Study Bava Batra folio 166B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
ועמדו קינין בו ביום ברבעתים.
The Mishnah concludes: And as a result, the price of the nests stood that day at 1/4th of a silver dinar, as the demand for nests decreased. It is clear in the Mishnah that the term dinarei indicates a higher value than the term dinarin.
כתוב מלמעלה וכו׳. תנו רבנן: ילמד התחתון מן העליון – באות אחת; אבל לא בשתי אותיות –
§ The Mishnah teaches: If it is written in the document above that someone owes 100 dinars, and below it is written 200 dinars, or if above it is written 200 and below 100, everything follows the bottom amount. If so, why does one write the information in the upper part of the document at all? It is a safety measure, so that if one letter is erased from the lower part of the document, thereby rendering it illegible, the information can be learned from the upper part of the document. A baraita states (Tosefta 11:4): Information concerning what is written below may be learned from what is written above if the lower text is missing one letter, but not if it is missing two letters. In that case, in the event of a discrepancy between information written above and information written below, the document is not valid.
כגון ״חנן״ מ״חנני״ ו״ענן״ מ״ענני״.
For example: if the name of one party is written as Ḥanan below and Ḥanani above, it may be derived from the word Ḥanani written above that the party is named Ḥanani. And similarly, if a name is written Anan below, it may be learned from the name Anani written above that the party is named Anani.