Pirke Avot: first half of the first verse

We’re discussing Pirke Avot; I started with some general ideas about the discussion before we began, and now in order to facilitate some sort of coherent discussion that can be joined in and followed, I’ve broken the first verse into four notes. Here’s the verse:

Moses received the Law on Sinai and delivered it to Joshua; and Joshua to the Elders; and the Elders to the prophets; and the prophets to the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be not hasty in judgment; Bring up many disciples; and, Make a hedge for the Torah.

I broke out the first sentence in this note, and will have a separate thread for hasty, disciples, and hedge. I hope this isn’t confusing. YHB is making it up as we go along, you know.

We begin with the authority of the sayings themselves. Of course there is the written Law, received by Moses. But there is also an oral Law, which was (tradition tells us) also received by Moses on Sinai, but because it was not all appropriate to the condition of the people at the time, it was not written at the time, but told, generation to generation, until such time as it became appropriate to write it down (partially out of fear that the Romans would wipe out all the people who knew it) at which time it becomes the Mishnah, and the Talmud as well, depending on what you believe. Or don’t believe any of it, of course, because of course historically it’s nonsense. Or a miracle, if you like.

Of course, it’s sitting here at the beginning of the book to claim Divine Revelation as the authority for the sayings, but also, by implication, to deny that the Divine Revelation came to the sages themselves. It cuts off two arguments against the sayings: first, you can’t argue that they are just a bunch of sayings and people say a lot of crazy shit, and second, you can’t argue that your own contact with the Divine is more important than study, because this isn’t just Revelation, it’s Revelation at Sinai, buster, and that’s the ace of trump.

On the other hand, let’s look at that chain: not from Moses to his sons, or even from Moses to his nephews the priests, but from Moses to Joshua. Not from Joshua to his sons, but from Joshua to the Elders, and not from the Elders to their sons but from the Elders to the Prophets, and not from the Prophets to their sons but from the Prophets to the k’nesset gadol, the great Parliament of Ezra. There is also a widening, from Moses the greatest of all prophets, to Joshua, a leader but not a king, to a group of Judges, to a wider group of Prophets, to a large group of sages. This is the path of wisdom, not to narrow itself but to expand; this is the path of the people of Israel, to spread the wisdom around a little. Like crazy left-wing socialist Marxist communists.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.