In the mishnah at Avot 4:1, Ben Zoma defines a
chacham ("wise person") as someone who learns from
everyone—but this is not the only definition. In the Talmud (Tamid 31b-32a) we learn an aggadic tale that Alexander of Macedon posed ten questions of the
Elders of the South. One of them was about the
chacham. The Talmud reads like
this:
He [Alexander] said to them: “Who is called wise?” They
replied: “Who is wise? He who discerns what is about to come to pass [literally
“what is about to be born”].”
This raises the questions: do both definitions identify the
same person as a chacham? If not, are they contradictory or complementary?
There is no reason why the two definitions should not be
satisfied in the same individual. Ben Zoma’s definition looks towards how the
chacham obtains knowledge of that which is already known to others, while that
of the Elders of the South focuses on how he obtains as-yet unknown knowledge
by drawing inferences from that which is already known to him. These two
approaches may be perfectly complementary if the mishnah refers to the process
of obtaining chochmah ("wisdom") by learning from all people, while the Talmud alludes to
the intellectual performance potential of someone who, having undergone that
process, has a greater sensitivity to the chain of cause and effect that enables
him to take a more accurate and realistic view of the future.
Why did the Elders of the South offer Alexander a different
answer to that given by Ben Zoma? It is possible that they were unaware of it
in that form. While we learn that the mishnah is Oral Law that has been handed
down in a continuous chain of tradition that began with the Giving of the Law
at Mount Sinai (Avot 1:1), we also know that the same teaching was sometimes packaged
in different verbal formulae, so it is possible that the answer given by the
Elders of the South was intended to mean the same thing as Ben Zoma’s answer.
We could also turn this question on its head and ask why Ben Zoma did not give
the same answer as the Elders of the South. After all, Alexander of Macedon
lived and died around 400 years before Ben Zoma and some 500 years before Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi both saved and popularised the vital corpus of the Oral Torah by compiling
Avot and the other tractates that make up the Mishnah.
A further explanation may be offered, one which looks more
closely at Greek philosophy. Alexander was a pupil of Aristotle, whose
thoughts and writings on political philosophy would have greatly influenced
him. Aristotle was himself a student of Plato, whose extensive writings focus
on the life and methodology of his own teacher, Socrates. Today Socrates is
principally remembered for what is called the Socratic method -- a
type of question-and-answer dialogue that seeks to stimulate critical thinking
by isolating the premises upon which a person’s arguments are based. This
method is particularly successful as a way of showing people that the positions
they hold are wrong, or that they are not based on the premises claimed for
them. Socrates repeatedly demonstrated this technique by asking questions of,
and learning from the answers of, craftsmen and artisans as well as other
philosophers. In this respect Socrates reflected Ben Zoma’s maxim regarding
learning from everyone. Aristotle’s approach was quite different from that of
the Platonic school. He was more concerned with the building of systems,
whether in the physical world or in terms of the social and political behaviour
of man.
We might conjecture that, when Alexander asked the Elders of
the South who was wise, he was curious to see if they were followers of
Aristotle like he was, or whether they supported the approach followed by
Socrates. The Elders of the South, understanding that Alexander was trying to
lead them into an argument which might have serious adverse consequences for
them, tactfully let him know that they could see what he was up to, letting him
know that they were wise enough to see the direction in which he was seeking to
steer his interrogation of them and would therefore take steps to avoid a
philosophical confrontation with him.
Now for one final observation. The Elders of the South considered that
wisdom was a matter of looking ahead in order to predict the likely outcome of
events. In colloquial English, one sometimes hears of a person being “wise
after the event.” These words should not
be conceived as even a mild compliment: they are a sharp reminder that anyone
can be wise when events have unfolded and it is too late for that wisdom to be
of any use. As the Elders of the South indicate, it is only before the future
has revealed its course that a person’s wisdom should be praised as such.
