The Holy Spirit in the Sages
Have a good week!
It is stated in the Sages that an embryo on the fortieth day is considered alive, and in fact, science only discovered in the twentieth century that only on the fortieth day does brain waves begin in the embryo and is it considered alive.
And it is also stated in the Sages that a snake has no taste at all in what it eats, and in fact, science has only recently discovered that a snake has no taste receptors at all, and in this it is unique.
Does this show that the sages were the Holy Spirit or something like that?
Thanks for the site!
I assume they didn’t have the Holy Spirit. First, because they were people like you and me and not prophets or anything like that. Second, they were wrong more than once, in science and in general, so it’s clear they didn’t know everything. As for the points you raised, I don’t know the latest scientific information, and I doubt whether it’s true. Regarding brain development, see a review here: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%A4%D7%AA%D7%97%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%97_%D7%94%D7%90%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%99
You can always find something that happens on the fortieth day and prove from it the holy spirit of the sages.
I assume this is from the books of the Revolution and the like.
The presentation of the specific cases in which the Sages were scientifically correct is simply demagogy. Anyone who has studied Gemara a little knows that there are things there that are scientifically inaccurate. The one about the dogwood is that the katzah has a poisonous smell. Of course, regarding the katzah, one can specifically claim that we do not have the plant that the Sages were referring to, etc. But there are many more examples of the Sages' scientific inaccuracies.
This can be addressed in two ways. A. To say that the Sages never intended to say anything scientific, but within the claim that appears scientific, a normative claim is hidden. B. To say that the Sages were based on the science of the Greeks and not on the Holy One. In other words, these are not things that Moses our Lord received. And there's no problem if they make a mistake.
Lishi
Please answer the question and not state your general view…
I specifically asked about the above examples, and I would be happy to receive an answer (I never claimed that they had to be accurate in everything, but these are enough for the argument)
You selectively chose what they were right (I'm not sure they were right either, it could be a retrospective interpretation) and ignored mistakes, especially since there are many more mistakes. Hindus are also sometimes right. Their creation myth is both appropriate for the age of the universe and also fits with modern theories. Muslims also have websites that show how the Quran is right when you selectively choose what to take. Sometimes even with a strange interpretation.
With so many claims being thrown around, they are sure to land on something right. Even a person who gambles on psychometrics will have some correct answers.
A real test should check whether the general knowledge they gave matches science. It's not that they got a limited number of things wrong. There are still laws that originate from mistakes.
This reminds me of demagogic arguments by recanters who claim that all scientific discoveries are encrypted in the Torah and give examples.
Like “the value of pi is encrypted in the first verse of the Torah” (when in fact an explicit verse claims that it is 3). Or the name of the North in human DNA. The match could equally be anything else.
In fact, this can be likened to choosing the number of functions from a certain domain to a certain range, where the domain is everything that is written in the Holy Books (Tanak, Talmud, Mishnah, Yerushalmi, Zohar, from verses to proverbs) to the number of possibilities that can be given a meaning that fits with science. Anyone who has studied combinatorics or discrete mathematics knows that the number of matches is enormous. Even with a relatively small domain and range. With such a quantity, there are sure to be matches that match science. That's why it's hard for me to fall for such claims.
A little clearing up of ignorance:
A. There is no “verse” that claims that it is 3, but rather a Gemara (which has summarized the data that any child can check).
B. It is clear that in every text there will be coding, the question is in what quantity and under what conditions. There was a large study signed by a large group of respected scientists who claimed a high number of codes, one that is unlikely to be accidental. Later, there was a coincidental study that claimed a ”total failure” of the previous study, and the debate is still raging.
Angels 1 Chapter 7
“And he made the sea a solid rock, ten cubits from its brim to its brim, a round shape, and five cubits its height, and a line {and} thirty cubits, encircling it”
Diameter – 10
Circumference 30
Pi is defined as the ratio between circumference and diameter. 30/10=3. The Septuagint translation gives a more precise value. It is possible that the Masoretic text is distorted in this verse, or perhaps the translator of the verse in the Septuagint version was Hellenistically educated and more accurate. The value name is also not accurate (since it is a number A that cannot be written as a quotient of two numbers, but because of the context of the verse, this can be neglected because it is a practical use and not mathematics as a theoretical field).
B. An infinite number of things can come from each verse that work out. It is enough to find one. After you find one, mark the goal. Speaking of ciphers, there is a cipher that proves Christianity. In the verse that talks about the work of sacrifices, there is a skipping of 3 (which represents the Trinity) “blood of Jesus is a woman”. I saw this not long ago on a Christian website and they used the Masoretic text. Of course, they won't tell you that.
Likewise, the Masoretic text is not the text that Hazal had, which was probably not the original text either.
