On Sheki'ah, Tzeis, Latitudes, Domes,
the Science of Chazal and More:
Zmanim
A Shiur given Sunday morning, May 21, 2023, at the
Midwest Torah Center in South Bend, Indiana
where the Mara D'Asra is my good friend Rabbi Elie Ginsparg.
The dome over the sky idea was Persian astronomy as well. The Persians were better at observation than the Greco-Roman tradition, even if their theories were weaker. For example, they had better star maps.
ReplyDeleteNow, the sun appears to move slower at sunrise and sunset. They didn't know to associate this with refraction and why spoons look bent when the bottom half is in the water and the top sticks out into the air. This bending of light means that light is more bent near the horizon. So, the sun looks like it is slowing down because the distance looks shorter to us. We actually see it going below the horizon, and the light it bent so it reaches us. Ands in fact, the light from the bottom of the sun is bent more than the top, so that at sunset the sun is an orange oval.
Again, they didn't know all this. They just see the sun slow down and turn into an oval. The idea that it changed direction to go under and behind the dome fits the data well. And the Roman orbit idea didn't even attempt to explain this.