Q&A: Determining Authority by the Authoritative Institution, and the Hermeneutical Rules
Determining Authority by the Authoritative Institution, and the Hermeneutical Rules
Question
Hello Rabbi, how are you?
I am currently in the final stages of writing an article establishing the authority of the Oral Torah. The article is based, among other things, on arguments you wrote on your site (in our long discussions from last year).
1) You once wrote to me that every authoritative body determines its own powers, and therefore it is reasonable that the Sanhedrin, too, would determine its own powers.
Could the Rabbi explain where such a thing happens, that a body determines its own authority? What is the “philosophical” justification for that? Perhaps you could point me to materials that explain the justification for it?
2) Regarding the hermeneutical rules and your extensive work on them: have you made progress in this research, such that in your view deriving Jewish laws through these rules is logical and plausible? Or has the research found that, given those same rules, there is logic in the branching developments of the rules (types of gezerah shavah and the like), but that the rules themselves have no justification?
Unfortunately, I do not have the time available to delve into the books A Good Measure, and I do not have access to Talmudic Logic.
Does the Rabbi hold that the assumption is that the Giver of the Torah embedded within a text that appears entirely literary and flexible such precision that these or those hermeneutical rules can really arrive at the Jewish laws He wanted to direct us toward? What is this assumption based on?
Best regards,
Answer
Hello,
1. The Knesset determines its own powers. The Supreme Court determines, to a certain extent, its own powers. In fact, every body that stands at the top of the pyramid determines its own powers, and the philosophical justification is that there is no one else who can do it. Even if you say that the citizens determine the powers of the Knesset, then the citizens are the institution that determines its own powers.
2. We have definitely made progress, and the impression is that the original basis was logical, and afterward it developed into more formal rules that moved away from the source. That is the way of every normative system.
It does not require very great precision. We are dealing with a kind of language, not an axiomatic system (in the mathematical sense). But it is hard to elaborate on this here.