Sanhedrin 138

10:

Many modern scholars (and not so modern ones too) have tried to guess why Rambam saw fit to broach this subject at all in his Mishnah Commentary. It is clear from his treatment that he is attempting to make rabbinic and Aristotelian concepts harmonize: he describes whatever remains of the human psyche after physical death as "discrete intelligences". The best guess is that in his Mishnah Commentary he was not trying to write an in-depth analysis of the position that he is espousing, but rather that he was attempting to "make the Jewish world a safe place for philosophers to live in", by indicating that there was room for maneuver. One thing is certain: he had every intention of denigrating the accepted conceptualization of resurrection. A couple of pages earlier in the excursus we have been discussing, he had written that there were people that

It is in this same excursus that Rambam expounds his Thirteen Basic Principles – what he considers the essential philosophic bases of Judaism. (These principles are better known in two other formats: one prose and the other verse. The prose version starts off each principle with the formula "I believe with perfect faith…": Rambam would have been horrified. The verse (or worse?) form is the hymn known as Yigdal. Obviously Rambam himself is not responsible for either of the two later formats.) The last of his Thirteen Principles is entitled "Resurrection", and his expounding thereof is limited to one pithy phrase: "I have already explained all this"! No doubt this is the reason why he was accused in his own lifetime of entertaining the heretical belief that there would not be a physical resurrection of the dead. He got so much flack that he had to write another work, Ma'amar Teĥiyyat ha-Metim [An Essay on Resurrection] in which he claims that he was misunderstood and grossly calumniated! He states quite categorically that "resurrection of the dead is an essential part of Jewish theology and that he who does not accept it is not part of Israel". He then manages to set up such a thick screen of verbiage concerning his own position that more heat is generated than light. However, his conceptualizations are obvious to those who wish to understand them.

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Thus it is that Judaism seems to have stated "absolutely categorically" that teĥiyyat ha-metim is so important a credal element that it must be hammered home in the second berakhah of the Amidah, for example, so that no one can claim that they do not accept the idea. Obviously, the categorical statement of our present mishnah that "one who says that the resurrection of the dead is not from the Torah" has no share in the next world is another example of hammering home this quasi-credal element. However, no one seems to be able to agree with anyone else as what is the precise meaning of that which has been "categorically stated" – except the absolute certainty that the other person's view must, of course, be heretical! Thus, in fact, in Judaism we seem to have found legitimate room for Resurrection, Afterlife, Transmigration of souls and so forth. What can be stated positively is that Rabbinic Judaism teaches that physical death does not entail spiritual extinction as well.

To be continued:

For the last time we return to the hapless prophet who was devoured by a lion. After presenting for you the view of Yitzchok Zlochower, I wrote I ask parenthetically why Yitzchok assumes that the second prophet was a false prophet. He responds:

You asked for proof that the second prophet spoke falsely to the prophet who came from Judea. Kings I 13:18 relating the words of the second prophet remarks kiĥesh lo, which seems to mean "lied to him".

Repentant, I add that Yitzchok's reading is also that of our sources that commented on the verse Yitchok quotes: Targum Yonatan, Radak, Ralbag, Metzudat David, and Malbim.

Albert Ringer also has doubts:

As an extra aspect in the discussion on the prophet and the lion, I wonder how Jonah would fit in with Ed Frankel's interpretation.

This item is now closed.

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On a different issue: we learned in Mishnah 4 of the previous chapter [ Sanhedrin 131] that a recalcitrant sage must be taken up to the supreme court in Jerusalem [where] he is kept until the [next] festival and executed during the festival.

I was quite certain that someone would raise the following question – and Juan-Carlos Kiel did not "disappoint" me! He writes:

This is roughly what the Evangelist describes about Jesus. Could it be he was executed as an "unrepentant" sage?

I respond:

I think not. The Christian scriptures make it absolutely clear that Jesus was executed by the Romans and not by the Sanhedrin. On the contrary, a few weeks later, when Jesus' students began to propagate their teachings in Jerusalem, they were arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin. The president, Rabban Gamli'el, recommended their release and his recommendation was accepted [Acts 5:33-40].

