[Avodah] Ben Shiv'ah vs. Ben Shemonah

[Zev Sero]

Yehoshua Kahan wrote:

> Here's my idea:  Not a few women (I'd be helped here by statistics or 
> even clinical impressions) experience bleeding, though pregnant, after a 
> month of pregnancy.  May of those women do not lose their developing 
> fetuses and go one to have healthy, full-term babies.  [...]
> SHE and everyone else thinks, when the 
> full-term, shaggy, clawed baby emerges, that she has given birth to a 
> seven-month fetus.  In fact, the baby is a nine-monther.  But:  when a 
> baby would come out in the eighth month, it would be a true premie, 
> often lacking hair and finngernails, and non viable in the days 
> preceding modern medicine.

Makes sense.  And this wouldn't have to happen that often; even if it
was a rare wonder, halacha would have to deal with it.  Even when we go
back to the midrashim, it does explain Moshe Rabbenu.  But it doesn't
fit the case of the shevatim, who are supposed to have been born less
than 9 months apart (even assuming that Bilha's and Zilpa's pregnancies
were more or less simultaneous, and that Rachel conceived Yosef a few
months before Dinah was born, it's still difficult to pack them all in
to seven years, without shaving a few months off here and there).


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas