About what were rabbis ahead of the times?

Question

I have heard claims that experts in the world of Torah were significantly ahead of their counterparts in the world of natural science (or mathematics, or psychology, or…) in that they knew X (some fact) centuries before the scientists/whatever did. I've never seen evidence of any of these claims. Is there any such true claim?

To be precise: Is there any scientific/similar fact (or fiction) which is now accepted by the establishment but which was claimed by rabbis generally or by some famous rabbi before it was accepted by the (non-Jewish) establishment?

(Answers with good evidence only, of course.)

Answer 1

Ralbag (Gersonidies) has the earliest known use of a proof by mathematical induction in his mathematical work Maase Hoshev (1321 CE).

Source: Rabinovich, N. L. (1970). Rabbi Levi Ben Gershon and the Origins of Mathematical Induction. Archive for History of Exact Sciences, 6(3), 237-248. Available in JSTOR here.

(For comparison, the prevalent thought before the above article was written was that mathematical induction was first used explicitly by Pascal ~1665 CE.)

Answer 2

I would say the biggest explanation ahead of its time was not by the rabbis, but by the Torah, steadfastly defended by even the most rational rabbis in the face of prevailing secular thought. Up until 1929 (and perhaps even as late as 1949), the leading view in astronomy was that we lived in a steady-state universe with no beginning and no end. People often talk about the clash between Big Bang theory and ma'asei bereshit, but in fact they are much more in line with each other than the prevailing secular theories up until that point.

For those numerologists out there, Tehillim 147:4 "He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name. ד. מוֹנֶה מִסְפָּר לַכּוֹכָבִים לְכֻלָּם שֵׁמוֹת יִקְרָא:" With 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, there are 22! = 1.1x10^21 possible permutations, pretty close to the number of stars in the observable universe (if shin and sin are counted separately, as they should be, you get 23! = 2.6x10^22, even closer to the "correct" number) [as an interesting aside, this is remarkably close to the number of grains of sand on the beach: 5x10^21 according to some estimates]

And for my favorite, which doesn't really count as preceding modern science, but is cool anyways, Tehillim 148:3 "Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all stars of light. ג. הַלְלוּהוּ שֶׁמֶשׁ וְיָרֵחַ הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל כּוֹכְבֵי אוֹר:" Isn't "stars of light" redundant?? NO! there must also be stars of darkness, i.e., black holes!

I'm not really a big kabbalist, but from what I understand of the sefirot, it is conceptually very similar to our modern particle physics theories of symmetry breaking.

Answer 3

Dr. Jeremy Brown, in a post on his Talmudology blog on science in the Daf Yomi, points out that Rava, quoted in Yevamot 97a, provides the first published claim that boys' puberty can be delayed by their being either overweight or underweight.

כי אתו לקמיה דרבא אי כחוש אמר להו זילו אבריוהו ואי בריא אמר להו זילו אכחשוהו דהני סימנין זמנין דנתרי מחמת כחישותא וזמנין דנתרי מחמת בריותא

Whenever people came [with such a case]* before Raba, he used to tell them, if [the youth was] emaciated, ‘Let him first be fattened’; and if he was stout, he used to tell them, ‘Let him first be made to lose weight’; for these symptoms disappear sometimes as a result of emaciation and sometimes they disappear as a result of stoutness.

* Of one who reached the age of twenty without having produced two hairs.

(Translation and footnote from Soncino [PDF])

Dr. Brown points out that these associations have only been confirmed in the scientific literature in the past fifteen years, citing two papers as the first published confirmations of excessive weight and insufficient weight, respectively, being associated with delayed puberty in boys:

• Lee, Joyce M., et al. "Body mass index and timing of pubertal initiation in boys." Archives of pediatrics & adolescent medicine 164.2 (2010): 139-144.

• He, Qing, and Johan Karlberg. "BMI in childhood and its association with height gain, timing of puberty, and final height." Pediatric research 49.2 (2001): 244-251.

(Hat-tip to Rationalist Judaism.)

Answer 4

Rabbi Y.L. Rapaport suggested that R' Yehoshua Ben Chananiah's statement

(כוכב אחד לשבעים שנה עולה ומתעה את (הספינות

(בבלי מסכת הוריות דף י עמוד א)

This is thought to refer to the periodicity of Halley's comet, about 1500 years before Halley discovered this.

In regards to comments suggesting that this claim is unfounded, I note that several reputable sources give credence to this interpretation:

• Jastrow's dictionary translates this as: "Here is a certain star (comet) which appears once in seventy years."

• The Soncino translation gives a footnote: "The star with which R. Joshua was acquainted has been identified as Halley's comet whose periodic time is about 75 years. Brodetsky, Z. disputes this view, since one of the periodic returns of Halley's comet was in the year 66, whereas the journey of R. Gamaliel to Rome was in the year 95. It remains nevertheless remarkable that the periodic time of at least one comet was known to R. Joshua in the second century, about 1500 years before this phenomenon became known even to the most civilized nations. V. Feldman, W.M. Rabbinical Mathematics, pp. 11 and 216."

• The interpretation of Halley's comet is accepted by R. Patai in his book "The Children of Noah: Jewish Seafaring in Ancient Times" (Princeton University Press 1998) and I. A. Ben Yosef in his paper "The Concept of Nature in Classical Judaism", among others.

Answer 5

If we're counting mathematical comments by rishonim (Medieval Scholars), then in addition to @DoubleAA's reference to Ralbag (Gersonidies) who has the earliest known use of mathematical induction, other Jews have made some strides here as well.

R. Avraham bar Chiyya has an interesting proof that the area of a circle is equal to half its radius times circumference. This is also shown in Tosfos to Sukka 8a, who I presume got it from Avraham bar Chiyya.

In addition, while this is no scholarly source, there's a magazine article discussing how Maimonides/Rambam was the first to state that pi is an irrational number. However, seeing as the Rambam doesn't prove this, it seems like he was just saying that his own instruments weren't able to measure pi precisely.

Of course, cases like these merely show that these Jews were involved in science and mathematics, and may have made discoveries in those fields.

Answer 6

The Ramban, in his commentary on Bereishit, writes that there were only two actual "creations" and the rest were more of "formations". He says that the two things that were actually "created" were light (and the resulting difference between that and darkness) and a "small point that had no substance" (נקודה קטנה שאין בה ממש). This seems to be a reference to the Big Bang, in which there was a large amount of positive energy that was in a very small "point".

Answer 7

Apparently Rambam said:

בבוקר אכול כמלך, בצהריים כבן מלך ובערב כאביון

eat breakfast like a king, lunch like the son of a king and dinner like a pauper.

among his other advice for health which seems to have stood the test of time.

I read about this study last year which seems to confirm the wisdom of the above advice:

High caloric intake at breakfast vs. dinner differentially influences weight loss of overweight and obese women.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE:

Few studies examined the association between time-of-day of nutrient intake and the metabolic syndrome. Our goal was to compare a weight loss diet with high caloric intake during breakfast to an isocaloric diet with high caloric intake at dinner.

DESIGN AND METHODS:

Overweight and obese women (BMI 32.4 ± 1.8 kg/m(2) ) with metabolic syndrome were randomized into two isocaloric (~1400 kcal) weight loss groups, a breakfast (BF) (700 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 200 kcal dinner) or a dinner (D) group (200 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 700 kcal dinner) for 12 weeks.

RESULTS:

The BF group showed greater weight loss and waist circumference reduction. Although fasting glucose, insulin, and ghrelin were reduced in both groups, fasting glucose, insulin, and HOMA-IR decreased significantly to a greater extent in the BF group. Mean triglyceride levels decreased by 33.6% in the BF group, but increased by 14.6% in the D group. Oral glucose tolerance test led to a greater decrease of glucose and insulin in the BF group. In response to meal challenges, the overall daily glucose, insulin, ghrelin, and mean hunger scores were significantly lower, whereas mean satiety scores were significantly higher in the BF group.

