Interesting, because I've heard precisely the opposite solution suggested -
as Rabbi Adlerstein said, not everyone believes Arneves is a rabbit because
of this problem. What the rabbits do, by the way, is called something like
"carthapasia." "It's not chewing its cud, it's merely disgusting." That's
how it was described at a Discovery seminar.
In any case, I have some comments on Rabbi Adlerstein's other issues:
>1) Does anybody actually know what the four animals mentioned by the Gemara
>are? How could you really know what their proper translation is?
It is pretty obvious that these aren't certain. That doesn't in and of
itself invalidate the proof derived. One cannot say that the verse is not
accurate, because one way or the other, we only have four clear categories
of animals that are prohibited. No matter how you slice it, it would have
been extremely foolish for any human author of moderate intelligence to
make this claim.
>3) What happened to the llama? Are you really going to convince someone
>that it is a type of camel?
You need a biologist for this one. Apparently Rabbi Noach Weinberg once
visited a zoo, and was troubled to notice that the hippopotamus was
described as having... a cloven hoof! However, he then noticed that
biologists have classified the hippo in the pig family. I am not making
this up; it's a pig. An extremely large pig, but a pig. Somehow it seems
less difficult to group the llama and camel together than a hippo and piglet.
>4) Is that really what the Gemara says? I always thought that what the
>gemara meant is that it would have been very foolish for a human author to
>commit himself to to a description of a land he never saw, and was told he
>would never see. How would Moshe know that they would find these four, and
>not seven, or not three? Better, if there were a human author, to just
>describe the two signs of kashrut, and let those who entered the land apply
>the principles! This argument I can understand. But then again, skeptics
>I have met who had background in biblical criticism would never buy it,
>because they believe (chas v'shalom) that the passage was written hundreds
>of years after they already got into the land!
I would agree with them - this is a lousy proof, and it's difficult to
imagine that this is what the Talmud meant. Indeed, I'd never heard this
explanation until now - it has _always_ been described to me as "how did
Moshe know that no other such animals existed in _all_Creation_?" Who
explained the verses as meaning anything else?
Certainly the common interpretation is that all Creation was included,
making this a strong claim indeed. Did Moshe visit Australia? How could
anyone know that we would never discover another animal - outside the pig
family - that has a cloven hoof yet does not chew its cud?
Michael Voytinsky wrote:
>One could just as easily argue that the fact that this is in the Torah is
>clear evidence that this was known at the time of writing.
According to this interpretation, that argument would not hold - so when
was the Torah written? 1920? Moshe may have been a brilliant man, but he
clearly did not visit every corner of the globe, certainly not the
Australian continent!
Yaakov Menken