The four who entered the pardes, and the warning "do not say 'water, water'" -- traced across four witnesses
Everyone knows Rabbi Akiva's warning at "the stones of pure marble: do not say 'water, water.'" What the handbooks rarely show is that the warning is absent from the two oldest tellings of the story. Set the witnesses side by side and a small textual history appears: the four who entered the orchard, the warning that was added to them in Babylonia, and the "water" that was cosmological before it became optical. Read across the table below for "water, water" and the story tells itself.
Four entered the orchard... one gazed and died, one gazed and was stricken... and one ascended in peace and descended in peace. ... [Ben Zoma:] "There is between the upper waters and the lower waters but a handsbreadth's span."
Notice No marble, no "water, water" warning. Where the Tosefta speaks of water, it is the cosmological upper-and-lower waters of creation (Genesis 1).
2. Yerushalmi Ḥagigah 2:1 · Palestinian, c. 4th-5th c.
Four entered the orchard... Ben Azzai gazed and was stricken -- of him Scripture says, "Have you found honey? Eat only your fill" (Prov 25:16). Ben Zoma gazed and died -- of him Scripture says, "Precious in the eyes of the LORD is the death of His devoted ones" (Ps 116:15).
Notice Still no warning -- and the fates of Ben Azzai and Ben Zoma are swapped from the Bavli/Tosefta. The proof-texts travel with the fate, not the sage.
Rabbi Akiva said to them: When you reach the stones of pure marble, do not say "water, water," because it is said (Ps 101:7), "One who speaks falsehoods shall not be established before My eyes."
Notice Here the warning appears -- the danger is the marble that looks like water, and the failure is mis-naming it.
The guardians of the gate of the sixth palace would act as though casting upon him thousands of waves of water, yet there is not a single drop there. If he said, "These waters -- what is their nature?" immediately they would run after him with stoning.
Notice The water is an illusion the guardians cast, and the failure is questioning it -- a third, distinct form of the danger.
Witness
"Water, water" warning?
What "water" is
Failure is...
Tosefta
Absent
Cosmological (upper/lower waters)
--
Yerushalmi
Absent (and fates swapped)
Cosmological
--
Bavli
Present
Marble that looks like water
Mis-naming it
Heikhalot Rabbati
Present (distinct form)
An illusion the guardians cast
Questioning it
For discussion
If the warning is missing from the two oldest witnesses, what changed between the Land of Israel and Babylonia that the danger of "water" needed to be named?
The Bavli's danger is mis-naming; the Heikhalot's is questioning. What is each tradition saying about the right posture before what one sees?
In the Tosefta and Yerushalmi the "water" is the upper and lower waters of creation. Does that older sense survive inside the later optical warning?
Why might the Yerushalmi assign Ben Azzai's and Ben Zoma's fates in reverse -- and what does it mean that the verses follow the fate rather than the man?