[Avodah] Rambam on Prophecy

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, 24 Dec 2006 16:26:18 -0500, dfinch847 at aol.com wrote:
> "Not at all! . . . . The Rambam holds that a navi is someone who lifted
> his consciousness to the point of being able to see what's going on in
> higher planes. Note that this is even *more* mystical than the other
> position...

(I assume we're still talking about the Rambam, so I took the liberty
of changing David's "n"s to "m"s.)

> I guess I hold to my position. Rambam's discussion of prophecy (other
> than Moishe Rabbeinu's) in MN II (ch. 32-84, esp. 41-44) emphasizes
> rationalistic joinder of Active (Human) and Divine intellect, sometimes
> impelled through dreams and visions. A raised "consciousness" was not a
> part of this system, although it was for Abravanel, who saw prophecy as
> inherently miraculous and believed that prophets acquired Divine powers
> through their consciousness of the higher plane. (There's a good
> discussion of this in Benzion Netanyahu's biography of Abravanel.) For
> Abravanel, this consciousness did not involve the exercise of
> rationalistic powers. For Rambam, it did.

The joining of Active and Divine intellect is inherently a spiritual
concept, if not THE spiritual concept -- the ability to acheive unity
with the Mysterious Tremens.

You instead point to the Rambam saying that the potential for prophecy
is "written into the system", and thus only denied to the qualified
when G-d chooses to intervene, and the other view that prophecy is
an independant gift each time.

Which you call more mystical would just depend on whether you think
the word applies more to assuming things "written into the system",
that there are mysteries in how the universe runs, or whether it
applies more to the miraculous and the notion of the miraculous.

I still think the Rambam posits more non-physical entities and
mechanisms to make his shitah on nevu'ah work. But all this might be
just a misunderstanding due to different definitions of the word
"mystical".


> In any event, it's often dangerous to interpret Rambam through the eyes
> of Abravanel, who distrusted his teachings and his intellectual method.

Not quite. They did dispute often, but Rosh Amana is not any less scholastic
than MN. For that matter, RA is itself a defense of the Rambam's ikkarim --
they also agreed often.

They did disagree on describing mal'akhim and nevu'ah, which is our topic.

However, the Abarbanel offers the simplest explanation of how the Rambam
avoids the Ramban's complaint in parashas Vayeira -- by denoting that the
visit was both real AND a prophetic vision. AND, that answer explains
why the Rambam had to make the "Man" Who rides the merkavah or sits in
the throne at Har Sinai was the kavod nivra; and the Ramban says it was an
image that actually represented Hashem Himself. This dichotomy itself makes
the point explicitly. The Rambam says that Hashem created something for the
Zeqeinim, Yirmiyahu and Yechezqeil to see -- visions of the real -- while
the Ramban days it was an image representing a reality.


Tir'u baTov!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             A wise man is careful during the Purim banquet
micha at aishdas.org        about things most people don't watch even on
http://www.aishdas.org   Yom Kippur.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                       - Rabbi Israel Salanter