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THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

great authority with which Rabbi's redaction became invc sted, that that branch of literature was produced to which later usage gave the Effect of name " Baraita. " The vast amount of the matter accumulated from the time of

Mishnah..

Hillel's activity

— to

— possibly from earlier

the time of Judah ha-Nasi was two groups by his Mishnah. It excluded from its contents nearly the whole halakic Midrash. Since the Mishnah is .concerned chiefly with judicial statements, and not with causes, the reason for a Halakah and the means by which it was produced remain for the most part unknown. Often no regard is paid in the Mishnah to the opinions of individual authorities the most recognized and most wide-spread view is adopted as law and, even where varying opinions are cited, the editor

generations divided into





omits, in most cases, the prolix discussions of his predecessors. The halakic Baraitas, therefore, if only those up to the time of the Mishnah are regarded, consist of tannaite traditions of the school of Shammai, which

were neglected even by Akiba in his Mishnah, and naturally were still less heeded by Judah ha-Nasi. To give an example In the Mishnah the rule px m2J? ~? IT^C (" One can not constitute another a representative ['' messenger "] for a crime ") obtains whereas a Baraita (Kid. 43a) has (see Accessory)



preserved the following tradition " Shammai taught, 'If some one bade a person, Go and kill so-and-so, he (the sender) has incurred the death-penalty.'" Another highly characteristic instance Halakic is the following The pharisaic concepBaraitas. tion, according to which the Biblical lex tnlionia is valid only in case of murder, while for other crimes money compensation satisfies the law, was no longer an open question Hence, while the Mishnah (B. for the Mishnah. K. viii. 1) begins by determining the damages for bodily injuries, it is learned from a Baraita (ib. 84«) that this principle was not recognized by the school of Shammai, and that Eliezer b. Hyrcanus still upheld the old Sadducean view of the lex talionis (compare Mek., Mishpatim, 8; Geiger's " Nachgelassene



Schriften," v. 162). It is evident, then, that the Baraita not infrequently gives the old Halakah, while the Mishnah gives the later development (see Baraita de-Niddah). In the

above-mentioned Talmud passage

(B.

K.

83S, 84a),

ten Baraitas and Memras present ten different Midrashic reasons for the principle concerning money compensation for bodily injuries which the Mishnah assumes to be self-evident. This furnishes an example of the wealth of the halakic Midrash in the Baraita, contrasted with its comparative absence in the Mishnah. As has already been observed, some of these halakic Midrashim have been preserved but the purely halakic Baraita collections— i.e., those without Mid;

support from Scriptures— were completely supplanted by the Mishnah, and, with the exception of a few citations in the Talmud, they have entirely

rashic

disappeared. the fate of the haggadic Baraitas highly probable that even Akiba, or at

The same was for

it

least

is

his

disciples,

began Haggadah

collections,

Baraita

arranged according to a certain system. The Book of Jubilees, as well as scattered haggadic Baraitas, furnishes plausible grounds for the supposition that homiletic elucidations and legendary amplifications, based on the Bible text existed at a very early time. From such Haggadah collections many of the haggadic Baraitas cited in the Talmud and the Midrash were drawn, and there are numerous indications that haggadic opinions were early arranged by numbers (see Baraita of the Forty-Nine Rules), from which, probably, many Baraitas in numerical form have been derived (see, for instance, Ber. 3a, 3b, 10b, 436, and many others enumerated by "Weiss, " Dor, ii.

240).

Though

the old Baraita, as has been shown, is not only quite independent of the Mishnah, but entirely different from it in character and contents, the

distinguishing feature of the later Baraita, which originated among the disciples of Judah ha-Nasi, is its constant relationship with the Mishnah. Explanations and elucidations of the Mishnah, supplements to it, and opposing opinions were all contained in the Baraitas of Hiyyah, Levi, Bar Kappara, and the other pupils of Rabbi. To give an idea of these Baraitas, the following may serve as an example The first Mishnah (Ber. i. 1), which gives the time set for the reading of the Shema', certainly originated in the period preceding the destruction of the Temple and the time-limits which it sets for this reading were actually unintelligible and pointless at a Judah ha-Nasi, who desired his Mishlater date. nah to be a text-book for instruction rather than a code of laws, preserved the old formula for the time of the Shema'-reading current in the academies. Not so Hiyyah, who in his Baraita changed the formula of the Mishnah in accordance with the conditions prevailing in his day (Yer. Ber., beginning). At the first blush, these post-Mishnaic Baraitas frequently give the impression of presenting something Closer examination, however, reveals quite new. the fact that general rules laid down in the Mishnah The are given a special application in the Baraita. Talmud relates that an amora of the second generation made an interesting wager that he would give the source in the Mishnah of every teaching in a Baraita whose author was a disciple of Judah haNasi (Ket. 69A). Cases in which these Baraitas present a view differing from that of the Mishnah are not very frequent but they often give opinions disregarded in the Mishnah, at the same time naming the authority for them together with the opinion The which the Mishnah holds to be the standard. origin of these Baraitas, then, is not to be sought in any feeling of opposition to the Mishnah though this may have played some part but rather in a Various passages desire to supplement that work. of the Talmud, in fact (Naz. 525 B. M. 51a), create the impression that the disciples of Judah ha-Nasi



—

—



were prompted to undertake their work by Rabbi himself.

Of these Baraita collections only fragments have been preserved in the Talmuds and Midrashim; and probably the Tosefta was in part prepared in accordance with them.

The diverse origins of the Baraitas explain the varied estimation put upon them during the period