2020 End of the Year Talmudology Numbers

It’s hard to believe that just a year ago, Talmudology was celebrating the completion of the Daf Yomi cycle in Jerusalem. What has happened in the world over the the intervening twelve months has been awful. But as the promise of vaccination begins to be realized, let’s spend a moment to appreciate what a bumper year for Talmudology it has been. Last year we had almost 30,000 unique visitors and 55,000 page views. This year we almost doubled that. There were 57,000 unique visitors and over 105,000 page views. Wow.

The Most Popular Posts of 2020

Here are the ten most popular posts of 2020, together with those of 2019 for comparison.

	2020 - This Year's Top Ten Posts	2019 - Last Year's Top Ten Posts
1	Avodah Zarah 28b ~ Ear Candling. On a silly way to clean your ears.	Bava Basra 126b ~ The Healing Power of Saliva. Saliva, wound healing, and the magic of a firstborn’s spit.
2	Bava Basra 126b ~ The Healing Power of Saliva. Saliva, wound healing, and the magic of firstborn spit	Chullin 22b ~ Yellow Pigeons, Folk Medicine and Hepatitis. Why pigeons are still used to cure hepatitis
3	Kiddushin 82a ~ The Best Doctors Go to Hell. Doctors were at best useless, and at their worst, agents of death. To hell with them	Avodah Zarah 28b ~ Ear Candling. On a silly way to clean your ears.
4	Kiddushin 30a ~ How Many Letters are in a Sefer Torah? 304, 801. Or 304, 805. And why the rabbis miscounted	Kiddushin 29a ~ Swimming and Drowning. The Jewish requirement to teach a child to swim.
5	Kiddushin 29a ~ Swimming and Drowning. The Jewish requirement to teach a child to swim.	Avodah Zarah 39a ~ Do Swordfish have Scales? Actually they do. So they are kosher.
6	Bechorot 8a ~ Rashi on Mermaids NEW Mermaids in rabbinic (and Greek) literature. And a sighting by Christopher Columbus	Bava Basra 25b ~ The Sun's Orbit Around the Earth. The rabbis of the Talmud vs. Copernicus.
7	Berachot 50a ~ "The Three Who Ate" - on Yom Kippur NEW David Frischmann wrote a story about the rabbi who made Kiddish on Yom Kippur. But was it true?	Kiddushin 30a ~ How Many Letters are in a Sefer Torah? 304, 801. Or 304, 805. And why the rabbis miscounted.
8	Bechorot 16a ~ A Flat Earth, The Eye, and the Sky NEW The geocentric universe is modeled by the structure of an eye.	Kiddushin 82a ~ The Best Doctors Go to Hell. Doctors were at best useless, and at their worst, agents of death. To hell with them.
9	Berachot 2 ~ How Many Words Are In the Babylonian Talmud? NEW 1.8 million, give or take	Bava Basra 27b ~ The Roots of a Palm Tree. How the United Nations supported Abayye’s botanical opinions.
10	Niddah 13 ~ Onanism, Self-Pollution and Potential People NEW The Talmud viewed sperm as potential people. It’s a viewpoint very removed from our own.	Ketuvot 36a ~ The Aylonit Syndrome and Turner's Syndrome. How genetics sheds light on a Talmudic category.

Where are the Talmudology readers FROM?

Here are the top five Talmudology reading countries:

1. USA - 61% (46,000 visitors)

2. Israel 12% (9,000 visitors)

3. United Kingdom 5% (4,200 visitors)

4. Canada 3% (3,000 visitors)

5. Australia 2% (1,600 visitors)

And there are plenty of readers from unexpected places too. Over 700 people enjoyed Talmudology in India, 90 were in Saudi Arabia when they read about the Talmud and 55 were in Iran. We should also welcome the 114 readers from the United Arab Emirates, a country now officially at peace with Israel. We value your readership, and don’t worry, we cannot identify any of you in more detail, even if we wanted to.

help talmudology reach its 1,000th subscriber

We are very close to welcoming our 1,000th email subscriber. With your help we can reach this goal. Here is a little incentive. If you already subscribe, please encourage a friend to do so. When they have signed up, let me know. The 1,000th subscriber, together with the existing subscriber who sent them, will each receive a signed copy of New Heavens and A New Earth, which is otherwise available on Amazon for the crazy price of $110. Already own a copy? Then instead you can get a signed copy of Influenza: The Hundred Year Hunt to Cure the Deadliest Disease in History.

Sign up here for email alerts, and follow us on Twitter (@Talmudology) as we continue to study science, medicine and the Talmud.

תכלה שנה וקללותיה, תחל שנה וברכותיה

The Year and its Curses have Come to an End

May the Next Year and its Blessings Begin*

*See Talmud Bavli Megillah 31b

Pesachim 35a ~ The Chemistry of Chametz

Today we will discuss the chemistry of chametz, prompted by this passage in tomorrow’s page of Talmud:

פסחים לה, א

אמר ריש לקיש וכן תנא דבי ר' ישמעאל וכן תנא דבי ר' אליעזר בן יעקב אמר קרא (דברים טז, ג) לא תאכל עליו חמץ שבעת ימים תאכל עליו מצות לחם עוני דברים הבאים לידי חימוץ אדם יוצא בהן ידי חובתו בפסח יצאו אלו שאין באין לידי חימוץ אלא לידי סירחון

How do we know that matzah must be made from one of five species of grain [wheat, barley, oats spelt and rye]?  Reish Lakish said, and likewise a Sage of the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught, and likewise a Sage of the school of Rabbi Eliezer ben Ya’akov taught, that the verse states: “You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it matzah, the bread of affliction” (Deuteronomy 16:3). This verse indicates that only with regard to substances that will come to a state of leavening does a person fulfill his obligation to eat matzah by eating them on Passover, provided that he prevents them from becoming leavened. This serves to exclude these foods, i.e., rice, millet, and similar grains, which, even if flour is prepared from them and water is added to their flour, do not come to a state of leavening but to a state of decay [sirḥon].

