flood

I have an article in preparation on exactly this topic, not yet published. The questioner is welcome to send me an email and provide his comments and clarifications. giladstn@gmail.com

For the questioner, see here:
https://mikyab.net/שות/המבול-מיטוס-וגדה/

Gil, is the article going to be published on the content website of the Yedaya Institute? When?

Gili – sent it to me too. Note that the main question is “where do we stop” (regarding the allegory of the creation stories, the answer is simple as we know, regarding the flood, as far as I know, there is only what we talked about about the format, the orders of the dynasties, etc. around the flood in the ancient East)

Y – Possibly. In a few months.

Gili, I would be happy if you would send your article to me too, at elnatanba01@gmail.com
Thanks in advance, Haim.

Hello M to the Bible! I assume that the boundary depends on two points, firstly on the present point of writing the events of the Torah – i.e. – the time of Moses describing the facts of his day. This is history, while what speaks of oral traditions passed down from the past is not necessarily history, and can sometimes be mixed with legend. (I personally assume that in all of them, without exception, there is historical truth whose way of expression is in the expansion/exaggeration ‘legendary’, and I will discuss it here) In the way to distinguish between one genre and another, we will discuss it immediately.

According to this position, we must change our erroneous expectations of the Scriptures. It is very possible that many parts of the Torah do not reflect historical reality but rather an ideological, conceptual reality. There is no basis for the assumption that the story of the flood belongs to this genre, and is in fact a legend, or better said, an "aggadatha," a kind of profound sage legend found in the Talmud and Midrash, mixed with and rife with halakhic issues that concern practical law.

Of course, these things are not true in relation to the story of the Exodus from Egypt, which is told "according to what is written in the Torah" by Moses our Lord, who led the people out and testified to them that they were the generation that experienced the revelation and miracles with his own eyes and that, by virtue of this, he must fulfill the commandment of remembrance in memory of those very events ("For this is what the Lord did to me when I came out of Egypt; He did not make a covenant with our fathers, but with us, with them, with these, with us, all of us alive today," and so on). Although the gates of excuses were not closed on this issue either - but the simple things are as I wrote. To say: real history for the generation of the recipients of the Torah, and history that may be fictitious/legendary and deceitful, for the generations preceding the recipients of the Torah. (On the difference between the stories of the patriarchs and the stories of Noah and the ten generations before him, I will explain).

Come to your own conclusion, before the system of grouping different books according to different genres (such as ‘Midrash Rabba’ versus ‘Shulchan Aruch’ and Katzva”H) – What was Moses (by the command of God) supposed to do when before him were collections of law, history, and ’legends of the sages’?! He would have done exactly as they did in the Babylonian Talmud - and wrote them all in a jumble. Therefore, it is possible that the flood, like the stories about Eve and the serpent, the sons of God and the daughters of man, are legends that were prevalent among the people and the environment, and Moses' option was either to ignore them and leave them as they were prevalent among the people with their theological distortions, or to introduce them into the Torah of God with a new update. Now the reader must know how to distinguish between legends and actual history (such as the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah) and also between actual laws and commandments - which are not mere allegory, God forbid. But this task - which seems quite complex - must not let go of this distinction, which seems simple, and it is also always practiced as a matter of course by every student of Gemara, who believes in the distinction between law and legend, and between real reality and parables and legends.

This is similar to the distinction made by Rabbi Yosef Tov Elam regarding the difference between the commandments in the Torah and the narrative parts: “Our rabbis, may God bless them and grant them peace, said in the Sahandrin, Part 1 (7:1) that even the entire Torah was said to be from heaven, except for this verse, which the Holy One did not say, but rather from the mouth of Moses himself, concerning which the scripture says (Numbers 15:30): “For the word of the Lord is in this.” And it must be answered that it concerns the matter of the commandments, as we said above, and not the narratives. Indeed, here I am not arguing this about the difference between the writers, which we claim are all from the mouth of Moses who wrote from the Gevaru, but rather about the difference in the truthfulness described in those scriptures. Legends from here and commandments from here (as part of the commandment to remember events from the holy and true history that occurred in the Exodus from Egypt before the eyes of all Israel). (And indeed, it is mentioned in the commandments of Gid Hanesha and Akmal).

