[smology]

Was in middle of learning meseches rosh hashana today, stumbled on a stone and found it to be the tip of a mountain..............i was hoping some of our h.com scholars could help me. i think its an old problem, i just havent found a satisfactory answer.

it's accepted according to chazal across the board that the bayis sheini lasted 420 years. (yoma 9a). it's also accepted that the mikdash was destroyed 69 A.D. which would mean the building of bayis sheini would have to be in like 350 B.C. the bayis rishon was destroyed 586 B.C., and the golus between the first mikdash and second was 70 years. which puts the building of bayis sheini at 516 B.C. there is a little fluctuation regarding those dates, but its a 30 year difference at most, which cant reconcile the glaring discrepancy of the length of the bayis sheini?

i first noticed it because r. steinsaltz (even yisroel) says the persian king who let them go rebuild reigned from 464 till 425. the whole thing got really fuzzy and things look really unclear over there. it turns out that seder olom rabba compressed around 200 years of persian leadership into 34 years.

i must be missing something, or have made a mistake in calculations. can anyone clear things up for me?

[grend123]

smology, on Dec 27 2004, 10:14 AM, said:

Was in middle of learning meseches rosh hashana today, stumbled on a stone and found it to be the tip of a mountain..............i was hoping some of our h.com scholars could help me. i think its an old problem, i just havent found a satisfactory answer.

it's accepted according to chazal across the board that the bayis sheini lasted 420 years. (yoma 9a).  it's also accepted that the mikdash was destroyed 69 A.D. which would mean the building of bayis sheini would have to be in like 350 B.C. the bayis rishon was destroyed 586 B.C., and the golus between the first mikdash and second was 70 years. which puts the building of bayis sheini at 516 B.C. there is a little fluctuation regarding those dates, but its a 30 year difference at most, which cant reconcile the glaring discrepancy of the length of the bayis sheini?

i first noticed it because r. steinsaltz (even yisroel) says the persian king who let them go rebuild reigned from 464 till 425. the whole thing got really fuzzy and things look really unclear over there. it turns out that seder olom rabba compressed around 200 years of persian leadership into 34 years.

i must be missing something, or have made a mistake in calculations. can anyone clear things up for me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

for starters, it was not exactly 70 years. but that doesnt help much. something looks off about your dates, but im too fuzzy right now to tell you what it is. I'll get back to you.

[Kalashnikover_Rebbe]

You DO realize what BC and AD mean??

[grend123]

Kalashnikover_Rebbe, on Dec 27 2004, 10:24 AM, said:

You DO realize what BC and AD mean??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Be fair. Yes, they are Christian terms, but they are also in common usage and to most people have no religious significance any more than AM or PM do.

[smology]

Kalashnikover_Rebbe, on Dec 27 2004, 11:24 PM, said:

You DO realize what BC and AD mean??

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

this the same dude that said he makes sure to pronounce jayyyyyy-suz with as much inflection as possible?? please dont let the subject digress. i realize, and couldnt give a darn. it means nothing to me.

[enigma]

I've heard explanations of this ~160-year discrepancy in the Seder Olam as well. Basically, what I was told is that they did it on purpose, to make it less clear when our 6000 years are up, and that really our calendar should be in the 5900's instead of the 5700's. But I'll let one of our resident scholars tell you whether what I've heard is backed up at all (or not, if I've been misled).

[Pinchas]

Your dates and calculations are correct.

The short answer is that bayis shayne took 20 years to complete.

This was taken from wikipedia:

Quote

Two distinct temples stood in succession on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem:

- Solomon's Temple, from approximately the 10th century BC, replacing the Tabernacle, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

- The Second Temple was built after the return from the Babylonian Captivity, around 536 BC (completed on March 12, 515 BC).

    - Herod's Temple was a massive expansion of the Second Temple including renovation of the entire Temple Mount. (It is not called the "Third Temple".) Herod the Great began his expansion project around 19 BC. It was destroyed by Roman troops under Titus in 70 AD.

