The Guide for the Perplexed, Judeo-Arabic: דלאלת אלחאירין, romanized: Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn; Arabic: دلالة الحائرين, romanized: Dalālat al-ḥā'irīn; Hebrew: מורה הנבוכים, romanized: Moreh HaNevukhim, is a 12th-century work of Jewish theology by Maimonides. It seeks to reconcile Aristotelianism with Rabbinical Jewish theology by finding rational explanations for many events in the text. It was written in Judeo-Arabic, a dialect of Classical Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet. It was sent originally, part after part, to his student, Rabbi Joseph ben Judah of Ceuta, the son of Rabbi Judah, and is the main source of Maimonides' philosophical views, as opposed to his opinions on Jewish law.

Since many of the philosophical concepts, such as his view of theodicy and the relationship between philosophy and religion, are relevant beyond Judaism, it has been the work most commonly associated with Maimonides in the non-Jewish world and it is known to have influenced several major non-Jewish philosophers.^[2] Following its publication, "almost every philosophic work for the remainder of the Middle Ages cited, commented on, or criticized Maimonides' views."^[3] Within Judaism, the Guide became widely popular, with many Jewish communities requesting copies of the manuscript, but also quite controversial, with some communities limiting its study or banning it altogether.

The Guide for the Perplexed was originally written sometime between 1185 and 1190 by Maimonides in Judeo-Arabic (Classical Arabic using the Hebrew alphabet). It was first translated in 1204 into Hebrew by a contemporary of Maimonides, Samuel ibn Tibbon.^[4] The work is divided into three parts. According to Maimonides, he wrote the Guide "to enlighten a religious man who has been trained to believe in the truth of our holy Law, who conscientiously fulfills his moral and religious duties, and at the same time has been successful in his philosophical studies."

While many Jewish communities revered Maimonides' work and viewed it as a triumph, others deemed some of its ideas heretical. The Guide was often banned and, in some occasions, even burned in Paris in 1233.^[10][11]

In particular, the adversaries of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah declared war against the "Guide". His views concerning angels, prophecy, and miracles—and especially his assertion that he would have had no difficulty in reconciling the biblical account of the creation with the doctrine of the eternity of the universe, had the Aristotelian proofs for it been conclusive^[12]—provoked the indignation of his coreligionists.^[13]

Likewise, some (most famously Rabbi Abraham ben David, known as the RaBad) objected to Maimonides' raising the notion of the incorporeality of God as a dogma, claiming that great and wise men of previous generations held a different view.^[14]

In modern-day Jewish circles, controversies regarding Aristotelian thought are significantly less heated, and, over time, many of Maimonides' ideas have become authoritative. As such, the book is seen as a legitimate and canonical, if somewhat abstruse, religious masterpiece.

The Guide had great influence in Christian thought, both Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus making extensive use of it: the negative theology contained in it also influenced mystics such as Meister Eckhart. Due to The Guide's influence on Western Christian thought, it has been regarded as a "Jewish-scholastic Summa." ^[15] It was massively used in—and disseminated through—Ramon Martí's Pugio Fidei.^[16] It was also read and commented on in Islamic circles, and remains in print in Arab countries.^[17]

Several decades after Maimonides' death, a Muslim philosopher by the name of Muhammad ibn Abi-Bakr Al-Tabrizi wrote a commentary in Arabic on the first 25 propositions (out of 26) of Book Two, leaving out the last one, which states that the universe is eternal. The extant manuscript of the commentary was written in 677AH (1278 AD), and states that it was copied from a copy in Maimonides' own hand writing. The commentary was printed in Cairo in 1949.^[18]

By Maimonides' own design, most readers of the Guide have come to the conclusion that his beliefs were orthodox, i.e. in line with the thinking of most rabbis of his day.^{[citation needed]} He wrote that his Guide was addressed to only a select and educated readership, and that he is proposing ideas that are deliberately concealed from the masses. He writes in the introduction:

No intelligent man will require and expect that on introducing any subject I shall completely exhaust it; or that on commencing the exposition of a figure I shall fully explain all its parts.^[5]

and:

My object in adopting this arrangement is that the truths should be at one time apparent and at another time concealed. Thus we shall not be in opposition to the Divine Will (from which it is wrong to deviate) which has withheld from the multitude the truths required for the knowledge of God, according to the words, 'The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him (Psalm 25:14)'^[19]

Marvin Fox comments on this:

It is one of the mysteries of our intellectual history that these explicit statements of Maimonides, together with his other extensive instructions on how to read his book, have been so widely ignored. No author could have been more open in informing his readers that they were confronting no ordinary book.^[20]: 7

Marvin Fox writes further:

