Avodah Mailing List

Volume 32: Number 50

Sun, 23 Mar 2014

• 1. The Real Story of Hebrew Pronunciation (Prof. Levine)
• 2. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Lisa Liel)
• 3. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Arie Folger)
• 4. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Lisa Liel)
• 5. Re: Fighting the Taf Guys (Lisa Liel)
• 6. How to Teach History (Prof. Levine)
• 7. Re: Points to Consider (Kenneth Miller)
• 8. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Micha Berger)
• 9. Re: Rav Elya Lopian: tefillin and radio (Kenneth Miller)
• 10. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Arie Folger)
• 11. Re: Can Xerxes be Achashverosh - Jewish Chronology (Lisa Liel)

Please see Rabi Dr. Seth Mandel's article on this topic at 
http://tinyurl.com/ksgmbfc  that appears in the latest issue of 
Jewish Action Magazine.

I found it scholarly,  well written and most interesting.

YL

On 3/21/2014 12:09 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I must confess, I was pretty surprised to see Lisa use the argument
> that a medrash must be historical, or else Chazal were lying to us.
> This isn't her/your position on Chazal's aggadic stories in general,
> why does Seder Olam warrant different treatment than the rest of the
> genre? (Or I guess your answer would most likely be to explain why it's
> not part of that genre.)

That's correct. "You can't cook basar b'chalav" is halakha. "Moshe
Rabbenu was brought forward in time to see Rabbi Akiva" is aggada. "Rava
was married to the daughter of Rav Hisda" is neither. It's informational.
I think it's fairly obvious that "Ezra was a talmid of Baruch ben Neriya"
is in that third category, particularly because kashyas are asked based
on it ("Why didn't Ezra return when Koresh let us return?"). I mean,
the easiest answer would have been, "Because he wasn't born yet".
And what about Ezra's lineage? That's in Tanakh, and it doesn't work
with the Greek based history. Unless you posit that we're dealing with
repeating names in his lineage and that Chazal dishonestly identified
two different members of the family with one another.

On 3/21/2014 12:18 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> I'll let Lisa reply for Lisa. As for me, I can say that thre are 
> actually a number of reasons to think Sedrr Olam is exactly of that 
> (non literal) genre. Think about it, so many numbers are just too 
> beautiful to be actual history. The absolute crown goes IMO to the way 
> minyan shetarot, which is actually a Greek post Alexandrian system, 
> begins exactly 1000 years after the Exodus. I mean, suddenly it looks 
> like those Greeks were closet Jews converting the Greeks to a Jewish 
> dating system.

Or, I don't know, that there's actually a pattern in the universe,
and that Hashem plans things.

I know people who have a hard time with the fact that the USSR lasted
70 years. "That's obviously fake." I went around while I was living
in Israel asking people how many states there were in the US. I got
49, 51, 52. People had a gut aversion to the idea that it was really
exactly 50. It seemed too obviously artificial.

There's a natural human tendency to see patterns even where patterns
don't exist. There's a similar tendency among skeptics to be suspicious
of anything that looks like a pattern. In my estimation, this is very
similar to the fundamental difference between the Torah worldview and
its antithesis. We see the holy and divine and planned even in events
which could easily be understood as commonplace, while they look at the
holy and divine and planned and see nothing but random happenstance.


On 3/21/2014 7:21 AM, Eli Turkel wrote:
> <<That's not good enough. You've got to posit a multigenerational hoax
> Again it is not just Herodotus. There are pillars carved in stone in 
> Oersia... The Greek
> historians detail battles between the Greeks and Persians over many 
> years. Were they lying to
> their contemporaries about these battles? The years affect many other 
> dynasties, Babylonian, Assyrian etc.
> There are even eclipse events that support the extended Persian history.
...

Well, if you say they aren't, then they must not be. Except that we /know/
there were forgeries back then. There are two inscriptions which were
attributed to the great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather of Cyrus,
and were later determined by mainstream scholars to have been forgeries
perpetrated during the Achaemenid Empire.

A number of the lists you're relying on are made up of bits and pieces,
with the gaps being filled in based on what we "already know". I.e.,
circular reasoning.

