Edut Meyuchedet - Concluding Remarks

Last night, we tried to understand R. Pappa's kashya on Abaye in more depth:
We noted that there was apparently both a strength and a weakness in viewing it - one after another - from the same window.
The weakness: they each seem to have seen "half an act"
The strength: they are seeing it from the same window, and apparently know of one another, so there is more of a connection between them here than in the case of simultaneous viewing from separate windows.

The baraita quoted in the תניא נמי הכי seems to imply that the non-joining - צירוף - of the witnesses in the one window - זה אחר זה case - is a bigger chiddush: In other words, even once we know that the two window case doesn't generate a merger of testimonies, we may still have thought the one window case would generate such a merger.  The baraita comes to tell us that not even the second case works.

Rav Pappa's difficulty with the baraita is that the second case seems to be weaker: Ie that there is more of a reason to veto a merger in case #2 since each side saw only half a מעשה!  Why, then, is it presented in the baraita as a bigger chiddush, more of a surprise?

Abaye responds by saying that the סיפא is dealing with a case of elicit sexual relations, and, as Rashi explains (presumably because the act can extend for longer than a moment) each witness views "an entire act".  Now, the only variable that distinguishes the first case from the baraita and the second is the two-window/one-window distinction.  In the two window case, we are told there is no צירוף because the parties do not see each other.  But we may have thought in a one-window case, since they were presumably aware of each other (they came one after the other) and they each saw a whole act ------that there were would be a merging of the eduyot.  The baraita's chiddush is that despite this, there is not a merger.  They literally must be mutually aware of each other at a SIMULTANEOUS SIGHTING.
Rava then informs us that there is another way we can merge the eduyot: through one ed of each group viewing the מתרה - the guy warning in the middle.  We got into a longer discussion of whether or not the מתרה is functioning as a halachic מתרה, and this was contingent on the machloket between R. Yosi and (possibly) Tanna Kamma.  Perhaps according to R. Yossi, the מתרה in this kind of a case would simply be someone, although not functioning as an ed, is a "merging force" between the two groups.

We finished the shiur with Rav Nachman's assertion that though edut meyuchedet is pasul in dinei nefashot, it works in dinei mammonot/monetary laws.  This is challenged in the form of a מתקיף לה. Tonight's shiur will begin with a review of this קושיא -  see you there!