Question

Recently I got into an argument about the nature of the thirteen hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded: were they also given at Sinai or not? I found your article on page 3 of the second root here.
And I had remembered that the thirteen principles too were fundamentally from Sinai and were transmitted together with the Written Torah. That would mean that even if the Jewish law derived from the thirteen principles does not have Torah-level force, that is because it is derived, or because it is subject to change and every religious court can analyze it according to its own understanding, etc. etc.
 
And I looked a bit at Maimonides’ wording in the introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah, and go and see whether this matter is as clear as daylight.
 
And I have several passages that seem worth examining. I should preface that Rabbi Kapach already commented on them in a number of places, but they still deserve further analysis.
I ask Your Honor to take a look at it.
 
And really, it is worth understanding what exactly the Arabic word al-qiyas or qiyas means, which he translated as hekesh; but sometimes it also includes an a fortiori inference. See the Ginzburg Jubilee Volume, from the introduction of Rabbi Saadia Gaon to his commentary on the Torah by A. S. Halkin, p. 132 n. 19 here. And see Maimonides’ responsa, Hevrat Mekitzei Nirdamim, vol. 1, responsum 122, near the end, on qiyas, and it is obvious that there he apparently means all thirteen principles here.
 
And perhaps among the Karaites as well, all thirteen principles are included under the term qiyas.
 
Let us move on to Rabbi Kapach and his teaching.
 
A. “And anything you find in Scripture from the words of the prophets that goes against one of the commandments—this principle is the key to all of them. And only in this is the prophet distinguished from other people with respect to the Torah. But in analysis, legal reasoning, and inquiry into the laws of the Torah, he is like the other sages similar to him who are not prophets.”
 
Note 27: “Al-qiyas” literally means comparison and analogy, and our Rabbi uses it for anything a person derives through analysis and reasoning, or what a person derives and learns through one of the principles by which the Torah is expounded; therefore I preferred to translate it as “legal reasoning.”
 
B. “Those elders transmitted what they had received to the prophets, peace be upon them, and the prophets transmitted it to one another. And there was no generation in which there were not matters of analysis and innovations. Each generation made the words of its predecessors into a foundation, and from them learned and innovated. And regarding the accepted foundations there was no dispute. And so matters continued until the Men of the Great Assembly.”
 
Note 37: “‘And the foundations’ can be translated this way, and the meaning is the interpretations and laws that they received directly from Moses and upon which they built all the innovations in all their branches. And it can also be translated as ‘the accepted principles,’ meaning the principles by which the Torah is expounded, through which the entire structure was built. But the first seems more likely to me.”
 
C. “And when he gathered all the reasonings and traditions, he began composing the Mishnah, which includes an explanation of all the commandments written in the Torah—some of them traditions received from Moses, peace be upon him, and some of them conclusions that they learned by legal reasoning, in which there is no dispute.”
 
Note 47 refers to note 27.
 
D. “But although they are received traditions and there is no dispute about them, nevertheless from the precise wording of the Scripture given to us it is possible to learn these interpretations through methods of legal reasoning, supporting texts, hints, and indications found in Scripture.”
 
Note 57: To reason by means of the principles by which the Torah is expounded—and that is indeed our Rabbi’s intent in the word qiyas everywhere.
 
E. “The first part: the interpretations received from Moses that have a hint in the text or can be learned through one of the principles—and in this there is no dispute at all; rather, whenever a person says, ‘I received such-and-such,’ all argument ceases.”
 
After all this, I am very doubtful whether according to Maimonides the thirteen rules were not transmitted to Moses at Sinai. On the contrary, from the precision of his language it appears that even the principles, insofar as there is no dispute about them, were transmitted from Sinai, and from them they learned how to derive matters. And in note 37, the latter explanation seems more likely to me.
 
Give to a wise man and he will become wiser still.
 
I hope to hear your opinion on these matters.