he
proceeds to list the beliefs without which there could be no Torah—that is, beliefs
that make Torah possible—before turning to beliefs found in the Torah.

³ See Book IV Issue X: “But none of this [viz. the account of creation and the account of the Chariot] can
be apprehended through metaphysics, for most of what is established there is extremely weak, as was
established earlier.”
 ’  

The six cornerstones are: God’s knowledge of all existents, His providence, and His
power; prophecy, choice, and end—that is, the final end of the Torah. The eight
obligatory true beliefs discussed in IIIA are: creation, immortality of the soul, reward
and punishment, resurrection, the superiority of Moses’ prophecy, the eternality of
the Torah, the reliability of the Urim and Tummim when consulted by the high
priest, and the coming of the Messiah. Book IIIB presents three obligatory beliefs
derived from specific commandments. They are: (1) that God is responsive to prayer
and blesses the people via the priestly blessing; (2) that God welcomes the penitent;
and (3) that God seeks to perfect people through the service He requires, particularly
during specific seasons of the year: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the three
pilgrimage festivals. It is striking that, whereas providence and choice (i.e. freedom to
choose) are counted among the cornerstones, reward and punishment are placed in
the category of obligatory beliefs. In other words, in Crescas’s view, the Torah could
not exist without providence and choice—but it could without reward and punish-
ment. The significance of this difference will be addressed in the section “Providence
and Choice”.
Light of the Lord concludes with Book IV, in which Crescas considers thirteen
issues whose true resolution is not definitively established in the Torah. He presents
the arguments for and against each side and contends that reason or the rabbinic
tradition tilts the balance to one side rather than the other. These are: (1) whether
the universe is posteriorly eternal; (2) whether another universe or many other
universes might exist; (3) whether the spheres are living and rational; (4) whether
the movements of the celestial bodies affect and direct the course of human affairs;
(5) whether amulets and incantations affect the acts of people; (6) whether there
are demons; (7) whether a human soul transmigrates, which is what one sect of
Sages calls gilgul (‫( ;)גלגול‬8) whether the soul of a child who has not yet begun his
education is immortal; (9) Paradise⁴ and Gehenna; (10) whether “the account of
creation” (‫ ;מעשה בראשית‬maʿaseh bereishit) refers to physics and “the account of the
Chariot” (‫ ;מעשה מרכבה‬maʿaseh merkavah) to metaphysics, as some of the sages of our
nation have held; (11) whether or not the intellect, the intellecter, and the intellected
are one thing; (12) whether there is a separate prime mover; (13) whether it is
impossible to apprehend the truth of God’s essence.

Physics
In challenging widely accepted Aristotelian views of physics, Crescas offers alter-
natives to them. These Crescasian ideas, ideas that have influenced later philosophers
and have indeed laid the foundations for science’s modern turn, have come down to
us as his settled views. It is likely, however, that Crescas proposed these views in the
spirit of a defense attorney’s attempt to plant reasonable doubt by offering an
alternate theory of the crime—in Crescas’s case, a more plausible one.
Since for Crescas the only way to know that God exists, that God is one, and that
God is incorporeal is to look to the Torah and the rabbinic tradition—philosophic

⁴ Or, Garden of Eden.

    

proof can do no more than incline one in a particular direction—his allegiance or

commitment to any particular set of beliefs about time, space, motion, and infinity as
foundations for these root-principles can be only half-hearted. Indeed, from his
perspective, no grounding in physics can reliably produce the truth concerning the
fundaments of theology. Whereas philosophical argument can support or confirm
what the Torah has taught, and whereas proper reasoning will never conflict with the
tradition’s instruction, these cannot ultimately and definitively establish any of the
root-principles.⁵ In other words, whereas Crescas does not discredit philosophical
inquiry, what he doubts is its ability to achieve the truth on its own. As Crescas says
(at the close of I. ii): “And what this condition of confusion teaches is that that which
provides the truth with respect to these theses has not to this day been fully grasped
by recourse to the philosophers. Indeed, the only thing that illuminates all of these
deep difficulties is the Torah”; and (in his introductory description in Book I to what
will be its Part III): “There is no way to grasp these root-principles perfectly other
than via prophecy”; see also (in I. iii. 6): “Only the Torah and the tradition furnish
complete truth”; and the parable with which Book I concludes: although Abraham is
inclined by way of speculation to the truth, only the light of God is ultimately decisive
for him.

⁵ Harvey (1998c: 84–8) contends that there is only one proof—the proof Crescas discusses at I. iii. 2 and
that Harvey calls the metaphysical proof of God—which Crescas regards as successful with respect to
establishing the existence of God. (See, too, Urbach (1961 116, 140, 147)). Yet Crescas seems to insist that
no philosophic proof can establish on its own any of the root-principles. And indeed, despite Crescas’s
hyperbolic pronouncement in connection with this argument that God’s existence “has thus been proved
beyond a doubt,” and his unequivocal assertion at the argument’s conclusion that “it [namely, the
determiner of existence over nonexistence] is God,” there remain several grounds for doubting the
argument’s unique sufficiency in Crescas’s estimation. First, there is its hypothetical nature. To be sure,
if all existents are effects, then all existents have (in respect of themselves) possible existence—in which case
they require a cause to determine their existence over their nonexistence. But how would it be established
that all existents (or even existence as a whole) are effects? The argument’s soundness is not assured; it is
valid at best. Second, until it is proved that there is but a single cause that is not an effect, it certainly may
not be assumed that we have arrived at God as the determiner—and Crescas concedes that we have not
as yet proved that there is one God. Moreover, if there is more than one God, there would be something
else besides [the first] God that is not an effect, in which case the very foundation of the argument is
undermined. Third, Crescas uses expressions such as “beyond doubt” quite liberally, even when
presenting a view with which he disagrees. Fourth, Harvey’s claim that for Crescas it is the “totality”
of effects that requires a cause seems to play no part in the argument: Crescas states that what is needed is
a determiner to determine “their”—that is, the many effects’—existence over their nonexistence. (We
may note that Spinoza in his paraphrase of this argument in Epistle 12 to Ludwig Meyer (20 April 1663),
makes no mention of “totality.” And Crescas uses the expression “totality of existents” elsewhere—see
e.g. II. i. 4, where he addresses the third general difficulty—meaning by it nothing more than all
existents.) Fifth, Crescas’s saying, “even if we concede (‫ ;כשנודה‬keshenodeh) the existence of a first
cause for the effects that follow,” suggests that the conclusion is less than firmly established. Finally,
there is no attention drawn by Crescas to this proof ’s being somehow special, different from the other
proofs by which he confirms by reason of what the Torah has taught. Crescas’s more favorable
assessment of this version of the argument may be attributed to the specific advantage he thinks it has
over others: it does not require, as, for example, Maimonides’ argument does, a finite number of causes.
Herein lies the superiority of this argument—though not its adequacy. For Crescas, this argument, like all
philosophical arguments, can do no more than supplement and confirm what is known with certainty
only via the Torah and the rabbinic tradition, namely, that the one God is the cause of everything, and
everything is dependent on Him.
 ’  

We can expect, then—and we in fact get—a certain degree of circumspection on

Crescas’s part with respect to his innovations in physics. That said, Crescas must be
credited with introducing a series of new perspectives that altered the character of
physical theory once and for all. Crescas frees place and time from their connection
to corporeal substances: place for him is an infinite, empty, three-dimensional
expanse, and infinite time a (mostly) psychological phenomenon requiring not
actual motion but only its conception: insofar as time applies to both motion and
rest, and insofar as rest is the privation of motion, time as it applies to rest may well
require the notion of motion—but that and nothing more. Furthermore, Crescas
can see no grounds for withholding actual infinitude from place and time. Whereas
Aristotle’s universe is a sphere, with the earth at the center surrounded by a series
of concentric circles or spheres the final one of which marks the world’s limit,
Crescas can entertain the idea of an expansive universe with no boundaries, no end
or limit, an infinite magnitude. Moreover, even if, as is likely, the world we inhabit
is in fact finite and closed, nevertheless, for Crescas, the empty space in which it
resides is infinite. This emptiness is not pure absence, but is rather an expansive-
ness whose dimensionality enables it to contain the world and its fullness. Fur-
thermore, in Crescas’s view there is no reason to exclude the possibility that this
endless expanse harbors many, perhaps an infinite number of, worlds. For Crescas,
to limit God’s creation is to limit God.
Crescas also returns to the world its unity, its undisturbed continuity: as the
product of the one God, the world, too, is a continuous and homogenous unit. In
viewing the world this way Crescas departs from Aristotle—and from Maimonides in
lockstep with him—who sees the world as hierarchical, distinguishing within it ranks
and levels and positing in particular a sharp distinction between the inferior earthly
realm beneath the sphere of the moon and the superior celestial realm above.
According to Aristotle, the celestial spheres differ from the earthly elements in
both their motion and their matter. For him, the motion of the spheres is circular,
continuous, and unceasing—in contrast to that of the elements, which is rectilinear,
discontinuous, and intermittent; moreover, the celestial spheres are intelligent and
yearn for and are drawn to divine perfection as the object of their thought and desire.
Celestial matter is more refined and purer than earthly matter and is not, like earthly
matter, subject to coming-to-be, change, or destruction.
Crescas rejects the Aristotelian privileging of heaven over earth. All motion—
whether rectilinear or circular, whether of the earthly elements or of the celestial
spheres, is natural and of the same kind. So, too, is their matter the same: both earthly
matter and celestial matter are not raw potentiality but are actual three-dimensionality.
As a result of this reorientation—that is, with earth and heaven being seen as of the
same rank—human dignity is restored: the human being is no longer deficient in
comparison with the celestial spheres. Whereas for Maimonides, the human being,
despite being capable of intellectual activity and thus verging on the divine, pales in
comparison with the eternal, unchanging, and indestructible heavens whose perfect
motion reflects the perfection of God who is the object of their thought and desire, for
Crescas, despite the inevitable immeasurable inferiority of the human being to his
Maker, God’s ultimate purpose in creating the universe was to have human beings
achieve happiness through their attachment to Him.
    

Providence and Choice

Of Crescas’s six cornerstones, two in particular stand out. Although all six are
prerequisites for Torah, providence and choice are arguably the most critical. Divid-
ing the six cornerstones into two sets of three, the first set—knowledge, providence,
and power—in which the focus is on God, and the second—prophecy, choice, and
end—in which the focus shifts to man, the central cornerstone of the first set is
providence and that of the second, choice. Providence is the concretization of God’s
love for man; choice, that of man’s love for God.
It is, moreover, only in the case of providence and choice that the standard formula
with which Crescas closes the major sections of his text is enhanced. In place of the
usual conclusion, “Praise is to God alone, who is exalted above all blessing and
praise,” the sections on providence and choice end as follows: “Adulation (‫;שבח‬
shevah: ) and praise are to God alone, who is exalted above all blessing and praise.”
Divine providence and human choice elicit an intensification of Crescas’s ardor.
In Crescas’s view, there are many ways in which God extends His providence to
our world, but foremost among them is His gift of the Torah. The Torah is the means
by which God accomplishes His supreme end, namely, the binding of people to Him.
Yet God cannot accomplish His end unless there is causal necessity. If it seems
puzzling that Crescas, whose views are, in the final analysis, fairly traditional, would
embrace causal necessity to the extent that he does, the explanation surely lies in his
view that everything God does is purposeful. The only way God’s issuing of the Torah
can be purposeful is if its commandments are effective in establishing the divine–
human bond; and the only way the commandments can be effective in establishing
the divine–human bond is if there is fully operative causal necessity. If the Torah is to
constitute a divine benefaction its commandments must have the power to produce
their intended end. Therefore Crescas asserts: “And when the grace on high deter-
mined to perfect us through the giving of the Torah . . . the admonitions it contained
sufficed for man to be drawn to perfection, to suppress his desires, to subdue his
inclinations” (II. ii. 6). Whereas for Abraham, as Crescas tells us, one commandment,
that of circumcision, sufficed to effect the connection between him and God, for
everyone else many more commandments are needed. God, out of His love, conse-
quently issues a multitude of commandments.
Yet if the world is governed by strict causation, is not the individual’s freedom to
choose necessarily curtailed? Is it not the case that there is in Crescas’s view no choice
after all? On the one hand, it seems indeed that there is not. People act in response to
the causes operating on them, the Torah’s commandments being one such cause. On
the other hand, however, since choice counts for Crescas as a cornerstone—that is, as
something without which there can be no Torah—it cannot be right simply to
conclude, as many scholars have, that Crescas is a determinist.
Crescas seeks to carve out a space for choice in his discussion of the category of
the possible. To that end he distinguishes between necessity in respect of itself and
necessity in respect of causes: two alternatives may both be possible—in themselves—
for someone, but once causes are factored in, only one alternative will, of necessity,
be the one chosen. For Crescas this latter necessity is not the same as the necessity
of a thing necessitated in itself, for necessitation in itself contains the element of
 ’  

no-matter-whatness. If one is causally necessitated to choose a particular alternative, it

is the causes that bring about the effect. But if something is necessitated in itself, causes
are irrelevant. Just as there is no cause that will change the sum of 2 + 2—something
which is necessary in respect of itself and not in respect of its causes—so, too, there is no
cause that will make a person poor if it is necessary in itself that he be wealthy. Put
another way, to be necessitated in respect of causes is to be responsive to causes; to be
necessitated in respect of itself is to be impervious to them. Phenomenologically as well,
the two forms of necessitation may be distinguished. When one is causally necessitated
one experiences oneself as free; when one experiences oneself as unfree, when there is a
sense of helplessness, a sense of no-matter-whatness, the necessity is experienced as
coercive.
Scholars have tended to see the distinction between necessity in itself and causal
necessity as a distinction without a difference: if, given the causes, a person will—
must—choose one and only one of the possible alternatives, then what difference
could it make that the choice was not necessary in itself? Consider, for example, the
words of Abarbanel (b. 1437, Lisbon; d. 1508, Venice) in his commentary on Gen. 18: 20:
And I was alarmed at seeing this pious Rabbi [viz. Crescas] escape being burnt by the fire of the
commentators’ heresy only to have him succumb to it in the end. For what possibility remains
for the thing that is necessary in respect of its causes when it is after all necessitated and
constrained? (221)
and in his book Nah: alat Avot (Ancestral Inheritance):
Insofar as a thing is compelled and necessitated by its causes, what possibility remains for it in
respect of itself on account of which a person should be called free (‫ ;בחיריי‬beh: iriyi) in
truth? . . . And if the things are necessary in respect of their causes, how can they be subject
to prescription and proscription? For the possibility they have in respect of themselves is not
anything (‫ ;אינו כלל‬eino khelal)—since in respect of their causes they are necessitated. (158)