[Pinchas]

enigma, on Dec 27 2004, 11:09 AM, said:

I've heard explanations of this ~160-year discrepancy in the Seder Olam as well.  Basically, what I was told is that they did it on purpose, to make it less clear when our 6000 years are up, and that really our calendar should be in the 5900's instead of the 5700's.  But I'll let one of our resident scholars tell you whether what I've heard is backed up at all (or not, if I've been misled).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

enigma,

It's true. But I don't think that solves smology's question.

Here's what I found on it...

Quote

Question


I would like a little background on the Jewish calendar. A friend heard a Rabbi who stated that the Jewish calendar is missing a little over 200 years. Can you give me any information on this and did it come from the Mishna or Talmud?

Answer:

The source of this discrepancy is in the accounting of the Persian period.

Greek historians (such as Herodotus, Ctesias, Xenophon, and others who lived after the events and collected oral histories) speak of 10 Persian kings who ruled for 208 years. By contrast, the Biblical Jewish account speaks of four kings ruling 52 years.

The confusion stems from the fact that one person may have several names. For example Clinton, President, and Hillary's Husband may all be names for the same person. So too, Arta-Khsharta is a title used by all Persian kings and means literally "Fit for the Kingdom", yet Artaxerxes is listed separately as three kings in the Greek lists.

Another point of contention focuses on the war between Darius and Alexander. These are commonly thought to be an earlier Darius and Alexander, due to the "interposing" Artaxerxes kings. That makes Alexander the Great into Alexander II and Darius who permitted the rebuilding of the Second Temple into a later Darius. Yet, many Jewish scholars feel that both Alexanders are the same person; so too with Darius.

For more details, see Brad Aaronson's article "Fixing the History Books," published in the Summer 1991 edition of Jewish Action magazine.

By the way, if you are Jewish and are interested in trying out one-on-one Jewish learning, by phone or in person, Aish.com, in conjunction with Partners in Torah, would be happy to arrange this for you. Any subject can be learned, at a time that's good for you. This service is absolutely free. Just write me back and I'll work on getting a suitable situation for you.

With blessings from Jerusalem,

Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Aish.com

[smology]

Pinchas, on Dec 28 2004, 12:10 AM, said:

Your dates and calculations are correct.

The short answer is that bayis shayne took 20 years to complete.

This was taken from wikipedia:

Quote

Two distinct temples stood in succession on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem:

- Solomon's Temple, from approximately the 10th century BC, replacing the Tabernacle, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

- The Second Temple was built after the return from the Babylonian Captivity, around 536 BC (completed on March 12, 515 BC).

     - Herod's Temple was a massive expansion of the Second Temple including renovation of the entire Temple Mount. (It is not called the "Third Temple".) Herod the Great began his expansion project around 19 BC. It was destroyed by Roman troops under Titus in 70 AD.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

the 20 year thing doesnt help at all.

any other answers? the aish.com doesnt sound right, it's too simple an answer to something that i found online to be a major problem. if our calendar isnt really 5765 to the creation, then i feel like i just discovered that santa doesnt exist. and how long then was the bayis sheini?

[BaronPhilip]

smology, on Dec 27 2004, 10:14 AM, said:

Was in middle of learning meseches rosh hashana today, stumbled on a stone and found it to be the tip of a mountain..............i was hoping some of our h.com scholars could help me. i think its an old problem, i just havent found a satisfactory answer.

it's accepted according to chazal across the board that the bayis sheini lasted 420 years. (yoma 9a).  it's also accepted that the mikdash was destroyed 69 A.D. which would mean the building of bayis sheini would have to be in like 350 B.C. the bayis rishon was destroyed 586 B.C., and the golus between the first mikdash and second was 70 years. which puts the building of bayis sheini at 516 B.C. there is a little fluctuation regarding those dates, but its a 30 year difference at most, which cant reconcile the glaring discrepancy of the length of the bayis sheini?

i first noticed it because r. steinsaltz (even yisroel) says the persian king who let them go rebuild reigned from 464 till 425. the whole thing got really fuzzy and things look really unclear over there. it turns out that seder olom rabba compressed around 200 years of persian leadership into 34 years.

i must be missing something, or have made a mistake in calculations. can anyone clear things up for me?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If people give me a chance to get back to them on certain things, I will try to answer all the questions people have raised or will raise on this thread. If people want, I might try to write an entire essay presenting all the mekoros and possibilities. I once studied the matter extensively.

