When Were The Middle Ages?

The Middle Ages are conventionally defined as when ancient civilization collapsed and recovered in Western Europe. The usual date given for the start of the Middle Ages is 476 when the last Western Roman Emperor was deposed. Wikipedia gives the following dates as having been proposed for the end of the Middle Ages:

1500 (an arbitrary round number)

1492 (first transatlantic voyage of Columbus; end of Reconquista)

1453 (fall of Constantinople)

1517 (Protestant Reformation)

1485 (Battle of Bosworth Field)

1516 (death of Ferdinand II)

1504 (death of Isabella I)

Except for 1453 all these ending dates are West Eurocentric, as is the focus on Western Europe in the definition of the Middle Ages. That geographc focus is too restrictive. Western civilization started in northeast Africa and southwest Asia (see my chronology here). Any account of Western civilization should cover everything that happened between the Iranian Plateau and the Atlantic Ocean.

IMHO if the Middle Ages are supposed to be what happened in the West between the effective end of Roman Empire hegemony over the Mediterranean Basin and the rise of modern Western civilization, they should be defined in terms of as when Christianity and Islam fought for supremacy between the Iranian Plateau and the Atlantic Ocean. In any case, there was no abrupt transition from antiquity to medieval or from medieval to modern. The transition periods should be defined by ranges of dates rather than single dates.

So here are my proposed ranges, both of which are conveniently 297 years long.

Transition from antiquity to medieval:

325: First Council of Nicaea: Christianity is standardized sufficiently for it to become (towards the end of the century) an official state religion

622: Hegira

At the end of the first transition period, the two transnational Abrahamic religions are in place and ready to start fighting over what used to be the Roman Empire.

Transition from medieval to modern:

1492: First transatlantic voyage of Columbus (start of European takeover of the rest of the globe); Fall of Grenada (end of Moslem rule in Western Europe)

1789: French Revolution (The Europeans now have finished assembling the social and political institutions that will enable them to finish their takeover of the rest of the globe. In particular, what used to be Christendom, but now is partially secularized, now is overwhelmingly more powerful than any other society generally and the Islamic Ummah in particular.)

If you still insist on a single date, 476 is as good a date as any for the start of the Middle Ages. The usual dates for the end of the Middle Ages are about 150 years too soon. My candidate is 1648 and the Peace of Westphalia, in which the countries of Europe agreed to stop fighting over religion, thereby formally abandoning the legal fiction of a single renewed (Holy) Roman Empire with a single (Catholic) state religion.

Some Mitzvot have Expiration Dates

How eternal is the Torah, really?

In Niddah 61b, Rav Yosef says

מצוות בטלות לעתיד לבוא

which the William Davidson Talmud translates as

mitzvot will be nullified in the coming days 

Except that some mitzvot already have been nullified.

Some mitzvot have explicit expiration dates. One obvious example is the rites of dedication of the mishkan, as described in Sh'mot chapter 29.  Another example is the prohibition of intermarriage among the tribes, in Bamidbar chapter 36, which, according to Rava in Bava Batra 120a, was in force for only one generation:

אמר רבא: אמר קרא (במדבר לו, ו) "זה הדבר" - דבר זה לא יהא נוהג אלא בדור זה. 

William Davidson Talmud translation:

Rava said that the verse states there: “This is the matter that the Lord has commanded” (Numbers 36:6), meaning: This matter will not be practiced except in this generation.

Indeed, RaMBaM does not include mitzvot that have explicit expiration dates among his 613.

Other mitzvot are nullified by historical circumstances. The clearest example of this is the nullification of the prohibition of marrying Ammonite and Moabite converts. Here is how that nullification is presented in Mishnah Yadayim 4:4:

בו ביום בא יהודה גר עמוני ועמד לפניהן בבית המדרש.

אמר להם, מה אני לבוא בקהל.

אמר לו רבן גמליאל, אסור אתה.

אמר לו רבי יהושע, מתר אתה.

אמר לו רבן גמליאל, הכתוב אומר (דברים כג), 'לא יבא עמוני ומואבי בקהל ה' גם דור עשירי וגו .

אמר לו רבי יהושע, וכי עמונים ומואבים במקומן הן, כבר עלה סנחריב מלך אשור ובלבל את כל האמות, שנאמר (ישעיה י), ואסיר גבלות עמים ועתודותיהם שושתי ואוריד כביר יושבים.

אמר לו רבן גמליאל, הכתוב אומר (ירמיה מט), ואחרי כן אשיב את שבות בני עמון, וכבר חזרו.

אמר לו רבי יהושע, הכתוב אומר (עמוס ט), ושבתי את שבות עמי ישראל [ ויהודה ], ועדין לא שבו.

התירוהו לבוא בקהל.

Sefaria translation:

On that very day, Yehuda, an Ammonite convert, came and stood before them in the Beit Midrash, and said to them, "What is my status with regard to whether I can enter [via marriage] into the congregation [of Israel]?" Rabban Gamliel said to him, "You are prohibited." Rabbi Yehoshua said to him, "You are permitted." Rabban Gamliel said to him, "The verse says, (Deuteronomy 23:4) 'An Ammonite and a Moavite may not enter into the congregation of the Lord, even to the tenth generation,' and so forth." Rabbi Yehoshua said to him, "And are the Ammonites or Moavites still [dwelling] in their own place? Sancheriv, king of Assyria, already arose and blended all the nations, as the verse says, (Isaiah 10:13) 'I have removed the borders of nations, and I have plundered their treasures, and like a great warrior laid low the inhabitants.'" Rabban Gamliel said to him, "The verse [also] states, (Jeremiah 49:6) 'And afterwards I shall return the captives of the children of Ammon,' and they are already returned." Rabbi Yehoshua said to him, "The verse [also] states, (Amos 9:14) 'And I shall return the captives of my nation Israel,' [and Judah], and they are not yet returned." They [the Sages, subsequently] permitted him [the Ammonite convert] to enter into the congregation.

The historical circumstance that nullified this prohibition was the Assyrian policy of population exchange that mixed all ethnicities.

Now for my agenda. A whole set of mitzvot that have been nullified by historical circumstances are all the mitzvot associated with sacrificial worship.Statistically, all Jews are mamzerim (see here and here), from which it follows that there no longer are any true kohanim.

So what was sacrificial worship doing in the Torah in the first place? I'm with RaMBaM on this one. You can read RaMBaM's take on sacrificial worship in The Guide for the Perplexed Part III Chapter 32 (which, unless you can read the Arabic original, you may as well read in English because the Hebrew version also is a translation). Sacrificial worship was supposed to be a temporary expedient that was destined to be outgrown. First, it was limited to a specific location and had to be performed by the members of a specific extended family. Next (and this is where I go beyond RaMBaM) the system was designed to gradually invalidate the members of that extended family. We didn't get the hint after the Babylonians destroyed the first Temple, so God had to send the Romans to destroy the second Temple.

So there is no point in building a third Temple.

All Jews are Mamzerim III

Another consequence of all Jews being statistically mamzerim is that, despite what The Temple Institute says, it is forbidden to renew sacrificial worship. If all Jews are statistically mamzerim, it follows that all male descendants of Aaron  are statistically halalim, and so are not kohanim. Sacrificial worship requires the participation of kohanim. For example, the sacrifice of an animal includes at least four steps: slaughtering the animal, collecting some of its blood, carrying the blood to the altar, and offering the blood on the altar. Only the first step may be performed by a non-kohen.

