[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 25/11/2010 5:43 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> RZS wrote:
>> "Yom shekulo shabbos" doesn't appear in Tanach.  It appears only
>> once in mishnayos, in the last mishneh of Tamid, and that mishneh
>> is quoted twice  in Shas.  It's a drosho on "mizmor shir leyom
>> hashabbos", where the pshat clearly is a 24-hour day.  I don't see
>> how you can use that as a precedent for learning pshat in an
>> instance of "yom" in Tanach.
>
> What prompted the drasha? Very simple: Psalm 92 has no connection
> whatsoever o Shabbos. It's theme is rasha' vetov lo, to which the
> psalmist responds starting with veAta marom ... through the end.

However, that's not pshat.  It seems to me, at least, that the pshat
is simply that this song is to be sung on Shabbos.  The mishne explains
*why* that is so.  And one can't use a drasha appearing once in the
mishne to show what a word in Tanach means.  Where is an example in
Tanach of "yom" meaning anything but a day?


> IOW, this is not a drush, but *plain* *peshat*, unless ... you want to
> posit (as some Bible critics do) that there is no connection between
> the superscriptions and the psalm they superscript.

I've never thought about it, but now that you mention it it makes sense
to me that the superscriptions weren't added by the authors, especially
by the other authors whose work David compiled together with his own
works.  Are we to believe that Moshe called himself "ish ha'elokim"?
Surely that was added by David, or even perhaps by a later editor.
Need one be a Bible critic to entertain such an idea?

But for the current purpose it doesn't matter who labelled this song
as for Shabbos.  It seems obvious that whoever it was meant the literal
day of Shabbos that comes every week.  (The lamed can mean "for" or
"about"; what I'm saying is that the pshat here is "for", while the
mishne's drasha treats it as if it meant "about".)


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                      - Margaret Thatcher