daf bit: Kiddushin 8

[cellio]

(The cycle moves this week from Gittin (about divorces) to Kiddushin (about marriages). I wonder why that order and not the other.)

The talmud discusses valid and invalid ways of acquiring a wife, and during the discussion takes a side path into acquiring slaves. The sons of Rabbi Chuna ben Abin bought a slave for copper coins (that is, the price was specified in coins). However, they did not have coins with them, so they left a silver ingot as a pledge. The slave's value then increased and the owner sought to cancel the arrangement. Rav Ammi ruled that the owner could do so, because the buyers had not paid coins and the ingot was not a payment. (8b)

Comments

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Purim Torah (meaning essentially an in joke for those long involved in Jewish learning): G-d sends the cure before the disease (an actual principle, found for example in setting up Esther before Haman shows up).

Logical answer: As a general rule, the tractates are organized within their seder (order, or set of tractates) from greatest number of chapters to fewest. This also explains why in a mishnayot Moed (Festivals) the holidays follow a seemingly random order with no relationship to the calendar. There are exceptions to this general rule*, but not in Nashim. Since gittin has 9 chapters & kiddushin has 4, gittin comes first.

People may think that Sanhedrin, which has 11 chapters, and follows Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia & Bava Batra, with 10 each is an exception. It isn't. Originally all the Bavas were one long tractate called Nezikin, and that was the first tractate in the Seder Nezikin.

[cellio]

Logical answer: As a general rule, the tractates are organized within their seder (order, or set of tractates) from greatest number of chapters to fewest.

Heh. I never noticed that. Here I was looking for thematic explanations for the orderings (not just here) and failing, and it turns out to be chapters? Wow.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Back of the Aryeh Carmel book Siyatta L'Gemara (I think the English title is Aid to Talmud Study) lists all the tractates, how many daf (folio pages) in Vilna printing of the Babylonian Talmud, and how many chapters in mishna. Noticed the theme, theorized on my own.

However, thematic answers do occur for several consecutive tractates with the same number of chapters (as for example at the beginning of Gemara Sotah for tractates Nazir & Sotah)