maimonides-and-many-rabbinici-heresies.html

It is worthwhile revisiting these claims of Maimonides, or Rambam, as it is highly illogical.

So here are some of his calls of heresy:

Hilchot Teshuva Ch. 3

Halacha 6

The following individuals do not have a portion in the world to come. Rather, their [souls] are cut off and they are judged for their great wickedness and sins, forever:

the Minim,

the Epicursim,

those who deny the Torah,

those who rebel [against God],

those who cause the many to sin,

those who proudly commit sins in public as Jehoyakim did,

those who betray Jews to gentile authorities,

those who cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God,

murderers

Let us analyse the selected claims above (some have been omitted).

Those who deny the Torah: Since the Torah in Deut 4, and Deut 13 forbids adding, then the entire rabbinic enterprise of adding laws, i.e. the Talmud, Rambam, shulchan Aruch etc are all denying this prohibition of the Torah. Dr Maimonides, that is an own-goal.

Those who rebel against God: The Temple purity and sacrificial system was entirely uprooted and perverted by the Pharisees. This was the case with the Spices, the Red heifer and impurity of the dead, Tail fat, water Libation and every other dispute with the Priestly administrators of the house of Zadok. It was also later written in the oral law (kind of ironic) that the Priests must wear Shaatnez. And other temple practices were abolished by the Rabbis, notably Yochanan ben Zakkai. Hence, the rebellion against God and torah was part and parcel of the oral law, which Maimonides perpetuates.

Those who cause the many to sin – the creation of new laws, and imposing these on people, is making the people complicit in the sin of adding to the Torah.

Those who proudly commit sins in public as Jehoyakim did. This was done by the Rabbis in their defiling the Temple with impurity of the dead; attack on the High Priest who refused to commit the trespass of the water offering in the Temple, and who was almost murdered by the attack of the etrog. Ben Zakkai was behind this as well.

those who betray Jews to gentile authorities – this is what the Pharisees did in their war against Alexander Janneus, when they sided with Demetrius, and connived to kill Israelites. Also, Ben Zakkai, the leader of the Pharisee sect, according to the Talmud, had the opportunity to negotiate the survival of the Temple and Jerusalem with the Romans, but he instead asked them to set up a new Rabbinic colony in Yavne, and by implication, to continue with the destruction of the Temple.

Those who cast fear upon the people for reasons other than the service of God – this is very interesting. The rabbinic oral law, and its threats upon Israel, ie non –acceptance of rabbinic law will lead to death is precisely such a form of terror.

Deut Ch 30 makes the following statement regarding the Written Torah:

9 And the LORD thy God will make thee over-abundant in all the work of thy hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good; for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as He rejoiced over thy fathers;

10 if thou shalt hearken to the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law; if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.

This quite clearly sets out the parameters for Torah observance, namely to keep what is clearly written down in the Torah. It also negates the Oral law, since we are only enjoined to keep what God commanded, and this is all in the Written Law. Thus Rambam, and his rabbinic colleagues are violating the Torah, and are also imposing fear upon the people for reasons of their own personal and political interests, and not to do with God in any way.

Finally: murderers – see the points regarding Ben Zakkai.

In Halacha 8, Maimonides makes some further claims:

“There are three individuals who are considered as one "who denies the Torah":

a) one who says Torah, even one verse or one word, is not from God. If he says: "Moses made these statements independently," he is denying the Torah.
b) one who denies the Torah's interpretation, the oral law, or disputes [the authority of] its spokesmen as did Tzadok and Beitus.
c) one who says that though the Torah came from God, the Creator has replaced one mitzvah with another one and nullified the original Torah, like the Arabs [and the Christians].”

These claims must be investigated logically.

a) What the rabbis actually do is very similar to the deniers of Torah. When they change the meaning of verses, so as to differentiate from the established Priesthood, this makes them deniers of the Torah. This was the case, for example, on the impurity of the Red heifer preparation. The Torah says that the person processing these ashes is unclean until evening. The rabbis changed this to make the clean in the daytime, by dipping in a mikveh. This is tantamount to denying the Torah.

b) The only people who claim that the Oral Law is the correct interpretation are the rabbis. Rambam offers no proof of the alleged divine origin of the oral law. As pointed out above, Deut 30 rejects any extra-scriptural law, as do Ch 4 and 13. Thus Rambam is making a circular argument here. Furthermore, the spokesmen in the Torah are the Prophets and the Kohanim, and it was the Pharisees who rejected both of these, especially in their violent assault upon the Kohanim in the 2^nd temple period.

c) This applies to the Talmud, just as it does to the Koran or NT. Furthermore, in the Mishnah Sotah, the terrorist rabbi Yochanan b. Zakkai abolished several laws of the Torah, as part of his campaign to exterminate the Priesthood. This included the Sotah ceremony, and the Eglah Arufah, as well as the levitical ceremony - see: http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/more-orthodox-reform-after-kohanim-were.html

And http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/destruction-of-levites-rationale-of.html

The Rambam might not be completely consistent between logic and his halachic rulings.

Only Torah - A Karaite Revival

Tuesday 14 October 2014

The Rambam’s Circular Argument