HALAKHOT PESUKOT ("HILKHOT R. YEHUDAI GAON"). (HEBREW TEXT)

Abstract

This study deals with the book "Halakhot Pesukot" (=HP), the first legal compendium of the post-Talmudic era in Babylonia. The book was known under various titles, and achieved widespread popularity already in the middle of the ninth century. R. Yehudai Gaon (=RYG) is its attributed author, and the book was compiled apparently in the latter half of the eighth century, using sources which predated it. The book served as a basis for several other works which expanded or shortened the format of HP.;HP had been known in a unicum manuscript (Ms. Sassoon) of the Aramaic original, as well as a unicum ms. (Ms. Huntington, Oxford) of a Hebrew translation, both of which are defective in the beginning and the end. Part of the present study deals with the many fragments of HP mss. from the Cairo Geniza, as compared to the text of HP, Ms. Sassoon. This comparison focuses primarily on the variant readings between Ms. Sassoon and other reconstructed exemplars of the book, and also affords the opportunity to draw conclusions regarding the differences between Ms. Sassoon and the prior singular co-witness to this work, the Hebrew translation. In addition, the text of HP was completed, nearly in its entirety, thus presenting a further opportunity to aid in its definitive identification and in determining its overall structure and contents.;Included in this study is an overview of the background and sources of HP; a clarification of certain traditions pertaining to RYG and HP; a brief comparison between HP and Halakhot Gedolot, authored by R. Shime'on Kayyara; and a detailed analysis of the legal dicta of RYG and their relationship to the opinions expressed in HP.;A large part of this study is a collection and treatment of the citations of HP found in the literature of the Geonim (post-Talmudic Rabbinic scholars) and the Rishonim (Rabbinic scholars of the Medieval era), and of citations in the name of RYG, the assumed author of HP.;The primary conclusions of the present study are: (1) Ms. Sassoon and the fragments of other mss. (Geniza) are all witnesses to the same book, and there is no evidence of any existing text which pre-dates HP. (2) There are no evidences of other recensions of the Aramaic original. (3) This very book was that which was known during the Geonic era as "Halakhot Ketu'ot" and "Hilkhot RYG". . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI.