Avodah Mailing List

Volume 02 : Number 176

Sunday, February 28 1999

• [none]
• Velikofsky!? and the 4 Shivuyim
• Megila Repetitions, Zochore too
• Bashing Albert E and Fooling Brilliant Men (&women for that matter)
• Re: Avodah V2 #173
• Re: Velikofsky!?
• Re: Fooling Brilliant Men
• P Zachor/ Purim
• Re: When should service be paid for?
• 420 years and Yechezkel 30
• A note on R' Eli Turkel's "Points"
• Re: Bashing Albert E and Fooling Brilliant Men (&women for that matter)

subject: 420 years

     In response to requests I shall present some details of the problem with the dating of Seder Olam Rabbah. I did not give these details until now because I assumed it would bore most readers. Much  is based on the book by First but the facts speak for themselves.
Apologizes for the length of the post:

Summary:
1. According to Chazal there were 52 years between the defeat of
the Babylonians my the Persian/Medes and the defeat of the Persians
by Alexander the Great. The Second Temple was built 18 years
after the Persian conquest and so stood for 34 years until Alexander
and 420 years in total. The Persian kings were Darius the Mede, Koresh, 
Ahashverosh and Dayavesh (the son of Esther).

2. According to secular history the Persians lasted for 207 years.
The kings began with Cyrus, Cambyses, Darius I, Xerxes I,
Artaxerxes I, Darius II ... ending with Darius III.
Hence, the Temple lasted 188 under the Persians and 589 years in all.

proofs for the secular history
1. external proofs
A. The history of Herodotus (485-425 BCE) discusses in detail the
lives of Cyrus, Cambyses,Darius and Xerxes and briefly Atraxerxes
who was a contemporary of Herodutus.
It is hard to conceive that he wrote about contedmporay figures or
recent history who did not exist. Note that according to Chazal
the Persians did not come into power until 350 BCE 75 years after
the death of Herodutus !!!
Thucydides (460-400 BCE) starts with Cyrus and goes through
Darius II and the fights between Athens and Sparta and the
Peloponnesian Wars. Again according to Seder Olam Rabbah
there was no time for all these wars and so probably many of these
Athenian and Spartan leaders did not exist.
Ctesias (430-380) was a physician in the court of Artaxerxes and
describes the 7 kings from Cyrus through Artaxerxes II.
There are also later Greek historians who give the complete picture.
Josephus also includes more kings than Chazal but not the entire
Greek list. Moderchai Breuer in his history accepts the Greek dating.
See Parker&Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology for more details.

Note: No modern historian claims that all facts in these histories are
true. That is a far cry from stating that the entire history and not just
certain details are fabrications and that all these kings never existed.

B. Archaological evidence has uncovered many ancient Persian (cuneform)
enscriptions (see for example The Persian Empire by J.M. Cook). For
example one at the Persian palace in Persepolis says "I, Artaxerxes the
son of Artaxerxes the son of Darius the son of Artaxerxes the son of
Xerxes the son of Darius the son of Hystaspes" (Darius was not the son
of Cambyses). Greek names have used for the original Persian names.
There are other earlier enscriptions which are similar.
These all conform to the Greek dating.

C. There are letters from the Jewish community in Elephantine
confirming the Greek position.

D. I recently read of the history of the Assyrians. In their history
they describe the reign of Sancherub and of a major eclipse of the sun
during some battle. Astronomical calaculations confirm that the
only full eclipse of the sun in that region occurred exactly during the
dates of Sancherub according to the Greek chronology.

2. Internal Proofs

A. Ezra 45,7 describes Koresh, Daryavesh, Achasverosh, Artachasta.
These exactly parallel the Greek chronology with Achasversh=Xerxes.
If one looks at the Persian writing rather than the Greek names then
Xerxes is called khshayarsha which is close to Achashverosh
(note Cambyses is left out probably because nothing of importance
to Ezra occured during that reign).
Note that Daat Mikrah on Ezra 4 assumes the secular dates.

