 We are now in a position to reconsider Strauss’s claims about esotericism. In a 1936 essay on the political science of Maimonides and Farabi, Strauss returns to the meaning of prophecy for Maimonides. While most interpreters, including Strauss in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion and in parts but not all of Philosophy and Law, viewed Maimonides’ conception of prophecy in epistemological terms, Strauss argues that Maimonides’ innovation was to think of prophecy in political terms. According to Strauss, “Maimonides neither wished nor was able, nor had any need, to lift the veil which conceals the origins of the Torah, the foundation of the perfect nation” (RPSMF, pp. 15–16). Yet, Strauss maintains, the attentive reader will notice that Maimonides distinguishes between Moses, the lawgiver, and all other prophets. Maimonides stresses Moses’ exalted status, argues Strauss, because for Maimonides Moses is the Platonic philosopher-legislator. The emphasis on the uniqueness of Moses as the ideal prophet and ideal ruler is the core of Maimonides’ political philosophy because “Not the mystery of its [the Torah’s] origin, the search for which leads either to theosophy or ‘Epicureanism,’ but its end, the comprehension of which guarantees obedience to the Torah, is accessible to human reason” (RPSMF, p. 16).