And one thing is always enough to work out from the infinite facts that exist in the world. If the first verse gave the base of the natural logarithm, the scale constant, the root of 2, or Weierstrass' theorem in skipping the “Darbaut's theorem” in gematria, they would also claim that the infinitesimal calculus is encrypted in the scriptures. In other words, my claim is not that it is a large quantity but rather that there are many possibilities that can be linked to each verse.
The biggest refutation of this comes from Chazal. Chazal never mentioned the cipher method as one of the methods of the sermon and did not mention anywhere that the Torah can be studied using this method.
It is worth reading the book The Code of the Ages by Rabbi Tropp, where he developed a unique code whose mathematical plausibility in other books is zero.
Regarding the biblical code:
https://www.osimhistoria.com/osim-tanach/ep130-otiyot
A. Interesting. In any case, it is very easy to find that it is slightly more than 3. It is more likely that the result is simply rounded, like the number of Israelites in censuses.
B. Again, it is clear that there will be codes in Harry Potter as well. The question is only how many. There was a study that claimed to have checked the Bible against the Lord of the Rings (as I think) and found that it was unlikely to be a coincidence (Israel Uman gave the number 1 in 100,000, later retracting it), on the other hand, there were those who doubted this study and the debate is still raging. You can read here https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%92%D7%99_%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%91%D7%AA%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%94
Regarding the Christian cipher, you yourself answered: One cipher is not evidence of anything.
The sages did not necessarily know everything, and they certainly did not write everything.
A. It is explicitly stated that pi is 3. A direct calculation without rounding yields this. Or in other words 30mod10=0. That is, it is exactly divisible by 10 and the result is 3. They did not round down because they did not give the explicit value, they only stated the diameter and the circumference. They could have given a more precise value, such as a circumference of 32 and a diameter of 10, a circumference of 33 and a diameter of 10.5 (as in the Septuagint translation).
It is also impossible to round in this way because it does not produce a circle. It produces an elliptical shape, and then we cannot talk about a diameter.
B. Again, it is very easy to create ciphers from 0. In other words, the number of functions between the set of verses, skips, and gematria and the set of facts in the world in some weak connection is almost infinite. Anyone who has taken a course like discrete mathematics should understand this. “A cipher is not evidence of anything” That's right. Here we agree. The problem is that you are holding the stick at both ends.
If it fits with your faith, you accept it, and if it doesn't (like if it proves Christianity) then it's not evidence for anything.
It doesn't matter whether Chazal knew everything or not. If someone brings evidence from the ciphers that Halacha is invalid, or even evidence in law such as a person repaying a debt from another person even though according to the law he doesn't repay it or if the husband of an agunah woman is not alive even though there is no way according to Halacha to determine this, will you accept it as evidence?
I've already seen delusional people who claimed that ”God” in gematria is “nature” and with a few skips they proved that a person should behave according to his nature even if he violates Halacha. You can prove anything this way.
B. Be precise: “One *cipher* is not evidence. The test should be understanding an objective and sufficiently large list of facts, and running a search using the same method in your Bible and another book of similar size. If you see that your Bible contains an exceptionally high number of ciphers, one that rules out randomness, this would be good proof of the existence of ciphers. Such a test was indeed done, see the link I provided.
Of course, ciphers are not evidence of anything other than their very existence, and accordingly, it is also not possible to prove something specific, because in a specific case it could indeed be random. The picture must be seen in its entirety.
I will point out that in my opinion there is a completely different reason to rule out ciphers: the sages themselves say that today (i.e., 1500 years ago) we are not familiar with omissions and additions, meaning that we do not have an accurate version at the letter level, and therefore everything is baseless.
But it is written in the G.M. about Amoraim and Tanais who had the Holy Spirit, the Rabbi does not believe them?
What are the Rabbi's criteria?
The question is what is meant by the Holy Spirit. Sometimes it is a metaphorical description. Perhaps it is meant to tell about their greatness and the like. The Rabbi also writes that the Holy Spirit appeared in his school, and it has already been explained that he does not mean something transcendent but rather a kind of certainty that he felt.
There is a sacrifice called the Par Elam, a matter of public opinion, which is that the Sanhedrin sitting in the Gazit Chamber (!!!) made a mistake in ruling on a halakhic law and the entire Jewish people sinned because of them!!! How could they have made a mistake, since they have the Holy Spirit???
We see from this that even the Sanhedrin are human beings and therefore they can make mistakes.
In the Gemara, it is written that Rava went to study the laws of slaughter for a very long time in order to know all the small details. He did not learn it with the Holy Spirit, but rather labored and examined and researched.
How did the Rambam and the Geonim argue about the Gemara on topics such as divination, sorcery, demons, fortune telling,??? After all, the Gemara has the Holy Spirit???
And how did the Amoraim argue about the Amoraim and also about the Tannaim???
They argued with the Holy Spirit???!!!!
It is clear that they all understood that prophecy is null and void and therefore no one has the Holy Spirit, and no one has authority over the truth!!! And whoever argues on the matter will accept his words, and whoever doesn't, then not!!!!
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