What is the distinction between history and allegory? According to R’ Levi ben Avraham in” Levit Chen” – Every story that does not agree with reason is a sign for the educated reader to change the disc and move on to an allegorical depth reading. But as long as the history described does not indicate such an exception – there is no reason to take it out of the ordinary. For example: A talking snake is a kind of such sign. According to Rabbi Levi, the flood is also like this: ”And one wonders at the destruction of every seed in the flood, and the reality did not exist, only Seth, and was there not a flood in the Land of Israel. Also, why did God not command Noah to go to the Land of Israel, as the wise man proved in his article (8217; 22:24) ‘A land that was purified and not covered in the day of wrath’? And further, because that was smaller than the one containing two of every kind. And what is the meaning of their saying (Shabbat 44:1 and more) ‘And you saw it to remember an everlasting covenant’ (Genesis 9:16)? And also because the rainbow was natural. Indeed, all of this is possible according to the hidden, and the hidden: that the flood alluded to loss. …. And the way the Scripture calls the loss a flood of water” And there is no time to elaborate here. Although in his opinion this does not negate the historical core of the story that partially took place. And like him, R. Nissim of Marseilles:
“The matter of the flood is strange and wonderful, indeed it is the scourge of the possible, and all the more so for many of us who understood that the matter of the flood did not include the entire settlement, since they had already said that there was no flood in the Land of Israel. And this is the kind of thing I called a ‘miracle’ ” Notice the nice trick in which he learns that on the equal side of the fact that the Land of Israel was not flooded (which stems from the Midrash of Chazal who took Ezekiel out of his simplicity), that other parts were not washed away. Rabbi Levi also argues this in relation to animal species, just as the Ram has not yet drowned, so too have species far away in the world. And there are other thinkers from Ya”b.

What is the constraint? This is against reason. Now the difference between this and the descriptions of the Exodus and the miracles of Mount Sinai becomes clear to us: these are also against reason, but there is a difference there, on two sides (who is the main one between them): 1. The miracles of Egypt are from the time of the writing of the composition and therefore are testimony and not memory. As above. 2. They are described without any doubt as revelations of God and the plundering of nature by Him. That is: they do not try to dress up the events of nature but rather to cancel them in order to show the power of God (the miracles of Egypt and the descent of manna) or His revelation (the fire of Sinai, the pillar of fire and the cloud).

Therefore, even rationalist thinkers will (not always) be able to accept these events as reality and not as allegory. Although the flood is not described as a miracle or a revelation, and is supposedly an event in the natural ways of the fall of rain and great abyssal waters (which, of course, He caused, as He causes everything). Since it is necessary to examine whether it is realistic that such a sky would cover the high mountains? And that they would disappear completely within forty days? And similarly, is it realistic that all the animals of the world would reach the ark and enter it, and then disperse from it to all the continents of the world? If it is not realistic, and it is not written that it was a miracle – this can be explained, according to those thinkers, as an allegory (I do not have the leisure, but all of this is also conditioned by another element and it is the cause of the story's spread and its universal fame before it was written down in the Torah, etc. ’).

I will do a small exercise:

1. Abraham having a child at the age of one hundred (against nature) – This is described as a miracle and therefore can be historical and not allegorical – And this is only if the touchstone for realism is the description of this event and not as nature. On the other hand, according to the touchstone of the time of the event in relation to its writing – then Abraham lived hundreds of years before the writing of the Torah, and therefore the writing about him is not a testimony of time but a ”memory” that passed (perhaps) in the nation – and therefore there is no obstacle to explaining it as an allegory.

2. Sixty thousand Israelites in Sinai for forty years (against nature) – The time of writing was at the time of the event, that is, Moses wrote in the Torah the number of those who left during his time – and therefore it is history and not allegory, but this, as above, only if this is the criterion for ”reality” against allegory. If, on the other hand, the criterion is the description of the thing as a deliberate event and its deviation from nature – So regarding the number of those who left and their survival, there is no description of such a miracle. It is true that someone came down from heaven, (and Moses was surprised before, "Sixty thousand of the people among whom I am... will the sheep and cattle be slaughtered and found for them?!"), but the water supply for such a number of those who left is not described at all. Sometimes he struck a rock and nothing more. If it were not for Chazal's laying his hand on Miriam's head, we would have no hands or feet to explain how Israel did not die of thirst! According to this, it is possible that the description of the number of those who left is allegorical, and a smaller number than that actually left (this is by giving a different meaning to sixty thousand or alternatively understanding the number as any kind of allegory) and as such was able to survive in the deserts of Sinai and Transjordan.

