[Avodah] Truth and the Rambam

[Zvi Lampel]

On 10/18/2010 4:06 PM, David Riceman wrote:
>  Me:
>>> ...I suspect that it really bothered him that the 13 midot shehatorah
>>> nidreshet bahem do not yield unique answers, and that may be why he
>>> claims that few laws were deduced from them.
> RZL:
>> The Rambam says in Sefer HaMItzvos Shoresh Shayni that "rov" laws were
>> deduced by them, and being that there were thousands that Osniel ben
>> Kenaz reconstructed, the Rambam says, the number that were not forgotten
>> must have been much more.
> See the hakdamah to PhM (tr. Kafih p.11): The first class of halachot 
> includes those which are deduced without ambiguity using MSNB, and the 
> third class consists exclusively of those which were deduced with 
> ambiguity using MSNB.  See his discussion of "misherabbu talmiddei 
> Shammai v'Hillel ..." which begins on that same page.
>
> David Riceman
>
>
I don't understand the import of your response. I was questioning your 
statement that the Rambam "claims that few laws were deduced from them 
[the 13 middos sheh-haTorah nidreshets bahen]," by citing his statements 
that "rov" halachos resulted from these methods and that the 1,700 
halachos that Osniel ben Kenaz reconstructed were only a fraction of the 
total number of laws generated through the 13 middos.

Regarding the passages about Shammai and Hillel's disciples or about the 
classes of laws derived through the 13 middos--I don't see what bearing 
that has on the subject.

(You refer to laws being deduced with and without "ambiguity." Did 
R'KPCH translate the Arabic "mesupachos" vs. Al Harizi's "machlokess"? 
Even if he did, I think the context and any attempt at making sense out 
of the passages would render the thought as Al Harizi did--some of these 
laws were subject to machlokos and some were not.  I.e., the sages 
deriving laws through the 13 middos were sometimes unanimous in their 
conclusions and sometimes disagreed (yeish ba-hem machlokess vs. ein 
ba-hem machlokess). In the time of Hillel and Shammai's talmidim, there 
was an explosion of such [unresolved] disagreements.)

Zvi Lampel