The Mishnah exists because rabbis feared an oral law would be forgotten
For generations Jewish law was taught by memory, and writing it down was considered off limits. Then the Temple fell in 70 CE, Judea lost its autonomy, and scholars worried the traditions might vanish. Around the turn of the third century, Judah the Prince gathered them into the Mishnah, whose name means learning by repetition.
Rabbinic tradition holds that Moses received two teachings at Sinai: the written Torah and an oral Torah explaining how to apply it. The oral part passed from teacher to student, varied between schools such as the Houses of Hillel and Shammai, and was, according to the Talmud, not to be written, though some scholars may have kept private notes of court decisions. After the destruction of the Second Temple, with no central place of study and rising persecution, rabbis judged that transcription was justified to prevent loss.
Tradition, especially the letter of Sherira Gaon, credits Judah ha-Nasi with the final edition, compiled at Beit Shearim or Sepphoris. Where earlier teachings agreed, he preserved their wording; where they clashed, he rearranged opinions and clarified missing context. Modern scholars agree it is an edited collection rather than a single composition, and point to later additions, such as a passage at the end of tractate Sotah that looks back on Judah's own death. A Talmudic tradition linking the anonymous rulings to Rabbi Akiva's school, particularly Rabbi Meir, is now read as evidence of earlier collections rather than individual authorship.
Unlike a verse-by-verse commentary, the Mishnah is organised by subject. Six orders cover agriculture and blessings, Sabbath and festivals, marriage and divorce, civil and criminal law, Temple sacrifices and diet, and ritual purity. They contain 63 tractates in all, divided into chapters and single paragraphs, each also called a mishnah. Its aim was practical: making the Torah's 613 commandments workable in daily life without a Temple. A Talmudic passage even claims there were once six or seven hundred orders, of which only six survive.
The work became the foundation of both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, which are commentaries on it. It is written mostly in Mishnaic Hebrew with some Aramaic, the oldest physical fragments date from the 6th to 7th centuries, and the first printed edition came from Naples. Oral recitation traditions persist too; one scholar devoted a whole study to the melodies of the Aleppo community's Mishnah chanting.
Source: Mishnah
