When writing a legal document, small details can end up having a big impact. The recorded time and place, for example, may seem formalistic, but these are used to authenticate a sale and the decision to use one date or another, or one place or another, can have far-reaching implications.
Today’s daf concludes a discussion about how to properly date a document of acquisition:
Rava bar Rav Sheila said to those who wrote deeds of acquisition: When you write deeds of acquisition, if you know the date of the acquisition, write it, and if not, write the current date to avoid the semblence of dishonhesty.
One should not, in other words, approximate a date of acquisition, as this can later be called into question and may appear false. Even if it seems more accurate to write the date a sale occurred, if one cannot be certain it’s correct, that opens the document up to the appearance of forgery.
This discussion is followed with a similar discussion about recorded place:
Rav said to his scribe, and Rav Huna also said to his scribe: When you are writing a document in Shili, write “Shili,” even if the matters were given over to you in Hini; if you are writing a document in Hini, write “Hini,” even if the the matters were given over to you in Shili.
Even if the transaction took place in another city, Rav advises, one should always record the city where the document was written. Some commentators understand a similar motive to be at work here: One writes the place where the document is being signed in order to avoid any errors that could lead to a suspicion of dishonesty.
Tosafot notes that Hini and Shili were actually geographically proximate, and people frequently travelled back and forth between them. By using them for this example, Rav underlines the importance of recording the exact place the document was signed. If the document was written in Hini but the acquisition took place in Shili, if the document says Shili, someone could come and say, “It says Shili, but you were in Hini that day!” To avoid such a scenario, Meiri suggests adding both places: “We are signing in Hini today about what happened in Shili.”
Ra’aviah, a medieval German scholar, suggests that the concern here is not avoiding the semblance of dishonesty but, should this document wind up in court, making it easier to track down the witnesses who signed it, as they would be known in that town and presumably even live there. This makes the location recorded in the document a practical consideration.
None of the commentators think that dating a document according to the date of a transaction, or listing the place of the transaction, instead of the date and place at which the document was signed, automatically invalidates a document, but they are concerned this practice leaves it open to question and may create a bureaucratic burden. Even if most of the time the only advantage is avoiding the appearance of falsehood, this too is good for business: One’s reputation for avoiding any type of deceit creates trust, essential for making the types of deals these documents allow.
Read all of Bava Batra 172 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 14, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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