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Babylonian Baraitot in the Tosefta and the “Dialectology” of Middle Hebrew

1991; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 16; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s036400940000310x

1475-4541

Yaakov Elman,

Ancient Near East History

It has long been a truism that the Tosefta serves as a major source of tannaitic material for both Talmuds. One corollary of this view is that the toseftan versions of baraitot (hereafter, “toseftan baraitot”)1 are, barring the usual vagaries of transmissional difficulties, closer to the original tannaitic texts than those found in the Yerushalmi, and certainly the Bavli.Linguistically speaking, this understanding of the place of the Tosefta in early rabbinic literature underlies the assignment (without much analysis!) of the Tosefta, along with the Mishnah, to the earlier stratum of Middle Hebrew (= Mishnaic Hebrew), mhe1 (= Middle Hebrew A).