The years don't affect Babylonian or Assyrian dynasties. The entire
structure of Mesopotamian chronology moves downwards /as a block/,
with all internal chronological sequences and durations maintained.
I'm not sure why you think otherwise.

It's fairly easy to see how the Greeks became confused initially. Here's
the list of Persian kings according to the Greek reconstruction:

Cyrus
Cambyses
Darius I
Xerxes
Artaxerxes I
--------------
Darius II
(Cyrus the Younger (3 year rebellion))
Artaxerxes II
Artaxerxes III Ochus
Arses
Darius III

I put a line in the middle because I think it was originally two
separate and parallel king lists, and that this confused the Greeks.
Who were already confused, after all. Their term for being a Persian
sympathizer was "medism". The Persians and Medes were married together
and closely related in general.

Chazal describe the kingship switching off between the Persians and Medes,
like the "rotation agreement" we saw in Israel a few times in the 90s.
The two lists are the list of Persian kings on top, followed by the
list of Perso-Median kings on the bottom. Both starting from the fall
of Babylon.

The Darius II of Greek history was Darius the Mede, father-in-law
of Cyrus. His two sons, Cyrus and Artaxerxes, were his son-in-law
Cyrus and his son Ahasuerus. Artaxerxes III was Darius the Persian.
And even the Greeks tell us that his real name was Ochus, and that
he only took Artaxerxes as a throne name. What they didn't realize
was that there's no such Persian name as Ochus. Darius, in Persian,
is Daraya-wachush. Ochus was simply a hypocoristicon of that name.
Similarly, Xerxes is Khshay-arsha, and the nickname for that becomes
Arses in Greek transliteration.

The Greeks didn't know a lot of things that we /do/ know. Which is
not to say that their accounts aren't valuable. They just aren't some
sort of scientific fact that trumps Jewish sources. They didn't know,
for example, that not only did Cyrus name his son Cambyses, but that
Cyrus's father was /als//o/ named Cambyses. And that /his/ father
was also named Cyrus. We know this because we discovered and read the
Behistun Inscription, but the Greeks didn't know it. I mean... Herodotus,
"father of history", had never even heard of Nebuchadnezzar. And there's
a reason for that.

Many, if not most, of the events attributed to Cambyses by the Greeks
are echoed in Tanakh, but attributed to Nebuchadnezzar. That's because
Cambyses I, the father of Cyrus the Great, was a vassal of Babylon
at the time that /he/ invaded Egypt. Many, if not most, of the events
attributed to Xerxes by the Greeks are also echoed in Tanakh, and also
attributed to Nebuchadnezzar. That's because the father of Darius the
Mede, identified in Tanakh as Ahasuerus the Mede (the grandfather of
Ahasuerus of the Megillah) was /also/ a vassal of Babylon at the time
that he attacked the islands of the sea.

Rather than take the Greek account as something we're stuck with, try a
thought experiment. Go back to the time of Alexander the Great, when the
Greek Empire was getting started and they were writing official histories.
Look at the sources they had, and ask yourself if it's any wonder they
got confused.

Lisa

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net> wrote:
> And what about Ezra's lineage? That's in Tanakh, and it doesn't work with
> the Greek based history.

Why not? You will say that there are too few people. So let it hereby be
known that several meforshim, including but not limited to IIRC the Gra,
state in Divrei haYamim that in Tanakh lineages, it is considered OK to
skip generations, hence two lineages of the same fellow don't always line
up.

-- 
Arie Folger,
Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
* Wieviel Feste feiern wir an Sukkot (Audio-Schiur)
* Die ethische Dimension des Schma Jissrals (Audio-Schiur)
* Ein Baum, der klug macht?! (Audio-Schiur)
* Podiumsdiskussion ?Jdische Religion zwischen Tradition und Moderne?
* Great Videos from the CER in Berlin
* A Priest Returns to his Faith
* The CER Berlin Conference in Pictures

On 3/22/2014 3:04 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net> wrote:
>> And what about Ezra's lineage? That's in Tanakh, and it doesn't
>> work with the Greek based history.

> Why not? You will say that there are too few people. So let it hereby 
> be known that several meforshim, including but not limited to IIRC the 
> Gra, state in Divrei haYamim that in Tanakh lineages, it is considered 
> OK to skip generations, hence two lineages of the same fellow don't 
> always line up.

