What was the chiddush in the sayings of the Sages quoted in Pirkey Avos when those very ideas already appeared throughout Tanach? Is there a deeper lesson to be gleaned from the personalities of those wise men who gave us the legacy of refined moral behavior?
The months of spring and summer are upon us and once again it is time to sit and learn Pirkei Avos on the long Shabbos afternoons. Maseches Avos as we know is made up of aphorisms on matters of ethics and character-building from the Tannaim the great Sages of the Mishnaic era which spanned the final years of the Second Temple and the period following the Destruction. Many of the common expressions used in modern spoken Hebrew or as decorative elements in Hebrew writing are taken from Pirkei Avos.
Many have wondered why the masechta is called “Avos.” The name doesn’t seem to express anything about the actual content of the masechta and probably wouldn’t pass muster with your average naming committee. A more incisive question arises however from even a superficial study of the tractate.
The Vilna Gaon wrote a commentary on Avos in which he finds an explicit source in the Tanach for every single dictum in the masechta. It would appear that he was challenging the authenticity of this whole tractate of the Mishnah. If every statement in Avos was already made somewhere in Tanach and the Sages had nothing new to add then why was this ever written at all?
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