Horayot (; "Decisions") is a tractate in Seder Nezikin in the Talmud.
In the Mishnah, this is the tenth and last tractate in Nezikin, the ninth tractate in the Babylonian Talmud, and the eighth in the Jerusalem Talmud. It consists of three chapters in the Mishnah and two in the Tosefta. The tractate mainly discusses laws pertaining to erroneous rulings by a Jewish court, as well as unwitting actions performed by leading authorities of the Jewish people, and the sacrificial offerings (Hebrew korban, plural korbanot) that might be brought as a consequence of these actions. The conclusion of the tractate (12a-13b) deals with the prioritization of korbanot in the temple and explores the question of how to quantify human life in emergencies.
Mishnah
The Mishnah of Horayot is the final work of Nezikin. It contains three chapters. There are twenty paragraphs of Mishnah, or twenty Mishnayot, within the three chapters. These chapters deal with the verses in the Torah (Leviticus 4) that specify different procedures for the sin offering brought by a private individual, an anointed priest, a nasi, and an entire community. The "community's" offering is understood to be that which is brought when the community has followed an erroneous ruling by the higher court. In addition to the discussion in Leviticus 4, the Torah also mentions community offerings. The sages understand the second passage in Numbers to be referencing the sin of unintentional idolatry committed by the congregation.
Chapter 1 – Sacrifice for unintentional sins Maimonides sums up the conditions necessary for the bringing of such a sacrifice, the conditions being found in the first and second chapters, as follows: (1) the head of the Sanhedrin and all its members must have been present when the decision was rendered; (2) every one of them must have been fully qualified to serve as a member of that body; (3) the decision must have been passed by a unanimous vote; (4) the error must concern a Biblical law; (5) at least a majority of the people must have followed the decision in practice; (6) those who followed the decision in practice must have been unaware of the mistake, and must have supposed that they were acting in accordance with law; (7) the error must have been due merely to ignorance of a matter of detail, and not to ignorance of the existence of the whole Biblical law in question. Unless these conditions are present, every one of those who have acted in accordance with the erroneous enactment must bring an individual offering.
Chapter 2 – The unintentional sins of the High Priest and King The anointed priest who had interpreted a Biblical law erroneously, and acted accordingly, was required to bring a special sacrifice. The same conditions, that governed the case of an erroneous ruling of the court with regard to the practice of the community, governed also the erroneous decision of the anointed priest with regard to his own practice. The laws regarding the special sacrifice of the Leading Elder of the Sanhedrin, the Nasi, are also discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 3 – Precedence In the cases of the anointed priest and the Nasi, whose tenure of office is temporary, a question might arise about the kind of sacrifice they must bring for sins committed before entering their offices or after leaving them. If the sin was committed before they assumed office, they were considered private individuals. If the sin was committed after they left their offices, the Nasi was regarded as an individual, while the status of the anointed priest was unchanged. The Mishnah (10a) states that the Nasi is considered the king, deriving this from the verse in Leviticus 4:22, that "all the commandments of the Lord his God." This verse must refer to the king, who alone has only God above him.
The Mishnah clarifies the meaning of the Hebrew word Mashiach, anointed one or messiah, in the context of the high priesthood. The "anointed priest" must bring a bull as an offering for an unwitting sin. Still, the High Priest who is not anointed (referred to as the High Priest of multiple garments, because of his extended duties during the Yom Kippur rites) does not bring that bull-offering for unwitting sins. The Mishnah states that there are two differences between the High Priest currently serving in that position and a High Priest who is not in the active role: (1) the serving High Priest brings the bull-offering on Yom Kippur, and (2) the daily gift offering of flour is prepared by the serving High Priest. The Mishnah begins prioritizing the distribution of charity money or lost objects to people based on their gender or title. The Mishnah ranks people from priests to slaves in terms of priority—priests, Levites, Israelites, illegitimate mamzers, Nethinim (the alleged descendants of the Gibeonites), proselytes, and then freed slaves. However, the Mishnah then states that this prioritization is overridden by one's level of scholarship or piety: "This is only when all other things are equal, but in the case of an ignorant priest and a scholar who is an illegitimate mamzer, the latter must precede the priest in all honors".
