[Avodah] How many bones in the human body?

[Marty Bluke]

On Wednesday, June 5, 2019, Abraham J. Friedman <ajfried22 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would imagine that just like by a strawberry whereby it is classified as
> a fruit scientifically but nevertheless halacha requires us to make a
> hadaamah on it, similarly with the skeletal structural composition of a
> human. There must be a difference for the basis of classification as to
> what makes something count as a bone. Did they actually count it out or
> simply come to the conclusion based on a drasha?

The Gemara there has a story that they counted the bones of an executed
person and ended up with 152. They asked R' Yishmael about the extra bones
and he asked was it a woman and they said yes. We see from this story that
they actually counted the number of bones.