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Sifre Zuta Bemidbar

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Sifre Zuta

Name	Sifre Zuta ספרי זוטא
Dates
Place	Eretz Yisrael
Characteristics
Sources	R. Akiva
Impacted on

Background¹

Names

• Common name – ספרי זוטא במדבר²
• Other names – ספרי, זוטי, ספרי ירושלמי, ספרי של פנים אחרות, מכילתא³
  

Date

3rd century

Place

SifZNum was redacted in Eretz Yisrael.

Language

·         Mishnaic Hebrew

Text

• SifZNum was known in medieval times, lost for centuries, and partially rediscovered and reconstructed in a gradual process beginning in the 19th century.
• Manuscripts – S. Schechter published two leaves from the Genizah containing SifZNum on Matot and Massei. J.N. Epstein published five leaves on Chukat.⁴
• Printings – The first attempted critical edition of SifZNum as a whole⁵ was published by H. Horovitz (Breslau, 1910), based on the fragment published by Schechter and citations in midrashim and Rishonim. Horovitz’s work must be revised based on the fragments published by Epstein, and new manuscripts that have been discovered of certain sources of citations, such as Yalkut Shimoni and Midrash Hagadol. It has also become clear that Horovitz erroneously included many passages that did not originate in SifZNum.⁶
• Textual layers – 

Content

Genre

• – 

Structure

• – It has been inferred from various sources that SifZNum started with an exposition of Bemidbar 5:2,⁷ skipped 31:25-35:8,⁸ and generally expounded the same verses as did Sifre Bemidbar.⁹
  SifZNum was divided into several large units (the size and names of which are unknown), which were subdivided into numbered parashiyyot.

Characteristics

• – See Introduction to Midreshei Halakhah.

Sources

Significant Influences

Occasional Usage

Possible Relationship

Impact

Other Midrashim

• – SifZNum is cited extensively in Yalkut Shimoni and Midrash Hagadol, and is also cited in Bemidbar Rabbah to Naso.

Medieval Exegetes

• – 

Supercommentaries

• – R. J. Jaskowicz, ספרי זוטא על ספר במדבר¹⁰
  R. E. Garbus, ספרי זוטא על במדמר עם פרוש ספירי אפרים¹¹
  In addition, academic studies of SifZNum have been published by J.N. Epstein¹² and S. Lieberman.¹³

¹ This page 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 SifZNum. The Aramaic word zuta means small and comes to distinguish this work from Sifre Bemidbar, which is also referred to as Sifre Rabbati. While the size of SifZNum is not clearly known, from the evidence at hand it does not seem smaller in scale than Sifre Bemidbar. The name may thus indicate simply that SifZNum was not as commonly available.

³ For other names see J.N. Epstein, Prolegomena ad Litteras Tannaiticas, ed E.Z. Melamed (Jerusalem-Tel
Aviv 1957): 741.

⁴ See the new transcriptions of these fragments in M. Kahana., The Genizah Fragments of the Halakhic Midrashim 1 (Jerusalem 2005): 214-226.

⁵ B. Koenigsberger had previously published a reconstruction of SifZNum from the parashah of Bemidbar through Behaalotecha, in two installments (Frankfurt 1894, and Pleschen 1907).

⁶ See Kahana: 93-94 for a summary critique of Horovitz’s edition.

⁷ This is also where Sifre Bemidbar starts.

⁸ This is indicated in one of the Genizah fragments. Sifre Bemidbar also skips this section.

⁹ As can be observed in citations in Yalkut Shimoni and Midrash Hagadol.

¹⁰ Lodz 1929.

¹¹ Jerusalem, 1949.

¹² “Sifrei Zuttah Parashat Parah”, Tarbiz 1 (1930) 46-78, reprinted in J.N. Epstein, Studies in Talmudic Literature and Semitic languages, ed E.Z. Melamed (Jerusalem 1983-1988) 2,1, 141-173.

¹³ Siphre Zutta: The Midrash of Lydda (New York 1968).