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We venerate our previous generations, and have a principle of yeridat hadorot. Therefore I would imagine that the Torah of Samaya and Avtalyon, for example, would be pure gold for us, and threaded throughout Mishna and Shas to an even larger degree than the Torah of Hillel and Shammai. Yet it is not, we have only a handful of halachot in their name, and they hardly appear anywhere in any Talmudic-era works such as Midrash, Sifrei, Braitot and Tosefta.

What are the exact historical or legal reasons that this is actually not the case? For some, we haven't got a single halachic record or teaching, e.g. Mattai/Nittai of Arbela.

Contrast this to the point that we have, for example, a huge amount of work from Philo, who was alive at the time of Shamaya and Avtalyon, which demonstrates that the leading Rabbis of the time were writing extensively, and that it's certainly possible to have preserved such writings from that time.

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    How many halachot from hillel and shammai are there? Like 5?
    – Double AA
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 16:43
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    Philo wasn't preserved by Jews. If early church fathers had thought Avtalyon's writings were interesting we'd probably still have them
    – Double AA
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 13:10
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    The Church Father Epiphanius, who was born a Jew in a small village near Beit Guvrin (Eleutheropolis) wrote in his book Panarion that he was aware of four "repetitions", which scholars typically take to mean mishnayot compilations (as we know, Rebbi collected older compilations of mishnayot to form his mishna): That of Moshe (probably Sefer Devarim, AKA Mishneh Torah), that of Rabbi Akiva, That of Rabbi Yehuda (=Rebbi) and that of the Chashmonaim.
    – Harel13
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 13:19
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    So we have here evidence for a mishnaic compilation from the time of the Chashmonaim (=Zugot) that was still known to some extent in Epiphanius's time (4th-5th cen.). Scholars connect this lost work to the few mentions of the "Beit Din shel Chashmonai" in the gemara.
    – Harel13
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 13:19
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    A. There were barely any arguments then, because the students were precise in their studies (Sanhedrin 88b) B. It was forbidden to write down Torah Shebe’al Peh
    – שלום
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 18:21

2 Answers 2

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Because in those days there was very little to no machlokes:

בראשונה לא היתה מחלוקת בישראל, אלא על הסמיכה בלבד

In the beginning there was no disagreement in Israel, except regarding smicha (Yerushalmi Chagigah 2:2)

So no halachos had to be recorded in the names of individual sages.

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    Do you hav a source for this ? Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 17:56
  • Wondering if there were two factors in play for how frequent tannaim are mentioned per generation. One is the lack/presence of machlokes that you mentioned. Another might be how much access Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi had to them. In this way there might have been a tendency that the ones in the generation of Rabbi Akiva's talmidim plus peers of Rabbi Akiva and the generation of Rabbi Akiva's rebbeim.
    – EraserX
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 20:21
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    I made an informal list many years ago and there only ten tannaim that are mentioned by name in >= 50 mishnayos. In order they are Rabbis Yehuda (over 600), Yosi, Meir, Shimon (over 300 each), Eliezer, Akiva (high 200s each), Yehoshua (abt 140), Shimon ben Gamliel, Gamliel, Yishmael. Bais Hillel/Shamai are each in just over 200 but Hillel and Shamai themselves each appear only in the mid-high teens.
    – EraserX
    Commented Sep 5, 2023 at 20:21
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    @NoachMiFrankfurt see Yerushalmi Chagigah 2:2: "בראשונה לא היתה מחלוקת בישראל, אלא על הסמיכה בלבד" and the Mishna described here is the one listing the zugot and their views regarding the smicha.
    – Harel13
    Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 3:59
  • I hope the OP reads those comments too. The reason for the appearance of Machlokes might be simpler than we think - the adoption of the Socratic method. Earlier practices of Torah study focused on mere recitation of Biblical verses and "traditional" Halochos. At the beginning of the first century, we observe Jewish religious leaders adopting the Socratic method of asking questions and contrasting answers (the first Mishna starts with a question, unlike all existing Halachic literature, e.g. the Temple Scroll. And that leads us to the Mishna and beyond.
    – Al Berko
    Commented Jul 15 at 11:47
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Per @RabbiKaii's request:

The reason that the teachings of the Zugot have been lost seems largely based on the reality of classic tannaitic and amoraic texts not including much of any of their teachings. Thus, while these works became more and more popular, other teachings were largely lost with time. Why these texts hardly included these teachings is a matter still heavily debated among academic scholars, though unless we uncover some lost works with clearer explanations (and I wouldn't lose hope for the possibility, every now and then we discover valuable lost works), or else wait for techiyat ha'metim, it seems like we'll never truly know for sure.

