Authority, Form, and Content in Prophecy – Transcript

Authority, Content, and Form: Three Dimensions of Religious Truth

Chapter 1: The Fundamental Distinction Everyone Confuses

Introduction: Two Questions That Must Be Separated

Instructor: Okay, so I have to explain some things, or not explain—that sounds too authoritarian. I have to discuss some things. And it’s like this, let’s just jump right into it. Okay, without mushroom and silly questions.

Everyone in the world confuses two different questions for no reason, right? Of course. One is the question of the source of the truth or of the authority of what we call prophecy or what we call Torah [the Jewish Bible/Law] or any religion or anything like that. That is one thing, that’s one question. And the other question is the form and the content. But for now, we’re talking mostly about the form, not the content of that, right?

Everyone agrees that everyone… So if I would say that everyone confuses the question of authority and the question of content, then everyone already agrees, right? Because that’s like the main difference between learning and believing, right? We’re interested in learning, not in believing. Not that we don’t believe, we just think that learning is a different thing, right?

The “Accept Truth From Whoever Says It” Theory

Instructor: Okay, but so that’s obvious and that leads people to say things like, let me explain very clearly. That leads people to say things like, what difference does it make if it was written by Moishe Mepi Agvur [Moshe mipi haGevurah: Moses from the mouth of the Almighty] or by Santa Claus. If it makes sense, you should take both of them seriously. If it doesn’t make sense, you should take neither of them seriously, right? Kabbalah’s M is Mishamber theory [קבל את האמת ממי שאמרה: accept the truth from whoever says it], right? They don’t judge a book by a cover theory. They think of the content and not of the wrapper or not of the authority, right? More correct, right? There, everyone already knows. Akhon [אכן: indeed]?

But the problem with that theory is what? There’s no problem with it. It’s a good way to learn. What is it missing, even as a way of learning, a way of explaining? What is it missing? It’s missing something, right?

What the Content-Only Approach Misses

Instructor: It’s missing the fact that any religion, or any system of thought even, or especially any system of thought with any power, which we call law, or some kind of law, some kind of culture, includes a lot more than its content, right? You can’t… People claim, for example, someone could say, well, the content of all religions or almost all religions are basically the same, so what difference does it make which one you are? Or the content of whatever philosophy or whatever thought is the same as the content of the Torah, so they’re the same. Well, that’s true in terms of content, but you seem to be missing something important, right?

What is the important thing that you’re missing when you say that? That’s good. If there’s an answer to like why take it seriously at all or what is it all about, say, well, it’s really about its content, not about its claim of authority or about its form. But it’s still missing something, right? It’s still missing something basic. In other words, when people say, that’s very cute, but that doesn’t explain the actual religion, they have a very good point. What is it?

Student: That the form is important.

Instructor: Yeah. Why?

Student: Because if the form is bad, forms are not irrelevant.

Chapter 2: The Third Dimension—Form and Its Significance

Form as Utility: Beyond Good and Bad

Instructor: Okay, but even more than bad and good forms, I would say useful and not useful, right? Because good and bad are moral questions. True and not true are epistemic questions. Useful and not useful are utilitarian questions. They have to do with the good, because you can’t make people good if you don’t have a useful form. But that’s a very important question.

So the question of the form, and like you said, there should be a question, is the form true? The form has to be, in some sense, true. I don’t think it could be a lie. Lies are bad. Although, of course, some people think they’re not, like Plato. But there has to be some discussion. At least it has to be good, for sure. Even Plato, who says he should lie to everyone, still agrees that it has to be good. There’s a whole theory about this. Let’s skip that.

The point is, we can’t talk about only the content. Anyone that says we’ll only talk about the content, it doesn’t matter what the form is, is wrong.

Three Dimensions: Authority, Content, and Form

Instructor: So now we end up with three things:

1. Authority—who said, why we take… Authority can be even for content, right? Like, why should we take it seriously? Why should we listen to it? Instead of why should we believe it, why should we listen to it? Still a kind of authority, right?

2. Content—There is content. There’s, like, the what. Well, it says good things. It says truths. That’s the what.

3. Form/Style—And then there is the, like, how, right? What we call the form or the… How would you give a better word for it? The style, right? The style in which it’s set.

How that style ties into the content, right? Well, some styles probably are a better match for some content and for some authority and so on, right?

Chapter 3: Two Registers of Discussion and Their Inadequacy

The Authority Register vs. The Content Register

Instructor: So now, therefore, what I want to claim is like this. We talk about authority. We talk about authority in one of these two registers, in one of these two ways, either in a sense of authority, people that don’t have any concept of understanding of content. They’re only thinking of, do we have to believe this? Do we have to do this? Do we have to say this? That’s the authority style.

And there’s people that talk about the content, and then those people at least claim—often it’s also wrong, like I said, even taking something seriously as a form of authority. But those people say things like, it makes no difference. They think like I’m independent, right? Who is the one that judges the content? How do I know the content to be true of myself, right? Not due to anyone else. So that’s the claim that’s made, right?

The Problem: We Cannot Account for the System

Instructor: And then we end up with a problem, which is that we can’t explain. We sort of can’t explain, we can’t account for, right? We don’t have a good story, we don’t have a locus, we don’t have an account of what this whole system of… Well, authority, we could say something very simple. Let’s make it even more simple.

If we talk about authority, you could say something simple like, well, most people are not capable of thinking for themselves, which we great geniuses are, but most people are not capable of that, so that we just tell them what to think, right? That’s the authority. But we’re forgetting that there’s a third thing which is the style or the what we just call the form.

Chapter 4: The Form Can Be True—Forms of Authority and Content

Form Applies to Both Authority and Content

Instructor: The form can be true. Now the form… There’s a form for authority and there’s a form for content. Both of these are forms, right? Both of these can have forms, right? For example, how do we tell people they must believe this, right?

You’ll notice something very interesting. For example, how… Okay, this is already sort of jumping the tongue use a conclusion before the question. But assuming that we have this distinction, which we all over here assume is true also, right? Just like we assume the distinction between thinking, between content and authority is true, we also assume that the distinction between authority people and content people is true, right?

Most people are authority, or at least most people are beginning from authority, and content is something that doesn’t belong to people, it’s something independent, it’s something very rare, and so on. We agree to that, right?

The Question of Teaching Form

Instructor: But then we still have to think of how we teach those people, right? What form does the authority take? And this is a very interesting question in any case. What form does the authority take, right?

For example, I think that nowadays the best manner of authority, right, is also… We live in a time where there’s all times together. We don’t only live in modernity, we live in everything plus. But properly, properly, properly modern authority works by telling you what you think. Very weird. That’s how teaching works, right? Not teaching—not what I call teaching—but authority in the sense of acknowledging that most people are dumb and they’re going to believe what they’re told.

Different Forms of Authority Through History

Instructor: So there seems to be different ways of doing this. One way of doing this is saying, you know, we don’t believe anything that’s not either so self-evident everyone can see it—the stupidest person could see it—or you could immediately see it for yourself, right? And how do you know this? Someone told you, right?

On the authority of Thomas Jefferson, everyone believes that it’s self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights, right? How do we know that? Well, you wouldn’t have known that if you wouldn’t have said in the Declaration of Independence. But now that you know it, how do you know it?

So this is called a style, a form of authority. Make sense? I’m just distinguishing, I’m just using this to distinguish in a funny way the difference between the form and the real difference between authority and content, right? The form of something versus what did this person do and he thought. Is there any independent thought? There isn’t. There’s someone that told them that they should think for themselves, such and such, right?

The Luther Example: Authority Disguised as Independence

Instructor: Like, what’s his name, famously made fun of Luther, the English… What was the guy’s name? So that Luther has 10,000 people that all thought for… No, what’s his name? Oh, the guy who was following him, right? The guy a little before him. He said that Luther has 100,000 people that all read the Bible by themselves and saw exactly what Luther told them that it says there.

So, but that’s a form of authority. You see, that’s a form, not authority in the sense that people don’t know that they’re following authority, so it’s lacking the form. You could call it more manipulative. Those would be like Žižek’s point. But it’s a form of… It’s a form of taqlid [تقليد: imitation]. Let’s call it, like if we change, we can add another distinction. I’m not keeping track of all the words that I’m tracking here.

Taqlid: The Form of Imitation

Instructor: But we call it the form of taqlid, which means properly imitation, right? It’s a form of imitation, although it doesn’t carry the form of authority. So most people are imitators. Most people are not originals. Most people don’t think for themselves. They imitate what others think for them or tell them to think. But there are different styles of authority.

There’s one like we call it the ancient style or a certain style that tells you the authority is because he’s the smart… Because the other guy told you to say and people are happy with that, right? Some people are happy. We believe in what the holy teachers told us to believe and that’s fine. And some people are not happy with that, so they say we believe what we are… We’re told to believe ourselves, right? They don’t… They just don’t say the word “we were told” because they forget to say, well, we were shown by the great teacher that this is what is self-evident, right?

That turns out to be a form of authority, right? In other words, if we assume… They still… Assuming that we didn’t change anything, I’m showing you something interesting. We didn’t change anything of our core, like, plutonium and Alfarabian elitist, you could call it, assumptions, right? Our assumptions that most people are… There is truths. Most people are incapable of reaching them. Most people are capable of originating them…

Authority, Content, and the Nature of Prophetic Truth

Chapter 1: The Modern Transformation of Authority and the Problem of Prophecy

The Unchanged Core: New Forms of the Same Authority Structure

Instructor: I’m showing you something very interesting. We didn’t change anything of our core, like, Platonian, Al-Farabian, elitist, you could call it, assumptions, right? Our assumptions that most people are—there is truths, most people are incapable of reaching them, most people are incapable of originating them, most people are only capable of being followers, right? That used to be the justification for things like speaking in the name of God, or killing people that don’t agree with you, or things like that. We still can agree with the entire social understanding, the entire epistemology, the entire anthropology that that is based on, and say, well, but since most people are too weak to be originators, they need to be followers, we’re going to make them imitate us in a new way by telling them this is what they think about themselves. There’s a different style, there’s a different form that the authority takes.