Okay, first of all, the date of 586 B.C.E. (or 587 or 588) for churban bayis rishon is the date arrived at by secular scholars, based on (1) Greek historical and astronomical texts and (2) Persian archaeology. But if you just trusted Chazal/Seder Olam, you would come up with the date 421 B.C.E., since we all agree that churban bayis sheini was in 70 C.E. and you would just subtract 420 years (bayis sheini) and then subject 70 years (in between golus). (Since there is no year 0--the year before 1 C.E. is 1 B.C.E.--70 C.E. minus 490 years is 421 B.C.E.)

So what's with the descrepancy of at least 165 years between the the secular scholars (586 B.C.E.) and Chazal's figure (421 B.C.)?

Rav Steinsaltz's presentation assumes that Chazal were simply wrong, unaware of the true historial facts. Such an attitude towards the historical claims of Chazal has vast precedent among the words of the geonim, rishonim, and achronim. Many of these authorities acknowledged the possibility that Chazal were mistaken about history, and indeed they quoted the Sefer Yosippon and other secular sources Chazal had never seen in order to argue on Chazal.

Rav Shimon Schwab is the most well-known "chareidi" authority who has given us a green light to regard the historical data in Chazal on the Persian period as being incorrect. But Rav Schwab couldn't stomach the idea that Chazal could actually not have known the truth, so he invented a wild theory: that Chazal deliberately falsified history. Why would they do this, you ask? Rav Schwab's theory is that Chazal didn't want people to be able to understand the poshut pshat in the nevuos of Sefer Daniel because then they might be able to calculate when Moshiach would come. (le-chasheiv es ha-keitz)

Let me explain the main point to be dealt with in Sefer Daniel. One of Daniel nevuos refers to a period of "70 weeks of years", which is generally understood to refer to some 490-year-period of something. And those 490 years are understood in Jewish tradition according to Chazal/Seder Olam to refer to the time between the destruction of bayis rishon and bayis sheini (420 + 70). But according to Rav Schwab, this understanding of Daniel's nevuoh is actually some kind of diversion tactic, a rouse designed by Chazal to trick us so we won't know its real, secret meaning, which may tell us something about when Moshiach will come.

Rav Schwab's position hasn't been accepted by anyone, neither the chareidi velt nor academic scholars. His whole thing is very odd. Chazal "hid" 165-168 years of Jewish history just in order to mess us up when we try to learn pshat in Tanakh? And it's clear that Rav Schwab came to his position working backwards, because of hashkafic considerations. Rav Schwab wanted to have his cake and eat it too. I.e. Rav Schwab has the best of both worlds: he can say to the secular scholars "all your archaeology and Greek writings are true and your claims are true" and at the same time he can say to yeshiva bochurim "Chazal weren't ignorant of history; they just deliberately chose to cover it up."

Rav Schwab seems to have been genuinely convinced that the secular scholars got it right. So I don't understand why he felt he had to bend over backwards to be melameid zchus on Chazal. As I mentioned above, there is already an extensive precendent among our authorities for arguing on Chazal on historical matters based on secular sources. In fact, there are several rishonim who argue on Chazal on this very point, on the length of bayis sheini! While those rishonim don't disagree by as much as a 165 years, they do disagree by anywhere from 1 to 10 years (IIRC) with the 420-years figure. These authorities often seem to have been compelled by difficulties reading Chazal's numbers into the pesukim in Ezra and Nechemiah. Just one example are all the generations of kohanim gedolim during bayis sheini mentioned in Nechemiah as being during the Persian period. There just isn't enough time in 34 years to include all of them. (The Malbim has an extremely dochak solution of having the first of the list start at an old age and then die soon etc.)

