Mishnah

A page from the Talumud, with a Mishnah section printed in the center, surrounded by commentaries.

The Mishnah (Hebrew משנה, "repetition"), is the first written recording of the Oral Law of the Jewish people. Traditionally, it is thought to have been redacted around 200 C.E. by Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nasi, also known as "Judah the Prince." It includes the often divergent religious opinions championed by the Pharisees and debated between 70-200 C.E. by the group of rabbinic sages known as the Tannaim. It is considered the first work of Rabbinic Judaism.

The "Oral Torah" (Law) was an unwritten tradition based upon what God reportedly communicated to Moses on Mount Sinai but was not recorded by Moses in writing. In the centuries after its initial redaction by Judah the Prince, commentaries on the Mishnah known as the Gemara (Aramaic: "Tradition") were compiled together with the Mishnah into the work known as the Talmud.

The Mishnah consists of six major orders (sedarim), each containing between seven and 12 tractates (masechtot), which are further divided into verses. The orders include:

• Zeraim ("Seeds"), dealing with agricultural laws and prayers
• Moed ("Festival"), pertaining to the laws of the Sabbath and the ritual celebrations
• Nashim ("Women"), concerning marriage and divorce
• Nezikin ("Damages"), dealing with civil and criminal law
• Kodashim ("Holy things"), regarding Temple rites and the dietary laws
• Tohorot ("Purities"), pertaining to the laws of purity, including the treatment of the dead, the priesthood, sexual purity, menstruation, etc.

Most modern editions of the Talmud are organized with each Mishnah section followed by its associated Gemara commentaries. A Mishnah section may only be a few lines or short paragraph, followed by a commentary of several pages, until that particular tractate of Mishnah is completed.

Context

Relationship with the Hebrew Bible

Rabbinical Judaism holds that written Torah has been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition, and that both of these were given to Moses at Mount Sinai. The first, known as the "Written Law," is composed of the Five "Books of Moses," namely Genesis through Deuteronomy. The second law given to Moses also takes the form of expositions of the Torah relayed by the scholars, prophets, and sages of each generation. This Oral Law is, in a certain sense, the more authoritative of the two, in that traditions of the Oral Law are considered the basis for properly understanding the Written Law. Thus, Jewish law and custom—refered to as Halakhah—is based not only on a literal reading of the Torah, but on the combined oral and written traditions.

After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., rabbinical interpretations became increasingly important as the authority of the Temple priesthood diminished and Pharisaic leaders debated both major and minor points of contention within the Torah. In the wake of the persecution of Jews following the Bar Kochba revolution of the mid-second century, there was real fear that the oral tradition might be lost to posterity. By 200 C.E., much of the Oral Law was edited together into the Mishnah.

Over the next four centuries this material underwent further analysis and debate—known as Gemara ("completion")—in the world's two major Jewish communities, in the former terriority of Israel and in the Babylonian Empire. These debates eventually came to be edited together into compilations known as the Talmud: the Jerusalem Talmud for the compilation in Israel, and Babylonian Talmud for the version undertaken in Babylon. Additional commentaries were added to the Talmud in the medieval period.

The Mishnah does not cite a written scriptural basis for its arguments and dicta. This is in contrast with the Midrashim (singular: midrash), commentaries in which the scriptural sources are specifically identified. These commentaries often predate the Mishnah.

Authorship and writing

The period of the Mishna is commonly divided into five stages according to generations of the Tannaim—the sages of whose opinions the Mishna is composed. There are approximately 120 known Tannaim. They lived in several areas of Judea, later known as Palestine.

Medieval artist's conception of Rabbi Akiva

The spiritual center of Judaism at that time was Jerusalem, but after the destruction of the city and Temple in 70 C.E., Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai and his students founded a new religious center in Jammia (Yavne). It would be here that many of the debates recorded in the Mishna were recorded.

The generations of the Tannaim included:

1. First Generation: Yohanan ben Zakkai's generation (circa 40 B.C.E.-80 C.E.).
2. Second Generation: the time of the rabbis Gamliel II, Eliezer and Yehoshua]]'s—the teachers of Rabbi Akiva.
3. Third Generation: The generation of Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues.
4. Fourth Generation: The generation of Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehuda and their colleagues.
5. Fifth Generation: Rabbi Judah haNasi's generation.
6. Sixth Generation: The interim generation between the Mishnah and the Talmud: rabbis Shimon ben Judah HaNasi and Yehoshua ben Levi, etc.

Many of the Tannaim worked as laborers in addition to their duites as teachers and legislators. They were also leaders of the people, and negotiators with the Roman Empire.

Some Jews did not accept the written codification of the Oral Law, but insisted on the authority of the Written Law only. Known as Karaites, they comprised a significant portion of the world Jewish population around the tenth and eleventh centuries CE. Some communities of Karaites still exist, though they currently number in the thousands.

Additional commentaries

• The famous commentary of Rashi (1040-1105) does not focus on the Mishna per se, but covers nearly all of the Babylonian Talmud (a total of 30 tractates). It has been included in every version of the Talmud since its first printing in the fifteenth century.

