Editing Mishnah (section)

==Mishnah studies==
{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2008}}

===Textual variants===
Very roughly, there are two traditions of Mishnah text. One is found in manuscripts and printed editions of the Mishnah on its own, or as part of the [[Jerusalem Talmud]]. The other is found in manuscripts and editions of the Babylonian [[Talmud]]; though there is sometimes a difference between the text of a whole paragraph printed at the beginning of a discussion (which may be edited to conform with the text of the Mishnah-only editions) and the line-by-line citations in the course of the discussion.

Robert Brody, in his ''Mishna and Tosefta Studies'' (Jerusalem 2014), warns against oversimplifying the picture by assuming that the Mishnah-only tradition is always the more authentic, or that it represents a "Palestinian" as against a "Babylonian" tradition. Manuscripts from the [[Cairo Geniza]], or citations in other works, may support either type of reading or other readings altogether.

===Manuscripts===
Mostly-complete manuscripts (mss.) '''bolded'''. Each is missing pages, some of which have been replaced by later hands. 
The earliest extant material witness to rabbinic literature of any kind is dated to the 6th to 7th centuries CE, see [[Mosaic of Rehob]].<ref name="FineS_(2014a)"/><ref name="WDL_(2018a)"/>
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Usual name !! Formal designation !! Place written !! Period written !! Description
|-
| '''Kaufmann'''|| [[Hungarian Academy of Sciences]] Library [http://kaufmann.mtak.hu/en/ms50/ms50-coll1.htm Kaufmann ms. A50]|| Italy<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Beit-Arié |first=Malachi |date=1980 |title="Ms. Kaufmann of the Mishna: Its Date and Locality" |url=https://www.academia.edu/42055732 |journal=Collection of Papers on Tanaitic Language |volume=2 |pages=88}}</ref>|| 12th-13th C.<ref name=":0" />|| Considered the best manuscript, it forms the base text of all critical editions. Vocalization is by a different, later hand.
|-
| '''Parma A''' || [[Biblioteca Palatina]] ms. Parm. 3173|| [[Otranto]], Italy || Late 11th C. Partially the work of MS Vat. ebr. 31's scribe, which MS was copied in 1072-3.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Haneman |first1=Gideon |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bZ62AAAAIAAJ |title=תורת הצורות של לשון המשנה: על פי מסורת כתב־יד פרמה (דה־רוסי 138) |last2=הנמן |first2=גדעון |date=1980 |publisher=אוניברסיטת תל־אביב |pages=6 |language=he}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Beit-Arié |first=Malachi |url=https://www.academia.edu/38097960 |title=*Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma: Catalogue*. Edited by Benjamin Richler, Palaeographical and Codicological Descriptions |publisher=Jewish National and University Library |year=2001 |pages=153}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=קרופ |first1=מיכאל |last2=Krupp |first2=Michael |date=1979 |title=The Relationship between MS Parma De Rossi 138 of the Mishna and MS Vatican 31 of the Sifra, Seder Eliyahu Rabba, and Zutta / על היחס בין משנה כ"י פארמא דה-רוסי 138 לבין ספרא וסדר אליהו רבה וזוטא כ"י ואטיקאן 31 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23595081 |journal=Tarbiz / תרביץ |volume=מט |issue=א/ב |pages=194–196 |jstor=23595081 |issn=0334-3650}}</ref>|| Probably the oldest mostly-complete manuscript. [[Palestinian Talmud|Palestinian]]-tradition orthography. About half is vocalized in the [[Talmud|Babylonian]] tradition (''not'' [[Babylonian vocalization|Babylonian diacritics]]).
|-
| '''Cambridge / Lowe'''|| [[Cambridge University Library]] ms. Add. 470 (II) || [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]]|| {{Circa|1465}}<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=הנשקה |first1=יהודית |last2=Henshke |first2=Yehudit |date=2010 |title=Emphatic Consonants in MS Cambridge (Lowe Edition) of the Mishna / העיצורים הנחציים בכתב יד קיימברידג' (הוצאת לו) של המשנה |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/24328125 |journal=Lĕšonénu: A Journal for the Study of the Hebrew Language and Cognate Subjects / לשוננו: כתב-עת לחקר הלשון העברית והתחומים הסמוכים לה |volume=עב |issue=ד |pages=421–450 |jstor=24328125 |issn=0334-3626}}</ref>|| A very careless copy, it is nonetheless useful where the Kaufmann text is corrupt.
|-
| Parma B|| Biblioteca Palatina ms. Parm. 2596|| North Africa(?)|| 12th C. || ''Tohorot'' only. Fully vocalized by the original scribe and contains [[teamim]], including an early [[question mark]].
|-
|MS "A" etc.
|Scattered geniza fragments
|Middle East
|10th C.
|The earliest manuscript fragments of the Mishna, which date to the 10th century, were discovered in the [[Cairo Geniza]]. [[Judith Olszowy-Schlanger]] has claimed that some are 9th century, but this is not generally accepted.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sykes |first=Sarah |date=2023-05-09 |title=Fragment of the Month: June 2023 |url=https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/departments/taylor-schechter-genizah-research-unit/fragment-month/fotm-2023/fragment-4 |access-date=2024-12-01 |website=www.lib.cam.ac.uk |language=en}}</ref>
|-
| Yemenite ms.|| [[National Library of Israel]] quarto 1336|| Yemen|| 17–18th C. || ''Nezikin'' to ''Tohorot''. The consonant text is dependent on early printed editions. The value of this ms. lies exclusively in the vocalization.
|}
The Literature of the Jewish People in the Period of the Second Temple and the Talmud, Volume 3 The Literature of the Sages: First Part: Oral Tora, Halakha, Mishna, Tosefta, Talmud, External Tractates. ''Compendia Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum'', Ed. Shmuel Safrai, Brill, 1987, {{ISBN|9004275134}}

===Printed editions===
The first printed edition of the Mishnah was published in [[Naples]]. There have been many subsequent editions, including the late 19th century [[Vilnius|Vilna]] edition, which is the basis of the editions now used by the religious public.

Vocalized editions were published in Italy, culminating in the edition of [[David ben Solomon Altaras]], publ. Venice 1737. The Altaras edition was republished in [[Mantua]] in 1777, in [[Pisa]] in 1797 and 1810 and in [[Livorno]] in many editions from 1823 until 1936: reprints of the vocalized Livorno editions were published in Israel in 1913, 1962, 1968 and 1976. These editions show some textual variants by bracketing doubtful words and passages, though they do not attempt detailed textual criticism. The Livorno editions are the basis of the Sephardic tradition for recitation.

As well as being printed on its own, the Mishnah is included in all editions of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds. Each paragraph is printed on its own, and followed by the relevant Gemara discussion. However, that discussion itself often cites the Mishnah line by line. While the text printed in paragraph form has generally been standardized to follow the Vilna edition, the text cited line by line in the Gemara often preserves important variants, which sometimes reflect the readings of older manuscripts.

The nearest approach to a critical edition is that of [[Hanoch Albeck]]. There is also an edition by [[Yosef Qafiḥ]] of the Mishnah together with the commentary of [[Maimonides]], which compares the base text used by Maimonides with the Napoli and [[Vilna]] editions and other sources.

===Oral traditions and pronunciation===
The Mishnah was and still is traditionally studied through [[recitation]] (out loud). Jewish communities around the world preserved local melodies for chanting the Mishnah, and distinctive ways of pronouncing its words.

Many medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah are vowelized, and some of these, especially some fragments found in the [[Cairo Geniza|Genizah]], are partially annotated with [[Tiberian vocalization|Tiberian]] [[Hebrew cantillation|cantillation]] marks.<ref>{{cite book |first=Israel |last=Yeivin |title=Cantillation of the Oral Law |publisher=Leshonenu 24 |year=1960 |pages=47–231 |language=he}}</ref>

Today, many communities have a special tune for the Mishnaic passage "Bammeh madliqin" in the [[Kabbalat Shabbat|Friday night service]]; there may also be tunes for Mishnaic passages in other parts of the liturgy, such as the passages in the daily prayers relating to sacrifices and incense and the paragraphs recited at the end of the [[Musaf]] service on [[Shabbat]]. Otherwise, there is often a customary intonation used in the study of Mishnah or Talmud, somewhat similar to an Arabic [[mawwal]], but this is not reduced to a precise system like that for the Biblical books. (In some traditions this intonation is the same as or similar to that used for the [[Passover]] [[Haggadah]].) Recordings have been made for Israeli national archives, and Frank Alvarez-Pereyre has published a book-length study of the Syrian tradition of Mishnah reading on the basis of these recordings.

Most vowelized editions of the Mishnah today reflect standard [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazic]] vowelization, and often contain mistakes. 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. The Albeck edition includes an introduction by Yelon detailing his eclectic method.

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.<ref>[[Shelomo Morag]], ''The Samaritan and Yemenite Tradition of Hebrew'' (published in: ''The Traditions of Hebrew and Aramaic of the Jews of Yemen''; ed. Yosef Tobi), Tel Aviv 2001, p. 183 (note 12)</ref> These institutes are the Jewish Oral Traditions Research Center and the National Voice Archives (the ''Phonoteca'' at the Jewish National and University Library). See below for external links.
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===As a historical source===
Both the Mishnah and Talmud contain little serious biographical studies of the people discussed therein, and the same tractate will conflate the points of view of many different people. Yet, sketchy biographies of the Mishnaic sages can often be constructed with historical detail from Talmudic and [[Midrash]]ic sources.

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Second Edition), it is accepted that Judah the Prince added, deleted, and rewrote his source material during the process of redacting the Mishnah between the ending of the second century and the beginning of the 3rd century CE.<ref name="EJ_(2007a)"/> Modern authors who have provided examples of these changes include J.N. Epstein and S. Friedman.<ref name=EJ327>{{cite encyclopedia|title=The Traditional Interpretation of the Mishnah |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Judaica |isbn=978-0-02-865942-8 |volume=14 |edition=2 |page=327|last1=Skolnik |first1=Fred |last2=Berenbaum |first2=Michael |year=2007 }}</ref>

Following Judah the Prince's redaction there remained a number of different versions of the Mishnah in circulation. The Mishnah used in the Babylonian rabbinic community differing markedly from that used in the Palestinian one. Indeed within these rabbinic communities themselves there are indications of different versions being used for study. These differences are shown in divergent citations of individual Mishnah passages in the Talmud Yerushalmi and the Talmud Bavli, and in variances of medieval manuscripts and early editions of the Mishnah. The best known examples of these differences is found in J.N.Epstein's Introduction to the Text of the Mishnah (1948).<ref name=EJ327/>

Epstein has also concluded that the period of the Amoraim was one of further deliberate changes to the text of the Mishnah, which he views as attempts to return the text to what was regarded as its original form. These lessened over time, as the text of the Mishnah became more and more regarded as authoritative.<ref name=EJ327/>

Many modern historical scholars have focused on the timing and the formation of the Mishnah. A vital question is whether it is composed of sources which date from its editor's lifetime, and to what extent is it composed of earlier, or later sources. Are Mishnaic disputes distinguishable along theological or communal lines, and in what ways do different sections derive from different schools of thought within early Judaism? Can these early sources be identified, and if so, how? In response to these questions, modern scholars have adopted a number of different approaches.
* Some scholars hold that there has been extensive editorial reshaping of the stories and statements within the Mishnah (and later, in the Talmud). Lacking outside confirming texts, they hold that we cannot confirm the origin or date of most statements and laws, and that we can say little for certain about their authorship. In this view, the questions above are impossible to answer. See, for example, the works of [[Louis Jacobs]], Baruch M. Bokser, [[Shaye J. D. Cohen]], Steven D. Fraade.
* Some scholars hold that the Mishnah and Talmud have been extensively shaped by later editorial redaction, but that it contains sources which we can identify and describe with some level of reliability. In this view, sources can be identified to some extent because each era of history and each distinct geographical region has its own unique features, which one can trace and analyze. Thus, the questions above may be analyzed. See, for example, the works of Goodblatt, Lee Levine, David C. Kraemer and Robert Goldenberg.
* Some scholars hold that many or most of the statements and events described in the Mishnah and Talmud usually occurred more or less as described, and that they can be used as serious sources of historical study. In this view, historians do attempt to tease out later editorial additions leaving behind a possible historical text. See, for example, the works of [[Saul Lieberman]], [[David Weiss Halivni]], Avraham Goldberg and Dov Zlotnick.