The Esoteric in the Guide of the Perplexed: A New Approach

One of the main debates among interpreters of Maimonides concerns the relationship between the esoteric and the exoteric meanings in his texts. In this article I seek a new method of analyzing how Maimonides wrote about esoteric subjects in his various books. First, I analyze the esoteric in Maimonides's legal writing: we will see that Maimonides himself used the methods of teaching esoteric subjects that he attributes to the Bible and the sages of the Talmud. I then analyze esotericism in the Guide of the Perplexed, finding that in this work Maimonides employed the same techniques to impart esoteric meaning that he used in his legal writings, for the same pedagogical reasons, as well as some alternate techniques.