[Avodah] Prophecy and Parable, was: Re: Nevu'ah in Hebrew?

[Zvi Lampel]

RMB on June 6 and 13, 2006 posed a contradiction about prophecy between the Rambam in his Mishneh Torah and his Moreh Nevuchim:

> Yesodei haTorah 7:2 tells us that "vekhulan keshemisnav'in... vetisha'eir hadei'ah penuyah lehavin mar shetir'eh..." All of them, when they prophecy, see things.

> Then we get to 7:3, and we see "hadevar'im shemodi'in lenavi bemar'eh hanevu'ah" -- the mar'eh we were just told was the medium of all nevu'ah -- "derekh mashal modi'in lo"["The things that they inform a prophet (sheh-modi’im l’navi) in a vision (mar’eh ha-nevuah)--by parable (derech mashal) they inform him; and immediately the interpetation of the parable would be engraved in his mind in the prophetic vision and he would what it is."--ZL] ... vekhen she'ar hanevi'im, yeish meihem omerin hamashel upisrono kemo eilu, veyeish meihem omerin hapisron bilvad" [some of the prophets say the mashal and its interpretation...and some say the interpretation alone"--ZL

> However in the Moreh, he speaks of mar'eh, of words spoken within the
> mar'eh, and of words (like those to the young Shemu'el) where the navi
> doesn't directly experience anything abnormal (Moreh II:42).

> Does his kelal in YhT mean "almost always"? How else to avoid the
> contradiction?

I attempted an answer,* but I’m afraid we both missed something important. As RMB half-heartedly speculated, the fact is that indeed, the first sentence in Moreh Nevuchim 2:43 reads:
"We have already explained in our writings [both KPH and (lehavdil) Pines refer us to our passage in Mishneh Torah, YhT 7:3)] that prophets /sometimes/ ["p’amim" --both in Ibn Tibbon and Kapach] prophesy in parables."
So there you have it. Although the key word "sometimes" does not appear in our editions of Mishneh Torah (and I assume never appeared in any), the Rambam makes it clear in Moreh Nevuchim that this is what he meant in his Mishneh Torah.
(So, sometimes the prophets see or speak in parables, but sometimes they see, hear and/or speak plainly. The Rambam does not delineate the manifestations of the latter in Mishneh Torah. [And I think this is because his goal there is only to give one example of how their prophecies may exhibit inferiority to those of Moses.)]But he does delineate them in the Moreh.)**
I don’t recall (FWthat’sW) another instance where the Moreh Nevuchim gives such a direct payrush on the Mishneh Torah. As a broader point, this sheds important light on the Rambam’s style. It implies that whenever the Rambam makes an unqualified statement without the modification of "all," he does not necessarily mean that what he says is so in an unqualified sense, but possibly as only "sometimes" so. This may bear critical ramifications regarding how we understand the Rambam on other subjects.
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* Sun, 11 Jun 2006, I had answered by restricting the Yesodei HaTorah 7:3 passage to be only about the "mareh," the visual part of the prophecy. I wrote, "The images in the prophecies are metaphorical, but they may contain words or images or both."

** RMB objected to my original answer on the grounds that "if the Yad meant that some nevu'os weren't derekh mashal, why would 7:3 conclude by explaining that "veyeish meihen omerin hapisron bilvad" -- that when we see text that doesn't mention the mashal, still "vekhulam bemashal vederekh chidah heim misnabe'im"? ...IOW, the insistence in the Yad that even when there is no mention of a metaphoric vision there still was one both voids RZL's ra'ayah, and seems to be at odds with the Moreh." I think the Moreh Nevuchim’s qualification answers this as well.

Zvi Lampel
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