The important question we need to answer here is whether there is something fundamentally different about rice when compared to the five grain species that can become chametz. And is there any scientific support to the claim that rice spoils sooner than it ferments?

The Chemistry of bread making

To get at the answers we need to remind ourselves how plants make and consume starch. They take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and water from the soil, and using the energy contained in sunlight (and the magic of chlorophyll) convert the two into a large sugar molecule we call starch. Plants use this starch to store and provide them with energy.

If you grind up wheat (or many other species of grain) you make flour which contains loads of starch. In addition to starch, flour contains proteins and enzymes which become important when the flour is mixed with water. Without going down a rabbit-hole of detail, here in general is what happens. First, an enzyme called beta-amylase breaks the large starch molecule down into a smaller molecule called maltose which is made up of two molecules of glucose. Another enzyme, maltase, breaks down each molecule of maltose into two molecules of glucose which is then broken down further to provide the plant with energy. Here is what it looks like:

From Lloyd, James R and Kötting, Oliver (July 2016) Starch Biosynthesis and Degradation in Plants. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester.

If you add some yeast into that mix, a chemical reaction called fermentation occurs. Yeast, which is a fungus, consumes glucose and turns it into carbon dioxide and ethanol, which is an alcohol.

As the flour and water and yeast all mix together, two proteins in the flour called gliadin and glutenin (which are glutens) give the dough mixture its characteristic body, which strengthens the more it is mixed. The dough traps the carbon dioxide that is given off by the yeast cells, which causes the bread to rise. And that gives us the leavened bread we call chametz.

Of course when matzah is made, we do not add yeast to the dough. But there are yeast particles in the air and these will inevitably land on the dough where they will act in the same way, consuming glucose and creating carbon dioxide and alcohol. This process is much slower than when yeast is added when bread is made, but the plain dough will rise a little as a result.

The differences between grains and rice

Resh Lakish (together with those sages of the schools of Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Eliezer ben Ya’akov) claim that unlike grains, rice does not ferment when water is added to it. Instead it spoils. That’s why it may be eaten on Passover (unless of course you are an Ashkenazi Jew, in which case you still can’t eat it, but for another reason we’re not going to get into). Is this in fact the case?

I know next to nothing about plant biology. But Dr Angus Murphy does. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Plant Science at the University of Maryland, and wrote the textbook on plant physiology. Dr. Murphy was kind enough to have a long chat with me over the phone and he agreed with the suggestion that grains and rice do very different things when mixed with water. The wheat seed is surrounded by the endosperm, which is itself covered by the aluerone layer. This aleurone is rich in amylase which as you recall is needed to breakdown starch into glucose (which is eaten by yeast which releases carbon dioxide and alcohol which causes the dough to rise…) However (most species of) rice do not contain this aleurone layer. So they have very little amylase, which means that it takes them a much longer time to convert starch into glucose. In fact it takes so long that by the time there is enough yeast in the dough for it to start to rise, bacteria in the air will have colonized the mixture and started breaking down the proteins in the dough. And that protein breakdown is what makes the mixture spoil, and which is what the Talmud calls סירחון. To conclude, Professor Murphy thought that the Talmud’s description of the difference between grain and rice was firmly based in plant biology.

The fine print and the final verdict

Distribution of variou types of amylases in rice grains. (Beta-Amylase activity was expressed in terms of maltose mg liberated in 3 min at 30°C by 1 g of ground rice samples.) From Ryu Shinke, Hiroshi Nishira & Narataro Mugibayashi. Types of Amylases in Rice Grains. Agricultural and Biological Chemistry 1973; 37:10, 2437-2438

Of course things are a little more complicated than that. (They always are.) Different kinds of wheat flour contain different amounts of amylase. Fine bleached white flour contains less amylase than say whole wheat flour, because the aleurone layer in whole wheat flour has not been broken down. Similarly, different species of rice contain different amounts of amylase, so that while standard white rice has very little, brown rice has considerably more. During talmudic times, the wheat flour would have been far less processed than any of the flour we would use today. As a result it would contain more amylase, and would have risen faster than would today’s supermarket flour..

But as a rule of thumb, the Talmud is, biochemically speaking, spot on. When mixed with water, the five species of grain from which matzah may be made do undergo fermentation even without the addition of yeast, while rice will spoil long before the fermentation process becomes noticeable.

Pesachim 31b ~ A Dog's Sense of Smell

Today we will discuss the wonders of a dog’s sense of smell, prompted by this Mishnah:

פסחים לא, ב

חָמֵץ שֶׁנָּפְלָה עָלָיו מַפּוֹלֶת הֲרֵי הוּא כִּמְבוֹעָר. רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל אוֹמֵר: כל שֶׁאֵין הַכֶּלֶב יָכוֹל לְחַפֵּשׂ אַחֲרָיו

Chametz (leavened bread) upon which a rockslide has fallen is considered as though it has been eliminated, and it is not necessary to dig it up in order to burn it. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: Any leavened bread that has been covered to such an extent that a dog cannot search after it is considered to have been eliminated.

