Prophecy The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy
More than any other topic, prophecy represents the point at which the Divine meets the human, the Absolute meets the relative. How can a human being attain the Word of God? In what manner does God, when conceived as eternal and transcendent, address corpo
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"Truth even unto its innermost parts", reads the motto of Brandeis University, my alma mater. It is a lofty human aspiration, one bordering on hubris (or husp ah. if you prefer). It is also a questionable one. Does Truth have parts? Is it not indivisible, necessarily existing as a whole if it is to exist at all? Does not the division of Truth into components generate its antithesis? Are not the most pernicious lies those "parts" of Truth separated from their context, their place in the totality? Is not Truth the unity underlying all its apparent "parts". Perhaps it is far better to speak of different perspectives for viewing Truth . "The Torah has 70 faces", noted the Sages.' They viewed the Torah as Truth. "70" represents the number of nations of the world. Every group, indeed every individual, apprehends the Truth in a different manner. The Sages certainly were not "relativists". They did not regard Truth, the Word of God, as a creation of the human mind. Nonetheless, they understood that people see Truth differently for it flashes its light upon them in diverse ways. Truth may be absolute in the divine realm. In the human realm it is the point at which the absolute meets the subjective, the "face" that the beholder sees. The beholder still must open wide one's eyes to see it. Otherwise, one sees only one's own imaginings. Even if we grant that Truth has parts, have we in the academic world set our sights on those that lie in its "innermost" recesses? All academic disciplines at best seek to bring to light the "innermost" recesses of those "parts" that they study. As a scholar in the field of Jewish thought, I, like many of my colleagues, have come to reject looking for the timeless, absolute truths in the texts I study; this despite the fact that the authors of these texts often sought to convey precisely such truths. As a scholar I have abandoned any claim to catching even a glimpse
Bamidbar Rabbah 13.15; cf. Abraham Ibn Ezra, Commentary on Numbers 10:28.
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H. Kreisel, Prophecy © Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001
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INTRODUCTION
of the divine perspective for viewing Truth. For the most part, I have set my sights on a historically accurate understanding of the teachings contained in these texts, not the truth of these teachings. Whether God is corporeal or incorporeal, has attributes or not, is identical to the world or completely transcendent, or exists at all, is not my concern as a scholar, no matter how much I may otherwise be preoccupied with these problems in my life. I may continuously grapple with the issue of human perfection, but I do not regard my task as a scholar to decide what is the true view on this subject or if there is one. A faithful depiction of how different thinkers approached these issues, among many others, the numerous considerations and wide range of influences that led them to adopt the positions that they did, the use they made of the sources at their disposal in developing their thought and how their teachings in turn influenced subsequent thinkers - this is my goal. I may look
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