Tosefta

In this book the author has discovered a new way of dealing with the problematic relationship between the Mishnah and the Tosefta. Her approach comprises a computer-assisted analysis of the text on the basis of the most important manuscripts, and a computer program was made for the compilation of different synopses. The program can take the Mishnah as a running text to which the Tosefta material is synoptically arranged, but it can als reverse the procedure. This enables an unbiased comparison of the two texts.
In the second part of the book, the methodology is applied to the tractates Berakhot and Shebiit. The analysis shows that the texts are interwoven so closely that they can almost be considered a single literary work.

Passover is a time of joy, celebration, family, warmth and friendship. My first memory of a Seder was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1957. My aunt Shaindel, of blessed memory, hosted it in the storage shed, at the back of her grocery store. We sat on wooden milk crates, around a jerry-rigged table made with a plywood sheet of wood, which also rested on milk crates. The table was covered with a white tablecloth and all the traditional symbols of Passover, including matzo, marror and charoset, were displayed. I was attired in the new suit my dad, of blessed memory, had made for me. He had studied tailoring at an ORT school in Italy, while recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust and Auschwitz. The suit consisted of a riding jacket and breeches. Of course, I also wore my favorite cowboy boots from Sears and sported toy six guns in dual holsters around my waist. It was a glorious experience. Yet today, I can't help but marvel at the extraordinary resilience and determination of my father to carry on, despite all the suffering he had endured. What's more, he motivated himself to build a family in a strange new land and re-establish a traditional Jewish household. He was so happy at the Seder, reciting the Kiddush, reading the Haggadah out loud, singing the melodies he had heard at home and introducing us to all the Jewish rituals and traditions he remembered from his own childhood. He had a strong and beautiful voice. When he sang, I remember my mom, aunts and uncles tearing up, as they too remembered how life had been in the old country. Their childhoods had been ripped away by the Nazis and their cohorts. Each had a miraculous tale of survival. In that intimate setting, I too felt how grateful they were to be alive, together with us, celebrating the Holiday of Passover at the Seder. As we clung to each other, the warmth of the moment enveloped us. It is a memory I will always treasure. What is it about Passover that makes it so special? It brings out so much good in people. In our times, the Seder is often associated with luxurious surroundings, bountiful food and good wine; but this has not always been the case. It was not so long ago that Jews in Nazi concentration camps celebrated Passover, even as they were starved, beaten and all but worked to death. There are reports of those who bravely conducted a Seder in the camps, by each reciting those parts of the Haggadah they remembered. There was no food, let alone matzo to eat. How to explain that kind of grit and determination to carry on an ancient tradition that seemed so remote from their circumstances? How were they able to sing about the miraculous redemption from Egypt, despite being slave laborers and in the face of near certain death? This was not the first time that the Jewish people celebrated a Passover Seder under exceedingly dire circumstances. The Haggadah speaks of a Passover Seder that was located in Bnei Brak. It likely occurred during the time of the Hadrianic persecutions.There was another Seder reported in the Tosefta, which was attended by Rabban Gamliel and the Zekenim, held in Lud. As discussed in this article, these two Seders likely occurred at different times and under exceedingly different circumstances.

Summaries for: Shamma Friedman, Tosefta Atiqta, Pesaḥ Rishon, Synoptic Parallels of Mishna and Tosefta Analyzed, with a Methodological Introduction, Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2002.

This English abstract (not published within the book) offers summaries of the 22 studies of Mishna/Tosefta parallels which comprise the body of this volume.

תוספתא עתיקתא על מסכת פסח ראשון, מקבילות המשנה והתוספתא ופירושן בצירוף מבוא, רמת-גן תשס"ג

The article traces the building blocks of the rabbinic concept of Nohaide laws as they appear in Jubillees, the Temple Scroll and the Genesis Apocryphon: the commandments given to Noah or by him to his sons; the motif of blaimng the sons of Noah for violating the commandments; and the rejection of the sons of Noah and the election of Israel, including its eschatological dimensions. The artilce also presents the percedents of legal discrimination against non-jews in the context of the ban against theft and murder. These various elements were later incorporated into a well-developed rabbinic conceptual framework of the Nohide laws. However, it is only in the rabbinic corpus, and especially in the Baylonian Talmud, that the Nohide laws were framed in terms of a binary model of distinction between Jews and Gentiles. The elements, motifs and conventions that later constituted the rabbinic concept are found in the earlier corpora in different contexts and settings. For example, the laws given to Noah or his sons are seen as par of a continuous chain of covenants rather than as a different legal system for non-Jews. Blaming the sons of Noah appears in the idelological context of the election of the Qumran sect rather than of the election of Israel as a whole. Finally, the halakhic context of the Nohide laws in rabbinic literature is an important development. It reflects a generic shift towards the development of distinct legal systems for Jews and non-Jews. I it also suggested that Acts 15 may be seen as the earliest legal cocretization of the laws, leading from Second Temple and secterial origins to the later rabbinic framework.

The present study explores the origins of Jewish ritual immersion – inquiring when immersion first appeared as a rite of purification and what the reasons may have been for this development specifically at this time. Textual and archaeological evidence suggest that immersion emerged at some point during – or perhaps slightly prior to – the first half of the first century B.C.E. It is suggested here that the practice grew out of contemporary bathing practices involving the Hellenistic hip bath. Through a process of ritualization, full-body immersion emerged as a method of purificatory washing clearly differentiated from profane bathing. By way of a subsequent process of 'hyper-ritualization', some ventured further to distinguish purificatory ablutions from profane bathing by restricting use of 'drawn water' for purification and by assigning impurity to anyone who bathed in such water. Before us is an enlightening example of one of the many ways wherein Jewish religious practices evolved and adapted in response to Hellenistic cultural innovations.

The Rabbinic corpus is notoriously lacking in reflexive descriptions of the rabbinic period and its literary products. The rabbinic sources rarely explain what the rabbis were trying to do, and why; what the rabbinic corpora was meant to present. But a few sources do give us a glimpse into several reflexive depictions of the rabbinic project. One of the most well-known of these is the first tosefta in tractate Eduyot. The text is set, unusually, in a time and place: “when the rabbis entered Yavne,” and it contains three parts: a problem, biblical textual proof for the problem, and a solution enacted by the rabbis at Yavne. In other words, the text is explicitly set as describing a conscious change, a moment in time in which the rabbis had to deal with a problem, and decided to start some kind of a process. This was thus rightly seen as a uniquely self-reflexive text, describing the beginning of the rabbinic project itself. I offer a philological examination of the two versions of the tosefta, and identifying their respective difficulties, alongside a higher criticism approach to the content of the different parts of the tosefta, might contribute to more nuanced understanding of this rabbinic source.  According to my reconstruction, the tosefta is using two different tannaitic sources to discuss the fear of future loss of the Torah, due to both blending of all teaching without markers of their origin, and due to lack of organizing and grouping of similar things in a way that facilitate their use.

The present chapter traces how the rabbis in the tractate of Hagigah developed the biblical commands concerning cultic pilgrimage into laws for a bygone Jerusalem temple pilgrimage to see and be seen by God. Our investigation points to how the desire for, and loss of, the sight of God’s face punctuates and centers the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Hagigah. The biblical commandment to "see the face of God three times a year" allowed the rabbis to conjure forms and narratives of pilgrimage in an age of Greek and Roman "visual piety" but without the Jerusalem temple. The chapter shows how in varying ways earlier and later rabbis construct a pilgrimage of reciprocal vision (in which pilgrim and god mutually behold and are beheld), particularly in the Babylonian Talmud which emphasizes "homovisuality."

(Hebrew below)
The Babylonian Talmud ("Bavli"), as does its Palestinian counterpart ("Yerushalmi"), often cites Tannaitic materials ("Baraitot"), many of which have parallels in the Tosefta. In the great majority of them there are minor or major differences between them and their parallels in the Tosefta. Many scholars have dealt with the questions what are the causes of these differences and what is the relation between the citations in both Talmuds, and no ultimate conclusion has been reached.
For example, H. Albeck argued that the Tosefta was redacted in the late Amoraic period, in Palestine, and hence concluded that the materials in the Bavli stems mainly from Baraitot that preceded the Tosefta. In a similar fashion Y. Elman argued that the Babylonian Amoraim did not use the Tosefta as a composition. J.N. Epstein argued, as did most scholars before and after him, that the Tosefta was redacted in the period after the Mishnah's editing, but that the Bavli used materials that stemmed from an "ancient Tosefta", besides other collections of Baraitot, and that the Yerushalmi used "our" Tosefta. Epstein furthermore explained many of the differences between the Bavli and the Tosefta by the freer, and sometimes paraphrastic, transmission of the Tosefta, because of its oral transmission in Babylonia, as well as the existence of emendations in the Tosefta following the rulings of the Amoraim.
S.Y. Friedman and A. Goldberg emphasized the nature of the Bavli as one that tends to redact and alter its sources, and opposed the hypothesis of an "ancient Tosefta". More recently, B. Katzoff pointed out the greater proximity of some of the Baraitot in the Bavli to the Tosefta than their counterparts in the Yerushalmi, and proposed two alternatives to explain this phenomenon: either it teaches us that the Bavli is more conservative in its citations than what most scholars assume, or the transmission of the Tosefta as we know it today was affected by late Babylonian style and language.
This work aims to study the nature of the citations in the Bavli of the Baraitot that have parallels in the Tosefta, by examining a corpus of 242 Baraitot in tractates Bava Batra and Sanhedrin in the Bavli, and specifically by comparing parallels and examining their contents, language and style, and differentiating between the various layers in the Bavli and in the Tosefta.
The work considers the various ways of which the Bavli alters the Baraitot it cites: adjusting the content and language to the Mishna; changing them in light of the Sugya's wording or ruling; using a Babylonian style; interpretive changes; transmission errors and deteriorated traditions; and at times the influence of a Babylonian ruling or tradition.
The work shows that when differentiating between the Bavli's layers, the wordings of Amoraim can be more understandable assuming they had in front of them a Baraita closer to the Tosefta than the one appears in the Sugya. On the other hand, there exists numerous cases where the Bavli preserves an original text, whether the cause is error in the Tosefta text-witnesses, a secondary wording of its redactors, or a parallel tradition.
The work also deals with the ways in which Baraitot ended up in the Bavli, sometimes as part of a Palestinian Sugya. Another phenomenon, that other studies have mentioned as well, is collections of Baraitot that appear in the Tosefta and in both Talmuds, when at times the Talmuds preserve information about the Baraitot being originally separated.
The work examines the relationship between the ways the Bavli and the Yerushalmi cite Baraitot, and determines that on the one hand, the citations in the Yerushalmi are generally closer to the Tosefta than those in the Bavli, partly because of the less intense modes of redaction of the former and the longer period of editing and transmission of the latter, as well as the change of place from Palestine to Babylonia, but on the other hand the Bavli at times shows greater proximity to the Tosefta than the Yerushalmi or other Palestinian sources, which in some cases present a secondary tradition.
On the whole, the work presents a complex image of an intensive redaction and deteriorated traditions in the Bavli, but also fewer but still numerous cases of preservation of ancient traditions and versions. These findings may be explained by a world of oral transmission, and the varying knowledge and ignorance of the different editing layers of the Tosefta by the different creators and transmitters of the Bavli, as well as the influence of the Talmuds on the final shape of the Tosefta.

התלמוד הבבלי, כמו גם התלמוד הירושלמי, מרבה לצטט חומרים תנאיים, "ברייתות", ולרבות מן הברייתות יש מקבילות בתוספתא. ברובן המוחלט יש שינויים, קטנים או גדולים, בינן לבין מקבילותיהן שבתוספתא. חוקרים רבים עסקו בשאלות מה הסיבות לשינויים האלה, ומה היחס בין הציטוטים בשני התלמודים, ונראה שעדיין לא הושגה מסקנה מחקרית חתוכה.
כך לדוגמה ח' אלבק טען שהתוספתא נערכה בסוף ימי האמוראים בארץ ישראל, ומכאן שהחומרים שבבבלי נובעים ברובם מקבצים שקדמו לעריכת התוספתא. ברוח דומה טען י' אלמן שאמוראי בבל לא השתמשו בתוספתא כחיבור. י"נ אפשטיין טען, כשיטת רוב החוקרים לפניו ואחריו, שהתוספתא נערכה בתקופה הסמוכה לאחר חיבור המשנה, אלא שלצד שימושו של הבבלי בקובצי ברייתות שונים מן התוספתא, בפני הבבלי עמד מה שהשתלשל מ"תוספתא קדומה", ואילו הירושלמי השתמש בתוספתא "שלנו". אפשטיין הסביר גם רבים מהשינויים בבבלי במסירה חופשית יותר, ולעיתים פרפרסטית, עקב מסירה על פה של התוספתא בבבל, לצד הגהות בתוספתא בעקבות תורתם של אמוראים.
ש"י פרידמן וא' גולדברג הדגישו את האופי המעבד של הבבלי, ולשיטתם כמעט כל שינוי בין התוספתא ובין הבבלי נובע משינויי עריכה של הבבלי, ואין מקום לדבר על חיבור מעין "תוספתא קדומה". לאחרונה עמד ב' קצוף על קרבה בין חלק מהברייתות בתלמוד הבבלי דווקא לתוספתא, לעומת מקבילותיהן בירושלמי, והעלה שתי אפשרויות להסבר: שהדבר מלמד על שמרנות רבה יותר של התלמוד הבבלי בציטוטיו מאשר המקובל במחקר, או שמסירת התוספתא בצינור בבלי השפיעה על עיצובה וקירבה אותה לתלמוד הבבלי.
עבודה זו מבקשת לעמוד על אופי הציטוט של התלמוד הבבלי של הברייתות המקבילות לתוספתא, על ידי בחינת קורפוס של 242 ברייתות במסכתות בבא בתרא וסנהדרין בתלמוד הבבלי. זאת, תוך שימוש בהשוואה בין מקורות ובחינת תוכן, לשון וסגנון ובהבחנה בין הרבדים השונים בתלמוד הבבלי ובתוספתא.
העבודה עומדת על הדרכים השונות שבהן הבבלי מעבד את הברייתות שבו: התאמה למשנה, שינוי בהשפעת לשון הסוגיה ותוכנה, ניסוח בסגנון בבלי, שינויים פרשניים, ניתוק מן ההקשר במקור, שיבושים ומסורת מדורדרת, ולעיתים גם השפעת הלכה ומסורת בבלית. המחקר מראה כיצד בהבחנה בין רבדים בתלמוד הבבלי, יש ודברי האמוראים מובנים טוב יותר בהנחה שעמד לפניהם נוסח דומה יותר לתוספתא מאשר זה שנמסר בסוגיה. מצד שני מודגמים גם מקרים שבהם התלמוד הבבלי משמר נוסח מקורי, בין אם מדובר בשיבושי נוסח בתוספתא, בניסוח משני של עורכיה ומסדריה, או במסורת מקבילה.
כמו כן נדונים בעבודה מסלולי המסירה של ברייתות בתלמוד הבבלי, שחלקן הגיעו לבבלי יחד עם סוגיה ארצישראלית, ולעיתים השתבשו בהשפעתה. תופעה נוספת שהועלתה במחקר, בהמשך למחקרים קודמים, היא קובצי ברייתות המופיעים הן בתוספתא הן בתלמודים, כשלעיתים התלמודים משמרים את המידע על היותן של הברייתות נפרדות במקור, בטרם סידורן לכלל קובץ בתוספתא.

