21:25: Even the world could not contain the books.
Similar exuberance is found in Tractate Sopherim 16 § 8: Of Rabban
Yohanan b. Zakkai († ca. 80), they said that he said, “If all the heavens were
parchment and all the trees were styluses, and all the seas ink, it would not
be enough to write down my wisdom, which I learned from my teacher. And yet, I
have enjoyed the wisdom of the wise only as much as a fly that dives into the
oceans of the world and takes away a little from it.”—The same saying is
attributed to R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, the disciple of Rabban Yohanan b. Zakkai,
in ’Abot R. Nat. 25 in the following form: If all the seas were ink and all the
stalks of reed were styluses, and all men were authors, they would not be able
to write down what I have learned from Scripture and from traditional
scholarship and what I have heard from the scholars in the academy. And yet I
have taken away from my teachers (according to the reading מרבותי) only as much as a person who dips his
finger into the sea (according to the Frankfurt a. M. edition [1720ff.]), and
by teaching, I have lost only as much as the makeup pencil needs from the tube
of makeup when applying makeup.—A parallel passage can be found in Midr. Song
1:3 (84B); see also b. Šabb. 11A. (Hermann L. Strack and Paul
Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash,
ed. Jacob N. Cerone, 4 vols. [trans. Andrew Bowden and Joseph Longarino;
Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2022], 2:676)
