Study Ketubot folio 85A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
לא קנה. תפסוה אינהו. רב פפא מימלח מלוחי. רב הונא בריה דרב יהושע ממתח לה באשלא. מר אמר: אנא קנינא לה לכולה, ומר אמר: אנא קנינא לה לכולה.
has not acquired it. He cannot act to the detriment of others without their consent, and his acquisition harms the other creditors. Those rabbis were also owed money by that same man, so they both seized the boat for himself. Rav Pappa steered it with an oar, while Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua, pulled it with a rope. This Sage said: I acquired all of it; and that Sage said: I acquired all of it.
פגע בהו רב פנחס בר אמי, אמר להו: רב ושמואל דאמרי תרוייהו והוא שצבורין ומונחין ברשות הרבים! אמר להו: אנן נמי מחריפותא דנהרא תפיסנא.
Rav Pineḥas bar Ami encountered them and said to them: What of the opinion of Rav and Shmuel, who both say: And this, that whoever first takes possession has acquired them, is the halakha provided that the items are arranged in a pile and placed in the public domain, which is not the case with this boat? They said to him: We too seized it from the current of the river, i.e., the middle of the river, which has the status of a public domain.
אתו לקמיה דרבא, אמר להו: קאקי חיורי, משלחי גלימי דאינשי! הכי אמר רב נחמן: והוא שתפסה מחיים.
They came before Rava to ask him who had acquired the boat. He said to them: You are white geese [kakei ḥivvarei], in reference to their white beards, who remove people’s cloaks, i.e., your actions were unlawful from the start. This is what Rav Naḥman said: And this, that whoever takes possession has acquired them, is the halakha provided that one seized them from the debtor while he was alive. In this case, however, the boat was seized after the debtor’s death, when the heirs had already taken possession of it.