[Avodah] Apikores?

[Zev Sero]

Marty Bluke wrote:
> R' Zev Sero wrote:
> <Achiyah and Eliyahu are people, even if they don't live here with us.
> 
> This is not so pashut. Is Eliyahu Hanavi considered to be alive?
> 
> This may be a machlokes the Rambam and other Rishonim. The Ramabm was
> mechadesh that if all the chachmei yisrael in EY get together they can
> be mechadesh semicha. A number of Acharonim explain that the Rambam
> was bothered by the following question. How will the Sanhedrin be
> reconstituted when moshiach comes? Who will give semicha? Therefore he
> came up with his chiddush. Why not Eliyahu Hanavi? He was a samuch and
> he will herald Moshiach's arrival. It would seem that the Rambam holds
> that Eliyahu Hanavi is not considered alive and could not give
> semicha. If that is the case then anything he teaches is "lo
> bashamayim" and not part of the mesora.

Not so.  The Rambam's problem with relying on Eliyahu Hanavi is that
he does not hold that it is necessary that the Eliyah(u) Hanavi in
Malachi is the same person as the Eliyahu Hanavi in Melachim.  Look
in Hilchot Melachim where he carefully does *not* say that Eliyahu
Hanavi will return to announce the geulah.  According to him that may
or may not happen; there's no halachic requirement that it must happen,
and if a candidate moshiach comes without it (as Bar Kochva did) this
is not grounds to reject him.  So he is left with a question: what if
Eliyahu doesn't come back, and the navi in Malachi is someone else?
Then who will renew the smicha?  And that's why he gives his own answer.

-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas