Jacob Neusner’s Tosefta
Just got a copy of the two-volume edition (reproduced from an earlier, larger set) of Jacob Neusner’s English translation of the Tosefta. The Tosefta (”addition” in Aramaic) is sort of a companion work to the Mishna. It has expansions and background to the laws of the Mishna, and while Neusner holds that it is the first commentary on the Mishna - sort of a proto-Gemara - based on the Gemara’s reading of at least some Mishna texts through the lens of the parallel in the Tosefta, there is some scholarly debate on the question of which came first, Mishna or Tosefta. Neusner makes his case in this work in his lengthy introduction, citing texts from all three sources to show the connections, but we haven’t made up our minds yet. If the Gemara understands a Mishna the same way that the Tosefta does, it seems possible to us that you could argue, as Neusner does, that the temporal chain is therefore Mishna-Tosefta-Gemara. But it also seems possible that you could make a case for the other order, namely Tosefta-Mishna-Gemara.
Consider the relative brevity of the Mishna and the relative expansiveness of the Tosefta. Neusner says this means the latter is a commentary on the former. But you could also argue that the Mishna is a distillation of a law code from a larger, more literary work, namely the Tosefta.
To tell you the truth, we think Neusner is probably right. Just that it’s fun to consider the possibilities.