y which the rabbis furnished. They declared that at
Creation God provided for certain extraordinary events, so that a latent
force, established for the purpose at the beginning of the world, is
responsible for incidents which appeared at the time to be true
interferences with the world order. Thus God had made a special covenant,
as it were, with the work of creation that at the appointed time the Red
Sea should divide before Israel; that sun and moon should stand still at
the bidding of Joshua; that fire should not consume the three youths,
Hananel, Mishael, and Azariah; that the sea-monster should spit forth
Jonah alive; together with other so-called miracles.(470) The same idea
occasioned the other Haggadic saying that shortly before the completion of
the creation on the evening of the sixth day God placed certain miraculous
forces in nature. Through them the earth opened to swallow Korah and his
band, the rock in the wilderness gave water for the thirsty multitude, and
Balaam's ass spoke like a human being; through them also the rainbow
appeared after the flood, the manna rained from heaven, Aaron's rod burst
forth with almond blossoms and fruit, and other wondrous events happened
in their proper time.(471)

3. Neither the rabbis nor the medieval Jewish thinkers expressed any doubt
of the credibility of the Biblical miracles. The latter, indeed,
rationalized miracles as well as other things, and considered some of them
imaginary. Saadia accepts all the Biblical miracles except the speaking
serpent in Paradise and the speaking ass of Balaam, considering these to
be parables rather than actual occurrences.(472) In general, both Jewish
and Mohammedan theologians assumed that special forces hidden in nature
were utilized by the prophets and saints to testify to their divine
mission. These powers were attained by their lofty intellects, which
lifted them up to the sphere of the Supreme Intellect. All medieval
attempts to solve the problem of miracles were based upon this curious
combination of Aristotelian cosmology and Mohammedan or Jewish
theology.(473) True, Maimonides rejects a number of miracles as contrary
to natural law, and refers to the rabbinical saying that some of the
miraculous events narrated in Scripture were so only in appearance. Still
he claims for Moses, as the Mohammedans did for Mohammed, miraculous
powers derived from the sphere of the Supreme Intellect. In a lengthy
chapter on miracles Albo follows