Q&A: Ketubot 24a — 3 Witnesses
Ketubot 24a — 3 Witnesses
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi,
I wanted to ask about the baraita brought on page 24:
Our Rabbis taught: “If one says, ‘I am a priest and my friend is a priest,’ he is believed to allow him to eat terumah, but he is not believed to marry him to a woman unless there are three people, with two testifying about this one and two testifying about that one. Rabbi Yehuda says: He is not even believed to allow him to eat terumah unless there are three.”
I couldn’t understand why there is a different significance to three witnesses here. Why don’t they accept the testimony of two?
Thank you
Answer
Interesting formulation: a baraita on page 24. Of which tractate? In the Babylonian Talmud or the Jerusalem Talmud? Maybe in the Upanishads? In the name of my expertise (which I inherited from the Shach), I concluded that you mean Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 24a.
As for the question itself, I didn’t understand it. You need two witnesses in order to marry him to a woman (that is, to prove that he is a priest; otherwise there is concern about his mamzer status. That is how Rashi explains it. And in Tosafot, it is to prove that he is not a disqualified priest, in order to validate his daughter for marrying into the priesthood). Therefore, if one of the two is himself one of the witnesses, then altogether at least three people are required, such that any two of them can serve as witnesses regarding the third.
Notice that this is not talking about three witnesses (from your question it seems that’s how you understood it). Testimony is always given by two. The Talmud is speaking about a case involving three people, from among whom pairs of witnesses are selected.
Discussion on Answer
That is indeed how I understood it — three witnesses.
Thanks for the explanation,
and I actually got a kick out of the Upanishads…
🙂
(I just now noticed that the title says it’s in Ketubot. My apologies.) 🙂