IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER the cosmic system of spheres and elements was presented as the model for the superstructure of Mishneh torah. In this chapter and the next we shall look at the Neoplatonic infrastructure, adding movement to the model, and exploring ways in which Mishneh torah's inner dynamics correspond to cosmic processes. The Aristotelian model explains why Mishneh torah has fourteen books, but it does not wholly explain the sequence of those books. That sequence can be accounted for by the idea of emanation. As a reminder, this applies only to the sequence of the first ten books, on the man–God commandments. The last four, on the man–man commandments, will be considered in the next chapter.

Emanation, the idea that existence flows from higher hypostases to lower ones, was invoked in Chapter 1 in discussing the relationship between ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’ and ‘Laws of Ethical Qualities’. Although it is one concept, it will be convenient to split it into two components: hierarchy itself, and the flow from higher entities in the hierarchy to lower ones. This will be applied to the first ten books of Mishneh torah by arguing two propositions:

1. 1. The first ten books of Mishneh torah are arranged according to a hierarchy from higher to lower.

2. 2. A formal pattern originating in ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’ is repeated first in the Book of Knowledge as a whole, and then over the first ten books. This pattern carries the basic concepts set out in ‘Laws of the Foundations of the Torah’ and the Book of Knowledge into the rest of Mishneh torah. The flow of both content and form from the Book of Knowledge corresponds to the Neoplatonic idea of the Forms emanating from the One.

Plotinus posited a twofold process of emanation, from the One to Intellect, and from Intellect to Soul. Alfarabi subsequently applied emanation to the Aristotelian system of the spheres, to give ten levels, each produced from the one above it, from the first cause down to the agent intellect. The descent from one level to the next is also a decline in reality and value, until the process peters out, to leave matter, which has no reality, and no value.