כפלי גרסה בירושלמי

Double readings occur frequently in Talmud Yerushalmi. Such doublets include combinations of alternative readings of seemingly equal authenticity (conflations), as well as original readings which were combined with synonymous simpler readings (glosses). Conflations presumably resulted from the combination by scribes and copyists (and occasionally printers) of different readings, which were initially preserved in different exemplars, in a single text. Such doublets are found in virtually all extant witnesses to the text of the Yerushalmi. The variant readings conflated include ordinary words and expressions, proper nouns (tradents' names), and technical terminology. These variants are usually synonymous (or at least interchangeable in context), although this is not always so. Some of the variants attested in conflations evidently derive from the subconscious substitution of secondary readings for more original readings, although most of these variants seem to stem from the fluid, presumably oral, transmission of the Yerushalmi text by ancient 'reciters', who transmitted the contents of the Talmud in different formulations. Two principal types of glosses have been preserved in Yerushalmi doublets: lexical glosses, which explain obscure words or expressions, and glosses which specify the antecedents of pronouns. Such glosses may have originated (and been included in the text) in the scribal period, although some of these readings might be considerably earlier, and have originated some time during the Yerushalmi's formative period. An appendix to the article discusses 'interpolation', i.e. supplementary explanatory material included in the base text of the Talmud. Unlike glosses (as defined above), such interpolations are not synonymous with material found in the base text, and hence it is extremely difficult to identify these readings with certainty.