The Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Central American Indians all had extremely advanced calculations relating to the lunar cycle. None of them had gotten this information from the Torah. Conversely, the Rambam states that the numbers used by Chazal are very slightly imprecise, yet, it isn’t due to their lack of the correct values, but in order to enable easier calculations. It is an error, he says, that does not change the date of the Molad when used with witnesses.
Our calendar sanctified by Hillel Sheni, though, IS problematic, since it is Julian and not Gregorian. Anyone opening a siddur to “tal umotor” will see that in every century those words are added a day later. Pesach DOES occur later than T’fufas Nissan by now, and Succos crosses into cold wintry weather, due to the accumulation of 2 weeks’ error since the time of Hillel. It has been proposed that, while knowing that this would be the fact, Hillel chose to use an existant callendar to facilitate the coming generations in having a working system, rather than to have the Jews using their own solar callendar in addition to lunar one. It has also been suggested that nobody envisioned the actual length of the golus before being mekadesh al pi eidim will resume, and, therefore, having few days artificially added would do no harm, as the tekufos would still be preserved. While nobody today can know with certainty Hillel’s reasoning, it is a solid fact that our traditional callendar, as practiced, is way off, but until the 15th century neither the Jewish sources, nor the Roman/European scientific ones ever mentioned being aware of this discrepancy.
Instead of today’s style of bashing the scientific advances as “done by goyim, whose only aim is to disprove the Torah”, which in itself is an imbecilic claim, Chazal embraced knowledge, and used it. They were so sure of the absolute truth of the Divine laws, that they never feared that a new discovery would shake the foundations of their faith. Today people are afraid, but instead of fearing their own ignorance they place the blame on those doing the research, as having sinister motives. Please, which astronomer examining the evidence for Black Holes, or which geneticist finding the molecular code for Tay Sachs did so in order to destroy the Biblical value system or to prove Rabbi so-and-so wrong?
The same benighted fools who yell “shtusim” and “kefira” from these pages run to the doctor for antibiotics, get their X Rays and MRI’s, fly on airplanes, and yes, listen to radio, all invented or discovered by those useless scientists who are drones, duds, and convince others of veracity of their research only to obtain more funding.
Who are the hypocritical fools after that?