Dear Editor,
I wait all week for the paper to come and I enjoy it immensely. I especially enjoy the weekly articles by Rabbi Yaakov Astor in the Yated. But as I was reading his article on Parshas Noach titled “The Stones Beneath Our Feet,” I came across a perplexing point in the paragraph titled “The Grand Canyon of Israel.” He seems to suggest that the fossils in the Ammonite Wall were sea creatures wiped out by the Mabul. But this seems to contradict the Gemara in Perek Chelek, which says that the fish did not die in the Mabul. If you can please forward my question to Rabbi Astor, it would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
C.S.
A Lakewood mesivta bochur
RESPONSE:
Good question. Ammonites were shelled sea creatures, not fish in the usual sense, although we don’t know whether Chazal would have included them under the term dagim.
In any case, Rav Avigdor Miller writes explicitly in The Beginning, his commentary on Bereishis (on 7:11 and 7:22), that enormous numbers of fish were killed and fossilized during the Mabul. So the Gemara’s statement that fish were spared doesn’t necessarily mean that every individual fish survived. The fossils at Makhtesh Ramon would be consistent with that picture.
Kol tuv,
Yaakov Astor
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