Who learned Torah from Joshua?

The festival of Shavuot, which Jews around the world celebrate this week, commemorates Matan Torah, the Giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai that is so dramatically described in the Bible. Moses was the Torah’s first recipient, but now it is ours. How did the Torah begin its journey from the safe hands of Moses to our own?

The first mishnah in Avot opens by outlining the chain of tradition that runs from Matan Torah to the point at which the Torah passes into the hands of the Anshei Knesset Gedolah (“the Men of the Great Assembly”). This was a body of scholars  who lived around the beginning of the Second Temple period and who commenced an ongoing process of teaching and explaining the Oral Torah which continues to this day. Avot 1:1 begins like this:

מֹשֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻֽׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻֽׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים, וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרֽוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶֽסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua. Joshua [gave it over] to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly.

This post considers just one question: who were the “Elders”?

The answer should be obvious. Following Joshua’s death, the Tanach records the era of the Shofetim (“Judges”), in which Israel was ruled by a succession of ad-hoc military leaders. Towards the end of this period the people clamoured for the appointment of a king. This was done through the agency of Shmuel—the first of a lengthy sequence of Prophets who initially guided and advised Israel’s kings and continued to offer their encouragement and inspiration until the early days of the Second Temple, when prophecy ceased. We should therefore be safe to assume that the “Elders” (in Hebrew, zakenim) were the Judges: they received Torah from Joshua and passed it on to the Prophets (not to the kings, whom the mishnah does not record as being not part of the chain of tradition).

The Bartenura’s commentary on Avot 1:1 states that the “Elders” were those people who lived after the time of Joshua. This should alert us to a problem. This should be obvious—but is it? If this is so obvious, why does the Bartenura need to give it?

As it turns out, there is no clear consensus as to how Joshua handed Torah down to future generations.

The commentary ascribed to Rashi agrees that Joshua passed the Torah to the Judges, starting with Otniel ben Kenaz, but raises the possibility of an alternative. Joshua, he explains, did not want to pass the Torah on to the Seventy Elders who were granted prophecy in Moses’ lifetime (Bemidbar 11:24-34), but no reason is offered for his reluctance to do so. R’ Yehoshua Falk (Binyan Yehoshua on Avot deRabbi Natan) follows this Rashi and the Sefat Emet (Imrei Kodsho al Masechet Avot) appears to prefer Rashi’s “Seventy Elders” option.

As usual with Avot, there are further views to consider. Abarbanel (Nachalat Avot) is clearly troubled by two things. One is the fact that the mishnah uses the plural word “Judges”, while Otniel ben Kenaz is only one judge. The other is the fact that the Seventy Elders did not live till the time of the Prophets and could not therefore have passed the tradition to them. He therefore crafts a more complex scheme of transmission: Joshua shared his Torah with the members of his Bet Din (i.e. a plurality of Judges) and also to Otniel ben Kenaz, from whom it was passed from judge to judge until there era of the Prophets.

The significance of the plurality—“zakenim”—is not lost on R’ Sha’ul Chai Moskovitz (Lev Same’ach) who observes that, when all Israel was no longer encamped together in the desert, it became necessary to spread the learning so that the various tribes could take it with them to their respective territories. This explanation assumes that zakenim are literally the old and wise (zakenim = zeh kaneh chochmah, according to the Chasid Ya’avetz), rather than judges in either the judicial sense or as political and military leaders.

Is this all a historical quibble, or does this part of the mishnah have a message for us even today? R’ Chaim Yosef David Azulai (the ‘Chida’) presumably thinks so because he looks at this link in the chain of tradition through in terms of middot—the human qualities we are encouraged to cultivate. In his Kikar L’Eden he teaches that the word “zakenim” alludes not to the status of the recipients but to their humility, the gematria of the Hebrew letters that spell “zakenim” is identical to that of the phrase “God of the humble”. Elsewhere, in his Ahavah beTa’anugim, the Chida offers another explanation: in short, “zakenim” are people who, having grown older and wiser, are now controlled less by the demands of the flesh than by the spirit.

My unauthoritative opinion on the subject? Noting that the Torah is handed down by Joshua to the Elders and the Prophets before it comes down to the Men of the Great Assembly, I feel that this teaches us something important. Joshua was a Torah scholar who spent his time midrashically in the Bet Midrash of his Moses his teacher. From this Torah scholar the Torah passes through the hands of the zakenim who, as portrayed by Tanach, are effectively men and women of action and military commanders.  Torah then passes through the Prophets—people who, in addition to being a link in the chain, have also their own direct channel of communication with God. And the Prophets pass their received Torah to the Men of the Great Assembly, a body of lawyers, sages and legislators. This shows that it is for every one of us, regardless of our very different functions, professional callings and capabilities, to take our share of the responsibility of transmitting Torah from one generation to the next.

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