[Avodah] What do we believe about the Kesuvim?

Lisa Liel via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Sat Nov 21 08:01:20 PST 2015


On 11/20/2015 7:02 AM, Zev Sero via Avodah wrote:
> We know that the Torah was directly dictated by Hashem.   The nevi'im
> had dreams, woke up knowing their meanings, and wrote them down in their
> own words.   But what are kesuvim?  When the Sanhedrin decided that a
> sefer belonged in the 24, what exactly were they saying about it?
> Were they saying that the authors were "inspired", as the Xians say?
> Yes, of course they were written with ruach hakodesh, but so were the
> mishna, gemara, and all the rishonim and at least the early acharonim.

Is there any source for that?  I mean for the Mishna and Gemara, let 
alone the others, having been written with Ruach HaKodesh?  I mean, I 
understand (though I may be mistaken) that some Hasidim even consider 
their rebbes to have Ruach HaKodesh, but I'm not entirely sure what is 
meant by that.

As I understand it, based on books by R' Aryeh Kaplan, the "influence" 
under which Tanach was written is a continuum.  That is, Torah, Nevua 
and Ruach HaKodesh are different degrees of perception of Hashem's 
Mind/Will/Intent.  And that when we use the term "ruach hakodesh" for 
other things, it's not even on the level of the Ruach HaKodesh with 
which the books of Ketuvim were written.

The fact that the inclusion of Ben Sira in Ketuvim still hadn't been 
settled by the time the Gemara was redacted suggests that we didn't know 
for sure in every case whether something was written b'Ruach HaKodesh.

Lisa




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