Too many words

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel (Avot 1:17) teaches:

כָּל יָמַי גָּדַֽלְתִּי בֵּין הַחֲכָמִים, וְלֹא מָצָֽאתִי לְגוּף טוֹב מִשְּׁתִיקָה, וְלֹא הַמִּדְרָשׁ עִקָּר אֶלָּא הַמַּעֲשֶׂה, וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה דְבָרִים מֵבִיא חֵטְא

All my life I have been raised among the wise, and I have found nothing better for the body than silence. The essential thing is not study, but action. And anyone who increases words brings sin.

It has sometimes been asked whether, if the most efficacious commodity in a person’s life is silence, it is truly necessary to add that “anyone who increases words brings sin”.  The answer depends on whether “one who increases words brings sin” is simply an explanation as to why silence is so good or whether it is a separate stand-alone teaching.

Until Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Rebbi) compiled the oral teachings into the body of law we now call the Mishnah, it seems to be generally understood that oral teachings were taught, explained and passed down the generations by word of mouth. Some Tannaim had their own collections of teachings which may have been written down for their own convenience, but these were not taught as normative text.  However, once Rebbi had compiled the six Orders of the Mishnah, the oral law now had a written text to which both teacher and talmid could refer.

The Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel who is cited as the author of our mishnah lived a century and a half before Rebbi, who was his great grandson. This Rabban Shimon, a contemporary of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, would have been active around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple—a time of great turbulence and uncertainty. With the benefit of hindsight we can ask why it was not in his generation, when continuity of Torah learning must have come under severe stress, that the idea of setting the oral law down in writing was not implemented as a way of preserving it.

Perhaps this issue was indeed debated in the lifetime of Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel and the teaching in this mishnah—that “anyone who increases words brings sin”—refers implicitly to his opposition to ‘increasing’ words by writing them down and thus increasing opportunities for transcriptional errors to creep in.

Thoughts, anyone?

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