No matter how much information there is in Jewish sources that join into 
a single coherent picture, you'll find one reason or other to reject 
them in favor of the Greek version.

Lisa

On 3/22/2014 8:48 PM, Prof. Levine wrote:
> I personally am not a fan of the way Hebrew is pronounced in Israel. I 
> much prefer the Ashkenazic pronunciation. Indeed, I cringe when I hear 
> someone say Yitgadal. It turns out that I am not alone in this.
>
> From http://www.ou.org/jewish_action/03/2014/fighting-taf-guys/ 
> <http://www.ou.org/jewish_action/03/2014/fighting-taf-guys/>
>
> Upbringing aside?or, perhaps because of it?I just don?t understand the 
> Sepharadic pronunciation. A /beis/ is different from a /veis/. A /kaf 
> /is different from a /chaf/. A /pei/ is different from a /fei/. So why 
> should a /taf /and a /saf /be the same? A /dagesh/ (the dot sometimes 
> found in Hebrew letters) has many functions. It can double a letter; 
> for example, a /dagesh/ in the /gimmel/ makes the word ?/Haggadah/,? 
> properly transliterated with two g?s. In a ?/mapik hei/,? the /dagesh/ 
> makes the vowel precede the letter /hei/, e.g., ?Elo-Ah? rather than 
> ?Elo-Ha? in Hallel. But what purpose does the /dagesh/ serve in the 
> last letter in Hebrew if it is always pronounced like a t?

So let me understand. You're okay pronouncing a gimmel with a dagesh the 
same as a gimel without a dagesh. You're okay pronouncing a dalet with a 
dagesh the same as a dalet without a dagesh -- /even though it makes it 
impossible to actually extend the dhaleth in Echadh in Kriyat Shma -- 
/and you're okay pronouncing a tav without a dagesh the same as a sin or 
a samech. But not pronouncing it the same as a tav with a dagesh?

And never mind the fact that it's not, and never has been "taf", with a 
feh at the end. Originally, the name of the letter was tau, just like in 
Greek (which got it from us). And without a dagesh, it was thau (th as 
in thick). While a dalet without a dagesh was dhaleth (dh = th as in this).

In "Sephardi" pronounciation, where no distinction is made between a tav 
with or without a dagesh, at least the letter has the same value. It's 
simply a plosive form versus a fricative form. But pronouncing it as "s" 
is purely a lisp, due to the fact that the true "th" sound didn't exist 
in German. That's probably where "taf" came from as well. "Ve haff vays 
of making you talk."

There's a reason this was published in the "Humor" section of the website.

At 09:50 PM 3/22/2014, R. Harry Maryles wrote:

>I am told that Rav Schwab was heavily influenced by the Lithuanian 
>type Yeshivos he attended. So much so that he had ?accepted the 
>Charedi view that ?RSRH only meant TIDE as a B'Dieved (as explained 
>to him by R' Baruch Ber Leibowitz, whiom he consulted about it). He 
>later rejected that view and returned to the view that RSRH meant it 
>as a L'Chatchila.

This is true.


>No doubt, R' Schwab was still heavily influenced by his yeas in the 
>Litvishe Yeshivos and retained some of that Hashkafa, which probably 
>explains his views about Jewish history.

What is your basis for asserting that Rav Schwab's approach to 
history is something that was prevalent in the Litvishe Yeshiva world?


>I think that's even more true about today's German/Jewish observant 
>community. Almost all of them attend Lithuanian type Yeshivos and 
>the only thing that remains of their RSRH's TIDE are the Minhagim. 
>The philosophy of ?classic TIDE is practically gone. IIUC.?

You are wrong about TIDE.  First of all,  TIDE is independent of 
Frankfurt minhagim.  Secondly,  the writings of RSRH continue to sell 
out.  For example, Feldheim keeps printing more copies of the new 
translation of the Hirsch Chumash.   Dr. Bondi,  who is an editor of 
the Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer Publication Society and a grandson of Rav 
Breuer, ZT"L, has assured me that TIDE is very much alive and well 
given the constant demand for the writings of Rav Hirsch.


