Whether or not Rabbi himself reduced the Mishnah to writing is a problem that has remained in dispute for the last thousand years, the greatest authorities, ancient and modern, being ranged on either side in almost equal numbers.2 The conclusion that Rabbi could not have left it in written form (and that it was not, indeed, written down until the sixth century) is mainly based on sayings like that of the third -century Palestinian teacher, Johanan ben Nappaha:J ‘Whosoever writes out the Halakoth is as one that bums up the Law’. But it is not intrinsically probable that so voluminous a work should have been transmitted orally through so many generations and yet show such slight traces of later influences. The manner in which it is quoted and referred to in its earliest commentaries, the two Talmuds, strongly suggests that they already had it before them in written form; and this impression is reinforced by the fact that they occasionally point out lacunae in the Mishnah text, and at least some of these belong to the common type of omission due to homoioteleuton,4 an accident to which written records are peculiarly susceptible.
III. ARRANGEMENT, METHOD, AND LANGUAGE The Mishnah presents the substance of the Oral Law divided into six main sections ( Sedarim, lit. ‘orders’), which are further divided into sixty- three subsections ( Massektoth,s lit. ‘texts’) or tractates. This arrangement is probably as early as the Mishnah of Rabbi Akiba.6 Each main division contains a group of tractates dealing with closely related topics. Sometimes the presence of a certain tractate in a particular Division is at first sight strange (e.g. Berakoth, ‘Benedictions’, in the First Division which treats of agricultural produce; Nedarim, ‘Vows’, and Nazir, ‘The Nazirite-vow’, in the Third Division which treats of laws affecting womankind; and Eduyoth, ‘Testimonies’, and Aboth, ‘The Fathers’ — a collection of moral * That we have not the text of the Mishnah entirely as Rabbi left it is obvious from the mention of his death (Sota, end) and the citation, though rarely, of teachers belonging to a later generation; e.g. R. Gamaliel and R. Simeon, sons of Rabbi (Ab. a’; Makk. 3*), and R. Joshua b. Levi (Uktz. end), and R. Yannai (Ab. 4'). See alto above, p. xxii, n. 3; and 4 See Ch. Albeck, Untertuchungen uber die Redaktion der Mischna, Berlin, 1923, pp. 151 ff.
5 PI. of masseketh. This word has an etymological history similar to that of the Latin textus.
6 Cf. above, p. xxi, n. 5. A reference to such a number of tractates (using, however, the favourite round number 'seventy') is possibly contained in the Ezra Apocalypse (c. a.d. 100), 14*4'4: 'And in forty days were written ninety and four books. And...the Most High spake with me [Ezra] and said to me: The twenty and four books [the books of the Bible] that ye have written first, make public, that those who are worthy and those who are not worthy may read therein; but the seventy thou shalt keep and deliver them to the wise of thy people.’
Originally the number of tractates was sixty (Midrash Rabba to Song of Songs, 6*: 'Sixty queens: these are the sixty tractates of Halakoth')-, the three tractates Baba Kamraa, Baba Metzia, and Baba Bathra were once a single tractate, while Makkoth was originally combined with the preceding Sanhedrin.
xx iv INTRODUCTION xx iv INTRODUCTION maxims — in the Fourth Division which treats of legal matters); hut some reason for their inclusion may usually be found.1 * As for the sequence of the tractates within each Division, the only underlying principle seems to have been the mechanical one of arranging them in order of length, with the longest first.; What has already been said of the antecedents of the present Mishnah explains some peculiarities in its method. That the Mishnah consciously aimed at the systematic presentation of its contents is everywhere apparent: its occasional failures are due not to its editor’s lack of purpose but to the nature of his material. Perhaps, to the modern mind, the most suitable method of presenting the Oral Law would have been, after propounding the Scriptural basis (if any), to give the general principles which the prac¬ tice of ages had gradually worked out in applying the Biblical (or non- Biblical) law to daily life, and then to give particular cases falling under the general principles, and cases concerning which there was doubt whether these general principles were applicable. What we actually find is that the Mishnah devotes most of its space to problems arising out of special cases, while general principles are either tacitly assumed3 * * or set forth incidentally and unsystematically, often with greater regard to secondary than to primary principles. As for Scriptural basis, it is characteristic of the Mishnah method of teaching Halakoth that these should be repeated independently of such Scriptural sanction as may be claimed for them; and this rule prevails in the present Mishnah.
