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Rh and then he takes up one by one the Aristotelian arguments in favor of eternity and refutes them in detail. We cannot afford to reproduce them here as the discussions are technical, lengthy and intricate. ^^^ Having given his philosophical cosmology, Gersonides then under- takes to show in detail that the Biblical story of creation teaches the same doctrine. Nay, he goes so far as to say that it was the Biblical account that suggested to him his philosophical theory. It would be truer to say that having approached the Bible with Aristotelian spectacles, and having no suspicion that the two attitudes are as far apart as the poles, he did not scruple to twist the expressions in Gen- esis out of all semblance to their natural meaning. The Biblical text had been twisted and turned ever since the days of Philo, and of the Mishna and Talmud and Midrash, in the interest of various schools and sects. Motives speculative, religious, theological, legal and ethical were at the basis of Biblical interpretation throughout its long history of two millennia and more — the end is not yet — and Gersonides was swimming with the current. The Bible is not a law, he says, which forces us to beheve absurdities and to practice useless things, as some people think. On the contrary it is a law which leads us to our per- fection. Hence what is proved by reason must be found in the Law, by interpretation if necessary. This is why Maimonides took pains to interpret all BibHcal passages in which God is spoken of as if he were corporeal. Hence also his statement that if the eternity of the world were strictly demonstrated, it would not be difficult to inter- pret the Bible so as to agree. But in the matter of the origin of the world, Gersonides continues, it was not necessary for me to force the Biblical account. Quite the contrary, the expressions in the Bible guided me to my view.^^^ Accordingly he finds support for his doctrine that the world was not created ex nihilo, in the fact that there is not one miracle in the Bible in which anything comes out of nothing. They are all instances of something out of a pre-existent something. The miracle of the oil in the case of Ehsha is no exception. The air changed into oil as it entered the partly depleted vessel. The six days of creation must not be taken literally. God's creation is timeless, and the six days in- dicate the natural order and rank in existing things proceeding from the cause to the effect and from the lower to the higher. Thus the