That’s just one very funny example, although we should think about it more, by the way. It’s very serious. Another funny, not funny, the more serious implication of this same thing would be that you remember that when we talk about, when people talk about something like this, the deeper meaning of authority, right? When people talk about, do you believe in Torah from heaven [*Torah min Hashamayim*: the doctrine that the Torah was divinely revealed]? Do you believe in prophecy in the real sense, right? Now that is a question of authority by definition, right? By definition it’s a question of authority. In other words, are there things which we should do or believe because the greatest authority called God, or some God, a God, something like that, told us to believe that or to know that, right?

The Content-Side Response to Divine Authority

Instructor: And if you people say, if, right? And people who talk, say this, say, if you say, well, this is true, but no God ever said it, I believe it because it’s true, right? Then you’re on the content side of things. And of course, the people that are entirely capable of thinking originally of originating thought—I don’t want to say thinking originally, I want to say originating thought, which is a different thing. People capable of originating thought are quite happy with that. They’re like, I don’t understand why I would need a God to tell me. That sounds like superfluous, like, well, did God tell me that gods exist, like the paradox that you discussed last week? That doesn’t even make sense. We know that God exists because we have this capability of recognizing reality or truth and that is the whatever god is he’s supposed to be the highest the highest the existing thing that’s the most real thing that’s how we know it and like what do you mean do you also believe like are you not are you there for a religious right are you therefore not really a believer because you say I know this just because I know it myself like are you just originating it to yourself and adding god or something like that right the question doesn’t really make sense to the content people in some sense right and people would say what do you mean from heaven. Do you mean to say is it true? Or do you mean to say which authority does it have? And which one is better? Is it better for it to be true or is it better to have a good authority or the best authority possible?

The Reinterpretation Problem: Authority or Textual Games?

Student: The best authority will cause you to learn it differently. I mean, if you come to conclusions that seem untrue or questionable when you’re coming from an authoritative lens, you might need to reinterpret the work you’re reading in order so that you accept it.

Instructor: Right? So that’s not authority. That’s just a game you’re playing with a text that other people take as authoritative. In other words, if you say something like this, if you were saying something like this, if you would believe in the authority of this law, of this text, of this truth, you would have believed it even if you wouldn’t have thought it’s true? That’s what you mean to say? Does that even make sense? That’s what people think.

Student: Something that I would apply a different interpretation or a different lens on it. Let’s put it this way, right? The way some people learn the Bible is not the way they learn Shakespeare. They’re not necessarily—if they disagree with one of Shakespeare’s conclusions, they’re not necessarily prying or reinterpreting or recalibrating Shakespeare’s work to mean something different.

Instructor: Okay, that’s the problem. I don’t actually agree with that, but that’s the problem of interpretation. Maybe you just don’t assume that Shakespeare meant it.

Student: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you make certain assumptions and read the work differently on the basis of what you think about it.

Clarifying What “Believing in Authority” Could Mean

Instructor: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me go to exactly where I am, because I’m going to get confused with this, okay? And everyone else already here is already confused, so let’s try. What I think is when people say—people often say things like this and I think it’s very hard to get even a hold on what they’re trying to say—what are you trying to say when you say, well, if you think that someone gives this like theory, it says prophecy is just a way of accessing the truth and you say okay, but that’s not divine, right? That doesn’t make you a believer in prophecy. Because to believe in prophecy means what? To believe in it even when it’s not true? No, that can’t be, right? That’s obviously absurd. It can’t be that a believer in prophecy means to believe in it even when it’s not true.

To believe in it even when I don’t know it’s true? Well, that’s just epistemic humility. There’s nothing special about that kind of authority. Firstly, it’s a kind of authority. So, it’s a kind of authority. It’s a kind of authority of assuming it’s, I think, more on my side than the side of the authority, right? If you recognize that you’re not the smartest person and you don’t have the most access to reality ever, then probably you should listen to other people also. Like *Eizehu chacham halomed mikol adam* [Who is wise? One who learns from every person—Pirkei Avot 4:1], very reasonable thing to believe, I think. Nothing special about a prophetic or whatever religious authority. Just a very reasonable position to have. Also relative to Shakespeare, by the way.

Digression: The Bible and Shakespeare—A Question of Serious Reading

Instructor: I actually think that religious people that say things like this, like you wouldn’t read Shakespeare so seriously like you did the Bible. I think that’s nonsense. Why? Of course you should. I mean, at least as seriously as you read the Bible. I don’t know about more. There is definitely more truth in Shakespeare than most people get out of it, and that’s because they’re not taught to read seriously. Or they don’t practice reading seriously. They don’t listen to other people seriously. Now, is there even more depth in the Bible than Shakespeare? I don’t think we’re up to all the depths of Shakespeare that we’re worried about this problem. And we’ll get there. Maybe there is. Probably way there is, but I have reasons to think that. It’s not such a big problem. It’s very funny when people say, like, I discussed this, but we’re going to get off topic, right?

So I don’t think that that’s correct. But that’s, again, that’s not a question about the authority. It’s more a question of, like, we call it epistemic humility, or just being a reasonable person, not being a huge bald guy [*ba’al ga’avah*: arrogant person] who thinks that he discovered the whole truth, which is, by the way, a problem for people that believe in their religion too much, too, right? Because just offloading the problem to authority doesn’t make you a non—how do you call this guy—like megalomaniac who thinks that he has discovered the true authority to follow or his family his people that’s also I think very dumb dumb and also bad like a bad *middah* [character trait] it’s a bad kind of human being to think that way so that’s not what it means.

Two Explanations of Prophetic Authority for Content-Believers

Instructor: So let me get back to my point that I’m trying to make. My point that I’m trying to make is that when we talk about prophecy, we’re talking about authority. Now, for people that believe in content, that authority cannot be other than the authority of the truth itself. It can be either the authority of the truth itself or the authority in the sense of having a way to reach people who do not have the ability to originate the truth within themselves, so they’re going to get it second-hand, which is all of us. Just to be very clear, right? Those are the two on this place. I don’t think there’s a third explanation, unless, I mean, I really don’t know what the other theory would be maybe that’s a limitation of my imagination but I can’t understand what—I read people that keep on saying other things and I always reinterpret it to mean something that I can make any sense of.

Addressing the Mystical Access Objection

Instructor: Because many people seem to say things like this: well if it’s if it’s only about the truth that we can access—I didn’t say it’s about truth that you can access. Maybe someone has a great mystic or some great spirit that can access truth that you can’t access. No problem. I don’t have any problem with that. I think that’s reasonable. It would be really dumb to think that all the truths are accessible to everyone all the time. It’s pretty reasonable also to think that some truths—I think it’s pretty common to have a belief.

Student: Yeah, it’s a common belief, especially—I’ll tell you why it’s a common belief soon, because of the kind of brainwashing that people that wanted to teach us good things told us. It’s a religious belief. I remember being in a school where the rabbi says that not understanding different intellectual laws, like counting heavier things or not, I remember being like—

Instructor: Yeah. It seems to be obvious, right? It wasn’t obvious to me. I already discussed this, right? There was a class that said this. It also seems to be obvious, or at least obviously probable, that there’s some truth that should only be accessible to one guy in 10,000 years. Nothing unreasonable about that. God never promised us that all truths will be accessible to all people equally. Thomas Jefferson promised that. No, even he didn’t promise that. He just said that you get rights.

Provisional Conclusion: Authority as Virtue

Instructor: So that’s obvious. So when people say you’re lacking authority, I think, in my interpretation they’re talking about a virtue, they’re talking about this virtue that I’m calling humility or openness or being able to be a student, and that’s a true, that’s a true, like we call it a religious virtue or a true virtue, it’s a virtue of the mind, like we discussed here, and that seems, for me at least, that seems to cover everything that the religious people demand from listening to their speeches, like I don’t—

The Question of Form: Why These Books and Not New Ones?

The Speaker’s Position on Authority and Truth

Instructor:

To me that gives me enough seriousness to read those books, but I don’t know anyone that has more seriousness. I’m not lacking anything practically. Theoretically it seems like they’re saying a point, but I don’t know what the point might be. Okay, so that’s the question. So therefore I don’t think I have a problem with this, like this, whatever this authority might mean, or whatever this seeking of truth or accepting or being open to truth might mean, I don’t seem to have an issue with that in my reading. Make sense?

What I therefore thought now is there’s still something I’m not covering in my understanding, which is where I have to get to the form. There still seems to be something that I’m not covering and that is the question of form.

Identifying the Real Question: The Question of Form

Instructor:

That’s why I think the question of form is a lot more interesting, a lot more—in other words, it’s the relevant question when we ask things like:

– Why isn’t there biblical books being written nowadays?

– Why can’t we have books that are read in the same way even?

– Why do we read these old books and not just some new guy that wrote the same thing last week?

Is that my phone? I think those are the relevant questions. Those were actually very interesting questions.

So now you get what I’m saying. So there’s authority if you want to say authority means God said it somehow, and again I think everything God said somehow, so I don’t really get the whole problem. Whatever God might mean, he must be doing everything all the time. I think almost everyone that believes in God believes in this, so it’s very hard to figure out what people might mean when you say, “Well, you’re not ascribing it to God”—unless you’re some kind of atheist, that’s hard to figure out what that would mean.

Unpacking “From Heaven” (*Min HaShamayim*)

The Talmudic Statement and Its Meaning

Instructor:

But other than that, it seems to be very hard. Like when religious people say, “Well, you said the Torah is not from heaven,” what does that mean? You mean to say it’s not true? Okay, I get that. But what do you mean to say, when it says in Talmud Bavli [the Babylonian Talmud], it says, if someone says, then all Torah is not from heaven, or even if he says one verse is not from heaven, but Moshe [Moses] said it by himself. What do you mean to say?

*Libi* [from his heart] means he made it up, not in discovery, right? Discovery to be equivalent to saying it’s from heaven. He made it up means it’s false. He made it up for his interest, or it’s just about him trying to manipulate you—I get that, but that’s not a question of authority, it’s a question of truth, right?

So it’s very hard to understand what people mean by that, unless you people could tell me what they mean, but I don’t know what they mean. But I realize that when people ask this question, there’s something, there’s always something behind the question that people ask, even if they don’t—I can’t make any sense.

There’s something about Moshe saying it because he has something to gain and him saying it because it’s true.

Student:

Yeah, yeah, I said that because most of the Torah is about virtue and not about good and not about truth anyways.

The Problem of Moshe’s Virtue

Instructor:

So therefore, we have to say that it’s about Moshe’s virtue. This is why it’s a big problem if you believe that Moshe wasn’t a perfectly good person. Or almost perfectly good person.