Yet if for Crescas there really is no substantive difference between causal necessity
and constraint, and if he believes, as he clearly does, that people are causally
necessitated, how are we to take him at his word when he affirms choice as a
precondition for the very existence of Torah? What does it mean to him to insist
that unless there is choice there can be no Torah?
Crescas’s inclusion of choice among his cornerstones suggests that Torah cannot
exist—that is, cannot exist as the gift to mankind that it was intended to be, cannot
fulfill its raison d’être—without human choice. As Crescas observes, the reason the
Torah is not fully efficacious, the reason it cannot guarantee that those who receive it
are perfected in their attachment to God—is that people often dislike what is
commanded; they consequently obey—if they obey—unwillingly and unhappily. As
Crescas puts it,
And if everything painful were removed—for example, if the pursuit of all their appetites were
permitted to them, and so, too, the seeking of honor in vanquishing enemies, and the amassing
of wealth—and if all that were required by way of service of God were the reciting of the first
verse of the Shemaʿ once a week, there is no doubt that there would not remain a single person
who would not serve God with love. (II. vi. 2)
    

The Torah, then, cannot effect its end alone. Without a human agent’s effort, will, or
pleasure and joy, and especially if the agent is actively resistant, opposed, or dis-
pleased and sad, the commandments cannot accomplish their end. Their causal
power is aided or thwarted by the person’s free choice—that is, by the two things
Crescas highlights as marks of human freedom: effort and attitude.
Crescas’s biblical exegesis may shed some further light on his thinking in this
matter. Genesis 32 describes an agitated Jacob fearful in the face of his imminent
encounter with Esau. The question Crescas considers in II. iv. 2 is why Jacob is afraid;
after all, God has promised to protect him. Crescas’s explanation is that Jacob knew
that everything that occurs is the result of a causal sequence, but he did not know in
his own case which cause would produce the promised effect. He therefore saw to it
that all possible causes were put in place: he prayed, prepared for war, and assembled
gifts. Jacob thus regarded his being protected by God as something possible in respect
of itself though necessitated in respect of its causes. It is not that Jacob thought there
was a chance that God’s promise would not come to pass. Rather, the fact that it
would come to pass but only as a result of causes gave Jacob the opportunity to
participate. What causation does is open a space for personal engagement. Jacob took
the opportunity to facilitate the very effect that he had been told—and therefore
knew—would occur. We see here how Crescas thinks the distinction between “in
respect of itself” and “in respect to causes” operates. Were God’s protection of Jacob
necessary in respect of itself, such that it would occur no matter what, Jacob would
have had no reason to act. Freedom is located not in escaping causal necessity but in
trying to—or refusing to—participate in it.
Whereas Crescas’s discussion of Gen. 32 focuses on the difficulty that arises for
choice from the perspective of causation, it does not address the additional putative
obstacle to choice, namely, divine foreknowledge. Here, too, turning to Crescas’s
analysis of a biblical text may be of use. In Ps. 139, a text pivotal to the argument of
Light of the Lord and discussed at length in II. i. 1 (and also in I. iii. 3 and II. iv. 3),
David turns to God—as the one who knows his innermost thoughts and desires—
seeking to excuse his bad behavior. “O God,” he says, “if only You would slay the
wicked, then murderous men would depart from me.” But God does not slay, and
David’s associations continue. Crescas derives three lessons from David’s words
in this Psalm. First, that God knows particulars—He knows David’s thoughts and
desires. (For Crescas, there is no less forgivable error than the one committed
by virtually all the great philosophers, namely, imputing ignorance, “the greatest
of all defects” [II. i. 3, 5], to God. To withhold from God knowledge of particulars is,
for Crescas, far worse than failing to protect Him from multiplicity and change,
which the philosophers were determined to do no matter the cost); second, that God
knows the future—He knows that David will sin; and third, that God’s knowledge
does not make the possible necessary—despite God’s knowledge of David’s future
sin, David’s sinning was nevertheless not necessitated: somehow God knows
what will occur without making the possible necessary. (Crescas entertains briefly
in II. v. 3—and nowhere dismisses—the notion that God’s knowledge is outside
time, and that His eternal apprehension encompasses what does not yet exist as if
it were existent. Crescas recognizes, however, that such a view presumes to know
how God knows. Moreover, it appears to imply that God’s knowledge “derives
 ’  

from existents,” that is, that God knows by observing rather than by conferring
existence and essence. Crescas does, however, entertain the notion that one appre-
hends in accordance with one’s nature rather than in accordance with the nature of
that which is apprehended. If this is so, it would not then be impossible to say that the
eternal God apprehends, with an eternal apprehension, that which does not yet exist
as if it were existent.) If it were the case that God’s foreknowledge makes the possible
necessary, David would need no excuse; he would not be responsible for his sin. But
the reason David believes he has an excuse is that he has good intentions, intentions
of which God is without doubt aware. In other words, David appeals to God’s
recognition of his unwillingness to sin, of his regret and displeasure with respect to
his sin. David can be forgiven because God knows he is not obstinate but weak.
For Crescas, then, what will be will surely be, though, in cases in which the
necessitation is causal and not in-itself, what will be is dependent on causes.
Although Crescas’s distinction between these two kinds of necessitation is critical
to his view, it is not, we see, the whole of it. In the two biblical sources considered,
Jacob and David exhibit some measure of freedom even though they cannot change
what will be. Jacob exerts effort, and David adopts an attitude of disapproval toward
his inevitable sin. Even though both causal necessity and divine foreknowledge entail
that what will be will be, how people relate to what will be is up to them.
Thus far we have considered choice in the realm of human action. The matter of
belief, however, brings with it a further complication. For in the case of belief,
resolution in terms of the distinction between the two kinds of necessitation is
precluded. Belief, according to Crescas, unlike action, is always and necessarily
involuntary—that is, will plays no part in it: the self-evidence or incontrovertible
proof of a proposition has coercive power. Nevertheless, here, too, a person’s effort or
lack thereof and his joy or displeasure are deciding factors in his closeness to or
remoteness from God. Let us look then to another instance of Crescas’s biblical
exegesis, as he draws together at II. v. 6 two seemingly unrelated biblical texts.
The first is Exod. 19: 17, which describes the scene as the Israelites prepare for
the revelation at Sinai. The verse reads: “And they stood at the bottom (‫;בתחתית‬
betah: tit) of the mountain”—which can also be rendered: “And they stood beneath
the mountain.” According to the Rabbis, this verse, when interpreted in this
second way, implies that the people were constrained to accept the Torah under
threat of death; will played no part in their acceptance of it. The second text is
Esther 9: 27: “The Jews confirmed, and took upon themselves.” As the Rabbis
understand this verse, the Jews in the time of Ahasuerus ratified, after the fact,
through the joy they experienced as they witnessed the miracles and deliverance
that were enacted for them then, what they had already taken upon themselves at
Sinai. Crescas explains that what the Jewish people accepted at first under con-
straint, they later willingly embraced. Even with regard to involuntary belief, then,
it is possible to be free—free to embrace the belief with enthusiasm, or to resist it,
even as one cannot deny it.
One exercises freedom, then, according to Crescas, either in exerting effort or in
feeling pleasure and joy with respect to acting or believing. Indeed Crescas recognizes
explicitly “the exertion of effort in investigating the belief ’s truth” (II. v. 5). It is for
how actively one is engaged in the process of causation or investigation, or for how
    

one feels about one’s acts and beliefs—how happy or unhappy one is in one’s
decisions and convictions—that one is rewarded or punished.
It was observed earlier that reward and punishment is not included among the
cornerstones without which there could be no Torah. Instead, it is counted as one of
the beliefs whose denial constitutes heresy. To be sure, Crescas has illuminating things
to say about reward and punishment: that it is natural—one who touches fire is
burned, one who violates God’s commandments is distanced from God; that true
reward and punishment are psychic or spiritual in nature—the former consists in
closeness to God, the latter in remoteness from Him; that reward and punishment
should not be the motivation for obeying God; that, as the Rabbis say, the reward for
fulfilling a commandment is a commandment—whether an additional one or the very
one performed; and that divine reward and punishment are not only not vindictive,
they are also not political—that is, they are not a matter of political justice, in which
desert is paramount; they are rather only for the sake of benefit, “as a father chastens
his son” (Deut. 8: 5). Yet by excluding reward and punishment from the list of
cornerstones, Crescas indicates that reward and punishment are not prerequisites
for the Torah as God’s great benefaction; it is the commandments themselves that
exhibit God’s grace. Whereas for other thinkers freedom to choose justifies reward and
punishment (II. v. i), for Crescas what freedom to choose justifies is the command-
ments, as he says: “But all alternatives must be open to [a person’s] simple will. Only
then will an imperative (‫ ;צואה‬tzavaah) be appropriate and relevant” (introduction to
II. v). The Torah confers benefit directly by way of its commandments—it is one’s
joyful and effortful embrace of commandments that ensures one’s closeness to God—
not by way of any further rewards and punishments that accompany their observance
or violation. What causes attachment to God is not desire for good things and fear of
bad but devoted service. Through issuing commandments God chooses man; through
loving acceptance of the commandments man chooses God.

About the Translation

Only one complete translation of Light of the Lord exists in any occidental language,
and that is the French translation by Éric Smilevitch, which appeared in 2010 under
the title Lumière de l’Eternel. Although some selections of Light of the Lord have
appeared in English, the bulk of the work has remained untranslated into English.
Partial English translations are listed in the bibliography. Notable among them are
the extensive translations in Warren Harvey’s Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Hasdai Crescas’s
Critique of the Theory of the Acquired Intellect’ (1973), and in his Physics and
Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998c); and Harry Austryn Wolfson’s translation of
most of Parts I and II of Book I, in his Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of
Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (1929). There are in addition short
selections translated by Seymour Feldman in J. David Bleich’s With Perfect Faith
(1983); by Menachem Kellner in his Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought: From
Maimonides to Abravanel (1986); and by Charles Manekin in Medieval Jewish
Philosophical Writings, ed. Charles Manekin (2008).
In 1990 Rabbi Shlomo Fisher rendered Light of the Lord into vocalized modern
Hebrew print. This edition serves as the primary basis for the current translation,
 ’  

though I have checked it for accuracy against the original printed edition (Ferrara 1555)
and a partial printed edition (Vilna 1905), as well as against the Florence and the Vienna
manuscripts. I have indicated variants in the notes.
The Hebrew of Light of the Lord is idiosyncratic and its style compressed and
notoriously difficult; moreover, the work contains discrepancies, most likely because
it was written over a long span of time. It is clear from the Florence manuscript that
additions were made to the original work that sought to reconcile some of the more
glaringly inconsistent passages and to moderate some of the more radical opinions
expressed, such as that concerning choice. I have tried in this translation to present
the work as it is, preserving Crescas’s voice and style and adding few embellishments
in the body of the text. To the extent possible I have translated critical Hebrew terms
consistently throughout. For the sake of clarity I have occasionally modified or
supplemented the text, sometimes by bracketing added words or phrases and some-
times by merely inserting them. Many of Crescas’s sentences are extraordinarily long
and complex. Often a single sentence will contain a string of several clauses begin-
ning with “since,” and will reach its conclusion only after recording several qualifica-
tions and asides. Prudence has made it necessary in these cases to deviate from the
text’s original form. Long sentences have been broken into shorter ones, and often
the serial “since” has been eliminated, with premises being treated as self-standing
assertions, and their conclusion being signaled by the “therefore” in its independent
sentence. Notes indicate biblical and rabbinic sources, and, where appropriate,
explain and clarify the text. The reader will find, however, that there are stretches
of text to which virtually no explanatory notes are appended, for there are passages in
which Crescas’s arguments, though difficult, are self-explanatory: notes would do
little more than repeat the text. I have not for the most part sought to indicate
Crescas’s likely philosophic sources for the arguments he advances. Wolfson (1929)
may be consulted for extensive discussion of Crescas’s philosophic sources—among
whom, as we know, are the major figures in Jewish and Islamic thought, as well as the
apostate Abner of Burgos whom Crescas never mentions by name. At the start of
Book I Crescas credits Maimonides with not simply reproducing the ideas and proofs
advanced by others but rather distilling their essence, thereby rendering unnecessary
a return to those earlier views. Crescas himself has no doubt done the same. As he
says at the close of I. i. 1:
These are the proofs that have come to us concerning this issue in the books of Aristotle and of
other authors and of commentators on his books. But they came to us confused and likely to
bewilder the reader, for this is a topic susceptible to error. We therefore formulated them in
their [proper] form and with splendid brevity. And we reinforced them with some things that
they did not mention.
It is perhaps sufficient, then, to present Crescas’s arguments as he formulated them.
I have aimed in this translation to render Light of the Lord accessible to many
readers—scholars, students, and the interested public. I have not simplified the text
or offered a comprehensive commentary on it. Light of the Lord, even in English,
remains exceedingly demanding. What I have provided is a text to be wrestled with. It
is my hope that it will spark renewed engagement with a thinker who merits far more
attention and study than he has hitherto received.
 Introduction

