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Avoda Zara 25 cites a difference of opinion as to how long the sun stood still for Y'hoshua: twelve hours, twenty-four, or thirty-six. According to those who say twelve or thirty-six, the sun finally set at a time (on watches, if you will, or hourglasses) that was twelve hours after the hourglasses indicated "sunset". And the next time the hourglasses indicated "sunset", it was astronomical morning, around sunrise or so. Likewise for every subsequent day, until now: any hourglass or watch that has been set in place since the time of Y'hoshua and not adjusted since would indicate "sunset" every morning. Yet we indicate the start of a new calendar date at sunset, not in the morning. Thus, dates start not when the sun "should" set but when it does: a new date does not start until the sun actually sets, even if (as in Y'hoshua's case) it "should" set earlier than that.

Now, Sifse Chachamim to Noach 8:22 says that, for the duration of the mabul (deluge), the sun and other orbs stood still, not moving in the sky: they remained, for the whole mabul, wherever they were at the start of the mabul, and there was no sunset. According to the paragraph above, then, the date should not have changed throughout the mabul. Yet the p'sukim (e.g., 8:4–5) clearly refer to the passage of dates. What's going on?

(This is a question on the Sifse Chachamim. The R'em, for example, has a wholly different explanation of what occurred during the mabul.)

msh210
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    @downvoter (and anyone else), if you have a suggestion for how the question can be improved, please let me know. I tried to be as clear as I could, but it is a complicated question. – msh210 Oct 30 '11 at 05:45
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    Maybe Noach and family looked up the Halachic literature regarding zemanim in outer space. Seriously, the Mabul was clearly exceptional; if natural laws could be suspended, so could calendrical conventions. – Isaac Moses Oct 30 '11 at 16:01
  • @IsaacMoses, more exceptional than Giv'on? (Well, yes. But more exceptional than Giv'on with respect to astronomy?) Re your first point, I doubt Noach had time to read on the teva (unless that's why he was late in feeding the lion). – msh210 Oct 30 '11 at 16:10
  • more exceptional in magnitude, at least. – Isaac Moses Oct 30 '11 at 16:14
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    @IsaacMoses: Come to think of it, wouldn't the Stack Exchange server have been down due to the flooding? How would he have read up on z'manim in outer space anyway? – msh210 Oct 30 '11 at 18:05
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    I noticed something else in that comment of Sifsei Chachamim, that Noach was able to tell the time using a "sonnenzeiger" ("sun clock," presumably a sundial). So presumably even according to him the sun must have moved around in the sky somewhat, otherwise a sundial wouldn't do its job. But yeah, when I saw that I couldn't figure it out either. – Alex Oct 30 '11 at 18:07
  • @Alex, ah, I couldn't make out that word. Very curious that he should be so adamant that the sun did not move, and then suggest a "sun clock" (which, yes, looks like it should mean a "sundial". Wikipedia doesn't suggest any other kind of ancient sun-based clock). – msh210 Oct 30 '11 at 18:10
  • msh210 and @Alex, regardless of what kind of sun-based clock it was, it wasn't going to work unless the sun was (apparently) moving (unless it was based on sunspots or solar wind, or something). – Isaac Moses Oct 30 '11 at 23:24
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    @all, Re the sun-clock: If we're going with this whole extraordinary interpretation of everything that was going on, maybe Sifsei Chachamim believed that the teiva actually traveled around the globe each day, which, if they were going in the right direction, would simulate the Sun's movement on a normal day, and the sundial would actually work normally. – jake Nov 22 '11 at 22:50
  • @jake, brilliant idea! — though of course quite a chidush. Then the "150 days", et al., would be as experienced inside the teva. It still wouldn't explain the jump to the 27th of Cheshvan (as discussed in the comments to the answer), but, hey, you can't have everything. :-) – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 22:56
  • In a deleted answer, @YDK brings up an interesting point. The sun and moon weren't hung until the 4th day of creation, but even before that there were days. So perhaps the sun and moon are just used by us to indicate when days and nights happen, but the days and nights are actually independent of the celestial spheres. (note that this doesn't address what happened by Yehoshua, unless not only did the sun stop, but the day and night transition stopped as well) – Menachem Oct 14 '12 at 16:55
  • Related: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/23009 – msh210 Dec 25 '12 at 13:33

1 Answers1

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The Maskil LeDavid on Bereshit 8:22 says that even though the sun did not rise or set Noach had signs to recognize and distinguish between day and night, since he needed to know this for many reasons. Also, not all the animals ate at the same time, and Noach needed to know when to feed the animals.

According to this we can say that the dates were marked by the passage of time (i.e. 24 hours was one day) rather than by the sun's rising and setting.

This is reminiscent of a story that is told about the Ba'al HaTanya when he was imprisoned for the first time:

Once, for instance, the Rebbe was put into a room which was as dark during the day as it was at night. A small lamp was the only source of light. One day, about two hours after noon, the Rebbe was told that the time is already past midnight and he should go to sleep.

"Right now," retorted the Rebbe, "the time is two hours and five minutes past noon."

When asked how he could possibly know such a thing, the Rebbe explained.

"Every day is illuminated by the twelve forms of the letters of in Ineffable Name (Tetragrammaton), while the night is illuminated by the twelve forms of the Name denoting G-d's Lordship. By experiencing these various forms I know to distinguish between day and night, and between one hour and the other."