The next question is of course, just how deeply buried a piece of chametz needs to be before “a dog cannot search after it”?

תָּנָא: כַּמָּה חֲפִישַׂת הַכֶּלֶב — שְׁלֹשָׁה טְפָחִים

It was taught -how deep will a dog search for something [using his sense of smell]? Three handbreadths

A tefach is a little more than three inches or around 8 cm (at least mine is) so if your chametz is accidentally buried at a depth of less than 9 inches, you have to dig it up and destroy it before Pesach. But any deeper, and it can stay where it is, because a dog will not search for it at that depth. Right?

Wrong.

But first, the bad news. There aren’t any scientific studies that have looked at a dog’s ability to detect buried chametz. I know this because I have looked. So we will need to use a surrogate measure of their sniffing ability. Instead of chametz, let’s look at their ability to detect something else. Buried human remains.

Search Dogs

In a 2003 study published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, researchers collected fresh human tissue together with fresh animal remains “obtained from the meat department of a local grocery store” and buried them at various depths. They then tested the ability of four dogs (a Rottweiler, two German Shepherds and chocolate Labrador) with various degrees of training to find them. It is was a hard test for the dogs, and not all were able to find the samples. But one of the German Shepherds (a six year-old with five years of training) was able to detect skeletal human remains buried two feet underground. The trial was not repeated using loaves of bread, so we cannot know if this ability could detect chametz at that depth, but there is no reason to think otherwise. But two feet is just for beginners. In 2014, while searching for a missing teenager, dogs found human remains buried an astonishing fifteen feet underground.

Other studies have tested the ability of dogs to smell buried explosive mines in war zones. The success of the dogs depends on the weather, how much explosive the mine contains, and the depth at which it is buried. Some dogs could detect explosive buried 25cm beneath the soil. That’s three talmudic tefachim.

Dog’s can even smell cancer

“The idea of canines for disease detection can be traced back to 1989, when a woman noticed her dog constantly sniffing a mole on her leg that later turned out to be malignant melanoma”

— Williams H, Pembroke A. Sniffer dogs in the melanoma clinic? Lancet 1989; 333 (8640): 734.

Using their incredible noses, dogs have even been trained to detect the smell of cancer. “Since the first proof of principle study in 2004 showed that dogs could detect cancer at a better rate than chance, at least six follow up studies have confirmed these findings” wrote a team of neuroscientists in a 2014 paper published in the journal Cancer Investigation. “Through the use of blood, urine, feces and breath, it seems clear that dogs possess the ability to detect cancer in human bodily fluids.” They have been used to detect breast, prostate, ovarian, bladder and lung cancer, with varying degrees of success, as the table shows. The authors also note that a lot depends on the dog - and its handler. “Dogs that had been previously trained for other scent detection work, such as explosives, were highly effective at correctly identifying cancer, while those without any previous experience in scent detection generally performed worse. While some research has shown that varying dog breeds did not significantly alter performance, it should be further studied, especially due to the high levels of specialization attainable by breeds such as German Shepherds and Basset Hounds that are preferred by law enforcement.”

Summary of Canine Cancer Detection Studies. From Spencer W. Brooks et al. Canine Olfaction and Electronic Nose Detection of Volatile Organic Compounds in the Detection of Cancer: A Review, Cancer Investigation, 2005. 33:9, 411-419.

The Nose of an Average Dog

Later in this tractate the Mishnah reminds us how challenging it can be to make general rules about things like dough and chametz:

פסחים מח, ב

רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אוֹמֵר: לֹא כׇּל הַנָּשִׁים וְלֹא כׇּל הָעֵצִים וְלֹא כׇּל הַתַּנּוּרִים שָׁוִין

Not all women [who are kneading the dough], not all wood, and not all ovens are the same

Rabbi Akiva’s point is that there are a lot of factors that effect the process of baking, and making general rules about the process is difficult. He may have said the same about the ability of a dog’s nose to detect things buried in the ground, or under a pile of rocks, or even inside a person. It depends on the dog, its trainer, and what exactly it is looking for. So while there may be some super dogs who could detect chametz buried to a far greater depth than three tefachim, the Talmud isn’t interested in rules for super dogs. Just your average one. And so it declared three tefachim to be the maximum depth of buried chametz that legally needs to be dug up. Any deeper, and you can leave it be. Just hope the dog doesn’t find it.

The Great Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter

Get ready to witness the glorious conjunction this Monday evening, Dec 21.

MONDAY evening, December 21st is a special time for those who gaze upwards.  If you look towards the south western sky soon after sunset, you will see an unusually bright light close to the horizon.  The bright light is actually coming from two planets which are so close together that to the naked eye they appear to be almost a single object.  Welcome to the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter.  For many centuries this event was an omen of terrible things to come, and occupied the attention of several medieval Jewish scholars, perhaps most notably Abraham Ibn Ezra.

The patterns of the great conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter. Three consecutive conjunctions move across the sky and fall in a pattern that is nearly (but not quite) the vertices of an equilateral triangle. This idealized illustration is by the great astronomer Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum 1597. p9. The 2020 conjunction would be at position 23, the first in the sign of Aquarius. The next conjunction will be at position 24, in the sign of Libra.

