The Science of Talmud – What's at Stake?

 

Within the orthodox rabbinic world, there is an ongoing debate around the statements made in the Talmudic literature about science. Many of the Talmudic statements are outdated and/or false, and reflect ideas that were floating around millennia ago.

The modern Orthodox tend to view these statements as plain wrong, and argue that the Talmud is only there for Torah matters, not scientific. The Ultra-Orthodox are fundamentalists, and claim that every statement in the Talmud is true, and hence the science of today must be wrong if it contradicts the talmud.

One such claim appears in the Talmud and the Mishnah, and is about spontaneous generation, of lice, mice, and salamanders. A very modernist thinker, Rabbi Slifkin, has written extensively on these matters, and suffered the wrath of his Hareidi brethren.

http://www.aishdas.org/toratemet/dongchong.html

Theories of spontaneous generation have long been dismissed and disproven by scientists. See for example http://www.microbiologytext.com/index.php?module=Book&func=displayarticle&art_id=27

So why are the hareidi rabbis taking an atavistic step back and making this into a new fundamentalism?

I would suggest several reasons.

1) Science is a threat to talmudism, since the acquisition of scientific knowledge can do away with reliance on rabbis, and hence they will lose adherents and income.

2) There is an internal political interest here as well. Despite earlier generations of rabbis such as Maimonides and Ibn Ezra, who were not fundamentalist on scientific claims of the Talmud, the ultra-orthodox of today wish to insulate themselves from both the outside world, and from the modern orthodox. Part of this is simple rivalry. If modern orthodox is “correct”, then big earning concepts such as Glatt Kosher (where food can be twice the price or more of regular kosher food) can also be questioned.

3) From a Karaite point of view, and this maybe of fundamental importance to the rabbis – if part of the Mishnah (and Talmud) is proven to be false, then their claim that the whole oral law was “divine” will collapse. Thus they have to retort to obscurantism and fallacious arguments, in order to avoid reaching such a conclusion.

The fact is that many or all of the pseudo-scientific statements made by the Talmudic rabbis had their origins in the theories of their contemporary neighbours, whether Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Hindu etc. Admitting this will not help their claims for their oral testament.