OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD UNtVBRSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dares Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi S5o Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York First published 1933 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Printed in Great Britain on acid- free paper by Biddles Ltd., King's Lynn PREFACE THE object of this translation is to render the contents of the Mishnah easily accessible in their entirety.
The Mishnah has considerable value, whether for the study of com¬ parative religion, or for the study of the civilization of the Near East during the first and second centuries of our era, or for the study of Christian origins, or for the study of the development of Judaism and the conditions of Jewish life during the final stages of its association with the soil of Palestine. It is comparable1 in its importance with the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphical literature, as well as with the works of Josephus; but while these have become a familiar subject of study and an easily available quarry of information, most of the Mishnah has been available (to other than rabbinical students and Jews educated according to older orthodox methods) only in the Latin version of Surenhusius (1698-1703)’ and the German version of Rabe (1760 -3). 3 Certain of the easier portions (‘tractates’) of the Mishnah have been published from time to time in Latin, German, English, French, and Italian, some of them more than once, and one of them (Aboth, ‘The Sayings of the Fathers’) many times.4 Such fragmentary presentation of 1 Sometimes to its advantage. See G. F. Moore, Judaism, i. 1*5-32.
2 Mischna live tottus hebraeorum juris, rituum, antujuitatum, ac legum oralium sy sterna, cum clarittimarum rabbinorum Maimonidis et Bartenorae commentariis integris...Latinitatc donavit ac notis illustravit Guilulmus Surenhusius, Amsterdam, 1698-1703, 6 vols., fol. For a good account of this and its sources see Erich Bischoff, Kritische Geschichte der Thalmud- Obeisetzungen, Frankfurt a. M., 1899, pp. 20-3. A Latin version of the complete Mishnah (with annotations to the First Division) was prepared for the University of Cam¬ bridge between 1663 and 1675 by a Jewish scholar, Isaac Abcndana, but it was never published. It is described by Israel Abrahams in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, viii. 98-t 16.
1 Johann Jacob Rabe, Mischnah oder der Text des Talmuds...ubersetxt und erUsuterl, Onolzbach, 1760-3, 6 vols, 4 to. The German Itzkowski-Kanel Edition, 1887-1933 (by Asher Sammter, David Hoffmann, Eduard Baneth, M. Petuchowski, S. Schlesinger, J. Cohn, and Moses Auerbach, containing Hebrew text, translation, and commentary), is now the best European edition; its usefulness is somewhat diminished by the varying standards of treatment adopted by successive editors.
Recent editions in Italian (by Vittoria Castiglione, 1904 ff.), and in German (the ‘Giessen Edition', 1912 ff., edited by G. Beer, O. Holtzmann and, since 1928, S. Kraitss) are still incomplete. The translations of the Mishnah embedded in the German version of the Babylonian Talmud by Lazarus Goldschmidt (1897 ff.) and in the French version of the Palestinian Talmud by Molse Schwab (1878-89) scarcely come within the term ‘easily accessible’; and 'Rodkinson’s so-called English translation [of the Babylonian Talmud, New York, 1896-1902; new edition 1918] is in every respect impossible’ (Moore, op. cit., i. 173 n.); apart from its free manner of translation and its arbitrary omissions, it covers only the second and fourth of the six Divisions of the Talmud.
4 Bischoff, op. cit., pp. 45-53, enumerate* seventy -eight translations of Aboth before 1899; it has been frequently translated since.
Of English translations of parts of the Mishnah the following may be noted: Eighteen Treatises from the Mishssa. Translated by the Rev. D. A. de Sola and the Rev. M. J. Raphall, London, 1843 (and ed., 1845). This translation contains the tractates Berakoth, Kilaira, Shabbath, Erubin, Pesahim, Yotna, Sukkah, Yom Tob (Betzah), Rosh ha-Shanah, Taanith, Megillah, Moed Katan, Yebaniotb, Ketuboth, Gittin, Kiddushin, Hullin, and Yadaira. It was intended for Jewish readers, die selection being confined to VI PREFACE the contents of the Mishnah fails to give a true idea of its nature and may easily give a wrong idea. The Mishnah as we now have it was planned and systematically compiled as a single whole; and it is only by studying it as a single whole and understanding somewhat of the system governing its compilation that we can hope to estimate aright the value of the tradi¬ tions which it has preserved.
The annotations to the present translation aim only at explaining allu¬ sions and removing surface difficulties: they do not pretend to be an adequate commentary. Thus no account is taken of the wealth of illustra¬ tive material contained in the literature, history, religion, jurisprudence, handicrafts, beliefs, superstitions, and folklore contemporary with the Mishnah; and in certain cases (particularly some of those treating of levirate marriage and the laws of cleanness and uncleanness) the notes do not trace the logical processes which underlie many of the recorded opinions. An adequate modern commentary on the Mishnah must deal with all these points. But to provide a commentary attempting such detail is probably a task beyond the powers of any single scholar, and certainly beyond the capacity of a single volume of moderate cost. Even with their very limited purpose the present annotations have been kept as few and brief as possible.
Throughout, both in translation and notes, traditional Jewish inter¬ pretation has been followed. Considering the centuries of intensive study devoted to the Mishnah and its associated literature by Jewish com¬ mentators from the time of the Talmuds to the present day, to neglect or ignore their results is as presumptuous as it is precarious. Novelties of interpretation, however tempting, have been purposely avoided: if those portions of the Mishnah having significance in modern Jewish life. The translators permitted themselves considerable freedom, and there are many omissions.
The Talmud. By Joseph Barclay. London, 1878. Its title is misleading. It contains seventeen out of the sixty-three tractates of the Mishnah: Berakoth, Shebiith, Shabbath, Erubin, Pesahim, Yoma, Sukkah, Rosh ha-Shanah, Taanith, Hagigah, Sanhedrin, Abodah Zarah, Aboth, Tamid, Middoth, Negaim, Parah, and Yadaim. It was intended for Christian readers and it is not free from an anti-Jewish animus. The translation is at times crudely literal, often obscure, ancTfrequently wrong. At the end of the eighth chapter of Shabbath is the note: ’The remaining two-thirds of this treatise are not translated as they are devoid of interest, and in parts unfit for publication.’ The translator (the third Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, 1879-81) was not a converted Jew as Bischoff (op. cit., p. 85) supposes.
Sayings of the Jewish Fathers: comprising Pirqe Aboth in Hebrew and English. By Charles Taylor. Cambridge University Press, and ed., 1897.
The Mishna on Idolatry: Aboda Zara. By W. A. L. Elmslie. (Hebrew text and English translation.) Cambridge University Press, 1911.
Mishnah Baba Mesiah. A Digest of the Basic Principles of the early Jewish Jurisprudence. Translated and annotated by Hyman E. Goldin. New York, 1913. (Noteworthy as an attempt to deal with traditional Jewish law along the lines of the general science of juris¬ prudence.)
Mishnah MegiUah. By Joseph Rabbinowitz. Oxford, 1932.
The Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, London, has published, under the editorship of W. O. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box, The Sayings of the Jewish Fathers, (Pirke Aboth), 1919; Tractate Sanhedrin, Mishna and Tosefta, 1919; Tractate Berakoth, Mishna and Tosephta, 1921; Sukkah, Mishna and Tosefta, 1925; and Tractate Shabbath, Mishnah, 1927.
A bibliography of translations is given in H. L. Strack, Einleitung in Talmud und Midrash, 5. Aufl., Munich, 1921, pp. 163 ff. (Engl, tr., pp. 154 ff.); and in Bischoff, op. cit., pp. 15-56.
PREFACE Vil any have crept in it is through oversight. Where there are differences of opinion among the standard Hebrew commentators attention is drawn to these in the notes, or, more frequently, the interpretation of Tifereth Y israel has been followed. Such differences are comparatively infrequent and seldom affect major issues. For plant nomenclature advantage has been taken of the work of Dr. Immanuel Low,1 and in certain archaeological details and in problems arising out of Greek and Latin loan-words (points usually inadequately treated in older works) many of the conclusions of Dr. Samuel Krauss2 have been adopted.
The text used is that of the ordinary printed editions of the Mishnayoth (as published by the Widow Romm and Brothers, Wilna). Some of the more important variant readings are indicated in the notes. There is no such thing as a ‘critical text’ of the Mishnah, nor has the study of the surviving manuscripts, earliest printed editions, and other textual authori¬ ties yet reached the stage which makes it possible to point with confidence to any one text as superior to all others. In the meantime the printed Mishnayoth editions have the obvious advantage of being the text which is customarily used and quoted.
With some exceptions the simplified method of transliteration and spell¬ ing adopted in the Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901-6) has been followed, partly because it is least troublesome to English readers and partly to facilitate reference to that work in matters not fully treated in the present volume (e.g. biographies of rabbinical authorities quoted in the Mishnah). Where transliteration of Hebrew technical terms has been unavoidable simplicity has been preferred even, in a few cases, at the expense of consistency.3 The translation aims at being as literal as English idiom will tolerate. Words and passages not represented in the Hebrew text (other than words required to make a sentence grammatically complete in English) are enclosed in square brackets.
Scriptural quotations are given according to the Revised Version, except where the context assumes a different rendering. Where the Hebrew and English versions differ in their enumeration of chapter and verse, the reference is always to the English enumeration.
A very full index has been added. Reference to it will be of use for the understanding of recurrent technical terms which it has not been possible to explain afresh each time they appear in the text. For the same reason Appendixes have been provided, giving a Glossary of the Hebrew termini teckmci retained in the translation, a Table of Money, Weights and Measures, and the Gaon of Wilna ’s summary of the rules of uncleanness. A chronological list of all the rabbinical authorities quoted or referred to in the Mishnah is given as Appendix III; constant reference to this is essential.
1 Die Flora der Juden, 3 vols., Vienna, 19*4-6.
1 Griechische und lateinitche Lehmodrler in Talmud, Midratch und Targum, 2 vols., Berlin, 1898-9; Talmuditche Archdologie, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1909-12* 1 The use of the conventional transliterations h, t, k, and y has also been avoided as unnecessary for the Hebraist and meaningless to the non-Hebraist.
vm PREFACE I take this opportunity of expressing my deep gratitude to the Rev. Dr. G. A. Cooke, Regius Professor of Hebrew, Oxford, for the interest which he has shown in this English version of the Mishnah; and to the Trustees of the Kennicott Fund for a generous subsidy towards the cost of publication. Also I am greatly indebted to the Rev. M. H. Segal, of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, who has devoted much time to reading through the proof-sheets of the entire work and whose suggestions and criticisms have been of great help. In conclusion the writer expresses his thanks to the Readers of the Oxford University Press for their helpful and skilful co-operation.
St. Georce’s Cathedral Jerusalem.
October 1933.
CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS...xii INTRODUCTION...xiii i. Purpose and character of the Mishnah...xiii ii. Origin and development...xvii iii. Arrangement, method, and language.. • xxiii iv. History of interpretation...xxvii v. Text and editions...xxx THE MISHNAH FIRST DIVISION, ZERAIM ('seeds’) i Demai (‘Produce not certainly tithed’)...20 Shebiith (‘The Seventh Year’)...39 Maaseroth (‘Tithes’)...•.66 Maaser Sheni (‘Second Tithe’)...73 Hallah (‘Dough-offering’)...-83 Orlah (‘The Fruit of Young Trees’)...89 SECOND DIVISION, MOED (‘set feasts’).. -99 Erubin (‘The Fusion of Sabbath Limits’)...121 Pesahim (‘Feast of Passover’)...136 Yoma (‘The Day of Atonement’)...162 Sukkah (‘The Feast of Tabernacles’)...172 Yom Tob or Betzah, (‘Festival-days’)...181 Rosh ha-Shanah (‘Feast of the New Year’)...188 Taanith (‘Days of Fasting’)...194 Megillah (‘The Scroll of Esther’)...201 Moed Katan (‘Mid-Festival Days’)...207 THIRD DIVISION, NASHIM (‘women’)..217 Yebamoth (‘Sisters-in-law’)...218 X CONTENTS Sotah (‘The Suspected Adulteress’) Gittin (‘Bills of Divorce’) .
