[MUSIC] Picture a rabbi sitting at a table. It could be in a local synagogue or in his own dining room, and surrounded by three or four students for hours of conversation. This scene, multiplied 100 times to take into account different generations of rabbis in different geographic locations, is the setting for the production of rabbinic literature. Some of the time the rabbi and his students would study out of a text, the Hebrew bible, and spend their time creatively reading a text in a style known as Midrash. Other times the rabbis would study in a different style. Articulating their ideas as precepts or statutes, statements of fact that could then be memorized and transmitted. Because so many precepts were involved, special techniques such as the construction of memory palaces, were used to remember all the words. The organization of the precepts was often mnemonic to facilitate memorization. Logical organization was also employed. In the 2nd century CE, several different oral organizations of precepts circulated in Palestine. They were the outgrowths of parallel study practices that took place under the leadership of different rabbis throughout Northern Palestine, now Israel. Around the year 200 CE, Rabbi Judah the Prince, a leading Rabbinic scholar who was also the official political authority of the local Jewish population, decided to collect the different oral organizations into a single body of statutes known as Mishnah. Mishnah is the most organized work of Rabbinic literature, it has three levels of organization, order, tractate, and chapter. Mishnah has six topical orders, and each topical order is subdivided into several subject tractates. The number of tractates per order ranges from 7 to 12. Rabbi Judah the Prince did a remarkable job editing a single Mishnah out of several, often discordant, prior works. One of the techniques that made it possible to put these works together was the practice of recording multiple opinions. The debates that are the hallmark of the Mishnah that we read today are often not reflective of live debate between rabbinic contemporaries, but of the competing views of different proto-Mishnahs. Despite Rabbi Judah the Prince's best efforts, not every idea or opinion that existed among these proto-Mishnahs as oral compilations in the second century, was included in the Mishnah. Some of these unrecorded ideas or opinions were lost to time, but others of them continue to circulate orally, both as independent, individual units, and as parts of other collections. Tosefta is a work that looks a lot like the Mishnah, and is organized on the same paradigm of order, tractate, and chapter. Some passages of Tosefta rely syntactically on text in the Mishnah, making it clear that Tosefta is, as a work, dependent on, and later than Mishnah. And yet Tosefta is a supplement to Mishnah that preserves material from proto-Mishnahs, that was excluded from Mishnah. This preserved material in the Tosefta is older than it's parallel formulation in the Mishnah, and often allows scholars to reconstruct the process through which the Mishnah was edited. Tosefta supplemental character makes it less of a literarily unified work than Mishnah, but it sometimes can be demonstrated to have literary substance all its own. Let's compare the Mishnah and Tosefta. The first chapter of Mishnah Makkot reflects some mnemonic organization. The first six cases introduced in the chapter employ the same formulaic expression attributed to the false witnesses. We testify about So-and-so that. It is only after these six cases appear that the Mishnah records it's most fundamental definition of false testimony at Mishnah 4. The negative introduction of this case, witnesses do not become false witnesses unless is echoed in Mishnah 6. Like the Mishnah, the first chapter of Tosefta Makkot has some mnemonic organization. It preserves four cases that have the format of, we testify about So-and-so that, that are not included in the Mishnah, two of these add a factor that wasn't included in the Mishnah, the relationship between false testimony and competing claims. Civil matters always has two opposing sides. False testimony is not just antagonistic to one party is such cases, it benefits and sides with another party. And can have disparate impact depending upon the type of testimony. Though Tosefta shares the mnemonic organization around, we testify about So-and-so that, it comes closer to opening with the fundamental case that defines how witnesses are determined to be false. Tosefta also adds other legal material that is not present in the Mishnah but does appear in the Talmud. The opening lines of Tosefta's chapter established that a false witness cannot be sold into slavery for this crime as thieves could be. Rabbi Akiva adds, that a false witness cannot financially self-incriminate because the financial penalty of this crime is not restitutive, but punitive. And all punitive punishments cannot be administered on the basis of self-incrimination. These two statements represent half of the content expressed in the Babylonian Baraita discussed in an earlier video. Looking at parallel material in the Tosefta can sometimes provide helpful interpretations of scenarios in the Mishnah. For example, the Mishnah imagines a case in which sets of witnesses keep arriving in court to assert that their predecessors are lying. If others came and showed these to be false witnesses, and others came and showed these to be false witnesses, even 100, they will all be killed. There are two traditions for understanding this Mishnah. One tradition understands the majority position to say, that all of the witnesses are killed as liars. This is the view of the Babylonian Talmud. Tosefta, an earlier commentary than the Talmud to the Mishnah in this case, understands the case to be one in which you have two factions of witnesses. The odds, sets 1,3,5 etc. And the evens, sets 2,4,6, etc. When the Mishnah says that all of the witnesses are killed, it means that all members of one of these groups. Tosefta also adds that this wouldn't apply at all in a financial testimony case. A final point, both Mishnah and Tosefta have a limitation from Rabbi Yose that excludes financial cases, but they apply the exclusion in different cases. This has something to teach us about the way these oral traditions worked. Sometimes the free–floating nature of the raw materials allowed for disagreements about application. To conclude then, comparison with Tosefta illuminates various aspects of Mishnah's construction and editing. Tosefta also functions as a contrast case for the Talmud's interpretations of the Mishnah. [MUSIC]