>This attitie is reinforced by the current successor to R' Schwab, 
>Rabbi Zechariah Gelley. He asserted that TIDE is no longer a viable 
>option in our day, because we cannot practice it properly without 
>RSRH's guidance (or some other excuse like that). He said so during 
>the celebration of RSRH's 200 birthday (IIRC) after Jonathan 
>Rosenblum's speech extolling classic Hirschian TIDE (and probably 
>embarrassing JR in the process).
It was not Rabbi Gelley who asserted this but Rabbi Mantel,  his 
associate.  Many Hirschians were horrified at what he said.  R. 
Mantel is not and never was a follower of TIDE.   I have no idea why 
KAJ took him as a rav.

YL
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Cantor Wolberg asked:

> if the laws of kashrut were to better us and make us masters over
> our primal instincts, then wouldn't the Almighty include everyone?
> If a parent has 10 children, he or she would want the best for all
> the kids.

That question really applies to ALL the mitzvos, doesn't it?

I'm not dismissing the question; it is an important one. My point is that
one answer will work for a person who is asking about all the mitzvos, and
a different answer will work for someone who sees kashrus as different from
the others.

R' Micha Berger wondered:

> whether people who lived before the magul were allowed egg and
> milk.

Given that poultry and milk is only d'rabanan, my guess is: No.

> Were they vegetarians, prohibited meat because of the necessary
> death involved? Or is the kashrus of Beris Sinai a way to matir
> those things that were prohibited by an original Adamic veganism?

Sanhedrin 56b discusses Ever Min Hachai, and Tosfos ("Achal") asks: "But we
said below (59b) that when we said that Adam Harishon was not allowed to
eat meat, that refers to killing and eating. But if it died on its own it
was allowed. Ever Min Hachai comes to tell you that even if it fell off on
its own, it is forbidden." I think Rashi says something similar near the
top of 57a, "L'mishray basar hu d'asa."

I have not learned this inside myself, so I don't know if I'm reading them
correctly or what other rishonim say. But I do know that there's a big
empty spot in my library where I would keep Practical Halacha For Bnei
Noach. Anyone know of such a volume?

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
Fast-Growing Industry
A New Player In The Booming Bottled Water Market.
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/532e4d85d4e524d85456cst03vuc

On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 01:27:59PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
> That's correct. "You can't cook basar b'chalav" is halakha. "Moshe
> Rabbenu was brought forward in time to see Rabbi Akiva" is aggada. "Rava
> was married to the daughter of Rav Hisda" is neither. It's informational.

This presumes your conclusion.

If Avraham avinu keeping Taryag mitzvos can be aggadic,
and Chonin haMagul sleeping 70 years can be aggadic,
then why can't the discussion of history 450 years prior to them
also be of aggadic rather than informational nature?

If you believe that Chazal weren't interested in imparting that kind
of information, then it's more natural all of it was relayed for
aggadic purposes.

Gut Voch!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A cheerful disposition is an inestimable treasure.
mi...@aishdas.org        It preserves health, promotes convalescence,
http://www.aishdas.org   and helps us cope with adversity.
Fax: (270) 514-1507         - R' SR Hirsch, "From the Wisdom of Mishlei"

R' David Riceman asked:

> This analogy bothers me.  People who understand electronics can
> walk you through the circuit, wire and component by wire and
> component, and explain what each part does.  If one component
> is defective they can replace it and the circuit will work again.
> It's a functional device in a very literal sense, and its current
> state determines it functionality.
>
> Tefillin aren't like that.  They depend not only on the product,
> but on how they were written and on who wrote them.  The status
> of the object depends not only on its state, but also on its
> history.
>
> Furthermore I doubt if anyone can point out, letter by letter and
> blank space by blank space, the function of each of its parts.
>
> So what is the comparison? Is he just saying that they're both
> complex objects, or is he saying something more profound?

I'm glad you asked. My personal belief is that they are profound beyond
most people's imagination, as one might expect of things which operate on a
metaphysical level. But they do have rules, and are bound by limits of many
kinds. I have heard of people and animals referred to as "living machines",
and if that is legitimate, then tefillin (and all mitzvah items) can be
referred to as metaphysical machines.