B. Nehemia 12:10 lists 6 High Priests, son after son,  between Yehosua 
and Yadua. This is hard to explain if the whole period was on 52 years.
It is even worse if one assumes that Shimon haTzaddik was the high
Priest at the time of Alexander as that adds at least one more high
Priest in the 52 years According to Ben Sira Shimon was the son
of Johanan which would make of total of at least 8 high priests in
52 years all presumably sons of the previous one.

C. Comparing Divrei Hayaim I: 3:19-24 with Ezra 8:2 and Nehemia 3:29 it
seems that Ezra and Nehemis lived many years after Zerubbavel.

Note: Daniel 11:2 seems more in line with chronology of Chazal.

Second Note: According to Seder Olam Purim occured before the
rebuilding of the second Temple while according to the secular chronology
Achashverosh was the son of Darius and so the Temple was already in existence.
According to Chazal, Daniel, Zerubavel, Ezra, Nehemia, Mordecai, Hagai,
Zerchahiah and Malachi and even Shimon haTzaddik were basically
contemporaries or within 1 to 2 generations of each other.

kol tuv,
Eli Turkel

A few minor historical matters:
R. Ginsparg,  in the course of explaining his lack of any need to account for
the analytic and historical conclusions expressed by non-yirei shomayim - which
substance I'll perhaps comment separately  because it managed to speak to a
number of generic issues -  essentially said if it was good enough to inspire
the Ari eight hundred years ago it's good enough for him.  That needs to be
revised to four hundred years ago for the 16th cent Ari.

RYGB, in defending (if that's what he was doing) the 420 year traditional seder
olam rabboh count actually pointed to - and I had to pinch myself here and
re-read it but then noticed he'd done it twice - Velikofsky as his historical
authority for refuting herodotus.  Now herodotus was a historian of the old
school, which meant a lot was made up, and while no defender of the traditional
count should comfort himself with the false hava aminoh that the universal
appreciation of the temporal extent of the persian empire rests solely on
herodotus, I did not mean to discuss that here. Rather I wanted to actually
ding him with (but only very gently since he's such a reasonable sounding
charedi, such should be nurtured not nattered at : -) the Velikofsky angle. 
How shall I say this.  I guess I would start by saying that, at the bottom
line, Velikofsky was a quack.  An extremely inspired quack who could write
rings around his numerous critics ands could take comfort that a number of his
early "predictions" were later adopted by the scientific community, but alas
still a quack.   And I say alas as someone very familiar with, indeed
sympathetic to,  the corpus of his writings and who went through a Velikofsky
phase myself in more tender years.  For purposes here I would briefly note that
Velikosky was no historian and his analysis is much burdened by his inability
to properly date source materials, leading to much bilbul of muqdom u'miuchor. 
RYGB didn't mention that his main historical breakthrough was the "discovery"
of a hitherto unperceived five hundred year ghost era (i.e. they didn't happen,
though everybody else thinks they did) in the historical record.  Now this
bears a certain surface similarity with our jewish chronological problem,
though the rove's shoe is now on the other foot, since traditionalists will
insist that it is the rove who have interpolated a ghost era of 165 years.  For
fairly understandable reasons (after all - everything he wrote was ultimately
inspired by his "proving" the historical reality, kinda, of the exodus - though
through rather bizaare physical mechanisms)   Velikofsky has enjoyed a
continued credibility in traditional jewish circles long after any such - and
it wasn't a lot -waned outside. (I think I recall a Jewish Action article
within the last two years or so which similarly referenced Velikofsky, but I
just shook my head then - now we get e-mail to vent).   In many ways the most
interesting part of the whole Velikofsky saga is not the substance of his
insights but rather as a case study in social anthropology, as the organized
scientific community, lead by a cabal of astronomers from Harvard, reacted with
fear and loathing to the appearance of this "outsider" on their turf, and moved
to actively defend itself by a variety of intellectually dishonest and
unscrupulous means.  The whole unseemly business was eventually grist for a
number of learned social-anthropological studies in journals devoted to the
behavioral sciences. 

