When Rabbi Zira returned to the land of Israel he fasted a hundred times
in order that he might forget the Babylonian Talmud.
_Bava Metzia_, fol. 85, col. 1.
This passage, as also that on another page, will appear
surprising to many a reader, as we confess it does to ourselves.
We must, however, give the Talmud great credit for recording
such passages, and also the custodians of the Talmud for not
having expunged them from its pages.
"Ye shall hear the small as well as the great" (Deut. i. 17). Resh
Lakish said, "A lawsuit about a prutah (the smallest coin there is)
should be esteemed of as much account as a suit of a hundred manahs."
_Sanhedrin_, fol. 8, col. 1.
Rav Yitzchak asks, "Why was Obadiah accounted worthy to be a prophet?"
Because, he answers, he concealed a hundred prophets in a cave; as it is
said (1 Kings xviii. 4), "When Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord,
Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave." Why by
fifties? Rabbi Eliezer explains, "He copied the plan from Jacob, who
said, 'If Esau come to one company and smite it, then the other company
which is left may escape.'" Rabbi Abuhu says, "It was because the caves
would not hold any more."
_Sanhedrin_, fol.
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