The Wisdom of the Fathers
Description
Tractate Avot of the Mishnah is generally dated in the third century and is considered the basic text of rabbinic Judaism. The present commentary proposes a critical re-evaluation of this position.
The commentary obviously tries to interpret the individual sayings of Avot as to their literary characteristics, their cultural context and their original meaning. But above all it tries to contextualize the tractate within rabbinic literature, to analyse its language/phraseology and to trace its earliest evidence and its use in later rabbinic literature. This approach will demonstrate that some sayings are well known even outside Avot already in the earliest rabbinic tradition, but that many other sayings do not reflect general rabbinic theology and seem to be almost unknown in rabbinic tradition before the late eighth century. This leads to the conclusion that only a kernel of the text existed already in the time of the Mishnah; its greater part grew in the following centuries. Only in the eighth century the tractate as we know it, reached its nearly final form and became soon popular due to the introduction of its text into the reading of the synagogue.
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Text, Translation, and Commentary
Chapter 1
1:1??? ???? ???? ????? ????? ??????, ?????? ??????, ?????? ???????, ??????? ????? ????? ???? ??????. ?? ???? ???? ?????: ??? ?????? ????. ??????? ??????? ????. ???? ???? ?????.
1:1 Moses received Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets. And the prophets passed it on to the Men of the Great Assembly.
They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment. And raise up many disciples. And make a fence for the Torah.1
Mishnah manuscripts refer to the tractate simply as Avot or "Tractate Avot" (massekhet Avot: MS Parma, massekhta de-Avot: MS Lowe). Many prayer books use the title "Chapters of the Fathers" (Pirqe Avot) and place in front of its text a passage from mSan 10:1 in the traditional enlarged wording (the whole passage is missing in MS Kaufmann): "All Israel have a part in the world to come, as it is said: 'Your people shall all be righteous; they shall possess the land forever. They are the shoot that I planted, the work of my hands, so that I might be glorified' (Isa 60:21)."
Moses received Torah from Sinai (??? ???? ???? ?????): The tractate opens with a statement about the origins of Torah. Torah appears without an article, implying that it is not referring to the Torah in the narrow meaning of the word, namely the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, or even to the Hebrew Bible as a whole, also called Torah. Rather, as used here, the term "Torah" encompasses both the written and the oral Torah (the technical term ???? ???? ?? is not commonly found in tannaitic texts), an early rabbinic idea that later became dominant, but which is found explicitly only once in the tannaitic period: "Two Torot were given to Israel, one oral and one written" (SifDev 351, F. 480: ??? ????? ????? ??? ??????, ??? ?? ?? ???? ????).2
The phrase ???? ???? is here understood as "received Torah." This is different from its common understanding in early rabbinic literature. The only other occurrence of the phrase in the Mishnah outside of Avot speaks of the high priest who during the Yom Kippur service receives the Torah and reads from it (mYom 7:1; parallel mSot 7:7). However, in this instance, the text is referring to the physical scroll of the Torah, not Torah as such. In early rabbinic texts ??? ???? is most commonly understood as "to take the Torah upon oneself" as an obligation, as frequently stated in the halakhic midrashim of Israel (e.?g. MekhY Beshallah 6, H-R 112 ????? ????? ??????? ????, "by the merit of the Torah that they would take upon themselves"). This is also the meaning in the only occurrence of this phrase in the Tosefta (tDem 2:4,5): "A proselyte who takes upon himself all words of the Torah" (?? ????? ???? ?? ???? ????). Only much later, in the Bavli, the Tanhuma, and other, later, midrashim it becomes more common to speak of Moses who received the Torah (e.?g. bShab 88b; bYom 4a-b; Tan Bereshit 1). The Mishnah, Tosefta, and most later texts prefer to speak of the giving (??? ,?????) or coming (???) of the Torah; the Torah is the subject, not an object that Moses received. The preferred passive form ???? ,?????, "it was/will be given" can be understood as passivum divinum: God gives the Torah. Considering the fact that rabbinic literature systematically quotes earlier traditions, it is astonishing that this famous passage about Moses who received Torah from Sinai, is never directly quoted as part of the Mishnah. Its wording, apart from ARN A 1:2 (Sch. 1a; B. 6) and B 1:8-9 (Sch. 1b; B. 316-7), is paralleled only twice, first in ySan 10:1,28a and then, hundreds of years later, in QohR 12:11 (K. 338). These are the only texts that speak of handing on (???) the Torah (but even ARN A 1:11-6 avoids the term ???, saying instead of Joshua etc. that they "received").
The terminology of receiving and handing on the Torah (????/???) is frequently regarded as characteristic of the Pharisees to whom some authors would attribute tractate Avot or at least its introductory chain of tradition. Paul's statement: "For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you" (1 Cor 11:23: ??? ??? pa???aß?? ?p? t?? ??????, ? ?a? pa??d??a ?µ??) is frequently explained on the basis of the word-pair ????/??? in Avot 1:1. But this is unlikely considering how rare and exceptional this phraseology is in rabbinic literature.3
What is also novel here is the emphasis on Moses as the recipient of Torah, a sentiment expressed only in a few passages in the Bavli (bShab 88b; bYom 4a-b etc.). In fact, classical rabbinic texts avoid this statement; for them Israel as a whole directly receives, or more precisely, takes upon itself, the Torah at Sinai.
What follows is the beginning of the chain of tradition, in which the Torah is passed down from Sinai to the early rabbis. Moses passed the Torah "to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets." Missing here are Aaron and the priests, who, according to Second Temple Judaism tradition, were the guardians of the Torah (Deut 31:9).4 Instead, in rabbinic tradition, they have been replaced by the rabbis.
The "Men of the Great Assembly" (or "of the Great Synagogue:" ???? ???? ??????) represent a transitional phase between the biblical period and the time afterwards. They are never mentioned in Jewish texts of the Second Temple period5 or in the Mishnah and Tosefta, outside of tractate Avot. They are referred to twice in the halakhic midrashim: MekhY Pisha 6 (H-R 19) states that the meat of Passover offerings and of sacrifices has to be eaten until the morning star arises; but the sages said, only until midnight, "in order to keep (people) far from sinning and to make a fence to the Torah and to carry out the words of (the Men of) the Great Assembly who used to say three things: Be deliberate in judgment and raise up (many) disciples etc."6 The Mekhilta introduces the whole longer passage with the words "from there they said" (???? ????), thus referring to earlier tradition, although only the saying of the Men of the Great Assembly has a literal parallel. Its ending in MS Oxford "etc." clearly marks it as a quotation. While the copyist of course knew the text of Avot by heart, it is very unlikely that the redactors of the Mekhilta were referring here to an early version of Avot; it would appear that for them it is a well-known saying, rather than necessarily being part of a larger collection. The same saying also appears in SifDev 16 (F. 25): "'I charged your judges' (Deut 1:16). I said to them: Be deliberate in judgment. For if a case (???) came before you once, twice and a third time, do not say: This case has already come before me two or three times, but be deliberate in judgment. Thus said the Men of the Great Assembly: Be deliberate in judgment. And raise up many disciples. And make a fence for the Torah."7 The text quotes the Men of the Great Assembly and thus shows that their saying was known, but not that Avot already existed and was the text from which it is derived.
The next references to the Men of the Great Assembly come from the Talmudim. They are so called "because they brought the greatness back to its old glory"8 - i.?e. they are credited with the first of the Eighteen Benedictions, "the Great, the Strong, and the Awesome God" (cf. Neh 9:32); for more liturgical innovations introduced by the Men of the Great Assembly see bBer 33a. They are also said to have written down the books of Ezechiel, the Twelve (Minor Prophets), and the books of Daniel and Esther (bBB 15a). Regarding their interpretation of these books see below; the benediction of Neh 9:6 is attributed to them in BerR 6:6 (Th-A 45), and the wording "the God who chose Abram" (Neh 9:7) instead of Abraham in yBer 1:6,4a. It is clear that no old traditions are behind such statements. Despite earlier theories, the Men of the Great Assembly do not appear to have been a historical institution, but rather an ideal, bridging about two centuries since they are directly followed by Simeon the Just, who in 1:2 is said to have been "among the remnants of the Men of the Great Assembly." The rabbis most likely derived the idea for this group from the assembly of the returnees from Babylon described in Neh 8-9, since they attribute to them several passages from Neh 9.9
They said three...
