admin asked Staff ago Here are a number of questions I would be happy to get answers to:
1. How did the Sages know the number of stars in the universe before the era of satellites?
2. How did they know the time it took for the moon to renew itself, something only discovered, and imprecisely, recently.
3. How was it ensured that the Western Wall would never be destroyed? It is known that over history the Holy Temple was destroyed twice and they tried to destroy all memory of the Jews (they came in to destroy the Holy Temple) yet to this day, as promised, the Western Wall stands.
4. How did the Torah have expertise in 2/3 of the world, the waters, as is written “Whatever has scales has fins, though there are those with fins which do not have scales.”
I would be happy to get answers as soon as possible.
Guy
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Guy
Dear Guy,
See the question The veracity of the science in the Torah and the essay What the Sages Knew About Fish, where you will find answers to your questions.
Now let us discuss the answer to your question about the “prophecy” on the Western Wall.
It is the way of religious people to try to back up questionable interpretations and attribute appropriate prophecies to them; this is the case with the nonsense about the Western Wall.
First, let us bring the source for the interpretation (written several hundred years after the destruction of the Second Temple): “My beloved is like a gazelle or like a young stag. There he stands behind our wall, gazing through the window, peering through the lattice” (Song of Songs 2:9). From this verse Chazal learned: “‘There he stands behind our wall’ behind the western wall of the Holy Temple, for the holy One, blessed be He, promised him it would never be destroyed” (Shir HaShirim Rabbah parasha 2).
Pay close attention: Chazal themselves say that after the destruction of the Second Temple prophecy was nullified. “From the day the Holy Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to fools and infants” (Bava Batra 12b). This is, then, no prophecy, only a questionable exegesis on an innocent verse which does not deal at all with the Holy Temple. We have already noted that it was Chazal’s way to take risks with predicting the future, with no fear of it not coming true; see the portion of Vayechi and the essay Prophecy.
But most important is that the western wall of the Holy Temple was destroyed; not only was the western wall of the Holy Temple destroyed, so was the western wall of the Temple Mount walls. So what is the wall which thousands of Jews visit and into whose cracks they push their wishes because He is “peering through the lattice”? It is a supporting wall which was built around the Holy Temple some 300 years after the temple was built. This supporting wall was built by Herod (who ruled over Judea in 40 BCE), the grandson of a family of Edomite converts, the man who in his wickedness killed the leaders of the Hashmoean dynasty; according to Chazal he was a servant of the Hashmoneans (Bava Batra 3b).
Sincerely,
Daat Emet
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Hello.
There isn’t a single historian or archeologist who claims that the wall is a remnant of the Holy Temple of the Temple Mount. The reason is quite simple. The length of the Western Wall is 485 meters while the length of the Temple Mount wall is 500 cubits (Mishnah, Middot 5:1). Even if we use the opinion which makes the cubit longer (the Chazon Ish’s opinion, which holds a cubit to be 57.6 cm), the length of the Temple Mount wall would only be 288 meters.
Sincerely,
Daat Emet
jsadmin Staff answered 22 years ago
Hello.
The above article does not deal with whether the Western Wall is a remnant of the Holy Temple. It admits that the Western Wall is a wall built by Herod to support the edges of the Temple Mount and is not a wall of the Holy Temple or of the Temple Mount.
N.B. It is proper and polite to read the article before drawing a conclusion.
Daat Emet