In the S”D’ B’A”H

To the age of – Shalom Rav,

The traditions about the flood were not distant ‘prehistory’ in the days of Moses. We will assume that Jacob, the grandfather of Moses' mother, was 50 years old at the time of Shem's death.

In other words, there were solid traditions among the Israelites in the days of Moses about the events of the flood. It is certainly not possible to sell mythological stories that did not exist and were not created to a ‘stiff-necked’people, whose opinions and criticisms are critical.

From the descriptions of the Torah, it is clear that this is not a natural event, but rather a divine intervention. The flood came due to the sins of humanity and Noah's salvation – due to his righteousness. Teaching us that the existence of the world depends on the fulfillment of its moral destiny.

What needs to be discussed is whether the Torah, in the statement ‘and wiped out all the universe that is on the face of the earth’, refers to the entire earth, or whether, as it is said in Joseph that all the earth came to break to Joseph, it refers to the entire environment, so in the flood it refers to the known ’cultural world’, and the Torah does not refer to what is ’beyond the mountains of darkness’

The possibility that this is a global event is supported by the fact that many of the world's cultures have traditions about a flood. On the other hand, the list of peoples who descended from Noah from whom the earth was broken deals entirely with the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin, from Persia in the east to Greece in the west, and from the Ararat Mountains in the north to Cush in the south. And hence it seems that the focus of the Torah is on the space in which the Israelites live,

With blessings, Shatz Levinger

Regarding the approach to allegorical interpretation of the stories of the Torah, the Rashba is known to have opposed the philosophers of his time, among whom there was talk of 'Abraham and Sarah as matter and form' (while regarding the sagas of the Sages there is more of a tendency among the Rishonim and the Rashba in general to accept an allegorical interpretation).

Rabbi Kook (in Igeret Tza, as I believe) speaks of the possibility of doing this with regard to the story of the creation of the world, since 'the act of creation' is one of the mysteries of the Torah in which allegorical interpretation is appropriate, but making an allegory out of the stories of the Torah is less plausible. The people of Israel, with their opinions, would not buy "mythological stories" without a solid historical basis.

Gil I don't understand. Do you believe that the Torah lied to us about the sixty thousand?
We have detailed lineages and exact numbers of every tribe in the desert..
It sounds absurd to me that the Torah actually concealed the real figure from us..

Hello, when I have free time I will write in Latin the meanings of sixty thousand. In any case, this is not a new issue at all and many have dealt with it. They showed that there are several ways of reading these numbers. According to this, let's say that there were sixty-five thousand and four hundred in the tribe of Reuben – the meaning is sixty-five ”thousand” – in four hundred men. A thousand is a military unit, and there were sixty-five units. Or alternatively, it is not the thousand that must be interpreted, but the number six hundred, which is a symbolic number of a large military multitude (six hundred warriors of Dan, six hundred chariots of Shera) and this is about the number 400 in Chazal. This is exactly like the legends of Chazal about the destruction, which they tell - not far from the time of the events – About millions and millions of children who were slaughtered in the city of Beitar: ”Vespasianus Caesar, who killed four hundred thousand in Beitar, and I say four thousand thousand (=40 million people!)” and from their blood that washed into the sea, the horses would swim up to their noses:
They would kill them and walk until the horse was drowned in blood up to its nose and the blood would roll rocks from the sea until the blood went four miles in the sea, if you say that it is close to the sea and not forty miles away from the sea… For seven years the nations of the world have been cultivating their vineyards with the blood of Israel without any manure.
This is a moving description of the intensity of the pain that the events of the destruction left in the Jewish people – and it was clear to the listeners that the description was not objective but psychological-subjective. Thus, all the literary exaggeration and intensity only added to the credibility of the event. Credibility that transcends the technical details of the data to what they express on a psychological level.