Talmud The Tractate Horayot in the Babylonian Talmud consists of only fourteen pages. In many editions, it is printed with tractate Avodah Zarah. The Gemara is mainly devoted to interpreting the laws of the Mishnah dealing with sacrifices for unintentional sin, with a few aggadic digressions in the third chapter. The commentary attributed to Rashi is more profuse here than in other parts of the Talmud. There is reason to believe that this commentary on Horayot attributed to Rashi was composed by the school of Rabbeinu Gershom.See Y.N. Epstein "The Commentary on Horayot Attributed to Rashi" [in Hebrew] Tabiz 1942 pp. 218-225. The Tosafot published in the Vilna Edition Shas occur only in the first two chapters, the style and method, mainly of an interpretive nature, being very different from those of the Tosafot in other books. In the Vilna edition, besides the commentary of Rabbeinu Hananel, there is a commentary called Tosafot HaRosh, attributed to Asher ben Jehiel. The earliest printed editions of the Babylonian Talmud, from Venice forward, include the writings of the Jerusalem Talmud on Horayot at the end of the printing. This was done because the printers could not find extensive Tosafot on Horayot. Revisions or minor edits to the text of Horayot were done for each printed edition.
Chapter 1 of Babylonian Talmud Horayot
The first Mishnah discusses the authority of the sages and the responsibility to act autonomously and not follow a misguided ruling. A sage who is an expert in Halakha and knows that the court was mistaken in its ruling, should not follow a misguided ruling of the court and perform a forbidden action. This applies to an individual who has a great understanding of Halakha. However, an individual who is not an expert and does not know that the court's ruling was indeed misguided would be exempt from punishment were that person to transgress against a commandment by following the court's incorrect ruling.
From this first Mishnah, and the Talmudic discussion that follows, the conclusion is drawn that experts in Halakha are obligated to weigh their internal truth and autonomous decision before acting on halakhic matters. As one modern writer notes, the "inner truth" of Halakha takes precedence over a court's instructions, especially when the court's instructions require one to transgress against Halakha. The Mishnah calls for experts on Halakha to be independent in reaching halakhic conclusions.Ben-David, Yitzchak, "Rabbinical Authority vs Personal Responsibility in Religious Zionism" in Etzah Laderech, p.17. (Published by Kibbutz Hadati and Ne'emanei Torah Va'Avodah:2010).
The Gemara rules that each tribe in Israel is considered as a congregation, after the verse "And Jehoshaphat stood in the congregation." The Bible (Jewish Publication Society, 1917) However, the bull that atones for the communal transgression is only brought when the majority of tribes or the majority of Israel's population err and follow a mistaken ruling. Twelve bulls are offered at the Temple for a sin of the entire people, but for the sin of idol worship, twelve bulls and twelve goats are sacrificed.
The Gemara proceeds to further limit the cases in which a court would bring a bull that atones for communal transgression. The only times when the bull is offered to atone for communal transgression is when the entire congregation sinned based on a court ruling on a detail of mitzvah prohibited in the Torah; i.e., no bull would be brought if the court annulled an entire negative prohibition and the congregation blindly followed them. Likewise, no bull atoning for communal transgression would be brought if the court rules on a matter so obvious that even the most straightforward reading of the Hebrew Bible would lead one to realize that the court is mistaken. In the language of the Talmud, if the matter is such that even the Sadducees acknowledge it is a prohibited mitzvah in the Torah, no bull would be brought in such a case of communal transgression following a court's unwitting ruling.
Chapter 2 of Babylonian Talmud Horayot
Chapter two begins with the words "The Rulings of the Anointed Priest". The chapter deals with the sacrificial offerings required by unwitting sin. The Gemara clarifies that a sin offering (korban ḥatat, ) would be brought either by the High Priest or by the king, who is called the Nasi in Leviticus.See "Nasi" by Gerald Blidstein#Encyclopedia Articles in EJ, 12: 833-5. In Leviticus, the High Priest and the Nasi, in particular, brought special sacrifices in Leviticus 4:9 and 4:23, apparently because their errors caused harm to their people.
The Gemara understands Leviticus 4:3, "guilt upon the people", as teaching that the anointed priest and the king bring a sacrifice due to their unwitting actions similar to that required to expiate the "guilt upon the people". This means that just as in the case of the people at large, who bring a sacrifice after transgressing due to mistaken rulings, so likewise is it in the case of the anointed priest and the king. The High Priest brings the sacrifice of a bull only after he rules, and then acts on that mistaken ruling, in error, a case that parallels the sacrifice of a bull by the people at large: i.e., when the unwitting action was committed after a mistaken ruling was issued. The anointed priest does not bring an offering if his transgression was not based on a mistaken ruling. There is a discussion on the status of the anointed priest parallel to that on the Sanhedrin. Rav Pappa teaches that the case in question is one in which the anointed priest was a distinguished Torah scholar with the same authority to issue rulings as the Sanhedrin.