However, we do have a hint that a mishnaic compilation authored by personnel connected to the Chashmonaim or at least living in their time was still known circa the 4th-5th centuries. The Church Father Epiphanius, who was born a Jew in a small village near Beit Guvrin (Eleutheropolis), wrote in his book Panarion, I, 15:

"Scribes had four "repetitions." One in the name of the prophet Moses, a second in that of their teacher called Aqiba or Bar Aqiba, another in the name of Addan or Annan, also called Judas, and another in the name of the sons of Hasmonaeus. Whatever customs they derive from these four traditions under the impression that they are wisdom - they are unwisdom mostly - are boasted of and praised, and celebrated and acclaimed as the teaching to be given first place."

According to Prof. Y. N. Epstein in his book Introductions to the Tannaitic Literature, p. 17, the "recitations" are mishnaic compilations (the word mishna comes from שנה, recite) and Epiphanius is speaking about four mishnaic compilations revered by the Jews: The first is Sefer Devarim, or Mishneh Torah, authored by Moshe. The second is by Rabbi Akiva, the third is by Rebbi (Rabbi Yehudah Ha'Nasi, the other two names are mistaken versions of the variants יודה and יודן) and the last one is from "the sons of the Chasmonaim".

Prof. Epstein mentions two relevant sources that may be related to the Mishnaic compilation from the time of the Chashmonaim:

Two mentions of a halachic ruling of a "beit din of Chashmonai" (Avodah Zara 36b and Sanhedrin 82a), and a tradition brought in some versions of Halachot Gedolot which states that the elders of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai wrote something called "the Scroll of the House of the Chashmonaim" (link, and see n. 9).

From all of these sources, it seems that traditions of teachings and rulings from at least some of the Zugot or their contemporaries disappeared at least a couple of centuries after the creation of Rebbi's Mishna.

As a side-note, I will add that a Kabbalistic work that was preserved in at least two places, one at the end of Brachot in the Munich 95 MS of the Bavli and another in a Kabbalistic compilation manuscript that had been owned for a time by my great-great-grandfather R' David Frankel and his partner and relative R' Lipa Schwager as part of a collection of rare books and manuscripts they sold in their bookshop in Husiatyn, Austria,1, mentions that part or all of this particular text had been transmitted thus:

"זה השם} מיכאל/מיכאל המלאך מסרו ליהודה ויהודה לבני חשמונאי}" ({This Name} Michael/Michael the Angel transmitted it to Yehudah and Yehudah to the Sons of Chashmonai).


1 This compilation, including quoting the relevant passage, is mentioned in one of Frankel & Schwager's catalogues. On Otzar Hachochmah it's called "רשימת ספרים ישנים גם חדשים - 40 - 7", p. 21:

Passage from book catalogue

I haven't not yet managed to discover whether this manuscript was preserved in some library or collection.

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    Thank you for taking the time!! We are so enriched by this
    – Rabbi Kaii
    Commented Oct 20, 2023 at 11:12
  • Very informative, thank you. Given the principle of Yeridas Hadoros, why wouldn't the tradition of the Zugos be included in the Mishna instead of the sayings of the much later Tannoyim? I do not doubt that various writings existed but according to your answer, Rabbi decidedly ignored them.
    – Al Berko
    Commented Jul 15 at 11:38
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    @AlBerko there are some teachings of the zugot in the Mishna, so I wouldn't say he ignored them. He probably didn't think all of their teachings were relevant for the Mishna. A significant portion of the Mishna was written with contemporary Jewry in mind. The zugot lived long before that. That later sages thought it relevant to mention other teachings on occasion seems to me simply evidence that they had different opinions on the relevancy, and differing opinions among sages isn't new.
    – Harel13
    Commented Jul 15 at 15:25
  • Also, much of Rebbi's Mishna is based on that of Rabbi Akiva's, so you might ask why didn't Rabbi Akiva include more of their teachings. I'm not an expert but I don't know if there's an answer to that.
    – Harel13
    Commented Jul 15 at 15:25

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