'We Should Not Impose an Enactment upon the Community Unless the Majority of the Community Will Be Able to Abide It' /'אין גוזרין גזירה על הציבור אלא אם כן רוב הציבור יכולין לעמוד בה'

International audience; According to Socrates in his Historia ecclesiastica (P. G. 67, col. 101-104), during a session of Nicea’s Council, the question of perpetual celibacy for the members of the clergy was raised. Most of the bishops were in favour of such a status. Suddenly, a venerable old and holy man whose name was Paphnutius, an ascetic and himself a perpetual continent, stood up and declared to the assembly: “Do not enact an enactment (Greek: kanon) which nobody can bear”The similarity between that statement and the well-known talmudic saying: “We should not impose an enactment upon the community unless the majority of the community will be able to abide it” (T. B. Babba Qama, 79b, a.s.o.), is striking enough to justify an attempt to check if we could speak of a Jewish influence upon Christian ways of expression, at that time.The inquiry is based upon rabbinic sources, on one hand, and Greek and Syriac Christian sources, on another hand. The comparison is made from two standpoints: that of the form (philological point-of-view) and that of the contents (religious point-of-view), with regard to the specificity of both institutions, the Christian and the Jewish ones.