Mishnah: Seder Moed: Parallel Hebrew – English Edition

Book 2 in Mishnah

This is a parallel edition of Moʿed (Festival) which covers Sabbath and festival law This book is part of a series which presents the Hebrew text of the Mishnah alongside Joshua Kulp’s English translation. It enables readers who already possess some Hebrew to begin reading Mishnaic Hebrew without hindrance. The series is intended as a practical and cost‑efficient tool for students learning to read and study the Mishnah. The volume also includes an introduction to the Mishnah, its contents, language, historical setting, transmission and influence.

The Mishnah is the earliest comprehensive compilation of rabbinic law. Although redacted around the year 200 CE, its teachings draw on much earlier traditions. Its title, mishnah, denotes study by repetition in the sense of disciplined learning and teaching (m. Avot 3.7) and oral instruction (t. Ber. 2.12 L. 8). In rabbinic Hebrew, mishnah is the noun form of the verb meaning to repeat or to learn (for example Avot 2.4 and 3.3). The work contains scriptural interpretation (midrash), legal rulings (halakhot) and haggadot (non‑legal material). Later interpreters drew on the biblical use of mishneh in Deuteronomy 17.18, where it refers to a copy of the Torah, and described the Mishnah as a second or parallel Torah.

The opening line of tractate Avot provides an explicit apologetic framework for the authority of the oral Torah preserved in the Mishnah. Avot 1.1 sets out a chain of transmission in which Moses received the Torah at Sinai and handed it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly. This formulation legitimises an authoritative oral corpus by rooting it in Sinai itself. By asserting that oral teaching was transmitted continuously alongside the written Torah, the rabbis justify the very category of Mishnah.