Sanhedrin 126

The influence of the Tannaïm, [people with prodigious memory who learned whole segments of the Mishnah by heart], was considerable. They emended it in accordance with the statements of Amoraïm [sages of the period of the Gemara] whose interpretation they incorporated in it, so that the later Amoraïm were at times unaware that the text of a particular Mishnah was not the original one but had been emended by those who declaimed it. Yet even though the early Amoraïm disagreed with a Mishnah, they refrained from emending it or changing its wording. From the third generation of Amoraïm onward [say around 300-350 CE], however, emendations also increased by reason of the problems raised by this intensive study. In the course of time variants arose between Babylonia and Eretz-Israel, as well as between the various academies in these two countries. The additions and emendations of the Amoraïm in one center were not taught in the other. From this derived also the considerable differences between the extant manuscripts, in some of which there are early additions such as are not found in the majority of printed versions. The most important extant manuscripts are the Kaufmann manuscript in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest; Parma manuscript 168; Cambridge manuscript 73; and Oxford manuscript 117. Complete manuscripts of the Mishnah are also found in the Munich manuscript, the only complete one of the Babylonian Talmud, and in a single manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud, Leyden Scaliger 3. Manuscripts of individual orders and tractates are found on all the sections of the Talmud. The Mishnah in manuscripts of tractates of the Babylonian Talmud does not represent the authentic Babylonian version, even as that in the Jerusalem Talmud does not always reflect the Eretz-Israel version. The reason is that, copying as they did from Mishnah texts in their possession, the copyists of the Talmuds at times placed at the beginning of a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud a Mishnah taken from a text written according to the Eretz-Israel version, and similarly the version of a Mishnah at the beginning of a chapter in the Jerusalem Talmud does not accord with that of the Eretz-Israel tradition. Distinguished by an unusual spelling, manuscripts of the Eretz-Israel version of the Mishnah, such as the Kaufmann manuscript, also preserve remnants of the living language of Eretz-Israel, whereas in the Babylonian version these features are blurred – the phraseology, style, and vocalization of the Mishnah having been given a literary quality. Great importance attaches to the many Genizah fragments of the Mishnah and of the Talmuds dispersed in various libraries for fixing the text and the vocalization of the Mishnah.

The Mishnah was first printed in Spain in about 1485. But since only individual pages of this edition have been preserved, that printed at Naples in 1492 and comprising the entire Mishnah as well as Maimonides' commentary is generally regarded as the first edition. It inclines mainly to the Jerusalem text, although several of its passages were emended in accordance with that of the Babylonian, as were most of the later printed versions of the Mishnah from that of Venice 1546/7 onward. Particularly important is the edition of Yom Tov Lipmann Heller, who, availing himself of manuscripts, produced a corrected version of the Mishnah. First published with his commentary Tosafot Yom Tov in Prague, 1614–17, it became the basis of all subsequent editions. As yet there is no critical edition of the Mishnah which includes all the variant readings contained in manuscripts, Genizah fragments and quotations of the Mishnah found in the Talmuds and in the works of the early authorities and their commentaries.

The Talmud.

