Yesterday’s Torah reading contained powerful prohibitions against occult beliefs and practices such as necromancy and divination. Rambam, who treats this subject in his Laws of Idolatry (10:8-9), explains this to include:
“A person who tries to predict auspicious times, using astrology and saying, "This day will be a good day," "This day will be a bad day,"… Anyone who performs a deed because of an astrological calculation or arranges his work or his journeys to fit a time that was suggested by the astrologers…”
Rambam’s teaching is most surprising in view of the fact that a number of Talmudic teachings explicitly draw upon astrological phenomena as providing legitimate basis for beliefs and actions.
For example we find on Shabbat 129b that:
Shmuel said: Bloodletting should be performed on a Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, but not on a Monday or Thursday. And why may bloodletting not be performed on a Tuesday? Because we know that Mars is dominant during the even hours.
Would Rambam therefore have considered Shmuel – and other Talmudic sages like him – to have been contravening biblical prohibitions by incorporating astrological assumptions into their thought systems and daily planning?
Applying Rambam’s principle to the long lists of peculiar medical advice which feature in the Gemara, it would seem that the effectiveness of these cures is of little consequence. What is crucial is that they were believed to have natural healing ability and were therefore, at least during the era of the compilation of the Gemara, not subsumed within the ambit of 'darkei Emori’.
Rambam understood that, since the laws of the natural world are a product of divine wisdom, they therefore represent an important means for acquiring awe, love and knowledge of God. We are to apply our God-given intellect, to the best of our ability, in order to appreciate the Creator’s wisdom within our world. When it comes to magic and the darker arts, by contrast, "these things corrupt all paths of truth" since such trickery and fabrication corrupt man's understanding of God's world, leading him away from attaining knowledge of God.
Any practice which appears to be effective, however, should be considered to be a reflection of God's wisdom in creating the world. If magical rites actually worked, the Torah would have had no cause to prohibit them. The problem, according to Rambam, with these imagined products of trickery lies primarily in the claim that they involve the use of powers which lie above God's natural laws, therefore wielding the ability to control and manipulate them. This creates an impression of the existence of additional and distinct supernatural powers — a dark side to be served and appeased — which makes sorcery and necromancy natural bedfellows of idolatry.
In his Letter on Astrology addressed to the Rabbis of Lunel, Rambam acknowledges the existence of Talmudic statements which uphold the legitimacy of astrology (though he indicates that they reflect a minority position). Nevertheless, on the basis of his analysis in the Moreh, he would not have condemned this Talmudic belief in astrology as a breach of biblical law since it was consistent with the (albeit mistaken) science of the time. Such a belief is also evident in the writings of Ibn Ezra (see e.g. commentary to Shemot 33:21) who understood that the stars form part of the system of divinely-ordained natural laws which were set up at the time of Creation to control aspects of our world.
On the basis of extensive research into the science of his day, however, Rambam considered astrology to have been resoundingly debunked – it was no longer legitimate to claim that it played a part in God’s natural system for running the universe. Any subsequent belief, therefore, in the powers of the stars could only be based upon an idolatrous belief that the celestial bodies enjoyed supernatural power independent of God – the sort of prohibited belief detailed in the opening chapter of Hilchot Avoda Zara.
Rambam’s approach to the scientific expertise of the Talmudic sages reflects his broader position that, while statements from the prophets are taken to emerge from divine insight and are therefore accurate, later sages based some of their teachings upon the science of the societies which they inhabited and could therefore sometimes be mistaken. As he sets out in the Letter of Astrology, only rational proof and tradition of the prophets should form the basis of a person’s belief.
This insight may also be helpful to those who this week started a new cycle of daily Mishneh Torah study – a cycle which opens with Rambam’s presentation of the wonders of God’s creation. That this cycle draws heavily upon now defunct science such as the spheres should not trouble anyone. As the Yemenite-Maimonidean sage, Rabbi Yosef Kapach wrote in his commentary:
“All the ideas concerning the existence of spheres, their nature, number and ranking…all of these matters were not part of our sages’ transmitted tradition. Rather they were based on their personal understanding or on the astronomical sciences of their time…However the books which were compiled by the sages from the era of the prophets…did not reach us…”
Rather than being concerned with how to interpret Maimonidean theories of the spheres, such passages should instead prompt us to explore what the opening chapters of Mishneh Torah would have looked like had Rambam written them in the year 2023.
First posted to Facebook 30 April 2023, here.
