Thursday, February 28, 2019

tanach - Why does the Mishna misquote the Tanakh?


In a number of instances, the Mishna provides quotes from Tanakh that differ from the versions of Tanakh that we have today. So, for example, Sotah 6:4 (31b). There, the mishna quotes Deuteronomy 19:15 as saying "על פי שנים עדים", but the Masoretic Text reads "שני" instead of "שנים". Similarly, Sotah 7:5 (32a) quotes Joshua 8:23 as saying "וכל ישראל וזקיניו ושטריו", while the Masoretic Text renders the fourth word as ושוטרים (without the suffix). I have seen other examples of this phenomenon elsewhere and, while they're not significant differences, I wonder why the text of the Mishna was never updated to reflect the precise phraseology of scripture?


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[With many thanks to @DoubleAA, if you consult Shabbat 55b you can see where Tosafot also comment upon this phenomenon (s.v. מעבירים כתיב) and, in Gilyon haShas, R' Akiva Eger brings an impressively exhaustive list of other instances in which this phenomenon also occurs: passages in the Bavli, the Yerushalmi, midrashim and mefarshim on Chumash. He also refers to another Tosafot (Niddah 33a, s.v. והנושא) that makes reference to this issue, though without offering an explanation for it.]




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