Student:

Do you have to believe in a man from heaven or not? Almost, yeah.

Instructor:

I think so. I think that Amon [the Rambam/Maimonides] talks about this problem in this chapter later when he talks about *Ma’amar Rava* [likely *Ma’amad Har Sinai*, the revelation at Mount Sinai]. It’s a big problem. You understand why? Because, well, if you say Moshe discovered it and it’s a truth, it’s like an eternal truth, then it’s from heaven. I don’t know what it would mean for it not to be from heaven anyways. What do you mean it’s not from heaven? He didn’t hear it on a voice. He heard it because he did the math. What difference does it make? It’s hard for me to…

I mean, wait. To most people, that makes a difference. I actually have to get to that. To me, it makes a difference. Wait. I have no idea.

The Rambam’s Agnosticism About Mechanism

Instructor:

*Dramam* [the Rambam] himself said he doesn’t know. So how could I know if the holy Rambam didn’t know? *Dramam* literally said we don’t know how much they discovered these things. So therefore the claim is only that it’s from heaven in the sense that it’s true. It’s from God. Okay. That’s fine. I don’t know what people might mean.

I do think people think there’s a difference between these things. That’s what I’m—I get the question in a form but I don’t know—I can’t make sense in saying what I’m saying.

Responding to the “Secularization” Objection

Instructor:

I think that when people say, “Well, so you’re just secularizing everything,” or “Rambam is just secularizing everything, you’re saying Moshe discovered it so Moshe was a scientist”—well, a scientist, but not the kind of scientist you know, right? Like we’re using this word with very different connotations. A scientist in the sense of someone whose mind and heart are burning to find out how the universe actually works—yeah. A scientist in the sense of someone who posts on Reddit—no. Those are two different kinds of people.

What I want to say is, I don’t understand what the question of authority would mean then, but this is where I’m getting to. I think there’s a much more interesting question and I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff to discover if we allow ourselves to explore this question. And the question is the question of form.

The Analogy of Blessings: Everything Is From God

The Objection About Blessings

Instructor:

Let me say it another way, what I’m trying to say. You could say the other way around also, right? You could say something like, of course everything is from heaven. Like all religious people believe that everything is from heaven anyways, right?

We say like someone would say, “Well, if you believe that Moses was just some kind of philosopher, how do you say *Baruch Atah Hashem Loi Sanat Ta’ira* [Blessed are You, God, who gave the Torah]?” Okay, did anyone ever ask you this question? I’m imagining someone asking this question. I don’t know if everyone—anyway, it’s a dumb question. Why? Because people don’t—you don’t invent your own thoughts.

The Baker Analogy

Instructor:

Okay, thank you very much. But I would tell a person, if you believe that the baker baked your bread, how do you say, “I’m a religious guy, I believe that God does things”? Thank you very much. Well, how is that very different?

Oh, there’s some more significant way in which God did the Torah. Of course, because it’s more true than the bread. So it’s more divine. Of course, the Torah is more divine than a piece of bread. But both of them make the same kind of *bracha* [blessing].

Blessings Over Wise People

Instructor:

When you see a scientist, you actually make the same *bracha* as you make when you see a *Talmud Chacham* [Torah scholar]. You do? No?

Student:

They’re a *goy* [non-Jew]—it doesn’t make a difference what he learns?

Instructor:

No, it’s not. No, it’s the same one and it doesn’t—firstly, the *drama* [Rambam] doesn’t have that difference, that’s a fake difference. Number two, it doesn’t—the difference is about a *yid* [Jew] and a *goy* [non-Jew]. The difference is just because we don’t call a person who doesn’t fear God a *ref* [likely *chacham*, wise person], but there’s—and we give a special *bruch* [blessing] if he’s Jewish. But it doesn’t say there has to be a Jewish *Talmud Chacham*. If you see a Jewish scientist he also makes—I think that’s why it doesn’t say. And if it says then I disagree. I don’t see any reason. There’s no difference.

In any case, think about the language of the world. There’s no difference. The difference is because we make different—there’s different languages for which person, kind of person it is, but there’s no difference to what kind of thing he learns and all of them are given by God. There’s no difference anyways. So Hashem [God] gives *Chachma* [wisdom]. We make a *bracha* that says Hashem gives signs to the scientists. I don’t get the whole problem. There’s a *bracha* on it. Seriously.

Digression: The Alter Rebbe’s View on External Wisdoms

The Speaker’s Incomprehension

Student:

I don’t know what—what does he say?

Instructor:

Honestly, I have no clue what that might mean. I literally cannot make heads and tails of what that claim even means. I think that that’s total—I can’t say anything. I know that he says that, but I have zero—I just have no idea what he’s even trying to say.

Student:

No, I agree with you. I agree that’s a good source and I have no idea what he’s trying to say. Honestly, I have no clue what this guy is saying.

Instructor:

Yeah, I get that. I get that, but I have no idea what this metaphysical claim might mean, that some kinds of wisdom are eclipsed. What does that mean?

Offering a Chassidic Interpretation (and Dismissing It)

Instructor:

I can explain to you in a Hasidic style what that might mean, but it becomes not very interesting.

Student:

Yeah, no problem.

Instructor:

In a Hasidic style I can explain to you what that might mean, but also it wouldn’t be an interesting claim at the end of the day. You say something like, “Well, if knowledge that doesn’t make you understand God is not true”—things like that. I get that, but that’s not interesting. It’s also true of Torah. It doesn’t—that’s the content.

Student:

Yeah, okay.

Instructor:

In a constant situation it’s *room talk* [empty talk] when you have content. In any case, it goes willy-nilly.

Methodological Principle: Take Seriously What Makes Sense

Instructor:

Okay, wait, wait, wait. Let’s go back. So let me give my sheet. I’ll give your sheet afterwards, no problem.

I know the *slam* [likely the Alter Rebbe’s position]. I don’t understand what it might mean. I could give you an explanation of it, but the explanation would sort of deflate it—would make it very uninteresting. So I have no idea. And definitely people like Rambam and *Azar* [the Zohar], nobody before and after believes this. So we’re put there from being worried about the *Das Yachet* [*da’at yachid*, a lone opinion], although he was a great man. They don’t have to be worried about now.

Student:

*Ajut* [likely asking about something specific]—what if they worry?

Instructor:

Sorry, but every *tzaddik* [righteous person] that ever said something would be going crazy if I would do that. So, like some people that I know, that I went crazy from doing that. It’s like a path that’s not allowed to go into, become crazy from taking everything seriously. You have to take the things that make sense to you seriously. The other ones you say, “And I don’t understand what he’s saying, so I won’t go.”

Anyways, sorry for being flippant, but now I’m going to—I’m trying to do a very serious *shiit* [*shiur*, lesson].

Reframing *Klipah* as an Ethical Category

Instructor:

This is not a side note. So but I think that people are saying something. There’s something going on. There’s still some difference which I can’t for the life of mine explain what the difference would mean, unless you’re an atheist that thinks there’s something that comes by people themselves. Of course you can do the *Siddish* [Chassidish] thing. I think things that we say are *clippers* [*klipot*, husks/impurities]—I think the people think come by themselves. Okay, so that’s a question of your attitude. I agree. So it’s a question of ethics. 100%.

The religious ethics—and we have to do a whole class at some point on what this even means—but there’s a religious ethic of ascribing everything to God even when God is only a distant cause and so on. That’s a kind of religious ethic and has to do with some more basic ethics of ascribing things to their causes. All these things need to be explained, right? But there isn’t a problem.

Setting Up the Next Question: Cessation of Prophecy

Instructor:

But I could still say this very interesting question here. And maybe that question is very real. The question is why did God, right? And when people ask something like *Pascha Nevoa* [*pesikat ha-nevuah*, the cessation of prophecy], right? You have to be very clear about this. If you believe that that means that God stopped speaking to people, you’re *stamina peccatus* [*apikorus*, a heretic].

The Necessity of Natural Prophecy as a Pre-Torah Rational Belief

The Problem with Believing Prophecy Has Ceased

Instructor: The Siddur says it wrong. And I think because of this. But the Siddur was totally wrong. And if you believe only what it says in the Siddur, it’s *k’hash apikores* [like a heretic] according to the Rambam [Maimonides]. Literally *apikores* [heretic]. Not a mean *apikores*. Because one of the kinds of *apikores* is someone who believes there is not prophecy. And the Rambam has this language: there isn’t knowledge that comes from God to people. That’s the Rambam’s definition or rephrasing of saying there’s no prophecy. Literally the Rambam’s language in *Mishneh Torah* [Maimonides’ code of Jewish law], right? And in *Peirush HaMishnah* [Maimonides’ commentary on the Mishnah] it says something similar. In *Hilchot Teshuvah* [Laws of Repentance], yeah.

*Mada* [knowledge] means knowledge, right? It doesn’t say anything about speech. You don’t have to believe in speech. There’s a question of how a prophecy works. Maybe it works with speech, maybe it doesn’t, but that’s a technical question.

Now, it doesn’t say that if you… How about someone believes that there was *nevuah* [prophecy], right? There was prophecy, but it ceased. I think that is still *apikores* [heresy]. That’s a *chiddush* [novel interpretation]. I don’t know. I never make *chumros* [stringencies], not because of *apikores*. I’m just trying to get a point across, right? Because you have to believe that prophecy exists.

Now, believing that prophecy exists, let’s go back to the same thing, doesn’t mean believing on authority.

Two Pre-Torah Beliefs: God and Prophecy

By the way, there’s two things that you have to believe before the Torah, right? The Rambam says this clearly a few times. There’s two things you have to believe before you believe in the Torah, which are?

Student: God and Torah.

Instructor: Prophecy, broadly said. Prophecy. Because if you believe in… Since everyone agrees, every year they agree that being a believing Jew means believing in *Torah Min HaShamayim* [Torah from Heaven]. If there’s no God, of course, there’s no one to give the Torah. And also, if there’s no prophecy, there’s no one to give the Torah. There’s no way to get the Torah, right?

So those two beliefs have to be rational beliefs. They have to believe the things that you believe. You would have believed them if you were a *goy* [non-Jew] also, right? Anyone that tells you you have to believe in *nevuah* because we have this book called *Nevuah* [Prophets] doesn’t believe in those books, right? Just like anyone that tells you I believe in God because I don’t believe in God.

