But I think this variant is more telling. There is a version which has “ benei adam - children of man”, i.e. The term I rendered “mortals” is “ benei temusa - sons of death”. Rabbi Zeira said that Rava bar Zimuna said: If the earlier were the sons of angels, then we are mortals but if the earlier ones were mortals, then we are donkeys – and not the donkeys of Rav Chanina Ben Dosa and Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair but like the other donkeys. Meanwhile, the idea, if not the metaphor, has a long standing amongst Chazal well before the Tosafos Rid. R’ Sedley identifies the “non Jewish scholars” as Bernard of Chartres, quoted by John of Salisbury. Not because we are greater than they were.” Quoted from translation by R’ David Sedley in his blog ( see there for a discussion focusing on this particular expression). … e are dwarves riding on the neck of giants because we see their wisdom and delve deeper, and we learn from their wisdom to discover everything that we say. His student, the Shibolei haLeqet, is clear that the Tosafos Rid was using “an aphorism that he heard from the non Jewish scholars. This metaphor first enters Jewish Thought with the Tosafos Rid, Rav Yishaya di-Trani (1180-1250). So, sometime around the end of the Second Beis haMiqdash period is the earliest documentation of the idea that people of later generations, even if not as great as those of earlier generations, could still get further - because we start with their accomplishments. Pigmies placed on the shoulders of giants see more than the giants themselves. ![]() Pigmaei gigantum humeris impositi plusquam ipsi gigantes vident. How is this possible, given that we now have universal education, and the masses know more Torah than any other generation in millennia? ![]() Someone recently (when I first wrote an earlier version of this post, Feb 2007) asked me about nisqatnu hadoros, the decline over time from one generation to the next.
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