Of course, it was a hoax, and those images had been produced well before the tsunami.
Yet apparently the mermaid did make a big splash. Indeed, as Rabbi Slifkin reports in his Sacred Monsters (page 95), posters were put up in Meah Shearim with the picture, gemara, Rashi's explanation of dolphinim as mermaids, and the caption that there is nothing new under the sun.This need not be representative of all chareidim, nor does it necessarily mean that all chareidim are this credulous. But certainly some did believe this hoax. And perhaps it is because the "news" items spoke to their own beliefs, which were somewhat under attack from the modern world. If Rashi had ruach hakodesh, and the gemara itself spoke of mermaids, and everyone nowadays "knows" that mermaids are fictional, then this news which validates our traditional beliefs is to be adopted wholeheartedly. Indeed, the "nothing new under the sun" comment was triumphalism, and effectively saying "see, we knew about this a long time ago, and science is only now catching up." Of course, various other subgroups might prefer other approaches to "coping" with this "difficulty" -- such as that the gemara doesn't really say this, and that Rashi was merely working with the contemporary science of his time, but that approach is not preferred or might be deemed heretical by some "frummer" groups.
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Indeed, when people at Bat Yam (or rather Kiryat Yam), in Chaifa, spotted a mermaid off-shore, kikar.net posted an article about it. And they wrote:
בדרך כלל, אנחנו מבטלים במחי יד את השמועות. נתקלנו אין סוף פעמים באגדות דייגים, שכנראה חלקם נוטים להזיות מסיבה שבוודאי תיחקר יום אחד.אך לא, הדג הזה קיים בהחלט. כבר במקורות הקדמונים ביותר מצאנו שיש דג שחציו אדם וחציו דג, או חציו אשה וחציו דג, וכמה וכמה הלכות נאמרו לגביו.מה שכתוב בתורה שכל נפש החיה שבמים שקץ הוא לכם, אמרו בתורת כהנים שמרבה את הסילונית. רש"י פירש שסילונית הוא אותה בריה שחציו דג וחציו אדם, והראב"ד אף הוסיף שסירונית (או סילונית) היא חיה שחציה אדם וחציה דג, ומנגנת כאדם. וכן חז"ל דרשו בטומאה: "אדם כי ימות באהל", ולא סילונית.וכן מצאנו בגמרא בבכורות, שהזכירה דולפינים, ולפי אחד הפירושים בגמרא שם זה "בני ימא", או כמו שפירש רש"י, אותה חיה שחציה אדם וחציה דג. ולפי האמור שם בגמרא, החיות הללו יכולות להתרבות כבני אדם או כדגים.מעניין מאד לציין, שבספר "ערוך השולחן" האריך לדון על אותו דג אם יש לו סנפיר וקשקשת. אם נזכה שמישהו יצלם, אולי נדע בבירור.אם יש לכם מרץ, נסו לצלם את הדג, כך תזכו להבין את דברי הגמרא בבירור, ותזכו את הרבים, ואולי גם תרוויחו את הפרס הכספי. סכום לא רע שיכול לעזור לכם קצת ב'בין הזמנים'.
The comments there, on that story, are also fascinating. Of course, this story was pure bunk, probably created to increase tourism.
The same seems to me to be true regarding the latest story, reported by an Egyptian paper, about an Egyptian find of coins which bear Yosef's name, and so on. There is enough about this story to make it rather dubious. Of course, we will see how it plays out, and if authentic, it would be quite amazing. Namely, how it goes against prevailing beliefs of historians of when coinage began (these are really round gems), and the amazing nature of the find. And I don't think we can necessarily trust the science and archaeology of the people around, without knowing more about them and/or having this finding verified by others. It looks like they were trying to find evidence of coinage that early so that Koranic accounts would not be anachronistic.
But I got an email from an otherwise rather skeptical individual about this, titled "Wow!"
I think this is because it fits in to our own beliefs, or what we would want to believe and want to see discovered. Because after all, most archaeologists deny the historicity of the Torah's account.
This, once again, is not to say that this story is not true, or that it is. Rather, it is to say that this story speaks to our biases, and so we should keep that in mind as we evaluate it.
3 comments:
Does that mean the shekel kesef in B'reishit 23 is just a weight of silver recognized by merchants and not coins? I guess that makes cents. (Sorry for the bad pun.)
Sure, this story speaks to our biases, but every human being in the planet as a bias. Only some are willing to admit it. Therefore while definitely religious people have biases, secular academics have also there built-in belief. It is just easier to point out the religious biases because they wear their religion on the sleeve while secular academics keep there biases much closer to their vest (and probably don't even acknowledge it to themselves). For example in academia there resides an anti-traditional bias that causes some historians to minimize any find that might concur with the biblical text.
The point is that we shouldn't be focusing on who said what, and what bias might be involved but what was said, and what evidence is there to support it. In this particular case, I agree there is a lot of questions, and I wouldn't be penciling in these finds as a certainty, there is no need to invoke definite bias, but rather a wait and see approach if it holds up to scholarly criticism. I have my doubts, but we'll see.
Also there are two things that people are getting confused here.
1. Are these actually coins, and therefore it puts in a monkey wrench to those who claim that coinage began in Lydia in the 6th century.
2. Does it truly say Yoseph on the coin, and is it dated properly to the 14-15th century BCE. Even if those things are not coins, but some kind of ornaments, it doesn't mean that having the name Yoseph on them is not significant.
>Does that mean the shekel kesef in B'reishit 23 is just a weight of silver recognized by merchants and not coins?
The root שקל means to weigh.
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