Although, the Rambam said you should do that because he’s teaching to most people, because most people are living with authority, no problem. And those books are just the authority. But if you do a content analysis, it doesn’t make sense. You have to believe in prophecy prior to the Torah. You have to say me.

What this means, what this means for me, it means, although that’s probably a weird way of saying it, but if you would have been a *goy*, if you would have not had the *mitzvah* [commandment] of *emunah* [faith], you would still believe there’s a God and you still believe that there’s prophecy, which means there’s a way of divine knowledge or truth being accessible to man or coming to man. That’s what it means, right?

Now, it seems to me that believing that it was once like that and not anymore is like *chatzi kefira* [half-heresy]. It’s like saying he was once a god and he died, basically. Like, sounds like similar. What if someone believes that the *Tanya* [foundational Chabad text] definitely thinks he does believe in God, right? If someone believes that God created the world and then walked off, it’s *shachim* [heresy], right? If you believe that God used to speak to people and then stop…

Student: Well isn’t there two… isn’t there two elements to this? Because when you say God speaks to people, one of the things that you’re saying is can people understand things…

Instructor: Oh, people are no problem.

Student: And then that’s a belief in people. That’s a belief about humans. That’s one element. You have to believe in people’s ability…

Prophecy Must Be Natural, Not Miraculous

Instructor: I kind of think so. Very good. I kind of think it’s so. Very good. So it’s a question in principle, but not if it happened to be this week a person that did that. And by principle, human nature is capable of achieving that. If it’s a miracle, then I’m not sure what kind of belief it could be prior to the Torah.

This is literally why the Rambam says you have to believe in natural prophecy, right? The Rambam says clearly, although prophecy might not be a natural phenomenon, but we can’t actually build a case for religion without believing in it as a natural phenomenon, right? The Rambam says clearly in *Chelek Aleph, Perek Ayin* [Part One, Chapter Seventy] something, *Ayin Aleph* [Seventy-One], right? And also in *Chelek Bet* [Part Two], where he talks about the three theories of prophecy, I remember, the chapter in the second part, right?

That’s why he says, I’m going to give you the rest of the… Whatever, not before that. And the Rambam always, in the *Mishneh Torah*, he gives the rest of the theory of prophecy, not the Torah theory of *Moshe* [Moses], which he explicitly distinguishes in *Moreh Nevuchim* [Guide for the Perplexed], because of this reason. Because he can’t teach people that there’s prophecy in the way that would only exist if there’s a Torah, right? You have to teach them that there’s natural prophecy. It means there’s a natural capacity for being a prophet.

And now this, of course, it’s nothing, it’s not a theoretical issue. I’m going to clarify what I mean. It’s not a theoretical issue to say, well, it’s in principle possible for human beings to achieve divine truth, absolute truth, or as absolute as humanly possible. But for two and a half thousand years, there hasn’t been one human at that level.

Student: Just to go back for a second. If someone believes, let’s say, that this is not a human capacity, and this is somehow a capacity he’s, I don’t know…

Instructor: If it’s a miracle.

Student: Or it’s a miracle, right. Meaning that, in some sense, if it’s accepted on authority, is that not self-sustaining?

Instructor: No, because the authority also, no authority is self-sustaining, right? Authority always needs authority in the sense, like, let’s say there’s a book that we believe. But why do we believe in this book? Because it’s a divine book, right? How did it become a divine book? Because the book told us that there’s divine books. Like, you’ve got to start somewhere else. You can’t believe in that the *Rebbe* [Rabbi] said *Yenovi* [I am a prophet] because the *Rebbe* himself told you.

Student: Yeah, so you need to believe only things about God and not things about man.

Instructor: No, no, but then you would have, that I’m a way of saying, you would have the God of Aristotle, which is not the God that makes a new world, right? Not the God, the creator God, right?

Student: Right, but you’re not accepting the God of Aristotle in this acceptance.

Instructor: You do, you are, you are. Of course you are. The only God you have to believe in before the Torah is the God of Aristotle.

Student: Right, but the same way he’s accepted on authority.

Instructor: Not on authority, yeah.

Student: Yeah, but that’s the kind of authority in the sense of…

Instructor: How do you mean from an authoritative lens?

Student: Again, if you think in an authoritative lens in the sense that people will believe whatever you tell them, doesn’t have to make sense, doesn’t have to be coherent, then yes. But if it does have to be coherent, if you have to be able to go to a person and tell him, look, you believe this and this, now, based on that, let me give you a Torah, then that person already has to believe in prophecy. And therefore, he has to believe in the kind of prophecy that is not invented, not given to you fresh from the Torah. It has to be the kind of prophecy that has a natural capacity. Because otherwise, it will tell you, well there’s no God, there isn’t that kind of God at least, and therefore there isn’t your kind of prophecy, and therefore where does this story start?

The Rambam has a very weird theory that somehow it could go the other way around, but let’s not get stuck in that. I think that it’s that it’s kind of obvious you have to believe in prophecy, which means you have to believe in natural prophecy in the sense, if you want this person to make any sense. If you want to just be a guy that believes whatever you tell him, then no problem. But if you want it to make sense, then you have to believe in that. And so that’s how I understand it.

Student: How he knows there’s a prophet there might be able to be other theories, but this is the theory that anyone that if you want to make sense of things you have to have a theory and that’s the only way it can make sense.

The Implications: Divine Knowledge Must Still Be Accessible

Instructor: So, um, what I’m trying to say is that it seems to be very weird. Let me make it very clear. Seems to be very weird. So number one, first let’s throw again. How many, how do we make this very clear? If you think that there’s things that God does and things that God doesn’t do, in which case you’re already, I mean for the first in the first place, then you can believe that there’s knowledge that comes from God and knowledge that doesn’t come from God. Okay?

If you don’t believe in that, which means that… The things that exist are not from Him. Do you know what I mean?

Student: Yeah.

Instructor: What else would I mean? Things that happen are not from Him, you could say. Not because of Him. Because of it, the, whatever you want to say. If you don’t believe in that, then you could still believe, just to be clear, we could believe that everything is from God, but humans have no access to that. There’s no way for us to know truth. There’s only a way for us to be fooled by Descartes’ demon or something like that. And therefore, there’s no way for us to have access to truth.

In that case, nothing ever began. There’s no religion based on divine authority or based on truth, even without calling it authority, can exist. No science can exist, by the way, either. Not only religions can exist, no science can exist, no human knowledge can exist. A lot of manipulation can exist, but no knowledge can exist. True? Okay? Not even the claim that, not even the claim itself is true.

Student: Yeah, and so on.

Instructor: If this can’t, if this is not the case, if there is a way of accessing divine truth, then it doesn’t have to be accessible to everyone. It could be very hard, it could be very rare. It’s actually reasonable for it to be that way, because most amazing human perfections are rare, right? You could run a mile in four minutes, but most people can’t, and so on. And even the people that could need to practice, and they have to be at their peak of their ability. It’s not something accessible to everyone, but it has to be, in principle, possible. It has to be, in principle, possible naturally, not by some magic external thing, external to the universe thing. External to the universe causal chain thing, right?

That’s what it can be. This is what makes it, I think, at least extremely unreasonable. I don’t have a proof. There’s nothing wrong with that, impossible. I think it makes it extremely unreasonable.

So firstly, it makes it unreasonable or impossible to say that there is now human knowledge, but none of it is true. None of it is divine. So the only truth that we’ve ever discovered was discovered until the year 400 BC. Since then no human has ever discovered any truth. If you believe that, and that’s what underpins your religion, then I guess you should have a *hamlish* [doubt] on them. But I think you’re crazy. I don’t know, it’s very hard to prove that you’re crazy, but I think you’re probably crazy.

You’re also *shtikl apikores* [a bit of a heretic], because you don’t believe that any of the *Chachamim* [Sages] were saying any truth. They were grappling in the dark to interpret some truth, which is I guess what you would do, but there’s nothing essentially true about what they’re saying, which is still kind of weird. To be honest, right?

So the other option is to believe that there is still divine knowledge coming to the human being. At least to some perfect human beings.

The Problem of Prophecy’s Cessation: Aristotelian Arguments and Natural Possibilities

Aristotle’s Principle of Actualization Applied to Prophecy

Student: You’re not saying that’s actual.

Instructor: What?

Student: You’re not saying that’s actual.

Instructor: Aristotle had a rule that anything possible has to sometimes actualize. Now, how much is this “sometimes,” I don’t know. To me, within the realm of human possibility. Because just to be clear, to say that it’s once in… By the way, just to be even more clear, right? If you say it happened only once in this era of humanity, that someone thinks about Neville Smoysha [a reference to unique prophetic achievement], or maybe doesn’t think, but says, then I guess you could say, well, there’s a cycle, it takes 10,000 years, we haven’t gotten to the next 10,000 year guy. Okay, that’s a sort of reasonable theory. Reasonable—it’s coherent, it’s not reasonable, it’s a coherent theory.

The Biblical Evidence for Prophecy’s Accessibility

If you believe in the other prophets also, right, and you’re like, well, there was Kiflayim Kirtzim Itzraim [double the number that left Egypt] prophets, and then at one point, which means the prophecy is a lot more, right, that teaches us that what? Prophecy is a lot more accessible than this theory says. It’s not a one in ten thousand year perfection of a human, it’s some kind of pretty much everyday thing. Not every person, it’s every one thousand people, every hundred thousand people, every one million people.

Well, there were a lot of times one million people since then, and the claim that not one of them achieved prophecy seems to be somewhat self-defeating, defeating the idea that there is possibility of prophecy at all.

Examining Standard Excuses for Prophecy’s Cessation

Student: What if circumstances changed?

Instructor: What if? Such as those.

Student: Yeah, I know, I love that excuse.

The Problem of Non-Jewish Prophets

Instructor: What about all the people that are not in Galus [exile]? There was not one smart people between them? You’re talking about the 500 Jews. What about the rest of the world? By the way, it’s reasonable for the Jews in Galus to follow a Gentile prophet who’s not in Galus. According to that theory, we should be following some guy who’s not in Galus and is more likely to achieve prophecy.

You could offer excuses for everything. You realize that…

Student: Well, you’re going to.

Instructor: If you’re going to say it’s an ideal, it should be difficult to find.

