Pirke Avot and Its Commentaries

Mishnah Avot

Tractate Avot, also known as Pirke Avot or Chapters of the Fathers, is a tractate of the Mishnah in the order Nezikin (Damages) unique in form and content. While other tractates are concerned primarily with halakhic issues—that is, Jewish legal matters—this tractate is the classic collection of rabbinic ethical teachings. 

The chapters are generally arranged according to the names of the rabbis to whom they are attributed. The exception is chapter 5 (the so-called numerical sayings), which is ordered according to the number mentioned at the beginning of each teaching (e.g., “With ten utterances the world was created”; “Seven kinds of punishment came into the world”). The first lengthy section of the work comprises a “chain of tradition,” recounting the line of transmission of the Torah that begins with the revelation at Sinai and ends with the sages Hillel and Shammai, who lived around the turn of the era (m. Avot 1:1–15), for which it has received much attention from scholars and traditionalists alike. 

Commentaries on Pirke Avot

During the medieval period, the ethical admonitions in Pirke Avot became a source of further inspiration, resulting in, for example, the composition of a talmudic-style gemara (commentary) on Pirke Avot, called the Chapters of the Fathers according to R. Nathan (Avot de-Rabbi Natan), composed in the seventh or eighth century. An extension of the talmudic tradition in the same ethical vein as Pirke Avot is the ninth-century Short Tractate on Correct Behavior (Derekh erets zuta). 

Many line-by-line-commentaries were composed as well, such as those by Ephraim of Qal‘at Ḥammād, Jonah Gerondi, Joseph Ibn Shoshan, Mattathias ha-Yitshari, Simeon ben Tsemaḥ Duran, and Ovadiah of Bartenura. As part of his Judeo-Arabic commentary on the entire Mishnah, Moses Maimonides wrote an extended introduction to Pirke Avot, in which he described his own understanding of the ethical life. This introduction was soon extracted from its original context and translated into Hebrew, and, under the title Eight Chapters, transmitted as an independent treatise in later centuries. In addition, Joseph Ibn ‘Aqnīn took the Arabic text of Maimonides’ Eight Chapters, rewrote it himself in Hebrew, and then distributed the reworked text within his own running commentary on Pirke Avot.