Ctrl Alt Del,
Avram, my point is valid either way.
I’m not sure about that. You posited that our sages brought the 18 vertebrae of the spine as a motivator to the stupid masses for davening Shemoneh Esrei – but it was not meant as a motivator at all, just a connection (or an explanation of bowing during the Shemoneh Esrei). Nothing was said to the effect of, “you should daven all 18 brachos because they represent your spine…” That’s a straw man you made up.
Iss shver tzuzein a yid back then too.
Actually, I disagree with this premise too. Literacy rates for Jews was quite high, certainly much higher than in the surrounding populace. In places like Vilna even the simple Jews were engaged in learning. This is not to say that there have been periods and places where education suffered tremendously, but I would think that someone learning Gemara (where you would come across this vertebrae reference) was not a “schlep”, especially since, a few pages before the vertebrae reference, the Gemara discusses the very reasons for our tefillos (in place of the korbonos) that you claim the schlep couldn’t understand.
Yes, they didn’t have x-rays back then so they did the best they could.
I think it’s incorrect to assume that the slope of technological and scientific advancement with time was always positive (e.g., the further back in time, the more ignorant). During the time of the Gemara, batteries were in use across the Middle East. The Romans had indoor plumbing. Egyptians practiced surgery. The period right after the Middle Ages was called the Renaissance, meaning a revival, because a lot of the advancements came through rediscovery of things the ancients knew but were subsequently forgotten. I think it’s quite reasonable to assume that the sages of the gemara knew what a human spine looked like – and that we are simply unfamiliar with their particular method of categorization.