Kiddushin (‘Betrothals’) • FOURTH DIVISION, NEZIKIN (‘damages’) .
Baba Kamma (‘The First Gate’) Baba Metzia (‘The Middle Gate’) Baba Bathra (‘The Last Gate’) Makkoth (‘Stripes’) Shebuoth (‘Oaths’) Eduyoth (‘Testimonies’) Abodah Zarah (‘Idolatry’) Horayoth (‘Instructions’) FIFTH DIVISION, KODASHIM (‘hallowed things’).
Zebahim (‘Animal-offerings’) Menahoth (‘Meal-offerings’) Hullin (‘Animals killed for food’) Bekhoroth (‘Firstlings’) Arakhin (‘Vows of Valuation’).
Temurah (‘The Substituted Offering’).
Kerithoth (‘Extirpation’) Meilah (‘Sacrilege’) Tamid (‘The Daily Whole-offering’) Middoth (‘Measurements’) SIXTH DIVISION, TOHOROTH (‘cleannesses’) Kelim (‘Vessels’) Oholoth (‘Tents’) Negaim (‘Leprosy-signs’) Parah (‘The Red Heifer’) Tohoroth (‘Cleannesses’) Mikwaoth (‘Immersion-pools’).
Makshirin (‘Predisposers’) Zabim (‘They that suffer a flux’) Tebul Yom (‘He that immersed himself that day’) Yadaim (‘Hands’) .
Uktzin (‘Stalks’) • CONTENTS XI APPENDIXES. 791 I. GLOSSARY OF UNTRANSLATED HEBREW TERMS...793 II. TABLES OF MONEY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES...797 ill. rabbinical teachers quoted or referred to in the text of the iv. the rules of uncleanness, as summarized by Elijah, the alphabetical list of abbreviated titles of the tractates of the index of biblical passages quoted in the text of the Mishnah. 807 GENERAL INDEX...8l2 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (For an alphabetical list of the abbreviations of the titles of the tractates of the Mishnah see p. 806.)
b. — ben, ‘the son of'.
Bert. = The commentary on the Mishnah by Obadiah of Bertinoro (d. 1510). Dor Dor = Dor Dor w' Dor’shaw (A history of the Growth of the Oral Law), by Isaac Hirsch Weiss, ed. 1924 (Berlin and New York).
Eliyahu Rabba = The commentary on the Sixth Division of the Mishnah ( Tohoroth ) by Elijah, the Gaon of Wilna (1720-97), compiled by his disciple Meir of Wilna (Briinn, 1802).
J.E. — The Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols. New York, 1901-6.
J.Q.R. = The Jewish Quarterly Review.
Maim. = The commentary on the Mishnah by Moses Maimonides (1135- Moore = Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era: the Age of the Tannaim. By George Foot Moore. 3 vols. Cambridge (U.S.A.), Neub. = La Geographic du Talmud, par Adolphe Neubauer. Paris, 1868. p. Prefixed to the title of a tractate when the reference is to the Gemara of the Palestinian Talmud.
R. = Rabbi.
Rashi = The commentary on the Babylonian Talmud by ‘Rashi’ (Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105).
Singer = The Authorised Daily Prayer Book of the United Hebrew Congrega¬ tion of the British Empire. Ed. S. Singer. 8th ed. London, 1908.
S. S. = Service of the Synagogue: a new edition of the Festival Prayers.
Strack = Einleitung in Talmud und Midrash. 5th ed. Munich, 1921.
(English translation, Philadelphia, 1931). t. Prefixed to the title of a tractate when the reference is to the Tosefta. Tif. Yis. — The commentary on the Mishnah entitled Tifereth Yisrael, by Israel Lipschiitz (1782-1860).
INTRODUCTION I. PURPOSE AND CHARACTER OF THE MISHNAH THE MISHNAH1 may be defined as a deposit of four centuries of Jewish religious and cultural activity in Palestine, beginning at some uncertain date (possibly during the earlier half of the second century B.c.) and ending with the close of the second century a.d. The object of this activity was the preservation, cultivation, and application to life of ‘the Law’ {Torah), in the form in which many generations of like-minded Jewish religious leaders had learnt to understand this Law. These leaders were known in turn by the names Soferim (‘Scribes') and Tannaim( lit. ‘repeaters’, teachers of the Oral Law). The latter taught the religious system of the Pharisees as opposed to that of the Sadducees. Until the destruction of the Second Temple in a.d. 70 they had counted as one only among the schools of thought which played a part in Jewish national and religious life; after the Destruction they took the position, naturally and almost immediately, of sole and undisputed leaders of such Jewish life as survived. Judaism as it has continued since is, if not their creation, at least a faith and a religious institution largely of their fashioning; and the Mishnah is the authoritative record of their labour. Thus it comes about that while Judaism and Christianity alike venerate the Old Testament as canonical Scripture, the Mishnah marks the passage to Judaism as definitely as the New Testament marks the passage to Christianity.
From the time of its compilation by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, the Mishnah has, in Jewish eyes, ranked second only to the Hebrew Scriptures as a national-religious creation and possession. It provided a link between Palestinian and non-Palestinian Judaism strong enough and authoritative enough to endure and to bind together the Jewish people despite theii geographical disintegration; it serves as the core of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds, and for orthodox Jewry it is still, what it has been for sixteen centuries, an essential ingredient in the education of youth and an object of devotional study through life.
“The Law’ {Torah), which it was the Mishnah ’s purpose to cherish and develop, is a complex conception. It includes the Written Law, the laws explicitly recorded in the Five Books of Moses; it includes also ‘the tradi¬ tions of the elders’2 or the Oral Law, namely, such beliefs and religious 1 The word is from a root thanah meaning ‘repeat’ and so ‘to teach by means of repetition’. From *he corresponding Aramaic root t’na comes the term taima (pi. tannaim), a name applied to the teachers of the Mishnah. ‘Mishnah’ means both teaching and the substance of the teaching passed on from teacher to pupil byword of mouth. It is used of the teaching of a single teacher or tarma, either in the sense of a single tenet held by him, or as a collection of oral laws taught by him. ‘The Mishnah’, as used without qualification, signifies the collection of oral laws made by Rabbi Judah the Patriarch. The term ‘Mishnah’ is used also to define the body of law which was transmitted orally as distinct: (i) from Miqra, the Law transmitted by written documents and learnt by ‘reading’; and (ii) from Midrash (‘exposition’), the transmission of the Oral Law in terms of its Scriptural basis. See also App. I. 27, 28. 2 Josephus, Ant. xui. x. 6; Mark 75"13.
xiv INTRODUCTION xiv INTRODUCTION practices as piety and custom had in the course of centuries, consciously or unconsciously, grafted on to or developed out of the Written Law; and it includes yet a third, less tangible element, a spirit of development, whereby Written Law and Oral Law, in spite of seeming differences, are brought into a unity and interpreted and reinterpreted to meet the needs of changed conditions.
The Mishnah in its six main Divisions covers the whole range of Penta- teuchal legislation: (i) laws dealing with agricultural produce, and the portions of the harvest which fall to the priests and Ievites and to the poor; (ii) the set feasts; (iii) laws affecting womankind; (iv) property rights and legal proceedings; (v) the holy things of the Temple; and (vi) the laws of uncleanness. The letter of the Written Law is throughout assumed, attention being given almost exclusively to rules of Jewish usage which sometimes seem to be no more than logical restatement or extension or practical application of the Written Law, while sometimes they seem to be independent of it. It is these rules of usage, ‘the traditions of the elders’, which form the essential and characteristic element in the Mishnah. There is yet another element, sometimes taking the form of logical argument and sometimes the form of Scriptural exegesis, which seeks to derive authority for actual usage from Biblical laws when, superficially, it might have been supposed that the usage lacked Biblical sanction. But whether the Oral Law was deducible from the Written Law or not, the accepted hypothesis was that it was delivered from Mount Sinai at the same time as the Written Law, and preserved by word of mouth, generation after generation, until it found permanent expression in the Mishnah. Between the Written Law and the Oral Law there could be no contradiction: both claimed the same divine origin and both possessed the same authority and binding force.