Also, the Mabul lasted a complete solar year (Rashi Bereshit 8:14), so everything would have picked up right where it left off. (Although this doesn't explain the 11 day discrepancy in the lunar calendar)

Menachem
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  • Nice source, thanks, but this doesn't help. Re your first answer, "dates were marked by the passage of time... rather than by the sun", I (in the question) cited Y'hoshua as evidence against that possibility: your answer doesn't address that evidence. And re your second, "everything would have picked up right where it left off", note that (as I mentioned in the question) dates during the flood are also mentioned in the chumash, which this answer doesn't address. – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 19:47
  • I was trying to say that we are marking the passage of time, and using the dates as a reference. Or in other words, the Torah is saying this happened on what would have been INSERT DATE HERE, if the sun was rising and setting. Also, if Noach was marking the hours, why wouldn't he just continue counting the dates, as a way to keep track of how long he was in the Ark (even if the dates didn't actually change). – Menachem Nov 22 '11 at 20:09
  • @msh210, Aren't the dates of the Mabul measured by years/months of Noach's life? Why can't you just say that although the date as far as the rest of the world was concerned remained constant, but Noach, being that he still continued to age, continued measuring his age by the passage of time? – jake Nov 22 '11 at 20:28
  • Menachem, so you're proposing that the dates Noach counted were wrong. Did he then continue counting them wrong after the flood? (Remember, it was 11 days later.) Is that the earliest example of "l'minyan sheanu monin kan": all of humanity has been counting wrong since then? – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 20:34
  • @jake, I'm not sure what you're proposing, but it seems to be the same as what Menachem is in his comment, in which case please see my preceding comment. Otherwise, could you clarify, please? – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 20:35
  • @msh210, I was just suggesting that IIRC the Torah's dates are counted by years of Noach's life, e.g. "In the six-hundredth year, seventh month" of the life of Noach. The life of Noach is perhaps measured by the passage of time, while the actual date "from creation" never changed. Same as Yehoshua. The date in those extra 12-36 hours never changed, but a person who lived through it would still consider himself 12-36 hours older than he was before. Regarding your preceding comment, how is Noach counting wrong dates? – jake Nov 22 '11 at 20:43
  • @jake, re your own suggestion: But note that the dates (nth month, xth day) are calendar dates, counted not from his birthday but from the new year. Per the evidence from Y'hoshua, that count should have stopped. (Unless you propose that they're birthday-based dates? That seems to go against Rashi (who mentions Cheshvan) and all I know about how dates are counted.) And re "wrong dates": Menachem had proposed that the count of dates actually stopped (as in Y'hoshua) but that Noach continued counting dates anyway as if it hadn't. So he was miscounting. – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 20:58
  • @msh210, I have to look at Rashi there, but IIRC, he reads some of the month/day counting as actual dates, but some as counting from when the rain started, or counting from other events. If we can isolate the actual dates to the beginning of the deluge, before this whole sun-stopping situation, my suggestion might be plausible. That actual dates stopped, but counting from other stuff, like the years from Noach's birth, or the months from events of the deluge, continued with the passage of time. Agreed? – jake Nov 22 '11 at 21:04
  • @jake, no, sorry. My earlier comment was in error: it implied that if we were counting from birthdays, dates would count during the flood. But we see from Y'hoshua that the day simply did not end until the sun actually set. So no matter how you count dates — or days — the day should not change during the flood. Even the "150 days" of 8:3 and similar are problematic. (It is interesting that (according to Rashi) no actual calendar dates during the flood are in the chumash: all dates given are relative to the start of the flood or another reference point. But I don't see how that helps.) – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 21:14
  • @msh210, I hate to extend the comment section here, but I don't see your parallel to Yehoshua. All we see from Yehoshua, like you said in the question, is that the calendar date did not change. Yet time continued. Same with the mabul: The calendar date did not change yet "24-hour periods" continued. The "150 days" of Parshas Noach can be interpreted as time-days, which were all part of the same "calendar-day". – jake Nov 22 '11 at 22:07
  • @jake, that sounds reasonable (I'll mull it over), except that what about the fact that the flood was over on the 27th of Cheshvan? How did the date suddenly jump to 27? (Again, perhaps that's only l'minyan sheanu monin, in which case no problem.) – msh210 Nov 22 '11 at 22:13
  • @msh210: I was only thinking about the solar dates, I forgot about the lunar discrepancy of 11 days. This makes it difficult to understand what happened in the solar system when the heavenly bodies started moving again, since in order for the moon to change from 18 to 27, the sun would have to suddenly move as well. – Menachem Nov 22 '11 at 22:23
  • @jake: That's what I was proposing in my answer, although you said it more clearly. However, the Seder HaDorot lists the flood starting in the year 1656 from creation and ending in the year 1657, which indicates that the Seder HaDorot held that the calendar date did change as well (although the mazalot themselves could continue from where they left off, without problem - I think I remember learning in a shiur about Birchat HaChamah when it happened last that the year of the flood is not counted in the calculation for the blessing, I have to see if I can find a source) – Menachem Nov 22 '11 at 22:28
  • @Menachem, Interesting. Does the Seder HaDoros agree with the Sifsei Chachamim about the Sun staying in its place? Does he say? – jake Nov 22 '11 at 22:30
  • @jake: I meant to post a link: http://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=24645&pgnum=45 - but to answer your question I didn't see him mention anywhere about the mazalot stopping, but it is always possible I missed something – Menachem Nov 22 '11 at 22:51