Temurah – Textual Issues

We began a new mesekhet this week – Temurah. This mesekhet continues the theme of smaller topics in kodshim, sacrifices and sanctified items, and nicely completes the previous mesekhet Arakhin, in that it wraps up the mitzvot that appear at the end of parshat Bechukotai.

What is different about this mesekhet overall is its textual peculiarities. Even after less than a week of the daf, people will notice how many textual variants/corrections there are. This is an indication of a tractate that was not studied extensively, hence no consensus developed regarding a standard text, and errors were more likely to creep in.

Beyond the textual variants, however, another distinctive feature exists, and that is the frequency of לישנא אחרינא, of the Gemara presenting another version, which for all intents and purposes is the exact same as the previous one in terms of content, but uses slightly different terminology or phrasing. The extensive presence of such לישנא אחרינא indicates that there were two parallel texts on the sugya, and some editor, at some time, rather than selecting one over the other, put both of them in and indicated that they were competing options with the phrase לישנא אחרנא.

Where did these alternatives texts come from? It is possible to speculate that they developed at the same time in the same location and the existence of both versions again – like in the case of textual variants – was an outgrowth of the fact that this tractate was not extensively studied. However, it is hard to imagine that this led to such significantly different alternative texts. More significantly, this ignores another fact, namely, that these לישנא אחרינא texts have a different grammar and style than the classic Bavli texts do. This indicates a different provenance for these alternative versions.

Rashi on today’s daf (6b, s.v., biShinuy koneh) notes as such:

ל”א … ובין האי לישנא ללישנא ד[שנייה] לי[ה] בשינוי קונה ליכא מידי אלא זה ירושלמי וזה בבלי.

Lishna Achrina … There is no difference between this version and the version where the Gemara answers “שינוי קונה”, except that this one is a Yerushalmi version, and the other one [the first one] is a Bavli version.

So according to Rashi, these are versions of the sugya from Eretz Yisrael, or perhaps even from the Yerushalmi itself. Now, although Rambam in his Commentary to the Mishna states that there is a Yerushalmi on Kodshim, we have no extant texts of this, and it is questionable if it ever existed. In fact, there was quite a scandal about 100 years ago when someone claimed to have “found” the Yerushalmi Kodshim. Needless to say, it was a forgery. A short write-up of this can be found here. So, it isn’t from the Yerushalmi, but perhaps it is nevertheless from Eretz Yisrael. And, in fact, scholars have noted that some of the linguistic peculiarities of these לישנא אחרינא versions have parallels to the Aramaic of the Land of Israel. This approach, then, represents one school of scholars – that these texts originate in Eretz Yisrael.

Two other schools of thought exist. One – the most widely accepted one – is that both these texts are from Bavel, but the לישנא אחרינא ones are from Pumbeditha and Neharda, where the Aramaic was more similar to that of Eretz Yisrael. The rest of the Bavli – and the base text of Temurah – was edited in Sura by Rav Ashi. Our mesekhet, then, represents two parallel versions of some sugyot – one from Sura and one from Pumbeditha and Neharada.

A third group of scholars believe that the difference is not geographical, but chronological. According to Avraham Weiss, the לישנא אחרינא versions actually represent earlier versions of the sugya, whereas Epstein believes that they are later. A consensus regarding this has not been reached.

Now, these questions relate not just to Temurah and the lishna achrina versions, but actually to 5 entire mesekhtot: Nedarim, Nazir, Meilah, Keritot, Tamid. All these mesekhtot reflect the linguistic peculiarities of our לישנא אחרינא versions, so the questions of redaction and provenance apply equally to these mesekhtot, two of which we will be learning soon in the daf.

These issues are nicely spelled out in Strack and Stemberger’s Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash - required reading on issues of contemporary Talmud scholarship – in their chapter on the Babylonian Talmud. On our Resources page, we have posted the entire chapter as well as the selection that focuses on these distinctive tractates and the לישנא אחרינא of our mesekhet. As we will be encountering these textual issues for the next three months, this short selection is well worth the reading!