[Avodah] Why Lie When Truth Can Also Achieve Peace

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2013 at 04:45:50PM +0100, Arie Folger wrote:
: So you claim that ruach hakodesh is a kind of X ray vision...

Ruach hakodesh is apparently a minor form of nevu'ah. Different
in quantity and not (as Zev has been insisting) different in
kind. See the Moreh 3:45 - "kisharon hanevu'ah bimqoro, qodesh shehu
mespaseiach bimlo'o, harei hu ruach haqodesh". On the other side of the
scholastic-vs-mequbal aisle, it is implied by the Ramban on BB 12a, where
he uses "ruach haqodesh" for what the gemara calls the nevu'ah held by
chakhamim since AKhG. The Kuzari 6:12 discusses this at length. Later in
history, the Seifer (6:10 in some translations, because 6:11 was the king
saying "go on" or some-such, and was lost, so the division is up to the
translator.) As open-n-shut as the Rambam -- ruach haqodesh is a partial
attainment of nevu'ah by a soul not ready for the full thing.



As I already noted, there is a machloqes between R' Saadai Gaon and
the Rambam on one side and most other rishonim on the other about the
3 mal'akhim who visited Avraham avinu which the Abarbanel relates to
a parallel machloqes about the Man in the Throne at Har Sinai (and
presumably also in the Merqavah). According to his explanation of that
machloqes:

Rambam, RSG: nevu'ah is a kind of "X ray vision" (as RAF put it).

Rov Rishonim: nevu'ah is the reception of a message from HQBH, which
the mind in the usual state of prophetic awareness naturally envelops
in metaphor.

Applying this machloqes to RhQ as "mini nevu'ah"...

According to this majority opinion, would mean being granted information,
and thus also that one doesn't necessarily know everything relevant
to them.

According to the Rambam, then, nevu'ah is seeing more of reality than
the empirical layer, and ruach haqodesh would be a lesser version of
the same. So yes, "x ray glasses" but only because nevu'ah is too.

Still, this would not guarantee that by default someone with ruach
haqodesh knows everything relevent with only exceptional things being
withheld by HQBH. In a universe run through hester panim, it seems quite
plausible that He may be concealing most things.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When we are no longer able to change a situation
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