or forms that would not quite have made sense. At the same time, the scribe of MS Parma seems to have been aware of the different forms and consciously chose those most standard. Feintuch, “On the Parma Manuscript,” shows that this scribe will fill the end of a line with a shortening of the archaic form of a word, but when commencing the next line with the complete word, he will use the more standard form. Despite these arguments, I have chosen to make MS Parma primary for two reasons. First, the minor differences in linguistic form have no impact on my argument. Indeed, the two manuscripts are nearly identical in every single narrative considered. That MS Kaufmann may be somehow closer to the original linguistic form of the Mishnah (an argument that can be called into question) is irrelevant here. Second, Krupp (“On the Relationship”) and others have marshaled significant evidence that MS Parma of the Mishnah was part of the same manuscript as MS Vatican 31 of the Sifra, which is an eleventh-century manuscript. Arguments for the greater antiquity of MS Kaufmann (for instance, in Rosenthal, “Mishna Aboda Zara”) are not convincing. Thus there is evidence that MS Parma is the oldest extant Mishnah manuscript. Because MS Kaufmann is also a very important manuscript, I have always consulted it as well, and recorded any noteworthy variations—none of which, however, has any bearing on the arguments I make. For the most part, variations between MS Kaufmann and MS Parma are minor. On these manuscripts, see also Krupp, “Manuscripts of the Mishnah,” 253; and Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, 141. These manuscripts have been accessed online at http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/talmud/mishna/selectmi.asp as well as http://kaufmann.mtak.hu/en/ms50/ms50-coll1.htm.
Hebrew Transliteration Guide
| א | ’ (except at end of word or silent, when not indicated) |
| בּ | b |
| ב | v |
| ג | g |
| ד | d |
| ה | h |
| ו | w |
| ז | z |
| ח | ḥ |
| ט | ṭ |
| י | y |
| יִ | i |
| יֵ | ēi |
| כּ | k |
| כ | kh |
| ל | l |
| מ | m |
| נ | n |
| ס | s |
| ע | ‘ |
| פּ | p |
| פ | f |
| צ | ts |
| ק | ḳ |
| ר | r |
 |
sh |
 |
ś |
| ת | t |
| ַ | a |
| ֲ | ă |
| ָ | ā |
| ֻ | u |
 |
u |
| ָ | o |
| ֳ | ŏ |
| ֹ | ō |
 |
ō |
| ֶ | e |
| ֱ | ĕ |
| ֵ | ē |
| ִ | i |
| ְ | ĕ (sometimes omitted) |
Dāgēsh ḥāzāḳ—doubling of consonant (with exceptions)
Tractate and order names are based on The SBL Handbook of Style, with consonants modified to fit these transliterations.
Introduction
The Narration of Temple Ritual as Rabbinic Memory in the Late Second or Early Third Century
When Roman military forces conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple in the year 70, life changed for Judaeans living in the province of Judaea.1 Aside from the direct consequences of war—the extensive casualties, the imperial appropriation of property, and the greater Roman political domination—Judaeans, or Israelites in rabbinic sources, must have also felt the absence of the Temple. Many Judaeans had regularly visited the Temple in order to participate in its ritual. But now there was no Temple, and the people could no longer make pilgrimage to perform the Temple’s rituals. Priests, whose authority was tied to the Temple, had been powerful figures, but now their power base was gone. In the aftermath of the war of 66–70 CE and the subsequent revolt of 133–35 CE, the structure of Judaean society necessarily changed.2
By the late second and early third century, when members of the early rabbinic group created the Mishnah, the Temple had been destroyed for over a century.3 There was no one still alive who had directly experienced the destruction and concomitant change in ritual life. More than a century after the destruction of the Temple, the normal rhythms of life must have long since resumed for members of the people of Israel living in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. Post-destruction forms of ritual life had by now taken hold, and the new shape of society had become entrenched.4
Despite the passage of time and the disconnection from the physical Temple and its rituals, the early rabbis gave special prominence to Temple ritual when creating the Mishnah.5 The Temple and its ritual are indeed one of the Mishnah’s main topics. Of the six “orders” (that is, large sections, composed of “tractates”) of the Mishnah, almost the entire order of Ḳodashim (“sacred offerings”), significant portions of Mo‘ed
