The Present Text
The Sifra was divided, according to an old arrangement, into 9 "dibburim" and 80 "parashiyyot" or smaller sections (Halakot Gedolot, end; Num. R. xviii.; Ḳid. 33a can not be cited in proof, because R. Simeon b. Rebbi can hardly have taught Ḥiyya's Sifra). As it exists today it is divided into 14 larger sections and again into smaller peraḳim, parashiyyot, and mishnayot. As the commentators point out, it varies frequently from the Sifra which the Talmudic authors knew (comp. Sifra, Emor, xiii. 1 and Men. 77b; Sifra, Ḳedoshim, ii. 5 and Ḥul. 137a; Sifra, Ḥobah, xiii. 6 and B. Ḳ. 104b); furthermore, entire passages known to the authors of Babli, as, e.g., Yoma 41a, are missing in the present Sifra, and, on the other hand, there are probably passages in the present Sifra which were not known to Babli (comp. D. Hoffmann, l.c. pp. 33, 35).
The Sifra frequently agrees with the Judean rather than with the Babylonian tradition; e.g., Sifra, Nedabah, xii. 2 (comp. Men. 57b); ib. xiv. 6 (comp. Ḥul. 49b); Sifra, Emor, ix. 8 (comp. Ḥul. 101b); and Tosef., Sheḳ. i. 7 likewise agrees with the Sifra. In the few cases where the agreement is with Babli (Sifra, Emor, vii. 2 as compared with Men. 73b; similarly Tosef., Ker. ii. 16) it must not be assumed that the text of the Sifra was emended in agreement with Babli, but that it represents the original version; e.g., in Sifra, Ḳedoshim, viii. 1 מאתכם is not a later emendation for מאתן according to Yeb. 47a, as I.H. Weiss (ad loc.) assumes, but represents rather the original reading. Babli, as compared with Yerushalmi, cites Sifra less accurately, sometimes abbreviating and sometimes amplifying it; e.g., Ḳid. 57b, which is the amplification of Sifra, Nedabah, xvii. 8; Sheb. 26b, which is a shortened (and therefore unintelligible) version of Sifra, Ḥobah, ix. 2; and Zeb. 93b, which is to be compared with Sifra, Ẓaw, vi. 6. Babli occasionally makes use, in reference to the Sifra, of the rule "mi she-shanah zu lo shanah zu" (i.e., the assigning of different parts of one halakah to different authorities), as in Sheb. 13a, Soṭah 16a, but unnecessarily, since it is possible to harmonize the apparently conflicting sentences and thereby show that they may be assigned to the same authority.
Many errors have crept into the text through the practice of repeating one and the same midrash in similar passages; e.g., Sifra to v. 3 and xxii. 5 (comp. Weiss, Einleitung, etc., p. v., note 1, though the passage quoted by Weiss does not belong here; comp. Giṭ. 49b); לשנא אחרינא is found in Sifra, Nega'im, ii. 10.
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