In his introduction to the Guide Maimonides speaks repeatedly of the "secret" doctrine that must be set forth in a way appropriate to its secret character. Rabbinic law, to which Maimonides as a loyal Jew is committed, prohibits any direct, public teaching of the secrets of the Torah. One is permitted to teach these only in private to selected students of proven competence ... It would seem that there is no way to write such a book without violating rabbinic law ... Yet at times it is urgent to teach a body of sound doctrine to those who require it ... The problem is to find a method for writing such book in a way that does not violate Jewish law while conveying its message successfully to those who are properly qualified.^[20]: 5

According to Fox, Maimonides carefully assembled the Guide "so as to protect people without a sound scientific and philosophical education from doctrines that they cannot understand and that would only harm them, while making the truths available to students with the proper personal and intellectual preparation."^[20]: 6

Aviezer Ravitzky writes:

Those who upheld a radical interpretation of the secrets of the Guide, from Joseph Caspi and Moses Narboni in the 14th century to Leo Strauss and Shlomo Pines in the 20th, proposed and developed tools and methods for the decoding of the concealed intentions of the Guide. Can we already find the roots of this approach in the writings of Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon, a few years after the writing of the Guide? ... Ibn Tibbon's comments reveal his general approach toward the nature of the contradictions in the Guide: The interpreter need not be troubled by contradiction when one assertion is consistent with the "philosophic view" whereas the other is completely satisfactory to "men of religion". Such contradictions are to be expected, and the worthy reader will know the reason for them and the direction they tend to ... The correct reading of the Guide's chapters should be carried out in two complementary directions: on the one hand, one should distinguish each chapter from the rest, and on the other one should combine different chapters and construct out of them a single topic. Again, on the one hand, one should get to the bottom of the specific subject matter of each chapter, its specific "innovation", an innovation not necessarily limited to the explicit subject matter of the chapter. On the other hand, one should combine scattered chapters which allude to one single topic so as to reconstruct the full scope of the topic.^[21]

The original version of the Guide was written in Judaeo-Arabic. The first Hebrew translation (titled Moreh HaNevukhim) was written in 1204 by a contemporary of Maimonides, Samuel ben Judah ibn Tibbon in southern France. This Hebrew edition has been used for many centuries. A new, modern edition of this translation was published in 2019 by Feldheim Publishers. Another translation, which most scholars see as inferior, though more user-friendly, was that of Judah al-Harizi.

A first complete translation in Latin (Rabbi Mossei Aegyptii Dux seu Director dubitantium aut perplexorum)^[22] was printed in Paris by Agostino Giustiniani/Augustinus Justinianus in 1520, and probably made by Jacob Mantino (Mantinus). A more well regarded translation was made and published by Johannes Buxtorf II in 1629 in Basle (Liber Doctor perplexorum).^[23][24]

A French translation accompanied the first critical edition, published by Salomon Munk in three volumes from 1856 (Le Guide des égarés: Traité de Théologie et de Philosophie par Moïse ben Maimoun dit Maïmonide. Publié Pour la première fois dans l'arabe original et accompagné d'une traduction française et notes des critiques littéraires et explicatives par S. Munk).

The first complete English translation was The Guide for the Perplexed, by Michael Friedländer, with Mr. Joseph Abrahams and Reverend H. Gollancz, from 1881. It was originally published in a three volume edition with footnotes. In 1904 it was republished in a less expensive one volume edition, without footnotes, with revisions. The second edition is still in use today, sold through Dover Publications. Despite the age of this publication it still has a good reputation, as Friedländer had solid command of Judaeo-Arabic and remained particularly faithful to the literal text of Maimonides' work.^[25]

Another translation to English was made by Chaim Rabin in 1952, also published in an abridged edition.^[26]

The most popular English translation is the two-volume set The Guide of the Perplexed, translated by Shlomo Pines, with an extensive introductory essay by Leo Strauss, published in 1963.^[27]

A new English translation by Lenn E. Goodman and Phillip I. Lieberman of Vanderbilt University was published in 2024. This edition attempts to highlight the conversational, emotionally resonant tone of the original text.

A modern translation to Hebrew was written by Yosef Qafih and published by Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 1977. A new modern Hebrew translation has been written by Prof. Michael Schwartz, professor emeritus of Tel Aviv University's departments of Jewish philosophy and Arabic language and literature.^[28] Mishneh Torah Project published another Hebrew edition between 2018 and 2021, translated by Hillel Gershuni.^[29][30]

Mór Klein [hu] (1842–1915), the rabbi of Nagybecskerek, translated it to Hungarian and published it in multiple volumes between 1878 and 1890.^[31]

The Arabic original was published from Arabic manuscripts in a critical edition by the Turkish Dr. Hussein Atai and published in Turkey, then in Cairo, Egypt.^[32]

Translations exist also in Yiddish, French, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian, and Chinese.

