פירוש על עדיות 1:6

למה מזכירין דברי היחיד בין המרובין – in order to nullify them. An individual [opinion] that was not followed by a single Jewish court like his words and they are rejected and nullified, why do we mention them at all? And we respond that if a person would say: Such is my received [tradition] and he would be astonished when he sees that no one is acting according to his received tradition, they would say to him: according to the words of that individual you heard and those words were rejected.

Introduction Mishnah six contains a different answer to the same question asked in mishnah five: why are minority opinions recorded in the mishnah.

Rabbi Judah said: “If so, why do they record the opinion of a single person among the many to set it aside? So that if a man shall say, ‘Thus have I received the tradition’, it may be said to him, ‘According to the [refuted] opinion of that individual did you hear it.’” Rabbi Judah asks the same question that was asked in the previous mishnah: why does the Mishnah record minority opinions. His answer, however, is the exact opposite of the previous answer. According to Rabbi Judah, minority opinions are recorded so that future Rabbis will not be able to rely on those opinions. If a person in the future should say that he learned the tradition in a certain way, a Rabbi could point to the Mishnah and tell him that that is a minority opinion and is therefore not accepted as halakhah. Halakhah according to Rabbi Judah will continue to follow the majority. Note the irony that the Mishnah records a dispute about why it preserves minority opinions, and in this very discussion there is a recorded minority opinion. If we were to look at this dispute in these two mishnayoth through the eyes of those who gave the first answer, they would have to say that in the future Rabbi Judah’s answer might be acceptable! In other words those who allow for a change in the halakhah, must admit that in the future such change might not be acceptable. If we were to look at the same dispute through Rabbi Judah’s eyes, we would have to say that this opinion is unaccepted now and forever! Meaning, Rabbi Judah himself would have to admit that minority opinions are acceptable in the future, in which case, perhaps, even his minority opinion would someday be accepted.

Questions for Further Thought:
• What might be some of the underlying conceptual differences between Rabbi Judah’s and the Sages’ (mishnah five) reasons why minority opinions are preserved in the Mishnah?