[Avodah] mesorah

[Eli Turkel]

<<Mesorah is a living tradition of a development of ideas. The Oral
Torah is oral, a dialog across the generations. If we see a quote in
the gemara from Rav Yochanan, we might be curious about the historical
intent of Rav Yochanan. But in terms of Torah, important to us than
what R' Yochanan's original intent is what R' Ashi thought that
intent was, which in turn can only be understood through the eyes
of what the Rosh and the Rambam understood R' Ashi's meaning to be,
which in turn can only be understood through the eyes of the Shaagas
Aryeh and R' Chaim Brisker. That is the true meaning, in terms of
Torah, of Rav Yoachanan's statement. >>

I have great difficulties with this. What of know that they made a mistake.
There are places where it is clear that Rashi was wrong because he didn't
completely know Israeli geography or the burial procedures or medicine.
Achronim state that we follow Rambam against Rashi on sugyot in chullin because
Rambam was a doctor.
Rash claims that the pythagoras theorem is wrong except when the two
sides are the same.

I would assume that much of the modern world has accepted the geonim over R. Tam
for the definition of shkia because of astronomical reasons even though
R Tam was almost universally accepted even on erev shabbat in northern Europe.

I recently saw a claim that Rav Chaim connected two arguments between Rambam and
Ramban based on printing error in the Schach. In a previous discussion it was
pointed out that many disagree with chidushei R. Chaim because it does
not usually
seem to be pshat in the Rambam though a beautiful dvar Torah.

Micha's argument reminds me of the CI argument against manuscripts. I
recently read
an article by Ta Shma on the printing of chidushe Ramban, Rashba and Ritva.
This was done mainly over a period of some 50 years about about 1700.
So in fact many achronim did not have access to the actual texts of
the rishonim but
only abbreviated quotes from the bet yosef or various teshuvot. Do we
say according
to CI that we ignore all of this because it was only found in 1700 or
do we accept
those and only reject those found in the 20th century?

Sperber brings examples where we better understand a Mishna because of modern
archaeology of how various instruments looked or what clothing they wore.
In many cases it is clear that the Yerushalmi had a better knowledge of many
Mishnayot while the Bavli is based on what happened in Bavel and not
in Mishnaic EY.


-- 
Eli Turkel