Creating a Broken Hyperlink

A little bit of mop-up from last post, about Ravina / Rabbi Avina. I had posted this image from the Hamburg 165 manuscript.

where our printed text presumably got it right, beginning:

אֶלָּא אָמַר רַבִּי אֲבִינָא, הַכֹּל מוֹדִים שֶׁאִם כָּתוּב בּוֹ: ״הוּזְקַקְנוּ לְעֵדוּתָן שֶׁל עֵדִים, וְנִמְצֵאת עֵדוּתָן מְזוּיֶּיפֶת״ – שֶׁהוּא פָּסוּל, כִּדְרַבִּי אַבָּא; לֹא נֶחְלְקוּ אֶלָּא

Rather, Rabbi Avina said a modification of Abaye’s explanation. All concede that if it is written in the document: We, the court, engaged in an investigation of the testimony of the witnesses and have determined that they signed the document, and their testimony was found to be false, the document is not valid, in accordance with the statement of Rabbi Abba. They disagree only with regard to…

The focus at the time was about Rabbi Avina vs. Ravina. But before the over the line insertion, the statement in Hamburg 165 was “like Rabbi Chanina, for Rabbi Chanina said…” This isn’t just in Hamburg. Some other manuscripts, while keeping R’ Avina, do have that quoting construction. Thus, two earlier printings (than the Vilna, which gets it right), plus Florence 8-9, Paris and Vatican.

Munich 95 gets it right.

If this text “ke-X da-amar X” were correct, then this would be a linkage to an external statement from another sugya. In other words, some other sugya would be the primary place this statement or analysis occurred, and we are linking to it. A search for such a statement elsewhere in Talmud yielded nothing.

Usually, such links do yield the primary sugya, but not just here, but elsewhere, there is no real target. I’ve grappled with this a few times, if I recall correctly, within Bava Batra. Plus one grappling I had with וְהָוֵינַן בַּהּ, which should mean that it is discussed by Amoraim in some primary sugya, but couldn’t find one that lacked those words. I wrote an article about vehavinan bah in general and that sugya here.

But what is interesting is that in our sugya, we can see the scribal error happen, and the genesis of the ke-de-X. Namely, the end of the statement, כִּדְרַבִּי אַבָּא, does make sense and should be there. Probably influenced by that, we added a כִּדְרַבִּי אֲבִינָא at the start, and changed it from אלא. Abba and Avina are spelled similarly, and dittography can be in play. So, I don’t feel so concerned when finding other seemingly spurious ke-de-Rabbi X. Maybe that other sugya was lost, but maybe the text was miscopied.