Страна и история/ Леви Китросски</a>

As we celebrate the seventh issue of “Torah News @ NDS”, we may pay attention to what was “At the Beginning”. In the very first issue of Chidushei Torah @ NDS, the first article was an interesting piece by Dov Falik about the calculation of the new month. The main idea was that the calculation of the mean period of the lunar month in the Jewish calendar is a so precise that it could not be possibly have been known naturally at the time of the Talmud. He assumed that this astronomical knowledge must have been provided by prophetic tradition. This syllogism can be called The First Calendar Proof. Below, I propose a Second Calendar Proof, and discuss the validity of both proofs. Along the way we learn some interesting information about Creation.

A simple question

The first question is simply this: on which calendar date (day/month/year) was the first Sabbath (Shabbat)? The question is simple indeed, but most people I asked gave incorrect answers, typically year 1. Further, one of the main purposes of the Sabbath commandment is to remember the Creation, so that details may produce interesting details regarding Creation and mankind.

The main source is the Talmud1 and the medieval commentary, Tosafot. The Talmud tells of a disagreement between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua concerning the month of creation. According to R’ Eliezer the world was created in Tishrei; R’ Yehoshua says Nisan. From there we learn that it is not crystal clear when the first Sabbath took place.

The day

According to both R’ Eliezer and R’ Yehoshua the creation started on the 25^th of Elul (R’ Eliezer) or of Adar (R’ Yehoshua). Why is such strange date proposed? Why not the 1^st of the relevant month? How does this fit with the respective claims of Tishrei vs. Nisan as being the month of creation?

And here we see an important Talmudic lesson . The appearance of humans completed the act of Creation and initiated our time. In other words, the Jewish calendar starts with the day man and woman were created. Even if the importance of Creation is not limited to mankind, the importance of the calendar is. Man was created on the 6^th day of Creation which, assuming a 29-day month, would be the first day of Tishrei or Nisan.

The year

In which year was man created? The first reaction usually is that this day marked the beginning of year 1. But the Talmud says “No!” Was it year number zero? Of course not, because such number does not exist in any calendar2. One must also take into account that according to Halacha there can be no day without a year, so the first five days of Creation must belong to some year. It is reasonable to suggest that these five days constituted year One. It follows that that the day of man’s creation, the sixth day, was the first day of year 2 and the first Sabbath took place on the following day, namely on the second day of the first month of year 2.

The month

As we have seen, the month of creation is the subject of disagreement between two rabbis of the Mishna. It seems that their argument about the calendar matches their general world view. Rabbi Eliezer appears to be stricter, more critical, even harsh, compared to the more lenient Rabbi Yehoshua. This distinction can be seen in many places3. It is not surprising, therefore, that Rabbi Eliezer holds that man’s history starts on the first day of Tishrei (Jewish New Year), the day when all mankind is judged every year. Rabbi Yehoshua, in contrast, places Man’s introduction in Nisan, the month of the exodus from Egypt, of Redemption. Rabbi Eliezer emphasizes Judgment, whereas Rabbi Yehoshua emphasizes Redemption. Both sages start the calendar with the appearance of Man.

Resolution of month problem by Tosafot

In order to find what month it really was, Tosafot turns to a Talmudic passage that provides an hour by hour account of Adam’s 4 first day, as follows

Tosafot notes that (9) above implies that Adam was already mature enough to be given commandments, like the prohibition of eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. The Talmud pictures Adam as a wise man, knowing Torah and seeing all future generations5. Hence, the appropriate time to start learning Torah is no later than the beginning of the 9^th hour (that is, 8 o’clock). Since the Midrash assumes that Adam knew the Torah, he must have known the mitzvah (commandment) of sanctifying the new months. The Moon must have been placed so that Adam would see it at 8 o’clock in order to allow the necessary observations. Adam started the calendar using these observations.

The basis of Jewish calendar calculations is the notion “molad”, the point of the lowest visibility of the Moon during the month. Clearly, the Moon cannot be seen at this point and also some hours before and after. The Talmud approximates the invisibility period as 6 hours before and after the molad6.

Based on this, we can conclude that the earliest time at which Adam could have seen the new moon was 6 hours after the molad, then the first molad in history was at 2 , that is six hours earlier than 8. Two o’clock here is in Talmudic hours7. In order to transform it in our hours, we need to take into account that in the Hebrew calendar the day starts from sunset, and mean sunset is 6.00 PM. This way we arrive at the conclusion that the first molad was 6 PM + 12 night hours + 2, that is 8 AM.

We now, seemingly, have an independent way to check which view of the creation is supported by these calculations: that of Rabbi Eliezer or that of Rabbi Yehoshua. According to the former the first molad was at 8 AM on the first of Tishrei, whereas R’ Yehoshua sets it at the same hour on the 1st of Nisan. We can compute what the current molad should be by multiplying the number of months since Tishrei (or Nisan) of creation by the mean molad, and seeing which calculation matches the molad today. Or we can just start with the current molad and go backwards to see what the molad was before year 2 begins. It seems a bit far fetched that it will work, but indeed it does8.

The Second Proof

a) Using experimental data of today and going backwards we arrive at the supposed 6^th day of Creation

b) The hour of the first New Moon (molad) at Creation is an integer — no minutes or seconds. This happens once per 90 years.

e) All this is true according to the opinion of Rabbi Eliezer. If, however, we do our calculation following Rabbi Yehoshua calculating back to the first of Nisan, year 1 we will arrive at the middle of the week rather than Friday. The molad of Nisan, year 1 is known as “molad shel tohu” (“of chaos”), referring to a virtual molad preceding creation.

Since the starting date of the Jewish calendar corresponds well to Rabbi Eliezer’s theory, his point of view seems stronger, concludes Tosafot.

So, the first Sabbath was on the 2^nd of Tishrei, year 2. More than that, the extraordinary precision of the calculation and agreement with the Adam story teach us, it seems, the reality of Creation. Let us call it the Second Calendar Proof.

What was incorrect in the Second Proof?

At this moment the reader might pause and consider, where’s the rub? Before we proceed with the agenda, one might wonder what is wrong with both proofs.

Let’s start the Second Proof. One suspects some manipulation, but where? The length of lunar period seems correct. It also appears in external sources, like “Almagest” of Ptolemy, so it cannot be played with. We can doubt the legendary time table of Adam, but it does not help much. Still counting backwards we arrive with remarkable accuracy at a molad value without any fraction!

So, it seems that the weakest point must be the current molad. The assumption above was that it is observable, and therefore cannot be tampered with. But, in reality, the molad is at the point of least visibility and thus one cannot observe it! The moment of the poorest visibility of the Moon is somewhere within a 12 hour period. There is one night every month that the Moon is not seen, and there is nothing to observe. The moment of molad can be manipulated and the calendar will work the same fashion.

When there was a decision to count years from Creation, there was a need to find some easy moment to start the count from. So, it can be supposed that developers of the calendar set the molad point in such a way, that it was in accordance with the calculated moment of the new Moon at the beginning of the calendar. That is, it is not a coincidence, but was done on purpose.

Further evidence for a deliberate choice of a convenient (whole number) initial molad comes from the observation that there is another starting point for the calendar in Halachic literature. It is called Molad DAT, which means the 4^th day of the week, 9 hours.9

What was incorrect in the First Proof?

The text of the Talmud that we have today10, says in the name of Rabban Gamliel that the period of the molad is “no less than 29 days 12 hours 793 parts11”. “No less” does not go well with such a precise value, and it is even incorrect on some specific years this leads one to suspect that the original text had another, less precise, value. One can even argue that Jews of that time did not need such precision, since the calendar could be set purely on visual evidence of witnesses observing the new Moon. The precise algorithm was really needed only later when the procedure based on witnesses was discontinued, and the algorithm was published several hundred years after Rabban Gamliel12 .

The number appears also in “Almagest”, the very important ancient work by Ptolemy, which was known no later than 150 CE. Ptolemy took it from Hipparchus (2 BCE), who was based on earlier Babylonian data. The number is written by Ptolemy in sexagesimal (base 60): 29;31,50,08,20 days, that is 29 + 31/60 + 50/60² + 08/60³ + 20/60⁴ days. It is the same number, in spite of Falik’s thesis13.

