Study Niddah folio 49A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And if you wish, say instead that the tanna who taught this ruling was R' Shimon, and the baraita is referring to an examination conducted after the age of majority. And R' Shimon does not accept the presumption of Rava that a girl of this age has already developed signs indicating puberty.
§ The Mishnah teaches that according to the Rabbis a young woman who apparently developed the upper sign before the lower sign has reached majority, and therefore if her childless husband died she either performs ḥalitza or enters into levirate marriage with her husband’s brother. This ruling is due
And if you would say that it is repeated because the tanna wants to teach an unattributed Mishnah in accordance with the opinion of the Rabbis, in order to establish that the halakha follows their opinion in their dispute with R' Meir, that cannot be the case. The Talmud explains why this suggestio
The Talmud answers: It is necessary for the tanna to state that the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of the Rabbis despite the fact that they are the majority, lest you say that the rationale for the opinion of R' Meir is more reasonable. One might have thought this, as the verses cited ab
Mishnah: Similar to the order of the appearance of the signs of puberty in a girl, where it is impossible for the upper sign to appear before the lower sign, there is an analogous principle with regard to the mutual dependency of two items: Any earthenware vessel with a hole that enables entry of l