[Avodah] Machlokes in Mishnayos, why?--When were Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel?

[H Lampel via Avodah]

> On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 8:20pm EDT, Zev Sero wrote: : I don't believe 
> the differences between BH & BS emerged until well : after H & S were 
> gone, when a new generation arose "asher lo yad`u : va'asher lo ra'u". 
> Indeed, isn't that the implication of blaming the explosuion of 
> machloqesin on "shelo shimshu kol tarkan" (Sanhedrin 88b)? If the 
> teachers were still around, then they could have stepped in when the 
> lack of proper attentiveness showed up. Tir'u baTov! -Micha

This /mehalech/ that places the Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel who had
hundreds of disputes* after the Churban (and therefore after the deaths
of Shammai and Hillel themselves) is followed Rav Sherira Gaon near the
beginning of his Iggeress. Not a bad source to rely on!

As I mentioned, Rav Yitzchak Isaac HaLevy argues that this BS and BH were
contemporaneous with, and under the leadership of, Shammai and Hillel
themselves. In fact, he maintains that Shammai and Hillel did indeed step
in and lessened the number of disputes. He notes that Hillel used the same
terminology of "shelo shamshu" in criticizing the people in the Bnei
Besayra affair, and assigns the criticism of "shelo shamshu" to the
situation /before/ Shammai and Hillel leadership reduced the talmidim's
hundreds of disputes to just the the few disputes between Shammai and
Hillel themselves noted in meseches Aidyos. (And in two of them the
majority rejected both opinions and voted for their own third one).

Each volume of The Doros HaRishonim is available on Hebrewbooks.org. I
downloaded them and combined them into one searchable PDF.


* HaRav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch (Collected Writings, Volume V, Feldheim,
1988, p. 65) approximates a total of 280 disputes between Bes Shammai
and Bes Hillel: 90 concerning gezayros, 25 concerning takkonos, and 130
concerning Scrip­tural interpretation. Approximation is necessary, he
points out (p. 66), because the points of divergence between Bes Shammai
and Bes Hillel are sometimes themselves matters of debate in the Gemora.
(All this without a search engine! Maybe he had a Talmud Concordance
to help?

Zvi Lampel