There are certain laws of nature which the scientists have figured out, and
which we have learned to accept as binding. There are others which are
un-scientific, but that's only because they are harder to prove, yet
"everyone" knows them to be true nevertheless. For example, it seems to me
that "mida k'neged mida" (a/k/a "what goes around comes around") is a law
of nature no less than the law of gravity.

Let me rephrase that: It seems to me that "mida k'neged mida" is a general
law, and Newton's Third Law ("For every action there is an equal and
opposite reaction") is a specific application of that general law. Namely,
Newton's law applies to the physical world, in which a propeller or rocket
pushes something backward, and the vehicle moves forward. Mida k'neged mida
applies to the spiritual world, in which an action here causes a reaction
elsewhere. It is inevitable. It *will* happen.

The problem, though, is that we're rarely privileged to see the spiritual
reaction. (Who saw that we lost a war because ONE soldier took some booty?)
We see it often enough that people develop aphorisms like "what goes around
comes around", but that falls far short of objective evidence.

RDR is bothered by the fact that expert can identify the function of every
single component in a physical device, but no one can explain the exact
function of (for example) the tagin above a letter in the tefillin. This is
true, but it does not bother me, because I have confidence that the tagin
do *have* a function. Rabbi Akiva understood the function, but even if no
one ever did, and even if no one ever will, I'm confident that Hashem
understands the function. They do *have* a function, and this is proven by
the fact that without them, the tefillin will either work poorly (kosher
b'dieved) or not at all (pasul l'gamrei).

But actually, I'll go even farther than that. I do not need to understand
the components of my car in order to drive from here to there. All I need
to know is how to USE the car. In fact, I don't really care whether or not
there's even one human on earth who knows the function of this particular
component -- as long as someone knows how to fix it or replace it. And this
is *exactly* where we are with tefillin. (Actually, this is true of some
non-religious items as well. The first two that come to mind are aspirin
and quantum computers. No one is *totally* sure how they work (or at least,
such was the case for some time), but they've figured out most of the rules
about how to use them. Perhaps others will have better examples.)

RDR is bothered by the fact that kosher tefillin depend not only on the
letters being of the correct shape, but also by being written by the right
sort of person in the right frame of mind. I would add other details, such
as placing the letters in the correct order. None of this surprises me.
We're talking about a machine which operates in a realm beyond our
perception, so it could well be that some of its required ingredients will
be present or not present, based on circumstances which are beyond our
perception.

"Mida k'neged mida" is not the only Law of Metaphysical Nature. Some hold
that Bitul is in this category, when circumstances are such that the
nullified item has lost its identity. 

Teshuva is another such machine. It is a sort of time machine, with the
ability to wipe out the past. It too has requirements (such as vidui and
charata) which must be followed for maximum effectiveness. We've discussed
other details too, such as how teshuva can cancel one's sins, but replacing
them with mitzvos is more complicated. And teshuva is value-neutral: Just
as it cancels the regretted sins, it can cancel the regretted mitzvos too.

Back to the machines, though... Let's take trumah and maaser, for example.
It's not just a ritual formality. There is a very real - if intangible -
quality about tevel which goes away once the terumah has been taken. And
more of it goes away when the maaser is taken. But the 10% had better be
very exact, or things can get really messed up. Hafrasha is not really a
physical act; it's the krias shem which accomplishes all sorts of
metaphysical things.

Bitul - kinyan - sh'lichus ? these are procedures which have real effect
upon a person or object's halachic status, if you do them properly. In
contrast, "hazmana lav milsa hee" - merely assigning a new status to
something has no effect; you have to go through the proper procedures.
"Shomea k'oneh" is such a procedure, but - like the other procedures - you
have to do it correctly or it won't work.

Kedusha and tum'ah are metaphysical properties. They are very real, even
though they are (currently) intangible and unmeasurable by physical
objects. Some tzadikim seem to be able to sense when they are in the
presence of these properties. That's not a contradiction; I'm not surprised
that people on a high spiritual level are "tuned in" to spiritual forces.

Looking of some very old note I wrote on these ideas, I found that Rabbi
Aryeh Kaplan touched on this in his Handbook of Jewish Thought, vol. 1,
6:65 (pg 104): "The human brain is like a receiving mechanism upon which
the soul can act. This action, however, usually occurs on the subtlest
sub-quantum levels and it is masked by the mind's normal reverie and
reaction to external stimuli..." (If you look that up, note that there's a
typo in footnote 191, where "3:23" should read "3:33".)

