The vav of “gachon” (and the other halfway points in Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a—letters, words, verses; all of it is wrong) is especially surprising (to me), because in the Masorah—after the period of the Amoraim, but presumably there were transmitters of the text even before then—you see astonishing control over the entire Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) down to its letters. They didn’t get tired of checking again and again and again and again, and writing down the number of occurrences of every word and how many spellings are defective and how many plene, etc. Compared to that, counting the Torah (and Psalms) once accurately is peanuts. Many have tried their hand at all kinds of creative ideas to explain what is meant there, and nothing much beyond homiletics has come of it.

Indeed, but it’s worth noting that in many cases they count and there are mistakes (like “melakhah/melakhet” in the categories of labor on the Sabbath, and so on). Afterward, of course, the commentators come and explain them away.

And here is an interesting explanation (it seems the writer there attributes this explanation to Rabbi Yitzhak Zilber and Rabbi Pinchas Segal. I seem to remember having seen something like this in Rabbi Reuven Margaliot):
http://torah.125mb.com/kidushin.html

– “darosh darash” is the midpoint of doubled words in the Torah
– the vav of “gachon” (an enlarged vav) is the midpoint of unusual letters (large/small; and at the above link he adds a few little decorative marks)
– “vehitgalach” (an enlarged gimel) is the midpoint of verses in which a large letter appears (…)
– the suspended ayin of “ya’ar” is the midpoint of unusual letters (large/small/suspended) in Psalms
– and “vehu rachum” is the actual midpoint of the verses in Psalms, and it is off by 2 verses from the truth, because in both of those there is something derogatory about Israel, so they moved the marker away.

The idea itself is admittedly strained, but if everything falls into place within one conceptual style, that’s pretty good evidence. Maybe you’d only need to check whether there really aren’t extra degrees of freedom left. And it’s also quite strange that the textual transmitters would err in this, especially in a generation where the only written text before them was the Bible—whether they had a written Mishnah or only one formulated orally in a fixed form depends on the versions of the Epistle of Rabbi Sherira Gaon.

To me it’s clear that this is not the plain meaning of the Talmud itself. Moreover, how did the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) understand it?

It also looks very strange to me. But if it really all works out smoothly, how could that be by chance? Aside from “vehu rachum,” if the numbers are right, it works out a little too nicely.

That’s not comparable. The author of the Zohar was “only” off by about 300,000 letters…

On the contrary, Benjamin: if the error is too extreme, then you can’t chalk it up to a counting mistake (after all, we’re not dealing with a runny-nosed schoolchild), and you have to look for what the hint is. When the error is altogether plausible (as in the Talmud), then you can attribute it to lack of expertise or a mistake.

Quite the contrary, Beit Hillel…

“In the book Megaleh Amukot it is written that the word Yisrael is an acronym for ‘There are six hundred thousand letters in the Torah’… But I cannot understand this number of six hundred thousand letters, which my poor intellect cannot accept, since the total number of verses in the Torah according to what is printed in the humashim is 5,845… It follows that even if there were 99 letters in every verse, like the verse ‘And now, Israel,’ etc., or 100 letters, it would be impossible for there to be six hundred thousand, for there are not six thousand verses in the Torah.”
— Havot Yair 235

Did you know??? Only in 1930 was the precise number of letters in the Torah discovered; it was published in the book Mishnat Rabbi Yaakov by Rabbi Yaakov Schor!!!

It seems to me that until then laziness ruled the world and nobody could be bothered actually to count…

Okay. I still think the problem in the Talmud is more serious than the problem in the Zohar.

By the way, regarding Megaleh Amukot, there’s a difference between someone who quotes something—then he relies on what is written and doesn’t bother checking, even things where if you make a little effort you can see they’re absurd—and someone who starts the whole idea. The first person who invented the number six hundred thousand had nothing to rely on, and it seems pretty odd to me that he would inflate a number out of his own head based on some homily. But maybe he really did inflate it based on some vague homily and wasn’t troubled by the Talmudic question: “Bring a Torah scroll and count them.”

I vaguely remember there being a responsum of Rabbi Akiva Eger that says something similar there: the one on whom the matter is initially imposed pays attention to it, while the second does so less. (Maybe it’s a Talmudic passage? Maybe it’s not in Rabbi Akiva Eger either? Alas.) Like in a store, sometimes you don’t count the change because the seller already counted it.

Dear Beit Hillel…

“As the letters add up to six hundred thousand, corresponding to the count of the tribes of Israel, which are twelve, and they add up to six hundred thousand. So too the letters, when they are filled out, add up to six hundred…”

— New Zohar 91a

What does “when they are filled out they add up to six hundred” mean? Here it actually says that the letters themselves do not reach 600,000 (but only about half that), and somehow this “filling out” completes it to 600,000.

I have zero interest in reconciling the view of the Zohar as some ancient sacred Jewish text. I would write the same things even if it were just some text written by some guy who knew how to slice himself a cucumber.

Maybe it should read “when they are counted,” and then your question goes right back to where it started. Though it’s still a bit difficult why, regarding the tribes, it didn’t say “are counted” but simply “add up.”

Aside from a plain scribal error, interchange of resh and lamed does happen. Among other places, see Nachmanides on Genesis 25:
(“letushim” = “netushim”) “for lamed and nun are interchanged in places, as in lishkah and nishkah, and ‘a drawn sword’ is like ‘sharpened.’”
There is also armalah = almanah (“widow”), and I seem to remember there are many more.

Thanks for the cucumber, and all the more so for the suggested emendation.
As for your minor difficulty, it’s no difficulty at all, since it explicitly says “corresponding to the count,” meaning: corresponding to the count that adds up to 600,000! There was an actual census of the children of Israel, unlike the count of the letters, which add up without counting…

I don’t think that explanation is worth investing three exclamation marks in.

Beit Hillel, “but only about half that” … how so?

Benjamin, you don’t have even the most basic beginning or end of an ability to read the Zohar properly. You could throw the same taunting questions at the Tao Te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita too. In fact, every mystical literature at its best can be dismissed and mocked with questions of this kind. The point is that these books were not written for states of consciousness like yours. In fact, they were written precisely in order to get out of that state.

Maybe A. can help him with this consciousness business.

He certainly studied core subjects.
Writing nicely, without proofs.