Professor Yaakov Elman of Yeshiva University learned in Yeshivas Chaim Berlin for a number of years, and even lived in Rav Hutner's basement for some time. He knew Rav Hutner extremely well and once discussed the whole inyan with him at length. He claims that Rav Hutner held that Chazal's chronology couldn't possibly be taken literally. Like Rav Schwab, Rav Hutner had his own teirutz to vindicate Chazal, one which involved Chazal wanting to count only certain years or something. I don't fully remember. I asked Elman why he doesn't write this up and publish it and his response to me was that he wasn't sure he fully understood what Rav Hutner had tried to explain to him and anyway he thinks that no one will believe him at this point if he claims that Rav Hutner said it.

In the 16th century, an Italian talmid chochom named Rav Azariah min Ho-Edomim (Rav Azariah De Rossi) decided that Chazal had been totally off on the Bayis Sheini. R. Azariah wanted to base his own view on Sefer Daniel, so he reinterpreted the 490 years (of "70 weeks of years") to refer ALL to Bayis Sheini, i.e. NOT including the 70 years of golus in between the two batei ha-mikdash. R. Azariah's system adds an extra 70 years to Bayis Sheini, but unfortunately even this doesn't help us much. We need about 165 extra years, not just 70. R. Azariah was put in cheirem by the mechabeir and others for his radical views, but it should be noted that some later authorities have no problem quoting from his seforim.

-----

I would like to add one more excursus, about the sefer Seder Olam. It's a very unique sefer and stands out from the rest of the writings of Chazal that have come down to us. Seder Olam can be called a "chronography", which means that it is a history book that focuses primarily on numbers of years. There is nothing at all else like this in the literature of Chazal, so it's peculiar. All the other historical aggadtas in Shas and Midrash seem to be focused primarily on teaching us mussar and the like, with the "know your history" aspect being only incidental. But Seder Olam was obviously intended to be primarily a history book, to establish a standard chronology for the Jewish people. Indeed, our current Hebrew year from Creation, 5765 is based precisely on its claims.

Professor Chaim Millikowski of Bar-Ilan University, a frum Jew, has spent decades studying Seder Olam. He is considered the world's foremost expert in it. He is currently preparing a scientific edition of Seder Olam based on rare manuscripts that will eventually be published by the Israel Academy of the Sciences and Humanities. Professor Millikowski has an interesting theory about Seder Olam. Most secular scholars refuse to accept that the real author of Seder Olam was Rav Yose ben Chalafta, and they insist on dating the book to the 5th century C.E. or later. But not Millikowski. He takes the sefer's claim literally and holds that Rav Yose ben Chalafta was indeed the author in the 1st century C.E. But he thinks that Rav Yose didn't start the sefer himself, but rather rearranged something that he had come across. Let me explain.

The writings from the period of Chazal that we have today are pretty much just from Chazal, from Eretz Yisroel and Bavel. But there were other Jewish intellectual trends at the time, centered primarily in the Hellenistic Jewish community of Alexandria, Egypt. (Jews in Alexandria constituted 40% of the population there!) If you want to know how to picture these Greek-speaking Jews, you might think of them as the "Modern Orthodox Jews of the time of Chazal". They had their own trends and literature that didn't make it into our mesorah. The Targum Shivim (Septuagint), which is a translation of the Torah into Greek, was their favorite work and they all studied it. They wrote history books, books of parshanus, and books of philosophy. The most famous writer of this millieu was Philo, who interpreted the stories and truths in the Torah as symbolic, using the methods and mindset of neo-platonic philosophy. While Philo's works did not survive within the Jewish community--i.e. no yeshiva bochur learns Philo's books--the Christian world was heavily influenced by them. In fact, much of the Judaism that Christianity used to build on was Alexandrian Greek style Judaism. But I digress. What I'm leading into is that scholars have fragments of not just Philo, but many other Greek writings from those "Modern Orthodox" Jews. And we see an interesting thing: chronographies, just like the kind Seder Olam is, were extremely common at the time. In fact, it was a widespread genre of literature among the Greeks. Many non-Jewish Greeks had written histories of the world using the chronography method and style, so the Jews learned from them and started making their own. We have evidence that Josephus used information from some of these chronographies.

