[Avodah] Historicity of Aggadta

H Lampel zvilampel at gmail.com
Wed Jan 3 21:20:19 PST 2018


> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2018 RSM wrote concerning my translation of a passage in Rambam's Hakdama to Perek Chelek:
>
> I don't know why he divides your and his translation into stanzas.The Rambam does not divide it in the original...
At first I was bewildered by this remark. How in the world does one see 
I divided the Rambam into stanzas?! Then I figured it out. Those slashes 
are not meant to mark stanzas. They are attempts to indicate italics. 
Not that I meant to convey that the Rambam wrote in italics, either, but 
to high-lite the words I wanted to focus on.

Regarding the argument RMB and I have concerning whether Chazal, when 
mentioning events, were interested in their historic veracity, or just 
the message they saw in the alleged events, RSM comments:
> ... If the arguments are about
> whether the Rambam is claiming that no aggadta is historically accurate,
> it is the flow of the arguments that answers that question conclusively,
Neither of us maintained such a thing.
> ...the context and the line of arguments of the Rambam makes it clear
> that anyone who takes aggadta just as historical fact ....
...an entirely different claim, and another one which neither of us 
maintained.
> ...is a fool because
> everything in Aggadta is meant to teach a lesson. I believe that the
> Rambam would say it is unimportant if it really happened, because Chazal
> are not interested in telling historical facts.
RSM and RMB share this belief, but it has no basis in the Rambam's words 
or context. (And the reasoning is circular. The reason RSM believes 
Rambam would say the veracity of a reported is unimportant is because 
Chazal are not interested. Well, that's begging the question! Who said 
Chazal were uninterested in the historical veracity of events they 
reported? Again, all agree that the purpose of reporting the event was 
to convey a lesson they teach. But that tells you /nothing/ about 
whether Chazal or Rambam were interested in whether the report is true.) 
So the rest of the remarks are really irrelevant.

> Chazal are not interested in teaching history.
>
> However, the Geonim had a tradition
Source?
> that some things that Chazal say are
> historical, and these are the things that the Rambam quotes, such as
> the story of Chanukka.
So Chazal were not interested in whether an event actually occurred, but 
the Geonim were, but the Rambam again was not? And from whom did the 
Geonim get the tradition telling them which events Chazal reported were 
historically true, if Chazal themselves were not interested in this matter?


>   He does not quote the allegories unless he is
> using them for his purposes.
He doesn't quote anything unless he is using it for his purposes.
> He also states things that he believes
> are historical, such as how AZ developed at the beginnings of Hilkhot
> AZ.
All the above about Chanuka and AZ sounds to me like special pleading.
And how do you know the Rambam meant each of these as history, or that 
he thought that this Midrash meant it as history?
On what basis did the Rambam decide that these reports were historical 
and not just to teach us lessons?
And why did it matter to him if the Midrash's report of the development 
of AZ was historically true? Let him just state the lesson it teaches, 
the halachos, and that no rationale permits praying to heavenly objects.
Why did it matter to him if the Chanuka neis actually occurred?Maybe 
Chazal were using metaphor to teach a lesson. Let him just tell us the 
halachos of lighting the licht, which symbolizes the lessons of the 
metaphor (or. as Josephus puts it, ''the freedom to worship had been 
concealed in darkness and is now brought to light.'')


What the Rambam says about the three kattim and Chazal's policy of using allegory tells us /nothing/ about whether Chazal or he considered it important that their reports of events were true. Unless one gets the impression that the Rambam held they did, based upon his praise of Chazal's integrity.

Me, I think that if the Rambam held that Chazal, in conveying lessons through reported plausible events, did so without regard to their truth, he would have said so. Because when a sage says something plausible happened (/especially/ if that alleged event teaches a lesson), a normal person thinks the sage means it really happened. And I think rightly so. And the Rambam's concern about whether an event was reported as a report of a dream, reinforces the notion that it mattered to him, and that he was not unconcerned about, whether it really took place (and conveyed the lesson it taught).



***

Some remarks on RSM's translation of the Arabic as it relates to the 
translations of the Hebrew offered by RMB and me of,

:      l'fi shedivrei hachachamim kulam /bedevarim ha-elyonim she-heim
:      hatachlis/ amnam heim chiddah umashal.

RSM's translation of the Arabic:

     "because what all the scholars (or: those with wisdom) say concerning
     these elevated (or: sublime) matters, which is the ultimate goal,
     is indeed metaphor and allegory."

RBM's take was:
:     "for/all the words of the sages/  are about lofty matters, which
:     form the ultimate concern, but they are [all expressed through] chiddah
:     and mashal."
  
My take was:
:     for the words of all the wise men//concerning the lofty matters, : which form the ultimate concern,/ /are truly [expressed in] chiddah
:     and mashal.

Upon which RBM asked: Hachakhamim kulam = all the wise men? Wouldn't that need a "kol", as in
"kol hachakhamim", or for emphasis, "kol hachakhamim kulam"?

But RSM too takes it as "all the scholars (or: those with wisdom)." Not that I wouldn't accept RMB's ''all the words of the sages." I can take it either way. Similar to ''eilu v'eilu divrei Elokim Hayyim hein'' (whoops, I just stumbled into another machlokess RMB and I engage in  perennially!...). Is it "the words of the living G-d," or "the living words of G-d"?


RMM also asked,
> And what do you do with the prepositional "be-" in "be'inyanim ha'elyonim"
if it isn't "kulam be'inyanim ha'elyanim" -- there is no noun afterward
either.

I had translated the ''be,'' which means ''in,'' as ''concerning," so that the clause reads not as RMB has it, ''"forall the words of the sages  are about lofty matters,'' but ''for the words of all the wise men concerning the lofty matters...'' RSM's take agrees with mine: ''because what all the scholars (or: those with wisdom) say concerning these elevated (or: sublime) matters...''

And thirdly, RMB critiqued my translation:

> And "amnam" is not "are truly" but "but they are".

Yet RSM too, translated it, "indeed."

(Before I wrote my original post, I checked out this amnam with /my/ Arabic go-to man, and he wrote:

The word amnam is a precise translation of the Arabic anma, and it carries
the ambiguity of “but” and “indeed,” but in this case, I think it means “but.”)

By the way, one can get to the Arabic and Hebrew on facing pages by going here:
https://he.wikisource.org/wiki/קובץ:Rambam-Helek-Holzer-HB33111.pdf


So again I maintain that the Rambam is telling us that Chazal presented only the inyanim elokiyyim/elyonim lessons in implausible reports. Less lofty, albeit valuable, lessons were taught in plain language, whose surface meanings of their statements were intended, but which perhaps additionally had some hidden meanings (of the non-lofty kind).

But he is not addressing here whether Chazal were concerned about the historical veracity of the reports upon which they built or illustrated their lessons.



Zvi Lampel


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