Avodah Mailing List

Volume 27: Number 211

Wed, 01 Dec 2010

• 1. flood (Eli Turkel)
• 2. Re: Klal Yisrael - one people, many tribes [was: Self Esteem] (Arie Folger)
• 3. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Arie Folger)
• 4. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Arie Folger)
• 5. local flood (Eli Turkel)
• 6. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Zev Sero)
• 7. Re: Just one Hashem in Heaven (Micha Berger)
• 8. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Arie Folger)
• 10. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Zev Sero)
• 11. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Arie Folger)
• 12. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Zev Sero)
• 13. Re: Local, Non-Global or Global Flood (Arie Folger)

<<I am interested in seeing an example of a rishon who, based on
new information, changed, or posited that we should change, the
traditional/conventional way of understanding the basic nature of any
Torah narratives from historical to allegorical. As far as I can see,
any rishon who posits that a particular narrative is meant allegorically
maintains that this was the way Chazal understood it all along.>>

I think it is clear that Rambam, Ralbag etc. chose allegorical interpretations
(ie the events occurred in a dream rather than in real life) whenever the
stories conflicted with their theology or sense of the real world.
Rambam clearly states that when there are conflicting interpretations in chazal
he chooses the one he prefers based on his philosophy and not based on any
rules that apply to standard halachic arguments.
I have never attempted to see whther every re-interpretation in Rambam can be
traced to some Chazal.

Ramban states that the rainbow was not "invented" after the flood based on
scientific reasoning but re-interprets the pesukim that it is a sign based on a
pre-existing rainbow.

In rishonim it is likely to see a change because of new knowledge
since science moved
very slowly in those days and differences from the science of chazal were small.

Note that Tiferes Yisrael uses the many previous worlds to explain dinosaurs.
This is another example where one chooses a relatively minor approach based on
external reasons.

I refer everyone to Prof. Shat'z article in Tradition on using science
to interpret pesukim
mainly in bereshit. Without revisiting the issue we have discussed
many times one
has to confront the issue of vast differences between science and the Torah.
In this case there is absolutely no evidence of a global flood some
4000 years ago
that destroyed (almost all) living beings.
As we have discussed many times there are many approaches including
just saying that
science and dating and rings on trees are simply wrong. Not everyone
is happy with
that approach.


-- 
Eli Turkel

R'n TK wrote:
> It is part of the incredible Hashgacha Pratis we see throughout
> the sweep of Jewish history that the Ribono Shel Olam created
> a wondrous  world that contains both Yekkes and Litvaks, both
> Sefardim and  Chassidim, not to mention many other shevatim.

Thank you for properly using the word shevatim, in the same sense the
Ari used it when speaking of the different gates of prayer, each of
which corresponds to its shevet's nussach hatefillah. There, as in
your sentence, shevet does not literally mean one of the twelve groups
that descended one each from Yaakov's twelve sons (nu, let's count
Yossef as one here), but rather its secondary meaning of groups,
'edot.

(source: R' Binyomin Shelomo Hamburger)

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

RZL wrote:
>> On 11/30/2010 2:27 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
>> I consider the preference for primary meanings of words to
>> be an a priori tendency, not an absolute rule...
>> it is however not convincing to assume that words
>> always mean their primary meaning, except in the most extreme
>> circumstances.
>
> So you're saying that you disagree with the authorities I quoted,
> because they only allow for non-primary interpretation in the most
> extreme circumstances? They are clear about the circumstances that
> disqualify the primary meaning. Where do you see they limit secondary
> meaning to "extreme" circumstances?

As I wrote, I think that you misread these sources. Language is not
math. Those sources are not talking in a formulaic manner, but rather
of the dominant predisposition. Yes, we are predisposed to interpret
words according to their primary meaning, and extreme issues will
always compel us reinterpret words and idioms according to alternative
readings that are in line with the theological principles. However,
that does not exclude the possibility that other texts, where lesser
issues arise, may also have to, or be allowed to be read differently.

>> ... I just refer to the gemara in 'Hullin, dibru
>> hakhtuvim belashon havai. I agree that doesn't give me or you licence
>> to just redefine things as lashon havai at will, but the presence of
>> lashon havai is an established fact, in 'Humash, no less.
>
> I'm getting confused. You consider the posuk cited there, "Cities
> fortified up to the heavens" as a non-extreme circumstance?

Sure, Why can't they literally reach up to the heavens? Why not say
that their walls were reaching a mile or two high, higher than all the
surrounding mountains, and that they stood thanks to kishuf, koa'h
hatumah, and that barring an opposite nes, no one would be able to
conquer them, not the Egyptians, not the Persians, not the Greeks, not
the Romans and not the Russians?

But common experience tells us (a) that city walls are never that
high, nor are they ever held up by visible ko'hot hatumah, and (b)
that lashon havai is often used in describing seemingly impregnable
fortresses.

Just because 'Hazal say this is a nonliteral idiom does not mean that
the issue is extreme. Isn't the set of midrashim about Og being a
super-extra-extra-gigantic giant every bit as surprising as city walls
reaching for the heavens, and then some? (this should lead us to seek
to understand those midrashim, too.)

KT,
-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

Rabosai,

The following post in Hirhurim is somewhat relevant to our attempts at
figuring out how broadly words like yom can be interpreted, given the
available messoretic evidence:

Sages and Scripture
... This is not on a midrashic level but on the level of basic
translation. Once the Gemara established this, could commentators
disagree?

http://torahmusings.com/2010/11/sages-and-scripture.html

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

<<*3. The Kuzari who dismisses the Indian belief, that they had
antiquities and buildings millions of years old, as contra our tradition
(rather than reconciling the evidence by interpreting the sixth day as
an era of Adam/"mankind"*>>

IMHO the point is that RIHAL says why throw out our traditions because of some
Indian beliefs.

It is an entirely different story if RIHAL were convinced that science
in many different fields
held the earth/universe was billions of years old
eg the distance to starts is measured in millions of light years.

As far as I am concerned this whole discussion is meaningless.
The rishonim had no real reason to scientifically doubt the story of creation
and the flood as given in the Bible. How they would have reacted to
other science than what they knew is open to conjecture.
We have already mentioned the Rambam that if he was convinced that the world
was eternal he would have accepted that. Only because a finite time
earth was conceivable
was he willing to not accept Aristotle.

-- 
Eli Turkel

On 1/12/2010 5:03 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> R'ZS wrote, regarding Rashi on Bereishit 1:1:
>> So Rashi tells him no, it doesn't mean that, it means that they
>> were created for the sake of two "reshises".  He doesn't like
>> that, so Rashi tells him if he wants to avoid drush then he'll
>> have to read it as if it said "bereshis bero".
>
> Actually, I think that the above analysis emphasizes Rashi's secondary
> point, while missing his main point. To borrow from the title of a
> work that uses the kind of analysis I want to suggest here, What's
> bothering Rashi?
>
> What bothered Rashi is, first and foremost, that it is incongruent to
> suggest that G"d created heaven and earth in the beginning, since
> heaven was created on the second day, and earth on the fourth.

Except that Rashi absolutely does *not* say that.  He could easily have
done so, and *had this been his problem he would have done so*.  His
problem is indeed that this can't be the order, but he goes out of his
way *not* to say that shamayim was created on the second day.  (And
eretz on the *fourth*?! What's that about?)

Rashi *says* what his problem is with saying that shamayim and eretz
were created first.  He doesn't leave it to our imagination, so that
we might fill in our own reasons, as you do.  He tells us his reasons,
so how can you ignore them and substitute your own?   Rashi already in
this pasuk accepts that shamayim and eretz were created on the first
day.  What he rejects is that they were created first.  Mayim had to
be created before eretz, and both esh and mayim had to be created
before shamayim.  And once we know that these two things were created
before shamayim and eretz, who knows what else might also have been
created before them?  One thing we know, they did not come first.

Therefore if the pasuk were telling us what were the first creations,
it would have to read, at the very *least*, "bereshit bara E' et ha'esh
ve'et hamayim, ve'et hashamayim ve'et ha'aretz".  Since it omits esh
and mayim, we *know* that it's not talking about the order of creation,
and therefore "bereshit bara" must be read in a non-standard way, and
he offers us two options: a drash which at least preserves the vowels,
or a pshat which requires us to ignore the vowels.



> Of course, I already hear you scream that in 2:4, Rashi finds a way
>  toclaim heaven and earth had already been created on day one.

Indeed.  And not only in 2:4; that's just where he *proves* it, but
he *asserts* it all through chapter 1.  He's known this pasuk was
coming all along, and he prepared us and steered us away from an
understanding which would have given us problems with it.  So no,
there is no "evolution", no new discovery that makes us reevaluate
what we've learned till now.  Rashi has never for a moment allowed us
to believe that shamayim and eretz were created after the first day,
and now we finally learn why, and we thank him for having kept us
from a reading that seemed more logical at the time, but would have
run us aground on this shoal.

Had Rashi done what you suggest, he would davka have *let* us think
the shamayim were created on the second day, and only now have pointed
out why that couldn't be, and have told us to retrace our steps and
come back to this point with the correct reading.  That might have been
an interesting teaching method, but if so it's one he chose not to use.




-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 01:49:11PM +0000, kennethgmil...@juno.com wrote:
: I admit that Chazal considered the planets and stars to be part
: of shamayim, but I feel that this was merely because it fit their
: understanding of what is "not part of this world"....

Just in case that thread isn't hot enough... Are you saying that
rishonim created new peshatim in the word "shamayim" in response to
changes in science?

In this case, like that, the rishonim make a point of citing a basis
in Chazal. RZL already quoted an example. There are enough quotes
from Chazal placing Hashem in Shamayim (in some sense of the world)
and also placing Him outside even the concept of space. The rishonim
had more than science to work with.

...
: As far as the Shechina not coming below ten tefochim, that's not a
: problem at all, because the Shechina is just one aspect of Hashem...

(The Shechinah is Hashem-as-Perceived. There are no Aspects -- that
would defy Yichud.)

I am not bothered because a height of 10 tefachim divides reshuyos. The
statement is straighforward idiom for "Hashem's presence is least visible
in the reshus of the gashmi". And not really a reference to height at all.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Live as if you were living already for the
mi...@aishdas.org        second time and as if you had acted the first
http://www.aishdas.org   time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning

From mi...@aishdas.org Wed Dec  1 10:12:29 2010
From: Micha Berger <mi...@aishdas.org>
To: avo...@lists.aishdas.org
Subject: Re: [Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood
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On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 09:48:49PM -0500, Zvi Lampel wrote:
> *RMB:>We've debated this numerous times. And I still believe you're  
> mistaken.<*

> *And despite my quoting-- *

Interested Avodah-ites can peruse the hundreds of posts we spent on
these very rishonim over the last decade. Since I can not convince RZL
that numerous acharonim, including the Maharal and REED, understood
those sources differently than what he was taught by R' Avigdor Miller
and others, and instead he just refers to the rishonim exactly as when
they were first introducted, I don't see the point in going around this
circle again.

Just two notes I found something new to say about:
> *5. The Rambam (MN **2:30**), as I will elaborate.*
> positied that each day consisted of thousands of years)*
...
>       ... 11. Abarbanel ...

This was in reply to my previous mention of the Abarbanel's take on 2:30,
which also followed a quote of that Abarbanel. The Abarbanel understands
the Rambam to be speakiing of a causal sequence that was lemaalah min
hazeman, not of any duration at all. AND, he informs us that Narbonni and
the Ralbag explain the Moreh similarly (if you, like most Adovah-ites,
do not have access to copies of the Moreh with their peirushim).

So why bother trying to establish an argument that the Rambam says
something else, particularly in the middle of your own argument based
on the authority of rishonim?

...
> *Yes, I am aware that you personally are not promoting this, but a view  
> that neither academia nor we can attempt to have any idea at all of how  
> the world developed. But this does not correspond to the  
> commentaries...

You think the Maharal didn't know the rishonim?

What is flawed in your citation of sources is that in order to prove
they didn't believe the six yamim were 24 hour days in the same sense
as human experience of days, you would have to prove they don't ALSO
describe the days as something else.

However, REED shows the Ramban does. And so on, with similar conflicting
quotes for most, if not all, of the rest of the list. I think I left our
last such debate with the belief that only Rashi refers to the yamim
of beri'ah as comprehensible days (and then asked if Rashi's focus
on peshat means that he is only talking pshat in pasuq, not history)
without contradiction, but thanks to our debate about 2:4, I'm not sure
about him anymore either.

