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There the matter stood until the twelfth century, when Maimonides gave an innovative 36 ruling:
A non-Jew who accepts the seven commandments and observes them scrupulously is one of the "pious of the nations of the world" and will have a portion in the world to come, provided that he accepts them and performs them because the Holy One blessed be He commanded them in the Torah and made known through Moses our teacher that their observance had been enjoined on the descendants of Noah even before the Torah was given. But if his observance of the commands is based on a reasoned conclusion he is not deemed a resident alien or one of the pious of the nations, but one of their sages. [27] 37
There are three novel features to this statement. The first is the stipulation (apparently Maimonides' own 38 ) that, in order to be one of the "pious of the nations" one must not only keep the seven commands but also do so because of a belief in revelation ("because the Holy One blessed be He commanded them in the Torah"). The second, also distinctive to Maimonides, is that the revelation in question is not that given to Noah but rather the revelation to Moses 39. The third is Maimonides' distinction between the "pious" (chassid) and the "sage" (chakham). Reflection on the third point was long inhibited because of a misprint in printed editions of Maimonides' code (the substitution of a vav for an aleph in the penultimate word), with the result that the last phrase read "nor one of their sages" instead of "but one of their sages". Only with the discovery of ancient Yemenite manuscripts was the correct version generally accepted.40
The question naturally arises as to whether, according to Maimonides, the "sage" has a share in the world to come. One midrash (Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer) discovered in the twentieth century has been taken by some scholars as Maimonides' source:
When does this apply? When [gentiles] keep [the seven Noahide laws] and say [that they do so] because G-d thus commanded our ancestor Noah. However, if they keep them, saying, we do so because we heard it from someone else, or because that is what reason dictates . . . they receive their reward only in this world [not the next].[28] 41
According to this, gentile "sages" do not have a share in the world to come. However, the dating and authenticity of this midrash is a matter of conjecture. It may be the source of Maimonides' ruling. It may however be the contrary - the midrash may be later than, and derivative of, Maimonides' code. R. Abraham Isaac Kook takes a quite different view:
I incline to the view that the intention of Maimonides when he writes that [the pious will have] "a share in the world to come", is to a low level [of spirituality], even though this too is a great good. However, since even the wicked and ignorant of Israel also have such a share [in the afterlife], this represents a relatively low level in the hierarchy of spiritual achievement. Maimonides himself holds that intellectual achievement represents a higher form of human flourishing than moral behaviour, and therefore holds that acquiring a share in the world to come characterizes specifically the "pious" of the nations, namely those who have not mastered the intellect but have simply accepted faith in the innocence of the promptings of the heart, and thus conduct themselves uprightly, having accepted the [seven Noahide] commandments as having been given by G-d. However, one who reaches the same conclusion through the use of reason is truly "wise in heart and full of understanding" and is regarded as "one of their sages" because the virtue of wisdom is very great. It was therefore not necessary to say that he [the sage] has a share in the world to come, for he stands at the level of holiness, which calls for a higher expression than "he has a share in the world to come". [29] 42
According to Rav Kook, for Maimonides the chakham is greater than the chassid. Undeniably this is so if we take as our interpretive key Maimonides' views as expressed elsewhere. 43
Whatever the case, the ruling alerts us to an ancient distinction between two modes of knowledge: Torah and chokhmah, or revelation and reason. Maimonides reminds us that in its encounter with other religions and civilizations, Judaism recognizes two phenomena, not one. The first concerns other religions of revelation, specifically Christianity and Islam. Do their adherents satisfy the requirements of chassidei umot olam? The second is the philosophical and scientific heritage exemplified by ancient Greece (which many medieval Jewish thinkers believed to be Adamic or Abrahamic in origin, but was subsequently forgotten by Jews because of the tragedies and dislocations of their history). Plato, Aristotle and their heirs did not believe in revelation in the Judaic sense and were therefore not chassidei umot olam. They may, however, have been chakhmei umot olam if, through reason and observation they arrived at the same truths as those taught by revelation. Let us consider these two phenomena in turn.
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