 | | very noble form, which, as we have explained, is the
image of God and His likeness,
should be bound to earthy, turbid, and dark matter, which calls upon man every imperfection and corruption.
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| | (1963, 431)
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Maimonides rivals nearly any neo-platonist here in his horror of matter and his revulsion from bodily life. And as we might expect, Maimonides's doctrine regarding sexuality differs sharply from that of the talmudic Rabbis: "With regard to copulation, I need not add anything to what I have said in my Commentary on Aboth about the aversion in which it is held by what occurs in our wise and pure Law, and about the prohibition against mentioning it or against making it in any way or for any reason a subject of conversation" (1963, 434). This characterization of sex and the body in general as being held in "aversion" by the Torah needs only to be confronted by the talmudic story of the disciple who hid under his teacher's bed to observe him making love to his wife, "because it is Torah and I must learn,"
40
to show how far the medieval rabbi has moved from the Rabbis of the Talmud and midrash. Where the Rabbis had showed an easy acceptance of contained, married sex and the body and indeed had conversed about these subjects freely, for Maimonides they become subjects of shame and repression.
41
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Maimonides accepts and transmits the midrashic interpretation of the narrative describing the creation of woman at the same time as man. However, by introducing a Platonic conception of language and an Aristotelian physical theory, he effectively undermines the cultural import of that very midrash. Yes, Adam and Eve were created as one, but only because matter and form never exist without each other. And as for the second part of the story, the separation narrated in the second chapter of Genesis according to the midrash, Maimonides responds that it simply describes the
conflict
between form and matter. Even if, for Maimonides, matter was in harmony with form before the separation of the woman,
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| | 40. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 62a. In another section of the present project, I shall undertake a fuller reading of that story and its congeners.
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| | 41. It is true that an anthology of rabbinic sayings could be produced in support of Maimonides's disposition. Nevertheless, the statement that copulation is held in aversion by the Law is one that is impossible to support from talmudic sources, and indeed, the more traditional (i.e., non-Aristotelian) opponents of Maimonides roundly attacked him on this point, as well as on others closely related to it, viz. the corporeality of God and corporeal resurrection.
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