Q&A: A medieval authority who says extreme statements are just aggadah and not literal
A medieval authority who says extreme statements are just aggadah and not literal
Question
Hello Rabbi. I seem to remember that there is a medieval authority — I’m pretty sure it’s Rashba — who says that when the Sages make an extreme statement (say, something like “Anyone who … has no share in the World to Come”), then it’s really just aggadah and shouldn’t be understood literally (it’s hyperbole meant to emphasize the message). I tried searching online and asking a few rabbis, but I haven’t found an answer about where this is actually written. Most likely he writes it in his novellae on the Talmud, on some saying that sounds extreme.
Do you know of such a statement by Rashba? Or by another medieval authority? Could you help me look? Do you know whom I could ask? Thank you very much.
Answer
I don’t remember. The Talmud itself says that there are cases in which the Sages spoke in exaggerated language.
Discussion on Answer
And that is also Maharsha’s approach to the aggadot about Rabbah bar bar Hannah [for example, Bava Batra 73–74].
Apparently you mean Rivash, responsa no. 171.
That doesn’t state any such general rule. What it says there is something like what I wrote above here: that sometimes the Sages use overstatement in order to deter people from committing transgressions. There is no rule there that every extreme statement is non-literal.
And this is Rivash’s language there:
“And as for what you said, that the Geonim and Rashba of blessed memory wrote that one who violates bans and oaths falls under the verse ‘He will not clear,’ and is like one who worships idolatry, for regarding it Scripture says, ‘And let nothing of the ban cling to your hand’ — if they spoke emphatically to magnify the severity of that sin, as our Sages did when they said (Shevuot 39) that regarding all transgressions in the Torah it says ‘and He will clear,’ whereas here it says ‘He will not clear,’ and likewise that punishment is exacted from him and from the whole world — they did not say about it that one must be killed rather than transgress, as with those three transgressions, and no person ever entertained such a thought. Rather, it is the way of the Sages to speak in amplified terms about the gravity of sins so that a person should guard himself from stumbling in them. They said in the chapter Yesh Be’arakhin (15b): ‘Anyone who speaks slander magnifies sins corresponding to the three transgressions — idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed,’ etc. And likewise in tractate Nedarim (40), Rabbi Akiva went out and taught: ‘Anyone who does not visit the sick is considered as though he sheds blood.’ And in the chapter Rabbi Eliezer of weaving (105a) they said: ‘One who tears his garments in his anger … should be in your eyes like one who worships idolatry.’ Would anyone say regarding these and the like that one must be killed rather than transgress? That cannot be said.”
In the name of Rabbi Samuel ben Hofni Gaon, based on Radak on I Samuel 28:24, it is brought as follows there:
“… This is the explanation of our teacher Rabbi Samuel ben Hofni, of blessed memory, the Gaon. And he said: even though the plain sense of the words of our Sages of blessed memory in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 65b) is that the matter was indeed true, that the woman raised Samuel, those words should not be accepted in a case where they are contradicted by reason …”
However, one can discuss whether this approach can also be extended to extreme statements brought in the Talmud.
See Radak on I Samuel, verse 25 [regarding the raising of Samuel through necromancy by the witch of En-dor], in the name of Rabbi Samuel ben Hofni Gaon.