Although the Mishnah was compiled in its present form at the end of the second century, it deals fully with phases of legislation and religious practice which for more than a hundred years had ceased to have any practical bearing on Jewish life. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 made an end of the last vestiges of national self-government, and it marked also the extinction of the pnesthood and the Temple worship which until then had been the centre o' Jewish national and religious life. The Mish¬ nah ’s minute treatment or the Temple cultus and its portrayal of Jewish religious and secular life (with few exceptions) as though the nation still enjoyed privileges lost to it generations earlier, constitute the Mishnah’s chief value as well as the chief problem in its study.
It is a matter of extreme difficulty to decide what historical value we should attach to any tradition recorded in the Mishnah. The lapse of time which may have served to obscure or distort memories of times so different; the political upheavals, changes, and confusions brought about by two rebellions and two Roman conquests; the standards esteemed by the Pharisean party (whose opinions the Mishnah records) which were not those of the Sadducean party (whose standards chiefly prevailed during INTRODUCTION xv INTRODUCTION xv the century before the destruction of Jerusalem)1 — these are factors which need to be given due weight in estimating the character of the Mishnah’s statements. Moreover there is much in the contents of the Mishnah that moves in an atmosphere of academic discussion pursued for its own sake, with (so it would appear) little pretence at recording historical usage: what was ideally true had a higher value in the eyes of the disputants than what once may have been actual but mistaken usage.
On the other hand, this academic tendency sometimes shown by the Mishnah and its purely Pharisean outlook are not necessarily such as wholly to discredit its picture of the fuller Jewish life of pre-Destruction times. The Pharisean standards were, from the time of John Hyrcanus (135-104 B.c.),2 as conspicuous in national affairs as those of the dominant Sadducean party (according to Josephus3 they were more generally acceptable to the common people), and Pharisean principles certainly proved strong enough to survive national convulsions which dried up other streams of Jewish life. Again, although the peculiar literary methods of the Mishnah sometimes give an impression of deducing an ideal and theoretical practice out of academic interpretation and application of Scripture, it may often be that the reverse is the truth: what was sought was Scriptural grounds on which to justify long-established usage not expressly ordained or permitted by Scripture.
Yet again, the Mishnah bears no trace of a tendency to effect reforms in the Jewish religious and ceremonial usage or to evolve a new scheme in closer accord with later conceptions of what the Law required: on the contrary, it manifests a veneration for the letter of tradition remarkable for pedantic insistence on verbal exactitude; and there was a purposefulness about the work of the post-Destruction rabbinical schools marking a determination to preserve as exact a knowledge as possible of those aspects of life under the Law which were become the more precious by reason of their present impossibility of realization.4 When we turn to the Mishnah’s religious importance we are on surer ground: within a generation of its compilation we find it described as ‘the iron pillar of the Law’,5 and according to a later teacher6 the study of it was as meritorious as offering sacrifice. The Mishnah is not a finally 1 In the Mishnah the Sadducees figure only as an insignificant, discredited, and heretical sect. 2 Cf. Ant. nil. xvi. a. 3 Ibid. x. 5.
4 There still persisted a hope of national restoration (a hope which culminated in the violence of the BarCocheba revolt against Rome in the reign of Hadrian), when Jerusalem and the Temple should again become the centre of Jewish national and religious life, and the Law be again applied in its fullness. Hence a knowledge of customs dealing solely with Jerusalem and the Temple (such as Temple and priestly dues, sacrificial ritual, the slighter grades of uncleanness which excluded persons from the Temple Court, the Temple ritual at the greater Festivals) was preserved and handed down, often in the words of men who had themselves experienced the fuller life under the Law in pre-Destruction days. Certain of these traditions (see especially the tractates Yoma, Middoth, Tamid, and parts of Bikkurim and Shekalim), since they no longer applied to Jewish everyday life, have been less overlaid with comment and argument by later generations of teachers, and less exposed to the possibility of revision under the influence of later fashions of inter¬ pretation.
s Leviticus Rabba, 21 *, reporting Joshua ben Levi, early third century. 6 Ibid. 7’.