MISHNAH

The Mishnah is the oldest part of the Talmud: a written collection of the Jewish oral law, the rabbinic rulings and traditions that developed over time. The name comes from a Hebrew word meaning "to repeat," reflecting the way these traditions were taught and memorized, by repetition, long before they were written down.

The collection was arranged and written down near the end of the second century A.D., a work traditionally credited to Rabbi Judah the Prince. It is divided into six main sections: agricultural laws, festivals, marriage and family matters, civil and criminal laws, temple laws, and ritual purity.

The Mishnah is not inspired Scripture. It does, however, preserve the kind of human "tradition of the elders" that Jesus rebuked when it was bound as law or used to set aside God's commandments (Matthew 15:1-9; Mark 7:1-13). Later rabbinic discussion of the Mishnah, called the Gemara, was joined with it to form the Talmud.

See TALMUD.