Getting back to Rav Elya Lopian, I don't know if all of this was in his
view of things when he compared the tefillin to the radio. But he was
clearly making the point that if one can't hear sound from a radio with a
broken wire, then why would one think that he gets a mitzvah from wearing
tefillin that have a broken letter? It was just a mashal, a story, a mussar
to impress upon people the importance of checking the kashrus of their
tefillin.

It is possible that in Rav Lopian's view, Hashem is a capricious,
vindictive God Who imposes arbitrary rules. And that might be correct, but
I hope not. I'd much rather believe that all these rules have reasons, and
that I'm simply too childish to understand them. But my Parent in Heaven
knows how it all works, and I trust that when He tells me what to do, He
has good reasons for it.

Akiva Miller
____________________________________________________________
The #1 Worst Carb Ever?
Click to Learn #1 Carb that Kills Your Blood Sugar (Don't Eat This!)
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3131/532e3f2bed2163f2b2099st02vuc

You do realize that works both ways. No matter how much evidence I will
show you, that supports an aggadic read of Seder Olam and a harmonious
readibg of Jewish and Assyriologist sources, you've long sgo made up your
mind that those sources are in conflict and Seder Olam must be ead as
factual history.

Which is why when contributing to this thread, I merely explained that this
is a reasonable alternative.

--
mit freundlichen Gr??en,
with kind regards,
Arie Folger

visit my blog at http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
sent from my mobile device
On Mar 23, 2014 2:28 AM, "Lisa Liel" <l...@starways.net> wrote:

> No matter how much information there is in Jewish sources that join into a
> single coherent picture, you'll find one reason or other to reject them in
> favor of the Greek version.
>
> Lisa
> On 3/22/2014 3:04 PM, Arie Folger wrote:
>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 7:27 PM, Lisa Liel <l...@starways.net <mailto:
>> l...@starways.net>> wrote:
>>
>>     And what about Ezra's lineage? That's in Tanakh, and it doesn't
>>     work with the Greek based history.
>>
>>
>> Why not? You will say that there are too few people. So let it hereby be
>> known that several meforshim, including but not limited to IIRC the Gra,
>> state in Divrei haYamim that in Tanakh lineages, it is considered OK to
>> skip generations, hence two lineages of the same fellow don't always line
>> up.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Arie Folger,
>> Recent blog posts on http://ariefolger.wordpress.com/
>> * Wieviel Feste feiern wir an Sukkot (Audio-Schiur)
>> * Die ethische Dimension des Schma Jissra?ls (Audio-Schiur)
>> * Ein Baum, der klug macht?! (Audio-Schiur)
>> * Podiumsdiskussion ?J?dische Religion zwischen Tradition und Moderne?
>> * Great Videos from the CER in Berlin
>> * A Priest Returns to his Faith
>> * The CER Berlin Conference in Pictures
>>
>
>
>
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On 3/22/2014 10:40 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 01:27:59PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote:
>> That's correct. "You can't cook basar b'chalav" is halakha. "Moshe
>> Rabbenu was brought forward in time to see Rabbi Akiva" is aggada. "Rava
>> was married to the daughter of Rav Hisda" is neither. It's informational.
> This presumes your conclusion.
>
> If Avraham avinu keeping Taryag mitzvos can be aggadic,
> and Chonin haMagul sleeping 70 years can be aggadic,
> then why can't the discussion of history 450 years prior to them
> also be of aggadic rather than informational nature?
Because they aren't discussing it.  They're mentioning it agav. It's the 
underlying assumption to actual discussions.  And because it's 
consistent.  Chazal do not make a major effort to bring consistency to 
different midrashic statements.  Esther was Darius's mother.  Esther 
never actually slept with Achashveirosh, because Hashem sent a mal'ach 
to take her place.  That's not even considered a stira, because 
midrashim don't need to be consistent one with the other.  And yet 
somehow, they made all of their references, however incidental, to the 
chronological structure of Bayit Sheni consistent.  It's too much for a 
coincidence, and if it's intentional, it's dishonest.

Lisa


------------------------------


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End of Avodah Digest, Vol 32, Issue 50
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