What exactly is a conjunction?

A conjunction triangle (trigon) for Saturn-Jupiter conjunction (top) and a partial conjunction sequence across the zodiac (bottom). From Etz, Donald V. "Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn." Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 94 (2000): 174-78.

A conjunction occurs when two or more bodies in the sky appear very close to each other. Saturn and Jupiter are the two outermost planets in our solar system that are visible to the naked eye. They usually appear far apart from each another as they wander across the night sky. Saturn appears to orbit the earth once every thirty years or so; Jupiter orbits every twelve years. As they do so, faster moving Jupiter catches up with Saturn every twenty years, much as a faster runner overtakes a slower one as they race around a track. That’s a conjunction. The stary background against which these conjunctions appear changes over longer periods of time. The conjunctions move through the twelve signs of the zodiac, each occurring 240 degrees removed from the previous one. If the first occurs in Aires, the next will occurs in Sagittarius which is 240 degrees away, and the next in Leo. These conjunctions form a rough triangle inside a zodiacal circle, and the three signs so related are known as a trigon, as shown in the diagram. In relation to the fixed stars, it takes some 900 years for a conjunction to appear near to the starting point of the sequence. [1]   

View of the solar system 16 Astronomical Units from Jupiter. . See how when viewed from the earth, Jupiter appears to cover Saturn which is some 400 million miles away. From SkySafari v. 4.4

Over the last few months Saturn and Jupiter have appeared closer and closer together. While in reality they are 400 million miles apart, from here on earth Jupiter will appear to cover Saturn. They haven’t looked this close since 1623, and won’t appear this close again until 2080. So don’t miss it. Afterwards, they will begin to appear as separate objects, and move father and father apart.

How to spot the conjunction

Looking southwest from the eastern United States at 5.20pm on Monday Dec 21. This is what you can see if there are no clouds. Note how Aquarius is in the background. That is what is meant by the conjunction “being in” Aquarius.

Exactly when the conjunction is best seen depends on where you live. It will be visible for only a couple of hours after sunset. On the east coast of the US, it will be visible from dusk until 7.07pm. In London, England the sun sets at 3.54pm. Dusk begins around 4.35 and you will have until 5.50pm before the two planets set.  In Jerusalem dusk begins around 5.10pm, and you will have until 6.35pm.

What happens if it is cloudy?

Come back the next night.  Unlike a solar eclipse, the conjunction is a slowly moving event. If it is cloudy one night – even if that night is Dec 21st, just come back the next night and take a look. The two planets will have moved apart a little, but only a little. It is still worth a look. No special equipment is needed. Oh, and one more thing. It is just luck that this conjunction occurs on the shortest day of the year, known as the winter solstice. The two are not otherwise connected.

 The Conjunction as an Omen

Conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter occur every twenty years or so and for humankind the vision of the two planets united as one was a harbinger of plague, war, famine and pestilence, an omen of terrible things to come. Or not.  

Although there are several lengthy discussions in the Talmud about the influence of the planets on the fate of humanity, none makes any mention of conjunctions.  But writing about three hundred years after the close of the Talmud, Saadia Gaon (d. 942C.E.) mentioned the belief of the terrible consequences of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in his introduction to the Book of Daniel.[2] He explained a belief that the twenty-year conjunction of the planets allowed for predictions to be made about individual kings. The conjunctions that occurred every 238 or 258 years could be used to make predictions about families, and those that occurred in a cycle of 944 or 964 years “influenced the governance from one nation to another.”[3] However, he did so only to reject the notion that these conjunctions or indeed any planetary alignments were of consequence. They were nonsense, as fanciful as other means of divination like the “observation of the organs of animals, such as the liver and the shoulder blade, of eggs and the like.” 

Indeed, things have come so far as the claim that the nations in their countries and the people of every kingdom they rule—their fate is determined by the judgments of the stars. They have relied in all this on the conjunction of the two superior planets, I mean Saturn and Jupiter. For they find that both of these planets are in conjunction once in a period of approximately twenty years… However, the Lord, may He be exalted and magnified, has made it known in His books that none of the wise men know anything about the duration of the kingdoms and their ends…[4]

 Saadia’s rejection of astrology was shared by Maimonides in his Iggeret Teiman, an epistle about many aspects of faith written to the Jews of Yemen around 1173. 

I note that you are inclined to believe in astrology and in the influence of the past and future conjunctions of the planets upon human affairs. You should dismiss such notions from your thoughts. Cleanse your mind as one cleanses dirty clothes. Accomplished scholars whether they are religious or not, refuse to believe in the truth of this science…

 For while the Gentiles believe that our nation will never constitute an independent state, nor will they even rise above their present condition, and all the astrologers, diviners, and augurs concur in this opinion, God will prove false their views and beliefs, and will order the advent of the Messiah…This is the correct view that every Israelite should hold, without paying any attention to the conjunctions of the stars,…[5]

The Conjunction in the writings of Ibn Ezra

Perhaps unaware of these objections to astrology, or perhaps in spite of them, several later rabbinic scholars wrote about the astrological consequences of planetary conjunctions in general, and of the Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in particular.  The most famous of these was the biblical commentator, grammarian, poet and astronomer Abraham Ibn Ezra (d.1167), who, “by incorporating astrological ideas into his influential biblical exegesis…promoted the smooth absorption of astrological content into the hard core of Jewish culture.”[6]