CONCLUSIONS:

High-calorie breakfast with reduced intake at dinner is beneficial and might be a useful alternative for the management of obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Here's a write up on the study in the Wall Street Journal, apparently it was done in Israel:

Bigger Meals Earlier Can Help Weight Loss

Answer 8

It seems that Rambam anticipated certain aspects of Einstien's General Relativity.

The traditional view was that time is absolute and constant:

"Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external."

Issac Newton

However, in the Guide to the Perplexed, Rambam sees time as something not having an existence of it's own, but deriving from the movement of bodies, and that time is not constant but variable. This is in contradiction to Midrash Rabbah Genesis which sees time as existing prior to the creation of our world.

...of these it is very difficult to form a correct notion, especially when the accident which forms the substratum for the other accident is not constant but variable. Both difficulties are present in the notion of time: it is an accident of motion, which is itself an accident of a moving object; besides, it is not a fixed property; on the contrary, it's true and essential condition is, not to remain in the same state for two consecutive moments. This is the source of ignorance about the nature of time.

Guide: M. Friedlander 1881

I have to credit my wife with pointing this out to me.

Mendel Sachs says the following in his paper Changes in concepts of time from Aristotle to Einstein in the Journal Astrophysics and Space Science:

From my reading of the twelfth century scholar, Moses Maimonides, he proposed a variation of Augustine's 'time' wherein the time that was created with the matter of the universe and it's laws was to be a manifestation of matter, rather than a 'thing-in-itself'. Indeed, the latter view is closer to Einstein's interpretation of time in his twentieth century theory of General Relativity, as we will discuss later.

Answer 9

The Baal HaTanya writes:

והיינו הגוף שלהם גדול כ"כ שהוא בבחי' מקום ומאחר שהם בבחי' מקום הרי הם ג"כ בבחי' זמן שהמקום והזמן שניהם הם נבראים בבחי' א

So in other words, time cannot exist without space, and space cannot exist without time, they are one type of creation.

Although I'm not sure the exact date of this Maamar, given the style it would seem to be somewhere between 1798 and 1813.

At that time Newtonian physics was what was popular, and in it (according to Wikipedia) space and time are not interconnected at all. This view was abandoned with special relativity around 1905.

Answer 10

Torah Shleimah (BeReishis 1:1 note 30) quotes the Rama in Toras HaOlah who says that Chazal (Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah 3:1, BaMidbar Rabbah 13, Zohar VaYikra 10, Zohar Chadash 15) knew the earth was round before the non-Jews (he gives the date that they knew as 5252, i.e. 1492, whereas Wikipedia claims that it was already known by that time that the world was round).

Answer 11

Chazal knew that metal utensils can absorb the taste of food, despite being seemingly perfect. Modern engineers also discovered that micro-fissures are created in metal by expanding and contracting, letting the taste of food enter it.

See Dave's answer to "Blias" in today's pots and pans.

Answer 12

Here's another "grain of salt" answer. If you accept the Vilna Gaon's drasha on Melachim Aleph 7:23, then Shlomo HaMelech knew pi to be 333/106=3.14151, a value not surpassed in accuracy by the scientific community for more than 1000 years, with Ptolemy's publication of 3.1416 in c150 CE.

Answer 13

The theory of the diurnal rotation of the Earth. According to this article in Isis, the journal of the History of Science Society,

After the Twelfth Century, references to the theory [of the diurnal rotation of the Earth] multiply, there being in the subsequent era at least six writers who discuss the hypothesis. Five among these, AL-SHIRAZI, ABU-L-FARAJ, AL-KATIBI, GIOVANNI CAMPANO DA NOVARA, and Saint THOMAS AQUINAS reject it... Its lone advocate is RAB HAMNUNA THE ELDER, who is described in the Zohar as stating in his "Book" that the inhabited world "turns round in a circle like a ball."

It should be noted that Gershom Scholem rejected this reading of the Zohar, and argued that the correct reading was not מתגלגלא, but סגלגל, which means round, and therefore does not indicate rotation of the Earth (see note 163 here). However, in his recent critical edition of the Zohar, Daniel Matt preserves the printed version's מתגלגלא. (However, I have not seen his translation, and Scholem also argues that even if the word reads מתגלגלא, it should be understood as "round" and not "revolves.")

Answer 14

I saw a presentation which gave 2 specifics (though I'm no scientist and had to take the presenter's word for it):

that the gemara posits a 10 dimensional universe (or some number like that) and science is now coming around to a similar view [I found this which seems to be related]

that the gemara puts an embryo turning into a fetus (first heartbeat) at 40 days and science eventually comes up with 42 days or some such.

but again, I'm a liberal arts guy so take with as many grains of salt as you wish.

Answer 15

An excerpt from Alei Shur (Shaar Rishon Ch. 12 p. 56):

והנה בערך בזמנו של רבנו הקדוש היה חי באלכסנדריא האסארונום הגדול פטולימייוס מחבר ספר האלמגסט שמתוכו למדו אסטרונומיא עד הזמן החדש. כאשר נודע לפטולימייוס זה על מחזור הי"ט שנה והידיעות הברורות בחשבון סיבוב הלבנה וכו' עליהן הוא מתבסס - השתומם מאד, כיצד היתה בידי חכמי ישראל ידיעה שחכמי האומות טרם עמדו עליה, וכתב שזה מוכיח שהיתה ביניהם נבואה. דבר זה מספר ר' יצחק אברבנאל בפרושו על התורה פ' בא עה"פ החדש הזה לכם ד"ה והלימוד הג

In approximately the time of Rabbeinu HaKadosh there lived in Alexandria the great astronomer Ptolemy, author of the book The Almagest, from which astronomy was learned until recently. When Ptolemy became aware of the 19 year cycle and the clear knowledge of the calculations of the rotations etc. on which it is based - he was flabbergasted, how could there be in the hands of the Sages of Israel knowledge which the scholars of the nations had only just discovered, and he wrote that this proves that there was prophecy among them. R' Yitzchok Abrabanel tells of this in his commentary to the Torah, Parshas Bo, on the verse "This month is for you" s.v. the third topic.

Apparently the world's most preeminent astronomer acknowledged that the Rabbis knew some astronomy before the rest of the world did.

Answer 16

Nidah 51b states: “All fish that have scales also have fins and are kosher, but there are fish that have fins but do not have scales and are unkosher".

Answer 17

Rabbi Abraham Zacuto (1452-1514) was a contemporary of Leonardo da Vinci, a leading astronomer who stood at the cradle of great geographical discoveries of 16th century, advised Columbus and guided Vasco da Gama, was a luminary at the Court of Kings of Spain and Portugal, merged science and Kabbala, taught at Salamanca University and lived in the Templar-built mysterious Castle of Tomar, travelled through the Orient from Tunis to Constantinople, to find his eternal rest in Jerusalem. Rabbi Zucuto perfected the astrolabe, which only then became an instrument of precision, and he was the author of the highly accurate Almanach Perpetuum that were used by ship captains to determine the position of their Portuguese caravels in high seas, through calculations on data acquired with an astrolabe. His contributions were undoubtedly valuable in saving the lives of Portuguese seamen, and allowing them to reach Brazil and India. While in Spain he wrote an exceptional treatise on astronomy/astrology in Hebrew, with the title Ha-jibbur Ha-gadol. He published in the printing press of Leiria in 1496, property of Abraão de Ortas the book Biur Luhoth, or in Latin Almanach Perpetuum, which was soon translated into Latin and Spanish. In this book were the astronomical tables (ephemerides) for the years 1497 to 1500, which were instrumental, together with the new astrolabe made of metal and not wood as before, to Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral in their voyages around the open Atlantic ocean (including the Southwest Atlantic) and in the Indian Ocean, to India, and to Brazil and India respectively.

See http://www.zacuto.org/

Answer 18

The Ben Ish Chai writes that the Arizal said that air has weight, and that this was laughed at with questions of why we don't get crushed. Then it was found to be true and the question was easily answered.

There is also the famous Gemara which differentiates between honey and milk.

Answer 19

There's the idea that it was remarkable how they knew about the heritability of Hemophilia or bleeding disorders.

Medicine in the Bible and the Talmud: Selections from Classical Jewish Sources
By Fred Rosner

Another link here

http://www.cirp.org/library/cultural/neusner1/

Answer 20

Chazal understand HaShem's name Shakai to mean "She-amer dai" - that the universe expanded until HaShem said enough. (http://www.jewfaq.org/name.htm)

According to prevailing scientific theory, there was an inflationary epoch, wherein the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light until "between 10⁻³³ and 10⁻³² seconds after the Big Bang", when it slowed dramatically.

Answer 21

Here's an interesting one from the end of Kesuvos (111b) - some rabbannim are trying to encourage one of their number to make aliyah. Then they give him some advice if he choses to remain in Bavel:

Do not sit too much, because it is bad for the stomach.

Do not stand too much, because it is bad for the heart.

Don't walk to much because it's hard on the eyes (not clear what this means).

Rather, divide you day between 1/3 sitting, 1/3 standing, and 1/3 walking.

You might have noticed some articles recently discussing that sitting at a desk all day has been linked with health problems, most notably more "belly fat" and shorter life expectancy. They have also found that standing raises blood pressure and is, similarly, unhealthy. The medical establishment didn't "know" this until recently.

Modern medicine recommends alternating between sitting and standing, interspersed with brief periods where you walk around.

So yeah, Chazal were 1500 years ahead of their time on that one...

Answer 22

how about this

Together we learn today that there are 7 continents, while the Torah says in Beraisheet Chapter 1 Verse 9, "And God says: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place and let the dry land appear." There should be only one continent according to that verse.

There is an explanation. Please wait.

The Zohar says "One continent came out and from this seven continents were grown. The water then filled the space between the continents and created the seven seas." The Zohar also says that these 7 continents came from a breakup of the one continent into seven.

In Proverbs Chapter 9 Verse 1 we find the following: "Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her 7 pillars." Rashi the foremost Biblical commentator explains that Wisdom is the Creator - House is The Earth. What is a Pillar? It is easy to move to the idea that 7 Pillars are seven continents.

Of course the question is how did this happen? And when did this happen?

The Zohar explains that through geological cataclysms the continents drifted apart. These Zohar statements are made 2000 years ago. Science at that time totally dismissed these teachings from the Jewish Rabbis. It was only in 1915 that the German Geologist Alfred Wegener published his book on the formation of continents and seas. (Based on the rough outline of the western side of Africa and the Eastern side of South America being similar.) Further research into the areas on both continents indicate similar fauna flora and make up of geological items in the areas where the two continents were thought to have touched. Today this is well accepted theory of continental drift due to geological movement of tectonic plates.

from: http://www.yeshshem.com/torah-and-science-4.htm#sthash.P8OgBSzO.dpuf

seems the zohar also predicted the industrial revolution Interpreting the Zohar's Prediction of the year 1840

Answer 23

One example I have heard is the amount of stars in the universe (from here):

In case you're concerned that the rabbis of the Talmud really hadn't a handle on what's going on in the skies, here's something to make you think again: The current estimate of the number of stars in the universe is about a thousand billion trillion (10^24). The Talmud (Brachos 32b) states as follows:

Each of the Zodiac constellations has 30 armies. Each army has 30 legions. Each legion has 30 divisions. Each division has 30 cohorts. Each cohort has 30 camps, and each camp has 365,000 myriads of stars.