A lamp unto my foot is Your word, and a light unto my path.¹

Shine Your face upon Your servant; save me with Your kindness.²
For a commandment is a lamp and Torah is light; and the reproofs of instruction
are the path of life.³
Teach me, O Lord, Your way; I will walk in Your truth; unite my heart in awe of
Your name.⁴
You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is the plenitude of
joys, and pleasures at Your right hand forever.⁵

May God’s name be blessed⁶ and exalted above all blessing and praise,⁷ for He has
been wondrously kind⁸ toward His creatures, in bringing them into existence
and in creating them following absolute nothingness,⁹ through a kind of wisdom
of whose mystery hearts cannot fathom even one part in a thousand of thousands of
thousands, through the might of His greatness and His wonders and awesome deeds
which outstrip the limits of a tongue to speak of things great and marvelous.¹⁰ When
the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,¹¹ and the heaven of heavens
:
and all their hosts,¹² and when higher still were erelim and hashmalim, serafim and
qedoshim¹³—thousands upon thousands, and myriads upon myriads—then He,
dwelling on high,¹⁴ sitting supremely¹⁵ on a throne, exalted and elevated,¹⁶ made
for them a seal of perfection.¹⁷ The Lord God fashioned the human being in the
image and likeness of all His creatures—and the Lord himself at their head—as God
said: “Let us make the human being in our image, according to our likeness.”¹⁸
God was joined in this effort by the totality of existent beings, in order that the
human being bear the imprint of all parts of existence; and, just as all parts of

This Introduction is to the entire two-volume work, Lamp of the Lord, the second volume of which, Lamp
of the Commandment, was never written. See n. 75. The opening of this work is composed of biblical verses
interwoven with the author’s words to form a continuous narrative.
¹ Ps. 119: 105. ² Ps. 31: 17. ³ Prov. 6: 23.
⁴ Ps. 86: 11. ⁵ Ps. 16: 11. ⁶ Ps. 113: 2; Job 1: 21.
⁷ Neh. 9: 5. The phrase, “exalted above all blessing and praise,” closes the major divisions of this work.
⁸ Ps. 31: 22.
⁹ “Following absolute nothingness” translates the expression, ‫( אחר האפס המוחלט‬ahar : haefes hamuhlat).
:
¹⁰ Ps. 12: 4. ¹¹ Gen. 2: 4. ¹² Neh. 9: 6.
¹³ These are names of various celestial beings. ¹⁴ Isa. 32: 16. ¹⁵ Ps. 113: 5.
¹⁶ Isa. 6: 1. ¹⁷ Ezek. 28: 12. ¹⁸ Gen. 1: 26.
  

existence are under the governance of the Lord, so is the human being¹⁹ under the
governance of his intellect. It is for this reason that our predecessors, peace be upon
them, called him a “microcosm”²⁰—because God made him a miniature imprint and
seal onto which all His creatures are engraved. Furthermore, in the magnitude of His
kindness and the abundance of His goodness, God was provident over all from the
realm of His abode,²¹ and chose the house of Jacob in whose midst to rest His glory,²²
that they [viz. the Israelites] might love and be in awe of Him, serve Him, and cleave
unto Him.²³ For to live thus is the pinnacle of human happiness, in pursuit of which
many have become perplexed and have walked in darkness²⁴—among them men
wise in their own eyes and intelligent in their own estimation.²⁵
With the light of His Torah God lit up for us the two great lights:²⁶ the lamp of
God²⁷ and the light of the Lord,²⁸ which are the commandments and the beliefs,²⁹
respectively, in order to prepare the way for us, the way of life,³⁰ a way that would be
so very distant without them—who could find it?³¹—unless there shone upon it the
true light that is called “the radiance of the Divine Presence.”³²
The rock³³ from which we were hewn,³⁴ the test stone,³⁵ the foundation stone upon
which the world was founded,³⁶ was the singular Abraham our father, peace be upon
him, who, at the age of three,³⁷ from the time he attained to reason, recognized his
creator and attracted others to God’s service—without the Torah’s having preceded
him. Blessings and praises upon His great name on account of all the benefits He
bestowed upon us—an abundance of goodness upon the house of Israel.³⁸ Indeed,
because of Abraham’s superlative eminence a covenant was enacted with him by way

¹⁹ Whether read ‫והיותו‬, “he” (as in the Ferrara and Vilna, eds.), or (with Fisher) ‫והיותן‬, “they,” the intent is
that, as all parts of existence are under the governance of the Lord, so too the human being—or the
imprints of all the parts of existence engraved onto the human being—are under the governance of the
human intellect.
²⁰ ‫( עולם קטן‬ʿolam qatan); Tanhuma
: Pekudei 3. ²¹ Ps. 33: 14.
²² Ps. 85: 10. ²³ Deut. 11: 22, 30: 20; Josh. 22: 5. ²⁴ Ps. 82: 5.
²⁵ Isa. 5: 21. ²⁶ Gen. 1: 16. ²⁷ 1 Sam. 3: 3; cf. Prov. 20: 27: “the lamp of the Lord.”
²⁸ Isa. 2: 5.
²⁹ Although the Fisher, Ferrara, and Vilna editions all have ‫האמונות והמצוות‬, nevertheless, the reverse
order, as found in the Florence and Vienna manuscripts, ‫המצוות והאמונות‬, “the commandments and the
beliefs,” is followed here. Crescas associates ‫( נר‬ner), lamp, with commandments, and planned to name his
work on the commandments ‫( נר מצוה‬Ner Mitzvah, Lamp of the Commandment). See Warren Harvey
(1973), 235 (Heb.), 245 (Eng. trans.).
³⁰ Jer. 21: 8. ³¹ Eccles. 7: 24.
³² “Divine Presence” translates the Hebrew term ‫( שכינה‬shekhinah) throughout.
³³ Reading ‫( הצור‬with the Ferrara and Vilna editions and with the Florence and Vienna manuscripts)
rather than ‫( כצור‬with Fisher).
³⁴ Isa. 51: 1. ³⁵ Isa. 28: 16. ³⁶ Num. Rabbah 12: 4.
³⁷ Crescas’s notion that Abraham was three years old when he acknowledged God is based on a midrash
in BT Nedarim 32a concerning the verse Gen. 26: 5. This verse contains the phrase, “because Abraham
hearkened to my voice.” The Hebrew term for “because” is ‫( עקב‬ʿeqev), whose gematria is 172. Since
Abraham lived for 175 years (Gen. 25: 7), he must have been three years old when he first “hearkened.” See,
too, Gen. Rabbah 30: 8. (In gematria, each of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet is assigned a numerical
value so that each word or phrase is the sum of the values of its individual letters. Alef is one, beit is two, and
so on until yod, which is ten; the next letter of the alphabet, kaf, is twenty, lamed is thirty, and so on until
tsadi, which is 90. The following letter, kof is 100, reish is 200. The final letter of the alphabet, tav is 400.
This is the highest value a single letter can represent.)
³⁸ Isa. 63: 7.
    

of just one commandment, that of circumcision; and that alone sufficed, because of his
elevated status. Indeed, for one who is worthy, all that is needed is but a few acts; there
is no need for many—as in the case of the diurnal sphere as compared with the other
spheres. For the diurnal sphere one motion suffices for it to achieve its perfection, the
emanation of its goodness; but for the other spheres, since they are lower than it in
eminence, many motions are required. It was therefore necessary, when the kindness of
the blessed and exalted One determined to perfect us, the congregation of the com-
munity of Israel, that He increase our acts,³⁹ as is confirmed by the dictum of
:
R. Hanania son of ʿAqashia: “The Holy One Blessed Be He wished to make Israel
meritorious; He therefore increased for their sake Torah and commandments.”⁴⁰
Since it is the performance of the commandments that leads to this perfection, but
there can be no performance of them without an understanding of them, the
following dictum in the Mishnah is to be understood in its literal sense: “and the
study of Torah is the equivalent of all.”⁴¹ And for this reason the Rabbis concluded
that study is the greater, for it leads to performance.⁴²
Since knowledge of the Torah’s commandments is the straight path leading to this
perfection, so that it would be appropriate that the Torah be such that knowledge of it
can be attained in as perfect a manner as possible, the perfection of the knowledge of
things and the comprehensiveness with which they are known turn on three things:
precision with respect to them; the ease with which they are grasped; and their
preservation and being remembered. Divine wisdom therefore determined that the
Torah be such that these three criteria can be most perfectly met. Thus, it indeed set
forth all the commandments and beliefs in written form, as well as in the oral form
that was preserved through the true tradition, along with rules and signs—namely,
the thirteen exegetical techniques employed in interpreting the Torah.⁴³ It is because
the foundation of the commandments as a whole is in written form, and because they
were not transmitted orally, that precision with respect to them is assured. The Torah
thus insisted, in accordance with what was received through the true tradition, that:
“It is not permitted to state orally things that appear in writing.”⁴⁴ The Torah’s
intention was that these things not be entrusted to hearts alone, lest they occasion
dispute on account of common forgetfulness. This is especially so considering how

³⁹ In Ptolemaic astronomy the rotation of the diurnal sphere—the supreme outermost sphere encom-
passing within it the spheres of the sun, moon, planets, and fixed stars—is simple: it rotates once every
twenty-four hours. By contrast, the motion of the planets is complex, needing to be explained by a theory of
numerous cycles and epicycles. In Crescas’s analogy, Abraham, who can achieve perfection through but
one commandment, is compared to the diurnal sphere, while the Israelite community, whose perfection
requires many commandments, is compared to the planets.
⁴⁰ Makkot 3: 16; Avot 6: 11. ⁴¹ Peah 1: 1.
⁴² BT Kiddushin 40b. This rabbinic dictum may be understood as maintaining, paradoxically, that study
is greater than performance because study leads to performance—which is greater. Alternatively, and less
paradoxically, what the Rabbis may have meant is that study is greater because it leads to performance,
whereas performance need not lead to study. For Crescas, however, it would seem that the reason study is
greater is that there can be no performance—or, perhaps, no genuine performance—without it, for
performance devoid of understanding is without merit.
⁴³ The thirteen interpretive techniques, known as the ‫עשרה מדות‬-‫שלש‬, are found in the Introduction to
Sifra. See n. 58.
⁴⁴ BT Gittin 60b; BT Temurah 14b.
  

painstaking the Torah is with respect to the form of its script and its letters—the
spare form being used on some occasions, and on others the full⁴⁵—for all this care
diminishes the chance that error and dispute will befall it.
Indeed, all the commandments and their divisions and subdivisions, along with
their exponential expansion—to which the necessity of perfecting us led, as was
discussed above—are contained, with splendid conciseness, in the written Torah
along with its orally transmitted signs and exegetical techniques. Two consequences
thus follow. First, the commandments can be grasped with the greatest of ease,
thanks to their utmost conciseness; and, second, they can be remembered and
preserved—and this, thanks, on the one hand, to their being concise and, on the
other, to the exegetical techniques that were set forth in the form of signs which are
the foundations and principles of the Oral Torah. For making signs for things—lest
they be forgotten—is one of the devices for facilitating memory, which is especially
critical considering that the Torah mandates its own constant study.⁴⁶ All this is an
important root and foundation for the commandments’ preservation and for their
being remembered. The Torah has indeed been most insistent in this regard, as is
attested in the true tradition in which the [Rabbis] say: “It is not permitted to state in
writing things that are oral.”⁴⁷ This proscription stems from a concern that the oral
things might depart from a person’s heart so that he will come to rely on the written
text and, as the subjects proliferate, this will lead to his forgetting. This is just like the
Torah’s insistence with regard to the written things that one may not state them
orally. This proscription too derives from the Torah’s fear that if someone permits
himself to state the written things orally he will come to regard his having stated them
orally as a reason to trust what he recalls—and this will lead to diminished precision.⁴⁸
Indeed, in order to create both love and a fierce passion to keep vigil at its gates
always,⁴⁹ the Torah went so far as to organize the totality of the commandments,
and to plant in them the seed of truth—which is derived from its stories about
the forefathers and the heightened providence extended to them and the bounty of
God’s kindnesses and wonders. As a result of one’s diligence and devotion, the
following three ends should be attained at once: grasping the commandments easily;
attaining precision with respect to them; and remembering and preserving them.
Indeed, this is a path that was hardly foreign to the sages of the nations, as is
suggested by what is found in their compilations. One of them, in defaming another
who committed his words to writing, said to him: “You distrust your pristine ideas,

⁴⁵ In Hebrew certain vocalizations can be indicated—but need not be—by the inclusion of the letter vav
or yod. The spare (‫ )חסר‬form omits the letter; the full (Crescas’s term is ‫ )יתר‬includes it. The technical terms
for the full and spare forms are, respectively, scriptio plena and scriptio defectiva.
⁴⁶ Josh. 1: 8; Ps. 1: 2; cf. Deut. 6:7.
⁴⁷ BT Gittin 60b; BT Temurah 14b. Fisher has ‫אי אפשר‬, “it is impossible,” as do the Ferrara and Vilna
editions. In the Florence and Vienna manuscripts, as well as in the Talmud, the expression is ‫אי אתה רשאי‬,
“one is not permitted.”
⁴⁸ Writing down what was transmitted orally will cause excessive reliance on the written text and will
diminish the capacity to remember the copious and ever-expanding body of oral material. Similarly,
making oral what was written will lead to excessive reliance on possibly faulty memory and thus to error.
⁴⁹ The expression, “to keep vigil at its gates always,” is based on a similar expression in Prov. 8: 34.
    

