Reply To: hashkofa help!

HaLeiVi: Is it possible you misread the gemara? Chazal’s explanation of the suns movement does indeed go both up and down. How? If you imagine a dome and a sun traveling around it, it will need to go down to the first “set” point on the dome, underneath the width of the dome and back around (this is how Rabbenu Tam comes at his 72-minute shitah: there are two sun set-like actions the sun takes in its path).

Peacemaker: With all due respect, I think you may be fudging some scientific history. Science doesn’t get “reinterpreted”; rather theories get proven or disproven. For example, Copernicus’s heliocentric theory came about by his disproving the geocentric theory. Without the geocentric theory, there was a need to explain orbit, thus the heliocentric theory. Later, Tycho Brahe proved this theory, showing it to be fact. The theory chazal had conflicts with scientific fact, not scientific theory. No one will ever come along and say, “Aha! Chazal were actually right! The sun really does go around a firmament!”