[Avodah] Classical Academia, Deconstruction, and Mesorah

[Micha Berger]

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 05:09:07PM +0000, kennethgmiller at juno.com wrote:
: The procedure by which the Baalei Mesorah produced our current text was
: Al Pi Rov, by a majority "vote" from among the reliable texts which they
: had available. And if it turned out that the authoritative text thus
: produced had he effect of invalidating all the ones that they started
: with, that is of no consequence. They used a halachic procedure, and
: the halachic results are what matters.

: Yet... The very procedure which they used -- Rov -- is only for use
: in B'dieved situations....

Is counting sifrei Torah an example of birur via a rov, or of pesaq
through azlinan basar ruba, the majority of people (soferim? qehilos?)
behind those various sifrei Torah?

If the latter, then one is talking about overruling precedent, not
just updating pesaq given updated knowledge. Which is different than
techeiles and the other examples we've raised.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha