Debate Responses
This argument assumes modern biological categories that older sources did not use.
This argument assumes modern biological categories that older sources did not use.
Older Hebrew, Aramaic, and Laaz terms were often broader than modern zoological labels. A word could describe the creature’s visible body, movement, shape, or general “creeping” form, not always its exact scientific classification.
A snail and a slug are not random opposites. They are closely related in appearance and movement. Both have a soft, creeping body. The difference is that one has a shell and one does not. So if a Rishon uses a word like limtza or tolaas, that does not automatically exclude a shelled sea-snail. It may describe the soft creature inside the shell, or its general worm-like form.
This is not like saying a fruit was once called a hammer. Words shift, but usually within a related zone of meaning. A term for a slug-like creature being applied to a snail-like creature is a normal kind of shift.
Chosam Shel Zahav makes this point in a few ways. It notes that the chilazon is called a tolaas, but also brings the Rambam in Peirush HaMishnayos explaining chilazon as tzadaf, a shell. It then argues that the creature is like the snails we know, whose form is worm-like even though they have a shell.
Bottom line:
Tolaas and limtza are fair questions, not disproofs. They show that the chilazon was described in broad creature-language, not modern taxonomy. A soft-bodied creature inside a shell can still be described as worm-like or slug-like.
