[Avodah] Tosfot (not)

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Jul 05, 2009 at 01:58:19PM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
: Is there any general explanation as to why certain sections of certain
: mesechtot (e.g.horiyot) are devoid of tosfot on the daf?

Our Tosafos were redacted by different people on different mesechtos. To
quote the Jewish Encyclopedia
<http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=276&letter=T#1046>
> The tosafot which have been published with the text of the Talmud ever
> since its earliest edition (see Talmud, Editions of). They extend to
> thirty-eight treatises of the Babylonian Talmud. Most of the treatises
> are covered by the Tosafot of Touques, some by the Tosafot of Sens;
> many are provided with the tosafot of various authors, revised by
> Perez b. Elijah's school. The authorship of the tosafot to seventeen
> treatises only can be established with certainty: Berakot, Moses of
> Evreux; Shabbat, 'Erubin, and Mena.ot, the Tosafot of Sens; Be.ah,
> Nedarim, Nazir, Sanhedrin, Makkot, and Me'ilah, Perez b. Elijah's
> school (many written by Perez himself); Yoma, Me.r of Rothenburg;
> Gi..in, Baba .amma, and .ullin, the Tosafot of Touques; So.ah, Samuel
> of Evreux; 'Abodah Zarah, Samuel of Falaise; Zeba.im, Baruch b. Isaac
> of Worms. The tosafot to Mo'ed .a.on were written by a pupil of a
> certain R. Isaac; the author of the tosafot to .agigah wrote tosafot
> to other treatises also. Those to Ta'anit belong to the post-tosafot
> period, and differ in style from those to other treatises.

That implies that there was no coordinated program to produce a complete
set.

There are a lot more Tosafos than were organized and redacted. I seem
to recall from my yeshiva days a few cases where the Mordechai quotes
Tosafos we don't have.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Rescue me from the desire to win every
micha at aishdas.org        argument and to always be right.
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