This is how the Mahal of Prague interpreted the matter in his book Netzach Yisrael: “We have already told you that he always mentions it in the language of the city of Beitar, which was a very strong city, and it was the strength and power of Israel… and therefore he said that in the city of Beitar he killed four hundred thousand, etc., which, just as the number of six thousand indicates a multitude, as explained above, so the number of four hundred thousand indicates a settled place, according to the number of four is an area that spreads out to the sides, and every place is estimated to be in the east, since we gave a person a place of four thousand. Amot (Gittin Ez 2), because the place is square, as we find the Land of Israel to be four hundred by four hundred. And therefore he said that four hundred (thousand) were killed, because this volume was an important place, and in his opinion it deserved the number four according to the greater, because the place is estimated to be four, and the people living in it are also estimated to be four, and therefore he said that when the volume of Beitar was destroyed, four hundred thousand were killed in it. And to her, four thousand thousand.

In short, Chazal did not lie and the Torah did not lie. It gave symbolic meaning to the numbers, or it described the share of the tribes differently than we are used to. It is true that the addition of all the half-shekels to the scales gives weight to the number literally – But on the other hand, it can also provide an explanation for the symbolic idea that the Torah seeks to describe: that all of Israel are the foundation of the Lord's tabernacle in the world. And Akmel and another vision for the time. However, it is clear that the simpler approach is that there were indeed sixty thousand literally

In the Book of Revelation, the text speaks in the language of the Bible, such as "great cities and forms in the sky," which is a metaphorical expression whose metaphorical meaning was clear to anyone who heard it.

However, in the number of the Israelites, the thousands are literally 1,000. And it is evident from the calculation of the "money of the congregation" that half a shekel for each one amounted to a total of "one hundred and four thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels" (Exodus 38:25).

With blessings, Shatz Levinger

Peace and blessings! I will begin with a brief quote from your words and respond: This means that there were solid traditions among the Israelites in the days of Moses about the events of the flood. It is certainly not possible to sell mythological stories that did not exist and were not created to a ‘stubborn’, opinionated and critical people. Rabbi Kook (in the letter Tza, I believe) speaks of the possibility of doing this with regard to the story of the creation of the world, since the ‘act of Genesis’ is one of the mysteries of the Torah in which an allegorical interpretation is appropriate, but making an allegory out of the stories of the Torah is less acceptable. The people of Israel, who were opinionated, would not have bought ‘mythological stories’ without a solid historical basis.

Well, the people of Israel did not ‘buy’ mythological stories. They possessed them themselves in advance. They toyed with their scrolls long before the giving of the book of the Torah. The law of the Torah (in the narrative parts) is like the Mishnah of a Rabbi. It merely edits the existing material – at will it lengthens and at will it shortens, at will it adds and at will it censors. Therefore, the story of the Flood It is not considered in Israel as a ”mythological-legendary” assumption from the outside, but as a solid tradition that is considered scientific information. I apologize. (That is, I don't have the time).