Artist's concept of Maimonides

• In 1168, the medieval sage Maimonides was the first known writer to author a comprehensive commentary on the Mishnah itself. Written in Arabic it condenses the Talmudic debates and offers Maimonides' conclusion on a number of undecided issues. Of particular significance are the various introductory sections, as well as the general introduction to the work itself. These are widely quoted in other works on the Mishnah and the Oral law in general. Perhaps the most famous is his introduction to the tenth chapter of tractate Sanhedrin where he enumerates the 13 fundamental beliefs of Judaism. Maimonides' commentary came to be considered authoritative and was normally included in subsequent versions of the Talmud.

• Rabbi Samson of Sens (France) was, apart from Maimonides, one of the few rabbis of the early medieval era to compose a Mishnah commentary. It, too, is printed in many editions of the Mishnah.

• Rabbi Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro (fifteeenth century) wrote one of the most popular Mishnah commentaries. He drew on Maimonides' work but also offered material following the commentary of Rashi.

• After the Maharal of Prague had initiated organized Mishnah study, Yomtov Lipman Heller wrote a detailed analytical commentary called Tosafoth Yom Tov.

Other important Mishnah commentaries were written by the kabbalist Rabbi Solomon Luria, the Vilna Gaon, and Rabbi Akiva Eiger. A prominent commentary from the nineteenth is Tifereth Yisrael by Rabbi Yisrael Lipschutz. The commentary by Rabbi Pinhas Kehati, which is written in Modern Israeli Hebrew and based on classical and contemporary works, became popular in the late twentieth century. It was designed to make the Mishnah widely accessible to a wide spectrum of learners of all ages.

Study of the Mishnah

Oral traditions and pronunciation

The Mishnah was and still is traditionally studied through recitation (out loud). Although ancient Hebrew does not included vowels, many medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah are vowelized, and some of these notations indicating that some of the material is to be chanted. Jewish communities around the world preserved local melodies for chanting the Mishnah and distinctive ways of pronouncing its words.

Two institutes at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have collected major oral archives which hold (among other things) extensive recordings of Jews chanting the Mishnah using a variety of melodies and pronunciation. These institutes are the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center and the National Voice Archives.

Most editions of the Mishnah today reflect standard Ashkenazic vowelization. However, scholars indicate that many editions also contain errors.

Critical views

Both the Mishnah and Talmud contain little intentional biographical information. A typical section simply indicates that one rabbi said such-and-such, while another said so-and-so. Yet, sketchy biographies of the Mishaic sages can often be constructed with historical detail from talmudic and midrashic sources.

Many modern historical scholars have focused on the timing and the formation of the Mishnah. A vital question is whether it is comprised mainly of sources which date from its editor's lifetime, or whether considerable later material has been inserted. Furthermore, are the opinions of the rabbis preserved from before the time of Judah the Prince accurate? And what has been ommitted or lost as a result of previously well-known acrimony between the schools of Hillel and Shammai? Are Mishnaic disputes distinguishable along theological or communal lines, and in what ways do different sections derive from different schools of thought within early Judaism? Can these early sources be identified?

In response to these questions, modern scholars disagree widely. While some students of the Mishnah take the text quite literally, critical scholarship of the subjection can be divided into three basic approaches:

• Some scholars hold that there has been extensive editorial reshaping of the stories and statements within the Mishnah (and later, in the Talmud). Lacking outside corresponding texts, they hold that we cannot confirm the origin or date of most of the Mishnah's statements and laws. We can also say little for certain about their authorship. In this view, the questions above are impossible to answer. See, for example, the works of Louis Jacobs, Baruch M. Bokser, Shaye J.D. Cohen, Steven D. Fraade.

• Other scholars hold that although the Mishnah and Talmud have been extensively shaped by later editorial redaction, it contains sources which we can identify and describe with some level of reliability. In this view, sources can be identified to some extent because each era of history and each distinct geographical region has its own unique feature, which one can trace and analyze. See, for example, the works of Goodblatt, Lee Levine, David C. Kraemer and Robert Goldenberg.

• Still other scholars hold that many or most of the statements and events described in the Mishnah and Talmud occurred more or less as described, and that they can be used as basically reliable sources of historical study. Such scholars do their best to tease out later editorial additions and skeptically view accounts of miracles, leaving behind a reliable historical text. See, for example, the works of Saul Lieberman, David Weiss Halivni, Avraham Goldberg and Dov Zlotnick.

See also

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Mishnah

• Tannaim
• Talmud
• Tosefta
• Beraita
• Minor Tractates
• Karaite

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Translations

• Blackman, Philip. Mishnayoth. The Judaica Press, Ltd., 2000 (ISBN 0-910818-00-X)
• Danby, Herbert. The Mishna. Oxford, 1933 ISBN 0-19-815402-X.
• Neusner, Jacob. The Mishnah: A New Translation. New Haven, reprint 1991 ISBN 0-300-05022-4.

Historical study

• Carmy, Shalom. Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations Jason Aronson, Inc.
• Goldenberg, Robert. The Sabbath-Law of Rabbi Meir Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1978
• McGinley, John W. "The Written" as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly ISBN 0-595-40488-X
• Porton, Gary. The Traditions of Rabbi Ishmael (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982), vol. 4
• Zlotnick, Dov . The Iron Pillar: Mishnah Bialik Institute, 1988

External links

• Learn Mishnah Online - Create a Shloshim Mishnah list online
• Mishnah on Demand
• Hebrew text based on Maimonides
• Hebrew text according to the Albeck
• VariousTalmudic Manuscripts
• The Daily Mishnah in English

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