The Founding Document of the Rabbinic Movement

Introduction

The Monotheistic religions all have some essential things in common, the believe in one God, a divine revelation, prophets, and divine teachings given to instruct the believers to live a correct life according to their God.
Among the most famous texts we find the Bible and the Quran, the former a compilation of texts gathered in the final collections known as either the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, a cornerstone of the Jewish and Christian faiths respectively, and the latter the compilation of the divine revelations given through the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the early sixth century CE.
Also well-known, but less understood outside Jewish circles, is the Talmud which is based on the collection of the Oral Torah known as Mishnah, the compilation of the Oral Tradition, believed going back to the revelation of the Torah to Moses.

Preface

The Roman-Jewish wars in the period between the years 66 CE and 135 CE had catastrophic consequences for the Jewish world, particularly in Palestine. With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the year 70 CE and the banning of all Jews, including the young Jewish-Christian community, in 135 CE the Temple cult lost its dominance and Jerusalem its role as the religious and political center of the Jewish people.

The plurality of Jewish religious movements thriving before the destruction of the Temple all but disappeared in the aftermath of the wars, and those religious leaders still present and with enough influence had to consider how to adjust the Jewish religion to a reality without the Temple and Jerusalem as the center of the Jewish world.

One of the answers to this new reality was the Rabbinic movement, which managed to establish new centers of learning and influence in Yavne, not far from Jerusalem, and Susha in the Galilee. They emphasized the oral tradition already promoted by the Pharisees during the late Second Temple period, with its emphasis on individual purity and oral teachings, adding the focus of prayer and study in and around the synagogue as the communal center of influence.

However, because of the Roman hostility in the aftermath of the wars, teaching the Jewish tenets became more and more difficult for the Jewish religious teachers, and what was an oral tradition and believed to have to stay that way, soon became necessary to submit to writing if the rabbis hoped to keep the existence of the oral tradition influential in and outside the Jewish communities in Palestine.

This collection of oral teachings became final in the beginning of the third century CE, compiled and redacted by the Rabbinic sage, Yehudah HaNasi.

Etymology

The name Mishnah is based on the root shin-nun-heh (שנה) which in Biblical Hebrew means “to repeat” (see for example Proverbs 26:11 – “As a dog that returns to his vomit, so is a fool repeating his folly”). This name is given because the teachings in the Mishnah were repeated orally again and again, until the students would know them by heart. This emphasizes the oral nature of the traditions found in the Mishnah.
The root also refers to “second” (shenit – שנית), referring to the compilation as the “second Torah”.
Hence the name Mishnah can be translated as “The Repetition” or “The Second Torah” – not to substitute the written Torah (the Five Books of Moses), but rather to compliment it.

Background

In the period before the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 CE, the Temple, and Jerusalem in extension, played a central role for the Jewish people in the known world. While there were other examples of temples built for the Jewish religion, such as the one in Elephantine, they only held importance for the local Jewish communities and as such only as “stand-ins” for the actual Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple in Jerusalem was the place that was chosen by God, and because of this was the main focus for all Jews in the known world. This was reflected in the half-shekel tax paid by Jews to the Temple in Jerusalem.

However, after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and particularly the expulsion of the Jews by Hadrian in 135 CE, the Temple and Jerusalem stopped playing the same central role for the Jews, even if it remained a strong cultural and religious symbol up to our days. The question for the remaining Jews was how to find themselves in this new reality. Considering the extensive amount of commandments in the Torah focusing on the Temple service, how could the Jews now exist in this new reality. It was not only the importance of the Temple as a central political and religious point, but also the role of the sacrifices brought to undo the sins of the Jews, both collectively and individually, as well as the states of purity for the individual Jews. Suddenly these issues, which were solvable before, now prevented the Jews from performing their lives according to God’s expectations.

The Mishnah was the result of one movement and its answer to the new reality. The oral tradition followed by the rabbis and their supporters was expanded with other traditions focused on the Temple service. When should one pray. What could be brought as sacrifice. How was it sacrificed. What if this was lacking, could one bring that instead. And so on. These were pragmatic considerations when the Temple still stood, now they were replacements for the actual Temple service. The Jews might no longer be able to gather in Jerusalem in the Temple, but they could still gather in the local community in the synagogue, and instead of performing the Temple service, they could study it and that way replace the actual Temple service.

