at re: ower r der­o the were ctor, o the

tht to ction lated verbs The rst of with > first one.” nani, from e the » has

ifra: ken o the eved s. He udies view, lows

A. STANLEY DREYFUS

that even a precocious scholar—the rabbis use the picturesque phrase yanniq vehakim,“nurseling sage™'’—can be called a zaken and that the young man becomes eligible for deference, though some say, for only a modest form of it. If one must rise to full height to do homage to an elderly scholar, the young scholar is to be acknowledged by half­rising before him. According to Arukh ha-Shulhan, however, a young man must be muflag behakhmah, exceptionally learned, to be worthy of deference, and Epstein observes that such mature wisdom cannot

be attributed to a youth."

A somewhat similar depiction of“old age” as simply another expression for wisdom occurs in Wisdom of Solomon 4:8-9:“For old age is not honored for length of time, nor measured by number of years, but understanding is gray hair for men, and a blameless life is ripe old age.” So also Philo , On the Contemplative Life, Chapter 8:

[The Therapeutae] do not regard those as elders who are advanced in years and aged if they have only lately devoted themselves to the vocation; but they call those elders who from their earliest years have spent time and strength in the contemplative study of philosophy."

Numbers 11:16 is cited as a proof text to demonstrate that zaken can be taken as a synonym of hakham. In that passage God directs Moses,“Gather for me seventy of Israel ’s elders(miziknei Visrael), of whom you have experience as elders and officers of the people(ziknei ha’am)....” There is a parallel to zaken, in the sense of mature and tried counselor, in the Greek geron, which has the dual Meaning of elder, and also one eligible to sit in the gerousia, the Council of Elders. Another parallel is in the Latin senex, from which

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