Among the fourteen books he wrote on astronomy was Sefer haMachbarot (The Book of Conjunctions), in which the influence of the conjunction of the two planets was discussed in great detail.[7]  Ibn Ezra believed that the sun and planets, together with the constellations across which they appeared to travel through the night sky influenced the fates of nations, cities and religions.  Jupiter in Aires held sway over Iraq, Saturn in Libra over Rome. The sun held sway over Christians, Saturn over the Jews, and Venus over the Moslems.[8] Like all of his contemporaries, Ibn Ezra’s astrology paid additional attention to conjunctions, of which the most important was that of Saturn and Jupiter.  These conjunctions had influenced the births of prophets and leaders, including Moses, Jesus and Mohammed.[9]

 רק דבר מנוסה היא שאריה ושמש לאדום, ובו הייתה המחברת טרם שיולד האיש שחושבים שהו אלוה...והמחברת ההוא תרם קום נביא הישמעאלים לפי דברם היתה במזל עקרב

 “The conjunction [of Saturn and Jupiter] took place before the birth of the man they consider to be God…and the conjunction [of Saturn and Jupiter] in the sign of Scorpio took place before the emergence of the prophet of the Moslems.”

 Ibn Ezra did not just emphasize the importance of the conjunction in his many esoteric works of astrology. He included it his commentary on the Torah, in a long passage found on Exodus 33:21, printed in any edition of the Mikraot Gedolot.

ודע כי כל הצמחים והחיים בארץ והעוף והבהמה והחיה והרמש וכל אדם קשורים בעליונים. כי הכללים קשורים בארבעים ושמונה צורות הגלגל...

והנה המחברת השניים העליונים במזל טלה היא בכל תשע מאות וששים שנה. ושניהם סובבים ממזל התחברותם אל מזל תשיעי בכל עשרים שנה. ככה יתגלגלו שתים עשרה פעמים עד מאתים וארבעים שנה. ומשם יתגלגלו כמספר הזה ובדרך הזה במזלות העפר. גם במזלות הרוח. גם במזלות המים

ובעבור זה אמר ה' אחר אשר חלק. ואתכם לקח ה' להיות לו לעם נחלה. ככה לא כאלה חלק יעקב כי יוצר הכל הוא. וזהו ונפלינו אני ועמך. וזהו שאמרו חכמינו ז''ל אין מזל לישראל כל זמן שהם שומרי התורה. ואם לא ישמרוה ישלוט בהם המזל כאשר הוא מנוסה. כי כל מחברת ומזל דלי במערכת רעה. הנה יבא רעה לשונאי ישראל. והיודעים חכמת המזלות יודו כן. והנה היתה במערכת השמים במחברת שיעמדו בגלות מצרים עוד שנים רבות. ובעבור שצעקו אל השם ושבו אליו הושיעם השם. וכאשר יקרה לכלל כן יקרה ליחיד על כן שומר תורה אשרהו

Know that all plants and everything that lives on earth, all birds, domesticated and wild quadrupeds, and other animals, and all human beings, depend on the celestial bodies, because the species depend on the forty-eight constellations of the orb

 … The conjunction of the two uppermost planets [i.e., Saturn and Jupiter] in the sign of Aries takes place every 960 years, and both revolve from the sign of their conjunction to the ninth [following] sign every 20 years, and they repeat this cycle twelve times to make up two hundred and forty years. From there they repeat this cycle the same number of times and in the same manner in the earthy signs, in the airy signs, and in the watery signs….

It is because of this that [Scripture] states, “which the Lord thy God has allotted” (Deut. 4:19); “But you hath the Lord taken ... to be unto Him a people of inheritance, as ye are this day” (Deut. 4:20); “The portion of Jacob is not like these, for he is the former of all things” (Jer. 51:19). This is the meaning of “so that we are distinguished, I and Thy people” (Ex. 33:16).  This is what the Sages mean by “there is no mazzal for Israel” (B. Shabbat 156a)—as long as they observe the Torah…

But if they do not observe the Torah, then the zodiacal sign rules over them, as has been proven by experience, for any conjunction [of Saturn and Jupiter that takes place] when Aquarius is in an evil configuration results in harm to Israel. Those versed in astrology admit that a conjunction took place in a configuration which meant that they would remain in exile in Egypt for many more years, but because they cried out to God and returned to Him, He saved them.[10]

 From Ibn Ezra we also know that Solomon Ibn Gabriol (d.1058) and Avraham bar Hiyyah (d. ~1140) believed that it was possible to link the conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter to a calculation of the arrival of the Messiah. Ibn Ezra was critical of these eschatological attempts, but not of the significance of the conjunctions and their important role in astrological computations.[11]

 The provenance of Ibn Ezra’s astrology was of course Jewish in so far as he cited many Talmudic passages that discussed the influence of the stars and planets.  But it contained much more from non-Jewish works of astrology. His work was “an accumulation of sources and doctrines that go back to the very beginnings of the astrological literature.” [12] This includes ancient Egyptian and Babylonian sources, as well as later Hellenistic works by Ptolemy. In fact, Ptolemy was “Ibn Ezra’s most important astrological and scientific source, to whom he refers in his entire work more frequently than to any other scientist or astrologer.”[13]  He also mentions several Islamic scholars on whom he based his work, of which the most prominent was Abu Ma’shar Ghafar Ibn Muhammad Ibn Umar al-Balkhi (787-886). Ibn Ezra’s astrology had an influential role in the spread of Abu’Ma’shar’s ideas into the west. In the thirteenth century his Sefer Olam was translated first into French and from there into Latin. Much of it was incorporated into the fourteenth century supercommentary on Ibn Ezra by Joseph ben Eliezer Bonfils known as Zafnet Paneach.

