In the spirit of the recent Mi Yodeya discussion of the Rambam's view of magic, a question that has bothered me for some time:
The Rambam ostensibly doesn't accept that there is any reality to magic, everything is done through slight of hand and trickery, and the Torah's prohibition is against exactly that trickery. (See here for more on that.)
However, in Yesodei HaTorah 8:1 the Rambam writes that Moshe would not have been relied upon absolutely due to any of the wonders he performed, because they could have been done through magic:
משה רבינו לא האמינו בו ישראל מפני האותות שעשה. שהמאמין על פי האותות יש בלבו דופי שאפשר שיעשה האות בלט וכשוף.
The Jewish people did not believe in Moshe Rabbeinu as a result of the wonders that he performed, for one who believes according to wonders always has some doubt in his heart, maybe it was done through magic.
The Rambam then procedes to give examples of some of those miracles which were not done to produce belief. All the examples seem difficult to pull off as a slight-of-hand trick, but here's just one:
היה צריך להשקיע את המצריים קרע את הים והצלילן בתוכו
He needed to drown the Egyptians, so he split the sea and sunk them in it
If magic is fake, how could these things have possibly been performed through "magic"?
No comments:
Post a Comment