and instead place your trust in the hides of dead animals!”⁵⁰ Our forebears adhered to
this approach from the days of Moses our Teacher to the days of the Men of the Great
Assembly.⁵¹ Throughout that period no dispute or error arose concerning anything
in the Torah.
When, however, the Greeks rose to ascendancy and troubles rained down on Israel
following the period of the Men of the Great Assembly, the number of disciples who
were insufficiently diligent in their studies increased, disputes proliferated,⁵² and
several of these men allowed themselves to write down what was transmitted to them
[orally]. They called these writings a “scroll of secrets.”⁵³ This situation persisted until
the end of the generations of the Tannaim,⁵⁴ when our holy Rabbi, peace be upon
him,⁵⁵ arose and saw that hearts were contracting. Out of fear lest the Torah be
forgotten in Israel, he compiled the six orders of the Mishnah, which very concisely
comprise the Oral Torah. Following him came R. Hiyya : and R. Oshaʿiya, who added
the Baraita⁵⁶ to those very orders, declaring: “It is time to act on the Lord’s behalf;
they have violated Your Torah.”⁵⁷ After them the Sifra⁵⁸ and Sifrei⁵⁹ were composed.
All the generations of the Amoraim⁶⁰ studied these texts, along with the Jerusalem
Talmud that was subsequently composed by R. Johanan. : The period of authoritative
teaching reached its culmination when Ravina and Rav Ashi arose and composed the
Babylonian Talmud with the consent of the Sages⁶¹ of that generation. According to
tradition, the editing of these works continued into the period of the Rabbis known as
the Savoraim.⁶² They were all following the intention of the Torah to make room for
the tradition in some way.
After that the Geonim⁶³—for example, R. Simeon Kayyara, the venerable
R. Jehudai, R. Saadia of Fayyum, R. Samuel son of Hofni, : and R. Hai—allowed
themselves to compose works. Some, such as R. Hananel : and Rabbeinu Nissim
and, culminating with the last of the commentators of the period, Rabbeinu Solomon
of France,⁶⁴ composed commentaries on the Talmud. After him, Rabbeinu Samson,

⁵⁰ Warren Harvey (1973a), 351 n. 1, points out that Crescas is quoting Hunayn ibn Ishaq, : Ethics of the
Philosophers I. 1. The speaker is presumably Socrates.
⁵¹ The Men of the Great Assembly, ‫אנשי כנסת הגדולה‬, were a group of scribes and Sages who served as
authorities for the Jewish community in the period from the end of the biblical prophets to the early
Hellenistic period.
⁵² See BT Sanhedrin 88b.
⁵³ ‫ ;מגלת סתרים‬BT Shabbat 6b, 96b; BT Baba metzia 92a.
⁵⁴ The Tannaim are the Rabbis cited in the Mishnah. They flourished in the years 10–220 .
⁵⁵ The reference is to Judah Hanasi.
⁵⁶ ‫ ;החיצונה‬the reference is to the Tosefta, comprising additional rabbinic oral traditions not included in
the Mishnah.
⁵⁷ Ps. 119: 126. The Rabbis relied on this verse for permission to commit the Oral Torah to writing in
disregard of the longstanding prohibition on doing so.
⁵⁸ Sifra is a midrash halakhah, a legal commentary, on the book of Leviticus.
⁵⁹ Sifrei comprises two midrashei halakhah, one on Numbers from ch. 5 on, and one on Deuteronomy.
⁶⁰ These are the Rabbis of the Gemara who flourished in the years 219–500 .
⁶¹ “Sage,” when in lower case refers to more recent thinkers. When in upper case, it refers to the Sages of
the Mishnah and Talmud. In both cases it renders ‫( חכם‬hakham).
:
⁶² These Rabbis flourished in the first half of the 6th century .
⁶³ The title gaon was given to the heads of the Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita from the
end of the sixth to the end of the twelfth century.
⁶⁴ The reference is to Rashi.
  

the disciple of the renowned Tosafist R. Isaac, composed books and produced
original arguments and dialectics on the entire Talmud. And also the great Rabbi,
R. Abraham son of David,⁶⁵ composed commentaries on the whole of the Talmud.
Although some [of these Rabbis] composed [legal] works drawing upon certain
sections of the Talmud, there were no comprehensive compositions other than the
legal composition of Rabbeinu Isaac Alfasi, which comprises three orders, and the
great work composed by our master and Rabbi, Rabbi Judah Hanasi the Barcelonian,
one that is of considerable length and includes the disputes of the Geonim and their
responsa. There followed the comprehensive composition of the Rabbi, our teacher
Moses son of Maimon,⁶⁶ which he called Mishneh Torah,⁶⁷ which proceeds without
recording rabbinic disputes except in a few places, and without citing a Tanna, an
Amora, a Rabbi, or a Gaon. He included in it that which appears in the Talmud, the
Tosefta, Sifra, and Sifrei concerning the commandments. In addition, in order to
teach the Jewish people the roots of the [proper] beliefs and views, and to illuminate
the dark recesses of doubt, he composed a book which he called Guide of the
Perplexed.
But despite what this Rabbi and author wondrously achieved in his lucid books,
nevertheless, because in his composition on the commandments he omitted the
disputes of the Geonim as well as their names, and also failed to cite the textual
sources that are the roots of the issues, we were unable on those occasions when the
books of other great authors were found to contain rulings and views opposed to his,
to escape confusion and doubt. Aside from this, he did not fully cite the reasons for
things or their general principles, except to allude to details found in the discourses of
our predecessors. Since the great part of the commandments are in the category of
the possible,⁶⁸ a category broader than the sea, and since knowledge cannot encom-
pass their details which are infinite in number, it appears that, were a single detail of
those mentioned there [i.e. in the Mishneh Torah] to change, we could not reach a
sure determination. Indeed, just as there is no comparison between a finite number
and an infinite, so, too, there is no comparison between what is grasped of the finite
details that are recorded there, and what is not grasped of the infinite details that are
not recorded there. It is clear, therefore, that knowledge will not be perfected through
that work in even one of the three requisite ways mentioned above.⁶⁹ Precision in the

⁶⁵ This is R. Abraham son of David of Posquières, popularly known as Raavad.

⁶⁶ This is Maimonides.
⁶⁷ This title has been variously translated. Its sense is probably, at least in part, “recapitulation of the
Torah.”
⁶⁸ “The possible,” ‫( האפשר‬haefshar), is to be understood as the modality of possibility, and to refer to that
which is neither necessary nor impossible. Whereas the term “contingency” might have been used
(especially to avoid the error of taking, for example, “there is no possibility” to mean “it is impossible”),
nevertheless, there is reason to prefer “possible” as the translation of ‫אפשרי‬. For although it may be the case
that things that are possible are possible because they are contingent, i.e. dependent on something else, the
term “possible” does not in itself carry the implication of dependence. Crescas devotes considerable
attention to whether the category of the possible is itself possible—in light of the causal nexus on the
one hand, and of divine foreknowledge on the other. See I. i. 30 and II. v.
⁶⁹ My translation follows Harvey’s 1973 text. An alternate version, found in the Ferrara and Vilna
editions as well as in Fisher, and which is reflected in Smilevitch’s translation, proceeds to list the “three
requisite ways” as follows: precision in matters considered, grasping them easily (‫)והשגתם על נקלה‬, and
    

matters considered and preservation from error [will not be secured]—for two
reasons: first, because he failed to note the disputes and the texts that are the sources
for the roots of the issues which would have made matters crystal clear; and, second,
because he neglected to mention the reasons and general principles relevant to the
issues. It is thus evident that perfect knowledge of matters will be had only when we
know them in their reasons in accordance with their context. So long as our
knowledge of matters is incomplete, we will not be safe from mistake and error.
This is also a cause of our not inscribing them in our minds and not preserving
them—which is the third problem. Even more so, we will not grasp them easily—and
this is the second problem—since we will grasp only a small part, as was mentioned
earlier, and even with respect to that part, our comprehension will be sorely lacking.
What is most surprising and a great wonder is how it could enter Maimonides’ mind
and how he could imagine that, aside from his book [which would endure], books of
earlier writers would be set aside, and that the whole of the Oral Torah could be
contained in his work, to the point that he called it Mishneh Torah.⁷⁰
In these generations, however, when strange and mighty troubles rain down on us,
it is surely good to prepare a path with great precision and with much care, through
which complete knowledge of the commandments of the Torah, and complete
knowledge of the Talmud, will be easily attained. This, however, requires that a
work be composed that contains the commandments of the Torah along with their
reasons, arranged topically, and along with a conception of their definitions and
general principles. In addition it should be one that clarifies them with a precise
explanation, and cites their Talmudic sources, and provides a record of the disputes
:
of the Geonim and the Rabbis, and the consensus of the Aharonim⁷¹—and all this
with splendid conciseness.
:
Therefore I, Hasdai :
the son of R. Judah the son of R. Hasdai the son of R. Judah,⁷²
may they rest in peace, have taken upon myself to walk this path—with the approval
of scholars and with their help,⁷³ and if God favors me with life. In those places,
however, where I innovate and depart from what was said earlier, I will be a bit more
expansive. My intention is that, in a matter in which there is disagreement, it be easy
for anyone who looks into it to find the roots of the issues where they originate in the
texts. Thus it would be best that one who studies this book attain in advance a
familiarity with the Talmud and be engaged in Talmud study, for then he will grasp
[1] easily, and [2] with precision, the matters relating to the commandments and
their general principles and reasons, so that by the mere mention of definitions
and general principles, once he has command of them, he will master the totality
of the commandments of the Torah, which in turn will be an evident cause of his

preservation from error. These, however, are not the three requisite ways enumerated earlier. “Precision in
matters considered” and “preservation from error” together constitute just one of the earlier three ways,
and the third way mentioned earlier,“preserving and remembering,” is missing entirely.
⁷⁰ See n. 67. ⁷¹ These are later authorities.
⁷² Some later manuscripts, as well as the Ferrara edition and Fisher, erroneously have “Hasdai
: the son of
R. Abraham.” I thank Professor Zev Harvey for alerting me to this error.
⁷³ This aside may be taken quite literally, as manuscripts of Light of the Lord contain corrections and
additions that are the handiwork of Crescas’s students or collaborators. See n. 95.
  

[3] remembering and preserving—the three things toward which the whole of our
intention is directed. Because in this book things will be made crystal clear and will be
purified, and because they will shine forth from the dark recesses of doubt that arise
from this great part of the commandments,⁷⁴ it is appropriate to call it Lamp of the
Commandment.⁷⁵
This is yet another⁷⁶—for indeed it is great⁷⁷—namely, the cornerstones of faith
and the foundations of the Torah and the principles of its roots, about which, until
the sealing of the Talmud, no dispute arose. Rather, these were known and agreed
upon by the Sages of our nation—except for the secrets of the Torah, among them the
account of creation and the account of the Chariot⁷⁸ which were in the hands of a
select few modest men who transmitted them to their disciples at special times and
under special conditions. But when the generations weakened, so that those who
were repositories of the received Oral Torah and of the recesses of its secrets and
mysteries lost their vigor, the wisdom of our wise men dissipated, and the under-
standing of our intelligent ones went into hiding.⁷⁹ Then many of our people
aggrandized themselves to put forth a vision⁸⁰—though words of prophecy had
been closed up and sealed⁸¹—in dreams and vanities⁸² and foreign ideas,⁸³ to the
point that some of our great sages were drawn to their words and decorated
themselves with their discourses and adorned themselves⁸⁴ with their proofs. Chief
among them was the great teacher our Rabbi Moses son of Maimon, who, despite the
greatness of his intellect, the prodigious comprehensiveness of his Talmudic knowl-
edge, and the expansiveness of his mind, was nevertheless vulnerable when he delved
into the books of the philosophers and their discourses: they seduced him and he was
seduced.⁸⁵ Upon their weak principles he erected pillars and foundations to support
the secrets of the Torah in the book that he called Guide of the Perplexed. Even
though the intention of the Rabbi⁸⁶ was proper, there now arose rebellious slaves⁸⁷
who turned the words of the living God into heresy, blemishing the sacred offerings
and introducing defilement⁸⁸ instead of beauty⁸⁹ into the words of the Rabbi. As he

⁷⁴ The manuscripts have “the great part of the commandments,” ‫בחלק הגדול הזה מהמצוות‬, referring back,
no doubt, to “this great part of the commandments” that is in the category of the possible, with regard to
which Crescas faults Maimonides for not dealing with it properly. Harvey (1973) reproduces the manu-
script version. Fisher and Smilevitch follow the Ferrara edition in which the word “great” is absent.
⁷⁵ Prov. 6: 23. This work was, unfortunately, never written. It may be assumed that it was to be
comparable in scope to Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah but free of those perceived deficiencies to which
Crescas calls attention in this Introduction.
⁷⁶ Hag. 2: 6. “This” refers to matters of belief, which are discussed in Light of the Lord, the only part of
the projected two-part work that was written.
⁷⁷ Esther 1: 20.
⁷⁸ The account of creation is found in Gen. 1–2. The account of the Chariot refers to Ezekiel’s vision in
Ezek. 1: 4–26.
⁷⁹ Based on Isa. 29: 14. ⁸⁰ Based on Dan. 11: 14. ⁸¹ Dan. 12: 9.
⁸² Based on Eccles. 5: 6. ⁸³ Based on Isa. 2: 6; lit., “children of strangers.”
⁸⁴ The term ‫( נתיפו‬nityapu) may well be alluding to Yefet (Japheth): see the following note.
⁸⁵ A similar expression, but used with respect to God and with a different sense, is found at Jer. 20: 7,
‫“( פתיתני ה' ואפת‬O Lord, You have persuaded me and I was persuaded”); also, 20: 10, ‫אולי יפתה ונוכלה לו‬
(“Perhaps he will be persuaded and we shall prevail against him”). It is likely that there is an allusion, too, to
‫“( יפת אלהים ליפת‬God will enlarge Japheth”—Gen. 9: 27), and thus to the allure of Greek wisdom.
⁸⁶ “The Rabbi” refers to Maimonides. ⁸⁷ 1 Sam. 25: 10.
⁸⁸ A similar expression is found in Isa. 50: 20. ⁸⁹ Isa. 3: 24.
    

