Refuting the Lion (article preview)

Gittin 83

The Mishnah (Gittin 82a) discusses a case where a man divorces his wife, telling her “you are permitting to everyone except for Ploni.” Rabbi Eliezer (ben Hyrcanus) permits her to remarry anyone (other than Ploni), while the Sages forbid. Instead, he should take it from her and give it back to her, this time without excluding Ploni.

Who are the Sages? The plural form, חֲכָמִים, makes us think that we’re dealing with many Sages. However, looking in other gemaras, this is not always the case. It would also be nice if the arguing Sages were contemporary, of approximately the same scholastic generation, or perhaps plus or minus one generation. Unless this is a later stratum of the Mishnah, in which case Rabbi Meir (in the first pass), or Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (in the next) understand that this is a daat yachid, an individual opinion, and fills in what the unnamed contemporaries must hold, as calculating a logical negation.

Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was a third-generation Tanna, situated in Lud. His frequent disputant was the second and third-generation Tanna, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chanania, situated in Paki’in, which was between Lud and Yavneh. Rabbi Yehoshua is a good candidate for the Sages, since Gittin 83b reports a brayta with his “refutation”, namely a derivation of וְיָצְאָה מִבֵּיתוֹ וְהָלְכָה וְהָיְתָה לְאִישׁ אַחֵר, contrary to Rabbi Eliezer’s interpretation of the same verse. Of course, several Sages of the next generation also explicitly argue, as we’ll see.

Rabbi Yehoshua’s Brayta

We’d tangentially observe that the brayta on Gittin 83b is extremely strange and suspicious, in that it employs Aramaic, such as דְּלָא אֲגִידָא בְּאִינִישׁ אַחֲרִינָא. And, while there are some early Aramaic braytot, other aspects of the language and the derasha just so happen to accord with Rabba’s derivation, in Nedarim 70a-b,