Off-By-One Error
Who knows twelve? I know thirteen!
I write a Daf Yomi column for the New Jersey Jewish Link, selecting one page from the week. It used to be the following Sunday’s page, since Sunday is my day in the maggid shiur rotation at Rinat. A few people suggested I instead cover the preceding Sunday’s daf, since the column focuses deeply on some point on the page, and therefore assumes familiarity with the general page’s content. So, my column is off-by-one week.
In computer programming, an off-by-one error is common, especially in loops and when dealing with collections of items. Collections, called arrays, in many programming languages begin at 0 rather than 1. And we use the < symbol, meaning less than, or the <= symbol, meaning less than or equal, to figure out when to terminate a loop. Being off-by-one means examining the wrong item of an array, or going just a bit too far such that our program crashes, or else going not far enough.
My latest column for the Link (here and better formatted, here), on Nedarim 25, deals in part with an off-by-one error, where manuscripts correctly have twelve but it is written as thirteen in printed text. This has greater import than it may seem.
The title of the column is properly “Snakes, On A Plane”. Yes, the comma was deliberate, because I was speaking of planar snakes and only obliquely referencing the movie. (The editors hypercorrected it to remove the comma.) Under discussion is a great snake in the days of King Shapur, so large that it was able to swallow thirteen bundles of straw. The Talmud Bavli (and parallel Yerushalmi) takes this account as literal, rather than fantastical, explicitly contrasting it with the preceding Mishnah’s statement that speaking of a snake (perhaps as long / thick) as a olive-press beam is exaggeration. Yet it seems like the fantastical or mythological azhdaha, especially when considering the details in the Yerushalmi parallel’s account, of tricking and killing the giant snake by feeding it camels laden with camel bags filled with straw and glowing coals.
A snake swallowing something on the scale of twelve camels doesn’t seem scientifically sound, except as the origin of the dinosaurs or, as in The Little Prince, of hats.
Alternatively, the fantastic account could be allegorical, referring to the famous Red Snake, a defensive wall second only to the Great Wall of China. The allegory could be to its use in repelling attacks by the Roman Emperor Julianus.
However, one big cue that this was exaggeration or allegory is that there were thirteen bundles of straw fed to the snake. As discussed in the column, thirteen is frequently Talmudic language of guzma, exaggeration. To undermine this, we must consider that the number intended was actually twelve. This then has practical significance in the Yerushalmi parallel — see column — but regardless, twelve isn’t such a magic number.
The Aramaic תרי is cognate with Hebrew שני, because of a tav / shin switch-off, and a lamnar-based resh / nun switch-off. The Aramaic תלת is a cognate of Hebrew שלש, again because of that tav / shin switch-off. The Hebrew עשר, ten, becomes a suffix סר for the Aramaic teens. So twelve is תריסר while thirteen is תליסר. Again we should note the lamnar phonemic group and realize the ease in which the lamed may be mistaken for resh, so an oral error is plausible. Admittedly, there’s some orthographic similarity between a lamed and resh, but oral seems more likely than written here.
Consulting Hachi Garsinan for variants, we find this:
That is, the two printed texts (Vilna and Venice) have תליסר, thirteen, while their two manuscripts, Munich 95 and Vatican 110-111 have תריסר, twelve.
Oh, well.
I still believe that an allegorical or mythological interpretation is correct (despite difficulties making that work with the gemara). But we should go in eyes open, and realize what is and isn’t valid support. This off-by-one error is indeed significant.