Enter Professor Millikowski. Millikowski believes that the tanna Rav Yosi ben Chalafta came into contact with a chronography of Jewish history based on Tanach written by one of these Hellenized Jews. According to the theory, Rav Yosi ben Chalafta decided that he liked the idea of the book, and wanted to re-edit it according to his own shitos. In other words, he wanted to make a "Daas Torah version" of it. The end result was Seder Olam, the only book in all the writings of Chazal that is actually Hellenistic in style.

[misosbd]

If chazals writings are wrong what happens to shmitta.I heard that the chazon ish held that shmitta was off by a year anyway, so maybe it makes no difference.

[smology]

thanx!! so, whats your maskana.......sounds like chazal were flat out wrong?

[BaronPhilip]

Pinchas, on Dec 27 2004, 11:17 AM, said:

Here's what I found on it...

Quote

Question


I would like a little background on the Jewish calendar. A friend heard a Rabbi who stated that the Jewish calendar is missing a little over 200 years. Can you give me any information on this and did it come from the Mishna or Talmud?

Answer:

The source of this discrepancy is in the accounting of the Persian period.

Greek historians (such as Herodotus, Ctesias, Xenophon, and others who lived after the events and collected oral histories) speak of 10 Persian kings who ruled for 208 years. By contrast, the Biblical Jewish account speaks of four kings ruling 52 years.

The confusion stems from the fact that one person may have several names. For example Clinton, President, and Hillary's Husband may all be names for the same person. So too, Arta-Khsharta is a title used by all Persian kings and means literally "Fit for the Kingdom", yet Artaxerxes is listed separately as three kings in the Greek lists.

Another point of contention focuses on the war between Darius and Alexander. These are commonly thought to be an earlier Darius and Alexander, due to the "interposing" Artaxerxes kings. That makes Alexander the Great into Alexander II and Darius who permitted the rebuilding of the Second Temple into a later Darius. Yet, many Jewish scholars feel that both Alexanders are the same person; so too with Darius.

For more details, see Brad Aaronson's article "Fixing the History Books," published in the Summer 1991 edition of Jewish Action magazine.

By the way, if you are Jewish and are interested in trying out one-on-one Jewish learning, by phone or in person, Aish.com, in conjunction with Partners in Torah, would be happy to arrange this for you. Any subject can be learned, at a time that's good for you. This service is absolutely free. Just write me back and I'll work on getting a suitable situation for you.

With blessings from Jerusalem,

Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Aish.com

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Okay, I need to explain some stuff to you guys. (There is so much here that is interesting! I hope you all will take the time to read these long posts of mine. )

This Rabbi Shraga Simmons is saying that Chazal were 100% right and the secular scholars 100% wrong based on the very controversial work of a man in Israel named Chaim S. Heifetz. Heifetz is not a recognized scholar of history. (I think he is a professor of law at Bar-Ilan University.)

Heifetz sees himself as continuing the derech of a strange non-Orthodox psychiatrist with radical views named Immanuel Velikovsky. About 40 years ago, Velikovsky wrote a number of books arguing with all the accepted history of the Egyptian empire. Even though Velikovsky was not frum and didn't believe in miracles, he started with the premise that everything in Tanach is right. (Not a bad premise, of course.) He made radical claims about cataclysmic world events--like earthquakes, asteroid strikes, even a reverse in polarity in the Earth's magnetic field!--to explain all sorts of puzzling things in ancient history. Velikovsky was so controversial that the academics of his day put pressure on Random House not to publish his books. Many books were written to respond to Velikovsky, and his theories are today considered to be a big joke. Interestingly, Aish HaTorah seems to like some of his ideas, and used them in presentations about how to square the story of yetzias mitzrayim with Egyptian archaeology. But I digress.