But even then, the worsening of the reality of existence for the Jew required the rabbis to consider how to ensure the continuation of the oral tradition. Having groups of students who would learn the traditions by repetition would prove insufficient and a solution to that had to be found. The Mishnah is a result of this challenge, a result which has proved successful to a degree the rabbis themselves might not have expected, but certainly would have celebrated.

Structure of the Mishnah

The Mishnah is organized in six “Orders” (סדר) with variable number of tractates (מסכת), which again are organized in a number of chapters (פרק). While the orders are categorized according to six different subjects, the tractates are generally following the subject of the order, but there are examples tractates that don’t seemingly fit the order they are placed in. This is for example the case with the very first tractate, Massechet Berachot (Tractate of Blessings), which is found in the Order of Agriculture but focuses on prayers and blessings. While the reason for why this tractate is placed where it is isn’t explained, the traditionally understanding is that it is placed as the first tractate to function as a blessing before the rest of the tractates. Considering that Jewish tradition requires a blessing before performing a commandment, this would make fine sense.

The organization of the Mishnah follows as shown below:

Importance of the Mishnah

The importance of the Mishnah cannot be overstated. While we need to be careful when trying to estimate how popular and influential the Mishnah was in the first centuries after its compilation, it would later become the cornerstone of the two Talmuds (the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds), which again would form the foundation of the Rabbinic movement, the present day dominant form of Judaism as expressed in the three denominations of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox Judaism.

The Mishnah represents a new form of Judaism, which appeared after the destruction of the Second Temple, removing the focus from the Temple service and cult to the focus on local communities being centered around the synagogue. With the Mishnah the idea of the study of the commandments connected to the Temple replacing the actual execution of those commandments became prevalent. For example, in the Babylonian Talmud it is stated that “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said [that the] prayers were instituted based on the daily offerings” (Talmud Bavli, Berachot 26b), and in a later midrash it is stated that “Israel said: ‘Master of the universe, when the Temple was extant, we would sacrifice an offering and gain atonement; now, we have nothing in our hand other than prayer.” (BaMidbar Rabbah 18:17).

Hence, when the Mishnah discusses the commandments surrounding the Temple, which are no longer applicable and weren’t when the Mishnah was compiled, it was less in order to make sure that the commandments were explained allowing the Jews to do them, and more to make it possible to study the commandments and that way allowing the Jews to fulfill the commandments by study, rather than execution.

Importance of the Mishnah for Historical Studies of Palestine

What role can the Mishnah play for the historical studies of Palestine? One would think it obvious, by studying the paragraphs in the Mishnah we can get a better sense of the reality of the Jews at least during some part of antiquity in Palestine. However, the problem is that the “mishnayot”, the traditions, are not very specific about when they were formed or how widespread they were. We know for example that while some of the traditions focusing on the spiritual purity connected to the meal probable were formed by the Pharisees in the first century BCE, we don’t know if anyone were following these traditions outside the Pharisaic circles. We do know that the Essenes in Qumran had similar traditions in connection with the meal, but how similar they were and if they were connected to the Pharisees’ traditions, and hence pointing to a common origin, we can’t say for sure without having to study this further.
We also can’t always be sure whether a tradition is based on an actual practice or if there is some theological background behind it, which motivated the person adding the tradition to formulate that particular tradition.

That said, it should be obvious that the Mishnah is a very important document allowing us a deeper understanding of the concerns of the Palestinian Jews during the first centuries CE. Challenges aside, we know the date of the compilation and even if we can’t trace the individual tradition to the specific date of its formation, we can still say for sure that these traditions are answers to the growing challenges of the Jewish communities in (and outside) Palestine during the first centuries CE and this way get a better understanding not only of which challenges the Jews were facing, but also of how they tried to respond to these challenges.

Sources:

Galilee in the Late Second Temple and Mishnaic Periods: Life, Culture, and Society, Vol 1, edited by David A. Fiensy and James Riley Strange
The Mishnah: An Introduction, by Jacob Neusner
The Mishnah: A New Translation, by Jacob Neusner
Narrative and Document in the Rabbinic Canon: From the Mishnah to the Talmuds, by Jacob Neusner
The Oxford Annotated Mishnah: A New Translation of the Mishnah, edited by Shaye J. D. Cohen, Robert Goldenberg, and Hayim Lapin
The Ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad, Seth Schwartz
Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 BCE to 640 CE, by Seth Schwartz