On the Editing of Mishna Eruvin

Abstract

In an attempt to understand the biblical injunction that "on the seventh day no man is to leave his place" (Exod 16:29), the Mishna treatise Eruvin preserves a record of the way talmudic sages of the second century of our era, the Tannaim, and very likely first century too, define and extend the area of legitimate mobility on the Sabbath from one domain to another by means of an eruv, the placing of food in a particular residence or at a particular distance. The problem of permission to move about outside one's home on the sabbath day was of deep concern not only to Pharisees and Rabbis but to all Jews for whom the Torah of Moses was authoritative law, though they might well differ in views of what that law did allow or forbid. In the rabbinic academies, halaka-the interpretation of biblical and supplementary early regulations-was a fundamental preoccupation. Akiva was of primary influence in the structuring and idiom of the Mishna as a whole and in Eruvin the key figure in the halakic exchanges is indeed R. Akiva, along with his leading disciples who interpret rulings which he adopted, especially those with the orientation of the Hillelite School. A. Goldberg has prepared a critical first edition of the Mishna-text in the light of manuscripts, first edition, and numerous Geniza fragments (there are several excellent photo reproductions), and after an analytic introduction, has commented in detail on it, each Mishna in terms of its literary composition and its substantive teachings.