Yet the Mishnah has preserved abundant traces of Midrash, that earlier method of teaching the traditional laws by means of a running commentary on the Biblical text. Outstanding examples are found, e.g., in Maaser Sheni, 510-14 (commenting clause by clause on Deut. 2613~15); Yebamoth, 126 (commenting on Deut. 25 7~10); Sota, 81"6 (on Deut. 202-9); Sotah, 91-6 (on Deut. 2ilfl); Sanhedrin, 2*~s (on Deut. I715 *19); Negaim, i25-7 (on Lev. 455a) 4 There are two types of Midrash, the one simple and unstrained, 1 Thus the tractates in the First Division give the laws governing the dues of the priests and levites, which a man must separate from his crop before it is free for common use; but these tractates are preceded by Berakoth, which deals (a) with the prayers which are man’s due to God and which must be paid before a man is free to go about his common task, and (b) with the Benedictions over food which a man must pronounce before such food is permitted to him. The tractates on Vows and the Nazirite-vow, though not in the main concerned with women, yet treat specifically of women in certain chapters (Ned. 10-11, Naz. 9). Eduyoth and Aboth may owe their present position to their having been originally an appendix to the tractate Sanhedrin, recording judgements and maxims emanating from leading judges in the Sanhedrin.
1 This principle is not really neglected in the Fourth Division, since its first three tractates were originally one, and Makkoth was once part of Sanhedrin. Though the prin¬ ciple is not observed in the First Division as a whole, it is applied to the concluding tractates. According to the Letter of Sherira Gaon, Rabbi himself adopted no set sequence; and early MSS. are not unanimous in the order they reproduce.
3 See the introductory notes to the tractates Demai and Hullin.
* No less that 217 cases have been counted in the Mishnah of this Muir ash Halakah (19m Zeraim, *i in Moed, 35 in Nashim,6oin Nezikin, 61 in Kodashin.and 21 in Tohoroth). In addition there are 65 cases of Midrash Haggadah (i.e. moral maxims, or teachings of a homiletic character, based on Biblical passages); cf. in Zeraim, Ber. 9*; Peah I*; 8*; INTRODUCTION XXV as in the cases here quoted, some of which belong to the earliest stage of Halakah history, and the other more forced and artificial,1 derived for the most pan from the school of Rabbi Akiba, who, in his attempt to provide Halakoth with Scriptural support, sought to lay bare hidden senses in every peculiarity of the Hebrew text, however seemingly insignificant. Yet another type of Midrash, more characteristic of the post-Mishnaic period, is that found, for example, in Shabbath, 87 to q4 (cf. Sanh. 8s), where a Biblical text is quoted not as ‘proof’ for a traditional law but as providing an ‘indication’ or indirect support for it.2 Rabbi’s Mishnah also retains numerous traces of those earlier devices for grouping Halakoth, devices which were adopted after the Midrash method was abandoned. These aimed at assisting the memory by linking together rules (no matter how different in subject) which had some element in common, e.g., rules emanating from the same authority,3 rules having some numerical feature in common,4 or rules couched according to a similar formula of tvords or having a single turn of phrase in common.5 These groups of heterogeneous rules, sometimes strung together by the slenderest thread of association of ideas, occur so constantly as to become one of the Mishnah's characteristic features. If one rule included in such a group finds natural place in a tractate dealing with the main subject of that rule, then all the rules included in that group are forthwith introduced with it, regardless of their complete inappropriateness in the new context.
Again some lack of uniformity is due to the fact that Rabbi absorbed into his Mishnah certain tractates which had already been shaped, almost in their entirety, by earlier teachers. Thus there is some evidence to show that Kelim6 and Uktzin7 existed nearly in their present form a generation earlier, and that the bulk of the tractates Yoma, Tamid,8 Middoth,9 and Kinnim10 date back nearly a century earlier.
Such irregularities, however, scarcely interfere with the Mishnah’s unity of plan, and with rare exceptions they leave unaffected its primary purpose, which was to make an end of the confusion which was growing around the subject of the Law owing to the multiplicity of schools and teachers and systems. According to Rabbi’s system all rules enunciated in the Mishnah with no record of the Sage or teacher through whom they had 1 This Midrash period in the history of Halakoth collections is also responsible for the inclusion of certain subjects in tractates devoted to some quite other subject. Thus Makkoth a deals with accidenul homicide and the cities of refuge, because these subjects belong to the same chapter of Scripture (Deut. 19) from which the main subject of the tracute (‘Stripes’) is drawn. Similarly Arakhin, whose subject is the ‘commuted vows’ of Lev. 27**, treats also of objects devoted to the Temple (Lev. 27**1), the year of jubilee (Lev. 25*"**). *nd unwalled cities (Lev. 25"“), subjects drawn from Biblical passages more or less in juxtaposition.
3 M. Sh. s“; Shek. 7*"’; Ket. 131"4; Sot. 5“. See also generally the tractates Eduyoth xxvi INTRODUCTION been handed down, are deemed undisputed and authoritative. Usually such a rule is in accordance with the teachings of the Sages as a whole, though Rabbi sometimes gives as an anonymous and therefore authoritative ruling what was only his personal opinion. If a rule had been disputed Rabbi gives also the name of the disputing Sage or Sages. Thus record is kept of the constant discussions and divergences between the Schools of Hillel and Shammai, c. a.d. 50; between R. Eliezer b. Hyrcanus and R. Joshua b. Hananiah, c. a.d. 90; between R. Akiba and his contemporaries R. Jose the Galilean, R. Johanan b. Nuri, and R. Tarfon, c. a.d. 130, and between R. Judah and R. Nehemiah, c. a.d. 170. Sometimes such opposing views are left without further comment; but more frequently a decisive ruling is given in such terms as ‘But the Sages say...’, or, ‘According to the Sages’, meaning the consensus of opinion among past and present teachers of the traditional law, or the opinion of Rabbi’s court of Sages, or even the opinion of a single Sage, if, as it seemed to Rabbi, that opinion was correct.1 In its literary style the Mishnah affects, for the most part, the dryness and preciseness suited to a catalogue of laws. Constant variety, however, is afforded by the interpolation of a contrary ruling by this or that Sage, sometimes supported by appeal to Scripture or by logical argument (at times extremely elaborate), sometimes by reference to some episode or some ruling by an earlier authority adduced as a valid precedent. At times dry brevity gives place to more spacious narrative, and, very rarely, to picturesque description. At the other extreme we find rules phrased so compactly as to be reduced to a few catchwords, meaningless formulae serving no purpose beyond aiding the memory, and incomprehensible without a previous knowledge of the subject.2 Such variety in style is a natural result of the variety of sources utilized by Rabbi.
The language of the Mishnah is pure Hebrew,3 but a Hebrew which, in vocabulary, in syntax, and (to a markedly less degree) in morphology, differs from the literary language as it is found in even the latest portions of the Hebrew Bible.4 Greek, Latin, and Aramaic elements in its vocabulary 1 Hull. 8s a. A few inconsistencies occur, such as quoting an opinion in one place as disputed and elsewhere as authoritative. These may be accounted for by the divergences existing in the sources which Rabbi included unchanged within his own work. See J.E.
1 Cf. Yeb. 51; to4 (end); Eduy. i*. Such passages, of course, cannot be translated literally without conveying a ludicrousness which is not present in the original. Cf. the opening sentence of Arakhin, 4*, where seventy-seven words in English are needed to convey the meaning of ten Hebrew words.
1 Brief passages in Aramaic occur only in Ket. Sot. 9'*; Gitt. 9’; B.M. 9’; B.B. io*; 4 See M. H. Segal, A Grammar of Mishnaic Hebrew, Oxford, 1927. He makes an elaborate examination of the relation of Mishnaic Hebrew to Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic, and, as against the opinion occasionally put forward that the Hebrew of the Mishnah was ‘merely a Hebraized Aramaic, artificially created by the Schoolmen, like the Latin of the Middle Ages, and that it never had an independent existence as a natural medium of ordinary speech in the daily life of the Jews’, he concludes that Mishnaic Hebrew is ‘the direct lineal descendant of the spoken Hebrew of the Biblical period, as distinguished from the literary Hebrew of the Biblical period preserved in the Hebrew Scriptures’ (p. it); 'so long as the Jewish people retained some sort of national existence in Palestine Mishnaic Hebrew INTRODUCTION XXV U INTRODUCTION XXV U are a consequence of the cultural influences with which the Jews had come into contact. Aramaic had entirely, or almost entirely, displaced Hebrew as the language of the Palestinian Jews, and a great number of Greek words, and a few Latin words, were absorbed into the language to denote foreign materials, implements, and institutions introduced into Jewish life during Hellenistic and Roman domination. In its syntax and forms of expression the Hebrew of the Mishnah has been reduced to a bald simplicity, due partly to the influence of Aramaic, but perhaps chiefly to the efforts of the teachers of the Oral Law themselves, who, taking the colloquial Hebrew as their foundation, fashioned the style best fitted to serve as a medium for compact and exact technical definition and instruction.1 IV. HISTORY OF INTERPRETATION The Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch was at once conceded authoritative status in the rabbinical schools of Palestine and Babylon. But though the material which Rabbi had included was accepted without challenge, other teachers were not convinced of the lack of value in what he had excluded. Such excluded or ‘external’ material ( Baraita ), all of it contemporary with Rabbi’s material, was brought together and out of it were fashioned other collections compiled in Mishnah fashion. Such collections were known as Mishnayoth Gedoloth (‘greater’ or ‘fuller’ Mishnahs). This ‘external’ material was of two kinds: Halakoth which Rabbi had discarded as unnecessary or unimportant or not in keeping with his general scheme or even perhaps unauthenticated; and halakic material which was of the nature of explanation, illustration, Scriptural interpreta¬ tion, or discussion bearing on rules which, in the Mishnah, were recorded without comment.
A collection mainly of this second type of Baraita has been preserved in what is known as the Tosefta (‘Supplement’). In its arrangement it re¬ sembles the Mishnah, having the same six main divisions and the same subdivisions into tractates.2 Whether its compiler intended it, from the first, to be a self-sufficing compendium of traditional law, or whether he intended it to be only a supplement to the present Mishnah (or to the Mishnah collection of Rabbi Meir),3 the Tosefta is nevertheless an authority of great value for the interpretation of the Mishnah, providing a back¬ ground of discussion, Scriptural hermeneutics, and illustrative narrative belonging to that same world of ideas from which Rabbi drew.4 continued to be the language of at least a section of the Jewish people living in Palestine. As Jewish life in Palestine gradually decayed, and eventually suffered total extinction, so Mishnaic Hebrew was banished step by step from everyday life, and eventually, towards the end of the Mishnaic period, became confined to the learned in the schools and academies’ (p. to).
* Cf. J. KJausner, Ha-Baith ha-Shem bi-G' dullatho, Tel-Aviv, 1930, pp. 148-59- He puts forward a theory that this compact legalistic Hebrew style arose early in the Hasmonean age, when the Jews in their newly won freedom found it convenient to revive Hebrew as an official symbol of their independence and as a medium for promulgating their national laws.
1 It lacks only the tractates Aboth, Tamid, Middoth, and Kinnim.
4 Its relation to the present Mishnah is difficult to determine exactly. Verbal similarity xxviii INTRODUCTION But the interpretation par excellence of the Mishnah is that given in the two Talmuds: the Talmud Yerushalmi or Palestinian Talmud, and the Talmud Bahli or Babylonian Talmud. These works contain the fruit of the labours of several generations of students (Amoraim) who set themselves to expound the Law as compiled by Rabbi. So long as centres of Jewish learning continued in Palestine, Rabbi’s Mishnah was the principal object of study. It was discussed sentence by sentence, its meaning debated, obscurities explained, authority for each rule was looked for in Scripture, parallels from the Baraita were quoted and where they seemed to differ from the Mishnah an attempt was made to harmonize them. In the course of discussion and argument all the knowledge and acumen of the Amoraim was poured out, often in a fashion baffling to a modern reader by reason of its inconsequence and profusion. During the same time Rabbi’s Mishnah was receiving the same attention in the rabbinical schools of Babylon. There this study persisted for several generations after it had ceased in Palestine,1 and its results are more elaborate and better preserved. The Palestinian Talmud reached its final shape about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, and the Babylonian Talmud about a century later. - For several centuries after the Moslem conquest Babylon continued to be the chief centre of rabbinical learning, its importance ceasing only with the death of Hai ben Sherira Gaon, in 1038. Contact with Arab scholars served in some measure as a renewed stimulus,3 and the ninth and tenth centuries saw the beginning of the philological and grammatical study of the Hebrew literature; and it is Hai Gaon who is responsible for the earliest extant commentary (in the ordinary sense) on the Mishnah. Only the last part, that on Tohoroth, the Sixth Division, has survived,4 but scattered quotations in later lexicographical works prove that he commented on the sometimes extends over complete paragraphs; generally where the one gives scanty details the other is diffuse; the Tosefta does not cover the ground as systematically as the Mishnah, and if we lacked the Mishnah the Tosefta’s treatment would often be obscure. Haggadic elements, scarce in the Mishnah, are comparatively abundant in the Tosefta. For specimens of the Tosefta in English, see the translations of Berakoth, Sukkah, and Sanhedrin (ed. S.P.C.K.) mentioned above, p. vin.
1 Probably with the extinction of the Patriarchal office, c. a.d. 425.
* Three tractates from the Babylonian Talmud are accessible to English readers: Berakoth, translated by A. Cohen (Cambridge University Press, 1921), Taanith, translated by Henry Malter (Philadelphia, 1928), and Hagigah, translated by A. W. Streane (Cambridge University Press, 1892).
The Gemara (lit. completion, i.e. commentary of the Amoraim) of the Palestinian Talmud covers the first three Divisions of the Mishnah in their entirety (with the exception only of the last four chapters of Shabbath); in the Fourth Division it is lacking for the two tractates Eduyoth and Aboth, and for the third chapter of Makkoth; of the Fifth and Sixth Divisions nothing has survived except the Gemara on a portion of the tractate Niddah.
The Gemara of the Babylonian Talmud covers, in the First Division, only the tractate Berakoth; it covers the whole of the Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Divisions (excepting Shekalim in the Second Division, Eduyoth and Aboth in the Fourth Division, and Mkldoth and Kinnim in the Fifth Division; for Shekalim editions of the Babylonian Talmud give the Palestinian Gemara); in the Sixth Division only the tractate Niddah is provided with Gemara.
3 See Hartwig Hirschfeld, Hebrew Grammarians and Lexicographers, Oxford, 1926, p. 7.
4 See J. N. Epstein, Der gaonSische Kommentar star Ordmtng Tohoroth, Berlin, 1915.
INTRODUCTION xxix whole of the Mishnah.1 He deals almost entirely with linguistic problems, and in his search for derivation of obscure words he makes much use of Arabic.
But the real father of Mishnah commentators is Rashi (so called from the initials of his name, Rabbi Shelomo Yitzhaki), a French Jew, 1040-1105, whose reputation is equally great in the fields of Biblical and rabbinical inter¬ pretation. His commentary on the Mishnah is but part of his famous com¬ mentary on the Babylonian Talmud, and it is therefore not available for those tractates which have no Gemara. Where it deals with the Mishnah text it is a self-contained commentary, with Rashi’s characteristic brevity and lucidity and his astonishing skill in unravelling a complication or illuminating an obscurity by a single w'ord or phrase. - Maimonides3 (1135-1204), one of the great figures of the Middle Ages, wrote in early manhood an introduction and commentary to the entire Mishnah. It was composed in Arabic under the title Kitab es-Straj, ‘The Book of the Lamp’. He worked on a larger scale than Rashi: not content with explaining details he endeavours also to keep before his reader the general principles governing the subject of study, so removing one of the chief difficulties in the way of understanding the Mishnah. Also, with a view to the use of the Mishnah as a practical guide to Jewish religious law, he determines what is to be accepted as Halakah in the numerous cases not explicitly decided in the Mishnah.4 Other of the earlier commentators were Isaac ben Melchizedek of Siponto, c. 1 1 10-70, an Italian rabbi of whose Mishnah commentary only the First Division, Zeraim, is extant;5 Samson ben Abraham of Sens, c. 1150-1231, a French Talmudist, who migrated to Palestine c. 1211, where he wrote a commentary on those tractates of the Mishnah to which the Babylonian Talmud provides no Gemara;6 and Asher ben Jehiel (a German Talmudist who migrated to Spain and died at Toledo in 1238), who commented on the tractates of the First Division (excepting Berakoth) and the Sixth Division and on Nedarim.7 The commentary which, owing to its adequacy and simplicity, has achieved highest favour, is that by Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro 1 The commentary is an indispensable aid to the understanding of the Talmud and, since the first collected edition of 1520, has always been printed side by side with the text. (The edition of the Babylonian Talmud by Lazarus Goldschmidt, 1897 ff., with a German translation, is an exception.)
J In Jewish writings generally styled ‘Rambam’, from the initials of his name, Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon.
4 His commentary was translated into Hebrew by various hands, and the Hebrew translation was included in the first edition of the Mishnah (Naples, 1492) and in other early editions, and it has been included in most of the collected editions of the Babylonian Talmud. A Latin translation of the Hebrew version is given in Surenhusius’s edition of the Mishnah. 5 Printed in the 1899 Wilna edition of the Talmud.