On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 10:34:15AM +0200, Eli Turkel wrote:
: I think it is clear that Rambam, Ralbag etc. chose allegorical interpretations
: (ie the events occurred in a dream rather than in real life) whenever the
: stories conflicted with their theology or sense of the real world.

The Rambam makes a point of citing Chazal when doing so. Whether direct,
or one he feels forces the implication. Even in the famous case of
turning much of parashas Vayeira into a nevu'ah.

RZL also argued that this finding an internal indication from within
the mesorah is the norm amongst rishonim.


On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 07:37:36AM -0500, Meir Shinnar wrote:
:>    "'Chokhmah bagoyim' -- taamin,
:>    'Torah bagoyim' -- al taamin."

:> There is an epistomological difference between that we know through
:> Inspired Sources and which we know through science. Yes, they have much
:> in common -- both tell us about the Borei. But they aren't fully in
:> common. It's not that chokhmah and Torah are really the same thing; not
:> if we're talking "which are we more sure of?" questions. They shouldn't
:> just be blurred into one under any label for this kind of conversation.

: They do have a difference - but one has to be sure what is the
: difference.  One argument is a la yeshayahu leibowitz - that
: revelation (in your sense..) is primarily in the connative sphere -
: while the other is in the cognitive sphere...

Other differences:
    Science deals with "What?" religion with "Why?"
    Or Is vs Ought.

But I cited another difference, an epistomological one -- you can
believe a nakhri's science, but not his "Torah". Which means that they
are different in their information gathering properties as well.

If all of science were subsumed in Torah, that Chazal I quoted would
be paradoxical.

...
: but it DOES FIT mesora - because mesora contains within it the
: understandign that our understanding is limited.

You don't see circularity in this sentence?

Yes, our understanding is limited. And BH grows every day, if you believe
we're still standing there on the shoulders of giants. But that's true
of both sides of the equation.

You're saying that because we don't have perfect grasp of Torah, and there
is TSBP indicating it, it is therefore less authoritative than our imperfect
grasp of science.

:> Yes, such changes are possible. But I would expect to find flaws in
:> the mistaken understanding of the Torah that wouldn't work qua Torah.

: Why?? it is this limited uinderstanding of torah that reflects, IMHO,
: a lack of emunah

I don't understand this sentence. You appear to be saying that there is
a lack of emunah in Torah to think that if we didn't perfectly understand
the Torah, it would be obvious from within the understanding itself rather
than needing to rely on science.

That greater emunah in the Torah means trusting it less in the face of
things less clearly part of it (if at all).

:> Either that, or one must accept that Torah is incomplete, less than
:> temimah. So, shemesh begiv'on dam can change from its old meaning --
:> I'm just demanding a higher threshold for doing so.

: higher threshold in terms of scientific acceptability - fine
: remember the rambam is explicit (ma'amar techiyat hametim)that the
: reason that he can allegorize is not that there is a specific mesora
: about this  item - but that there is a general mesora that one can do
: so..

Yes, that stories in Chazal are stories, not history. If you and I are
thinking of the same bit in the MTH. Nothing to do with this.

There is no parallel WRT the text of Tanakh.

The problem is your argument is too powerful, and if it worked, then
even belief in Maamad Har Sinai would have to fall to scientific theory.

After all, the notion of a half a million families leaving Egypt,
traveling for 40 years in the desert, entering Canaan and needing decades
to conquer it -- and never entirely succeeding (e.g. Dan and Shim'on)
-- runs against current models of life of that period. We would have
been too large of a percentage of the Egyptian Empire, and multiples
the total population of the land we were to conqure. The archeological
doesn't reflect that.

So, do we allegorize sefer Shemos too?

Or course there are times where we must say that Torah itself is enough
evidence to assume the flaw is in current scientific theory. I would think
therefore the only question is when.

Which I would think excludes this notion that science is part of Torah
(even though goyim have one and not the other), and that the Torah itself
tells you you will always be more advanced and sure in your scientific
knowledge than in your knowledge of it.

...
:> I suggest you learn the Maharal. You are assuming a consistency to reality
:> that the Maharal is saying fails for miracles. Not internal/subjective
:> vs external/objective. But conflicting realities. If even within physics,
:> different frames of reference can have conflicting descriptions of reality
:> (Was the train ever entirely inside the tunnel?), why can't metaphysics
:> assert the same thing on a grander and more fundamental scale?