Doing the math: 12 x 30 x 30 x 30 x 30 x30 x 365,000 x 10,000 = 1.06434 x 10¹⁸

But then we have to include the other non-Zodiac constellations, bringing us closer to the 24th power. Apparently, these rabbis had a higher source of knowledge.

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Rabbi Zamir Cohen published a book called "The Coming Revolution", bringing many examples of how "Science discovers the Truths of the Bible". This audio shiur, "Nothing New Under the Sun - Science in Torah" attempts to collect several more such examples.

Answer 24

BSD

An accepted scientific theory is that the universe was created ex nihilio.

a)This article illustrates a Jewish precursor to the Greek ideology with whom this theory is mostly attributed to. http://www.hashkafacircle.com/journal/R2_RS_exni.pdf

b)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_universe

Answer 25

In Vayikra Rabbah 27:1, Chazal make the statement that "just as the deep waters are unable to be planted and do not produce fruit, so, too, the wicked have no good deeds and do not produce fruit."

Until the mid-Twentieth Century, when advances in microscopes allowed humans to see creatures at a cellular level, it was assumed that creatures such as seaweed should be classified as plantae. It wasn't until 1969, when Whittaker proposed the 5-kingdom classification that forms the basis of how we classify species today (which now uses six kingdoms), that the kingdom Protista was created as the category in which algae belonged. In fact, plants can't live underwater, as they would "drown": osmosis would drain the water from the plants until they'd whither away.

And yet Chazal said this fact, that plants can't survive underwater.

Answer 26

Does the knowledge have to have originated directly from rabbis, or is their application of Biblical knowledge allowed too?

If the latter, certainly the laws of hygiene and nutrition were thousands of years ahead of science.

Practices such as cleanliness, quarantine, and avoiding sick people and corpses and isolating oneself when unavoidable, ensured much better general health. During the Black Plague for example, Jewish communities fared far better than the rest of Europe, precisely because of their following Biblical health rules.

There are many possible reasons why Jews were accused to be the cause for the plague. … Additionally, there are many Jewish laws that promote cleanliness: a Jew must wash his or her hands before eating bread and after using the bathroom, it was customary for Jews to bathe once a week before the Sabbath, a corpse must be washed before burial, and so on. — Jewish persecutions during the Black Death - Wikipedia

And, if the world followed the kosher laws, the influenza epidemics over the last 150 years would probably not have occurred. They almost all originated in China under conditions where ducks and swine are raised together. Ducks can catch viruses from wild birds (mostly harmless), and people can catch viruses from swine (mostly harmless), but conditions where ducks and swine live in each other's filth allow duck and swine viruses to exchange genes (extremely rare events), resulting in these sudden outbreaks where wild bird viruses are quite harmful to humans (e.g. the current Covid-19 situation).

Similarly, other outbreaks also result from non-kosher practices, such as ebola from eating bats:

It is thought that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are natural Ebola virus hosts. Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals such as fruit bats … — WHO: Ebola virus disease

and AIDS from chimpanzees:

Scientists have traced the origin of HIV back to chimpanzees and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), an HIV-like virus that attacks the immune system of monkeys and apes. — History of AIDS

Answer 27

According to some manuscripts of Shabbat 113b¹:

"Reish Lakish said: Why is Babylonia called Shinar? It is because all the waters of the Flood were deposited there [ninaru lesham]."

It was first discovered in the early 20th century that flood-deposits in Mesopotamia point only to the event of an ancient localized flood. See here for example.

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¹ Munich 95, possibly Oxford 366, Vatican 108, NLI: 4° 1149.4, Vat. ebr. 487/82-85 and Oxford: Heb. d. 63/27.

Answer 28

Many people, specifically Breslov chasidim put a huge emphasis on being happy. Nowadays scientists are beginning to say that being happy mentally actually effects the body physically in a positive way.