6 First published in the 1523 Bomberg edition of the Talmud, and since then printed in most of the collected editions. More recent Talmud Babli editions print also a commentary on these tractates of the First and Sixth Divisions by Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg, 7 He is more famous as the author of a compendium of Talmudic Laws, included in most Talmud editions.
XXX INTRODUCTION (c. 1510), an Italian Jew who in middle life migrated to Palestine (in 1488), and became spiritual head of the Jewish community in Jerusalem. His commentary, covering the whole Mishnah, is based on the work of Rashi, Samson of Sens, and Maimonides; it usually gives also the Gemara’s explana¬ tion of the Mishnah text. Since its first publication in 1548 very few editions of the Mishnah have been printed without it.1 A far more elaborate and erudite work is that of Yom-Tob Lipmann Heller (1579-1654), rabbi successively of Vienna, Prague, and Cracow. His commentary, Tosefoth (lit. additions, glosses) Yom-Tob, was published first in 1614 together with that of Bertinoro, to which it is a learned and critical supplement. Equally critical and penetrating is Meleketh Shelomoh, the commentary by Solomon ben Joshua Adeni, a Yemenite Jew, who after migrating to Palestine finished his commentary in Hebron (1622 or 1624). 2 Of more recent commentaries mention should be made of Tifereth Yisrael, by Israel Lipschiitz (1782-1860), a diligent scholar and ascetic, successively rabbi of Dessau and Danzig. His work3 is of great practical value to the student, combining many of the best features of its predecessors, keeping apart simple explanations from elaborate discussion, and prefacing each of the six Divisions with lengthy but lucid expositions of general principles.4 V. TEXT AND EDITIONS The periodical persecutions of Jews during the Middle Ages were usually accompanied by systematic attempts to destroy Hebrew writings, and especially manuscripts of the Talmud. The result is that very few complete manuscripts of the Mishnah have survived and only one of the Babylonian Talmud.5 The most important manuscripts of the complete Mishnah6 are: The Cambridge Manuscript. It has been published in a reliable tran¬ scription by W. H. Lowe, The Mishnah on which the Palestinian Talmud rests: from the unique manuscript preserved in the University Library of Cambridge. Add. 470.1. Cambridge University Press, 1883.
The Kaufmann Manuscript. Now in the possession of the Konigliche Ungarische Akademie der Wissenschaften. A facsimile is published by G. Beer (Haag, 1930). The text has been wholly pointed by a second hand.
1 A Latin translation is given in the Surenhusius edition.
2 Published in the Romm quarto Mishnah (Wilna, 1908-9).
3 Published, at intervals, between 1830 and 1850; it is included in the Romm quarto Mishnah and (together with Bertinoro) in the Romm octavo Mishnayoth.
4 An exhaustive list of Mishnah commentaries is not here in place. Additional titles will be found in Strack, p. 158 f. (Engl, tr., pp. 145 ff.). Almost all the extant commentaries, in whole or in part, are included in the great Wilna edition (First and Sixth Divisions, 1887; Second to Fifth Divisions, 1908-9) in seven quarto volumes. Z. Frankel’s Dar'ke ha- Mishnah ('Hodegetica in Mischnam'), Leipzig, 1859, is still the standard work on those subjects which come under the head of ‘ introduction to the Mishnah’.
been published by H. L. Strack (Leiden, 1912).
6 For a list of MSS. of portions of the Mishnah, see Strack, pp. 80 f. (Engl, tr., INTRODUCTION XXXI The Parma Manuscript (De Rossi, no. 138). See J. B. Rossi, MSS. Codices Hebraice Biblioth. i. 99 (Parma, 1803). Nearly a half of the text is pointed.
The Mishnah, together with the commentary of Maimonides, was printed first at Naples, 1492, in folio, by the Soncino press. It was fol¬ lowed by the Venice Justiniani edition, 1546 f., in folio; a quarto edition printed in Venice, 1548 f., with the commentary of Obadiah of Bertinoro; the folio edition of Riva di Trento, 1559, the quarto edition of Sabbioneta and Mantua, 1559-63, and the folio edition of Venice, 1606, containing the commentaries of Maimonides and Bertinoro. The Mishnah with the commentaries of Bertinoro and Yom-Tob Lipmann Heller ( Tosefoth Yom - Tob) was first published at Prague (1614-17; second edition, revised by Heller, Cracow, 1642-4), and it is this same version, equipped with these same two commentaries, which has since been reproduced in the common six-volume Mishnayoth editions.