The Three Oaths were a rhetorical device used by Chazal to try to calm down the rowdy Jews who kept on trying one disastrous revolt after another.
Please provide source/evidence or at least the rationale for this explanation. This will be helpful to defending your stance, but it is also I think necessary for those without as much knowledge as you on this issue (myself included). This answer seems to presume a lot of unseen information.
I'll give you an example to demonstrate this. There is a Midrash that says that in the story where Moses killed the egyptian for beating a Hebrew actually Moses used the name of G-d to kill this egyptian. Zapping him, as it were, with magical killing power.
Now, you can take the infantile position that Moses actually did zap him with magical powers....................
OR you can realize what a Rabbi might say in order to calm down a Jew who reads the Torah seeing that Moses killed the Egyptian oppressor, I will go out tommorow morning and kill a few Roman soldiers.
But if you tell this person that in happened in some magical fashion and therefore such things can only be done in a magical fashion so don't go out and kill Romans, got it?
But how does one determine which midrashim to apply this to and which not to?
One has this problem with all midrashim, is it literal or not, and if not, then what does it teach.
(see, one could say they are not literal oaths, but then say that it teaches what it says it teaches,so it makes no difference!).
Most rabbis -do- believe the midrash (literally), that Moshe literally killed the egyptian with the Shem HaMeforesh. A divine name with special powers.
If you want to say that it is literal, then you have to answer the questions of consistency. e.g.
OK, so we are under the 3 oaths. They weren't literally made. But if they apply, then when do they apply? How do we explain chanukah(revolt against the greeks)? or Rabbi Akiva's choosing of Bar Koziba/Kochba - revolt against romans.
Now. KahaneBT, you're a logical person..
If you listen to a shiur why not produce a summary of it?
Here, at this link, I produced a summary of one of rabbi bar hayyim's shiurim. It is the one you were wondering about
http://jtf.org/forum_english/index.php?topic=22537.0You actually participated in that thread.. I guess you forgot.
If you search for breakdown you would pick up that thread.
You may forget.. But you are logical, and if you go to the trouble of listening to a one hour shiur, it would be a great service if you produced a summary of the shiur..
(I don't know about you.. But I know that for me, if I have listened to a shiur, and absorbed it, then summarising it is not a problem.. I often pause it and tap things into notepad anyway while listening to it. It's the listening and absorbing it that takes the most time)