[Avodah] Traditional Methodologies

[Eliyahu Grossman]

On 7/23/2013 2:25 PM, Rich, Joel wrote:
> On a related (in my mind) topic -- if time viewing were invented so 
> that one could observe (but not impact) prior events, would we accept 
> the "testimony" of the tannaim and amorayim as to what was actually 
> said or would this be considered a nontraditional methodology?
>    

On 7/23/2013 3:25 PM, Lisa wrote:
>Get back to me when you have a time machine.

Actually, we can historically see that what was seen with the eyes has been
rejected by religious leadership. We read in Pesachim 94b that Rebbe
preferred the non-Jewish view of the solar system, but only because he
misunderstood their view of it (theirs was a geocentric round earth with
concentric circles going around it while his was a flat earth with the sun
and moon rolling on the underside of a "rakia" (dome) and going through and
rolling back over the top. I cover this more extensively at
http://eweirdness.blogspot.co.il/2013/07/a-proper-view-of-universe.html )

Despite his statement that "their view appears to me to be a better one" for
centuries you would have Rabbinical leaders say "He use 'appears', so he
would never have accepted their view of a round earth! The words of the
Rabbis are truth!"

You even had the Lubavitcher Rebbe who preferred to deny provable cosmology
and accepted the geocentric model of the Universe as Chazal did (I do not
know if the Lubavitcher Rebbe held that the world was flat or if the sun
went around a "rakia" dome as Chazal did). 

Those who thought like the Rambam would certainly accept confirmable
evidence and rule otherwise, but would most likely have their words banned
by those who really have taken to heart "even if they say that right is left
and left is right, you accept their words. This happens today quite a lot.
 
So yeah, even with a Tardis, you would have those who would refuse to accept
anything seen unless it locks in nicely with the words of his or her teacher
and all of those teachers who came before.

Eliyahu Grossman