The 4 Shivuyim.   As R. Eli Turkel has already noted the historicity of this
episode is simply not there.  It first appeared in the Raivad's (make that the
Raavad III, not THE Raivad) sefer haqaboloh and is perhaps better understood as
a founding myth which sums up a generational truth.  The issue it ultimately
addresses is the passing of the torch from the era of the geonim - when they
were essentially the sole central authorities for all of the dispersed
settlements of binei yisroel in their global diaspora, to the era of halachic
independence of the separated communities, when great centers of learning and
independently authoritative halachic masters arose, obviating the need to write
to the geonim for adjudication of jewish legal matters, and contributing to the
financial decline of the "two yeshivos", Sura and Pumpadisoh  (both of which
were in Baghdad by this spoint).  The 4 shivuim provides a neat personification
of this complex historical process in terms readily understandable to the
contemporary reader who was very familiar with the then common hazards of
travel and the universal practice of the mitzvoh of pidyone shi'vuyim by jews
bichol artzos pizureihem.  

Mechy Frankel			michael.frankel@dtra.mil

Been away for awhile and back just in time to get in trouble for Purim.  If
anyone doesn't like this or any of the companion postings, please put it down
to pre purim ramblings.

Someone, I erased the volume too hastily and can't remember who it was (BTW
where are the avodah archives so i could check stuff like that?),  asked about
the origin of the repeated words in the megila.   Briefly, they stem from
disputes amongst the extant medieval codices of the tanach.  The current custom
in most ashqenazic shuls is to repeat Esther 8:11 with and without the vov (waw
for you linguists out there) on li'harog, and both bifneihem and lifneihem in
Esther 9:2.  These differences are not limited to sephardi vs ashqenazi MS
since instances of both spellings appear in both ashqenazi and sephardi (and
italian too for that matter) sources - though the sephardi sources do seem
heavily weighted at least towards the ve-leharog reading.   (there are also
rarer minhogim to repeat some other stuff, like yehudim (the accepted qiri) but
also the kisiv-yehudiyim).   In any event, this minhog of repetition is
relatively new and would not seem to antedate the beginning of the 19th century
- apparently nucleated from talmidim of chasam sofer who testified that the CS
would repeat - but only quietly and to himself - vi'laharog after the qohol
read laharog, and from R. Chaim Volozhiner who instututed a public double
reading for both words, apparently because of doubts expressed by the gra. 
 
Having said all that it is never-the-less absolutely clear what the most
correct girsoh actually is, indeed we know that much better today than they did
in the 19th century when this new minhog got off the ground.  The correct
girsoh is vi'larog and lifneihem, which is the girsoh of the most accurate of
the Tiberian codices (accuracy in the sense they agreed with their own mesorah)
and above all is the girsoh of the most authoritative of all, the keser aram
tzovoh, which almost everybody now agrees is the ben asher kisav relied on by
the rambam and which is what every published tanach has attempted, with less
than complete success, to replicate.    

And since we're passing by shabbos zochore I guess I'll throw in the fact that
there is really no doubt as to what the correct girsoh for zeicher amoleiq is,
i.e. zeicher,  and the widespread custom to repeat it with the incorrect
zecher,  seems to have taken hold only with the widespread acceptance of the
mishnoh beruroh in  20th century ashqenazi communities. 

Mechy Frankel		michael.frankel@dtra.mil

Though this letter addresses R. Ginsparg's note, I really don't mean to pick on
him personally (and hope he doesn't take it that way) and believe rather that
he fairly represents the hashkofic stand of a broader constituency, which
exploration and clarification is worthy of pursuing.  R. Ginsparg in a recent
letter which started off bashing literary analysis and asking what it was good
for, went on to touch on a number of issues which bear further comment as they
illumine a divide in both hashkofoh and the methodological implications for
confronting source materials.   Though I have obvious (I suspect) personal
preferences here, disagreement does not necessarily mean that one side is
correct while the other is not, even more so it should not entail any
opprobrium for those on different sides of the methodological fence and I hope
that my remarks are not taken in such vein.  There are however at least two
elements which do merit protest, not just the neutral highlighting of the
sources of disagreement.   One involves the demand for consistency (hobgoblins
and small minds aside) which should be imposed on all parties.  And another,
more serious vector, involves the personal lashing out at those who disagree
with us, especially if a contributing cause is unfamiliarity with contrary
sources.   

I shall not treat here R. Ginsparg's (seconded by another poster) swipe at
literary analysis since it merits at least a separate posting of its own and I
don't have the energy just now.  Suffice it to say that I disagree with the
posters and believe that these approaches bear excellent potential for
illuminating the narrative sections of the torah - contributing original and
valuable poroshonus - and its not easy to be convincingly innovative after
great poroshonim have been ploughing the same field for two thousand years
already - and, inter alia, also provide interesting and powerful new arguments
against the modern academic deconstruction of the tanach into ill fitting
source documents. 

First for the consistency complaint.  It is well and good to make the argument
-as the song goes - that the old time religion is good enough for him. I.e. if
it was good enough for the Arizal, or the baalei tosephos or someone(s) like
that, it is automatically acceptable and he will set aside without even looking
evidence which he might perceive in conflict.  This is unobjectionable and a
consistent position to hold.  What is not consistent are the further
assertions, sprinkled through his letter, that we must look at the evidence
honestly.  This is precisely what his methodology will not do, it will not
consider the evidence "honestly", it will rather a priori reject it with no
consideration at all, especially if  the analyst lacks yiras shomayim, a fact
he duly acknowledges elsewhere.  One should not be able to claim both sides of
this methodological fence.

Lashing out is a more serious problem, especially if coupled to
misrepresentation of someone else's view.  Let me start by lodging a very
strong complaint of his swipe at the intellectual integrity of - of all people
- Albert Einstein!  Since I shall assume that the poster is not himself a
physical scientist who grapples with understanding the workings of physical
reality in its most fundamental form, and who is cognizant of the relationship
of modeling to reality and the attendant evidentiary, philosophical, and
mathematical vectors which are integral to that enterprise, the casual smear of
the godol hador (in this domain) by someone who is not even a tinoq shel bais
rabbon (in the same domain) does not sit well, especially with those who are
knowledgeable.  And whoever said that lack of yiras shomayim constituted a
smearing license.  

Turning back towards more traditional substance, the poster's impassioned
defense of the baalei tosephos, briliant men all (as though that were in
question), rejected the suggestion that they could have been made such a
mistake as thinking R. Eliezer HaQalir was a tanna.  Setting aside for the
moment the substantive evidence for same (hey - look at the tos in Chagigoh
13a, d"h raglei hachayos, and decide for yourself what this baal tosephos -
probably R. Elchonon ben HaR'I according to auerbach-  believed, you might also
want to check out the shailos/tishuvos of the rashba #449)  he found the very
notion preposterous. Since the baalei tosephos were all brilliant, they could
not have been "stupid".  Now the methodological problems here are rather
evident.  For one thing, if it should turn out that a baal tosephos did make
such a mistake, R. Ginsparg will have called a rishon "stupid", surely just
what he meant to avoid.   Of course it also kind of posits an infallibility, or
perhaps omniscience to gidolim (or perhaps only rishonim/gidolim - he didn't
make that clear).  It assumes, and this touches on the Zohar discussion as
well, that great gidolim who spent many years poring over texts until their
critical textual faculties were honed to the degree we have always recognized
in our gidolim, simply would not, could not, be mistaken of fooled by forged
texts. One wonders then that the Chofetz Chayim was fooled for many years by
the - forged - "discovery" of the Yerushalmi Menochos (even to the point that
he started putting on tefilin derabbeinu tam because of the shiqulim therein),
and the long history of chachomim who were fooled by the forged tishuvos of the
Rosh  (shailos and tishuvos Besomim Rosh - interestingly I saw it quoted in a
halachic work as recently as last year, though the author surely must have
known it was a forgery).  Would the poster then have us label the Chofetyz
Chayim as c"v "stupid". Of course he would not, but the CC was clearly
mistaken, or fooled in this instance, and I'm not sure why he thinks that it
could never have happened to a baal tosephos.    

