Rabba Zutei the Redactor (article summary)

Another recent article for the Jewish Link. See it here (paid Substack with hyperlinks, Jewish Link website, and flipbooks).

It is brief enough to just read directly, but here is an even briefer summary.

1. Our sugya in Bava Kamma 108b has two versions of a dilemma.
   
   As setup, we know that there is toen taanat ganav for an unpaid watchman, where he can swear that he watched it faithfully and doesn’t possess it, and is exempt from paying. And such a watchman can either swear, or else contend with the thief in court if caught.
   
   If we increase the level of theft to an armed robbery, for which even a paid watchman is exempt, do we say the same? If we do, is it then only for the unpaid watchman (Abaye), or even for the paid watchman (who would be similarly exempt; Rava)?
   
   In a second version of the dilemma, which we hear from Rabba Zutei, we don’t have Abaye and Rava, and the question is different, that the thief returned the cow to the watchman’s house. And it resolves in a teiku, the question stands. This premise of the question seems to contradict both Abaye and Rava.
   
   (Practically, Rosh says that we then favor Abaye and Rava collectively over Rabba Zutei. And in an Abaye / Rava dispute, we rule like Rava because it is not yaal kegam.)
   
   So it seems like Rabba Zutei is bold enough to argue with Abaye and Rava. Who is he, what’s his generation, and what’s his general approach?
   

2. We looking through other occurrences of Rabba Zutei in Talmud, we see that he is sixth-generation, and Rav Ashi’s contemporary, to whom he poses challenges.
   
   One interesting pattern is that when someone else, X, בעי poses a question, with content Y, Rabba Zutei appears and says בָּעֵי לַהּ הָכִי, namely that X posed the question as Z. This is the case in Zevachim 24b with Rabbi Ami as X and in Menachot 15a-b with Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat as X. Rabba Zutei also weighs in to correct Ravina as to the girsa, in whose name some halacha is stated. Thus, he seems to be a redactor who has variant oral Talmudic “texts”.
   

3. With that in mind, sixth-generation Rabba Zutei isn’t taking on Abaye and Rava. Nor, with the words בָּעֵי לַהּ הָכִי, is he formulating his own dilemma at odds with Abaye and Rava. Rather, he is saying that in his gemara, the argument is about the robber returning the istem, followed by the watchman’s negligence. If we follow the pattern, either this was just an anonymous dispute without resolution such that it ends in a teiku (ibaya delo ifsheta); or temptingly, he actually has Abaye and Rava take contrary positions within this new dilemma, in which case Abaye and Rava would agree with the Rabba-Zutei-underlying premise.