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Keeping the losing opinion on the page: is disagreement inside a tradition as deep as disagreement between traditions?

Rabbi Eliana Gutman Fellow
· 5 replies · 191 views
Revelation & scriptureIndianIslamicJewishIslamic jurisprudenceMimamsa#ikhtilaf#interpretive-disagreement#minority-opinion#talmud
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In my Tuesday Talmud class we recently read the story in tractate Eruvin about the houses of Hillel and Shammai, who argued for years until a heavenly voice declared that "these and these are the words of the living God", and that the law nonetheless follows Hillel. The Talmud's explanation for why Hillel prevailed is that his school was gentle and humble, and taught Shammai's views alongside their own, even before their own.

The Mishnah also asks why minority opinions are recorded at all, if the law doesn't follow them. One answer it gives is that a later court might one day need to rely on them.

Then there is the oven of Akhnai in Bava Metzia, where Rabbi Eliezer produces miracle after miracle and a heavenly voice in his favour, and the sages answer, quoting Deuteronomy, "it is not in heaven". The majority's reading wins against heaven itself.

So within one tradition, guided by the same revelation, we find disagreement that is formally preserved, valued, and sometimes as sharp as anything between faiths. I'm curious how other traditions handle this. Is interpretive disagreement inside a religious tradition a weakness of divine command approaches, as critics say (no agreed way to adjudicate), or is it a strength, a way of keeping the tradition honest?

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5 replies

  1. Khalid Mahmood Awan

    Fellow

    Islamic law has the same feature under the name ikhtilāf. The Sunni schools grew up recognising each other's rulings as legitimate even when they disagreed, and a judge in Lahore can follow the Ḥanafī view while respecting a Shāfiʿī colleague's. People often quote a saying that the disagreement of the community is a mercy, though its chain of transmission is disputed, which is itself a nice example of the point. In my years on the bench I came to think that a legal culture which preserved dissent made judges more careful, not less.

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  2. Govinda Prasad Mishra

    Fellow

    The Sanskrit commentators built disagreement into the form of the argument itself. A Mīmāṃsā discussion sets out the pūrvapakṣa, the opponent's prima facie view, in full and at its strongest, before the siddhānta, the settled conclusion. A student who can't state the opponent's view better than the opponent is not ready. So the losing opinion is not just kept on the page; it's required reading. My boys hate this until they're about twenty.

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  3. Miriam Adler

    Fellow

    One thing I'd add from teaching adults: Maimonides wanted to codify the law in his Mishneh Torah largely without the debates, giving the ruling and not the arguments, and he was criticised for exactly that. Rabad's glosses on the margins of the Mishneh Torah are in effect the minority opinion reinserting itself. The tradition doesn't easily let anyone close the discussion.

  4. Nikos Stavridis

    Fellow

    A contrast from the Orthodox side, in fairness. The ecumenical councils were also places of fierce argument, but the losing positions were usually condemned rather than preserved. That doesn't mean there was no internal disagreement; the Fathers disagree with each other constantly on many matters. But on dogma, the tradition decided that some disagreements must be settled. Maybe the difference is between law, where dissent can be kept, and dogma, where a church thought it couldn't.

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  5. Rabbi Eliana Gutman

    Fellow

    Nikos, that distinction is very helpful, and it may answer my question better than I could. Where revelation is treated as law to be applied, disagreement can be preserved as a resource. Where it is treated as truth to be confessed, the pressure to close it is much greater. And Govinda, I'm stealing the rule that a student must state the opponent's view better than the opponent. My congregation will hate it until they're about twenty too.

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