[Avodah] Truth and the Rambam

[Zvi Lampel]

  RDR:
>> ...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.
RDR: 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.  ...

RZL: ...[Again, the Rambam writes] 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.
>> RDR: (...)
> [In the hakdama to PhM t]he Rambam was making a necessary distinction 
> between classes of laws....  The first class can be resolved by a 
> person saying "I have a tradition", and the third class cannot.  The 
> first class consist of traditions, many of which, in addition, can be 
> deduced by MSNB.
>
> I suggest that the halachos of ObK were of this category, and the 
> deduction jogged people's memory.  Cf. Yadayim 4:3 "al tahushu 
> l'minyanchem" (there are several other sugyos where something like 
> this happens as well).
>
> David Riceman
I would love to say the Rambam held this way. It would mean that the 
majority of law-details we have are laws we received intact from Moshe 
Rabbeynu (the 13 middos only serving to show where they are indicated in 
Scripture), and only a minority  were actually generated by applying the 
interpretation rules. (And it would somewhat alleviate a problem: 
Whereas in the Sefer HaMItzvos he says that he wrote in the Haksama to 
PhM that Chazal were "motzi" "rov" halachos through the 13 rules of 
interpretation, I cannot find anywhere in that work where he actually 
says that, unless he holds it's implicit in the term he used there, 
referring to generated halachic details, as "anafim min anafim.")

However, even from the very beginning, Shoresh Shayni reads to me that 
the reverse is true: that  the pesukim-associated ("sheh-yismachu-hu") 
law-details that were mekuballim from Moshe were the exception that one 
finds in the Talmud (relatively) only "p'amim"--although of course they 
included all the ikkarim. First the Rambam writes they were "motzie 
(KPCH has "nilmadim") through the 13 rules "rov dinei haTorah," and 
there was sometimes machlokess over them, and then adds that there were 
also other dinim that were mekuballim that were (therefore) not subject 
to being contested. So the "rov" is going on the rule-generated dinim. 
And it continues to read that way to the end.

But even if I am mistaken, and by "rov dinei haTorah" the Rambam is 
referring to all inexplicit dinim--both mekuballim MiMoshe and 
generated--and I would have no proof that the rule-generated details 
outnumber the mekuballos dinim reinforced by the rules of 
interpretation--I still don't see any support for the reverse, that the 
Rambam "claims that few laws were deduced from them."

Where do you see that?

Zvi Lampel