Study Bava Batra folio 54B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And if it is not defined by its boundaries, up to how much of the field is acquired by one strike of the hoe? Rav Pappa said: He acquires as far as an ox driver goes and returns, i.e., the size of a standard furrow, beginning where the hoe entered the ground.
§ Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says: With regard to the property of a non-Jew that was sold to a Jew for money, it is ownerless like a desert until the purchaser performs an act of acquisition; anyone who takes possession of it in the interim has acquired it. What is the reason for this? The non-Jew
Abaye said to Rav Yosef: Did Shmuel actually say this? But doesn’t Shmuel say that the law of the kingdom is the law, i.e., the halakha obligates Jews to observe the laws of the locale in which they reside, and the king said that land may not be acquired without a document? Therefore, taking posse
Abaye said to him: Are you saying that the incident occurred in Dura that was founded by shepherds? Proof cannot be brought from that case, as there the fields were concealed, since the owners of fields would not pay the land tax [taska] to the king, and the king says that one who pays land tax may
The Talmud relates: Rav Huna purchased land from a non-Jew. Another Jew came and plowed it slightly. Rav Huna and that Jew came before Rav Naḥman, who established the property in the possession of the latter. Rav Huna said to Rav Naḥman: What are you thinking in issuing this ruling? Is it because