solemnly swore them not to reveal the matters he concealed and the mysteries of his
thoughts, these others indeed did not reduce his word to naught and did not violate
that to which he swore them;⁹⁰ instead, they turned his words to heresy, subverting
his intention. The remaining others who trembled at the word of the Lord,⁹¹ when
they saw these people rendering clean the unclean swarming thing⁹²—as if in
accordance with the Torah—and offering seemingly plausible proofs,⁹³ were not
freed from confusion, and bewilderment assailed them. At the heart of the matter
is that up until now there was no one to take issue with the proofs of the Greek,⁹⁴ who
darkened the eyes of Israel in our times.
For this reason I, whose eyes have been somewhat opened with respect to this
enterprise, have seen fit to present in writing the root-principles and cornerstones
upon which the Torah in its totality rests, and the axes on which it turns, without
favoring anything but truth. I will indeed accomplish this by investing, together with
the most important scholars,⁹⁵ much study and great diligence. I will at the same time
explain that, with respect to these principles of belief the Rabbi did not, God forbid,
dissent. Nevertheless, if his book in fact turns out to contain astonishing things, it is
unthinkable that we should say nothing about them. For although the words of the
Rabbi our teacher, including even his remarks on secular matters, are dear to us and
are loved by us, the truth is yet more beloved.⁹⁶ And it is particularly necessary [not to
remain silent] when it is possible for desecration of the holy name to result from
these points. For our maxim is: “Wherever there is desecration of the holy name one
ought not accord deference to the Rabbi.”⁹⁷ And since the source of error and
confusion is reliance on the words of the Greek and the proofs he produced, it struck
me as appropriate to highlight the fallaciousness of his proofs and the sophistry of his
arguments—even those the Rabbi borrowed from him to bolster his own positions—
in order, on this day, to show all the nations that that which removes confusion
in matters of faith, and which lights up all the darkness, is the Torah alone, as he
[viz. Solomon] says: “For a commandment is a lamp and Torah is light.”⁹⁸ In saying
this he did something extraordinary: he compared the relationship between the
Torah, which in its roots and grounds is wisdom (and which is that to which this
part [of my intended two-part book] is devoted), on the one hand, and the com-
mandment, that is, the totality of the commandments (which we deal with in the

⁹⁰ Crescas’s point is that Maimonides’ students, because they lacked the necessary subtlety and
discernment, did not—because they could not—reveal their master’s secrets.
⁹¹ Isa. 66: 5.
⁹² The expression ‫וטהר את השרץ‬, “and he purified the swarming thing,” is found at BT ʿEruvin 13b and BT
Sanhedrin 17a.
⁹³ The expression ‫ ומראה לו פנים‬is used in this sense at BT ʿEruvin 13b, with respect to R. Meir’s uncanny
ability to defend his positions, even when they seemed indefensible, with plausible arguments.
⁹⁴ The reference is to Aristotle.
⁹⁵ It is likely that these scholars, or “associates,” ‫( חברים‬haverim),
: are Crescas’s students, who may have
prepared the collections of material and the abstracts of literature he used in this work. Talmudic Sages
graciously referred to their students as “associates.” See Wolfson (1929), 23. Also see n. 73.
⁹⁶ Something similar was uttered by Aristotle (EN I. vi. 1096a) with respect to “those who introduced the
Forms,” intending no doubt Plato’s followers (cf. Metaph. III. ii. 987a–b). It was Plato’s Socrates who first
made this remark—with respect to Homer (Rep. X. 595b–c; cf. X. 607c–d).
⁹⁷ BT Berakhot 19b; BT ʿEruvin 6a. ⁹⁸ Prov. 6: 23.
  

other part),⁹⁹ on the other, to the relationship between light and lamp. We have
therefore called this part Light of the Lord. Since this part is the foundation and pillar
of the other part, it is appropriate that it precede it in sequence. Indeed, the name of
this book, which comprises both of these parts—should God will its completion—is
Lamp of the Lord.¹⁰⁰ For it is from the Lord¹⁰¹ to light a path with His Torah and His
commandments. From Him I request help and guidance, for there is no helper but
He, and no one to rely upon but Him. Now I begin, in the name of the Lord. Amen.

⁹⁹ This part was never written. See n. 75.

¹⁰⁰ See Harvey (1973), 367, who contends that although all manuscripts and printed editions have
“Lamp of God” (‫ ;נר אלהים‬ner elohim), nevertheless “Lamp of the Lord” is intended. The text’s next sentence
supports Harvey’s view, since “Lord” is the divine name contained in the verse it cites. It is likely that the
reason the manuscripts and printed editions all have “Lamp of God” is that their editors assumed that the
verse Crescas has in mind is Prov. 20: 27—“The soul of man is the lamp of the Lord”—in which
traditionally, for some reason, the Tetragrammaton was pronounced elohim. It seems clear, however—
and it is indeed quite explicit—that the verse Crescas has in mind is the one cited in the following sentence,
viz. Ps. 18: 23, in which “Lord” is the name used: “For it is from the Lord . . . ” Moreover, it is evident that
Prov. 20: 27 is the verse Crescas has in mind earlier in the Introduction, when he speaks of two lights, the
lamp of God, which concerns the commandments, and the light of the Lord, which concerns beliefs. It is
surely in this earlier passage that the traditional elohim-pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton in Prov. 20:
27 comes into play. Inasmuch, however, as “lamp of God” is reserved there for the commandments-part of
the larger work, it could hardly be the name of the whole.
¹⁰¹ Ps. 118: 23.
 Preface

O house of Jacob arise and let us walk in the light of the Lord.¹

The foundation of beliefs and the root of first principles² which will lead directly to
the knowledge of truth concerning the fundamental cornerstones of the divine Torah
is the belief in the existence of God. And since the intention of this part³ is to prove
the cornerstones and views of the Torah of God, it is appropriate that we investigate
this root-principle and the way in which we arrived at our knowledge of it.⁴
Since the root of the first principles of the divine Torah is the belief in the existence
of God, this root-principle is self-evident—since the Torah is arranged and com-
manded by an arranger and commander, and its being divine has meaning only if the
arranger and commander is God. Anyone who included belief in the existence of God
among the positive commandments therefore committed an infamous error—since
commandments are relational and no commandment can be conceived without a
certain commander. Thus, if we regard the belief in the existence of God as a
commandment, we in effect make the belief in the existence of God precede—in
the order of our knowing—the belief in the existence of God! Moreover, if we regard
the preceding belief in the existence of God as itself a commandment, this, too, will
necessitate a prior belief in the existence of God. And so on to infinity. It would then
follow that the commandment to believe in the existence of God would go on to
infinity—but this is the height of absurdity. It is clear, therefore, that it is inappropriate
to count the belief in the existence of God among the positive commandments.⁵

This Preface introduces only Light of the Lord, the first volume of the intended two-volume work, Lamp of
the Lord, the second volume of which, Lamp of the Commandment, was never written.
¹ Isa. 2: 5.
² Crescas echoes here the opening of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah. He does so, however, only to go on
to disagree with Maimonides on the matter of whether there is among the commandments a command-
ment to believe that God exists.
³ The reference is to this first part of Crescas’s projected two-part work, the part called Light of the Lord.
See Introduction n. 75.
⁴ In addressing “the way in which we arrived at our knowledge of it,” Crescas considers the extent to
which speculative arguments support the view favored by Torah and tradition.
⁵ These are the first two of five arguments directed against the notion that belief in God is commanded:
(1) If belief in God is a commandment, it would have been commanded by God, and so it would have to
presuppose belief in God ab initio; and (2) the presupposed belief in God entailed by taking belief in God to
be a commandment (as per argument (1)) would itself be a commandment that presupposed belief in
God—and so on to infinity. The first argument locates the flaw in the view that belief in God is commanded
in its begging the question. In the second, the view is faulted for generating an infinite regress.
  

This may be seen in another way, in that it is indeed clear from the meaning of the
term “commandment” and its definition that it can only find its place among things
to which will and choice apply.⁶ If indeed, however, the belief in the existence of God
is among the things to which will and choice do not apply, it follows that the meaning
of the term “commandment” will not extend to it.⁷ This is something we shall
investigate later on, God willing.⁸ Be that as it may, because it is evident that this
belief is a root and first principle of all the commandments, if we count it itself as a
commandment, it would follow that it is its own premise. Yet this is the height of
absurdity.
That indeed which led him [who counted belief in the existence of God as a com-
mandment] to do so—that is, to count this root-principle as a commandment—is
a statement at the end of Gemara Makkot, where the Rabbis say:
613 commandments were spoken to Moses at Sinai. What is the scriptural support for this?
“Moses commanded the Torah to us.”⁹ Yet they objected, “But Torah in gematria is only 611.”
And they responded: “I am the Lord” and “You shall not have”—these we heard from the
mouth of the Almighty.¹⁰

Those [who count belief in the existence of God as a commandment] came to think
because of this that “I am” and “You shall not have” are two commandments, and
they therefore regarded the belief in the existence of God as a commandment. But it
is evident that this conclusion is unwarranted. For what is intended there [viz. in the
Rabbis’ response to the question they raised] is that the God who is referred to in this
way [viz. as the Lord your God] is the very deity and leader who took us out of the
land of Egypt. Therefore the Rabbi our teacher Moses, of blessed memory, did well,¹¹
according to this way of thinking, when, in his Book of the Commandments (Sefer
Hamitzvot), he counted the first commandment concerning belief in the divine as the
command “to believe that there is a cause and determinant that is the agent
responsible for all existents—which is why He said: ‘I am the Lord your God.’ ”¹²
The Rabbi thus interpreted the divine name as signifying God’s being the agent
responsible for all existents. And for the same reason God says, “who took you out of
the land of Egypt”; this, too, is a kind of proof for that belief, since it is on the basis of
this event that we grasp the power of God, such that all existents stand in relation to
Him “as clay in the hand of the potter.”¹³ Therefore, indeed, this commandment will
apply to the belief that God is the one who took us out of Egypt. Nevertheless, it is

⁶ Crescas will argue that belief is not voluntary—and certainly not once the truth of the proposition in
question has been demonstrated.
⁷ This is the third argument: commandment implies choice and will; belief precludes them; hence,
belief in God cannot be a commandment.
⁸ See II. v. 5.
⁹ Deut. 33: 4. The idea is that the number of commandments derives from the gematria of “Torah.”
One would therefore expect the gematria of Torah to be 613. On gematria, see Introduction n. 37.
¹⁰ BT Makkot 23b–24a.
¹¹ Crescas’s approval of Maimonides in this matter is confined to just this one view that he attributes to
him, namely, that God is the cause of all existents and that this God is the very same God who took the
Israelites out of the land of Egypt. Crescas disagrees both with Maimonides’ interpretation of the rabbinic
dictum in tractate Makkot and with Maimonides’ view that belief in God is commanded.
¹² Exod. 20: 2. ¹³ Jer. 18: 6.
    

clear that even this way of thinking is absurd in itself. For from the Rabbis’ having
said: “ ‘I am’ and ‘You shall not have,’ ” it would indeed appear that the entire
extended utterance¹⁴ through “to those who love Me and observe My command-
ments” is to be included. For, note: these two utterances take the grammatical form of
the first person singular—“I am the Lord”; “who has taken [first-person sing.] you”;
“before Me”; “because I am the Lord your God”; “to those who love Me and keep My
commandments.” Since the remaining utterances proceed in the grammar of the third
person—as it is said: “For the Lord will not acquit”; “for in six days the Lord made”;
“He rested and was refreshed”—they agreed that “I am” and “You shall not have”
issued from the mouth of the Almighty. Because all those writers who were enumera-
tors of the commandments¹⁵ thought it appropriate to count “You shall not make a
graven image” and “You shall not bow down to them” as two commandments—and
this is indeed the very truth—were “I am” to be counted as a commandment, there
would be three that we heard from the mouth of the Almighty, so that there would be
614 commandments. Furthermore, if we take “You shall not have any other gods” as a
commandment not to believe in any divinity other than Him, as the Rabbi wrote, their
number would rise to 615.
It is therefore appropriate that we deny that the Rabbis, in saying that “ ‘I am’ and
‘You shall not have’—these we heard from the mouth of the Almighty,” intended
each to count as a commandment. Rather, since both alike were framed in the
language of the first person singular, as we noted earlier, that is what they meant
when they said that we heard them from the mouth of the Almighty. It follows that
the two commandments in the utterance “You shall not have,” which are “You shall
not make for yourself a graven image or any representation,” and “You shall not bow
down to them,” which we heard from the mouth of the Almighty, will complete the
[count of] 613 when added to the 611 that were heard from Moses’ mouth.
What remains to be explained is why the Rabbis did not count “You shall not have
any other gods before Me” as a commandment, in which case there would be three
commandments in this one utterance. This is easily accounted for: for if beliefs are
something to which will and choice do not apply,¹⁶ the term¹⁷ “commandment”
would not apply to them. And if nevertheless the term “commandment” does apply
[to “You shall not have”], then the meaning of “You shall not have” will be that we
may not acknowledge anything else as a god.¹⁸ It was in fact made clear in Sanhedrin
that one who does so merits the death penalty.¹⁹ The Rabbis did not see fit to count
“You shall not have” and “You shall not bow down” as two, because these share a
single common root-principle, namely, the acknowledgment of [other gods’]

