Maimonides on “Useless Stories” in the Bible * 89 possible to read them as an introduction to the Book of Deuteronomy, which Moses calls Mishneh Torah ( Deut . 17 : 18 ) —the original Mishneh Torah . And following that line, Maimonides might also have read the significance of the masa‘ot in the Torah—the kind of training they signify—as a model for his organization of his own Mishneh Torah . The culmination and climax of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah are the “Laws of Kings,” whose own culmination is its description of th e messianic era in which, according to Maimonides, everyone will be solely engaged in the pursuit of knowledge, and in which all humans will have become actualized intellects or, as it were, prophets . The organization of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah thus presents all the rest of rabbinic halakhah as preparation for the intellectual perfection achieved by the entire nation of Israel in the messianic age, the perfection that constitutes prophecy . Like the masa‘ot that transfo...
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