Order of Tannaim and Amoraim
About This Entry
Order of Tannaim and Amoraim (Seder tanna’im ve-amora’im) is a unique work among medieval European Jewish texts. It is primarily organized as a massive prosopography, identifying talmudic rabbis and assembling information about their lives and activities. Judah displays a keen historical sense and a critical approach to talmudic history. In the absence of external sources of information, he attempted to determine the identity and biographical details of rabbinic figures using internal evidence from the Talmud itself. The first passages here collect information about the talmudic figure Ḥanina.
On Ḥanina
Ḥanina: We learned in the last section of chapter two [of b. Ḥagigah]:
R. Jonathan ben Eleazar said: If his shawl fell off, etc.1 R. Jonathan ben ‘Amram likewise says: If one’s Sabbath clothes were swapped for his weekday clothes, etc.,2 until R. Tsadok said: An incident occurred involving two women who were wives of ḥaverim,3 whose clothes were swapped in the bathhouse, and the incident came before R. Ḥanina, and he deemed their clothes impure. [b. Ḥagigah 20a]
The identity of this R. Tsadok is uncertain, as we will explain in the entry on Tsadok, God willing. This cannot be the R. Tsadok who was the father of R. Eleazar—as R. Jonathan ben ‘Amram does not cite his statement as proof—for if that were the case, then the Gemara should have said: We learned in a baraita. Furthermore, if this is R. Ḥanina ben Ḥama, who is the unspecified R. Ḥanina throughout the Talmud—apart from those cases I have enumerated—then the R. Tsadok who mentions him must have been an amora.
It is possible that he is the R. Tsadok who was the father of R. Eleazar ben R. Tsadok, mentioned in tractate Sukkah [44b], who was a contemporary of Ayvu. If so, then R. Ḥanina is the R. Ḥanina who issued a ruling in Sepphoris regarding almonds, that one is exempt in both cases,4 as I wrote in the entry on Ḥanania. However, it is more likely that he was an amora, as R. Oshaya raised an objection against their opinion, as stated there [b. Ḥagigah 20a]. We will further elaborate on this in the entry on Tsadok, God willing, that R. Tsadok is certainly the student of R. Ḥanina the amora, who is the unspecified R. Ḥanina, that is, R. Ḥanina ben Ḥama. This is as we learned in the Gemara of tractate Niddah, chapter six [62a] with regard to the mishnah of “a young boy who developed two pubic hairs” [m. Niddah 6:11]. For it is stated there that R. Tsadok and the students of R. Ḥanina acted in accordance with R. Judah5 even though she had engaged in intercourse.6 R. Shemen bar Abba then went before R. Yoḥanan [to inform him of this ruling], who himself went and told R. Judah Nesia, who sent a constable to remove the girl from her second husband. [ . . . ]
Notes
[This is referring to the extreme care that was taken by particularly scrupulous individuals to prevent their garments from contracting ritual impurity. Jonathan ben Eleazar is saying that if a shawl of such an individual fell off him, and he asked someone else to hand it to him, and that person did so, then the shawl is ritually impure, even if that person was equally particular about purity. The reason is that his attention was momentarily diverted, and that is enough for the shawl to be considered ritually impure.—Trans.]
[The statement continues: “And he wore them, they are impure.” His mere assumption that they were different clothes is enough of a distraction to render them impure.—Trans.]
[The name given to those who were strict in their observance of halakhah, particularly matters of ritual purity.—Trans.]
[This refers to the teaching that one is obligated to separate terumah and tithes from bitter almonds when they are small, but one is exempt from this obligation when they are large. R. Ḥanina that one is exempt whether they are large or small. See b. Ḥullin 25b.—Trans.]
[Who maintains that a girl has the right to refuse her husband “until the black predominates,” i.e., two pubic hairs are not enough.—Trans.]
[I.e., they permitted a young girl who had grown two pubic hairs to refuse her marriage, even though she had engaged in intercourse with her husband after growing two hairs. Only a minor girl (who was not married off by her father) may refuse her husband. See m. Yevamot 13:1.—Trans.]
Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.