¹⁴ I translate ‫דבור‬, “utterance,” when referring to any of the Ten Utterances, popularly known as the Ten
Commandments.
¹⁵ The term ‫( אזהרות‬azharot) normally refers to the negative commandments, the proscriptions, in the
Torah. In the expression, ‫מוני האזהרות‬, “enumerators of the azharot,” however, the term refers to
commandments, whether negative or positive.
¹⁶ See nn. 6 and 7.
¹⁷ Reading shem (“term”) rather than sham (“there”) (contra Fisher’s vocalization of ‫)שם‬.
¹⁸ Acknowledgment is understood as active and hence not as a matter of belief alone.
¹⁹ Sanhedrin 7: 6. Here the acknowledgment, ‫( קבלה‬qabbalah), consists in proclaiming to the
unauthorized god, “You are my God”: ‫והאומר לו אלי אתה‬.
  

divinity. But “You shall not make for yourself a graven image” stands—even if one
does not worship or acknowledge it—and therefore they counted them [viz. “You
shall not bow down” and “You shall not make”] as two. But it never occurred to the
Rabbis to count “I am the Lord” as a commandment,²⁰ since it is the root and first
principle of the totality of the commandments, as we explained previously.²¹
Now that it has become clear that this belief is a root and first principle of the
totality of the Torah’s beliefs and of the commandments, it is indeed appropriate
that we examine this belief as well as how we arrived at our knowledge of this root-
principle. Of the beliefs contained in the Torah, however, some are cornerstones and
foundations of the totality of the commandments and others are not. Nevertheless,
they too are true views. Indeed, all are alike in that they are all beliefs such that one
who believes in the divine Torah must believe them and one who denies them denies
the entire Torah. But there are some [beliefs] that are opinions that recommend
themselves to reason; those who deny these are not considered heretics. The inten-
tion of this part²² is to prove the cornerstones and views of the divine Torah. Because
of these considerations, we have seen fit to divide this part into four Books: the first
will deal with the first root-principle, which is the first principle for all the Torah’s
beliefs; the second, with those beliefs that are cornerstones and foundations for the
totality of the commandments; the third, with the true views that we who believe in
the divine Torah ought to believe; and the fourth, with those opinions that recom-
mend themselves to reason.
Our discussion of these things will proceed along two paths: one, the clarification
of their sense as the Torah determines it; and two, the way in which we arrived at our
knowledge of them. May His name be praised.

²⁰ Not every utterance counted among the “ten utterances” need be regarded as a commandment.
²¹ This completes the fifth argument, which is a refutation of Maimonides. The argument, in brief, runs
as follows. Since the verse Deut. 33: 4 states, “Moses commanded the Torah to us,” and since the word
“Torah” in gematria is 611, there have to be two commandments that issued directly from the mouth of
God (since, according to the tradition—for which this verse may well be the source—there are 613
commandments). Crescas contends that the two divine commandments are: “You shall not bow down”
(which may comprise “You shall not have”) and “You shall not make”—these are distinct from one
another because one can make a graven image yet not worship it or worship it yet not make it. Crescas
argues that if, as Maimonides would have it, “I am the Lord” is one commandment, “You shall not have” is
another, “You shall not make” is a third, and “You shall not bow down” is a fourth, the total number of
commandments would rise to 615. From Crescas’s perspective, as we have seen (see n. 7), belief cannot be
commanded, so “I am the Lord” cannot be a commandment nor can “You shall not have”—so long as this
is viewed as a matter of belief rather than of action. As Crescas interprets the Rabbis, when they say that
“I am” and “You shall not have” proceeded directly from God, all they intend is that the early part of the
Decalogue was uttered by God in the first person; all commandments contained in this early part of
the Decalogue spoken by God in the first person, however, forbid actions; they do not require beliefs.
²² Of Crescas’s projected two-part work.
 Book I
C the first root-principle, which is
the first principle for all the beliefs of the
Torah: the belief in the existence of God.

The meaning of a proposition is clarified in two ways: the first, by explaining the
terms that it contains, and the second, by explaining the relation between the one
term and the other—for instance, is the predicate to be affirmed or denied of the
subject? It is evident, too, in the case of this proposition, namely, our assertion
that God exists, that its subject-term is “God,” who is absolutely inscrutable, as will
be discussed, God willing, later on. Therefore, the point of this proposition is
solely that the cause and first principle of all existents exists. For this reason it
would seem that the study of this root-principle can be conducted in the second
way alone, that is, by the way in which we arrived at knowledge of its truth.¹ It is
therefore appropriate that we investigate whether we came to know the true meaning
of this root-principle on the basis of tradition alone, that is, on the authority of
the divine Torah, or whether we came to know it also by way of speculation and
investigation.
First among those who discussed this root-principle at length from the point of
view of investigation were: Aristotle in his works the Physics and the Metaphysics;
the commentators on Aristotle’s works, such as Themistius and Alexander; the later
commentators, such as Alfarabi² and Averroes³; as well as the authors who followed
him, such as Avicenna,⁴ al-Ghazali,⁵ and R. Abraham ibn Daud. Indeed, since the
Rabbi and author who in his book called Guide of the Perplexed also made use of
many of their propositions, stating them concisely in order to clarify this root-
principle in a variety of ways, and seeing fit to join to it two precious root-principles,
namely, that God is one and that He is neither a body nor a force in a body,⁶ we
decided to investigate Maimonides’ proofs, with respect to whether they establish

¹ This is the second of the two ways, set forth at the end of the Preface, in which the truth of beliefs may
be established. The first is via the Torah and the rabbinic tradition. The second is via speculative reasoning.
² Alfarabi is also known as abu Nazzr.
³ Averroes is the Latinized form of ibn Rushd.
⁴ Avicenna is the Latinized form of ibn Sina.
⁵ Al-Ghazali is also known as abu Ḥamed.
⁶ By “force” Crescas means to include whatever cannot exist except in something else. It includes,
therefore, accidents, forms, the lower faculties of the rational soul, the internal principle of motion, and
universals.
  :   

comprehensively the truth concerning these three root-principles or not. Since

Maimonides’ proofs derive from a synoptic grasp of the discourses of the first
philosophers, one need not attend in addition to anything else that appears in their
discourses.
Inasmuch as Maimonides’ proofs are based on the twenty-six propositions
that he posits at the beginning of the second part of his book,⁷ the order of
investigation herein will proceed by considering the following two questions:
first, whether the propositions Maimonides uses to prove these root-principles
are truly established demonstratively—for if the propositions required for the
proof of the root-principles are not themselves proved demonstratively, neither
will the root-principles be proved demonstratively; and second, if we do assume
these propositions to be true—and to be proved demonstratively—whether the
root-principles are also proved demonstratively from them. In this study, we shall
proceed by addressing the author’s own claims. Accordingly, it is appropriate that
we divide this Book into three Parts:
Part I. An exposition of these propositions in accordance with how they were
proved in the discourses of the philosophers, and an exposition of the proofs of the
Rabbi. For inasmuch as we shall be examining them, it is appropriate that they be
understood by us clearly and straightforwardly and free of any uncertainty—as the
Rabbi intended.
Part II. An inquiry into some of the propositions and into the proofs of the Rabbi,
to determine whether they have been proved demonstratively.
Part III. An account of the root-principles in accordance with what the Torah
prescribes and in accordance with the way in which we arrived at our knowledge of
them. In this Part the intention of Book I will be made manifest, to wit, to show that
there is no way to grasp these root-principles perfectly other than via prophecy, as the
Torah attests and the tradition confirms. This fact notwithstanding, it will also
become evident that reason concurs.

Part I
P of the propositions as they were proved in the discourses of the philosophers
and in the proofs of the Rabbi as derived from the discourses of the philosophers. We
have consequently divided this part into thirty-two chapters: twenty-six to explain
the twenty-six propositions [of the philosophers], and an additional six to clarify the
six proofs of the Rabbi.
Chapter I
P of the first proposition, which states that the existence of anything whose
measure is infinite is absurd.
An investigation of this proposition was conducted by Aristotle in various places in
his works the Physics, On the Heavens, and the Metaphysics,⁸ and he produced proofs

⁷ The reference is to The Guide of the Perplexed.

⁸ Physics III. iv–viii; On the Heavens I. v–vii; Metaph. XI. x.
    

for it: a proof of the impossibility of the existence of an infinite incorporeal magni-
tude; a proof of the impossibility of the existence of an infinite corporeal magnitude; a
proof of the impossibility of the existence of an infinite moving thing—whether its
motion is circular or rectilinear; a general proof of the impossibility of the existence
of a body whose infinity is actual. Consequently, we divide this chapter into four
sections, corresponding to the number of these classes of proofs.

 .          

 .
This proof proceeds as follows. He⁹ asserted that the following disjunction is ines-
capable: an incorporeal magnitude is either subject to division or not. If it is not
subject to division it surely cannot be described as infinite except in the sense in
which it is said of a point that it is infinite or of a color that it is inaudible.¹⁰ The
remaining alternative is that it is subject to division. But if so, it is inevitable that it
be either an incorporeal quantity or one of the incorporeal substances such as the
soul or the intellect. Yet it is absurd that it be an incorporeal substance, since any
incorporeal thing, insofar as it is incorporeal, is not subject to division; yet we have
been proceeding on the assumption that it is subject to division.¹¹
In addition, it is unavoidable that we say that it [viz. the incorporeal substance] is
either divisible or not divisible. If, on the one hand, it is divisible, then, since that
which is incorporeal is simple and homogeneous, it would follow that the definition
of the part and of the whole is the same. And because it is assumed that the whole is
infinite, it would be necessary that the part, too, be infinite. But it is the height of
absurdity that the whole and the part be the same. If, on the other hand, it is not

⁹ In this Part as well as in Part II Crescas frequently uses the third-person singular pronoun without
specifying its referent. This translation for the most part follows suit. Nevertheless, since it is Maimonides
who formulates in the Introduction to Part II of his Guide of the Perplexed the twenty-six propositions that
Crescas presents and discusses here, the third-person pronoun usually refers to him, even when the proofs
presented are not originally his. Of course, there are also discussions in which Aristotle is either explicitly
(as in I. i. 1) or implicitly (as in I. ii. 1) Crescas’s target. Moreover, Crescas is well aware that the proofs that
undergird Maimonides’ twenty-six propositions often derive not directly from Aristotle but more
generally from “the discourses of the philosophers,” that is, from the writings of the medieval Aristotelian
commentators, especially Averroes. Crescas occasionally refers by name to a specific philosopher or
commentator. He clearly relies as well on al-Tabrizi’s Commentary on Maimonides’ Twenty-Five Proposi-
tions, a digest that sets forth the medieval interpretation of the Aristotelian position. For extensive
consideration of Crescas’s likely sources, see Wolfson 1929.
¹⁰ To say of a point that it is infinite or of a color that it is inaudible is to commit a category mistake:
neither “finite” nor “infinite” applies to a point; a color can be neither audible nor inaudible. Whereas it is
true of a point that it is infinite in the sense that it is not finite, and true of a color that it is inaudible in the
sense that it is not audible, these assertions are true not because a point might have been finite or a color
audible though as it happens they are not, but rather because they are not subject to this sort of
characterization. The point here is that finitude and infinitude apply only to things that are subject to
division.
¹¹ In this paragraph the argument maintains that no indivisible incorporeal magnitude is infinite. It
proceeds to consider whether a divisible incorporeal magnitude might be infinite. The incorporeal
magnitude in question might be either a quantity or a substance. Yet surely it cannot be a divisible
incorporeal substance, since nothing incorporeal is divisible.
  :   

divisible, as is indeed a necessity for any incorporeal thing, we would have to be

saying that it is infinite in the way that a point is said to be infinite.¹²
The sole remaining possibility [once it has been shown that the incorporeal
magnitude cannot be an incorporeal substance] is, therefore, that it is a quantity,
in which case it is inevitable that it be either a quantity that inheres in a substratum¹³
or a quantity that is incorporeal. But it cannot be an incorporeal quantity, since
number and measure, which are now being posited as infinite, are not separable from
sensible things. But if it were a quantity that inheres in a substratum, then, since
accidents¹⁴ are not separate from their substratum, and since the finite and the
infinite are accidents of quantity, it follows necessarily that they are not incorporeal,
since quantity is not incorporeal.¹⁵
Since this proof is based on a premise that requires the impossibility of measure
separate from sensible things, this proof would be question-begging from the per-
spective of one who endorses the notion of incorporeal extension, which allows for
the existence of such a quantity.¹⁶ It would seem, therefore, that he must be relying on
his belief in the impossibility of empty space.¹⁷ For were we to admit the existence of
empty space, then the existence of a quantity separate from sensible things would not
be impossible, but, on the contrary, its existence might actually be necessitated, for in
fact, it would be capable of measurement, and we would be justified in saying of it
that it is large or small or in applying to it any of the other concepts of quantity. So it
is only because he denied the existence of empty space that he could base this proof
on the aforementioned premise [viz. that number and measure are not separable
from sensible things]. We therefore see fit to cite his proofs [for the impossibility of
empty space] briefly within this class of proofs [viz. those dealing with the impossi-
bility of an infinite incorporeal magnitude], so that we may investigate them further
in the second part [viz. in Book I Part II], God willing, to see whether they establish
comprehensively the truth of his view.

