state of Rabbinic documents. A prominent theologian has, when referring to the Rabbis, declared that one has only to study the Mishnah to see that it was not moral or spiritual subjects which engrossed their attention, but the characteristic hairsplitting about ceremonial trifles. There is an appearance of truth in this statement. The Mishnah, which was compiled about the beginning of the third century of the C.E., consists of sixty-one (or sixty-three) tractates, of which only one, known by the