Chaim Heifetz, the professor of law I mentioned above, sees himself as carrying on the radical derech of Velikovsky to rearrange all of the data of world history in order to fit what traditional Jewish sources say. Heifetz is outraged with even Rav Schwab for buying into the idea that the data in Seder Olam isn't literally true. In the Sivan 5751 (1991) issue of the religious-Zionist Tanach journal Megadim, Heifetz wrote a 68-page manifesto presenting his own theory. It is this piece of work that that Rabbi Shraga Simmons from Aish is relying on. (The Brad Aaronson he mentioned is a follower of Heifetz and wrote up Heifetz's theory in simple form in Jewish Action.)

Heifetz tells us that all the secular academics base their date of 586 B.C.E. mainly based on the writings of two non-Jewish Greek historians, Thucydides and Herodotus. Heifetz thinks those two Greeks just got it all wrong when they wrote the history of Persia and put too many kings in. Heifetz tries to reconstruct exactly how and why the messed it up, and part of his theory has to do with confusion over names, as that Rabbi Shraga Simmons notes.

But Heifetz doesn't get off as easy as he would like. It's not just Thucydides and Herodotus that the secular scholars rely on. There is also an Egyptian astronomer who dates a number of eclipses according to when they occured during the long list of Persian kings. But most importantly, there is archaeological evidence: There is an ancient Persian temple that was dug up that has an inscription listing the whole long list of 200 years of Persian kings in ancient cuneiform script. Heifetz dismisses the archaeology as a later forgery, but no one is really buying his claims.

In conclusion, Chaim Heifetz is certainly a great man for trying to vindicate a literal reading of Seder Olam. And I highly recommend everyone interested to get a hold of Brad Aaronson's article to learn about his theories. If you're up to the full scientific presentation, get a hold of that 68-page Hebrew article in Megadim. But it is not exactly intellectually honest of Aish HaTorah to present his theory as if it were so poshut and obvious. Before Heifetz, Aish HaTorah like to cite Rav Schwab. It seems that they teach there whatever is the "frumest" theory anyone has thought of. I think Aish HaTorah ought to level with its followers that the whole matter is not so simple, and that frum people have choices: We might choose Heifetz; we might choose Rav Schwab; or we might just say that Chazal got it wrong, as many rishonim and Rav Azariah de Rossi were willing to. There is no ikkar be-emunah that says that Chazal were expert historians, and many of our sages have had no problem saying this. This is, at least, a "back-up" position that questioning minds should have as an option. The way Aish HaTorah leaves it, if you don't accept a wild theory about Greek historians and archaeological forgeries invented by a professor of law, you might as well go off the derech. Especially when we do kiruv, we shouldn't choose such narrow definitions of what is "frum" and not "krum".

[simplejew]

yetzias mitzrayim took place in the year 2448 from creation.
the binyan bayis rishon took place 480 years from the exudos (a posuk mefurash) = 2928 from creation.
churban bayis rishon after 410 years = 3338 from creation
Binyan bayis sheini 70 years after = 3408 from creation
churban bayis sheini 420 years later = 3828 from creation.
today we are in 5765.

5765 - 3828 = 1937. which means the churban took place 1937 years ago. 2005 - 1937 = 68. so there are 2 years off. Maybe it took 2 years for the building of bayis sheini.

which means the number 586 BC is wrong.

am i missing something?

[BaronPhilip]

simplejew, on Dec 27 2004, 12:42 PM, said:

yetzias mitzrayim took place in the year 2448 from creation.
the binyan bayis rishon took place 480 years from the exudos (a posuk mefurash) = 2928 from creation.
churban bayis rishon after 410 years = 3338 from creation
Binyan bayis sheini 70 years after = 3408 from creation
churban bayis sheini 420 years later = 3828 from creation.
today we are in 5765.

5765 - 3828 = 1937. which means the churban took place 1937 years ago. 2005 - 1937 = 68. so there are 2 years off. Maybe it took 2 years for the building of bayis sheini.