¹² This paragraph offers a further explanation of why it is that an infinite incorporeal substance cannot
be divisible: since an incorporeal substance lacks internal differentiation, each part in it will be identical to
the whole. Yet if this is the case then the parts would have to be infinite just as the whole is; but it is absurd
that what is true of the whole, namely, that it is infinite, be true of the parts. The paragraph concludes with
the application to incorporeal substances of what was said earlier regarding incorporeal magnitudes
generally: that if they are indivisible they cannot be described as infinite except in the way that a point
is—that is, illegitimately, by way of a category mistake.
¹³ “Substratum” renders ‫( נושא‬nosei), which in turn translates the Greek hupokeimenon: that which
underlies and is thus the bearer of the various properties.
¹⁴ “Accident” renders ‫( מקרה‬miqreh), which in turn translates the Greek sumbebekos: a property that a
thing happens to have but which is not essential to or definitive of it. “Accident” is also used more broadly
to mean anything that cannot exist other than in something else. For this notion Maimonides—and
Crescas as well—generally employs the term “force” ‫( כח‬koaḥ ).
¹⁵ This argument seeks to show that “incorporeal quantity” is an oxymoron: if something is incorporeal,
and hence separate from sensible things, it cannot be a quantity, since quantity is not separable from
sensible things; but if it is a quantity that is in a substratum it cannot be incorporeal, because quantity—
whether finite or infinite—is an accident of sensible things.
¹⁶ Whereas incorporeal quantity may be an oxymoron when quantity is regarded as a property solely of
corporeal things, incorporeal quantity might be admissible if quantity may be regarded as a property of
“incorporeal extension,” that is, of empty space.
¹⁷ By “empty space” what is meant is vacuum; empty space is empty of everything, including air.
    

Since those who maintain the existence of empty space imagine that without its
existence locomotion would be impossible, he first took it upon himself to prove the
falsity of this idea. In addition, he formulated four proofs for the absurdity of the
existence of empty space.
The proof of the falsity of the idea [that locomotion is impossible without empty
space] is as follows. If empty space were a cause of motion, it would have to be either
an efficient or a final cause.¹⁸ But it is neither efficient nor final, leading to the result
that the antecedent is contradicted. The necessity of the connection between the
consequent and the antecedent is evident: since it was shown that the number of
causes of things is four, namely, material, formal, efficient, and final, and since it is
also evident that empty space cannot be either the material cause or the formal cause
of motion, the only remaining possibility is that it is an efficient or a final cause. That
the consequent is necessarily contradicted is proved as follows. Since we see a variety
of bodies in locomotion, some moving to the up and others to the down, it appears
that the cause of this difference is either the nature of the locomoting body itself,
which is the moving and efficient cause, or the nature of the that-to-which toward
which the motion proceeds, which is the final cause. Since, however, empty space is
homogeneous with respect to its parts and so cannot have variation in its parts—with
some part of it possessing the nature of a that-from-which and some other part
possessing the nature of a that-to-which—the following disjunction is inevitable: it
has either the nature of a that-from-which, or the nature of a that-to-which, or the
nature neither of a that-from-which nor of a that-to-which. If we posit for it the
nature of a that-from-which, then any body placed within the empty space would
have to be at rest forever. But if we assume for it the nature of a that-to-which, it
would have to move in all directions simultaneously or else be at rest forever—since
there is no more reason that it move in one direction than in another. And if we
assume that it has the nature neither of a that-from-which nor of a that-to-which—
and indeed it must be so since empty space is nothing but extension detached from
natural things—it will again turn out necessarily that any thing placed in it would be
forever at rest. It is evident, therefore, that empty space is neither an efficient nor a
final cause. This is what he intended to prove with this argument.¹⁹
In addition he offered four proofs for the impossibility of the existence of empty
space.
The first proof proceeds as follows. Were empty space to exist, there would be no
motion. But there is motion. Hence, there is no empty space. In this case, that the

¹⁸ Aristotle posits four causes that account for the coming-to-be of all things, whether natural or
produced by art. The efficient cause is the producer; the formal cause is the form of the thing produced,
that which determines the kind of thing it is; the material cause is that out of which it is composed; the final
cause is its purpose or end. It is clear that empty space has neither matter nor form, hence it can be neither
the material nor the formal cause of motion. Aristotle contends that in empty space there are neither
starting-points nor destinations since empty space is homogeneous. In the absence of both starting-point
(“that-from-which”) and destination (“that-to-which”) there would be only rest.
¹⁹ This argument challenges the idea that empty space is required for locomotion. It contends that, since
empty space is not any of the four causes to which the motion of bodies might be attributed, it cannot be a
necessary condition for their locomotion. In the four proofs for the impossibility of the existence of empty
space, immediately following, the point will be not simply that empty space is not a cause of motion, but
that the existence of empty space actually precludes motion.
  :   

consequent is contradicted is evident by way of sense-perception. And the necessity

of the connection between the consequent and the antecedent may be proved as
follows. Motion is either natural or forcible.²⁰ Natural motion varies in accordance
with the nature of the that-from-which and of the that-to-which, but empty space
contains no variation and therefore contains no natural motion. And because forcible
motion is related to natural motion, and natural motion precedes it in nature
inasmuch as what is moved by force is moved by force only in that it departs from
the place toward which it moves by nature, it follows that if there can be no natural
motion there can likewise be no forcible motion. Furthermore, if there were forcible
motion in empty space, the thing that is moved would have to rest when the mover
departs from it. In the case in which an arrow departs from the string that is its
mover, and then the string rests, the only reason it can propel the arrow until it
arrives at its natural place is that the air in its lightness has the capacity to receive the
motion. Since it is evident in the case of empty space that it has no capacity to receive
the motion, the thing that is moved will of necessity come to rest as soon as it departs
from the mover. Yet this is contrary to what is perceived by sense.
The second and third proofs are based on two premises. One is that the cause of
swiftness and slowness in moving things is either variation in the mover, variation in
the receptacle, or both. To explain: if the mover is stronger, the motion will be swifter;
and so, too, if the receptacle, which is the medium in which the motion takes place, is
stronger, the reception will be stronger. For instance, in the case of air, which has
greater receptive strength than water, the motion in it will be swifter than in water.
The second is that the ratio of one motion to another is as the ratio of the strength of
one mover to another when the medium is the same; or as the ratio of the strength
of one [medium’s] reception to another when the mover is the same; or as the
combined ratio of moving strength to moving strength and of receptive strength to
receptive strength, when the movers and media vary. (How to calculate a combined
ratio has indeed been explained in Euclid’s Elements.) With the assumption that these
premises are self-evident, he formulated one proof from the perspective of the
receptacle and another from the perspective of the mover.
The one from the perspective of the receptacle proceeds as follows. If there were
empty space, anything that moved in it would necessarily move not over time.²¹ But
motion not over time is impossible. Hence the antecedent is necessarily contradicted.
The connection between the consequent and the antecedent is proved if we posit a
single thing moved a given distance by a single mover in air and in empty space.
According to the first premise, the swiftness and slowness would be a function of the
variation in the receptacle, and, according to the second, the ratio of swiftness to
slowness would be as the ratio of air to empty space. It is evident that in the case of
these two receptacles, their ratio is as that of the finite to the infinite. It follows
therefore that motion in empty space would take place not over time. But this is
impossible, since motion over a given distance is inconceivable without time—since

²⁰ Natural motion is motion from within; forcible motion is motion from without.
²¹ The expression, ‫( בזולת זמן‬bezulat zeman), which I render, “not over time,” means having no duration,
that is, taking place instantaneously. The contrasting expression, ‫( בזמן‬bizman), which I translate “over
time,” means having duration, that is, taking place over a stretch of time.
    

distance is divisible, and it is necessary that time be divided in tandem with the
motion in it.
Averroes has maintained that the force of this proof is like that of the proof that
derives from it, namely, that if there is an infinite hylic²² moving force, that which is
moved by it will move not over time.²³
The proof from the perspective of the mover proceeds as follows. If there were
empty space, the first premise would necessarily be false, despite its being self-
evident. This is because if we were to assume two things moved in empty space by
two movers that differed by a certain magnitude, it would follow from the first
premise that one would be swifter than the other. But since it is evident with respect
to any moving thing in empty space, in accordance with what was said earlier, that it
would move in an instant, it would follow necessarily that, despite the variation in
mover, there would be no variation in motion. This is impossible according to the
first premise. And this impossibility is entailed by our asserting that there is empty
space.
The fourth proof proceeds as follows. If there were empty space, it would have to
be possible for one body to enter another. But the entry of one body into another is
impossible, for if it were not impossible, the world could enter a grain of mustard. It
follows that empty space does not exist. The necessity of the connection between
consequent and antecedent may be proved as follows. Since the existence of empty
space is not anything more than the existence of three incorporeal dimensions
separate from body, it follows that, since they are also not bodies, and are not
accidents borne by a thing, it is impossible for them to be displaced when a body
enters them the way water in a trough is displaced when a stone is thrown into it. If
so, the dimensions of the body could indeed enter the dimensions of the empty space.
But if this were possible, it would be possible for a body to enter a body. After all, the
impossibility of one body’s entering another does not derive from the body’s being
a substance, nor from its being possessed of color or quality, but from its being three-
dimensional. Thus, if the entry of a body into dimensions is possible,²⁴ then the entry
of a body into a body is possible. But this is an outright impossibility. Therefore,
empty space exists neither in the world nor outside it.
He drew further support for this view from a body’s requiring a place insofar as it
has three dimensions in which it resides. But if this is so, these dimensions [viz. the
dimensions of the place] would in turn require dimensions, and this would go on to
infinity.²⁵ In addition, dimensions are the limits of bodies, and a limit, inasmuch as it

²² The Greek hylē, wood, is one of several terms generally used in philosophic contexts to designate
matter. I translate Crescas’s term ‫( חומרי‬ḥ omri) as “material,” reserving “hylic” for Crescas’s ‫היולני‬
(hiyulani).“Corporeal” translates ‫( גשמי‬gashmi) throughout. “Bodily” translates ‫( גופי‬gufi).
²³ The idea here is that when any of the variables is infinite there can be no motion over time. For there
can then be no ratio that would determine relative swiftness and slowness. Averroes is noting that the
problem that arises when the receptive strength of the receptacle is infinite is the same as when the moving
force is infinite.
²⁴ Following the manuscripts: ‫אם הכנס גשם ברחקים אפשרי‬. Fisher, following the Ferrara edition has: ‫אם הכנס‬
‫ברחקי הגשם רחק אפשרי‬, “if it is possible for a dimension to enter the dimensions of a body.”
²⁵ The thrust of this argument is that if a three-dimensional body, insofar as it is housed within three
dimensions, requires a further place in which to reside, the three dimensions of this further place would in
turn require a three-dimensional place in which to reside, and so on to infinity. If an infinite regress is to be
Another random document with
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älä pois mua manaa, pyydän ma,
ja semminkin, jätä paatos!

Ole aave en aikojen menneiden,

en hautojen kouko ja peikko,
ja retoriikast' en pidä, mun on
hyvin filosofiiakin heikko.

Olen käytännön mies ma, vaitelias

ja verkkainen aina. Vaan tiedä:
mit' olet sa miettinyt mielessäs,
sen lupaan ma perille viedä.

Ja vuodet jos menköön, ma työtä teen

yhä väsymättömin voimin,
kunis todellisuutena aattees nään;
sa tuumit, ja ma, ma toimin.

Sa tuomari olet, ma pyöveli,

joka täytän tuomios määrät,
kuin tulee orjan tottelevan,
oli oikeat ne tai väärät.

Kävi Roomassa liktori kirveineen

ain' edellä konsulin ennen.
Niin sunkin, mut takana tappara käy,
nyt itses edellä mennen.

Ma olen sun liktoris, alati sua seuraan, liepeessä vaatteen

teloituskirves, mi valmis on — Teko olen ma aivojes aatteen."
VII LUKU

Menin maata, ja oli kuin tuutineet ois enkelit. Sulolta tuntuu

uni Saksan sängyissä, semminkin jos untuvapatjoille untuu.

Kuink' usein kaipasin makeutta

ma pieluksen kotimaisen
öin unettomin noilla kovilla
matrasseilla maanpakolaisen!

Hyvät untuvapatjamme maata on

ja ne hyviä unia suopi.
Niissä sielu saksalainen se maan
kaikk' ikeet yltään luopi.

Luo ikeet ja kohoo ja korkeimmat

valontaivasten tarhat tapaa.
Sielu saksalainen, kuink' untes tie
on öisten uljas ja vapaa!

Käy kalpeiksi korkeat jumalat,

kun kotkanlentoos sa rupeet!
Sun siipes kirkasti kiitäissään
jo monen tähtösen kupeet!
 Maa ranskalaisten ja ryssäin on,
ja meren on herroina britit,
mut isännät ilmojen ihannemaan
on meidän Meyerit, Schmidtit.

Se on valtamaamme, siellä on
ehyt heimomme, pilvien päällä;
muut kansat kaikki on kehittyneet
maan matalan tasalla täällä. — —

Ma nukuin ja katuja noita taas,

valetuita kuutamon valoin,
olin kaikuvin askelin astuvinain
ohi vanhanaikaisten taloin.

Taas naamio silmillä takana mun

tuli tumma se seuralainen.
Mua väsytti, polvet kuin poikki ois,
mut yhä me astuimme vainen.

Yhä astuimme. Sydän mun rinnastain

oli avattu, auki rippui
se ammottavasti, virtanaan
veri sydänhaavasta tippui.

Verivirtaan monesti sormeni

ma kastoin ja pieltä oven
myös monta ohitse astuissain
ma sivusin punalla poven.

Ja aina, kun talon ma minkä noin

olin merkinnyt, kuolinsoitto
niin väräjävästi valittain
mun korvaani kumahti loitto.

Mut yöhyt synkkeni, kirkas kuu

taa peittyi kolkkojen varjoin,
rajut pilvet mustina ratsuina
ens ilmassa häilyvin harjoin.

Ja yhä olento tumma tuo

tuli perässä. Tuima terä
hihan varjosta välkki. Niin vaellettiin
me katuja hyvä erä.

Yhä mentiin, tuomiokirkkoon taas

me kunnes jo yhdyttäytiin;
ovet kaikk' oli sepposen selällään,
me kirkkoon sisälle käytiin.

Tuon holvin äärettömän vain yö

ja kuolo äänetön täytti;
joku palava lamppu se ikäänkuin
vain pimeytt' oikein näytti.

