[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 25/11/2010 10:53 AM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Zev Sero<zev at sero.name>  wrote:
>> I think you're seeing things that aren't there.  Whoever wrote the
>> introductory pasuk simply meant that it is a song for the Shabbos day.
>
> This begs the question [assuming that is what the superscription
> means, which is arguable]: why would this song be so fitting for
> Shabbos, if its content is totally unrelated? Because the weekly
> Shabbos is a symbol for the Eternal Shabbos, which is in turn
> connected to the theme of the psalm. One way or another, you will come
> back to the maleability of the notion yom, whether as a stand alone
> word, or as the compound noun Yom haShabbat.

On the contrary, it is you who is begging the question.  "Yom" almost
everywhere else in Tanach clearly means "day".  You want to claim that
there are a few exceptions, and therefore any example where the context
doesn't force us to read it one way we can read it either way.  For that
to work you have to first find one example that is indisputably such an
exception.

Once you've found one, then you've established that exceptions do exist,
and you can then argue that any other case is also such an exception.
But every example you've given *isn't* indisputably an exception; on the
contrary, the simplest read in *all* those examples is that it means a
literal day.  You can claim that it *might* mean something else, but you
can't prove it *does*; and you have to do so in at least one instance in
order for your whole edifice to have something to stand on.

Why would this song be sung on Shabbos?  In pshat, I don't have to
answer that.  It just is, because it says so.  Whoever wrote that
superscription thought it appropriate, and that's all I need to know.
Probing beyond that is not necessary for pshat; that the mishneh
finds a reason is very nice, and it's a good drasha, but it doesn't
affect pshat.  Perhaps that really is what the author meant.  Perhaps
it's even what the original author of the psalm (who is presumably
Moshe Rabbenu) meant.  But it isn't what he *wrote*; it isn't the
intended translation of his words.  Or at least, you can't prove that
it is, and the onus is on you to do so.


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