Mishnah

The Mishnah or the Mishna (/ˈmɪʃnə/; Hebrew: מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb shanah שנה‎, or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. It is also the first major work of rabbinic literature. The Mishnah was redacted by Judah ha-Nasi probably in Beit Shearim or Sepphoris between the ending of the second century and the beginning of the 3rd century CE in a time when, according to the Talmud, the persecution of Jews and the passage of time raised the possibility that the details of the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period (516 BCE – 70 CE) would be forgotten.

Most of the Mishnah is written in Mishnaic Hebrew, but some parts are in Palestinian Western Aramaic. It consists of six orders or sedarim, each containing 7–12 tractates or masekhtot, 63 in total, and further subdivided into chapters and paragraphs. The word Mishnah can also indicate a single paragraph of the work, i.e. the smallest unit of structure in the Mishnah. For this reason, the whole work is sometimes referred to in the plural form, Mishnayot.