ABSTRACT
It is an axiom among traditional scholars of Talmudic literature that appearance of a saying or story in a late document, such as the Babylonian gemara or a medieval collection of midrashim, does not mean the saying or story itself is late. The whole corpus of rabbinic materials, it is alleged, circulated orally before redaction. Hence, what appears in a late document could have been handed on in oral tradition from earliest time, therefore is just as reliable as what is redacted in the earliest compilations. In other words, the theological principle that הרותב רתואםו םדקומ קא applies as much to the oral as to the written Torah. That axiom cannot be said to run counter to common sense, for the conditions for the transmission of traditional materials are not incongruent to it. If pretty much everything was preserved by memory, then the occurrence in a written document is not consequential in assessing the relative age of materials.