I think at the root of this, as well as many other discussions that have gone
on in this forum is a divide over the omniscience/infallibility of
chazal/rishonim/acharonim/?.  Whereas in principle I don't think anyone
disputes the fact that they were not O/I, in practice the yiras hacovode or
whatever of one group will not allow them, in any specific instance, to get
their mouths around an utterance that one of the heroes may have simply made a
mistake, or not been in possession of all the facts.  The other side, perhaps
much too readily in some cases, has no trouble with it.  While I am probably
more represented by the latter faction,  I am conscious of the potential (and
reality) for abuse.  

Mechy Frankel		michael.frankel@dtra.mil 

Rich Wolpoe asks:
"How did the minhog come about of eating the Purim Se'udo towards the
end of the  day?  When researching Purim b'erev Shabbos, it seemed clear
that any time after Chatzos was good, and zrizim makdimim would imply
the sooner the better.  yet In yeshivos we always began the Se'udo
within about an hour before sunset."

My brother Dov suggests that it is zekher le-Korban Todah which was
brought during the day and eaten be-yom ha-hakrava and the following
night.
		Aryeh Frimer

Michael Frankel wrote:

> RYGB, in defending (if that's what he was doing) the 420 year traditional seder
> olam rabboh count actually pointed to - and I had to pinch myself here and
> re-read it but then noticed he'd done it twice - Velikofsky as his historical
> authority for refuting herodotus.  ...
> How shall I say this.  I guess I would start by saying that, at the bottom
> line, Velikofsky was a quack.  ... For purposes here I would briefly note that
> Velikosky was no historian and his analysis is much burdened by his inability
> to properly date source materials, leading to much bilbul of muqdom u'miuchor.
> ....  For fairly understandable reasons (after all - everything he wrote was
> ultimately inspired by his "proving" the historical reality, kinda, of the exodus
> - though through rather bizaare physical mechanisms)   Velikofsky has enjoyed a
> continued credibility in traditional jewish circles long after any such - and
> it wasn't a lot -waned outside....

Couple comments 1) My interest in Velikovsky was destroyed when I was a senior at
Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute. My roommate - a brilliant physicist said simply.
"Velikovsky asserts that the miracle of the sun standing still was the result of
the earth's rotation being stopped by a comet. Calculate the angular momentum of
the earth's rotation and calculate the rise in temperature that would accompany a
sudden stoppage with all that energy between transformed to heat".
2) I was in a used book store in Jerusalem a few week ago. Someone asked me my
opinion of Velikovsky. When I replied that he was a quack and it was a waste of
time reading him - a chasid standing nearby attacked me for my chutzpah. I thought
at first he was just an ordinary am haaretz and so I explained the above problem of
physics. I told him that the assertion that it was a miracle was fine with me and
in particular with the Maharals explanation of localized miracles. He replied with
great contempt, "you are saying that Velikovsky is a das yachid - well your Maharal
is also a das yachid." That comparison was obscene.
3) Anybody who gets into this issue of chronology has to deal with Rabbi Schwabs
long article on the issue as well as his retraction of his explanation while still
asserting that the problem is a problem.

Michael Frankel wrote:

>
> I shall not treat here R. Ginsparg's (seconded by another poster) swipe at
> literary analysis since it merits at least a separate posting of its own and I
> don't have the energy just now.  Suffice it to say that I disagree with the
> posters and believe that these approaches bear excellent potential for
> illuminating the narrative sections of the torah - contributing original and
> valuable poroshonus -

It would be appreciated if you explain exactly what you mean by literary analysis.
I was under the impression that there are a number of varieties. In particular that
Scholem is in essence a historian of ideas - what he perceives as conceptual
changes found in the texts, Idel is looking for archetypes which are independent of
history,  while other are more focused on stylistic or vocabulary issues. The
common denominator - that what we call mesorah - is largely a non factor in their
analyses. Of more relevance is Rabbi Bechhoffer unanswered question - to what
degree have any of these techniques been validated in a scientific way?

