Mishna 2a and b - "There Goes the Sun"
Ein Yaakov
- The World of Talmudic Aggada
By Dr.
Moshe Simon-Shoshan
Lecture 4: Mishna 2a and b
There
Goes the Sun
The first
section of the Gemara that the Ein Yaakov presents is entirely halakhic
in nature, and it is unclear why the Ein Yaakov included it. Nevertheless, since our project is to
study the Ein Yaakov, we will examine this passage:
The Master
said: FROM THE TIME THAT THE PRIESTS ENTER TO EAT THEIR TERUMA.
When do the
priests eat teruma?
From the time
of the appearance of the stars.
Let him then
say: From the time of the appearance of the stars?
This very
thing he wants to teach us, in passing, that the priests may eat teruma
from the time of the appearance of the stars.
And he also
wants to teach us that the expiatory offering is not indispensable, as it has
been taught: And when the sun sets ve-taher, the setting of the sun is
indispensable [as a condition of his fitness] to eat teruma, but the
expiatory offering is not indispensable to enable him to eat teruma.
But how do
you know that these words and the sun sets mean the setting of the sun, and
this ve-taher means that the day clears away?
It means
perhaps: And when the sun [of the next morning] appears, and ve-taher
means the man becomes clean?
Rabba son of
R. Shila explains:
In that case,
the text would have to read va-yithar.
What is the
meaning of ve-taher?
The day
clears away, conformably to the common expression,
The sun has
set and the day has cleared away.
This
explanation of Rabba son of R. Shila was unknown in the West,
and they
raised the question:
This and the
sun sets, does it mean the real setting of the sun, and ve-taher means
the day clears away? Or does it perhaps mean the appearance of the sun, and
ve-taher means the man becomes clean?
They solved
it from a Baraita, it being stated in a Baraita:
The sign of
the thing is the appearance of the stars.
Hence you
learn that it is the setting of the sun [which makes him clean]
and the
meaning of ve-taher is the clearing away of the day.
Scholars
argue that this sugya (section of the gemara) was authored by the
Saboraim. The Saboraim were a group of rabbis who taught after the
main body of the Talmud was edited. The Saboraim added various sugyot,
mainly at the beginning of masekhtot (tractates). The Geonim and
Rishonim already identified a few sugyot as being of Saboraic
origin. Modern scholars have added other sugyot, such as this one, to the
list of Saboraic additions, because their language and style are similar to
previously identified Saboraic passages.
The sugya
opens with a basic question as to the meaning of the Mishna. The Mishna states
that the time for saying keriat shema at night is the same as the time
that the priests enter to eat their teruma. But what is this time? The
Talmud answers that it is when the stars come out.
We should
note that by the time of the later Babylonian Amoraim (rabbis of the
Talmud), and certainly by the time of the Saboraim, the laws of purity no
longer applied, so most people did not know when the priests eat their teruma.
The Gemara
goes on to ask, if the Mishna refers to nightfall, why does it not say
explicitly from the time of the appearance of the stars, rather than using
this circumlocution about the priests and their teruma? The Gemara
answers that this allows the Mishna to teach us an extra law: not only does the
time for keriat shema start with the coming out of the stars, but the
time for eating teruma starts then as well.
This teaches
us yet another important law. In order to understand this law, we need to back
up a little bit and ask, what does the time that the priests enter to eat their
teruma mean? Why cant they eat it during the day? The Gemara assumes
that the Mishna is only talking about certain cases. According to the Torah,
several types of tuma (impurity) can only be resolved through an
immersion in a mikva followed by a sacrifice. Thus with regard to a
zav, a man who has an impure discharge, the Torah states:
When a zav
becomes clean of his discharge,
he shall
count off seven days for his cleansing,
wash his
clothes and bath his body in fresh water.
Then he shall
be clean.
On the eighth
day he shall take two turtle-doves or two pigeons,
And come
before the LORD at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting,
And give them
to the priest
(Vayikra 15:13-14)
The reader
will note that these verses state that the person becomes clean (ve-taher)
after immersion, even before the sacrifice is offered.
The rabbis
understand this law in the context of another verse in Vayikra dealing
with the impurity of creepy crawly things:
The person
who touches such shall be unclean until evening,
And shall not
eat of the sacred donations unless he has washed his body in water.
As soon as
the sun sets, he shall be clean,
Afterwards he
shall eat of the sacred donations (Vayikra 22:6-7).
Now an extra
element is added to the purification process. Immersion is not sufficient to
render one clean. Rather, one must wait until ba ha-shemesh, a term
translated here as sunset.
Now we are
ready to understand the extra law that the Gemara derives from our Mishna. The
Gemara states:
And he also
wants to teach us that the expiatory offering is not indispensable, as it has
been taught: And when the sun sets ve-taher, the setting of the sun is
indispensable [as a condition of his fitness] to eat teruma, but the
expiatory offering is not indispensable to enable him to eat teruma.
