[Avodah] nes niglah

[Zev Sero]

kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:

> We often hear varied stories about this tzadik, or that gadol, and frankly, they are sometimes difficult to believe. I have often heard this as a common reaction to such incredulity: "If you think all these stores are true, then you're a fool. But if you think they're all false, you're an apikores. The message of these stories is that they *could* be true."

Well, no.  Each individual story claims to be true; some of them have
messages, but the truth of the message may to varying degrees depend on
the truth of the story (depending on how novel the message is).  The
saying is about this whole corpus of stories, that it's not possible
for them all to be true, it must be that many false stories have crept
in over the years, but it's difficult to know which particular stories
are false, because to a believer they're all plausible.  Disproving
such stories depends on external evidence, and generally ends up with
it remaining possible that the basic story happened, but to another
person, or in another place, etc.


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