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Adam Porter raises what seem to me to be two very important issues:

Sanhedrin 136 raised two questions in my mind that I hope you can clarify:

1) You note that scholars have argued that a theological innovation seems to have occurred before the Maccabean revolt: people observed that the "retribution theology" (bad people will suffer ill and good people will be blessed) does not always take place. So they moved the "reward and punishment" into the "world to come." This explanation, although it fits the data, has always struck me as rather weak: surely people noticed there were Jobs, who suffered without obvious sin, long before the Hellenistic or Persian periods! Perhaps this it is impossible for a modern to see the world through the eyes of the Deuteronomistic historian, but the idea that bad people are punished but good are blessed seems hopelessly naive and simplistic; it is almost impossible for me to believe that people would ever have believed this. What other explanations do you think are possible?

I respond:

The Biblical record shows dynamics in the philosophical issue that Adam has raised. It is generally accepted that when Israel's economy was agricultural and the concomitant social structure was tribal that the predominant philosophy was that there was no individual reward and punishment, but that what happens to an individual may well be the result of association: a son may pay for the misdeeds of his father, a tribe may suffer for the misdeeds of one of its members and one generation may pay the price for the activities of a previous generation. Conversely, of course, I might be rewarded for someone else's good deeds even though I myself am undeserving. One of the clearest statements if this philosophy is to be found in the Ten Commandments [Exodus 20:5-6] where God warns that He is "a jealous God, requiting the sins of the fathers upon the sons even to the third or fourth generation … and repaying with kindness even to the thousandth generation…"

Two phenomena contributed to the growth of a different philosophy, that of personal responsibility. Urbanization and the gradual breakdown of the tribal system was one contributing factor and the destruction of the Judean state and the exile to Babylon was the other. Thus we find the prophet Ezekiel [18:1-4] roundly remonstrating with his exiled contemporaries, who explained their plight as having been caused by the previous generation:

I run the risk of making this Shiur overly long, so let me say just this. It is obviously the later philosophy that, when taken literally, does not agree with the observed facts of life. I believe that since Freud we can accept with greater equanimity the idea of "collective responsibility" in which "everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault". We need to develop a new philosophy that is an amalgam of the two: what happens to us is often caused by circumstances beyond our control, but this fact of life does not remove from us the moral responsibility for our own actions – it just makes it more difficult.

Adam's second point:

2) You note that Daniel has perhaps the only reference to resurrection in the Biblical canon, but that it is a very late pseudegraphic text. You seem perfectly comfortable using historical explanations to understand the Tanakh (noting that the Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed on resurrection, so it was a "late" theological concept), but this is not the way early Rabbis would have understood these texts is it? They would have thought Daniel dated to the Persian period and perhaps not seen "resurrection" as a relatively late development. My question: when it is kosher to explain things "historically" rather than "Biblically"? Does knowing the historical setting change the way we interpret the texts or affect halakhah? Or is it "interesting but irrelevant" in deciding proper conduct?

I respond:

Conservative Judaism developed from the teachings of Zechariah Frankel [Germany, 1801-1875] who founded the Positive-Historical approach to Judaism. "Positive" meant a positive attitude towards observance; "Historical" meant a critical attitude towards texts. Our approach is an amalgam of both. We do not revamp an observance or a philosophy unless it is obvious to our critical apparatus (which is God-given) that something does not fit the facts. This approach is by no means either modern or heretical. In the greatest work on Jewish philosophy ever written, A Guide for the Confused [Moreh Nevukhim] Rambam was faced with a contradiction between his religious beliefs and the views of his scientific mentor, Aristotle: Aristotle taught that matter was eternal, the Torah teaches that everything was created. In Part Two, Chapter 25, Rambam boldly states that the reason he does not accept Aristotle's view is because it was only an unproven theory, not an observed fact. Thus it is easy for him to accept the teaching of the Torah on this matter. However, he adds, if Aristotle's teaching were a proven law then we would have to interpret the Torah text according to the best human knowledge – and "the gates of interpretation are not closed" to us

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Both of these responses are admittedly insufficient answers to Adam's questions, but there is a limit that I must set to the length of these Shiurim!