Aristotle on the Impossibility of Extinction

You remember that according to Aristotle’s way of thinking, right? Also, dinosaurs being extinct is extremely unreasonable and probably not true, right? Because kinds of things should always stay, should always exist, right? If there’s a kind of person called a perfect person, it’s not really a kind of person, but it’s like the one ideal specimen that everyone else is measured by, right? It has to exist, and it has to exist more than once, and it can’t stop existing in some historic tragedy and then basically be done. That would be like the extinction of humankind.

Student: No problem.

Instructor: Yeah, but we have certain, I guess people, you and Khan be extinct, they go into modern science and they went extinct.

But just to be clear, but just to be clear then you don’t have no access to the ancient truths either, right? Then reading the old text would be kind of useless too.

Student: But I guess my only question, but this is the real difference between being the prophet that originates it and being the one that understands it, right? There are differences in terms of, I would call it basic even categories of thought or basic at least kinds of thought that existed once that don’t exist now.

Nature’s Self-Correcting Mechanisms

Instructor: No problem. That makes it harder. It doesn’t make it impossible. And when they say it doesn’t make it impossible, that means one in two million people achieves it instead of one in ten thousand.

Student: Well, it depends because you need a certain amount of people learning, at least, we’ll call it, areas.

Instructor: Okay, so it makes it even less probable, so one in two billion people. It can’t be that it makes it basically… If you believe in Chazal [the Sages], if it’s stopped, that seems extremely unreasonable and maybe impossible. Not that it’s unavailable, not that it’s unavailable, but that’s…

Student: Okay, so therefore, just to be clear, people like the Rambam [Maimonides] basically believe that there is probably 80% prophecy, 90% prophecy.

Instructor: But let’s say they were once upon a time pagans, right? Maybe 120%, just too much already. Once upon a time they were pagans, right? I don’t know about this. By the way, I don’t believe in any of these Hegelian theories. I already gave you a long… I don’t know if I ever did. I don’t know. I don’t fly these theories. I’m not a Hegelian. I don’t think the world… I’d say a lot of classes based on presumptions like that. But that’s just… I’m not saying they weren’t onto something.

The Epistemic Problem: The “Digital Camera and Ghosts” Analogy

Okay, let me move on. Okay, this is my claim. My claim. I think, to me, in any case, to me, to claim some basic fact about humanity that hasn’t been true forever for any, just to be clear, for all the time that there’s written history, right? Of course, that’s the cause. Because there’s written history, there’s no prophecy. Okay.

So, it becomes also a very kind of Yehiyeh Kadosha [it will be holy] situation, right? Just for the epistemic problem, right? It becomes very kind of, it becomes very similar to—this is a very Reddit atheist claim, but I think there’s something to it, right? It becomes very like, you know, ghosts have existed only until there were digital cameras, and of course the digital cameras have disenchanted the world, that’s why there’s no ghosts anymore, because before that they were all over.

And by the way, this is true, you can’t prove one or the other. I think it’s true. I think it’s probably true that digital cameras have disenchanted the world and every time you put a flash in the forest you’d be my goddess if you were shy of them [shedim: demons], and that’s why there’s no more shedim anymore. But someone from the outside has got to look at you and look like, are you for real?

The Objection from Subtle Conditions

Student: Can I make an argument, by the way, quickly? Not about ghosts, but on the ball again. If you’re saying it’s the ideal of people, then any subtle reason could make it. So, for example, maybe you should start, maybe if you don’t start when you’re three years old.

Instructor: I get all these excuses, but I don’t agree, I don’t agree. I’ll tell you why, because I agree that that would be the ideal case, maybe. But I don’t… Remember that nature, nature has itself, is full of self-correcting mechanisms, right? Humanity has every kind of nature, that’s what nature is, right? A self-correcting mechanism. It has all kind of immune systems, all kind of ways of, you know, if someone, you know, these kind of theories that if someone can’t hear well then he sees better or the opposite and things like that, right? Nature is full of these kind of redundancies.

Now, again, of course it could be that this happens to be the most rare, subtle human nature and… Again, that by the way—that’s the claim, isn’t that the claim?

Student: No, I don’t, by the way, I don’t think that’s… That’s not the Rambam’s claim, by the way.

The Rambam’s Actual Position on Prophecy

Instructor: The Rambam, who said things like this, didn’t say, didn’t actually say anything like that. He actually thought the prophecy is much closer than people nowadays think, because of this, and explicitly said it. I don’t think this is… I don’t think anyone really claims… I think people say this is a way of making sense of nonsense that people say, but I don’t think people really think that.

I don’t think that, in other words, again, this is very a priori thought, claims that have to be based on something, and I’ll explain to you soon how I can base it. But I think it’s very unreasonable to think something that’s part of human nature and, just to be clear, part of the divine nature, right? God likes speaking to people. That’s what prophecy also means. Likes is not against it, at least, right? It’s not something you have to convince him to do.

Prophecy in the Biblical Narrative

By the way, in the Bible, he doesn’t tell anyone, right? Doesn’t do to everyone. Even in the most ancient parts of the Bible, God is not accessible to everyone. You can’t just speak to whoever, no matter who you are. But it’s not as selective as your theory says, right? Not close, right? Sometimes you randomly pick the Gideon [Gid’on], some guy, right? It just happens. The Rambam was very worried about all these stories, but that’s just the story that you get, right? Sometimes. It’s not an everyday occurrence, but it can happen, and it happens once a generation at least. Or sometimes a few generations that it doesn’t, and then it comes back.

You can have all these things, but it’s part of the divine nature. So I don’t believe that you can’t say, well, let’s stop because of all kinds of excuses. I don’t say these problems are not real problems, but there should be an immune system. There should be a self-correcting mechanism. There should be, okay, and by the way, I’m going to make a claim like that. There should be, well, if prophecy doesn’t work in this style, it’s going to now work strongly better in a different style.

Student: That is what you’re saying.

Instructor: That ends up to be what I’m claiming. No, I’m claiming something more basic though, but let’s get to that.

Why the Rambam’s Theory Demands Continued Prophecy

So I don’t think that this is a reasonable claim. I don’t think the Rambam thought it was a reasonable claim. This is why the Rambam, when he discussed this, when he said that he thinks that prophecy can at least also be natural. So now I have a problem interpreting why prophecy stopped and he says, well, if I would have believed that prophecy is natural I would have given this natural explanation and one of them was very convoluted ways of saying things and it’s what you said, the political problem. But of course that doesn’t explain why there’s no non-Jewish prophets.

The Rambam definitely believes it and of course this is the question that people ask on the Rambam, right? If your theory of prophecy is correct, why wasn’t Aristotle a prophet? Of course the answer is he was. He was, he was just not a certain… It was just not a king, so he was missing part of prophecy, but he was a prophet in the epistemological sense.

Student: What the Rambam…

Instructor: Of course he was. Plato definitely was. I don’t know what I was talking about, but now I’m not just about going to all the day before I see him. He learns it very literally, exactly. And they were, they’re still on a VM [unclear reference] and they teach some good things and some bad things and when we… Okay, let’s look at that. I have another problem.

Student: Yeah, yeah, I think it’s literal, it’s very…

Instructor: Yeah, the Rambam definitely thinks it’s likely. And it also has to be likely in every generation.

Shlomo Carlebach’s Theory: Jews and Eastern Spirituality

You can’t say, okay, you know Shlomo Carlebach’s theory of why all the Indians went to India? I’ll say it even more crazily than he said. Shlomo Carlebach said he knows why all the Jews went to the Eastern spirituality. You know, Eastern spirituality is a Jewish-American invention, right? Mostly. Western Buddhism was invented by a few Jews. And more or less, there was something going before also.

Student: You said the Easterners, they weren’t spiritual at all?

Instructor: Who?

Student: The Easterners.

Instructor: No, they had their different religions, different Girsahs [versions]. Of course they were.

Student: No, of course they weren’t.

Instructor: I’m saying something. So anyways, the Carlebach said, no, no, I don’t mean to say that. I mean to say the opposite.

The Holocaust and Spiritual Anger

So the Carlebach said that he thinks that the reason is because there was a Holocaust. And the Holocaust made all the Yidden [Jews] mad at God. And that’s called Atzvus [sadness/spiritual depression]. And it says in Pashas Emma [unclear reference] that a Kohen [priest] can’t be turned into a mess [become impure]. Why? Because you see a dead person and you get mad at God and you can’t… What kind of Kohen is mad at God? So that’s what the Halacha [Jewish law] says. This is all the Torah. The Halacha says that a Kohen can’t be…

But now it’s a big problem. So all the Yidden are mad at God, they’re never going to be able to worship God. So Hashem [God] sent… Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, it’s like anyway…

Going to India to Recover Spiritual Capacity

So he said they went to India and in India there was no Holocaust. Those people are still happy with God and they told all the Yidden to love God. So that’s very reasonable. Okay, go to Moav [Moab], like the people in Zach’s Megillah [unclear reference to Talmudic tractate Megillah] said, we’re stupid, we’re confused.

Why Are There So Few Religions? The Structural Problem of Religious Founding

The Broader Nature of Divine Communication

By the way, it’s not just a Jewish story. It’s also a Greek story that prophecy ceased. And we discussed this once. It’s a kind of—I don’t know about the Far East, but it’s a kind of common assumption to the Near East, to the Middle East, that prophecy ceased at some point. Not clear when. Maybe not the same exact time, but it’s a common assumption. There are people that disagree with it, of course, all over, amongst the Jews too. But it was like an idea in the air—there’s such an idea, you know, the cessation of the oracles.

Student: What? Is that James?

Instructor: No. James is a theory, but there’s actually ancient sources. There’s actually ancient sources that say that the oracle stopped, and there’s theories about it also. So there’s in Tanakh [the Hebrew Bible] already theories about this. But it’s official.

So what I would say is something different. What I would say is that since it can’t be a problem with God and it can’t be a problem with humans—so what is it? You see my stare? I’m very stuck. I’m not happy with the theory that God stopped speaking to people. I was not happy with the theory that people somehow got extremely worse. It just seems unreasonable to me because of my assumptions about how nature should work. It can’t be so specific. That’s what I’m saying. God is a more general—speaking God’s voice is a more general thing than the specific ways. I agree that specific ways are lost. But I don’t think that the general—

Student: Yeah, because of God having to be the source of everything. It would be very weird for God.

Instructor: Like, you know something? True.

Student: True.