The Conjunction in the writings of Avraham bar Hiyyah

Avraham bar Hiyyah (c.1070~1145) was an extremely influential Catalonian mathematician and astrologer. He wrote two famous works on astronomy, Tzurat Ha’aretz and Heshbon Mahalakh HaKochavim and in a lesser known work of astrology called Megillat HaMegalleh he detailed how the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter explained the course of Jewish history.[14]  Moses was born under the influence of a conjunction, he fled Egypt during one, and stayed in Midian until there was a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Scorpio.[15]  With the next conjunction it became time to punish the kingdom of the wicked Pharaoh.

ובעלי האומנית הזאת סבורים שבדבוק הרביעי הזה ברח משה מלפני פרעה אל ארץ מדין ועמד שם עד הדבוק החמישי כשנתחבו שניהם במזל עקרב. ואין אנו יכולים לבטל את דבריהם ולא לקיימם מפני שאין אנו מוצאים ברברי רבותינו ז״ל מספר הימים אשד עמד

... והדבוק הניע אל מזל עקרב אחר הדבוק הזה בשנת י״ב מן המחזור קכ״ט שנת אלפים תמ״ד לעולם. ומזל עקרב הוא בית מלכות הרשע והוא מן המזלות השולטות על מצרים לדברי אנשי החכמה הזאת. ובדבוק הזה הגיע זמן מלכות פרעה הרשע להשמד ולהחרב.

Those who subscribe to this system believe that during the fourth conjunction [of Saturn and Jupiter] Moses fled to Midian from Pharaoh Midian until the fifth conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the constellation of Scorpio. We cannot be sure about this calculation because we do not have anything from the rabbis [of the Talmud] about the length of time this took.

After that conjunction, then next one moved towards the constellation of Scorpio in the 12th year of the 129th cycle, in the Year 1,444 of creation. Scorpio is one of the constellations that rules over Egypt, according to the astrologers.  During this conjunction the time arrived to destroy and desolate the kingdom of the wicked Pharaoh...

 The conjunctions continued to influence both general and Jewish history, with a rule that whenever they occurred with Pisces a calamity of some sort would befall the Jewish people.[16]

ואתה רואה בכל עת אשר היה הדבוק נופל במזל דגים שהוא מזל הדבוק הראשון היה מתחדש על ישראל מאורע קשה

 With copious calendrical precision bar Hiyyah details the fall of the kingdoms of Judea and Israel and the association with the conjunctions. In contrast he notes that the birth of Jesus was not heralded by a conjunction, because “he was belittled and despised by his people, and he never reached greatness in this world.”[17]

 ואמרו שבשנת ג׳ אלפים תשצ״ג“ לעולם שהיא שנה אחת לפני הדבוק הזה נתלה ישו בן פנדירא שחיק עצמות ולשנה אחריו יצאו תלמידיו הפריצים הרעים להטעות את העולם. ואין אתה מוצא בדבוק הזה ולא בדבוק אשר לפניו אות ללידת ישו התלוי הזה מפני שהיה שפל ומאוס בעיני עמו ולא היתה לו גדולה בעולם כל ימי חייו אבלי אלו הרשעים תלמידיו החיו אח זכרו אחרי מותו… וכן לא היה כח לאנשים הרשעים האלו ולא עלה להם זכר כל ימי הטריגון הזה  

In the year 3793 of creation, which was one year before [a] conjunction, Jesus (ben Pandariah), may his bones rot, was crucified. The following year his wicked disciples spread their attempt to trip the world into error.  The birth of Jesus the crucified was not heralded by a conjunction because he was belittled and despised by his people, and he never reached greatness in this world in his life. However his wicked disciples continued his memory after his death…But these wicked people had no influence and so they were not foretold in the prior conjunction..

 One of the impossibly frustrating features of astrology is the way in which different astrologers interpret astronomical events. The birth of Jesus is a perfect example. According to Ibn Ezra it was foreshadowed by a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction. But in the schema of Avraham bar Hiyyah it was an unimportant event and as such it was not heralded by a conjunction. Not only did the two disagree about the historical significance of the founder of Christianity. They also disagreed about when the Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions even fell.

The Prognostication of 1166

In 1166 there was to be another conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, and astrologers of many faiths composed horoscopes of sorts, known as prognostications. One of these, written in Hebrew, used to be attributed to Ibn Ezra, since it is found in an Oxford manuscript after his Sefer Hame’orot. However, based on a philological analysis, it is unlikely to have been written by him, and cannot have been written by Avraham bar Hiyyah since he had died long before the prognostication was composed. Its anonymous author remains unidentified, though was most likely a Jew living in Aragon.[18]  The prognostication demonstrates the seriousness with which a Saturn-Jupiter conjunction was taken. Here are some excerpts: 

The following prognostication was made in [4]914 [1153-54 C.E.] concerning a [forthcoming] prognostication [to occur on Sunday July 31, 1166]…the conjunction will take place in Capricorn…Since the conjunction will be retrograde, it will be very strong and powerful…

