method we still have no indication as to the reason or category to which the Prohibition belongs.
3. The clause" 1"" contains in addition to the manner of performance a hint as to the reason for the Prohibition it should not be performed in a" secular" way ( and not in the meaning of" weekday" as in the two previous interpretations). We are therefore involved with a special group of Prohibitions that are secular in nature and do not conform to the character of the day.
B. The accepted interpretation does not generally veer from the third proposal, however, it is not, in our opinion, the most satisfactory, as:
1. An investigation of the use of the other clauses" 777" shows that they do not contain any indication as to the reason for the Prohibition.
2. Most important: we do not find in the Mishna or the Tosefta category indications. The category indications are only shown if there is a reason for it, such as a difference of opinion regarding it. It would therefore be very questionable to suppose that particularly in regard to this specific category the editors stress its special relationship.
3. In our opinion, the reason that the phrases"" y" that appear in the Tosefta lack the parallelism of the phrases in the Mishna is that the editor of the Mishna abbreviated them with the intention to shorten the texts before him( one of the important goals in the work of the editorship, as shown by Prof. S. I. Friedman in his recent research), it would then be plausible to assume that the editor of the Mishna saw these latter phrases as shown by our first proposal, that the latter part of the phrase repeats the prior description in another format, saw no reason to preserve them in the text of the Mishna. It would seem questionable to say that he understood the
- ii-