The Form Argument: Prophetic Schools and Poetry

Instructor: Let me give you like a very simple theory, right? Someone would say something like: of course God—the way people were trained, at least, to access God was by writing Hebrew poetry. I don’t know which many prophets at least practiced. When, of course, by the way, it’s obvious that that means that in their school they also taught how to write good poetry, not only how to be a prophet, right? Because you got to be a poet before so the prophecy can inspire to write inspired poetry, right?

He [Jeremiah] went to that school. He was not one of the best students, but he was able—he was a writer, he was able to write.

Student: I know, I know, I know.

Instructor: Yeah, that’s true, but he obviously did go to school. He wasn’t illiterate, right? He was able to write. Sometimes he repeated himself, he made some grammar mistakes—okay, that’s what these people say. But he was able to write, right? Many people weren’t able to write in his time.

And now you say, but that was the form—so now we’re back to the word form. That’s what the form in which it worked. But now people don’t know how to do that art, so we can’t prophesy in that way. Okay, but we do know how to write social media posts.

The Reductio: God and Social Media

Seems really weird that God shouldn’t be able to write any social media posts. I’m pretty sure that God’s writing some posts on Twitter, or what’s it called—

Student: No, that’s not him, that’s an imposter.

Instructor: But he’s definitely writing some. Of course by the hands of humans, like everything else he does. But there must be some of them that he’s writing. Like, nobody knows what his handle is, so we’re confused. But it has to be—like, there can’t be a human communication, that he called media, in which there’s no divine voice. That’s my basic theory. Because God must be broader than all these things. Instead, God used Hebrew poetry because that’s one vessel that he had, but he can’t use Substacks? I mean, why not? He doesn’t have a password? How could it be? It doesn’t make sense.

The Empirical Problem: Something Has Changed

So I think—but there’s where I come, what just brings me to the question is—but we do want to have an understanding that something has changed. Something has gone on. And how do I know this? Because you can’t actually—now this is my bigger proof—you can’t actually nowadays found a religion by saying God spoke to me. Unless your name is Abdullah Hashim, then you obviously can’t, right? You basically can’t.

Of course there are some exceptions where you have to make a very big, very wide and long empirical study of this. But my supposition is that you can’t. Not in the way that Moshe [Moses] or some other people—maybe two or three other people in history—managed to do. Obviously, there’s a reason why we talk about these three, four, five, eight founders and not more of them, right? You can’t do the same thing that they did, right?

Student: You could, it’s just redundant.

Instructor: Okay.

Student: Mormons?

The Mormon Exception

Instructor: Yeah, that’s one of the exceptions, and there’s no problem. But we have to remember, we talk about these exceptions for a reason. And also, whatever—in America you can do anything, that doesn’t count. The land of unbounded possibilities where you could even found a religion.

But also, we didn’t really found a religion. Just to be honest, Mormonism is not a religion. It’s just a heretical version of Christianity. It’s not a religion.

Student: Well, is it all about God’s revelation to Joseph Smith?

Instructor: No, it’s about Jesus and about all kinds of other things. That’s true of any good interpreter. There’s like—

Student: Leave my table, thanks.

Instructor: There’s this whole—by the way, that’s true.

Student: No, but it’s not true. It’s a lot more question than—like, okay, let’s not get—

Instructor: In any case, I don’t have a problem with exceptions. Understand, these are exceptions. It’s not something that happens all the time. And it’s not only because of redundancy, because that just begs the question. Like, why are these few people so successful and not everyone else? And why is there—the bigger question—why is there scarcity?

The Scarcity Question: Why So Few Religions?

Why aren’t there—like, you know, there’s other kinds—like there’s countries, right? Someone invented at some point something called a country, right? Or I don’t know if it was invented or created by God or whatever—an ancient state, whatever you call it. At some point there weren’t always empires. There were many empires, many more than were religions.

You’ll notice these—take religion as a way of organizing human society, like one of the ways, one of the levels. There were many more kingdoms and empires than there were religions throughout history. Since they stopped, they abolished the king being the god all by himself, there’s been many more. And this is a question, right?

Like, all kings are doing this, running the same playbook. They all read the same book. They’re all doing the same, more or less. The ones that are successful are more successful. All empires are running the same playbook, more or less. And there’s less empires—less significant empires than there are—and there are kingdoms or nations. But still less than religions, I think, depending on how you count empires. I guess maybe empires and religions are the same kind of thing. I wonder. That’s a question.

But the point is, at least nations—why is there like that? Like, I have another question: why isn’t—why, like, there’s like an economics question. Like, economic—econ people should research things like this and probably have. Why are there so few religions?

The Protestant Exception and the Core Pattern

Of course there’s ten thousand versions of flavors of Protestantism. Okay, well, that’s just like—that’s the way the religion works. There’s ten thousand flavors. That’s what the whole—the whole *emunah* [faith/belief system] is that there should be a lot of flavors. It’s really the same. It’s still the same religion, same God, same book, right?

Why are there so few holy texts in the world? Holy corpuses, right? Let’s call it. I doubt there’s only—there’s less than ten. I mean, unless you count every weird in the Chinese or like South American tribe as something serious, it’s basically less than ten. Can you count them? I think there’s less than ten.

This is a serious question about society, right? In other words, it’s a question about God, right? It’s a question about how the world actually works.

The Truth Argument and Its Limits

You say, “Well, because there’s so many truths—only—well, if there would be only one, then the answer would be simple, because that’s the true one.” But there’s more than one, right? So at least not all of them are fully true. At least they’re less than fully true, or less than universally true. You might say that, right? They’re not true for everyone and every time. But there still seem to be way less than there would be if you would expect every people to have their own god, like the pagans were up to something.

The Pagan Model: Proliferation of Gods

Where everyone had their own god—that makes sense. That’s reasonable. Every group of people—every group of people is different. I don’t know. Every group of people is different, and you know, every time is different. Friend, there should be new gods. There should be gods being born and dying all the time. And there aren’t.

Okay, but that’s the question. We’re talking about these few religions that we’re taking seriously in this discussion, right? Like I said, if you want to count every religion the UN counts, I don’t care about that. I’m talking about—you know, we’re talking about culture, please. I don’t know. There’s no non-racist way of saying this. The point is, like, let’s—we’re talking about our neighborhood, okay? We’re not talking about some random people that we don’t—you have to believe some anthropologist that he’s saying something, you know, who knows.

The Religious Answer to a Structural Question

This is a real question, and I think that there was a religious answer, not just like an *apikoros* [heretical/secular] answer. Like, oh, because—I don’t know, what’s the like theory of this? Is there a theory of this? I’m going to ask—I asked already, give me some books to read, but I didn’t read them. But I guess I ask you to think.

There’s many more generals than there are religious leaders in a significant sense.

Student: No, I’m just saying it’s not true.

Instructor: Yeah, if you would say that people—it’s easy to control so many people. It’s not that easy.

The Cult Leader Problem

It’s easy, but how many cults are there? Ten million, right? Because if you people—all these cult leaders that think that they’re following the prophetic playbook, like “I am the messenger of God”—they have a lot of competition. It’s very hard to be a successful cult leader, right? Even the really successful ones only have like a hundred thousand people.

Student: Mormons more than that.

Instructor: They’re a religion. They’re not a cult. And they’re just a flavor of Christianity.

Student: No, but I told you why. I told you why.

Instructor: And also they don’t count. There’s always an exception that doesn’t count. I don’t care. We’re making theories. We’re not trying to do this weird kind of way of doing science where every exception is a problem.

The Disposable Strategies Theory: Why New Major Religions Cannot Emerge

The Puzzle of New Religious Movements in an Era of Population Growth

The Difficulty of Cult Leadership and Religious Success

Instructor: They have a lot of competition. It’s very hard to be a successful cult leader, right? Even the really successful ones only have like a hundred thousand people.

Student: They’re a religion, they’re not a cult, and they’re just the flavor of Christianity.

Instructor: No, but I told you why. I told you why, and also they don’t count. There’s always an exception that doesn’t count. I don’t care. We’re making theories. We’re not trying to do like this weird kind of way of doing science where every exception is a problem. It’s not a problem. And it’s very hard. And just to be clear, they also have a lot more competition. It’s very hard. It’s still very hard, and it’s always been very hard. And these people that are not—that seem to be doing the same thing—are not. They’re not on the same, how do you call it, they’re not on the same, how do you call it, they’re totally not on the same level.

The Case of Mormonism: Not Playing the Same Game

Instructor: Like, even if you count Mormonism as religion, it’s still not playing the same game as the major religions are. Not even close, right? They have 100 million people. By the way, they have this way—they’re a bunch of liars. They say they have a lot more people than they actually have, like all religions. They don’t have a billion people.

Student: Baptized over a dead house, I suppose.

Instructor: Dead people, not a house, but even living people. They also count anyone they ever spoke to as a follower. The point is, it’s not on the same level. And there’s major religions that have like a billion people each. Such Judaism that pretends to be a major religion with only like a million people. We take it seriously just because we’re there.

Student: Them.

Instructor: But other than that, other than that, no. And for historical reasons, of course, you know the reasons.

Student: Yeah, yeah. I know. You don’t have to tell me. I know.

Defining Major Religions: The Half-Billion Threshold

Instructor: But besides for that, like to be a major religion, you’ve got to have a half a million people, okay? Before that, we don’t count you. Okay? And there are—that’s the funny thing—there are seven or eight major religions with a half a million people each, and not more than that. And of course, all of these religions are thousands of years old.

The Core Puzzle: Why No New Major Religions?

Instructor: Okay, but why aren’t the younger religions—it shouldn’t be hard. People, human growth has been exponential in the last few hundred years, or the last hundred and twenty something years. There should have been some new religion that should have a billion people by now. Why is it so hard?

Student: Communism is basically that, but it’s just not a religion.

Instructor: I think some would argue—I’m not sure if I’m convinced of this—but some would argue that different countries are practicing officially the same thing, they just end up doing—

Student: Okay, but when we say religion, we mean whatever all Christians share, not what’s different, right?

Instructor: Whatever all Jews share. People have the same question—there’s so many kinds. Whatever they all share, that’s what we’re talking about, right? They share devotion to one book or to one founder or something like that.

