[Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old Jerusalem settlement

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 01:24:33AM -0500, Zev Sero wrote:
: On 02/18/2016 11:30 PM, Micha Berger via Avodah wrote:
:>  Bedil refers to tin only when it's used to make bronze.

: On the contrary, in the pasuk in Matos it means davka kelim made just of tin.

Tin is too ductile, it would have to be a tin alloy. Think of
the difference between a spool of solder and a spool of wire of
comparable thickness. This is why "tin cans" are really tin plated steal
cans. (Unless they're actually aluminum cans, the expression lost sight
of the tin somewhere along the way).

There are no known examples of such keilim surviving until today. Which,
given the above, does not surprise me.

And aside from the metallurgy and the archeology, the shoresh also
indicates similarly that tin was something smelting took out of bronze,
and not used by itself.

Similarly ofares. Lead keilim? Figurines, beads -- ie gelumim (see Sifra
ad loc), yes. But a keli with walls of lead? A lead plate? It would be
either thick and unusably heavy or too malleable to last very long. And
so I am not surprised no one mentions evidence of Bronze era use of
lead keilim.

So what about Matos? Perhaps it's to be clear that when the pasuq says
nechoshes and barzel requires tevilah, it is including those that contain
their usual alloying ingredients, not only copper but also bronze.

But otherwise Matos leaves us with a parallel problem to that of Yisro's
use of barzel as the metal associated with the military.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Live as if you were living already for the
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Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning