Journal of Ancient Judaism, 2019

What is the Mishnah? A code of law or an anthology of Tannaitic literature? The traditional approach relates to the Mishnah as a legal code written by the school of Rabbi Yehudah The Prince. However, among scholars of Mishnah this approach has been the subject of fierce controversy for many years. There were those who regarded the Mishnah as a collection of sources not intended in any way to present legal rulings. Others, however, followed the traditional approach, arguing that Rabbi Yehudah intended to produce legal rulings in the Mishnah and did so by means of emending the text of the sources he had used and editing them. The resolution of this controversy lies in understanding the historical process of the reception of the Mishnah. At first, the Mishnah did function primarily as an anthology. It was only the second generation of the Amoraim, Talmudic sages, who began to regard the Mishnah as a uniform work and an authoritative and binding legal code. Subsequent generations of Amoraim reformulated their approach to the Mishnah with regard to both hermeneutics and legal decision making. Thus, one who studies the Talmud without taking into consideration the historical development concealed within it is influenced by the later approach, which dominates most of the Talmud. An additional stage in the process of the canonization of the Mishnah took place toward the end of the Amoraic period and, in particular, at the time of the redaction of the Talmud in the Savoraic period: both the text of the Mishnah and its language became consecrated, in similarity to the text of the Bible, and a fastidiousness developed with regard to the language of the text, down to the last word. In this article I will endeavor to delineate this historical process.

Pages 263–78 in Beloved David—Advisor, Man of Understanding, and Writer: A Festschrift in Honor of David Stern. Edited by Naftali S. Cohn and Katrin Kogman-Appel. Brown Judaic Studies 373. Providence, RI: Brown Judaic Studies, 2024.

Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung BETL Bibliotheca ephemeridum theologicarum lovaniensium BibInt Biblical Interpretation BJS Brown Judaic Studies BTB Biblical Theology Bulletin BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly CBQMS Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series CEJL Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature CRINT Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum DJD Discoveries in the Judaean Desert DSD Dead Sea Discoveries EJL Early Judaism and Its Literature FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments

2013

Ihe question of the composition and transmission of the Mishnah is, argu ably the oldest debate in the history of rabbinic literature. What were the sources out of which the Mishnah was compiled by the early third-century sage R. Judah the Patriarch, to whom the editing of the Mishnah has tradi tionally been attributed? What was the plan behind R. Judah's editing, how did he go about it, and with what purpose? And most importantly, when R. Judah finally completed the Mishnah, how did he "publish" it, that is, make it public? Was the Mishnah released as a fixed document in writing', or as an orally composed and memorized text to be recited aloud and trans mitted orally? In past scholarship going back to learned discussions since the early Mid dle Ages, these questions about the composition of the Mishnah have of ten, and not always helpfully, been conflated with similar questions about the other documents constituting the Oral Torah, Torah she-be'alpeh (fit *alpeh}, the Oral or Memorized Law.' As is well known, the foundational

The work of many emerging young rabbinics scholars today, particularly that which is focused on the Mishnah, is animated by a desire to synthesize two distinct approaches to rabbinic texts. One is the traditional philological-historical approach, which traces its roots back to the European Wissenschaft des Judentums tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In its current form, traditional Talmud criticism is perhaps most associated in Israel with the work of J. N. Epstein, the founder of the Hebrew University Talmud Department and the "father of exact scientific Talmudic inquiry." 1 While most of Epstein's students proceeded to shape the study of rabbinic literature in the Israeli academy, Saul Lieberman, perhaps his most distinguished disciple, moved to America, where his presence dominated the study of rabbinic literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary in the postwar decades. 2 Traditional Talmud criticism is characterized by a scrupulous attention to manuscripts and textual variants, a systematic use of the findings of Semitic and comparative linguistics, and the use of form and source criticism to determine the history and development of larger textual units.

Prof. Kaplan reasserts that analysis of the introduction to Mishneh Torah and the evidence of an early draft of the work are not supportive of my thesis about Mishneh Torah's cosmological structure. He partly revises comments about the categorization of Mishneh Torah's books, but criticizes the general characterization of the last four books as concerning commandments 'bein adam lahevero' (social laws), which is fundamental to my thesis.

In my book 'Reading Maimonides' Mishneh Torah', I propose that Maimonides based the structure of the Mishneh Torah on his cosmology. This has profound consequences for the status of philosophy in his code of Jewish law, and turns it into an intricate work of literary art. Prof. Kaplan finds that Mishneh Torah's 14-book structure as we have it was not part of Maimonides' original concept, and that the structure underwent change in the course of composition. This, he says, tends to undercut my thesis. In this article I argue: 1) we must appreciate Mishneh Torah in its final form; 2) Prof. Kaplan's findings are subject to interpretation; 3) what he has brought to light about Mishneh Torah's evolution actually supports my thesis.

2015