Commentators:Sifre Devarim/0

Sifre Devarim

This page is a stub.
Please contact us if you would like to assist in its development.

Sifre Devarim

Name	Sifre Devarim ספרי דברים
Dates	3rd century
Place	Eretz Yisrael
Characteristics
Sources
Impacted on

Background¹

Names

• Common name – ספרי דברים²
• Other names – 

Date

3rd century

Place

SifDeut was redacted in Eretz Yisrael.

Language

Mishnaic Hebrew

Text

• Manuscripts – The best manuscript of SifDeut is ms Vatican 32.  Other important manuscripts include London 341, Oxford 151, and Berlin Tubingen 1594.33. These manuscripts are near-complete versions of SifDeut. There are also partial manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah and others.³
• Printings – L. Finkelstein published a critical edition in 1939 in Berlin, which was republished in New York in 1969.⁴ The text for the edition was based on the four major available manuscripts (see above, Manuscripts) and the first edition, as well as several Genizah fragments and secondary citations.
• Textual layers – Scholarly consensus is that the main unit of SifDeut (from Devarm 12:1-26:15, piskaot 59-303) was supplemented with material from other sources that form the units on 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 (both passages from Shema), piskaot 31-36 and 41-47, and perhaps other sections.⁵

Content

Genre

• – midrash halakhah

Structure

• – SifDeut covers six distinct units in Devarim:
  1:1-30, 3:23-29, 6:4-9, 11:10-26:15, 31:14, 32:1-34:12.
  The printed versions are divided into sections called piskaot.⁶

Characteristics

• – See Introduction to the Midreshei Halakhah.

Sources

Significant Influences

Occasional Usage

Possible Relationship

Impact

Other Midrashim

• – 

Medieval Exegetes

• – SifDeut was widely known and used by medieval exegetes.

Supercommentaries

• – Important commentaries to SifDeut by Rishonim include those of Rabbenu Hillel⁷ and Raavad,⁸ among others.⁹ Significant commentaries by Acharonim include those of R. David Pardo (ספרי דבי רב), R. Meir Friedmann-Ish Shalom (מאיר עין)  and R. Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (Netziv) (עמק הנציב).

¹ This section incorporates information from M. Kahana, "The Halakhic Midrashim" in The Literature of the Sages Part II, ed. Safrai et al. (Assen, 2006): 3-105 (hereafter: Kahana).

² This page will use the abbreviation SifDeut.

³ See M. Kahana, Manuscripts of the Halakhic Midrashim: An Annotated Catalogue (Jerusalem, 1995): 100-107, and Kahana: 99, note 509 for fragments discovered after the above work was published. Transcriptions of all the fragments are available in M. Kahana., The Genizah Fragments of the Halakhic Midrashim 1 (Jerusalem 2005): 227-337.

⁴ Finkelstein’s work was criticized by other scholars for being too liberal with textual emendations, among other things. Finkelstein himself admitted in the introduction to the second printing that his method was flawed. Kahana (99) thus concluded that “all this compels the reader of Finkelstein’s edition constantly and thoroughly to check the critical apparatus and the commentary in order to reconstruct the manuscript versions and to examine the editor’s considerations in determining the text.

⁵ See the summary of opinions in Kahana: 96-97. The consensus is that the main unit originates in the school of R. Akiva, and the units on Shema originate in the school of R. Yishmael. See Introduction to the Midreshei Halakhah.

⁶ The ends of which are marked by the term סליק פיסקא. Some of these section breaks interrupt the flow of an exposition. Most manuscripts have a division by verse (with the end of sections marked with סליק פסוקא), and there sometimes appears an alternative division by chapter (marked by סליק פירקא).

⁷ S. Koleditzky published this commentary twice in Jerusalem, in 1948 and 1985, the second time basing the edition on a different manuscript. According to Kahana, both editions are somewhat flawed. See M. Kahana, “The Commentary of Rabbenu Hillel to the Sifre,” Kiryat Sefer 63 (1990): 271-80.

⁸ The commentary was traditionally attributed to Raavad, but scholarly consensus is that it was not authored by Raavad. See the critical edition H. Basser, Pseudo-Rabad: Commentary to Sifre Deuteronomy (Atlanta 1994), and Kahana: 90, note 442.

⁹ See Kahana:90, note 445.