5 Outreach Arguments - Part 1

3. Outreach arguments

Let me begin this inquiry with the arguments that are usually brought by the people of outreach organizations, whose goal it is to rationally prove to skeptics the divinity of the Torah. Sadly, after I devoted time and effort to analyze these arguments, they all appeared to lie somewhere between charlatanry and ignorance or, more accurately, seemed a mixture of both. Perhaps they may best be described as overenthusiastic.To give one example, they claim that the four animals listed in the Torah as each having a single sign of purity -- the pig, the camel, the hare, and the hyrax -- are the only animals in the world with only one sign of purity. Our Sages, OBM, knew that from Divine tradition and stated so explicitly in the Babylonian Talmud (Chulin 59a). They then argue that if our Sages' tradition of were not of Divine origin, they would not dare say no other animal in the world has only one sign of purity, nor could they be correct.

Now, not only are the outreach people wrong in their claim that they have definite proof of the divinity of the Torah, they chose a topic which seems to show actual inaccuracies in the Torah itself. The Torah explicitly states that the hyrax and hare (shafan and arnevet) "bring up the cud" (Leviticus 11:5-6), which most clearly means rumination. Now, we know with utmost certainty that the hare and hyrax do not ruminate.

Of course I am aware of the fact that there are some Rabbinical authorities who claim the shafan and arnevet of the Torah are not the hare and the hyrax familiar to us. Alternatively, there are some who interpret the term "brings up the cud" (ma'alat gerah, in the Torah's terminology) as some action or quality other than rumination, but these responses seem to be, after all is said and done, mere apologetics. We have no more reason to doubt that the arnevet is the hare than we have to doubt the chazir is the pig. Moreover, the Talmud itself (Megillah 9b) relates that the Greek king of Egypt, Ptolemy, ordered the Jewish sages to translate the Torah into Greek for him. The Sages did not translate arnevet literally, for the king's wife was called "Arnevet" and they feared the king would consider the literal translation a mockery. Some manuscripts of the Talmud say that it was not the king's wife but his father who was called "Arnevet." Indeed, the father of Ptolemy I, the first Greek king of Egypt and the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty, was called Lagus, which sounds quite similar to the Greek word for hare -- lagos.

The term ma'alat gerah is defined explicitly by the classic Rabbinical commentaries on the Scripture: "'Ma'alat gerah' -- [an animal that] brings up and vomits food from its bowels back to its mouth to crush it and to grind it well" (Rashi on Leviticus 11:3); "'Ma'alat gerah' -- [an animal that] brings up its food through the throat after it has been eaten" (Rashbam ibid.). And indeed, the verb ma'alat (or ma'aleh, in masculine) means bringing up something, and if we consider all the other animals described in the Torah as ma'alat gerah, we can only conclude that gerah means cud, and that ma'alat gerah means "bringing up the cud," i.e. rumination. (We cannot propose that ma'alat gerah means "looks like a ruminant," since the verb ma'alat means that the action of "bringing up" really does take place.)

Recently I've heard another "explanation": hares regularly re-ingest their fecal pellets. In fact, they produce two kinds of pellets: one dry and hard, the other soft and moist. The latter, which appear to contain both vitamins and metabolic products, are eaten, in most cases directly from the anus. Encyclopaedia Britannica (lagomorph, Natural history) writes that "the nutritional effect of this practice [called coprophagy] has been compared to that of rumination among cows," and, perhaps based on what they read in the popular scientific literature, some people consider coprophagy a kind of true rumination. But it is clear that whatever coprophagy is, rumination it is not. If the Torah says that a certain animal ruminates (ma'alat gerah), it most clearly means that the animal brings something up (that something being the cud).

The great Rabbinic commentators on the Scripture -- Rashbam and Ibn Ezra -- explicitly wrote that the Hebrew word gerah is derived from the word garon (throat), and that means that an animal described as ma'alat gerah must bring up something through its throat; that is quite different from an animal excreting feces from its anus. And even if the nutritional effect of coprophagy is similar to that of rumination, it does not mean that coprophagy and rumination are one and the same. It may be said, for example, that the nutritional value of spaghetti is similar to that of rice -- but that does not mean, of course, that rice and spaghetti are one and the same food. And besides, the hyrax does not practice coprophagy in any form. So do the proponents of "coprophagy as bringing up the cud" maintain that hyrax does not bring up its cud, despite what is written in the Torah?