The Gemara
understands that the Mishna is teaching us that in cases where immersion and a
sacrifice are necessary, the sacrifice is not necessary to make the priest
eligible to eat teruma. Rather, as soon as the sun sets (ba
ha-shemesh), which the rabbis interpret as when the stars come out, the
priest can eat teruma. Apparently, the rabbis understood the term sacred
donations in the verse as referring specifically to teruma, and
not to other holy foods, like sacrifices.
We now come
to the second part of the sugya.
The Gemara challenges its previous understanding of the phrase u-va
ha-shemesh ve-taher in Vayikra. It seems that the Gemara understood
the word taher as referring, not to the purification of the person, but
to the darkening of the skies. Hence the phrase u-va ha-shemesh
ve-taher, indicates that one must wait until nightfall.
The Gemara
asks, is this really so? Perhaps it would be better to understand u-va
ha-shemesh as referring to sunset and ve-taher as referring
to the person who becomes pure, not the darkening of the skies? This would be
the simple meaning of the verse. (I have understood this line like Tosafot
s.v. dilma, as opposed to Rashi.)
The Gemara
now quotes the Amora, Rabba b. Shila, as definitively ruling that the
term ve-taher in the verse refers to nightfall. He brings two proofs.
First, if the Torah intended to refer to the individual becoming pure, it should
have said va-yithar, and he shall become pure, which would have
eliminated any confusion. Second, common Aramaic uses the term purified as a
metaphor for nightfall, as in the idiom, The sun has set and the day has
cleared away (been purified).
This use of a
popular expression to elucidate a verse from the Torah highlights one of the
Talmuds most distinctive features. The Talmud mixes many different types of
language together. Not only does it mix various types of Hebrew and Aramaic, it
also mixes high language with low language. We find the words of the Torah
and the prophets rubbing shoulders with common expressions and popular folk
wisdom. The dialogue between these different types of language generates much of
the vibrancy of the Talmuds discourse.
Finally, the
Talmud quotes an alternative defense of its interpretation of the verse in
Vayikra and, by extension, our Mishna, as referring to nightfall and not
sunset. They quote a tradition from the
The
explanation of this passage was long and complex, and may have been difficult to
follow for readers who do not have background in Talmud study. I will now
briefly summarize the key issues in the sugya.
This is an
essentially interpretive sugya. It seeks to interpret two related texts.
The first is the line in our Mishna that refers to the time that the priests
enter to eat their teruma as the earliest time to say the evening
Shema. Secondarily, the Gemara wants to know the meaning of Vayikra
22:7, which describes the purification process following impurity. It too refers
to eating holy things and the conclusion of the day.
It seems to
me that the simple meaning of both the Mishna and the Vayikra verse is
that the person becomes pure before sunset. However, in both cases, the Mishna
argues that the passages in question refer to nightfall. It seems that the
Mishna interprets the passages in this way because the interpretation fits with
the accepted law as they know it. The Talmud often reinterprets sources so that
they conform with the law as the Talmud understands it.
Bein Ha-shmashot and Talmudic Astronomy
The next
passage cited by the Ein Yaakov comes from the bottom of page 2b. The
Ein Yaakov only cites the last line of the following quotation, but I will
cite the entire quotation because the context is helpful in understanding that
line:
The Master
said: R. Yehuda said to him:
When the
priests take their ritual bath it is still day-time!
The objection
of R. Yehuda to
Do you think
that I am referring to the twilight [as defined] by you?
I am
referring to the twilight [as defined] by R. Yosi.
For R. Yosi
says:
The twilight
is like the twinkling of an eye.
This enters
and that departs and one cannot exactly fix it.
This passage
refers to the preceding discussion in the Talmud in which R. Yehuda chastises
What is
bein ha-shemashot and what is the nature of the debate between R. Yehuda and
R. Yosi about its duration? How does this relate to the question of when to say
keriat shema?
In order to
answer these questions, we must take a few steps backwards to explain a little
bit about rabbinic cosmology the way in which the rabbis understood the
structure of the universe.
Unlike people
today, the rabbis did not envision the earth as a spheroid which orbits the sun
along with eight other planets (or seven, if you dont count Pluto), and with
the moon orbiting the earth. Neither did the rabbis adopt the classical Greek or
Ptolemaic theory of the universe which was already widely accepted in the times
of the Mishna and Talmud. This theory posited that the earth is a sphere and the
sun, moon, planets and stars all circle the earth.
Rather, the
rabbis embraced the traditional view of the universe which was held in one form
or the other by most ancient civilizations before the advent and spread of Greek
science. The rabbis may have learned this position from the Bible itself, which
also presents the universe according to the conventional understandings of its
time. According to this view, the earth is more or less flat and is covered by a
solid dome, referred to in the Bible and in rabbinic literature as the rakia
(firmament). Each day, the sun
travels along the inside surface of the rakia from east to west. At the
end of the day, the sun passes through the rakia to the other side,
becoming invisible to the human observer and leaving the world in darkness. Over
the course of the night, the sun travels back around to the east side of the
world. In the morning, the sun re-enters the rakia and the process starts
again.