The answer to the "missing-two-years problem" is very simple, simplejew, and you should know this: The Jewish calender all of Klal Yisroel, which says that right now it's 5765, holds that the first normal year of Creation is to be called "year 2". (The seven days of creation are reckoned as year 1. After that it's year 2.) This is how the geonim who established our counting looked at it.

But when you counted from brias ho-olom, you assumed that the first year was year 0, which is, of course, the poshut mashmo'us of Seder Olam.

What I have just explained to you, about the missing two years, was explained in a book called Talmudic and Rabbinical Chronology, by Edgar Frank, published by the very frum publishing house Feldheim in 1956. Rav Shimon Schwab held from Mr. Frank very much, and quotes this explanation about the missing two years from him in his own article of 1962.

Quote

which means the number 586 BC is wrong.
am i missing something?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Did you not read all that was posted above on this thread? The number 586 B.C.E. is based on multiple, mutually corroborating sources from Greek historians and Persian archaeology. And don't forget the names of something like seven generations of kohanim gedolim in the Persian period: the Malbim tried, but it's just hard to fit all that into just 34 years! Of course, it's your prerogative if you want to just chuck all that and rely on a literal reading of a tannaitic history text written 600 years (le-shitoschoh) after all this happened. R. Yosi ben Chalafta had in front of him only Tanach, and in the books of Ezra, Nechemiah, and Daniel only three or four Persian kings are mentioned by name. If you undercover the klolim R. Yose ben Chalafta uses--these klolim are extremely obvious--you can see that he was just reading those books of Tanach and applying certain very straightforward mathematical rules to them. There is no reason to assume that R. Yose ben Chalafta wrote Seder Olam based on any kind of mesorah, it was just the most accurate history he could reconstruct based on the data in Tanach. But not everything that's happened in history has made it into Tanach. And we see that even a rishon as traditional as Rashi has no problem rejecting the data in Seder Olam when he discovers more detailed historical information from a secular source like Sefer Yosippon, even though this source is outside the canon of rabbinical literature. Are you frummer than Rashi?

[simplejew]

actually the churban bayis sheini took place in 69 not 70. so its only one year off. barons explanation (that odom was created on day 1 of year 2) then makes sense.

i am not that farmiliar with every thing you posted or with the order of seder olam. but let me ask you this. which item in seder olam maybe off according to those sources you mentioned? some of the things i posted are lichorah not disputable. up to and including churban bayis rishon is clear, no? the number 410 for bayis rishon comes from where? is it in a posuk? (besides bizos (=410) yavo aaron)

[simplejew]

binyan bayis rishon must have been in the year 832 BC. if matan torah was 1312 BC (2448 from creation is 1312 BC) then 480 years later is 832. if the churban was 586 BC then the entire bayis rishon lasted only 246 years which does not shtim with the years given in the tanach from shlomo till golus bovel? fill me in here.

[BaronPhilip]

simplejew, on Dec 27 2004, 01:27 PM, said:

binyan bayis rishon must have been in the year 832 BC. if matan torah was 1312 BC (2448 from creation is 1312 BC) then 480 years later is 832. if the churban was 586 BC then the entire bayis rishon lasted only 246 years which does not shtim with the years given in the tanach from shlomo till golus bovel? fill me in here.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No no no. If you say that the Churban was 586 B.C. you obviously have to push EVERYTHING back 165 years. So Bayis Rishon still lasted 410 years, etc....

Accordingly, we are not living in the year 5765 from Creation (a date that is based on Seder Olam) but actually in the year 5930 or later!! Rav Schwab himself mentions that this has some pretty powerful consequences according to the view that Moshiach will com before the end of 6000 from Creation!

[misosbd]

Baron
Is saying that chazal were wrong about the dates something that the Hungarian Chasam Sofer people would reject But the pre ww2 litvish world would accept?

[simplejew]

i dont understand. the torah (tanach) gives a detailed account from creation till the golus bovel (and even further) in that detail the churban happens in the year 3338 from creation, (or 3339 if year 1 is really 2) there is no room for argument on that. then there is 70 years of golus (also in tanach) then binyan bayis sheini in the year 3408 (or 3409). is all the confusion after that point?