Q&A: Didn’t the Sages know how to count?
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Didn’t the Sages know how to count?
Question
It says in Kiddushin [30a]: “The Rabbis taught: there were 5,888 verses in a Torah scroll,” but in the entire Torah there are 5,845 verses. Didn’t they know how to count?
Answer
I don’t know. Various explanations have been given for this, and I haven’t looked into it in depth.