The Case of Philosophy: Socrates and Elite Culture

Instructor: There was also only one Socrates that founded all of philosophy, to the extent that that’s just not a religion because he’s never managed to create a real human culture. It’s always like something for elite. But in any case, this is a real question. So I have some theories about it. I have some theories about this.

Divine Authority and the Continuity of Revelation

Rejecting the Distinction Between Eras of Providence

Student: Yeah, so this is not about authority.

Instructor: So again, like I said before, everything is divine authority, and you could teach people under any theory. Just to be clear, that’s why I said before, if you’re religious and you say God is speaking all the time, like I believe, then God is speaking all the time and never stopped speaking. The animals that Yehezkel [Ezekiel] saw in his dream are still the ones managing world politics and so on. Nothing changed. Just maybe there’s different visions, but we’ll talk about that. But nothing really changed. There isn’t this period of Hashgacha [divine providence] of revealed providence and the period of non-revealed providence. I don’t believe that. There are people that believe in providence, people that don’t. There always were, right?

The Question of Truth-Seeking Across Eras

Student: But there might be questions about whether or not there’s eras in time where people pursue truth more than others, or at least—

Instructor: I told you, not really. Not really. Not enough to make a difference. It’s like hard for me to believe that there’s enough to make a difference. That’s like my assumption. They’re wide assumptions, but they seem to be just as reasonable to me as the opposite assumptions that everyone else has, or maybe even more.

Student: Yeah, I don’t think that it’s impossible. I just mean that to me it’s at least tenable that at least the pursuit of certain kinds of metaphysics—

The Recurrence Thesis: Content Repeats Across Time and Place

Why Philosophical Positions Keep Being Reinvented

Instructor: I don’t think—I don’t think—because if you look, I’ll tell you why. Because you look around, if you look at content, again, if you think about content, not about forms of authority or even forms of content, if you look at the actual content, you’ll notice that things tend to recur all the time. Like Platonism is reinvented by every third teenager, whatever, something like that. Something like Platonism, right? In a very broad sense, right? There’s a reason why there’s all these perennialists and all these theories making everything the same thing, not because they’re precisely the same thing.

Student: Right, but this group is actually much smaller. Meaning, maybe you need, let’s say, I don’t know, a half million people to be learning something from one of them.

Cults Follow the Same Seven Strategies

Instructor: But this is not true. But this is not true. Cults, like every cult around, every cult is basically the same as every other one, or like seven strategies that cults do, and they’re all doing one, picking one of them. They keep on being reinvented. None of them read the other guy’s book and did it. They just—these are like pathways that humans can work through, and they work through them. Philosophies are more or less keep on being reinvented. They’re not—they’re not very—there’s only like seven of them all over, and they keep on being reinvented. There isn’t a period in which people stop just hopping out. It’s not true.

The Persistence of Metaphysical Positions

Instructor: Even to the extent that people say, “Well, you know, certain metaphysical kind of theories don’t work nowadays,” that’s just not true. That just means they don’t work among my three friends that went to Oxford together. But in the next university in Cambridge, there’s still five people that are doing that kind of metaphysics, and nothing stopped them. They’re not—they’re not—it’s just not true. I don’t find—I don’t think—I don’t find the world to actually work this way.

The Constancy of Human Types Across History

Instructor: It seems to me that things more or less work the same all over, all the time. There might be fluctuations, but they’re way smaller than these big breaks that people talk about. I just don’t see it. There’s spiritual people all the time. There’s materialist people all the time. There’s cynical people all the time. There’s seekers all the time. There’s all kinds of people all the time, and all over, everywhere. They express themselves differently. But if you think about the content, that they’re way more similar than they’re different. There’s real differences. That’s what I’m saying, but we have to correctly place…

Optimized Conditions for Truth-Seeking: Do They Exist?

Student: Right, I don’t know if it’s critical, meaning is there a way that like, or, okay, so—

Instructor: They’re only critical, just to be clear, just to be clear.

Student: Are there preferential methods of truth-seeking that you’ll—

Instructor: No, the only places in which they’re critical, the only places in which they’re critical is in the belief business. Many people believe something to be critical, but I don’t think any of them have shown that. Many people say, well, yeah, then these kind of arguments are to make it slightly more reasonable.

Student: Yeah, like on authority there is no…

Instructor: There are no places or times that were more optimized?

Student: Places of material success or places of leisure or less distraction?

Fluctuations Never Reach Critical Mass

Instructor: Less, but not to the extent that this kind of thought demands. Not to the order of magnitude never reaches critical mass?

Student: I don’t think.

Instructor: Not close to what you would think. Not close to what would be demanded. I don’t see it working this way. I just don’t find it.

The Universal Distribution of Human Achievement

Instructor: Anything that I could understand, any kind of human achievement or human progress or human regress or anything that I could understand that I actually know what it is, exists in some form almost in every place and every generation. Of course, when I say place, I don’t mind black. But if you take in at large human society, if you look at any kind of philosophy nowadays, nowadays, okay? Any kind of thought. From the craziest ones to the normalest ones, they have adherence in every single country that the UN counts, okay? And maybe one, and maybe there’s only one in the whole Russia, but there’s one. There isn’t zero. I don’t find things getting to zero. And they claim that the authority people make seems to have need to get to zero even more than that. That’s why I think that we have to take the difference seriously.

Avoiding the Collapse of All Differences

Instructor: And I’m not saying we should collapse all the differences and say, “Well, everyone is always living and saying the same thing, and there’s five people and so on.” But we have to place the difference correctly.

Locating Difference in Form Rather Than Content or Authority

The Wrong Moves: Content and Ultimate Authority

Instructor: I think that placing the difference in the place of content or in the place of ultimate authority—I’d be like, is this really true? Did God command it? Or did human nature achieve it? Or whatever your source of authority is—I think that would be both wrong moves.

The Intermediate Category: Form

Instructor: That’s why I invented this intermediate category called the form. The form in which things are expressed. Or the form in which, both the form in which authority is expressed or the form in which truth is expressed or content is expressed. And I think the form is the thing that changes a lot. And I think that there’s—we could find some simple laws for why it has to be this way, for why you can’t be Moshe [Moses] again, and why, and so on, why there’s—there’s other strategies that work nowadays.

Student: No, it’s not—wait, listen to my theory.

The Disposable Strategies Theory: A Novel Explanation

Apology for Extended Preliminaries

Instructor: See, yeah, you, you made me—I went, spent too much, way too much time trying to say why the other theories are not good, and I didn’t give you a theory that even gives you a place from another place from which to theorize.

The Core Theory: Single-Use Strategies of Revelation

Instructor: So my theory would be something like this. Very simple theory. I invented a very simple theory. Probably someone invented it before me, but I didn’t find anyone. And my simple theory goes like this: There are strategies. There are amazing strategies for controlling, for teaching humans, for controlling them, I guess, but for teaching them, for revealing them, for revealing God to them, for revealing truth to them. Most of these theories—

Theories are disposable. Most of the strategies, not theories, most of the strategies or forms are disposable. Which means they’re used once, use it or lose it. Or not use it or lose it, use it once and then it explodes, it never works again. That’s my theory. I have a new theory. It works once and then you can never use it again. I have actually a reason why it can’t be used again. Maybe once…

Student: Use once?

Instructor: Yeah.

Student: No, I want to explain how.

The Mechanism: A Viral/Memetic Immunity Model

Instructor: I have a mechanism to explain this. This is only wild speculations, but I’m allowed to do wild speculations. So, I think that all strategies of revelation, and therefore this is also on the part of God, in other words, I have a natural explanation for this, work once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times, not more. Or some, I think, and I basically think, my basic model—yeah, I’m talking within the extent of history that we can remember, right, we’ve written that.

Now, what I think is that it’s something like, something like, how’s it called, the naive population for new, for new sicknesses. Like I have a medic theory, right? Like a viral theory.

How the Strategy Spreads and Then Becomes Ineffective

Instructor: So there’s new strategies that are revealed or discovered by people, and those strategies work amazingly, and they spread to the whole world as long as the whole world is naive to this new theory. It works once they all got it, or they got one of them. Even as long as once you’ve heard of one of these strategies, even if you don’t entirely believe it, but you’ve heard of it, the next one you become immune to the next one.

The Question of Immunity

Instructor: Why do you become immune, become immune, and therefore you can’t do it again. Why do you become immune?

The Theory of Strategic Exhaustion: Why Spiritual Strategies Cannot Be Repeated

The Fundamental Principle: Truth Creates Strategies That Become Detachable

Instructor: For a very simple reason, that anything given to humans can be imitated. The only things that can be imitated are the truth, but we’re not talking about the truth, we’re talking about the strategy, right?

Moshe came and did, brought a mountain on fire and said God spoke to him. This is easily imitated. I can tell you the directions. People have imitated it throughout history, just haven’t heard of them because everyone was like, thank you very much, Moshe did it yesterday, you’re not interesting. We know already about this trick.

But the first time the trick was done, or not the trick, the miracle, it doesn’t matter if you call it a trick or a miracle—what I mean trick I mean trick when I say trick I mean in the sense of being a rhetorical strategy of teaching people. Once someone, the first person that did it, he did it as an expression of the truth, right? It doesn’t matter here if you call it a miracle, if you call it a natural thing.

Clarifying Through Examples: Rhetorical Strategies

What I mean to say, something like this—right, let’s use rhetorical strategies as a better example, right? The first guy that came up—yeah, the first guy that came up and said, let’s not talk privacy right, took simple things, right, the first guy that invented the concept of, I don’t know, something like—

Like, the first guy that came and made a joke, okay? I don’t know who was the first guy that made a joke. A joke? I’m going to tell you a joke. Yeah, Kayin [Cain] made a joke. It was so funny that Hevel [Abel] died. Since then, nobody died from a joke. Because we’re like, oh, that’s a joke. We know what that is. Right? This is not true. It’s just a *midrash* [homiletical interpretation], right?

The Monument to Truth: Direct Causation

What I mean to say is you see things like this happen. The first time someone came up with like, I have this major crazy idea, therefore what I’m going to do, I’m going to build a school with a beautiful huge building and this is going to be a monument to my idea and really impress people. It really worked because the only reason, the cause of this monument was the true idea that he had, right? He had an idea, he had a true idea. So I’m going to make a monument announcing it to the whole thing. I’m going to build two *luchos* [tablets] and say and so on, and that’s going to be a true evidence of my ideas. It’s going to be a true evidence.

