14 Facts About Mishnah

The Mishnah was redacted by Judah ha-Nasi probably in Beit Shearim or Sepphoris at the beginning of the 3rd century CE in a time when, according to the Talmud, the persecution of the Jews and the passage of time raised the possibility that the details of the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period would be forgotten.

The word Mishnah can indicate a single paragraph of the work, i e the smallest unit of structure in the Mishnah.

Term "Mishnah" originally referred to a method of teaching by presenting topics in a systematic order, as contrasted with, which followed the order of the Bible.

Margolies suggests that as the Mishnah was redacted after the Bar Kokhba revolt, Judah could not have included discussion of Hanukkah, which commemorates the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire .

Mishnah teaches the oral traditions by example, presenting actual cases being brought to judgment, usually along with the debate on the matter, and the judgment that was given by a notable rabbi based on halakha, mitzvot, and spirit of the teaching that guided his decision.

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The Mishnah is thus not the development of new laws, but rather the collection of existing traditions.

Rabbis who contributed to the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim, of whom approximately 120 are known.

The period during which the Mishnah was assembled spanned about 130 years, or five generations, in the first and second centuries CE.

Authorities are divided on whether Rabbi Judah the Prince recorded the Mishnah in writing or established it as an oral text for memorisation.

Mishnah was and still is traditionally studied through recitation .

Many medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah are vowelized, and some of these, especially some fragments found in the Genizah, are partially annotated with Tiberian cantillation marks.

The Albeck edition of the Mishnah was vocalized by Hanoch Yelon, who made careful eclectic use of both medieval manuscripts and current oral traditions of pronunciation from Jewish communities all over the world.

Two institutes at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have collected major oral archives which hold extensive recordings of Jews chanting the Mishnah using a variety of melodies and many different kinds of pronunciation.

The Mishnah used in the Babylonian rabbinic community differing markedly from that used in the Palestinian one.