> Turning back towards more traditional substance, the poster's impassioned
> defense of the baalei tosephos, briliant men all (as though that were in
> question), rejected the suggestion that they could have been made such a
> mistake as thinking R. Eliezer HaQalir was a tanna.

By and large gedolim have not had much interest in history. This point is made by
the ultimate chareidi historian Rav Yitzchok HaLevy (Doros Rishonim) in a number of
places. He comments (section 5 chapter 19 page 318) for example on the fact that
Tosfos (Bava Metzia 84a) holds Reish Lakish to have been a gadol who became a bum
and then did Tshuva. He says that Tosfos is wrong and assets  that a proper
analysis shows that Reish Lakish had not been frum originally. We see that
questioning the accuracy of the historical information of rishonim is not a major
issue - though obviously it should not be done lightly without the thorough
analysis that HaLevy has done. [see the introduction of the Ofek Institutes edition
of Seder Hakabala of the Meiri page 20 note 27 "it was a frequent occurrence that
Rav Yitzchok HaLevy said on the rishonim e.g., Rav Sherira Gaon, Rashi, Rambam, the
Baalei Tosfos and others) that they were not precise in these types of matters
because they were preoccupied with halachic issues while history was not of
relevance to their work..."]. The historical analyses of Rav Tzadok or the Netziv
are not oriented to history but haskofic consistency.

> . One wonders then that the Chofetz Chayim was fooled for many years by the -
> forged - "discovery" of the Yerushalmi Menochos (even to the point that he
> started putting on tefilin derabbeinu tam because of the shiqulim therein),

His son writes [page 24] of his short biography of his father."He did not put on
Rabbeinu Tam tefillin until his old age during the years of the war [WWI] when he
lived in the Ukraine among chassidim and then he purchased a pair and war them till
his passing. I thought that he was wearing them to be consistent with the chassidim
amongst he lived since they considered it obligatory by din and anyone not wearing
them was considered as someone who didn't wear tefilin and thus it would be a
degradation of kavod HaTorah. However when I once asked him  he replied that the
recently discovered Yerushalmi on Menachos expresses the requirement of tefilin
according to Rabbeinu Tam and that is why he started. However this explanation is
problematic since it was already known that the Yerushalmi was a forgery and my
father who was not quick to agree that it was a forgery - did in the end accept
that is was a forgery when  I informed him that it was known that the publisher was
a forger 20 years prior ... he didn't mentioned it anymore. "

>
> I think at the root of this, as well as many other discussions that have gone
> on in this forum is a divide over the omniscience/infallibility of
> chazal/rishonim/acharonim/?.  Whereas in principle I don't think anyone
> disputes the fact that they were not O/I, in practice the yiras hacovode or
> whatever of one group will not allow them, in any specific instance, to get
> their mouths around an utterance that one of the heroes may have simply made a
> mistake, or not been in possession of all the facts.  The other side, perhaps
> much too readily in some cases, has no trouble with it.  While I am probably
> more represented by the latter faction,  I am conscious of the potential (and
> reality) for abuse.

