Pirke Avot: The Sayings of the Jewish Fathers

The Sayings of the Jewish Fathers is the oldest collection of ethical dicta of the Rabbis of the Mishnah (9). It is a Rabbinic anthology. It has been happily styled "a compendium of practical ethics" (10), and, as Mielziner has said, "these Rabbinical sentences, if properly arranged, present an almost complete code of human duties" (11). The Abot is, then, a sort of moral code.

(9) There was another, and apparently older, recension of Pirke Abot on which is based the Abot de-Rabbi Natan, an hagadic or homiletical exposition of Abot. Two recensions of Abot de-Rabbi Natan exist, and have been edited by Schechter. On this work, see Hoffman, Die erste Mischna, p. 26 et seq., Mielziner, article Abot de-Rabbi Natan, in Jewish Encyclopedia, Strack, Einleitung, p. 69 _et seq., and Pollak, Rabbi Nathans System, etc., Introduction, pp. 7-9. An English translation is found in Rodkinson's edition of the Talmud, vol. V, p. 1 et seq.