[Avodah] Local, Non-Global or Global Flood

[Zev Sero]

On 29/11/2010 10:08 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 07:15:01PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>> Since when is "yamim" meaning year the plural of "yom"?
>>
>> At any rate, the Radak does not say what you claim he says.  Surely
>> you must at least recognise that.
>
> The Radaq's Seifer Shorashim makes this comment about yamim under the
> entry "yom'. I have no idea how could can reach the conclusion that he
> isn't discussing the word yom.

I "reach" that conclusion by reading his words.  It's right there.  You
even linked to it.  How can you deny it?  He's done with "yom", he's
now defining "yamim"; if "yom" could mean a year he'd've said so while
defining "yom".  Note that "yamim" *always* means either "days" or
"year"; it never means a week or a month or a decade or a century or
any other period.


> Or are youy engaging in misdkirectio by objecting to my use of an example
> the Radaq doesn't give ("yamim achadim") in language as though he doesn't
> make the same overall point?

Not at all.  "Yamim achadim" can easily mean "several years"; the plural
of "yamim" in the sense of "year" is "yamim", because "yamimim" would
sound silly.



> On Mon, Nov 29, 2010 at 07:26:28PM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
>>> You still ignore issues like the use of "yom" in Bereishis 2:4 to describe
>>> that the previous pereq told us took a week -- or an unstated amount
>>> of time plus a week.
>
>> Fine.  No, it doesn't.  Rashi is very very clear on this.  It means
>> the first day and not a minute longer...
>
> Yes, the pasuq is very clear that Adam was made on "yom asos H' Elokim
> eretz veshamayhim", named the animal on that yom, gets a wife on that
> day, eats from the eitz hadaas on that day.

That is absolutely not true.  All of those things happen *after* that
day.   At least according to Rashi.

> Look at the events that
> pasuq introduces. Fine, it's literally the first yom... but was Adam
> formed from the mud on the first day?

No, he wasn't.


> Rashi still doesn't mention yom in his commentary -- no yom, no "not
> a minute longer". What Rashi does speak of is the haskhalah, which is
> beri'ah yeish mei'ayin before everything in place. There is no indication
> this was on day 1 rather than before day one -- and in fact Rashi on
> 1:1 says (like the Ramban) that is was before. Not even during any yom
> of the previous pereq.

Again, no he doesn't.  You're making stuff up that just isn't there.
Rashi on 1:1 says that *this* pasuk says nothing at all about the
order of creation.  Not because it couldn't have, but because we know
from elsewhere that the order was different.  That is the reason he
gives, and it's the only reason.  Not because of some mystical time
dilation.

You need to open Rashi and read it again without any preconceptions,
the way the ben chamesh lamikra would read it.  The ben chamesh has
never learned the Ramban, and doesn't know about hyle or relativity
or anything like that.  He reads "bereishis boro", and naturally thinks
it means that these are the things Hashem created first.  So Rashi tells
him no, it doesn't mean that, it means that they were created for the
sake of two "reshises".  He doesn't like that, so Rashi tells him if he
wants to avoid drush then he'll have to read it as if it said "bereshis
bero".  He then asks why he can't just read it simply, that at the very
beginning, before anything else happened, Hashem created shamayim and
aretz?  What's wrong with that.  And Rashi explains what's wrong; not
that the grammar won't work, or that there's something fundamentally
wrong with the concept, but because later pesukim tell us that these
weren't the first things created.  If not for that then we *could* and
*would* read it that way, and spare ourselves the reliance on drush or
the twisting of "bara" into "bero".

So the first pasuk tells us nothing at all about the order of
creation.  It *doesn't* tell us that everything was created on the
first day.  But when Rashi continues with the order of the six days
he several times warns us that certain things weren't really created
on the days the chumash tells us, but were really created on the first
day.  How he knows that, he doesn't tell us.  Then we get to 2:4, and
finally he tells us how he knew it: because it says "beyom asos",
which teaches us that they were all created "barishon".  Without this
"beyom" we would *not* say that, and we would say that each thing was
created on the day that the chumash says it was.  It's *only* this
"beyom" that tells us otherwise, and made us read the previous chapter
as talking about when the already-created things were set in place.
(Note that he does *not* say "barishona", which would mean "at the
beginning", but "barishon", on the first day.)


> So, Rashi says "yom asos shamayim va'aretz" is the period that includes
> the time period from before the yom echad, before tohu vavohu (again, see
> 1:1). And we know from the parsashah whose events it describes that we
> are now being told that yom is when man is created and commits the first
> cheit. The the only way to understand that is if the "yom" is a period
> previously described as taking a week.

Again, this may be the way other meforshim read it, but not Rashi.
Rashi reads 2:4 as telling us that eretz veshamayim were created on the
first day; the rest of the chapter is *not* about that day, but about
what happened on the sixth day.


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