And regarding the number of shekels: ”Among the thousands of Israelites, the number is literally 1000. And evidence from the calculation of the 'money of the community' that half a shekel for each person amounted to a total of 'one hundred and four thousand seven hundred and seventy-five shekels...'’ I have already answered with my mustache, and allow me to follow the custom of my teacher, Professor’ Shalom Rosenberg, who often said ”as I have already written in my articles” (and sometimes he would add, I don't remember which one):” It is true that the joining of all the half-shekels to the scales gives weight For the simple number – but on the other hand it can also provide meaning to the symbolic idea that the Torah seeks to describe: that all of Israel are the foundation of the Lord's tabernacle in the world”. That is, the number of tribes is not truly counted according to our system, and as biblical scholars have already suggested that – 45,500, for example, would be forty-five military units – ” a thousand” – of five hundred men. Divide 500 by 45 units and you get something like a unit of 10 men. (This is narrow, and that is why I said that there are other methods and when I get free, ”if the Lord takes away a life’ (as Rabbi Yitzhak Ezrachi says) I will include them all). Now this is the meaning of the simplification of things. And on top of that there is another layer A legendary-ideological Torah legend says that if you count the numbers – in a different way – they will reach 100 and some silver coins, which was originally the given number that was traditionally used to weigh the pillars of the Tabernacle (or maybe this number also carries a conceptual – numerological message). And what is the message that the number of the Israelites is exactly equal to the pillars of the Tabernacle (when calculated in this way)? The message is that Israel is the foundation of the throne of God in the world. God dwells within the Israelites, they are the foundations that support Him, they are His throne of glory, and His footstool (not necessarily in the terminology of the Prophet ”).
PS. The counting methods in the ancient East were sometimes very different from what we think. See this wonderful article for example, which came to curse and was found Greetings
http://www.1vsdat.org/index.php/2013-02-21-20-40-12/%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%A6%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%A9%D7%9C-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%99%D7 %94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94/item/1739-%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%A7%D 7%99%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%94
put The Babylonian patriarchs lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and when they deciphered the system of sixties and the exaggerated multiplication of each king's reign by six hundred times, the entire duration of their real dynasty was revealed to the eye. Thus, Dumuzi, who reigned for 36,000 years, actually reigned for 60 years. And Hur, who reigned for 28,000 years, reigned for only 48 years.
Is it possible that the number of the children of Israel is also a kind of multiplication of sixty or six hundred? Perhaps they actually numbered only a few thousand or tens of thousands, and their multiplication is an expression of the blessing "Yosef the Lord be upon you a thousand times" and so on? Just as the Sages tell us about a round astronomical number among the dead at Betar, and they knew that this was not an exaggeration. It is possible that the number 600,000 had a military-symbolic meaning "armies" The world. Or something Kabbalistic similar to the words of Ramach in the way of the Lord: And behold, the Supreme Wisdom saw that it was fitting that this effort should be divided into my roots and my branches. Explanation: Let there be at first the time of effort for the roots in the history, and then for the branches in which ..the branches of our tree of Abraham our father, the kollel, here they are up to sixty thousand, who are those who came out of Egypt and from them the Israeli nation was made, and to them the Land of Israel was divided. And all those who came after them are considered details of the history of these kollel. And behold, to these was given the Torah, and then we read that this tree stood on its branch
Perhaps, in general, when all the language prevalent around you is rhetorical/poetic and exaggerated, perhaps then the attachment to precise-real numbers is not correct from an educational point of view? For if the Torah had said that there were It is said, 27,476 Exodus from Egypt – would all the readers of the Torah at that time assume that this is an exaggeration and that in reality they counted only 1/60 of this? Let the wise man be wiser still.

The number of the children of Dan is: ‘sixty-two thousand seven hundred’ (Numbers 1:3). This means: in ’a thousand’ there are more than 700. Why not simply say that ’a thousand’ is 1000?

With the blessing of ‘Malka La Alpin HaiÙ, Matthi Hachazr Alpi Yisrael, Shࢭz Levinger

In the signature:
With the blessing of ‘Malka for the grave of my life’ (Daniel 6,7), Matthias…

The number of the children of Dan is: ‘sixty-two thousand and seven hundred’ (Numbers 1:3). This means: in ‘a thousand’ there are more than 700. ”

As I wrote, this is the meaning of the verse:” sixty-two army units (= a thousand) and seven hundred warriors”
Tight? Yes. Impossible? No. Certainly no more than the assumption that such a quantity indeed wandered through Sinai without a trace.

On the 6th of September 2017, B’Av Āh

For Gil – Shalom Rav,

As I mentioned, the numbers in the Torah are unambiguous. The weights of sixty thousand were made into one hundred adanim, and the shekels of the remaining 3350 amounted to a total of 1775 shekels. So a thousand is 1000, and therefore there can be a remainder of 700 that was not divided into thousands.

Your question about the traces. Even in nature's way, it is not a question. And did they dig every meter in the huge Sinai peninsula? And that in the three thousand years that have passed since then, the sandstorms and desert animals have not had time to scatter every possible remnant?

All the more so, since the Torah testifies that the entire existence of the Israelites was a miracle - manna from heaven, water rising by a rod or speech, pillars of fire and cloud guiding the people and protecting them from enemies, their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell, and the snakes and serpents of the desert did not harm them.

Is there room to ask questions of ‘natural feasibility’ about the reality of a permanent miracle? The hand would fall short of leaving a tidy and litter-free place after leaving the parking lot, as befits the ’people of the Torah’ which is the ‘order of the world’. Go out and investigate whether the litter was from the swallows or the burned ones 🙂

With blessings, Sh”z Levinger