Knowledge Beyond

Knowledge beyond Their Times
According to Rabbi Avraham Kook ^[1]: "G-d limits revelations, even from the most brilliant and holiest prophets, according to the ability of that generation to absorb the information. For every idea and concept, there is significance to the hour of its disclosure" end quote i.e. some ideas are intentionally kept hidden, as the world may not be ready for them due to various reasons. History is not a chain of events going nowhere. Rather, there is a goal and along the journey, certain ideas must be kept hidden until humanity is ready for them. Usually, the Torah sages viewed the world according to the science of their times, but sometimes it seems they possessed knowledge from Tradition which was beyond their times. Some examples:

Camel - the Talmud derives from the Torah that there exists only one large animal on earth that chews its cud but does not have split hooves - the camel. (For small animals, the torah lists two - the "arnevet" and "shafan" usually translated as the hyrax and hare). How did the Torah know this?
Talmud Chulin 59a: "if one were walking in the wilderness and he found an animal whose hooves were split... it is kosher provided it is not a camel.. For Rabbi Yishmael taught: The verse states: 'The camel, because it chews the cud but its hooves are unsplit, it is unclean' (Leviticus 11:4). The Ruler of His world knows that nothing other than the camel chews the cud and is still non-kosher. Therefore, the verse singles it out with the word 'it'" (i.e., it and no other.)
Pig - similarly, the Talmud derives from the Torah that there exists only one animal whose feet look like split hooves but it does not chew its cud - the pig. How did the Torah know this? Since then many new species have been found such as in Australia and America and it still holds true.
Talmud Chulin 59a: "Rabbi Yishmael taught: The verse states: 'And the pig, because it parts the hoof, and is cloven-footed, but chews not the cud, it is unclean' (Leviticus 11:7). The Ruler of His world knows that nothing other than the pig parts the hoof and is still non-kosher. Therefore, the verse singles it out (with the word 'it', i.e. it and no other)."
(see here for more details). (some invoke the peccary which are classified by modern scientists as outside the pig family despite their very strong resemblance to pigs. the trick here is to assume the Torah follows modern scientist's classification method. Others invoke the hippopotamus. The trick there is that its foot has four toes and does not at all look like the split-hooves of a kosher animal, unlike the pig.)
Kosher Fish - the Talmud states (Chulin 66b): "All fish with scales have (flapping) fins" (similar to above. see link). We have plumbed the depths of the ocean these days, and it's still true. Neither the Torah sages nor anyone else did that back then. (some invoke the "sea snake" or "sea eel" as a refutation. The trick here is that those scales are embedded in the skin unlike normal fish scales which are armor-like and come off without peeling off the skin as explained here and here. The hebrew word for scales "kaskasim" is the same as for armor. Keep in mind, there is absolutely no reason for scales and flapping fins to be connected. The two are completely independent features.
in the beginning... - Rabbi Meir Mazuz said (Parsha Sheet Tzav 5778):
The torah's word is above everything, above all the professor's, above all the scientists. All their words are null and void against one word of torah! For example: "in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth" (Gen.1:1). The deniers came along and said: This is false! The earth is part of the heaven. We once had a book called "the heavens" (by the french astronomer, Palmerion). He wrote there: "the heavens are everything. Don't think the heavens are one thing and the earth is another. No! the earth is just one planet in the heaven!" He was not the first to say this. After it was discovered that all the planets revolve around the sun, then all the scientists also held this view.

Thus they said, what is this: "the heavens and the earth"?! (Gen 1:1)

When they reached this conclusion, they asked themselves: "just like there are human beings on the earth, so too there must be also on other planets. There must exist also on the moon, on mars, on venus, mercury, etc.

In truth, there were some torah sages who thought like this. In the days of the Chacham Tzvi, there was a Rav talmid chacham, tzadik, G-d fearing, by the name of David Nito, author of the book Matei Dan. There they asked him: "what do you think of what the scientists say that there are human beings on the moon?". He answered: "Why not? If they tell you there are human beings in India, will you say they walk upside down or they have three eyes?! Of course not. All are the same. So too here. All the planets are the same".

Eventually, this matter was proven false. When? About fifty years ago, when they went up on the moon and saw no men, no horses, etc. There's no air and no water. All desolate wasteland (at that time, Rabbi Nissan Pinson told me: "slowly, slowly they will realize that there is no place fit for life like planet earth".)

For the "heavens" is a vast sphere which has nothing, while the "earth" has so many interesting things. There are human beings, animals, trees, grasses, and there are people who recognize their Creator, pray to Him and thank Him.

This is what is written: "in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth". It has already been fifty years, since the scientists search against this. But in truth, there is nothing. Period.

One word of torah is worth more than all the scientists' words together! They are all as dust and ashes against it. So too, for everything else written in the torah.
Who invented the Lightning Rod? - Benjamin Franklin of course. Not correct. The Torah sages mentioned its use almost 2000 years ago in a Tosefta (Shabbat 7:10).
the Lunar Calendar - in tractate Rosh Hashana of the Talmud (25a), the head judge Raban Gamliel states: "I have a tradition from my grandfather's court that the length of the month is no more than 29 days plus half a day plus two-thirds of an hour plus 73 parts of an hour (an hour is divided into 1080 parts so each part is 3.3 seconds). Addition of these numbers yields a lunar month that is 29.530594 days long. Current measurements, as reported in the Encyclopedia Britannica, show a mean time period of 29.530588 days ^[6]. These two numbers differ by less than half a second. Keep in mind Raban Gamliel died in the year 110 so we are talking about almost 2000 years ago, well before there were electronic clocks, batteries, modern telescopes etc. (note: some skeptics counter perhaps he calculated the times between solar eclipses over centuries, though "I have a tradition" implies from Sinai.)
Earth Hangs in Space - ancient civilizations thought the earth stood on giant turtles who sometimes shifted causing earthquakes and the like. But scripture informs us "He suspends the earth over nothing (Job 26:7).
Big Bang - the Midrash Tanchuma on Leviticus 8:3 states that when G-d created the world it was not even as big as the black center of an eye ("dok ha'ayin") and that G-d then stretched space out to the vast regions we see.
Nuclear Bombs - in Yoel 2:30, which is read in the Passover Hagada, prophetic words regarding the end of days: "blood and fire and pillars of smoke". The word there translated pillars literally means palm trees of smoke. A tall slender column, rising to a great spreading mushroom head, like the drooping branches of the palm tree. Never before in all history had any weapon produced this phenomenon. Our era, it seems, is thus identified.
Pi - In the round pool made by king Solomon, the verse says:
"And he made the molten sea, ten cubits from brim to brim; it (was) round all about, and the height thereof (was) five cubits; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about" (Kings 1, chapter 7:23).
It is said in the name of the Vilna Gaon that this verse alludes to Pi. For regarding the circumference, the word "line" (kav) is spelled differently than it is pronounced. It is spelled kuf-vav-hay, but pronounced kuf-vav according to the tradition. The gematria of kuf-vav-hay is 111 while the gematria of kuf-vav is 106. The ratio of 111/106 gives us the correction factor of the circumference. Multiplying this by 30/10 gives:
3.141509433962 for the circumference. This number is 99.99735 percent the value of Pi. see here for more.

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