: I have actually learned the maharal a long time ago.  However, we are
: not dealing with those directly experiencing the nissim - but their
: aftermath. Eg, for the flood - when it says vayimach et kol hayekum -
: did that just happen in the perception/sphere/? of the people at that
: time, or did it actually happen?

As I said, "conflicting realities". It did really happen -- for the people
who experienced it. That doesn't mean that if we were there, it would
have happened for us. From that I suggested a resolution to the problem
that this is why we don't find the evidence, even though numerous cultures
(even those in areas safe from flooding) have a human memory of the event.

: In the end, the difference between your version of the maharal
: approach (it happened but not in our physical world) or allegorical
: approach is actually quite small.

With the difference that it really did happen in the physical world of
the people who alive then. There was a Noach, his neighbor really did
drown, every person descends from Noach, etc...

...
:> Why not accept all the data as compelling and postpone the answer?

: There is a difference between saying we have a conflict between our
: understanding of the torah and science - and postponing resolution -
: as you are proposing here - and sayign that therefore our
: understanding of torah is correct, and science must be wrong - as you
: said earlier.

What I said earlier was that you were being lopsided in your standards
of truth. To quote myself:
:> So, if something in mesorah is well supported within TSBP and doesn't
:> raise problems internal to Torah, why not afford it the same credibility?
:> Why does science stand in the face of a conflict with mesorah, as long
:> as it's sound on scientific grounds, but TSBP doesn't stand in the face
:> of a conflict with science, as long as it's sound on mesoretic grounds?

...
: Again, all the examples that he gives reflect nissim whose primary
: impact was on those experiencing them (BTW midrashic undestandings of
: the global impact of shemesh begivon dom is rejected here.). Who is
: the person experiencing the flood as a nes?

Noach and the 7 other people in the teiva, as well as many people for
whom it was their last experience.

I leave the question of whether the cats experienced hashchases kol
hayequm or not to Schroedinger's Cat. (Which again, is a totally different
kind of conflicting reality, just a good metaphor.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Between stimulus & response, there is a space.
mi...@aishdas.org        In that space is our power to choose our
http://www.aishdas.org   response. In our response lies our growth
Fax: (270) 514-1507      and our freedom. - Victor Frankl, (MSfM)

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> Rashi already in
> this pasuk accepts that shamayim and eretz were created on the first
> day. ?What he rejects is that they were created first. ?Mayim had to
> be created before eretz, and both esh and mayim had to be created
> before shamayim.

We obviously disagree as to how to read a text. Some of what you write
evokes in me the question regarding what the meaning of is is. Rashi
is quite explicit, but doesn't spell everything out., because some of
the blanks I filled in are simply obvious, for anyone who has read
three pessukim in a row. Once Rashi spelled out that it is incongruent
to claim that heavens were created bereishit, all the rest follows,
but you want Rashi to spell out every detail. Sorry, that ain't going
to happen, because Rashi is, well, Rashi, and even more than being a
commentator, he is a master biblical educator, a pedagogue, and by
spelling out all these details, he would be as long winded as the
Ramban. His would then be a masterful commentary, but no longer Rashi,
no longer the standard commentary we all refer to.

Rashi needs to be studied, not read like in elementary school. Once
Rashi puts you on a path, it is absolutely OK and in fact a duty, to
follow that path in order to figure out what he wants, and so once he
tells us there is an incongruity, that is what he means, and that is
his main point.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

On 1/12/2010 3:34 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
> Ramban states that the rainbow was not "invented" after the flood based on
> scientific reasoning but re-interprets the pesukim that it is a sign based on a
> pre-existing rainbow.

This is not reinterpreting the pesukim, it's just reading them closely.
It's not that we would have some difficulty with positing that Hashem
changed the nature of light and/or of water after the mabul so as to
produce rainbows; it's that there's nothing in the pesukim to justify
such a theory.  The Ramban is saying that those who claim there were no
rainbows before the mabul are reading the pesukim carelessly; it's
*they* who are reinterpreting the pesukim to say something that's just
not there.



