Sunday, March 20, 2005

Daf Yomi Brachot 18a - Accompanying a met - but how far?

On Brachot 18b, we read:
Rechava cited Rav Yehuda: Whoever sees a dead body and does not accompany it (in the funeral procession) violates Mishlei 17:5:

ה לֹעֵג לָרָשׁ, חֵרֵף עֹשֵׂהוּ; שָׂמֵחַ לְאֵיד, לֹא יִנָּקֶה. 5 Whoso mocketh the poor blasphemeth his Maker; and he that is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.
and if he accompanies him, what is his reward?
Rav Asi said: Upon him Scriptures states (Mishlei 19:17):
יז מַלְוֵה ה, חוֹנֵן דָּל; וּגְמֻלוֹ, יְשַׁלֶּם-לוֹ. 17 He that is gracious unto the poor lendeth unto the LORD; and his good deed will He repay unto him.
{with מַלְוֵה - lender - being revowelized as melaveh, to accompany.}

The Munich manuscript of the Talmud (from 1342 - it is the only manuscript of the entire Talmud that we have today) records a variant version of Rechava's citation of Rav Yehuda, in which one is only required to accompany the dead body for a distance of 4 cubits.

This makes sense as being a formal fulfillment of escorting to provide honor to the deceased, since the minimum amount of escorting someone (such as a guest) is 4 cubits. In Sota 46b Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says the 400 years of servitude of Avraham's descendants in Egypt were in exchange for the 4 steps Pharaoh took in escorting Avraham - ואמר ר' יהושע בן לוי בשביל ארבעה פסיעות שלוה פרעה לאברהם.

On the other hand, I think there is a high probability that this variant reading in the Munich manuscript is the result of scribal error. After all, the pasuk cited as prooftext - לֹעֵג לָרָשׁ, חֵרֵף עֹשֵׂהוּ - was used just above, also on 18a, as a prooftext for another law:

The Sages learnt {in a brayta}: A man should not walk in the cemetary with tefillin on his head and a sefer Torah in his arms, and read in it and pray, and if he does so, he violates Mishlei 17:5:

ה לֹעֵג לָרָשׁ, חֵרֵף עֹשֵׂהוּ; שָׂמֵחַ לְאֵיד, לֹא יִנָּקֶה. 5 Whoso mocketh the poor blasphemeth his Maker; and he that is glad at calamity shall not be unpunished.
and specifically within 4 cubits, for the master said: a dead body grasps 4 cubits in terms of reading Shema, but outside 4 cubits it is permitted.
{The text marked green is part of the gemara, but is the stama elaborating upon the brayta.}

I think what happened is that the copyist's eye moved backwards to the earlier prooftext of לֹעֵג לָרָשׁ and copied the elaboration of specifically 4 cubits to the later occurrence. The Rif, by the way, has the same girsa that we have in our printed editions, without reference to 4 amot. See here, on my Rif blog.

2 comments:

brainhell said...

Did they not have some kind of error checking back in the 1300s? I suppose it was all one scribe per job?

joshwaxman said...

errors of this type in manuscripts are actually not uncommon. it usually is one scribe working. sometimes you see the scribe (and sometimes another hand) making corrections by dotting words that should not be there, or making marginal additions.

in this instance, it is either our version which is incorrect because a scribe left out some words, or the Munich manuscript version which is wrong because a scribe added some words which should not have been added.

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