Note 166 — BOOK V THE JEW AND THE TALMUD

R. Akiba (early second century) in the Mishnah treatise “Pirke Aboth” used to say, “Massorah is a fence to the Torah.” This has been generally understood as a reference to the Massorah of which we are speaking here. But many scholars now consider that R. Akiba was referring in this saying to “tradition” generally, and they understand the word Massorah as correlative to “Kabbala” (tradition in general), such as is embodied in the Mishnah.