Continuing on in the series of trying to better understand the somewhat mysterious group of חכמים that occasionally appear in the Mishnah as well as the Tosefta – focussing on the Tosefta in this series – primarily by looking at with whom they disagreed (see this earlier post, for instance), I am now examining סדר נזיקין. Once again, Rabbi Meir is the most frequently-appearing sage:
רבי מאיר – 27
רבי יהודה – 15
רבי אליעזר – 7
רבי עקיבא – 5
עקביה בן מהללאל – 3
רבי – 3
רבי יוסי – 2
רבי אלעזר חסמא – 1
רבי דוסה – 1
רבי יעקב – 1
רבי נחמיה – 1
רבי נתן – 1
רבי שמעון – 1
Once again, Rabbi Meir is at the head of the pack with Rabbi Yehudah behind him, with a lot of appearances! Yes, Rabbi Yehudah is the most frequently-appearing sage in the whole סדר, while Rabbi Meir is the fourth, although it is interesting to note that the חכמים are the second most frequently-appearing (curiously enough, Rabbi Eliezer is the tenth most frequently-appearing). Of the appearances of the חכמים speaking against various sages, Rabbi Meir appears in 39.7% of them, Rabbi Yehudah appears in 22.1% of them, Rabbi Eliezer appears in 10.3% of them, and Rabbi Akiva appears in 7.4% of them. These four sages account for three-quarters of all of the appearances of the חכמים arguing against sages.
Just to show how much of Rabbi Meir’s statements have the חכמים appearing to argue on him, the frequency is 40.3%, meaning roughly two out of every five statements of his are challenged by this group! We can contrast that with the next three: Rabbi Eliezer = 20.6%, Rabbi Akiva = 12.8%, and Rabbi Yehudah = 10.1%. We can contrast this with Rabbi Yose (2.9%) or Rabbi Shim’on (1.6%), who are Rabbi Yehudah’s and Rabbi Meir’s contemporaries, and get very different frequencies.
It is very curious as to why Rabbi Meir gets a very high amount of response from the חכמים….