Q&A: On Prophecy
On Prophecy
Question
Hello,
After reading the fifth booklet, a question came up.
I assume the Rabbi agrees with the idea that in the end, a person is obligated only by the conclusions he himself arrives at. If Reuven reached the conclusion that a certain act is immoral, then Reuven is obligated by that, but Shimon, who thought honestly and came to a different conclusion, is not obligated by Reuven’s conclusion. Why don’t we say the same about prophecy / revelation: Reuven had a revelation, so Reuven is obligated by that revelation, but what does that have to do with me? Reuven experienced some sort of revelatory experience and has complete certainty about it, good for him. I didn’t experience it; I don’t even really understand what he is talking about. Why should that obligate me?
Add to that the fact that I have no real way to examine the nature and reliability of the experience, both because the prophet is not before us, and because even if he were before us, we do not have the tools to investigate this experience, since we are completely unfamiliar with it. Maybe it was just a hallucination or a dream? Maybe he is not interpreting the experience correctly?
Thank you very much
Answer
Clearly, what obligates you is only what you are convinced of. So now you have to decide whether the revelation your friend experienced convinces you or not. It is like people giving testimony before a religious court, and the court has to decide whether the testimony is reliable or not, and only then accept it. That is because they themselves did not see it. There is no difference between testimony and a mystical experience or revelation.
The bottom-line question is what your attitude toward prophecy is. Do you believe that the prophet received a message or not? The Torah says that there is prophecy, and by doing so it allows us not to dismiss such prophets who report messages out of hand. After all, the Torah said in advance that there would be such people. But even so, one must still examine whether the person standing before me is a true prophet or a charlatan, and that is why the “tests of reliability” for a prophet exist, which Maimonides discusses at such length.
By the way, already in the Talmud itself (and in Tosafot on Sanhedrin there) they discuss a false prophet or one who suppresses his prophecy, and how he is flogged. Who knows that he received a message, and who warned him? The answer is that his fellow prophets warn him. So you see that the other prophets serve as a kind of check on the various prophecies.
Discussion on Answer
I do not see any importance in that distinction. Bottom line, this is a matter of impression, just as you form an impression of any person who tells you something (answers what time it is or how to get somewhere), including witnesses. If it seems reliable to you, you accept it; if not, you do not. I discussed this at length in my book Truth and Stability.
1. How do I know it is not hallucinations? A person who hallucinates also sees and hears things and is convinced of their truth.
2. I am surprised that the Rabbi does not see the importance of the difference. If a witness came to the Rabbi’s court—let us say theoretically, for the sake of the example, that we have no suspicion he is lying; we know with certainty that he is an honest person—and he says, “Reuven murdered Shimon,” and before the Rabbi can ask him for details about the case, the witness has a heart attack and dies. Would the Rabbi accept that testimony? (Let us take the halakhic rules out of the equation, just according to common sense.)
3. There is a difference between asking to know a simple fact, like what time it is, where the chances of error are low, and asking to know a fact that is less simple to verify—for example, a complex scientific observation, where I know there is a significant possibility of error. How much would the Rabbi rely, even on the most trustworthy person in the world, on such a scientific observation that was made only once? I am sure that in general the Rabbi believes in scientific observations, but I doubt the Rabbi would believe a single observation made about a complex matter in which one can make mistakes. The same applies to revelation. Let us say that I believe in general that there is such a thing, but the revelation in which the Torah was given happened only once, to only one person (even if initially there was a mass revelation, the revelation in which the Torah was given was only to Moses). And the Torah is an extremely complex matter in which one can make hundreds of mistakes.
We are repeating ourselves. The prophet comes against the background of the Torah’s statements that there will be prophets. If you believe in the Torah, that certainly strengthens your a priori trust in the prophet you encounter.
1. Form an impression and decide.
2. Maybe yes. It depends on my impression of him.
3. It does not matter at all. Whether it is a mistake or a lie, in both cases it depends on your impression. That is how you make decisions in every field, and here too.
Does “impression” = gut feeling?
You could call it that. Though that expression is somewhat reductive. But without it, you do not make any decision at all.
I think there is a big difference between testimony and prophecy. The condition for accepting testimony is a thorough examination of the witness. If a person comes to a religious court and declares, “Reuven murdered Shimon,” and then leaves without details and without questioning, the court would not relate to such testimony at all. Examining the witness is essential, and not only because of reliability. It is important for two reasons: A. To make sure the witness is honest and not a false witness. B. To know the details of the case precisely, down to the smallest detail. The second reason is important because it may be that the witness is interpreting what he saw incorrectly. He testifies that Reuven murdered Shimon, but when we question him about the details it turns out that he only saw Reuven holding a blood-covered knife while Shimon was lying beneath him lifeless, with no one else in the area. From the witness’s perspective it is absolutely clear that Reuven murdered Shimon, but in fact that is not reality—it is his interpretation of what he saw. It may be the opposite: perhaps Reuven was trying to save Shimon.
A person automatically gives an interpretation to the reality his eyes see. We, as a religious court, need to question him thoroughly and uncover from his words the precise reality, rather than accepting his interpretation as reality.
This is exactly what is missing for us in investigating prophecy. I compare prophecy to a sighted person and a blind person, similar to the Rabbi’s example in the booklet. The prophet is sighted in a world of people blind from birth. A religious court made up of people blind from birth cannot question a sighted witness, for the simple reason that they do not know at all what “seeing” is, and have no idea how such a thing is investigated. They will not be able to ask the witness the critical questions needed to discover whether this is reality or the witness’s mistaken interpretation of reality. Therefore they will not be able to draw any conclusion from such testimony. So too with prophecy: we have no way whatsoever to clarify the precise reality. We have no idea what happens in this experience called prophecy. When the prophet tells us that he saw something, he does not mean that he literally saw it; rather, that is simply the term we know, so he uses that term. It is like a sighted person in a world of blind people wanting to explain to them what a “beautiful flower” is, and saying that it is a “tasty flower,” because “beautiful” is a concept that does not exist in their world and “tasty” seems to him the closest explanation. Of course, he is misleading and confusing them—the blind people might even eat the flower. This example illustrates just how problematic our ability to investigate prophecy is.
In prophecy we have an additional problematic element. Many times the prophet does not tell us the reality he experienced at all, but rather the conclusion he draws from it. He is not making a factual claim but a normative claim (as the Rabbi used the term in our correspondence about obligation). Moses our Teacher says to the people of Israel, “One must keep the Sabbath.” That intensifies the problem in our ability to investigate prophecy. It may be that he is a true prophet and experienced a certain experience (which we do not understand), but the normative conclusion he draws from the experience is mistaken. And we have no ability to follow the whole process and investigate it.
In summary, if we compare prophecy to testimony, we need to investigate two things:
1. The reliability of the witness.
2. The reliability of the witness’s interpretation, namely whether it actually matches reality as it is.
And in addition, since testimony deals with facts, while in prophecy we also need to investigate:
3. The reliability of the normative conclusion.
As I understand it, maybe we have some ability to investigate item 1. But items 2 and 3 are things we have no tools at all to investigate, even if the prophet were here before us—how much more so when מדובר on an event from more than 3,000 years ago.
Much thanks for the time, patience, and effort!
All the best.