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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>From: "Michael Makovi" <mikewinddale@gmail.com><BR>>>Just
this past Yom Tov Pesach, I saw Marc Shapiro's book The Limits of<BR>Orthodox
Theology....he collects classical Torah opinions that controvert<BR>Rambam's
13....<BR><BR><BR>1) When Rambam says the Torah we have is the same as given by
Moshe,<BR>Rambam cannot possibly believe that this is literally
true....</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000
size=2>1a) Rather, then, Rambam is saying that no deliberate additions
were<BR>made after Moshe. However, while Rambam is saying that this is
the<BR>case, he cannot possibly be saying it is heretical to say
otherwise.<BR>.... Most importantly, the Gemara<BR>itself opines that
Yehoshua wrote the end of the Torah - surely Rambam<BR>cannot declare Chazal to
be heretics! So while Rambam says no<BR>post-Moshe additions were made, the
contrary opinion is not heresy....</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><BR>2) As an alternative to point 1 above: Rambam knew that there
were<BR>textual variants in our Torah scrolls, but he very well have
lied<BR>about this, and said that there were no variants... In fact, in his
Iggeret<BR>Teiman, Rambam makes exactly such an explicit lie. Back then,
the<BR>Muslims were accusing us of falsifying the Torah, and any admission
on<BR>our part would have harmed the faith of the ignorant.... <<</DIV>
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<DIV>>>>>><BR>Most of this has already been extensively discussed
on Avodah but I would like to say that I have always found these
endless navel-gazing discussions annoying and frustrating. "The Torah
we have is the same Torah that Hashem gave Moshe" does not mean and was
never intended to mean "and no human error has ever crept in even to a single
letter of the Torah." Nor could Rambam ever have intended
to mean, "And Chazal grossly erred when they said Yehoshua wrote the last few
verses describing Moshe's death." All this "how many angels on the head of
a pin" kind of discussion just seems so perverse and petty to me. Rambam
meant to answer the kind of people -- so similar to the Reform and Conservative
of our day -- who claim that the Torah was written by men over a period of
centuries, based on the myths and legends of surrounding cultures. </DIV>
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<DIV>"So while Rambam says no post-Moshe additions were made, the contrary
opinion is not heresy...." -- well, Rambam is NOT stating an opinion
as to whether the last few pesukim were written down by Moshe or by
Yehoshua. He IS stating that no post-Moshe laws and stories were added,
and if you say "The law against homosexual relations, and also the law
requiring the killing of Amalek, were later interpolations unknown to Moshe" --
then yes, you very much are a heretic. If it is your opinion that some of
the laws and stories in the Chumash were written centuries after Moshe
lived, then your opinion definitely is heresy. "The contrary opinion
is not heresy" -- I'm sorry, but the contrary opinion IS heresy. It IS
heresy to believe that all or part of the Torah was written by human beings
out of their own heads.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>BTW every one of the 13 Ikrim has been endlessly dissected here in
this same petty and perverse way. So, for example, "It is not proper to
pray to anyone other than Hashem" -- instead of its obvious meaning, "Don't pray
to Jesus, don't pray to false gods, don't pray to intermediaries" -- is
twisted and made to mean "Don't ask a malach for a bracha" and then if you do
sing "Sholom Aleichem," someone pops out from behind a tree and goes,
"Aha! So you don't accept the 13 Ikrim of the Rambam! Well
ha ha, NO ONE does!" Then singing Sholom Aleichem becomes tantamount to
being a Conservative rabbi and Yakov Avinu, who asked a malach for a bracha,
becomes the first Conservative rabbi, and all the Jews who have ever said to a
deceased relative, "Be a melitz yosher for us" set a precedent that you can
pretty well pray to anyone and anything you like -- Rambam's ikrim now
being proven to be mere tentative suggestions, binding on no one, since Judaism
has no set of beliefs whatsoever, QED. This whole line of reasoning is
incredibly distasteful, or should be, to a Torah Jew.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As for the suggestion that the Rambam "lied," I find this to be an example
of the unfortunate tendency to chutzpa and lese majeste to which impetuous youth
is sometimes prone. I haven't read Igeres Teiman all the way through but I
highly doubt that he actually said in there, "And in all the Torah scrolls that
have ever been written throughout history, no sofer has ever made a single
mistake in even a single letter." If, rather, he said, "The Torah we
have today is the same Torah that Hashem gave Moshe, and the Torah we have was
not written or rewritten or falsified by later writers" then he was indeed
stating something that all Torah-true Jews must believe, not only the
simple-minded. This BTW would be an argument against both Moslems and
Christians who have claimed that the Jews "know the truth" (that Mohammed really
is the true prophet, or that Jesus really is the Messiah) but being the perverse
and evil dogs they are, the Jews have deliberately changed their own holy
scriptures to obfuscate the "truth." It was against such falsehood that
the Rambam inveighed. To call the Rambam himself a liar is the height of
arrogance.</FONT></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10"><B><BR></B><BR><B>--Toby
Katz<BR>=============<BR></B><BR></FONT></DIV></FONT><BR><BR><BR><DIV><FONT style="color: black; font: normal 10pt ARIAL, SAN-SERIF;"><HR style="MARGIN-TOP: 10px">Need a new ride? Check out the largest site for U.S. used car listings at <A title="http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851" href="http://autos.aol.com/used?NCID=aolcmp00300000002851" target="_blank">AOL Autos</A>.</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>