One could hardly expect a literary work of the vast dimensions of the Talmud to be preserved in an authoritative version in all its details. There are indeed innumerable variant readings of the talmudic text. In his commentary Rashi [Western Europe, 11th century CE] often says, hakhi garsinan ("this is how we read it"). In many of these cases Rashi departs from the version before him. There are many reasons for the variants. For many centuries the Talmud was copied by hand in all parts of the world, and mistakes of the copyist were unavoidable; comments written on the margin of a handwritten text occasionally merged with the text and were so copied (thus comments of the geonim were at times incorporated in the text; awareness of the copyist's mistakes often led to correction of texts, which were not based on other more reliable manuscripts, but which were determined by the commentary; and a manuscript was corrected because the text as it stood could not be meaningfully explained, so that the habit developed of correcting texts for the sake of intellectual consistency. As was pointed out by Rabbenu Tam [Western Europe 12 century CE], this played havoc with the texts. Tam shows the right method of textual criticism: to include the change in the commentary, but not to tamper with the text itself, for what may not be clear to the reader may be understood by someone else. He refers to the example of his grandfather Rashi, who followed this practice. Unfortunately, the copyists were less careful and, relying on Rashi's authority, introduced his corrections into the text. Tam complains bitterly about his brother, Rashbam, who, carried away by his powerful intellect, often eliminated older versions to suit his own interpretation. Tam recognizes, however, that he often did it on the basis of other manuscripts. Variant readings were also due to the fact that from the very beginning of establishing the text, there remained unsettled problems. Not unlike the situation after the conclusion of the Mishnah, variations were the manifestations of the unresolved differences between various schools of thought. The great commentators often disagree, not because they interpret the same text differently, but because they had a variant reading before them. Maimonides, apparently, used a great deal of text criticism based on the comparison of old manuscripts. In one place in his code, he rejects an accepted reading of the Talmud because of the variant he found in old manuscripts of the seventh century. In another place he disagrees with a decision of the Ge'onim because as he says: "I have examined many of the old books and found the matter to stand as I explained it". R. Solomon b. Abraham Adret (Rashba) of the 13th century would disagree with the author of the Halakhot Gedolot of the ninth century because of a variant in his text. It was generally recognized that the Talmud copies that came from the Yeshivah of Rabbenu Ĥananel [North Africa, 11th century CE] and his father Ĥushi'el were the most reliable ones. Since the Talmud was studied for centuries in innumerable schools in many countries, the number of manuscripts must have been very great indeed. Yet only one complete manuscript, the Munich manuscript, dating from 1334, is extant. However, manuscripts of individual tractates, among which the following may be mentioned, exist in various libraries: a few pages of tractate Pesaĥim at Cambridge may belong to the ninth century, and some tractates of Nezikin in the National Library of Florence, to the tenth, a manuscript of tractate Avodah Zarah from the 13th century and an edition of the important Hamburg manuscript of Nezikin. Fragments have been recovered from the Cairo Genizah. The oldest dated manuscript (1123), is part of tractate Keritot and is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This paucity of manuscripts is undoubtedly the result of the war waged by the [Medieval] Church against the Talmud, in which tens of thousands of copies were publicly burned all over Europe.

The Talmud began to be published soon after the introduction of printing. Before the appearance of the entire Talmud, individual treatises of it were printed, especially in Portugal toward the end of the 15th century. Most famous were the volumes printed by Joshua Solomon and his nephew Gershon of Soncino [Italy] from 1484 to 1519. They brought out numerous single tractates, but not the entire Talmud. The first complete Talmud was printed by a Christian, Daniel Bomberg, at Venice (1520–23). This editio princeps determined the external form of the Talmud for all time, including the pagination, the inclusion of Rashi's commentary in the inner margin and of the Tosafot in the outer, and the discussion of the Gemara following each Mishnah. (In the manuscripts the whole chapter of the Mishnah is given at the beginning of the chapter, and traces of this have been retained even in the printed texts. As a result one sometimes has a mistaken idea of the relative size of some of the tractates. Thus the fact that the Tosafot of Bava Batra are more extensive than those in Berakhot, coupled with the fact that from folio 29 to the end the commentary is by Rashi's grandson Samuel b. Meir, who was much more prolix than his grandfather, has had the result that Berakhot has only 64 folios compared to the 176 of Bava Batra though in fact the talmudic text of the former has 36 pages and Bava Batra 40.) The first edition of the Talmud was followed by the edition of M. A. Giustiniani, also of Venice, in 1546–51. From then on the Talmud was printed in all major Jewish communities, either complete or in single tractates. Most famous among them are the editions of Lublin (1559–76 and 1617–39); Basle (1578–81); Cracow (1602–05 and 1616–20); the Amsterdam editions (Benveniste, 1644–48; 2nd edition, 1714–17); Frankfort an der Oder (1697–99); and Sulzbach (1756–63; known as the "Sulzbach Red" because of the front-page printing of each title in red). Many of these editions contain numerous misprints, which were further confounded by the ruthless mutilations of the [Christian] censors. Often Jewish printers exercised self-censorship. The best known among more modern editions is the "Vilna Shas," printed in Vilna by the brothers and the widow of the printer Romm, containing numerous additional commentaries and glosses. About [more than] a century ago, using the Munich manuscript and many other sources, Raphael N. Rabbinovicz, in his monumental work Dikdukei Soferim, undertook to bring out a critical edition of the Talmud. At his death, the work encompassed about three and a half of the six orders of the Talmud.