This [conjunction] indicates a consolidation of the affairs of kings who have inherited their kingdom from their fathers... [By way of contrast] every conspirator and traitor not of royal seed will be weak and abased.  This is a major indication concerning the Christian kingdom; their regency will be strengthened, whereas the strength of the conspirators of al-Masmud [19] will dimmish, their kingdom will fall and perish, and their alliance will be scattered…

There is hope for our nation in these years of the conjunction, with the help of God, kings will honor them, elevate them, make them great, and join with them…

The sun will enter the beginning of Aires in the middle of the ninth hour of Wednesday the 20th day of Jumada I according to the reckoning of the Moslems…or in the evening of March 23…All this indicates the success of the king of Aragon in that year and the increase of his greatness…in the first years of the conjunction crops will increase. But in the fourth year there will be death and great famine in the lands of Qedar…

The people [of Israel] will move from their place to other land…many warriors will rest from war…. Wonder will be seen in the East, and in the Land of Israel new things will happen, as also in other land. The summer will be made temperate, and the heat of the sun will be milder…Blessed be God who knows future events, for there is none like him. Blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.  Amen.

וברוך האל היודע העתידות כי אין זולתו. ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד

The Conjunction in the writings of Lev ben Gershon

Levi ben Gershon (1288-1344) was a French polymath who mostly referred to astrology is his main work, Milchamot Adonai. In addition there is a single manuscript held at the University of Cambridge which contains Levi’s prognostication for the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter that occurred on March 14th, 1345 (10 Nisan 5105).[20] Avraham bar Hiyyah had noted this conjunction in his Megillat ha-Megalleh, and had considered it in his messianic calculations, which were based on a date derived from the Book of Daniel. Levi ben Gershon predicted unrest and turmoil for the next decade that would come to a head in 1355. But he never lived to test the accuracy of his prognostication, for he died in April 1344.

Now I say that it is known by experience that a conjunction (machberet) of Saturn with Jupiter signifies great and general events. When it takes place in [one of] the airy [zodiacal] signs, its impact is of great strength. When it takes place in a fixed (omed) sign, its impact will last for many days. This is the case for the conjunction to take place on 28 March [13]45…

According to [the planetary] configuration it indicates the destruction of a nation and a kingdom by a nation of a different religion. This will begin to happen in the tenth year[after]the aforementioned conjunction according to this configuration because this conjunction will take place in the third house that signifies religions…According to what is manifest in [the planetary] configuration the evil for these countries will begin from the north. Since Saturn and then Mars will dominate this conjunction, this indicates extraordinary evil with many wars, visions, and miraculous signs…Since the conjunction is strong and Mars is eastern and also will dominate the ascendant, it indicates the spilling of much blood and increasing enmity, jealousy, hatred, strife, famine, various diseases, drought, and dearth….

On account of Saturn it indicates much disease, senseless enmity, strife, destruction of places, collapse, and the sinking of ships in some seas. The conjunction with Mars indicates burning heat in some latitudes, many dry exhalations, comets and for most of the inhabited[world], wars, calamities, death by the sword, killing, and destruction… 

Up to here [is all that] he revealed and added nothing more, for he [Levi] was beckoned to the Upper Academy, may his soul be bound up in the bond of [everlasting] life.

 Levi’s prognostication carried considerable weight and was translated into Latin at the request of Pope Clement VI. In hindsight it was applied to the terrible European outbreak of bubonic plague that began only three years later, and as a result additional attention was paid to Levi’s forecast.[21] The French astrologer Johannes de Muris (c.1320-1350) also prognosticated for the Pope and was certainly aware of Levi’s predictions. “It appears” he wrote, “that the Jews will expect the Messiah before a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter recurs, which will be within ten years, rather than at another time.” [22]

The Conjunction in Western Thought

The ominous conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter continued to be a cause for alarm in the west during the early modern period. In 1583 a conjunction was to occur that ended the watery trigon of Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, and would begin the fiery trigon of Aires, Leo, and Sagittarius. These rare circumstances, not having occurred in more than 1,500 years, were dire. Astrologers predicted upheavals and the end of the world. The English Franciscan philosopher Rodger Bacon, (d. c.1292) had predicted that the conjunction of 1583 would be catastrophic:

When the conjunction has changed from this triplicity to another one, as from the end of Cancer to the beginning of Aries, it is then said to be the greatest one, through the revolution of Saturn thirty-two times, and happens every nine hundred and sixty years, and has reference to changes in empires and kingdoms, to impressions of fire in the air, to flood, earthquake, and dearness in the price of food.[23]

Contemporary astrologers of the time updated Bacon’s prognostication and predicted a terrible future. The English astrologer Richard Harvey wrote a grim book titled Astrological Discourse upon the great and notable Conjunction of the two superiour Planets, SATURNE & IUPITER, which shall happen the 28 day of April, 1583. He predicted “eyther a finall dissolution, or a wonderfull horrible alteration of the worlde.” There would be cold weather, floods, hatred, violent oppression, “waterie and fierie calamities” and the world would be spared only due to the second coming of the savior.[24] Another astrologer, Robert Tanner was certain that the conjunction meant that “the latter dayes of the worlds destruction to be neere at hande, & that the comming of our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ to judgement, will not bee long.”[25] But when none of these calamities occurred these prognostications were used by those who opposed the astrology and its foundations.

Today, echoes of the belief that misfortune may follow a conjunction remain. The name of the winter viral disease influenza comes from the Latin influentia, meaning influence, for it was believed to be caused by astral alignments, among which was the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. Contemporary professional astrologers remain concerned, though they couch their prognostications in modern language. “Not only will Jupiter and Saturn be uniting in Aquarius, they will also be forming a catalytic square aspect with Uranus in Taurus. At this pivotal moment in our journey, the lightning bolts of Jupiter and Uranus will not only bring down old societal structures but will also impel us to release old personal dreams and drama we have been attached to. There will be new challenges and unknown potential arising as we begin a new era of Jupiter and Saturn that we will need to make space for in our lives.”[4]  Whatever that means.

 The spectacular 2020 conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter takes place following a year of world-wide pandemic misery but will occur within a few days of the start of vaccinations. The ominous celestial omen has become a harbinger of good news. 

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For the much shorter version on Tradition Online, click here. For a PDF version of the essay click here.

Notes

[1] Donald V. Etz, "Conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn," Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 94 (2000).

[2] The work is only known is manuscript form from the Cairo Genizah, with sections held in libraries in the Antonin Collection at the Russian National Library and Cambridge University. The reconstructed text was published in a 2004 paper in Aleph.  See Haggai Ben-Shammai, "Saadia’s Introduction to Daniel: Prophetic Calculation of the End of Days Vs Astrological and Magical Speculation," Aleph 4 (2004).

[3] Ibid. 70-72.

[4]   “The polemical nature of Saadia’s writing here is unmistakable. As a point of departure for understanding the argument, we may assume that it was directed against Jewish proponents of astrology, especially as they related to the book of Daniel and the prediction of a timetable for the ultimate Redemption.” Ibid.

[5] Available at https://www.sefaria.org/Iggerot_HaRambam%2C_Iggeret_Teiman.12?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en.

[6] Shlomo Sela, ed. Abraham Ibn Ezra: The Book of the World. A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Two Versions of the Text., 2 vols., vol. 2. Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Astrological Writings (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 1.

[7] The work was titled both Sefer HaMachbarot and Sefer Haolam, though Ibn Ezra subsequently used only used the second of these titles. There are three manuscript versions of the work, two of which are held at the Vatican Library. One of these was published in 1937 by J.L. Fleischer using the Vatican MS Ebr. 390, and is available here. For a review of the scientific writings of Ibn Ezra see "Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scientific Corpus Basic Constituents and General Characterization," Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 11 (2001).

[8] Yehudah Leib Fleischer, Sefer Haolam (Berehovo: Haladas, 1937). 14, 19.

[9] Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra: The Book of the World. 164-165.

[10] Ibid. 272-279. As Sela notes, there are textual variants in the Mikraot Gedolot, and his translation, which is used here, is based on a collation of fifteenth-century manuscripts.

[11] Ibid. 9.

[12] Ibid.11.

[13] Ibid. 14.

[14] "Abraham Bar Ḥiyya's Astrological Work and Thought," Jewish Studies Quarterly 13, no. 2 (2006). The work is available here.

[15] J. Guttman, Sefer Megillat Ha-Megalleh Von Abraham Bar Chija (Berlin: A. Poznanski, 1924).122.

[16] Ibid.126.

[17] Ibid. 136.

[18] Bernard R. Goldstein, "A Prognostication Based on the Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1166 [561 Ah]," in Studies in the History of the Exact Sciences in Homor of David Pingree, ed. C. Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

[19] Goldstein identifies the term as referring to one of the principal Berber ethnic groups in North Africa. See ibid. 748.

[20] MS Cambridge, heb., Add. 1563,folios 104b:20-106a:8. For a detailed description and translation see Bernard R. Goldstein and David Pingree, Levi Ben Gerson's Prognostication for the Conjunction of 1345 (American Philosophical Society, 1990).

[21] Cedric Cohen Skalli and Oded Horezky, "A Fifteenth-Century Reader of Gersonides: Don Isaac Abravanel, Providence, Astral Influences, Active Intellect, and Humanism," in Gersonides’ Afterlife: Studies on the Reception of Levi Ben Gerson’s Philosophical, Halakhic and Scientific Oeuvre in the 14th through 20th Centuries, ed. Ofer Elior, Gad Freudenthal, and David Wirmer (Leiden: Brill, 2020). 201.

[22] Goldstein and Pingree, Levi Ben Gerson's Prognostication. 37. Another Jew, Violas de Rodez  wrote  a detailed political prognostication in Hebrew for the year 1355. However, since this was not based specifically on a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter, we will not consider further. For details see Hagar Kahana-Smilansky, "Violas De Rodez’ Political Prognostication for the Year 1355: Reaction to the Prognostications for 1345–1355?," in Gersonides’ Afterlife: Studies on the Reception of Levi Ben Gerson’s Philosophical, Halakhic and Scientific Oeuvre in the 14th through 20th Centuries, ed. Ofer Elior, Gad Freudenthal, and David Wirmer (Leiden: Brill, 2020). For a critical translation see "Violas De Rodez’ Astrological Prognostication for the Year 1355: Introduction, Text and Translation," Aleph 18, no. 1 (2018).

[23] R Burke, The Opus Majus of Francis Bacon (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1928). Vol. 1, 284-285.

[24] Margaret Aston, "The Fiery Trigon Conjunction: An Elizabethan Astrological Prediction," Isis 61, no. 2 (1970). The work is available online here.

[25] Ibid. As Margaret Aston has pointed out, William Shakespeare composed some lines that referenced the non-events of 1583 in his Henry IV part two (iv, 261-265.)

[26] From here.  There are hundreds of similar predictions available online.