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MISHNA: Introduction
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Mishnah The Mishnah and the Gemara, component parts of the Talmud , have been traditionally called Torah sheh-b'al peh, or the Oral Law. During the centuries that the oral tradition had been developing among the Jews in Palestine and Babylonia it was considered sacrilege to write down the common usages and the discussions, enactments and laws of the rabbis—for nothing was to compete with the sanctity of the Written Law, the Torah. When the Mishnah was redacted in 200 C.E. by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, it was to a degree a revolutionary step. As the body of oral material grew too weighty for even those of prodigious memory—and it must be remembered that with a lack of books memory was perforce keener—various schools (like that of Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Meir) began to keep notes of discussions , for internal purposes only and not for publication. These notes eventually were the point of transition from nonwriting to writing of the Oral Law, and Rabbi Judah made full use of this written material. His code also brought uniformity at a time when many schools were utilizing their own private collections of laws. The Mishnah is divided into six principal divisions, or orders: 1. "Seeds," laws pertaining to agriculture. 2. "Festivals," laws of the Sabbath and the holidays. 3. "Women," laws concerning marriage and divorce. 4. "Damages," civil and criminal laws. 5. "Sacred Things," laws about the Temple and sacrifices. 6. "Purifications," laws of things clean and unclean. Each order has about ten tractates, which are subdivided into chapters and paragraphs. References to the Mishnah are made 72 MISHNAH 73 by tractate, chapter and paragraph. Thus, if one wished to refer to the opening lines of Pirke Avot, one would cite Avot 1:1. The Mishnah is written in a terse, lucid Hebrew that reflects contemporary usage (first and second centuries C.E.) in Palestine, a language that differs strikingly from Biblical Hebrew in vocabulary , syntax, and idiom. By the time the Mishnah was written, Palestine had already come under the influence of its Greek and Roman conquerers and the stamp of these languages is imprinted to a degree in Mishnaic Hebrew. The redactor of the Mishnah was Judah ha-Nasi (135-210), a descendant of Hillel, who succeeded his father Simeon ben Gamaliel as Patriarch. With the completion of this lifetime task Rabbi Judah, the chief rabbinic authority of his generation, had contributed to Judaism one of the books that molded the development of Judaism and gave it its most comprehensive legal compilation. In sum, the Mishnah is a commentary and extension of the Torah statutes, as in turn the Gemara is a discussion and extended commentary upon the Mishnah. With the cessation of Jewish hegemony in Palestine in 70 C.E., and the growing number of exilic communities, the Mishnah served as a cohesive force in the development of Judaism, a spiritual substitute for a no longer viable political center. The Mishnah, too, serves as the core for the two Talmuds, the Babylonian (Talmud Bavli) and the Palestinian or Jerusalem (Talmud Y erushalmi), which base their differing discussions on exactly the same Mishnaic text. The laws of the Mishnah were considered as sacred as the Torah, as is indicated by the opening of the Pirke Avot: the direct and unbroken link between Moses and the rabbinic sages. Although statements in the Mishnah were not always based directly on Scriptural authority—accepted usages, unwritten practises, oral traditions, as well as logical extensions of sacred writ, deducible rules and exegesis are the presumed link between the Torah, Jewry's basic constitution, and the Mishnah. Owing to his stature as Patriarch, Rabbi Judah's Mishnah was immediately accepted as the authoritative code—but, because of Judaism's continually developing institutions, not as a permanent corpus of law. Even at the time of its compilation the Mishnah was dealing with practises no longer current. The Temple had been destroyed for more than a century, yet the laws dealt with it as though it [3.144.243.184] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:20 GMT) 74 MASTERPIECES OF HEBREW LITERATURE were in existence (c./., the entire fifth order, "Sacred Things"). Here, and in other places, the fusion of past and present showed the hope for eventual national restoration; and moreover, played an important part in developing a sense of nationhood and peoplehood among Jews scattered in various corners of the world. In the Mishnah Rabbi Judah collected the halakhot (laws...