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.

The other thing that Artscroll has in its Talmud version is in-line Hebrew and English. That is, one page has the original Aramaic/Hebrew text. The facing page is not just a translation, though. It is a running translation and explanation, based largely on Rashi, that includes the vocalized Aramaic/Hebrew text followed by English translation, phrase by phrase. The original and the translation are in bold font, while interpolated explanations and other words needed to render the sentences in readable English are in normal type. Another thing that takes getting used to, but is actually quite handy, is that since it usually takes 3-4 English pages to translate 1 original Hebrew/Aramaic page, the Artscroll Talmud repeats each original page three or four times until the facing English page catches up to it. On any given English page, you can see where you are on the Hebrew/Aramaic page courtesy of a grey bar on the Hebrew/Aramaic page that shows which parts of it are on the current English page.

The Steinsaltz version, on the other hand, does a similar interpolation of explanation and text, but it keeps the Aramaic/Hebrew text separate from the English. It also uses its own pagination, instead of that in the Vilna edition. (Some readers, it seems, couldn’t handle that, though the Vilna printing is of course not really all that old in Talmud years.) One other plus of the Steinsaltz English section is that he also gives you a literal translation separate from the translation with interpolated commentary and explanation. If you don’t know Hebrew and Aramaic, this is a nice way to get a feel for the structure of the language used in the Talmud. 

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