[Avodah] Chazal are Infallible

[hankman]

CM wrote:
>Actual the Babylonians and Greeks had better values than the ones used
in shas. It is safe to assume that chazal knew these values that well
preceded the time of the mishna and gemara even if you choose to assume
that chazal only knew what the intelligencia of their day knew in
science. They chose to use these rounded values since these approx. were
sufficient halachakly and easier for the less sophisticated hamon am to
use. 

RSK responded:
Why do we assume Chazal had a good "secular" education, and more
particularly, since we are dealing with shiurim to be yotzeh according
to halacha, why would chazal NOT be as precise as possible?  Again, see
the gemara I cited.

I [CM] respond:
I take it as an article of faith, that at the very least, chazal, our intelligencia, was no less knowledgeable in the secular fields of knowledge than the best of any other nation. Why would you assume otherwise? We can produce Einsteins today, but not then? (The obvious counter examples of our day where many gedolim do not have such knowledge is a discussion for another day).

As to your second point, "why would chazal NOT be as precise as possible?"  You misunderstood my comment. They were precise in halacha, not mathematically. That is to say, The precise value halachakly is 3 (not 3.1415...), The precise mathematical value, in discussions of halacha, IS the approximation to the correct halachik value of 3. (Presumably the Torah adopted this value of 3 rather than pi for halachik calculations due to its ease of use. But for halachik purposes it is the correct value, not an approximation, just don't expect a real circle to close by use of this value).

KVT
Chaim Manaster
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20060914/d0639db4/attachment-0001.htm>