Instructors: Dr. Nathan Schumer and Jeff Bacon

Description:
The Mishnah is the foundational document of rabbinic Judaism, and was written around 200 CE in Galilee. It serves as the basis for the later Talmuds, and for later Jewish rabbinic legal codes. It codifies and collects and remembers all of the things that Judaism meant at that time, but closer examination and reading of the Mishnah suggests that it is a much odder text than one might expect.

Much of the Mishnah is engaged in remembering the Temple, narrating rituals, or dealing with archaic laws that no longer existed when the rabbis were writing. So holding these different tensions in mind, this course is a survey and reading course of the Mishnah. We will attempt to finish the whole Mishnah over the course of the year. Other things we will cover in the course: prominent scholarly theories of the Mishnah, the relationship of the Mishnah to the Tosefta, how the Talmuds read the Mishnah, and how to place the Mishnah in its Roman imperial context. Readings will be in English with reference to the Hebrew as necessary.

Textbook: The Oxford Annotated Mishnah

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