I recently saw an article by Professor Morris Engelson14, which was written with the same religious motivation as Falik’s. Prof. Engelson does not deny that Greeks had the same value. But he asserts that the Greeks used observations and math, while Jews could have it earlier from a “special Source”. He attributes a great importance that the value was expressed in different ways15. The Talmud divides an hour into 1080, whereas Ptolemy divides into 540000. This allows Engelson to propose that the simpler expression in Talmud is more ancient. So, the Babylonians might have taken it from the Jews and passed to the Greeks. He admits that it is no more than a plausible hypothesis, convenient for believers.

We have no proof that the precise value originated from the Jews. On the contrary, we know that heads of Sanhedrin (Synedrion) learned Greek science, including Rabban Gamliel himself: “Permitted for the House of Rabban Gamliel to learn Greek wisdom, because they are close to the Caesar’s House”16 . There were also a lot of Jews for whom Greek was their mother tongue. They learned Greek wisdom and visited Jerusalem regularly, like Philo. Taking this into account, we suggest that use of the number in the Talmud as an evidence of prophecy, as in the first issue of “Chidushei Torah @NDS”, is rather weak.

Conclusion: understanding Creation better

Since both the first and the second calendar proof are not valid one has to rely on other proofs or faith. A discussion about the validity of other proofs is beyond the scope of this article.

Nonetheless, the Talmud and Tosafot give us a message. The Creation of Man was a process that has resulted in a human race that has reason, understands Law and is even able to process calendar calculations. This Man was a historic man with calculus and an alphabet. This historic man has existed, according to the Talmud, for only several thousand years, a value that is not in great discordance with scientific history.

The Creation is seen by Talmud and Tosafot as a very real event. Everything must be viewed through this prism in order to decide whether the world was created for Judgment or for Redemption.

1 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah, page 8A and Tosafot on the page, starting with words “Velitkufot keRabbi Eliezer” (“Seasons [calculated] by method of Rabbi Eliezer”)

2 Zero is a relatively late concept.

3 For example, R’ Eliezer says that the ultimate redemption will occur only when the nation repents. R’ Yehoshua says that redemption is guaranteed and does not depend on teshuva.

4 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, page 38B

5 Milton also refers to this prophecy in “Paradise Lost”.

6 If one sees visibility of the Moon as a sinusoidal graph, then molad is the minimum.

7 A Talmudic hour is a 1/12 of the day or night.

8 In calendar calculations we use the mean lunar period, which is taken traditionally as 29 days, 12 and 793/1080 hours. Using this number we can know the next New Year. But we can also go backwards to the first New Year. So we can take the time of New Moon before 1^st of Tishrei now and start going backwards, subtracting months. In this way we will arrive at the time of the New Moon point 5764 years ago, that is in year 2. I spare the reader the details, and say only that if we start on our Rosh Hashanah (1^st Tishrei), and go backward to year 2, we find that that molad was on Friday, 8 AM , 0 min, 0 s. If we transform hours from AM to Talmudic style, we obtain 14 (12 hours after sunset and two hours of the day). Since the Moon can be seen 6 hours after the molad, it could be seen after 8 hours of the day, which is the 9^th hour, when Adam really obtained commandments as above!

9 See an article by Israel Adler on http://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/mishpatim/adl.html; I am very grateful to Eliezer Reinstein for this reference. The difference between molad VID of R’ Eliezer and molad DAT of R’ Yehoshua resulted in harsh polemics around 923 CE (4684 in the Jewish calendar) between R’Saadya Gaon and HaGaon Ben Meir. Tosafot does not mention DAT, but that may be due to the simple fact that they lived after the resolution of the polemic.

10 Rosh Hashana, 25A

11 Part (heleq) – subdivision of hour into 1080 parts

12 The way of calculating lunisolar calendar was published about 358 CE by Patriarch Hillel II, a descendant of Rabban Gamliel, head of the Sanhedrin ca. 80-118 CE.

13 In Falik’s article there appears to be an incorrect statement that the number had only precision to 1/5 of hour. See “Chuddushei Torah @ NDS”, volume 1, page 5. Dov Falik

14 http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part1.pdf, http://dioi.org/evols/engleson-part2.pdf

both by Prof. Morris Engelson and many sources there.

15 Denominator in fractions is 1080 in the Talmud and 60 to the fourth power in “Almagest”.

16 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sota, page 49B

Levi Kitrossky

What date was the first Sabbath?

Inspiration for this article