Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud ❙ 75
(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1993), 119±64; Je²rey L. Rubenstein,
Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999).
3 Daniel Boyarin, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1993).
4 J. N. Epstein and Ezra Zion Melamed, eds., Mekhilta derabbi Shim¦on ben Yoai
(Jerusalem: Mekitsei Nirdamim, 1955), 206±7; Tosefta Bava Metsi¦a 8:20±21,
Saul Lieberman, Tosefta (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1988), 106±7;
BT Bava Metsi¦a 95a. PT Bava Metsi¦a 8:1, 11:3±4 attributes it to the amora
R. La.
5 Piskei haRosh Bava Metsi¦a 8:6 reads ``Rav Ashi'' here. This is likely an orthographic
shift from `ax to '` ax.
6 This statement in parentheses, missing from the Florence II I 8, Hamburg 165, and
Cremona ebr. T. IV 10 manuscripts, is an explanatory addition.
7 This scenario strains the formal de®nition of owner presence, since the ®nite act of
pouring is independent of the borrowing and is terminated before the borrowing
commences. Shittah, cited in Shittah mekkubetset, explains that the borrower performs
the act of acquiring the animal while in the process of pouring. (An
analogous position is found in the Hebrew/Judaeo-Arabic commentary in
S. Schechter, Louis Ginzberg, and Israel Davidson, Ginzei Shekhter [New York:
Hermon, 1969], 2:392.) Or zarua¦ (Bava Metsi¦a 8:311) explains that the borrowing
transpires between the verbal commitment to pour and the act of pouring.
Talmid haRashba, in M. Y. Blau, ed., Shittat Hakadmonim on the Tractate Bava
Metsi¦a (New York: M. Y. Blau, 1985), 251, suggests that the borrowing transpires
after the act of pouring, but that the verbal commitment connects the discrete
actions and creates owner presence. This scholar is so taken by the simple reading
of this passage that he interprets the Mishnah's requirement of owner priority to
describe such a case.
These solutions recall similar ones regarding a passage on Bava Metsi¦a 81a±b. In that
passage, the stam responds to two tannaitic sources that describe exchanges in
watch duty by saying that these constitute owner presence. Shamma Friedman,
Talmud arukh: Perek hasokher et ha¥umanin (Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary,
1990), 268±73, 288±89, notes that the notion of an owner being present not
through physical work in the hirer's domain is unparalleled in the essential texts
that describe owner presence. In light of the di³culty, Friedman suggests a reading
of Rav Pappa that is independent of the stam and unrelated to the notion of owner
presence.