[Avodah] What date was the Torah given?

Micha Berger micha at aishdas.org
Thu Jan 3 07:40:47 PST 2013


On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 01:05:43PM +0000, Akiva Miller wrote:
: I don't see any difference. Every machlokes of halachah is ultimately
: a machlokes of history as well. If it doesn't boil down to "What did
: they do?", then it is at least "What would they have done?" or "What
: could they have done?"

: RZL's chapter 4, from pages 65-82, is titled "The Rambam's Attack
: on Attributing Machlokess to Forgetfulness", and later, on 116-118...

The Rambam says that machloqes comes from using the halachic process to
build new din from existing dinim and pesuqim. In contrast, there is no
building of the past; it's discovered, not legislated.

But yes, it's related. Which is why I used wiggle-words, "not sure [RZL]
FULLY [emph added] addresses".

By the Rambam's shitah, any machloqes about the past means that people
are trying to deduce something never transmitted mesoretically. Since
nothing transmitted mesoretically is ever forgotten, leshitaso.


That said, RMBluke's question AIUI isn't about the date or even the
nature of the machloqes over the date. It's about explaining how we
could ever have gotten to the point of not just having one well known
date. Given that we're talking about the most momentous event in history,
how could we not have it burned into our communal memory?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             It is a glorious thing to be indifferent to
micha at aishdas.org        suffering, but only to one's own suffering.
http://www.aishdas.org                 -Robert Lynd, writer (1879-1949)
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