Pilaristoa kauan ma kävelin,

vain askelet saattajan vakaan
mun korviini soi yhä, jäljistäin
ei jäänyt hän askeltakaan.

Oli vihdoin paikka, min kynttilät

valas kirkkaat, mi kiviin ja kultiin
oli koristeltu; — me kappeliin
pyhän kolmen kuninkaan tultiin.
 Vaan nuo pyhät kuningas-vainajat,
jotka muuten niin hiljaa nukkuu,
kas ihme! nyt arkkuinsa kannella
ne siellä kolmisin kukkuu.

Luurankoa kolme, koristein

eriskummaisin, — kurjat, valjut
pääkallot kruunua, valtikkaa
käsirangat kanteli kaljut.

Kuin nuoranuket ne heiluivat

nuo luut, jotka ammoin kuoli;
mädän löyhkää puol' oli hajussaan
ja suitsutussavua puoli.

Höpis yhden huuletkin, puheen hän

hyvin pitkän ja laajan laati;
hän selitti, miksikä minulta
hän kunnioitusta vaati.

Näet koska hän kuollut ensiksikin

ja toiseksi kuningas oli,
ja pyhimys kolmanneksi, mut ei
moneks auttanut tuo holipoli.

Vain nauravin mielin ma vastasin:

"Tuo kaikki on hukka-huolta!
Mies ollut ja mennyt sa olet, sen nään,
vaikka katsoisin miltä puolta.

Pois täältä, pois! Tilaks omansa

teille haudan on mustat mullat.
 Nyt elämä ottaa haltuunsa
tään kappelin kivet ja kullat.

Ajan uuden ratsassaatto saa

ilon lyöden ja ottaa majan
tässä templissä — mielin menkää pois,
tai ma asevoimalla ajan!"

Niin lausuin ja käännähdin ja näin,

kun kamalasti se välys,
ase kamala saattajan sanattoman —
ja hän viittaukseni älys.

Kävi kirveineen hän päin ja löi

alas armahtamattomasti
nuo taikauskon katalat
luurangot pirstoiks asti.

Joka holvissa, sopessa raikui, soi

kuin tuomiopäivän pauhu!
verivirrat syöksähti rinnastain,
ja siihen mun herätti kauhu.

VIII LUKU
 Kuus groshia Kölnistä Hageniin meni kuudetta riksiä
Preussin. Paha kyll' oli vaan diligenssi täys, varavaunuista
tilan ma löysin.

Syysaamu harmaa ja kostea,

loan vallassa vaunut sousi;
mut säässä ja kelissä kehnossakin
sulo tunne se suoniin nousi.

Kodin kultaisenhan se ilmaa on,

jota polttava poski tapaa!
Ja maantien rapakko onhan tuo
isänmaani rakkaan rapaa!

Hevot mulle huiskutti häntää kuin

tutut vanhat tuhansin muistoin,
kakaratkin ne kauniilta näyttivät
kuin heelmät Hesperian puistoin!

Tiellä Mühlheim on. Soma kaupunki

ja uurasta, hiljaista väki.
Oli toukokuu kolmekymmentä-yks,
kun viimeks sen silmäni näki.

Ilos silloin ilmassa päivän koi,

maa kukkaishäitä vietti,
kevätkaihoja linnut liversi,
ja ihmiset toivoi ja mietti —

ne mietti: "Pian jo pääsemme noista laihoista ritareista,

eromaljan pitkistä mittaamme heille teräspikareista!
 Saa Vapaus liehuvin lippuineen,
käy karkelot, soitot soipi,
ehkä Bonapartenkin takaisin
se tuonelta tuoda voipi!"

Hyvä Jumala! tääll' ovat ritarit vaan,

ja moni nulikka-paha,
joka itikkahoikkana maahan sai,
nyt on mahtaja isomaha.

Nuo kalpeat kanaljat, naamaltaan

kuin rakkaus, toivo ja usko,
heillä meidän viljoista viineist' on
nyt nokalla rohkea rusko. — —

Eikä juosta ja rynnätä Vapaus

voi enää, sen jalka on nilkku;
alas Pariisin torneista tuijottaa
vain trikolori-tilkku.

Ylös sittemmin keisari noussut on,

mut mieheksi äänettömäksi
madot Englannin hänet jo saattoi nuo,
hän jälleen hautaan läksi.

Omin silmin ne hautajaiset näin,

näin kultaiset vaunut, joilla
kuus voitotart' oli kultaista,
arkku kultainen hartioilla.

Kautt' Elyseisten kenttien,

kautt' uljaan Riemukaaren,
kautt' usmain ja lunten hiljaa niin
kävi saatto sankaripaaren.

Rämis vihloin kauhea musiikki,

väris soittajat viiman alla.
Sotalippujen kotkat tervehti
mua katseella murehtivalla.

Niin oudoilta, vanhaan muisteloon

lumotuilta ihmiset näytti —
tarun keisarillisen kangastus
taas mielet tenhoi ja täytti.

Sinä päivänä itkin. Kyyneltä en silmästä estää voinut, kun

kajahti huuto "Vive l'Empereur!" tuo armas, ammoin soinut.
IX LUKU

Ma neljännest' ennen kahdeksaa olin aamulla Kölnistä tiellä;

tulin kolmen jo korvilla Hageniin, on päivällispaikka siellä.

Oli pöytä katettu. Herkut näin

ma taas peri-germanilaiset.
Sua hapankaalini tervehdin,
sun lemus on ihanaiset!

Kera kaalisten haudotut kastanjat!

niit' ennen söin emon koissa! —
Kapaturskat te kotoiset, terve myös!
miten viisaina virutte voissa!

Isänmaa joka ihmissydämen

on ainainen aarre — maistaa
myös hyvältä munat ja silakat,
kun hyvin ne paahtaa ja paistaa.

Miten riemusi makkarat rasvassaan!

Ja rastaat, paistetut, pienot
herran-enkelit omenahilloineen,
tervetullut! ne visersi vienot.
 "Tervetullut, maanmies!" — ne visersi —
"jo viikon viivyitkin poissa,
kera vierasten lintujen leikamoit
vain vieraissa viidakoissa!"

Oli pöydässä hanhi, hiljainen,

hyvänsävyinen olento siellä.
Mua kerran lempinyt lie kenties,
kun nuor' oli kumpikin vielä.

Mua silmäs se katsein niin merkitsevin,

niin syvin, niin hellin, niin heikein!
Oli kaunis sisällä sielu kai,
mut liha ei murennut leikein.

Tinavadissa pöytään vaeltavan näin sianpään myös rehdin;

siankärsät ne meillä koristetaan yhä vielä laakerinlehdin.
X LUKU

Heti Hagenin takana tapasi yö, ja puistatus päälleni pakkas

omituinen. Se vasta Unnassa majatalomme lämmössä
lakkas.

Siellä mulle kiltisti punssia kaas

soma tyttö tyllykkä muudan —
kuin keltasilkkiä kiharat,
ja silmät kuin lempeä kuudan.

Tuo westfalilainen soperrus

taas soittona korvissa soi mun.
Sulomuistoja punssi se höyrysi,
tutut veikot mielehen toi mun,

kera joitten ma Göttingenissä join jo kerran sen

kymmenenkin, kunis toistemme povelle langettiin ja alle
pöydän ja penkin!

Niin paljon heist' ain' olen pitänyt

kelpo Westfalin pojista noista —
väki niin luja, vakaa ja uskollinen,
ei koskaan kuorella loista.
 Miten miekkasill' uljaina seisoivat
he leijonamielin ja -tarmoin!
Niin vilpittömästi he iskivät,
niin kvartein ja terssein varmoin.

Hyvin taistelevat, hyvin maistelevat,

ja silmiss' on kyynellammet,
kun ystäväliittoon he kättä lyö,
nuo sentimentaaliset tammet.

Sua kaitkoon taivas ja kartuttakoon,

jalo kansa, sun kylvöjes keot,
sodat maaltas ja maineet estäköön
ja uroot ja urosten teot.

Läpi tutkinnon suokoon solahtaa joka poikas, ja morsiamen

joka tyttärestäsi laittakoon lain jälkeen aina — amen!
XI LUKU

Siis Teutoburgin on metsä tää, josta Tacitus tarinoipi, tää siis

on se klassillinen suo, johon tarttui Varuksen koipi.

Jalo Hermann, kheruskein ruhtinas

tässä häviöön hänet hääsi;
tässä ravassa Saksan kansallisuus
se voiton päälle pääsi.

Jos Hermann vaalevin heimoineen

ois tässä tappion saanut,
me roomalaisia oltais nyt,
ois Saksan vapaus laannut!

Tavat Rooman täällä nyt vallitseis,

ja Rooman kieli se soisi;
vestaaleja Münchenissäkin ois,
qviriittejä svaabit oisi!

Nyt Hengstenberg olis haruspex

ja sonnein suolia urkkis.
Neander, neuvokas auguuri,
se lintuin kulkua kurkkis.
 Birch-Pfeiffer tärpättiä jois
kuin muinen naiset Rooman
(uriinille kuuluu se antaneen
niin erinomaisen arooman).

Ei lumppusaksa nyt Raumer ois,

vaan roomalainen Lumpacius,
ja riimittä laulais Freiligrath
kuin muinen Flaccus Horatius.

Isä Jahn, tuo ruokoton kerjuri,

ois nimeltä Grobianus.
Puhuis Massmann, me hercule! latinaa,
tuo Marcus Tullius Massmanus!

Jalopeurain, hyenain, shakaalein

kera otella totuuden tulkit
areenalla sais, katulehdiss' ei
tulis kintuille penikka-nulkit.

Yksi Nero, ei kolmea tusinaa

maanisää meill' olis tuhmaa.
Me valtimot avaten näytettäis
orjuuden vahdeille uhmaa.

Ois Schelling maar koko Seneca,

kun kohtais moinen fatum.
Corneliuksemme kuulla sais:
"Non pictum est, qvod cacatum!" —

Vaan onneksi Varuksen legiot

löi Hermann taistelollaan,
pois roomalaiset ne tungettiin,
ja me saksalaisia ollaan!

Meillä Saksan mieli ja kieli on,

kuin ollut on iät päivät;
nimi aasin on aasi, ei asinus,
ja svaabit svaabeiksi jäivät.

On Raumer lumppusaksa vain,

saa kotkantähden viimein.
Ei ole Horatius Freiligrath,
vain laatii lauluja riimein.

Puhu onneks ei Massmann latinaa,

Birch-Pfeiffer vain draamoja valaa,
tärpättiä saastaista särpi ei
kuin Rooman naikkoset salaa.

Oi Hermann, se on sun ansiosi

Siks sulle patsas suuri
Detmoldiin tehdään — se kohtuus on
panin lisäni listaan juuri.
XII LUKU

Läpi öisen metsän vaunumme meni, nytki — yht'äkkiä rysäys,

ja pyörä irti. Ei erittäin juur' ollut hauska se pysäys.

Alas astui ajaja laudaltaan

avun hakuun kylästä kiirein.
Jäin yksin, metsä mun ympäröi
sydänöisin, ulvovin piirein.

Sudet nälistyneillä äänillään

ne ulvoi viiltävin vimmoin.
Kuin kynttilät yössä tuikkivat
nuo silmät kiiluvin kimmoin.

Kai oli kuullut mun tulostain

tuo metsän karvainen kansa,
ja kunniakseni tulitti tien
ja kaiutti kuorojansa.

Mulle kunniavastaanotto, sen nään,

noin suodaan silmillä, suilla!
Otin asennon heti ja vastaamaan
kävin liikkeillä liikutetuilla:
 "Sudet, veljet! Onnekas hetki tää,
joka jaloon seuraanne toi mun,
niin sydämenpohjainen ulvonta
missä tervehdykseksi soi mun.

Oi, mittaamaton on tunne tuo,

minkä mielelleni se antaa;
tään hetken ihanan iäti
ma tahdon muistossa kantaa.

Teitä luottamuksesta kiittää saan,

jota minulle olette suoneet
ja koetuksissa näkyviin
ain' uskollisesti tuoneet.

Sudet, veljet! Te minuun luotitte,

ette käyneet kurjien paulaan,
muka ett' olin koiraksi kääntynyt
ja ottanut renkaan kaulaan,

pian luopio muka ett' ilmestyis hovineuvosna

lammaslaumaan — alapuoll' oli arvoni astuakin mun moisista
puolustaumaan.

Jos lampaanturkin mä toisinaan

vedin päälleni pahaan säähän,
mun haaveilla onnea lammasten
toki tullut ei ikinä päähän.

En ole lammas, en koira, en

hovineuvos, en silli mikään —
susi oon, suden mulla on sydän ja suu
ja ikenet niin-ikään.

Olen susi ja sutten keralla

ain' ulvon ma — teit' en heitä.
Niin, itseänne kun autatte,
niin luojakin auttaa teitä!"

Se oli mun puheeni, sellaisnaan kuin hetki mieleeni toi sen!

"Yleisiin Sanomiinsa" Kolb typisteltynä kopioi sen.
XIII LUKU

Nous aurinko Paderbornissa kovin nuivalla katsannolla. Sen

viraton virka on tosiaan, maan tyhmän lamppuna olla!

Kun yhden kupeen valaistuaan

se hehkuvin kiirein heittää
valon toiselle puolle, niin pimeys
sill' aikaa jo toisen peittää.

Kivi Sisyphon yhä se vierii pois,

Danaiidit seulaansa täyttää
ei saata, ja turhaan aurinko
maapallolle soihtua näyttää! — —

Tien varrella, valoon kun alkavaan

sumu hälveni aamun suussa,
sen miehen kuvan ma huomasin,
joka riippui ristinpuussa.

Näkös, serkku parka, mun murheiseks

saa aina, jok' alttihisti
tämän maailman mielit lunastaa,
sa narri, sa utopisti!