[Avodah] Birds & Fish in the Mabul

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Nov 02, 2011 at 02:28:59PM -0000, Chana Luntz wrote:
:> I think etymologically it is built from "sham", and thus means
:> "thereness", and would be a term referring to any unreachable domain.
:> (Contrasted to "aretz", that which can be spanned, related to "rutz"?
:> At least that is RSRH's take on alef-prefix nouns. But in any case,
:> my comment about "shamayim" stands no worse without this contrast.)

: Agreed it must  be a spacial sense.  But it is still a problem for your
: translation.  On what basis do you include in the definition of shamayim the
: spacial area that includes the moon, planets and galaxies? ...

... and most of the atmosphere. I guess our ability to get there with
special equipment doesn't count. (Maybe like our ability to see some
bugs on lettuce only with magnifying glasses.)

Off the cuff, these examples leaped to mind:
"Ve'of ye'ofeif al ha'aretz, al penei raqia' hashamayim" (Ber' 1:20)
"... ulechol chayas ha'aretz, ulekhol owf hashamayim" (Ber' 1:30)
"... ve'atzar es hashamayim, velo yihyeh matar..." (Dev' 11:14)

But I think you're arguing in the wrong direction to make your own point.

Noach was told that everything under shamayim would be destroyed. That
includes all of earth no matter which homonym is intended by "shamayim"
here. Your ability to raise problems is tangential, unless you can prove
that "shamayim" has yet another meaning that is yet smaller.

...
: But you see, this way of defining (ie translating) these terms makes it
: dependent upon the people in relation to whom they are defined.  Aretz and
: Shamayim are thus relative terms, expressed in the language of man, derived
: from looking at the people at the centre of the relevant discussion and
: their accessible domains....

But I think that day 4 tells us more about what shamayim was presumed to
mean to the reader than you're willing to grant.

...
: And Aretz too of course, sometimes including the moon and planets and
: sometimes not.  But if you agree that there are multiple meanings, then how
: can you assign one meaning with any certainty to the use of these words in
: parshas noach?...

Because the problem I posed -- that the flood is described as being global
-- holds under any of the attested definitions of "all the shamayim". And
why "kol", if people thought in multiple senses and Hashem meant the most
limited one?

I think, therefore, that even if there is a more limited sense than the
area that birds fly across the face of and rain comes from above, it still
wouldn't fit.

:                                                              Why cannot it
: mean that indeed the moon, Mars, Venus and galaxies beyond were flooded?
: Scientific evidence?  Gut instinct? 

Actually, if there is no macroscopic life anywhere but on earth, Hashem
could destroy all the yequm that is under all the shamayim by only
flooding the earth.

But I wouldn't go there, except as food for thought.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             With the "Echad" of the Shema, the Jew crowns
micha at aishdas.org        G-d as King of the entire cosmos and all four
http://www.aishdas.org   corners of the world, but sometimes he forgets
Fax: (270) 514-1507      to include himself.     - Rav Yisrael Salanter