How do specific understandings of a given religious tradition end up becoming the dominant form of that religion? What evidence and methods can be used in order to assess such questions? In this talk, I will trace the history of the transmission, reception, and study of the Mishnah, the central text of the Rabbinic corpus, beginning with its inception in third-century Galilee and ending with medieval authors that sought to explain the Mishnah’s purpose and creation. Along the way, significant attention will be given to the place of the Mishnah in elementary and lay Jewish education and religious piety, as well as to the manuscript evidence of the Mishnah and to the shifting role of the Mishnah in articulations of Jewish identity. Approaching the spread of the Mishnah from a variety of methodological angles over the longue durée will shed significant light on the spread of Rabbinic Judaism and the processes through which it became the dominant form of Judaism.
Dr. Yitz Landes is an Assistant Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. His research focuses primarily on the premodern transmission of Jewish knowledge, vis-à-vis the history of rabbinic education and the history of the Jewish book. Additionally, Dr. Landes works on the history of scholarship into Ancient Judaism; on Jewish-Christian relations in Antiquity; and on the development of Jewish ritual and liturgy, a topic he addressed in his first monograph, Studies in the Development of Birkat ha-Avodah (The Mandel Institute for Jewish Studies, 2018).