[Avodah] History

[Daniel Israel]

On Mon, 03 Mar 2008 04:17:58 -0700 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> 
wrote:
>I also think I provided a way in which RET can accept the notion 
that 
>the members of Chazal who derived halakhos from such stories could 
>still have not assumed they were historical. One assumes a rule of 
the 
>system is that one does not besmirch a role model by attributing 
>actions to them that are today (at the time of the retelling) 
>considered assur.  Then, the survival of a story into the corpus 
would 
>imply that there are no such issurim contained therein. It's a way 
to 
>pick the brains of the previous generations who brought the story 
down
>to the one drawing the conclusion.

I think this description is a little oversimplified, given that we 
do have stories in which various great figures are described as 
doing things and criticized by Chazal.  (Whether these actions are 
actual issurim or not is not really that relevant.)  OTOH, 
contemporary m'farshim who suggest criticisms with little or no 
basis in Chazal have been themselves sharply criticized.

A refined version of your hypothesis would have to include the 
caveat that some stories do come down for the purpose of teaching 
something not to emulate, and would have to include a method for 
identifying those stories.  One simple suggestion would be that the 
only such stories are the ones with a critical component already, 
but this does bring us back to the question as to when that 
criticism was attached and who is able to make such criticism.

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu