Study Bava Metzia folio 13A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
This Mishnah is referring not to one who finds an ordinary promissory note but to one who finds deeds of transfer. This refers to a promissory note that establishes a lien on the debtor’s property from the date the note is written, regardless of when he borrows the money. Because the debtor obligat
The Talmud asks: If that is so, the following difficulty arises: How will one account for the ruling of the Mishnah here, which teaches that if the promissory notes include a property guarantee, the finder should not return them to the creditor; and we established that the reference is to a case w
The Talmud elaborates: Let us see what the possibilities are. If the reference is to a deed of transfer, didn’t the debtor obligate himself that his property can be collected for payment of the loan from the date that the deed of transfer was written? Conversely, if the reference is to a promissory
The Talmud answers: Rav Asi could have said to you: Although we do not write promissory notes that are not deeds of transfer when the lender is not present together with the borrower, with regard to the case in the Mishnah it can be explained that since the promissory note was dropped, its credibil
Abaye stated an alternative explanation of the Mishnah that allows one to write a promissory note for a borrower in the absence of the lender: The document’s witnesses, with their signatures, acquire the lender’s lien on the borrower’s land on the lender’s behalf, despite the fact that the loan did