Fact-Checking the Torah -- put it to bed with a shovel

So I was doing on some Talmudic studies on Sefaria.org, which is a wonderful site. They are currently working on putting all the vowels in Talmud Bavli and expect to be finished by the end of 2022.

And I forget how this happened but I came up with something I've seen on another Jewish site, myjewishlearning.com. It's time to put this urban legend to bed with a shovel.

There's a wonderful saying attributed to R. Yochanan b. Zakkai, who saved Judaism after the Second Temple was destroyed. “If you have a sapling in your hand and are told, ‘Look, the Messiah is here,’ you should first plant the sapling and then go out to welcome the Messiah”. The citation is Avot d'Rabbi Natan 31b.

I have seen two different digital versions of Avot d'Rabbi Natan, one of them on the Sefaria site under Talmud, Masekhtot Ketanot. As you scroll down the Avot, the top of the page shows section numbers. 

Section number 31 does not have this quote. It has quotes from rabbis who came after R. Yochanan.

This is classic for an urban legend. The next step to take is to assume the numbers are reversed. This can happen if the person doing the writing doesn't know Hebrew. The gravestone of Mendel Beilis seems to have two letters reversed, showing the wrong year of death.

So now section 13: It has sayings by Rabbi Shammai, who was vice president of the Sanhedrin when Rabbi Hillel was president. So that doesn't work either.

Step three is, what quotes of Rabbi Yochanan DOES Avot have? That's in section 14. The Messiah is not referred to in that section.

There are also quotes from him in sections 17, 22 and 25. None of them have to do with the Messiah.

The Sefaria document is searchable. That's how I found the last three sections. The words in the spurious quote are not in there.

So what is going on here? Well, Sefaria fosters registered users who can create sheets about topics they are interested in or want to see discussed. And apparently one of these users believes the urban legend, but has never compared it to the on-site version of Avot d'Rabbi Natan. This is chronic with people who spread urban legends; they never check the source. The sheet with the urban legend claims it comes from a specific version of Avot, but gives no publication data on this version -- no publisher's name for the book, no date of publication, no editor, nothing.

That's like the Jesus ossuary or the manuscript which refers to Jesus and wives. Neither one has a provenance. Remember, I talked about that in The Digs. Anybody who makes a claim has to give the evidence that says it's real. In the case of the ossuary and manuscript, there is no such data. The owner of the manuscript has changed his story about where he got it. 

If anybody can give publication data on a version of Avot d'Rabbi Natan that DOES contain this urban legend, then we can possibly find it on Internet Archive, HebrewBooks.org, or for sale on etsy, E-Bay, or even Dan Wyman's store. But until we know the publication data, everybody spreading this story is spreading an urban legend.

Sefaria is not responsible for a user who doesn't doubt he is right, and posts on a site that gives the lie to his urban legend. Myjewishlearning has a named author for their post. I emailed them, told them when I was going to publish, and gave them this text. I got no answer back from the site or their author.

As with the Baba Bathra question, this story deserves to be true. But I come to bury urban legends, not to praise them.