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Mishneh Torah משנה תורה
The only complete codification of the whole Oral Torah ever written by one hand: "gathering the entire Oral Torah" so that, after the written Torah itself, "a person shall need no other work between them." Its introduction is also the chain's own genealogy — the Rambam's list of forty generations from Rav Ashi to Moshe — making this text both a link in the mesorah and the mesorah's map of itself.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- משנה תורה
- Also known as
- Yad HaChazakah, HaYad
- Era
- rishonim
II. When
- Traditional
- completed c. 4938 AM
- Academic
- completed c. 1178 CE, Fustat
- Duration
- ≈10 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Mishnaic Hebrew
- Redaction
- Written by the Rambam (Rambam) at Fustat over about ten years, completed c. 1178
- Structure
- Fourteen books (hence "HaYad", numerical value 14) covering the entire halakha — including laws with no practical application in exile — in topical order; prefaced by the introduction whose chain of forty generations this atlas follows.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Rambam states its purpose himself: he composed it "so that all the laws be open to small and great... so that a person shall need no other work in the world for any law of Israel... for a person reads the written Torah first and then reads this." | rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| It opens with the foundation of foundations — "to know that there is a First Being who brings all beings into existence" — halakha beginning from metaphysics, a structure no earlier code attempted. | rabbinic | ★★★★★ | |
| Its omission of sources and dissenting views drew immediate controversy (the Ra'avad's glosses chief among the responses), and it became one of R' Yosef Karo's three pillars of hora'ah rather than the sole code its author envisioned. | tradition | ★★★★☆ | |
| In Teiman it became what its author intended everywhere: Yemenite Jewry — bound to the Rambam since the Iggeret Teiman (Iggeret Teiman) — adopted the Mishneh Torah as its halakhic canon, and the Yemenite manuscript tradition of the work is prized as among the most accurate that survives. | tradition external | ★★★★☆ |