A halal (חלל) is the son of a kohen and a woman whom he is forbidden to marry. Those who want to renew sacrificial worship might argue that the son of a kohen who is "just" a halal (for example, a son of a kohen and a divorcee) may participate in sacrificial worship. As RaMBaM states (הלכות ביאת מקדש ו:י)

כהן שעבד ונבדק ונמצא חלל עבודתו כשירה לשעבר ואינו עובד להבא ואם עבד לא חילל שנאמר ברך י"י חילו ופועל ידיו תרצה אף חולין שבו תרצה

Chabad translation:

When a priest performed service and afterwards, his [genealogy] was checked and it was discovered that he was a challal, his previous service is acceptable, but he may not serve in the future. If, however, he does [continue] to serve, he does not desecrate the service. [This is derived from Deuteronomy 33:11]: "May God bless His legion and find acceptable the work of his hand." [implied is that] He will find acceptable even the desecrated among them.

But this is not the case for a halal who is also a mamzer. The Encyclopedia Talmudit article on halal says that there are differences of opinion among the Rishonim about whether sacrificial worship by a kohen mamzer is valid retroactively; but nobody maintains that a kohen mamzer is allowed to participate a priori in sacrificial worship. RaSHBA (reference 466 there) distinguishes between sons of women who are prohibited only to kohanim (פסולי כהונה), to whom Devarim 33:11 applies, and sons of women who are prohibited to Jews generally (פסולי קהל), to whom Devarim 33:11 does not apply.

Robert E. Lee Was Not Stupid

I am approaching the end of the Audiobook version of Jubilee by Margaret Walker. It has inspired me to surf the Web to learn more about the US Civil War.

One of the issues that is covered is: given the great Union superiority in manpower and industry, why did the Confederacy think it could win. The answer seems to be cotton. In 1860, two-thirds of the world's cotton was produced by the US. The English textile industry got all of its cotton from the US. All of that cotton was grown in the southern US. The Rebels just assumed that the British, desperate for cotton for their mills, would send the Royal Navy to break the Union blockade. In the end that didn't happen. English textile mills were shut down for about a year after they used up their pre-war stockpiles and were scrambling to find alternate sources of cotton, but find alternate sources they did, in India and Egypt. The Rebels had no Plan B for fallback.

Another issue that is covered is the wisdom of Lee's invasions of the North. Some historians argue that Lee was stupid to invade the North. The argument against invading the north seems to be that all the South needed to do to win was play defense to hold on to what it had at the beginning of the war, and Lee was very good at defense. But both times he invaded the North he was badly beaten, at Antietam and at Gettysburg.

Actually, Lee's invasions of the North were his own Plan B. To explain that, I need to refer to something that I blogged in April 2015. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, the Prussians said "Never Again!" and organized an army strong enough to make an invader think twice before invading. Now here is something I learned from this YouTube video. At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Prussia was small and economically weak, and its potential enemies, Austria, Russia and Sweden, all were major European powers. The only chance Prussia would ever have to win a war would be to take crazy risks and hit the enemy army hard when the enemy army wasn't expecting an attack. The Prussians never bothered planning for a war of attrition because they knew a priori that they never could win a war of attrition. This style of grand strategy worked so well (most of the time) for the next 200 years that in 1871 what used to be little puny Prussia now had become the German Empire, a Major European Power. Except that the German Army still thought like the old Prussian Army and didn't plan for wars of attrition, even though, as a Major European Power, Germany was now in a position to contemplate wars of attrition. This conceptual failure came back to haunt them in the Fall of 1914 and at the end of 1941, when their great offensive Plans A failed and they hadn't bothered to formulate a Plan B.

Back to Lee. Lee knew perfectly well that there was no way that the Confederacy could win a war of attrition against the Union, and without British intervention on the side of the Confederacy that was what the war had become by the middle of 1862. The only hope the Confederacy had to win was by imitating Prussia, and that is why Lee invaded the North. The only remaining question is why Lee kept fighting after Gettysburg, when he knew the war was lost. Maybe it was a matter of honor. Maybe he was hoping the politicians would come up with something,