The Gospel of Rashi - How the Mishnah was Manufactured

With a background on how the President of the Sanhedrin narrowly kept his autocratic role, we can now progress and see how this document was produced. It is claimed by the rabbis that the “oral law” was given to Moses on Mount Sinai, together with the Torah. That alleged “oral law” is supposedly the Mishnah, or contained therein. It is the main purpose of these posts to demonstrate the fallacy of the rabbinic claims.

Rashi's commentary on the Talmud is regarded as canonical, so that is how the Talmud is generally understood. The following is a description by Rashi of how the Patriarch, Judah, composed or redacted the Mishnah.

Rashi In Bava Metzia 33b

“When the students of Shammai and Hillel multiplied…
disputes in Torah also multiplied, and it appeared as if there
were two different Torahs. This was a consequence of the
oppressive decrees of the empire. As a result it became
impossible to have the clarity to understand the underlying
reasons for halachic disputes. Then, when God showed favor
to Rebbi in the eyes of Antoninus, the Jewish people were
able to take respite from their oppression. Rebbi then sent
for, and gathered, all the scholars in the land of Israel. Up
until that time the laws were not arranged according to
tractates, but rather each student heard laws orally from
someone greater than him, would repeat it, and would label
it; halachot A and B I heard from Rabbi C. When all of the
scholars were gathered by Rebbi everyone recited what he
had heard. Then, they took the effort to understand the
underlying reasons for each opinion in each dispute and
decided which opinions to preserve. These were then ordered
and arranges according to separate tractates… [In addition]
Rebbi would anonymously quote the halacha of an individual
sage which he approved of in order to establish the Halacha
according to him.”

This statement is quite contrary to the marketing and flashy advertising of the so-called oral law! It is making several statements which seriously undermine the veracity and authenticity of the rabbinic claims. Here are some of the reasons why:

1) The “Mishnah” is not something that existed in oral form, and was simply put down on paper. It is a collection of disparate statements or claims made by a group of rabbis in a specific time.

2) The alleged oral law was not known to any individual or group of people, in its entirety. There was no mass tradition, not even in the period immediately before the Mishnah was written.

3) Yehudah HaNasi, or “Rebbe” did not know the “oral law”, he had some things he had learned or recorded. He sent out to collect statements from the rabbis as to what they knew or had allegedly heard.

4) There is no proof or even reasonable probability that each of the “gospels” (gospel is used in the New Testament in precisely the same manner, i.e. what each of the authors recalled about the Jesus event) faithfully transmitted what he heard. Perhaps he embellished the story or added his own creations, for personal reasons.

5) Even if the collection of stories did reflect what they had heard from their teachers, this is no proof that it came from Sinai. The Gospels told their recollections of Jesus, but that is not a proof to their claim that Jesus was the Messiah etc. Similarly, the various Hadiths tell of their stories about Mohammed, but this is not a proof that Mohammed was a prophet or that the Koran was a God given successor to the Torah. These are various collections of discussions, stories etc. To sell such a story, giving it a “divine” claim will help in gaining adherents.

6) The rabbis tell us that to practice Judaism, we need the oral law, and that it is not possible to do so without it. Thus the general public would have had to have known the oral law, just like today the orthodox public know the Shulchan Aruch. But this is not the case, and never was. The public who were Torah observant, did not know the oral law, even at time of writing, and certainly not during the 2^nd temple period. Thus, if the claim of the rabbis was indeed true, the public would also know all the various laws, yet they were not approached to refresh the memory of the rabbis.

However, there were certain practices which went back to the early Pharisees, and these would have been known, eg the Omer, the Etrog etc. These only go back to the emergence of the Pharisees, which is around 150 BCE, or at the time of their conflict with the Maccabees. In the early 2^nd Temple period, even these were not known, and Ezra was not a party to the Oral law.

7) Rashi states “When the students of Shammai and Hillel multiplied…disputes in Torah also multiplied, and it appeared as if there were two different Torahs.” The rabbis claim that the Oral Law was handed down by the Prophets, for over 1000 years prior to the destruction of the Temple. They claim that Torah practice is simply not possible without the Oral Law. If there was an uninterrupted transmission, as they claim, and the people were all practicing the Torah according to the oral law, how could disputes arise among the greatest rabbis in history? If the written Law is ambiguous, and the oral law is clear, why were the sages unclear about what the actual oral law was? And had the practice of the masses been changing or divided? It is ironic that the very people who allege the Torah is ambiguous, are suddenly saying the oral law was ambiguous and in danger of being lost!

Furthermore, the same problem occurred even before Hillel vs. Shammai – when the Pharisees emerged, they made a 2^nd Torah, to buttress their dispute with the Kohanim.

8) He further attributes this alleged loss of oral law to “This was a consequence of the oppressive decrees of the empire.” How then, did it supposedly survive when the Torah itself was lost and then found by Josiah? Or during the Babylonian exile?

9) A classic argument of the Karaites is that if the oral law was meant to be orally transmitted, why then did it have to be written down? And there is not evidence of its existence in the time of the TNK. The reason given by the rabbins is that it was at risk of being forgotten! But the rabbis state that it was given in such as way that it wouldn’t be forgotten! And once written, it did not solve the disputes it was purportedly going to resolve. Thus every few years even more is written: the Talmud; the Rif; Rambam, Zohar, Shulchan Aruch etc. What is the point of having had an oral law if it has been in writing for the past 200o years?

10) The Rabbis claim a chain of transmission from Moses to the redactors of the Mishnah and Talmud, for example Maimonides does this in his introduction to his legal work “Mishneh Torah”. This claimed transmission can be shown to be false in a number of ways, but the statement of Rashi disproves this claim internally. It is saying that Yehuda HaNasi did not receive the Oral Tradition, but had a limited set of data. He had to gather various contradictory sets of data from a few dozen other rabbis, and then create a book called the Mishnah.

11) Just like an oral contract isn't worth the paper it is written on, so a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. This particular link is already broken, hence there is no way to verify the authenticity of the oral tradition. There are many other weak links, which are being explored on this blog. However, going back in time, you cannot make the argument of an unbroken chain of transmission, when in fact the texts that rabbis rely on describe a broken link.

12) [new]  Rashi states that "Rebbi would anonymously quote the halacha of an individual sage which he approved of in order to establish the Halacha according to him"
So Yehuda Hanasi is not faithfully transcribing the tradition, he is inserting unnamed sources that he favours, and setting them up as being "halacha". In other words,  the claim of an unchanged tradition is false, since the power-broker can make whatever changes he likes, and he will not be challenged because of his political position. This comment by Rashi further undermines the credibility of the Rabbis.

To conclude, there is a serious credibility problem surrounding the authenticity of the oral tradition and the veracity of the claims made by rabbis regarding its nature and origins. The statements made by a limited group of rabbis, who were eager to have their names externalised, are nothing more than gospels of a newish rabbinical testament.