Rabbi Meiselman maintains that if the Tannaim and Amoraim expressed a definitive scientific opinion, to argue differently is likely heretical. Yet there is considerable evidence of scientific errors in the Talmud. One example concerns the shape of the earth. The Talmud clearly believed the earth to be flat, with a hard-shell, semi-hemispherical top.
The round shape of the earth impacts halacha. For one thing, it necessitates an international dateline, whose location determines when Shabbos and holidays fall. Yet there is no Talmudic discussion of the international dateline. How could the sages neglect to discuss this critical matter? The answer is clear: in a flat world, there are no time zones and therefore no international dateline. Rabbi Meiselman would doubtless label someone a heretic for espousing this view. Perhaps, then, he should burn his copies of Midrash Rabbah, wherein Rabbi Zev Wolf Einhorn (Peirush Maharzov, Bereishis Rabbah 6:8) states emphatically that the sages held the world’s surface to be flat.
Rabbi Meiselman does discuss a related matter: a debate between the Jewish and gentile scholars regarding the location of the sun at night (Pesachim 94b). The Jewish sages held that the sun goes above the skycap; the gentile scholars maintained that the sun goes under the earth. The Talmud states that the latter evidently are correct. The concession by the Talmud that its science is wrong would seem to belie Rabbi Meiselman’s thesis, but he triumphantly cites Rabbeinu Tam, who opines that in reality the Jewish sages were correct, despite the fact that the Talmud says the opposite.
Today we know clearly that both the Jewish and the gentile sages were wrong. There is no hard skycap and the sun most certainly does not go underneath the earth. Indeed, the conception that the earth has an “underneath” is based on a flat world, not the spherical one upon which we live.
Another apparent error concerns the length of the solar year. The Amora Shmuel declares that the year is 365.25 days long; a second view, ascribed to the Amora Rav Adda, gives a somewhat shorter (and much more precisely delineated) length. Both figures overestimate the year’s duration. Despite this, Rabbi Meiselman states that Shmuel and Rav Adda are both using calculations given to Moses at Sinai. The implication is mind-boggling: that God intentionally gave Moses two erroneous figures for the solar year’s length!
Rabbi Meiselman underplays the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, author of the 18th-century work Pachad Yitzchak. The Talmud states that one may kill a kinah (a louse, according to almost every opinion) on Shabbos because lice do not reproduce; rather, they spontaneously generate. Acknowledging that according to modern science there is no spontaneous generation, the Pachad Yitzchak writes that he would not kill a louse on Shabbos.
Rabbi Meiselman suggests that Rabbi Lampronti retracted after a mentor, Rabbi Yehuda Brill, retorted that we rely upon Chazal, not on scientists. However, a careful reading of Pachad Yitzchak shows no such concession.
Rabbi Meiselman tries to have it both ways: when current science confirms a Talmudic view, he adduces proof that the sages were privy to scientific truths; when science disagrees with the Talmud, he declares that science is unreliable. Which is it? Can we trust scientists, or should we disdain them? Should we blindly follow the Rambam’s view that the sun circles the earth? Or, knowing the Rambam is wrong, does that not mean the Talmud is also wrong since according to Rabbi Meiselman the Rambam’s science conforms to the Talmud’s?
Finally, regarding evolution, which Rabbi Meiselman dismisses: in a recent article he cited HaRav Aaron Soloveichik as a mentor. I personally heard Rav Aaron state that belief in evolution is not heretical.