In short, the Torah verses do not seem to accurately describe reality as it is. And there are definitely more than just four animals with only one sign of purity. The Torah's list does not include the warthog, the babirussa, the peccaries, and the llamas. (If one considers coprophagy a kind of bringing up the cud, then some other animals, including lemurs and mountain beavers, should also be considered as having one sign of purity, for they practice coprophagy but do not have split hooves; of course, they are also not mentioned in the Torah.) One can say that from the Torah's viewpoint all llamas are camels, and the warthog, babirussa, and peccary are all pigs, but we have specific criteria for distinguishing the animals mentioned in the Torah from all others:

"One who walks in a desert and finds an animal whose mouth is damaged [so it is impossible to check whether it has upper incisors and/or canines, which is the way to verify whether it brings up its cud], should look at its hooves: if the hooves are split -- it is clear that the animal is pure, and if they are not -- it is clear that the animal is impure, provided that one is familiar with the pig [whose hooves are split, yet it is impure]."

(Tractate Chulin 59a)

If one finds in the desert an unknown animal which cannot be checked for signs of rumination, provided that the animal has split hooves and does not look like pig, one may eat it. This means that an animal whose external look is different from that of a pig is definitely not a pig -- and yet the peccary, for example, looks very different from a pig.

Collared peccary

Yorkshire (Large White) pig

From that same Talmudic discourse (Chulin 59a) it is clear that an animal whose external look is different from that of the camel is certainly not a camel. The South American llamas look very different from the camel, so they also should be considered an additional kind of animal with a single sign of purity.

Llama

Arabian camel (dromedary)

Maimonides ruled in the Laws of Kilayim 9:4, in line with what is written in the Tosefta (Tractate Kilayim 1:5), that the horse, mule, and donkey are all different species which one is forbidden to interbreed, despite the fact that the mule is a hybrid of a he-donkey and a she-horse, and that all the three look quite similar:

Donkey

Mule

Horse

So if the horse, mule, and donkey are considered different animals by the Halacha, the pig and peccary, or camel and llama should certainly be considered different animals -- and then, of course, the claim that only those animals mentioned in the Torah have a single sign of purity must be wrong.

With regards to the arnevet and the shafan, it’s a good question – one that as of yet, I do not know the answer.

However, I will mention that the Maharal, in his commentary Gur Aryeh to Leviticus 11:3, seems to imply that the shafan is not the hyrax.

But about the camel and pig, I will suggest the following answer:

It is quite clear to me that the Torah’s criterion for defining a species, is very different from the scientific one.

This can be readily seen from the way the Torah discusses Kosher animals. For example, in Deuteronomy 14, the Torah lists the goat (or two or three types of goat, depending on the interpretation) as a Kosher animal, and according to my understanding, that includes all goats worldwide. From a scientific viewpoint though, there are around nine different species in the goat family. We find the same thing by deer – the Torah lists 3 (or 4) different types of deer, stating that they are all Kosher. According to the scientific classification, there are well over eighty species of deer.

I am not entirely sure what precisely the Torah’s criterion is, but perhaps it is connected to its lineage back to the original pair of ancestors it came from. Even according to those that understand the Torah’s account of creation in the literal sense, and reject the notion of common descent, they will agree to the idea of ‘adaption’, that creatures adapt to, and are affected by, their surroundings.

Seemingly, this idea is even acknowledged in the Talmud. For example, in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbos 31a, in the anecdote where someone tries to make Hillel angry, Hillel is asked why the Tarmodians have round eyes and the Africans have wide feet. He answers that these features are a result of the environment that these people live in.

Another example, is from the Midrash Bamidbar Rabba (16:9), that comments on Moses’ instruction to the Spies (Numbers 13:18): “You shall see what (kind of) land it is.” The Midrash explains that Moses told them to, “observe the Land of Israel, for some lands rear strong people, and some lands rear weak people, some produce large populations, while others produce small populations.”

So it could be that according to the Torah, the camel, vicuna and llama are all considered as being the same species, as they all stem from the original pair of camel that was originally created. Similarly, it could be that the pig, warthog, babirussa and peccary, belong to the same species, as their differences stem from living in different climates from each other for thousands of years.

Accordingly, it would be incorrect to compare these animals to the case of the mule, as the defining concern here is not how similar the animals look, but rather if they come from a pure lineage from the original generation. Therefore, the mule is considered a separate species, as it is born from a mixture of different animals.