One of the
central questions regarding the rakia that the rabbis debate is its
thickness. Some rabbis argued that the rakia is extremely thin. We find both R. Joshua b. R. Nehemiah
and Ben Zoma stating that the
rakia is about two or three fingers in thickness (Bereshit
Rabba 4:5, 2:4).
Some rabbis go so far as to compare the rakia to fine gold
leaf (Bereishit Rabba 4:2). On the other hand, some rabbis posit that the
rakia is extremely thick. Rabbi Yehuda estimates the
rakias thickness
more conservatively as a 50-year journey (Yerushalmi Berakhot 2c).
The dispute
as to whether the
rakia is very thick
or very thin may be connected to the debate about the length of bein
ha-shemashot mentioned in the Gemara. The source for this debate is a
baraita cited in the Talmud, in Shabbat 34b:
Our rabbis
taught: As to the twilight [period], it is doubtful whether it is partly day and
partly night or the whole of it [belongs to the] day or the whole of it night:
[therefore] it is cast upon the stringencies of both days. And what is twilight?
From sunset as long as the face of the east has a reddish glow: when the lower
[horizon] is pale but not the upper, it is twilight; [but] when the upper
[horizon] is pale and the same as the lower, it is night. This is the opinion of
R. Yehuda. R. Nehemiah said: For as long as it takes for a man to walk half a
mil from sunset. R. Yosi said: Twilight is the twinkling of an eye, one
entering and the other departing, and it is impossible to determine it.
R. Yehudas
position that bein ha-shemashot consists of the entire period from sunset
to complete nightfall is apparently directly linked to his beliefs about the
thickness of the
rakia. This is the
same R. Yehuda whom we saw above cited as stating that the
rakia is a fifty
years journey in length. In that passage in the Yerushalmi, R. Yehuda
elaborates on his understanding of the relationship between the thickness of the
rakia and the
process of the rising and the setting of the sun:
It was taught
in the name of R. Yehuda: The thickness of the firmament (rakia) is a
fifty-year journey. An average man can walk forty mil in one day. In the
time in which the sun passes though the firmament, a fifty-year journey, a man
can walk four mil. Thus, the [time it takes the sun to pass though the]
thickness of the firmament is equal to one tenth of the day.
R. Yehudas
calculations assume that the suns passage through the
rakia is an
observable phenomenon. Otherwise, he
would not be able to calculate that this passage takes one tenth of the day. R.
Yehuda apparently identified the hour or more between sunset and complete
nightfall with the suns passing through the
rakia. R. Yehudas
maximal definition of bein ha-shemashot as spanning the entire period
from sunset to nightfall thus corresponds to his opinion that the
rakia is a fifty
years journey in length. R. Yosis proposition that bein ha-shemashot is
an infinitesimally short period of time may similarly be based on a calculation
of the time it takes the sun to pass through the
rakia. It would
follow that R. Yosi was a proponent of the position that the
rakia is extremely
thin. R. Nehemiahs position that bein ha-shemashot lasts for as long as
it takes to walk half a mil does not correlate directly with any known
position about the thickness of the rakia.
It is
possible that he had his own opinion either about the thickness of the rakia
or about the observable phenomenon corresponding to the suns passage through
the rakia.
In other
words, the debate between R. Yehuda and R. Yosi regarding the length of bein
ha-shemashot may in fact reflect a scientific dispute among the rabbis as to
the thickness of the rakia.
This
discussion raises fundamental issues about the relationship between the rabbis
and science and, more broadly, between Torah and science. I believe that the
rabbis understanding of the structure of the universe does not conform, in any
way, with the observations and conclusions of modern science (I have made this
argument in much greater depth in an article which I would be happy to send to
any interested readers). It is nearly
impossible to argue that these texts are allegorical or symbolic, and are meant
to teach us other, non-scientific interpretations. So we are left with two
alternatives. We can either decide, taking a radical approach inspired by
Tosafot, that we are bound to believe all that is written in the Talmud and that
all of Western science is simply wrong. This approach is theologically viable,
but very difficult for a rational person to accept. Or, we can take an approach
in the spirit of the Geonim (and the Rambam), that the rabbis received no
tradition regarding science, so the scientific statements found in the Gemara
merely reflect individual rabbis opinions and are not binding upon us in any
way. The question of what happens when halakhic rulings are made on the basis of
outdated scientific information is complex and beyond the scope of this class.
I further
argue that the rabbis cosmology was not even in line with the advanced Greek
science of their day. The rabbis were fairly insulated from the dominant
Greco-Roman culture of their age, so they relied on the Bible and inherited
assumptions to construct their conception of the universe.
Therefore,
those who argue that the rabbis of old were aware of todays most recent
scientific developments are ignorant either of modern science or of the writings
of the rabbis, or of both.
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