בעבודה נבחן גם היחס בין התלמוד הבבלי לתלמוד הירושלמי בציטוטי ברייתות הנמצאות בתוספתא, ונמצא שמצד אחד לרוב הציטוטים בירושלמי קרובים יותר לתוספתא מאשר אלה שבבבלי, בין השאר משום שדרכי העיבוד של הראשון אינטנסיביות פחות וזמן העריכה והמסירה של האחרון היה ממושך יותר, ואף המעבר מארץ ישראל לבבל יכול להשפיע על דרדור מסורות, אך מצד שני הבבלי שותף לעיתים לתוספתא אל מול הירושלמי או מקורות ארץ ישראליים אחרים, ובחלק מהמקרים במסורת הנראית משנית לעומת אותם מקורות.
בראייה כללית, מוצגת בעבודה תמונה מורכבת של עיבוד רווח של ברייתות בבבלי ודרדור מסורות לצד מקרים מעטים יותר, אך עדיין רבים, של שימור מסורות קדומות ונוסחים קדומים, וכן שיתוף בין הבבלי לתוספתא במסורות משניות. תמונה זו מוסברת כתוצאה של עולם של מסירה על-פה, ושל הימצאותם והיעלמותם חליפות, של שלבי גיבוש שונים של התוספתא בפני השלבים השונים של יוצרי התלמוד הבבלי, עורכיו ומוסריו, לצד השפעה של התלמודים על גיבושה הסופי של התוספתא.

In the present paper I discuss acollection of baraitot in ToseftaBerakhot1:1–2, in comparison to the parallel mishnayot. Certain anomalies and linguistic difficultiesin the Tosefta text are discussed. A study of parallel baraitot embedded in the discussion of the Palestinian Talmud (yBer 1:2 [3a])appended to mBer1:2 (yBer 1:2 [3a]) leads to a proposal concerning the original formulation of the Toseftanbaraitot, providing insight into the formation of collected tannaitic traditions and the activity of the Toseftan redactor and his purpose in collecting thebaraitotin the Tosefta.The proposed collection of baraitot underlying the Toseftan redaction in tBer1:2 is found to complement the collection of baraitot in  tBer1:1; together, these collections are contrasted with the formulation of mishnah 1 and 2, providing further insight concerning the Redaktionsgeschichte of the early tannaitic compilations.

The first installation to be identified as an ancient Jewish ritual bath (miqweh) was discovered by Yigael Yadin at Masada in 1963–4, and consisted of a stepped pool connected to an adjacent pool via a hole in the wall shared by the two installations. Yadin identified one installation as the immersion pool of the miqweh, and the second as an ’ôṣār (lit., ‘reservoir’), used to ritually purify the water in the immersion pool. Yadin’s explanation regarding the functioning of this double-pool ritual bath has gone unchallenged since it was first suggested almost half a century ago, and set the stage for future identifications of ’ôṣār installations found adjacent to other Second Temple period ritual baths. The present paper argues that the ’ôṣār is an innovation of the modern period, and that the commonly accepted view that an ’ôṣār was employed in ritual baths dating to as early as the Second Temple period is no more than an unqualified anachronism.

Three caves were discovered by the first archaeological expedition to Naḥal Ṣeʾelim in 1960 under the direction of Yohanan Aharoni: Cave 31 (“The Cave of the Arrows”), Cave 32 (“The Cave of the Skulls”) and Cave 34 (“The Cave of the Scrolls”). This article presents a tefillin case from Cave 34, a find which was never published or even mentioned in preliminary reports on the results of the expedition. The miniscule case is made of leather; it is almost square in shape (16×17 mm) and is divided into four compartments. No inscribed tefillin slips were found inside. Two tefillin slips which were discovered separately in the cave have been published in the past, however it is impossible to know for sure if these originated in the case under discussion. Although Aharoni identified the Bar Kokhba revolt as the main period of activity in the three adjacent Naḥal Ṣeʾelim caves, it is possible that the tefillin case might have been brought to Cave 34 earlier—perhaps during the course of the Great Revolt. The structure and size of the tefillin case are quite similar to those of tefillin cases with four compartments found elsewhere in the Judean Desert, most of which date to the late Second Temple period. It should come as no surprise that our tefillin case matches certain details found in the rabbinic prescriptions considering the fact that the rabbis were certainly aware of the way contemporary Jews practiced the tefillin ritual, and it is against this backdrop of common practice that the comments of the rabbis should be read and understood. Recognizing that the rabbis were likely reacting to existing practices rather than acting as primary promulgators of halakhic praxis, there is little reason to label the tefillin case from Naḥal Ṣeʾelim as in some way or other “rabbinic”.

The purpose of this article is to investigate the Tannaitic attitude towards the Samaritans (Kutim) through the analysis of a number of references where the Kutim are associated, analogically or contrastively, either to Israel or to the gentiles. Focusing the attention more on the plane of discourse than on that of factual history, I shall use the case of the Kutim to discuss the process of (textual) definition of the notion of Israel as it emerges from Tannaitic (thematic) texts. The assumption is that studying how the Rabbis categorized the Kutim, is a (tangential and not at all conclusive) way of studying the process of identity definition of the social entity the Rabbis intended to create.

This article examines the relationship between two sets of parallel chapters in the Mishnah and Tosefta, uncovering phenomena which imply the primacy of the Tosefta over its mishnaic parallels. In the first chapter of Ketubbot the mishnaic editors deal simultaneously with the two subjects of the chapter, virginity claims and ketubbah size, thereby creating definitions of virginity which can be broadly applied. Furthermore, the editing of the mishnah paved the way for some halakhic modifications. In contrast, while the parallel toseftan passage also displays editorial organisation, its organisation is that of a simple list. It conveys information, but not the pedagogic agenda of the Mish-nah. Mishnah Yebbamot 5 is a unique chapter of Mishnah whose editorial agenda was to explore the relationship between rabbinically innovative activities and those ordained by the Torah. While ostensibly providing ha-lakhic information, the Mishnah's editors place at the heart of the chapter a position which ascribes some efficacy to the innovations of the rabbis, while preserving the primacy of those institutions contained more explicitly in the Torah. In contrast, the Tosefta merely provides information as to the order in which the various acts of levirate marriage are performed, and does not offer any coherent ideological message.

Neis traces an expression of bodily language (kavvanat halev, literally “directing the heart”) from biblical to early rabbinic sources and demonstrates how it oriented people to the affective, physical, and spatial dimensions of prayer. Rejecting a binary that would treat such language as either mental/subjective (and thus metaphorically) or soley physical/objective , Neis argues that we must unpack the fraught meaning of such corporeal spatial terminology to understand “rabbinic concepts of body-mind, ritual technology, and sacred geography." Neis highlights the guidelines for the body in prayer mode found in the rulings of Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot, which provide a geography and choreography of bodily and affective orientation that calls into question the notion of a fixed,  mandate to turn toward the site of the Jerusalem Temple.  Although later directions found in the Babylonian Talmud on the praying toward the holy of holies have come to be viewed as normative, Neis warns against reading these into the earlier sources on prayer, finding multiple focal points in her anatomy of the tannaitic evidence. Analyzing kavvanat halev in Mishnah Rosh Hoshana 3 and its parallel in the Tosefta, Neis shows how the sages turned hearing into ritual listening and ordinary gazing into observing, directions grounded in the body, space, and affect. Neis closes with a section on the broader implications of this analysis for scholarly discussions of mind/body dualisms and metaphorical and embodied language.

Recent scholarship has shown how investigations into food and poverty contribute to our understanding of late-antique Judaism and Christianity. These areas of inquiry overlap in the study of charity, as providing food was the preeminent way to support the poor. What foods and foodways do the earliest texts of rabbinic Judaism prescribe for the poor? This article examines Tannaitic discussions of the foods that should be given as charity, reading these texts within their literary and historical contexts. I find that they prescribe a two-tiered system whereby foods for the week aim to meet the poor’s biological needs, while those for the Sabbath fulfill religious requirements. These rabbinic instructions, however, also reinforce social separation and deepen the poor’s sense of exclusion. This article contributes to scholarship on poverty and charity in late antiquity, the use of food in the construction of rabbinic identity, and the tensions that arise from establishing material requirements for religious observances.

