Physical Description

Only edition. Two Parts in one volume, quarto, 225:145 mm., wide margins, light age staining, stamps. A very good copy bound in later boards, rubbed.

Detailed  Description 

Tosefta, literally an "additional" or "supplementary" halakhic or aggadic tradition, i.e., one not included in the Mishnah of R. Judah ha-Nasi . Originally the term was used to designate any individual additional or supplementary tannaitic tradition, and so was virtually synonymous with the later Babylonian term baraita . In the later Babylonian tradition the term "tosefta" was used to designate a particular body of such baraitot (Kid. 49b; Meg. 28b; Shav. 41b), and eventually it came to denote a particular literary work, "the Tosefta" – a collection of halakhic and aggadic baraitot, organized according to the order of the Mishnah, and serving as a companion volume to it. Though there may once have been other such collections of tannaitic halakhot and aggadot, the Tosefta is the only such collection to have come down to us, and together with the extant Midrashei Halakhah , it provides the student with direct access to a large body of ancient tannaitic sources, without the mediation of later amoraic and post-amoraic talmudic tradition. In addition to containing two additional layers of tannaitic traditions, there are two primary differences between the Mishnah and the Tosefta. First, the Tosefta is some three to four times larger than the Mishnah. Second, the overall order of the units of tradition found in the Tosefta is largely dictated, not by internal criteria, but rather by the external standard of the order of the Mishnah. It would therefore be fair to say that the Tosefta as a whole represents a kind of proto-talmud to the Mishnah – a large collection of tannaitic traditions whose purpose is to supplement, to complement, and in various other ways to expand upon the Mishnah of R. Judah Ha-Nasi.

References