[Mesorah] Hallel

[Zev Sero]

On 5/05/2014 12:49 PM, Richard wrote:
>
> I don't disagree with Akiva Miller.
>
> My point about Rav Kanarfogel is simple:
> "We currently accept a text that has evolved, so long as it evolved Halachically."
>
> If that is true, is there any reason [excluding the strictly academic]  to restore an early version of the text?
>
> And if so - do we get to an ein l'dovor sof situation?
>
> Consider these options and the following question.
> Which version trumps?
>
> The Text most closely resembling -
>
> 1. Ezra Hasofer's?
> 2. The Bavli's?
> 3. Ben Asher's?
> 4. Keter's?
> 5. The current Halachic consensus?
> 6. Something else?
>
> For R Kanarfogel I'm guessing he'd vote for Halachic Consensus.

Sorry, that can't be true, for the simple reason that *none* of the people
along that track would have agreed with it.   Every single one of them was
trying to get as close as they could to the only text that is actually
correct -- Moshe Rabbenu's.

Ezra consciously attempted to replicate the authentic text of Moshe, by
examining three sifrei torah that were found in the BHMK, and assuming that
wherever one disagreed with the other two it was a mistake.  Thus he came up
with a text that didn't agree 100% with any of his three sources, but which
was more likely than any of them to be an exact reconstruction of the lost
original text.

The Bavli knew that its text was corrupt, and didn't know how to fix it.  It
never occurred to any Amora to claim that since their text had "evolved"
according to a "halachic process" it was valid.   The Amoraim simply accepted
that the original text was lost, and they had to make do with what they had,
and assume it was close to the original.  They had to be wary of making too
many drashos based on their text, because the anomaly they spotted and wanted
to derive lessons from might simply be a mistake.

The Keter *is* Ben Asher.  And his method was the same as Ezra's, though his
sampling of source documents was wider but less reliable.  Instead of three
highly reliable sefarim, he and his colleagues used hundreds of sefarim of
dubious reliability, making up in volume for the low quality.  Again, their
goal was to reconstruct the lost original text, and we have to believe they
came as close as possible.   The Keter supposedly represents the climax of
all their work, the most correct version they could come up with, after more
than a century of research.

It is *entirely possible*, perhaps even likely, that the Keter is an exact
letter-for-letter replica of Moshe Rabbenu's sefarim.   But whether it is
or isn't, that is exactly what it's trying to be, and its entire authority
rests on the assumption that it's as close as we're going to get until Moshe
comes back.   To claim that it has its own authority, that it could be correct
despite *not* being the same as Moshe's text, let alone that if we had Moshe's
text and discovered that it differed from the Keter we would stick with the
Keter and reject Moshe's text, is absurd, and would shock Ben Asher himself
and all those who have relied on him over the centuries.

-- 
Zev Sero             Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
zev at sero.name        from malice.
                                                          - Eric Raymond