Welcome to the Digital Mishnah.

This site accompanies and hosts the development of a born-digital critical edition of the Mishnah. When fully implemented, the project provide a dynamic edition of the Mishnah that takes advantage of its medium to provide multiple and customizable presentations of the text, as well as analytical tools that will allow the user to study variability between witnesses as well as other features.

The Mishnah is a rabbinic legal text edited around 200 CE/AD. It serves as the basis of the Talmud, and is a fundamental document of the rabbinic Jewish tradition. It is also a vital document of the history of the Jews and of Palestine in the Roman period. A critical edition is one that encapsulates data and scholarly judgment about the history of the text. Generally, this involves using comparison of readings from manuscripts or other witnesses that provide knowledge of the history of the text. Because this edition is born digital it can dynamically compare manuscript readings and provide tools to the

What’s here?

This site contains an ongoing project blog and links to output based on preliminary work. In the near future, we hope to include a dynamic interface that will allow users to test the functions based on transcriptions of a sample chapter.

How to help the project

This is a large, multi-year project. Colleagues and students who want to contribute transcriptions or other support are invited to do so by contacting Hayim Lapin, hlapin@umd.edu.