SaraCFL:
No need to apologize. But can you clarify? Are you saying that your mother and brother counted one pomegranate and it had exactly 613 seeds? Are you saying that they counted many pomegranates and consistently found that they had exactly 613 seeds? I personally have counted several pomegranates and never found one with 613 seeds. Also, even within a specific variety, there are always different sizes. It does not seem particularly logical that there could be a variety in which every pomegranate has the same amount of seeds, because there isn’t any variety in which all the pomegranates are the same size. Now it could be that within one variety, all the pomegranates are somewhat similar and therefore there could be a variety in which the average pomegranate has 613 seeds, but as I pointed out to Sam2, there wouldn’t be any way to determine that. If you counted 1000 pomegranates and came up with an average of 613 seeds, you could just count one more pomegranate and the average could change to 614 seeds. Now it’s also possible that the rabbinic statements about pomegranate seeds, were not intending to be so precise; in other words they simply meant that there are around 613 seeds, perhaps say, as range of 550-650. It’s possible, but it would be severely limiting their statements to an approximation about one variety. And I still wouldn’t be sure if that could be, because it’s possible that even within a variety there is a big range of size. In the pomegranates I have counted, I have gotten some closer to 600 and some closer to 1000. Now I don’t know if they were all the same variety, so I am speculating somewhat.