Halachot Pesukot
{{Short description|Geonic halakhic work}}
{{italic title}}
Halachot Pesukot ({{langx|he|הלכות פסוקות|4=Legal rulings}}) is a condensed rabbinic work attributed to Yehudai Gaon in the Geonic Era, containing chapters on common Jewish halachic themes. The work was compiled in the 8th century, two hundred years after the closing of the Babylonian Talmud.{{Cite journal |last=Stampfer |first=Y. Zvi |date=2017 |title=A Mechanism for Change in Traditional Culture: A Case Study from the Judicial Jewish Codes of the Geonic Period |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/90006283 |jstor=90006283|journal=The Jewish Quarterly Review |volume=107 |issue=2 |pages=131–156 |issn=0021-6682}} It was written in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic{{cite book |last1=Siegal |first1=Elitzur A. Bar-Asher |title=Introduction to the Grammar of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic |date=2016 |publisher=Ugarit-Verlag |isbn=978-3-86835-177-4 |page=20 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Introduction_to_the_Grammar_of_Jewish_Ba/LplcAQAACAAJ?hl=en |language=en}} and follows the format of the Halachot Gedolot which antedates it by about 20 years.{{cite book |author-last1=Ibn-Daʾud |author-first1=Avraham |author-link1=Abraham ibn Daud |author-last2=Ben-Ḥalaftâ |author-first2=Yôsê |title=Seder ʿolam raba ṿe-seder ʿolam zota ṿe-sefer ha-Ḳabalah le-ha-Rabad |editor=M.D. Yerushalmi |publisher=Gil Publishers|date=1955 |location=Jerusalem|language=he |url=https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=46767&st=&pgnum=1&hilite= |page=[https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=46767&st=&pgnum=144&hilite= 27] |oclc=754774918 }}
Authorship
While the work is generally attributed to Judah the Blind, gaon (head) of Sura Academy, some scholars attribute scholarship instead to the Exilarch Makhir of Narbonne (d. about 739).{{Cite journal |last=Epstein |first=Yaakov Nachim |year=1945 |title=תשלום פירוש הגאונים: לטהרות |trans-title=The Supplement to the Gaonic Commentary to Taharot |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23585385 |journal=Tarbiz |language=he |volume=ט"ז |issue=ב'/ג' |pages=71–134 |issn=0334-3650 |jstor=23585385}} The gaon, who was blind, did not write with his own hands but rather dictated by scribes. Hai ben Sherira, gaon of Pumbedita Academy, noted that "anything that the sages did not hear from his mouth they do not attribute to him when it contains a difficulty, nor do we rely on it, because we say that the scribe was the one who made the mistake or that someone else wrote in his name".
In his 1998 book The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture, Robert Brody, a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, concluded that the Halachot Pesukot was written outside of Mesopotamia.
Editions
In 1886, A.L. Schlossberg published in Versailles an edition of Halachot Pesukot which he based on the Oxford Manuscript. In 1911, David Solomon Sassoon purchased a handwritten manuscript of the work while visiting Yemen, and which based on its style, appears to have been written in Babylon or Persia in the ninth or tenth century.David Solomon Sassoon, Ohel David (vol. 1), Preface, Oxford University Press : London 1932, pp. x–xi. ({{OCLC|71513156}}). A description of the manuscript is found in Sassoon's Ohel Dawid catalogue. The manuscript was first published by his son, Solomon David Sassoon, in 1951,{{cite book |author=Yehudai Gaon |author-link=Yehudai Gaon |editor-last=Sassoon|editor-first=S.D. |editor-link=Solomon David Sassoon|title=Sefer Halachot Pesukot |publisher=Mekitze Nirdamim|location=Jerusalem|year=1951 |language=he |oclc=1140886734 |title-link=Halachot Pesukot}} and has been published several times since then by other editors.{{cite book |author=Yehudai ben Nahman |author-link=Yehudai Gaon |editor-last=Etz-Chayim|editor-first=Yehonatan |title=Halachot Pesukot Ha-shalem, based on the S. Sassoon MS. |publisher=Mossad Harav Kook|location=Jerusalem|year=2016 |language=he |oclc=993219181 |title-link=Halachot Pesukot}}; ({{OCLC|880847587}}){{cite book |author-last=Yehudai ben Nahman|author-link=Yehudai ben Nahman |title=Sefer Halachot Pesukot le-rav Yehudai Gaon z"l|publisher=Mekhon 'Ahavat Shalom'|date=1999|location=Jerusalem |oclc=233180091 |language=he }}
Schlossberg's edition, which he prepared from the Oxford Manuscript, differs slightly from the Sassoon Manuscript version. Schlossberg's edition contains 3 additional halakhic discourses on Megillah, Hanukkah, and kosher wine, which do not appear in Sassoon's copy. Conversely, Sassoon's copy contains 2 additions not found in Schlossberg's edition: Berakhot and the defects of slaughtered animals in the Land of Israel.{{cite book |last=Sassoon|first=D.S.|title=Ohel Dawid – Descriptive Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan Manuscripts in the Sassoon Library |publisher=Humphrey Milford: Oxford University Press |volume=1 |date=1932 |location=London |page=124 |language=en |oclc=912964204 }}
References
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Further reading
- {{Cite book |last=Danzig |first=Neil |title=Mavo le-Sefer Halakhot pesuḳot ʿim tashlum Halakhot pesuḳot |date= |publisher=The Jewish Theological Seminary of America |year=1993 |isbn=978-965-456-026-9 |edition=Mahadurah sheniyah ʿim tiḳunim ṿe-hosafot |location= |language=he |trans-title=Introduction to Halakhot Pesuqot with a supplement to Halakhot Pesuqot}}
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Category:Jewish texts in Aramaic
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