[Avodah] Not Making Kiddush Between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, February 6, 2008 4:19 pm, Prof. Levine wrote:
: I have to admit that until I read what you wrote and did some
: checking that I was under the impression the Babylonian hour was a
: fixed hour of 60 minutes like the one we have today.

There is a claim that the cheileq was something we picked up during
galus Bavel. In general, there are claims about information flowing
from Bavel to us. The cheileq is nothing compared to the claim that
messianism was their invention.

However, look at the composition of their royal court. If the king's
advisors were nevi'im and other talmidei chakhamim, a fact that not
every minimalist denies, wouldn't it be more plausible that the
Bavliim learned these notions from us?

The Bavliim didn't use fractions, so they tended toward numbers with
lots of divisors. It may be more fair to say they didn't reduce
fractions, so to do math they needed denominators that could express
many of the common fractions. 60 was a favorite, as you can make 1/2
(30), 1/3 (20), 1/4 (15), 1/5 (12), 1/6 (10), 1/10 (6), 1/12 (5),
etc... without playing with the denominator. This is why there are 60
min in an hour or degree, 60 sec in a min, 60 moments in a sec. For
similar reasons, there are 360 deg in a circle, and 12 hours in a day,
or night. Which were originally of different length. If an hour during
the day is 1/12 of the time from sunrise to sunset and an hour at
night is 1/12 of the time from sunset until the next morning's
sunrise, they'll differ.

Anyway, along these lines... The cheileq is 1/1080 hours. Or, 1/18 *
1/60... Looks like a Bablynonian taste in denominator, no?

Except that a cheileq is 1/1080 of a STANDARD hour. The Bavliim only
used sha'os zemaniyos. Thus, it is implausible that they came up with
a cheileq.

I researched all the above to rebut a non-O rabbi who made the "got it
from the Bavliim" claim in response to my posting my liking the shitah
that says that our knowledge of the cheileq dates back to "hachodesh
hazeh lakhem".

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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