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that led to God were called “higher,” even though they were also depicted as concentric rings encircling the planetary orbits that surrounded the earth. But essentially the divine world was conceived as an order of being different from the “sublunar” world in which we live. It was entirely immaterial and therefore could not be attained by any sort of physical or spatial journey, only by an opening of the mind (for the Aristotelians) or by the perfect and unimpeded longing of the soul (for the Neoplatonists). The true transcendence of God lay not in spatial distance but in the endless abstraction of God as a concept and the degree to which the mind had to stretch itself to gain even the smallest intellectual glimpse of the divine.

Where did the mind turn to get its idea of God? Scripture was an important guide, of course, especially when read through the lens of proper philosophic interpretation. But essentially the philosophers pursued an inward contemplative path. God was attained by a progressive abstraction of consciousness, an inner mental turning aside from all externals and “accidents,” including the utter shedding of all anthropomorphisms, to discover the single abstract truth of Being. Thus, despite their seeming loyalty to a hierarchical and even “vertical” worldview, it was the God within their minds and souls who was the true object of philosophical quest. It may be said that both of the root metaphors, the vertical and the internal, were taken nonliterally by the philosophers, who saw no conflict between them. The ultimate divine reality was not clearly distinguished from the ultimately rarified idea of God. To purify the mind of all anthropomorphisms and other misconceptions was to come as close as humans might to hassagah (“attainment” or “understanding;” significantly, the word is the same) of the divine reality.

The techniques of attaining this abstraction are best known from Maimonides’ presentation of them in his Guide for the Perplexed. The first section of the Guide is concerned mostly with dismissing any literal truth claim that might be made for either anthropomorphic (human-form-like) or anthropopathic (human-emotion-like) descriptions of God to be found in the Bible. Since it is clear that God has no body (based on a combination of Aristotelian metaphysics and quotations from the more abstract prophetic passages referred to above), seeming anthropomorphic descriptions of God must have some other meaning. Words like “hand” and “eye,” when applied to God, cannot refer to physical body parts, since God has no body. These words are then taken to be homonyms, words that have one set of meanings when applied to corporeal beings and a second, unknowable (and therefore essentially dismissible) meaning when applied to God. The same is true of such actions as walking, seeing, hearing, and (most crucially in this case) speaking. This process of negation is then carried over to the realm of emotion, since such feelings would imply lack or need, compromising the supposed perfection of God. This “perfection” itself, we should add, is an assumption of philosophy, and does not represent a claim found in the biblical or rabbinic tradition. Once all concrete attributes are denied to God, the seeker may only use ongoing apophatic claims (negative assertions or denials) to speak about the divine nature. We come to know God best by denying all false and untenable claims that can be made regarding “Him.”

It would be a misunderstanding of Maimonides and the whole school of philosophic religion to think that there was no possibility left of passionate religious devotion to such a God. When we read the climactic concluding chapters of the Guide (3:51 and 54), as well as certain key passages in Maimonides’ other works, it is clear that he represents a deep piety, one in which the human soul is utterly drawn to the delights of sublime contemplation, remaining attached to God at all times, even while involved in the duties that bind us to this world. There are ways in which the term “mystic” might well be applied to the great