Question: Remember the thing about the earth being created from snow? Fasten your seatbelt: Iyyov 37:6. (The Book of Job)
I just found it brought as a proof in the Midrash Rut from the Zohar Chadash 93:a. If the Rambam accepted the tradition that Iyyov was written by Moshe then it’s a pretty, uh, shtarke qasha. Moshe is as authoritative as it’s possible to get on the question.
My Answer: That midrash refers to the Big Bang. Not the actual earth. The idea is that snow contains structure a hexagon that you do not see in water or other things. That is why snow is used as the analogy. In Greek thought before R Eliezer there was an argument of what the world is made of. Water or fire etc or all four. So R Eliezer did not want to say all four but not one or the other either. Rather he found snow as being some combination of Solid Liquid Gas and Energy in a way that combined all four but in some way that was not any of the four.
I just found it brought as a proof in the Midrash Rut from the Zohar Chadash 93:a. If the Rambam accepted the tradition that Iyyov was written by Moshe then it’s a pretty, uh, shtarke qasha. Moshe is as authoritative as it’s possible to get on the question.
My Answer: That midrash refers to the Big Bang. Not the actual earth. The idea is that snow contains structure a hexagon that you do not see in water or other things. That is why snow is used as the analogy. In Greek thought before R Eliezer there was an argument of what the world is made of. Water or fire etc or all four. So R Eliezer did not want to say all four but not one or the other either. Rather he found snow as being some combination of Solid Liquid Gas and Energy in a way that combined all four but in some way that was not any of the four.
But I imagine you are referring to the fact that the Rambam thought that Midrash is ridiculous. The Rambam can be wrong as I might have mentioned before. For some reason the great sages like Rav Shach and others made it an important part of learning to answer questions in the Rambam--and that is a worthy cause. Still with all that we see Rav Nahman ignored him in his list of things that one ought to learn every day.
I was impressed with Tosphot when i first got to Far Rockaway and later learning sessions simply reinforced that impression. Still the Rambam is a worthy Rishon but not one to put above any of the other great rishonim.
On the other hand the idea of the Rambam of a synthesis between Reason and Faith is a worthy idea and found in other Rishonim and Geonim.
Pirkei Avot --I forget where is one place where the Rambam misunderstood the meaning of an Aramaic word. The commentaries over there mention this and they are right. Another place I mentioned is the Spheres and the Rings. The whole reason the Rings were introduced was because the Spheres did not explain the fact that Venus gets darker and lighter. So just in the course of one generation after Plato then spheres were abandoned and the Rings put in there place. yet the Rambam says the reason the Rings were introduced was because of the darkening and lightening of Venus.
I might add that the way of the Litvak yeshivas since Rav Haim of Brisk is great on the side that they dig in to find some way of reconciling the Rambam with the Talmud which is usually hard if not impossible. Yet they all do an amazing job. Rav Shach, Rav Haim, my own teachers at the Mir Rav Shmuel Berenbaum etc. Yet too much in Tosphot is forgotten about. people get to the point of almost just skimming over Tosphot without getting the ideas except for how the conclusion may of may not disagree with the Rambam. They ignore the whole reasoning.
I was impressed with Tosphot when i first got to Far Rockaway and later learning sessions simply reinforced that impression. Still the Rambam is a worthy Rishon but not one to put above any of the other great rishonim.
On the other hand the idea of the Rambam of a synthesis between Reason and Faith is a worthy idea and found in other Rishonim and Geonim.
Pirkei Avot --I forget where is one place where the Rambam misunderstood the meaning of an Aramaic word. The commentaries over there mention this and they are right. Another place I mentioned is the Spheres and the Rings. The whole reason the Rings were introduced was because the Spheres did not explain the fact that Venus gets darker and lighter. So just in the course of one generation after Plato then spheres were abandoned and the Rings put in there place. yet the Rambam says the reason the Rings were introduced was because of the darkening and lightening of Venus.
I might add that the way of the Litvak yeshivas since Rav Haim of Brisk is great on the side that they dig in to find some way of reconciling the Rambam with the Talmud which is usually hard if not impossible. Yet they all do an amazing job. Rav Shach, Rav Haim, my own teachers at the Mir Rav Shmuel Berenbaum etc. Yet too much in Tosphot is forgotten about. people get to the point of almost just skimming over Tosphot without getting the ideas except for how the conclusion may of may not disagree with the Rambam. They ignore the whole reasoning.
