ABSTRACT
So the Mishnah draws to a close, at the end of sixty-two tedious tractates of law on as many topics, broken up into more than five hundred and fifty chapters comprised of equally picayune and recondite rulings. The highly formalized character of the composition – topic sentence, followed by two carefully balanced rulings, each bearing an attribution to an authority – competes for attention with the peculiarity of the subject-matter. Here is how the sages of the Mishnah articulate both established principles and secondary disputes about them, the Mishnah’s characteristic mode of setting forth its laws and conflicts concerning them.
