  We might highlight a difference in this regard with Averroes for whom it is never a good idea to share any such truths with the masses (see Pines 1969, cxviii-cxix; Stroumsa 2009, 74-76). This can be seen as signaling a larger philosophical-hermeneutical divide between the two thinkers: Whereas both understand the difference between religion and philosophy, and while both understand the role of religious scriptures (and religion) as aiming—through its external meanings—to address the imaginative needs of the average person, Maimonides has a broader understanding of the external layer of the text: For Maimonides, but not for Averroes, when it comes to the topic of divine embodiment, even the external layer of text, when carefully read, offers a non-anthropomorphic set of meanings. In line with his strong sense that even the average religious person must be taught that God is incorporeal, Maimonides sees the Bible’s external claims about divine corporeality as themselves beckoning—even within the external layer of the text—to non-corporeal meanings, even for the average person. Averroes does not share this sense and, as Pines puts it, instead feels that “the simple faith of the average nonphilosophical person should not be troubled; and he should be left free to stick to his own unsophisticated beliefs even in such matters as the corporeality of God” (Pines 1969, cxix).