No matter if God wrote the *luchos* or if I wrote the *luchos*, it’s a true evidence because the source, the cause of these *luchos* were my true ideas, were the truth, right? They were directly caused by the truth. This is what means God did something, right? As opposed to God did it secondarily, right? It was directly caused by the idea, the insight that I had, and that insight I was thinking how to express it and I expressed it just like my speech, right?

The Problem of Escaped Containment

If I tell you, wow, I have seen God. Now the first person who saw God, when he said that, he saw God and was like, well there’s something called language, we have to connect words in certain ways, and he figured out how to say words that obviously he got those words from other people already, figured out how the language started, but he said these words, “I saw God,” and those words were God speaking by himself. He could have said, “I am God speaking to you,” and that’s what he did by the way, because those words were directly caused by his understanding of God.

Now once he did that, it escaped, it’s escaped containment. Now that these words exist in the world, anyone could come and say, “I saw God,” without him having seen God, because we already have the instructions, we already have this strategy invented called saying “I saw God.”

Now of course maybe most people are honest that they don’t lie, so if we have a guy and we can prove that he’s honest, that he didn’t lie, and he says “I saw God,” we might trust him. But it still doesn’t have—nobody’s ever going to have the power of the first guy. In other words, nobody’s going to actually have God speaking to him through these words just like the first guy did, because now it’s going to be because, by yes, God spoke to me, and also I’m borrowing this strategy that someone else taught me which can be equally used for a false God or for a liar as for the truth, and saying that. You get what I’m saying?

The Origin of Strategies: Truth-Seekers, Not Liars

So assuming that the strategy was first invented by the truth, and I think people assume this at least, that most rhetorical strategies were not invented by liars. They were invented by people looking for a way to express the truth that they saw. Because why would a liar—I mean, you could have the opposite theory, but this is one of my theories for today.

And then, therefore it had the actual power of the truth, but the next guy, even if it was true, even though there’s truth behind it, it wasn’t directly caused by the truth. It was caused by the truth, plus the first guy is teaching you a strategy that works equally well for lies as for truth.

Contemporary Example: The Matching Charity Campaign

By the way, you could see this kind of process happening with many, many methods. Every method of human growth basically sort of works this way and has this kind of expiration date built into it. I think that I could give you so many ideas, like very simple ones. Like the first guy that invented something called a matching charity campaign had amazing success and the second guy had way less success. And everyone knows it might work, but it has to be something besides that for it to work, right? Because you didn’t come up with the idea. The idea is directly caused by your amazing thought: wait, everyone’s gonna send links to their friends and then they’re just like, wait, why are you sending me a link? Oh, because you must believe in the charity so I’ll help you, you’re my friend, right?

Now everyone’s like, why are you sending me a link? Oh, because they taught you this. Oh, thank you very much. I already know this game, right? These kind of strategies, human conversion strategies being used up is something that happens all the time, and I think that the mechanism by which it happens is also pretty obvious and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be applied to these major thoughts like saying God spoke to me or writing a book in the name of God.

Application to Sacred Texts and Canon Formation

The first guy that ever wrote a book in the name of God, maybe he was also the first guy to ever write a book, he was doing something really amazing and converted the whole world, basically. Now, basically, two billion people or three billion people are just interpretations of that book. But the second guy is like, okay, you can write an interpretation, you could convince us that’s what it was really meant.

And by the way, the first guy to invent the concept of interpretation was also amazing. But the second guy is like, oh, you’re also doing an interpretation, okay. And then there’s different kinds of interpretation invented, every time every one, the first one is more successful—not the first one doesn’t need to be the first one chronologically, we have to get into details about this, but that’s my basic structure and my theory. Yeah, whatever it might be, it might take time for the method to actually be worked out and so on.

Running Out of Naive Populations

So this is my basic theory and now this theory predicts that it would be very hard to—basically this theory predicts that most people are fighting the last battle.

The Case of Shabtai Tzvi: Fighting the Last Battle

For example, there’s something called the *Mashiach Sheker* [false messiah]. It was basically only one *Mashiach Sheker* in Jewish history. No, he was a true *Mashiach*. It was a *chezkas Mashiach* [presumptive messiah]. It didn’t work out. There was one false messiah called Shabtai Tzvi.

Now since then, all the Jews are in trauma. Like, how do we become not Shabtai Tzvi? They don’t realize, you can’t be a second Shabtai Tzvi precisely because there was already one. Now everyone else that comes is like, he has a few believers, but Shabtai Tzvi basically had all the Jews believing in him. You know that, right? Basically all of them. That’s why he was almost not a false messiah. It could have worked.

But nobody else had anything close to that success. And precisely because there was already one. Everyone’s like, well we know this script. There wasn’t any other one. There’s always one, but not the same level. Oh, I don’t say maybe it could have worked, that’s why it’s a mistake, but the point is these people are always like, wait, why are you going to be the same? You can’t be the same. Maybe this fact that people are already used to it and they’re already aware of it and they’re afraid of it as part of it, but my point is you can’t repeat strategies precisely because they’ve worked so well. And you’re sort of burnt out.

The Radical Claim: There Will Never Be Another Torah

In other words, because they don’t represent truth. They don’t, they’re not actually—in other words, I’ll tell it like this. There will never be another Torah. Never. Not by Messiah. Not even another Torah. Another word of a biblical book. Why? Because biblical book, the kind of thing, it’s a kind of register, it’s a kind of style, it’s a kind of form. It’s not a kind of truth. There’s always going to be no truths or no more truths revealed. But there’s a kind of truth that has been burnt out.

Since, why did we stop adding books to the canon? Because a bunch of people were writing books and they were like, everyone’s writing a book nowadays and claiming that it’s part of the Bible, enough, right? The format was ran, ran through, format stopped working. So we stopped at some point. The smart people stopped. Some other people continued, but even that format’s work burnt out at some point.

And by the way, it worked out, but how did you know? Like the second time it worked, the guy that wrote the next book only worked because he had a population to work on, right? The guys that already read the first version of the Bible were like, yeah, I could also write another version, like thank you very much. The guys that never read the first one really were like, wait, yeah, why not? But then you don’t have any—at some point you run out of naive populations for your strategy to work and it can’t work and it would be a lie for it to work.

When Even True Prophecy Becomes False

It would be a lie for it to work because now even if you happen to be a true prophet, God actually spoke to you, saying God—the words saying “God spoke to me” or “I’m speaking the name of God” is our false world. Like those words become not—there’s nothing holy in them anymore because they become not representative of the truth. They don’t become not caused by the truth anymore. They’re caused by someone picking up this tool and using it, even if you were using it for good purposes.

Student: By being blended with contemporary mediums.

Instructor: Yeah, and therefore—let me finish, let me finish because I have to go to sleep. That’s all. I’m speaking to you way too long already.

Implications for the Future: The Need for Unprecedented Strategies

So this is my basic theory and this explains—and there’s other strategies—this explains why *Mashiach* [Messiah] will have to invent a new way, or if there’s going to be a future *Mashiach*. By the way, there were many *Mashiachs* already that worked out. There were many people that came and said, I have a strategy of interpretation, I have a new strategy of interpretation, I am the promised Messiah that the book predicts, all kinds of strategies. And I had a list in my thing of like six or seven different strategies that have been tried and burned through, and none of them were the original strategy.

If I’m writing an original book, you have to realize there’s something significant in that. And now if there’s going to be a new way, I don’t think prophecy will ever return. I think people are trying to return prophecy or return to *Sanhedrin* [the supreme Jewish court] are doing something very dumb. You’re trying to return—the reason there’s no *Sanhedrin* is because we went through that system. It stopped working at some point. Why? Because everyone could be a *Sanhedrin*. Me and you are a *Sanhedrin*. Me and you are prophets. Thank you very much. That’s not what we need.

The Only Path Forward: Genuine Innovation

What we need is something unknown, right? If we need something. Maybe we don’t need anything. Maybe we’re fine. But assuming that we need something, the next prophet is not going to write a biblical book because anyone, any *am ha’aretz* [ignoramus] can do that. He’s going to write a good one, by the way. *ChatGPT* could not write a good one yet, but he will be able to, maybe, I don’t know. Everyone can do that.

What we will have to come up with is a new kind of strategy that hasn’t been tried yet, and only the first one will work, or the second one, whichever one will be most correct at it, and that will be able to do some progress. Or meanwhile—

Prophecy, Authority, and the Future of Religious Leadership: Concluding Reflections

The Need for Unknown Strategies

Thank you very much. That’s not what we need. What we need is something unknown, right? If we need something, maybe we don’t need anything, maybe we’re fine. But assuming that we need something, the next prophet is not going to write a biblical book, because any loafer can do that. He’s going to write a good one, by the way. Chanchabdik could not write a good one yet, but he will be able to maybe, I don’t know. Everyone can do that.

What we will have to come up with is a new kind of strategy that hasn’t been tried yet, and only the first one will work, or the second one, whichever one will be most correct at it. And that will be able to do some progress.

Working Within Moshe’s Framework Today

Or meanwhile we have to work within. Meanwhile, if you want to actually be like Moshe, what you do is you interpret Moshe. You work within words, within processes that work for the people that are now there. So this is variation, or much more complexification. It’s not the same. It’s not the same. It’s a, right, it’s a complication of the theory.

Revisiting the Theory of Prophecy’s Cessation

That what’s his name said in my name, that the people stopped understanding God and there was no prophets. I think it’s—I don’t think it’s true that people don’t have God speaking to them. I think that nobody would believe you say God spoke to you, and for good reason, because you wouldn’t—it wouldn’t be true even if it’s true. And then it’s true God speaks all the time.

Therefore, if you—we have ways of telling people God spoke to you. By the way, it’s called paskening [poskening: rendering halakhic/Jewish legal rulings]. Still somewhat works. Stopping to work slowly. I mean, for a few hundred years it’s stopping to work slowly, but it used to work very well. There’s other ways. Those ways that work, those are legitimate ways. There’s nothing wrong with them.

The Question of Remaining Strategies

If you want to like conquer the world, maybe there isn’t any way, any leftover strategies for doing that. Or maybe there are, and we just didn’t discover them.

Closing

Anyways, that’s my sheet [shiur: Torah lesson/lecture] for today. Everyone should have a good night. And I have enough meshugene [meshugene: crazy, Yiddish] thoughts, and we could move on. Close my thing. Thank you.