A dispute for heaven's sake

Mahloqet l'šem šamayim is the topic of m'Abot 5:17. Medieval interpreters understood mahloqet as a 'dispute'. Modern scholars, following Biblical Hebrew, have proposed 'group' as the original definition, with support from one of the oldest commentaries to m'Abot. Others opposed this interpretation as irreconcilable with the Mishnah's examples and proposed alternate intermediate interpretations. A diachronic analysis of manuscript textual witnesses and of parallels in m'Abot 4:11 and 'Abot R. Nat. suggests that 'group' was the definition in an abbreviated early Mishnah, which split following the linguistic development of the term maloqet. That kernel was supplemented with examples in order to clarify the new meaning, 'dispute', as was the parallel to m'Abot 4:11 in 'Abot R. Nat B 46, which preserves the older meaning by substituting the term k'nesiya. An appendix describes the colourful history of an original later interpretation deliberately misattributed to R. Jonah of Girona by the printer.