On 1/12/2010 6:26 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> RZL wrote:

>> I'm getting confused. You consider the posuk cited there, "Cities
>> fortified up to the heavens" as a non-extreme circumstance?
>
> Sure, Why can't they literally reach up to the heavens? Why not say
> that their walls were reaching a mile or two high

But the shamayim is higher than that.  Even taking the literal view
that shamayim is a physical object directly above a flat disc-shaped
earth, its distance is the same as the earth's diameter, which is far
more than a mile or two.  It's inconceivable that they could have
built a wall all the way up to touch the shamayim.



On 1/12/2010 10:00 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Zev Sero<z...@sero.name>  wrote:
>> Rashi already in
>> this pasuk accepts that shamayim and eretz were created on the first
>> day.  What he rejects is that they were created first.  Mayim had to
>> be created before eretz, and both esh and mayim had to be created
>> before shamayim.

> We obviously disagree as to how to read a text. Some of what you write
> evokes in me the question regarding what the meaning of is is. Rashi
> is quite explicit, but doesn't spell everything out., because some of
> the blanks I filled in are simply obvious, for anyone who has read
> three pessukim in a row. Once Rashi spelled out that it is incongruent
> to claim that heavens were created bereishit, all the rest follows"

How does it follow?  You want to say that his problem with saying that
shamayim were created in the beginning is that we are still running with
the hava amina that they were created on the second day, and only in
chapter 2 will we discover that it wasn't so.  But how could we form
that hava amina in the first place, when the very first time the chumash
tells us they were created on the second day Rashi hastens to inform us
that they weren't?   *Where* are you getting this whole concept from?

-- 
Zev Sero
z...@sero.name

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> You want to say that his problem with saying that
> shamayim were created in the beginning is that we are still running with
> the hava amina that they were created on the second day, and only in
> chapter 2 will we discover that it wasn't so. ?But how could we form
> that hava amina in the first place, when the very first time the chumash
> tells us they were created on the second day Rashi hastens to inform us
> that they weren't? ? *Where* are you getting this whole concept from?

That is in 1:6, and shows that Rashi was already planting the seeds
for 2:4. Rashi is quite an educator. But in 1:1, he is still trying to
convince us that heaven and earth were not created on the first,
because that would be incongruous.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?

On 1/12/2010 12:02 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Zev Sero<z...@sero.name>  wrote:
>> You want to say that his problem with saying that
>> shamayim were created in the beginning is that we are still running with
>> the hava amina that they were created on the second day, and only in
>> chapter 2 will we discover that it wasn't so.  But how could we form
>> that hava amina in the first place, when the very first time the chumash
>> tells us they were created on the second day Rashi hastens to inform us
>> that they weren't?   *Where* are you getting this whole concept from?
>
> That is in 1:6, and shows that Rashi was already planting the seeds
> for 2:4. Rashi is quite an educator. But in 1:1, he is still trying to
> convince us that heaven and earth were not created on the first,
> because that would be incongruous.

So you keep saying, but where are you getting it from?  Where does Rashi
either say or imply that they were not created on the first day?  Where
would we get the idea that they were created on the second, if not from
1:6, where Rashi explicitly tells us *not* to?

Rashi is not "planting seeds" for some future revelation, he's explicitly
saying exactly what he says later.  He's not gently leading us to a
conclusion, he tells us the whole thing straight away, and warns us not
to be misled by what seems at the moment to be the simple pshat.  By the
time we get to 2:4 we already know his opinion, and all we finally learn
is *why* he's been telling us this.  Now we see the wall we would have
run into, had we not had Rashi for a guide.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
z...@sero.name                 eventually run out of other people?s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher

On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 6:25 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> So you keep saying, but where are you getting it from?

Let's be brief. Rashi in 1:1 is arguing that the reading of bereishit
... shamayim vaaretz would mean "in teh beginning, G"d created heaven
and earth" is untennable. Everything else is commentary, go read it
again.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Basler Gymnasium experimentiert mit Chawrut?-Lernen
* Where Will We Find Refuge ... from technology overload
* Video-Vortrag: Psalm 34
* We May Have Free Will, After All
* Equal Justice for All
* Brutal Women of Nazi Germany
* Gibt es in der Unterhaltungsliteratur eine Rolle f?r G"tt?


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