Mishna

The Mishnah (Hebrew shanah, 'to repeat, study') is the authoritative written codification of the oral Torah, compiled and edited by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi ('the Prince') in Palestine around AD 200. Jewish tradition held that alongside the written Torah (the five books of Moses), God had given Moses an oral Torah at Sinai, transmitted through a chain of teachers from Moses to the rabbinic sages (tannaim). The Mishnah organized this vast body of legal discussion into six orders (sedarim) covering agriculture, festivals, family law, civil law, temple worship, and purity — sixty-three tractates in total — providing the diaspora community with a portable legal system independent of the land and temple.

The Mishnah is significant for NT studies because it preserves Pharisaic and early rabbinic traditions developing contemporaneously with Jesus and the early church. Jesus's debates with Pharisees over Sabbath observance, handwashing ('the tradition of the elders' — Matt. 15:2; Mark 7:3), divorce, and other matters reflect controversies whose rabbinic counterparts are preserved in the Mishnah. Paul's reference to his zeal for 'the traditions of my fathers' (Gal. 1:14) reflects the world of oral Torah transmission. The Mishnah also provides invaluable background for understanding temple service, purity regulations, and the judicial processes described or referenced in the NT. Together with the two Talmuds (the Jerusalem Talmud, c. AD 400; the Babylonian Talmud, c. AD 500-600), the Mishnah forms the foundation of normative rabbinic Judaism.