The earliest complete Judeo-Arabic copy of Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed, copied in Yemen in 1380, was found in the India Office Library and added to the collection of the British Library in 1992.^[33] Another manuscript, copied in 1396 on vellum and written in Spanish cursive script, but discovered in Yemen by bibliophile, David Solomon Sassoon, was formerly housed at the Sassoon Library in Letchworth, England, but has since been acquired by the University of Toronto. The manuscript has an introduction written by Samuel ibn Tibbon, and is nearly complete, with the exception of a lacuna between two of its pages. Containing a total of 496 pages, written in two columns of 23 lines to a column, with 229 illuminations, the manuscript has been described by David Solomon Sassoon in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library.^[34] In the Bodleian Library at Oxford University, England, there are at least fifteen incomplete copies and fragments of the original Arabic text, all described by Adolf Neubauer in his Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts. Two Leyden manuscripts (cod. 18 and 211) have also the original Arabic texts, as do various manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (No. 760, very old; 761 and 758, copied by Rabbi Saadia ibn Danan). A copy of the original Arabic text was also stored at the Berlin Royal Library (now Berlin State Library), under the category Ms. Or. Qu., 579 (105 in Catalogue of Moritz Steinschneider); it is defective in the beginning and at the end.^[35] Hebrew translations of the Arabic texts, made by Samuel ibn Tibbon and Yehuda Alharizi, albeit independently of each other, abound in university and state libraries.

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "MOSES BEN MAIMON (RaMBaM; usually called MAIMONIDES)". The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

• Buijs, Joseph A. (ed.). Maimonides: A Collection of Critical Essays. University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0268013675.
• Fox, Marvin (1990). Interpreting Maimonides. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226259420.
• Goodman, Lenn E. (1985). Rambam: Readings in the Philosophy of Moses Maimonides. Gee Bee Tee. ISBN 0670589640.
• Ivry, Alfred (1985). "Providence, Divine Omniscience and Possibility: The Case of Maimonides". In Rudavsky, T. (ed.). Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy. D. Reidel. ISBN 978-9027717504.
• Kasher, Hannah (1998). "Biblical Miracles and the Universality of Natural Laws: Maimonides' Three Methods of Harmonization". Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy. 8: 25–52. doi:10.1163/105369999790231971. ISSN 1053-699X.
• Kellner, Menachem (1986). Dogma in Medieval Jewish Thought. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197100448.
• Kellner, Menachem (1997). "Maimonides' Allegiances to Science and Judaism". The Torah U-Madda Journal. 7. Yeshiva University: 88–104. ISSN 1050-4745.
• Kellner, Menachem (1991). "Reading Rambam: Approaches to the Interpretation of Maimonides". Jewish History. 5 (2): 73–93. doi:10.1007/BF01668933.
• Langermann, Y. Tzvi (2019). "Rabbi Yosef Qafih's Modern Medieval Translation of the Guide". Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed in Translation. University of Chicago Press. pp. 257–278. ISBN 978-0-226-45763-5.
• Manekin, Charles (2005). On Maimonides. Thomson Wadsworth. ISBN 978-0534583835.
• Strauss, Leo (31 May 2024). The Literary Character of the Guide for the Perplexed. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226227887. This essay has been printed in a number of volumes, including Buijs's volume (above) and as a chapter in Strauss's own "Persecution in the Art of Writing".

• Original Judeo-Arabic full text
  • Seforim Online (#217) Joel edition with Arabic text per Munk (public domain, free download in PDF).
  • Writings of Maimonides; manuscripts and early print editions. Jewish National and University Library
• Original text transliterated to Arabic
  • "دلالة الحائرين" Edited and Transliterated by Hussein Attai
• Hebrew full text
  • Ibn Tibbon Translation (PDF) Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3
  • trans. Joseph Kafih
  • trans. Michael Schwarz
  • Writings of Maimonides; manuscripts and early print editions. Jewish National and University Library
  • Moreh Nevuchim recorded lectures in Hebrew, (Podcast)
  • Collection of Various Works by Maimonides in Hebrew from the 14th-century
• Latin full text
  • Writings of Maimonides; manuscripts and early print editions. Jewish National and University Library
• English full text
  • Steinberg - The Revised New English Guide for the Perplexed on Amazon
  • Friedländer translation at Project Gutenberg
  • Friedlander translation at Wikisource
  • Friedlander translation PDF
  • Friedlander translation HTML
  • The Guide for the Perplexed public domain audiobook at LibriVox
  • Shiurim from Rav Aaron Lopiansky
• Russian full text of Part One
  • trans. Michael Shneider
• Discussion
  • Summary of the Guide for the Perplexed
  • Moreh Nevukhim Archives, Rabbi Gidon Rothstein
  • Approaching the Guide: Penetrating Rambam's Moreh Nevuchim, Rabbi Jonathan Blass
  • Three series of video/audio shiurim on select sections of the Moreh Nevukhim, Rabbi Meir Triebitz- On Book I (Negative Theology), On Book II (Creation), On Book III (Divine Commandments)
  • Yahoo Maimonides Discussion Group
  • The Guide: An Explanatory Commentary on Each Chapter of Maimonides' Guide of The Perplexed by  Scott Michael Alexander (covers all of Book I, currently)