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim of the Mishnah and Tosefta set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction , zoology and species hybridity. The human here emerges at the intersection of menstrual purity law and Temple sacrificial law in the tractates of Niddah and Bekhorot and is part of a reproductive biology that sought to determine the boundaries and overlaps between species. This rabbinic biology ought to be understood amid ancient conversations about what constitutes a proper member of a species, in terms of reproduction, resemblance and variation. The article shows how, even as it disavows genealogical links between humans and animals (and indeed across other species), rabbinic reproductive biology nonetheless implicates humans among and as animals.

Aharon Shemesh suggested two models for understanding the relationship between the Qumranic laws and the tannaitic Halakha: the developmental model and the reflective model. Following his distinction, this article examines a central concept in the laws of the Sabbath: preparedness (mukhan). Despite the affinity between the meaning and usage of the concept in Second Temple literature and in the Mishnah and Tosefta, a conceptual disparity exists. Whereas tannaitic law distinguishes between preparedness and labor (melakha), the article argues that in Jubilees and in the Damascus Document, preparedness and labor are two sides of the same coin; and that food is not proscribed on the basis of its status, as in rabbinic law. It follows that the sectarian law in this case is not necessarily more stringent than the tannaitic law. The tannaitic novelties are analyzed twofold: as internal tannaitic developments and as a continuation of exegetical traditions that can be traced back to previous works. Through this analysis, the article offers new insights regarding the Sabbath laws in Jubilees and the Damascus Document and suggests a possible understanding of the midrashic ties between Scripture and Halakha.

The consensus is that the Tosefta is 3 to 4 times larger than the Mishna.  Disputes over the relationship between the Mishna and Tosefta fill pages of academic scholarship.  Which came first, the Mishna or Tosefta? Is the Tosefta a commentary on the Mishna or the source of the Mishna?  Was the Tosefta compiled as a challenge to the Mishna’s authority?  However, this claim, that the Tosefta is at least three times longer than the Mishna, appears to go unchallenged.  But is this claim true?
The availability of digitized texts allows this claim to be tested rigorously.  The resulting analysis reveals some surprising facts about the relationships on the tractate level.

A Toseftan story tells of Baba ben Buta, a disciple of the house of Shammai, intervening in the logistical execution of sacrificial rituals to achieve a practical legal outcome according to the position of Beit Hillel. This article lends texture to this narrative by reading into both the doubling of the story in the text and a series of editorial interruptions in the narration. These features combine with similar editorial interruptions in the famous adjacent passage about the temple era legal system to tell a story of editorial resistance to the original story and its assumptions about law and jurisprudence. This example demonstrates that Jewish law as a unified consistent entity was already being contested in the tannaitic period.

The present study presents and discusses the tefillin (phylactery) remains found in Cave 34 at Naḥal Ṣeʾelim within the framework of Yohanan Aharoni’s first 1960 expedition to the Judean Desert. Presented here are a leather tefillin case, never before reported upon, and two inscribed tefillin slips (34ṢePhyl A and 34ṢePhyl B) which have until now received only preliminary treatment. Very few close parallels to the Naḥal Ṣeʾelim tefillin slips are known from elsewhere in the Judean Desert. Both the tefillin slips and the case appear quite compatible with rabbinic descriptions and prescriptions, although there is little reason to label these ritual objects as in some way or another “rabbinic”. The paleographic analysis of the tefillin slips (presented here by Ada Yardeni) suggests that the texts were penned sometime in the second half of the first century CE. While a Bar Kokhba period date for the deposit of the tefillin remains in Cave 34 does not appear at all unlikely, an earlier dating –possibly First Revolt period– must not be precluded.