Purim and Pirkei Avot 2: Citing a teaching in the name of its originator

This is the second of three short posts that link Pirkei Avot to the festival of Purim (this coming Thursday for most of the world, Friday for Jerusalem and any city that was walled at the time of Joshua).

A baraita at Avot 6:6 lists 48 things that are said to be ways of acquiring Torah. Of these, the 48th and final item is

"repeating a saying in the name of the one who says it".

The baraita concludes by making the only reference to the Book of Esther that can be found within Avot, adding:

"whoever says something in the name of the person who says it brings redemption to the world, as it is said: 'And Esther spoke to the king in the name of Mordechai'" (Esther 2:22).

What was it that Esther told the king? It was the information, overheard by Mordechai, that Bigtan and Teresh were plotting against him.

The idea of mentioning by name the person who originates an item of Torah learning is a conceptualisation of the same principle that opens the tractate of Avot, where the chain of tradition is charted from the Torah's Sinaitic revelation to the era of the Men of the Great Assembly and then down through the various rabbis whose words we find in the Mishnah and Talmud. It is important to know the name of the person who relates a teaching to others so that its authenticity can be verified -- or challenged.

Our baraita at Avot 6:6 presents us with a paradox: we learn that whoever cites the name of the originator of a piece of learning when he quotes it will bring redemption to the world – but it does not reveal the identity of its own author, of of the author of the statement about bringing redemption to the world.

Are there any clues as to its authorship? The name of Rabbi Yose is twice found in close proximity to citations of this maxim (at Chullin104b, Niddah 19b) but it is nowhere stated that he is its author. In Megillah 15b the same principle is taught in the name of later rabbis (where the Amora Rabbi Elazar teaches it in the name of an earlier Amora, Rabbi Chanina).

Regardless of its authorship and the reason, if any, for not citing it, the maxim retains its force: the correct citation of one’s sources can enhance both the transparency and the authority of one’s arguments, leading to their acceptance where they are correct and to their dismissal or refutation where they are not. The Babylonian Talmud does however preserve a number of examples where this principle is discarded in favour of false attribution, where the rabbis discern a greater good which only false attribution can achieve – this greater good frequently being framed as a means of persuading the Jewish population at large to accept an undoubtedly correct halachic ruling which, if learned in the name of its true author, would carry considerably less weight (see Marc B. Shapiro, Changing the Immutable: How Orthodox Judaism Rewrites Its History, in Chapter 8 (“Is the Truth Really That important?”).