There is another critical issue. To what degree are issues to be raised - which are
not ultimately solvable - but which might serve to shake the respect and awe that
we have towards gedolim and the mesora. Their obviously is no simple answer  - but
it can not be ignored either. I am currently working on a major compendium dealing
with the nature of Torah authority. A number of middle echelon rabbonim have told
me that my work constitutes a danger to klal yisroel - as well as to myself. On the
other hand, Rav Elyashiv told me he didn't understand the problem. He told me that
as long as I stuck to acceptable sources (e.g., not recently discovered manuscripts
from the Cairo geniza) he saw no problem. When I mentioned that some might get
confused by the reality of the various positions - he replied, "Anyone who gets
upset and confused by studying accepted sources - should go to his rebbe or rosh
yeshiva for an answer". A similar positive attitude was expressed by Rav Moshe
Shapiro, Rav Zalman Nechmia Goldberg, and Rav Yaakov Weinberg. The middle echelon
rabbonim reply - most people don't have a rebbe or rosh yeshiva they can ask or one
who can answer their questions.

Random he'oros:

(1) Shmuel HaNavi tells Shaul he has "done evil in the eyes of Hashem".  Asks
the Chafetz Chaim, the sin of Shaul was b'shev v'al ta'aseh, Shaul failed to
completely fufill the words of the navi, so how can he be described as
"*doing* evil".  Answers the C"C, by failing to adhere to Shmuel's words,
Shaul demonstrated his motivation was based on his own reasoning, not based on
the dvar Hashem, which means he had no matir to wage war and was guilty of
murder.  L'chorah this means anyone who fights a milchemes mitzva she'lo
lishma is guilty of retzicha - I see no difference bwteen a heter milchama
based on nevuah and one based on mitzva.  Is there a makor for such a
chiddush?

(2) Saw psak quoted in the name of Chayei Adam (couldn't find it inside) that
an onen can eat basar v'yayin at seudas purim (see P.T Y.D. 341 who is
choleik) and must say berachos/bentch as it is a chiyuv.   Don't see why the
chiyuv seudah should change the din - it might create a heter for basar/yayin,
but not a chiyuv tefilah.

(3) "lamah nimnu shnosav shel Yishmael" (Meg. 17) - Rashi: why do we care to
know about the lifespan of a *rasha*.  Didn't Yishmael do tshuvah at the end
of his life? 

Happy Purim!

-Chaim

On Fri, 26 Feb 1999, Ezriel Krumbein wrote:

> I don't understand.  Does this mean since I can borrow my father's car I
> do not need to pay Avis rental fees? 
> 

Your father lending you his car is really a gift - of gas, depreciation,
etc. The reading of a book seems dquite different.

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

I'm not sure what to make of R' Michael Frankel's remark about me:

....Rather I wanted to actually ding him with (but only very gently since
he's such a reasonable sounding charedi, such should be nurtured not
nattered at : -) the Velikofsky angle. 

But on we plod!

On Sat, 27 Feb 1999, Eli Turkel wrote:

> subject: 420 years
> 
>      In response to requests I shall present some details of the problem
> with the dating of Seder Olam Rabbah. I did not give these details until
> now because I assumed it would bore most readers. Much is based on the
> book by First but the facts speak for themselves.  Apologizes for the
> length of the post: 
> 

It is unfortunate that R' Eli is so very biased in this matter so as to
ignore all the scholarly writings that advocate the position taken by
Chazal. Since I do not have the time nor inclination to even listen to my
own tapes on the topics, I will write b'kitzur nimratz.

I would, like, however, to note my deep disappointment in Mitchell First's
work, and in R' Eli's citation of it, in that it ignores the substance of
the dialogue that Mr. First engaged in with - if memory serves me
correctly - Brad Aaronson, and, by extension, Prof. Chefetz of Israel, who
did a masterful job justifying the traditional chronology based on work by
Immanuel Velikovsky - no friend of Torah or Chazal, but a creative
thinker, whose work, once largely ignored, has been given more and more
credence by the scientific community over time. I give R' Michael the
credit of at least mentioning the arguments, while blithely dismissing
them.

Now, both R' Michael and R' Daniel scored me for quoting a quack. The
question is not whether he was a quack or not - let us stipulate that he
was - but rather whether occasionally he may have quacked corrctly. He did
so, to the mind of the scientific community, in stating that the dinosaurs
were annihilated by a comet striking Earth, and we now "know" that the
comet struck the Yucatan Penisula.

Neither Mr. First nor R' Eli mention the substance of that work, that
musters strong evidence that Herodotus confused a single conquest of Egypt 
different conquests.

I would like to note the even more important aspect of the
Velikovsky/Cheifetz/Aaronson approach, which is, that while some feel
Chazal can, for some odd reason I cannot fathom - be discounted at will in
any matter save pure Halachic, there is a Tanach problem here - that of
Yechezkel 30. Open your Tanachs and take a look, please. Yechezkel
promises an Egyptian Holocaust at the hands of Nevuchadnezzar. 

Historians cannot conceive of such.

Velikovsky (with no desire, of course, to validate Tanach) did.

Q.E.D. 

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

I have neither time, patience or inclination to pursue these issues in
detail. Some thoughts:

1. This has nothing to do with infallibility issues. I have no theological
need to convince anyone of Chazal's being correct on this point. I am
simply bewildered why Chazal's dating on this - meisi'ach lefi tumam -
many times in Yerushalmi Bavli and other sources - should not be accepted
as weightier than Greek accounts.

2. Most of the points that RET raised are dealt with by Chazal and our
sources - as copiously detailed in Mr. First's work. The implication of
his statement is that Chazal were not aware of Tanach.

3. RDE cited R' Schwab. R' Schwab's views on history were noted by RJJ
Schachter in a Torah u'Madda journal. They are, simply, extraordinary. I
do not believe they reflect the view of the main body of "right-wing"
thinkers and historians. Certainly not mine. I think his missing 165 years
were a grievous error that had grave consequences to the attitude of the
non-right-wing toward the intellectual integrity of the right in matters
of history etc. I do believe it was in line with his thoughts on history
in general. And I strongly disagree with them.

YGB

Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer
Cong. Bais Tefila, 3555 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago, IL, 60659
ygb@aishdas.org, http://www.aishdas.org/baistefila

On Sun, 28 Feb 1999, Michael Frankel wrote
>  Let me start by lodging a very
> strong complaint of his swipe at the intellectual integrity of - of all people
> - Albert Einstein!  Since I shall assume that the poster is not himself a
> physical scientist who grapples with understanding the workings of physical
> reality in its most fundamental form, and who is cognizant of the relationship
> of modeling to reality and the attendant evidentiary, philosophical, and
> mathematical vectors which are integral to that enterprise, the casual smear of
> the godol hador (in this domain) by someone who is not even a tinoq shel bais
> rabbon (in the same domain) does not sit well, especially with those who are
> knowledgeable.  And whoever said that lack of yiras shomayim constituted a
> smearing license.  

  I have no desire to discuss this much further because it is clearly a
waste of time. RYGB and RDE have illustrated that there is no problem with
the
gedolim/chazal approach to the Zohar and 420 years issue. They have
demonstrated that there is no compelling evidence to interpret facts
different then Chazal. We are basically left with who do you trust Chazal
Vs. Herodite (whatever). If I'm wrong I'll be happy to hide behing R' Yose
and say I trusted Seder Olam, I don't want to have to go looking for
Herodite (who knows where i'll find him). What really bothers me is that
Poeple(who are nothing when compared to chazal or even achronim) can
make derogatory comments about the Avos which are based on the fanasty
p'shat in ones mind, which goes against all accepted tradition ---yet are
defended and even praised for using new techniques which Chazal didn't
know
about. Yet Albert Einstein, A genious yet a kofer,  is defended
because of
his genious in his subject area from criticism which is historically true
(my source is the book Fingerprint on the universe--I think page 32). This
is just plain SHEKER. By the way, since I believe that Reishish Chachma
Yiras Elokim----It does give a right to comment, Al wasn't even a chacham.
With all those brains, he couldn't see HAshem. It must be Purim
(venahafochu) when people who make up psaht against the mesorah which
degrade chazal are praised , and people who cite historically acurate
criticism against a known Kofer are condemned, It was nice Purim Torah.
Elie Ginsparg     
 

*********************


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