Q&A: Errors in the Statements of the Sages
Errors in the Statements of the Sages
Question
Hello again,
In your book you successfully demonstrate errors of the Sages cited in the Talmud / Talmudic text (calculation errors, the issue of lice, and so on), and from this you conclude that many things were not said as part of a tradition, but rather were things they knew from their surroundings and therefore got wrong, and not from looking into the Torah, from which they drew knowledge about the world.
That makes sense.
However, I am a bit perplexed by sources in the Sages that show they knew things that only today are discovered with sophisticated tools, such as in Berakhot 32b regarding the number of stars (how could the Sages have known this without divine inspiration or tradition?), and similarly other things brought in the book The Revolution by Rabbi Zamir Cohen. Would you say here that they received this through tradition, or that they knew things in other ways that we do not know?
And from a practical halakhic / of Jewish law perspective:
what is your opinion regarding lice—is it permitted to kill them or not? Are the words of the Sages here like an unjust but formal law, and therefore in the case of lice as well their words have formal authority, making it forbidden to kill them?
Answer
Usually the pieces of information brought in tendentious books such as the one mentioned are highly questionable. It does not seem that the Sages had information that was unavailable to the people of their time. And even if you find in one or two places such information, that does not testify to the rule as a whole (for our own eyes have seen, and not those of a stranger, the errors that were there).
Lice are of course forbidden to kill. I explained in the third book that the authority of the Sages does not apply to decisions that were based from the outset on a mistake (as opposed to decisions where the reason later changed). They are void without any need for a religious court, like a mistaken transaction.
Discussion on Answer
That depends on the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot there regarding shuraina de-eina. According to the view that it is because of a connection to the heart, it would apparently be forbidden, but according to the view that a blind person is considered like dead, it would be permitted.
Nowadays, is it permitted to eat fish with meat?
Once the basis of the prohibition is danger, it depends on one's understanding of reality. As far as I know, there is no danger in such a mixture. But I have not checked this with doctors.
Regarding
"sources in the Sages that show they knew things that only today are discovered with sophisticated tools,"
you can see here in the appendices
Greetings, Rabbi… And would violating the Sabbath over a possible case of blindness, where it says in the Talmud / Talmudic text that it is permitted because the eyes are connected to the heart, be forbidden in light of the information we have today?