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THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION 237

4.Jose b.Joezer of Zeredah andJose b.Johanan ofJerusalem received
[the Law] from them ... 42
And so on. In short the Mishnah's own account of its legitimacy, contained
in this tractate, consists mostly of sayings in praise of the Oral Law along
with the names of the teachers who handed it down from generation to
generation. "Exceptingthe lastfour paragraphs the sayingsare anonymous.'?"
This traditional account of the Oral Law and its transmission, passing
from Moses in an unbroken chain to the rabbis of post-ExileJerusalem,
is easily disproved by a glance atJewish history. 2 Kings 22-23 relates the
discovery of a 'Book of the Law' during King Josiah's reign (640-609
B.C.E.).44 The multitude of reforms he carried out - purging the Temple
of heathen altars, eliminating child sacrifices, destroying the pagan house
of male prostitutes, and so on - bears witness that even the most basic
fundamentals of the Law had been wiped clean from Israelite consciousness.
The extent of these practices belies the existence of thoseJewish teachers
who were supposedly memorising and transmitting the Oral Law for
centuries. The Oral traditions are clearly an exponent of the Written Law;
even if the latter had disappeared, any faithful preservation of the former,
orally, would have sufficiently informed rabbis that such pagan rituals
constituted sacrilege.Where were the religiousleaders who were transmitting
the Law generation after generation? IndeedJosiah's grandfather, King
Manasseh, thought that by restoring the altars to Baal which Hezekiah
had destroyed, he was "returning to the early worship of the nation, and
the Baal whom he worshiped was probably identified in the minds of the
people with the national God Yahweh,"45
Whatever the form of Oral Law originally received by Moses, it was
lost several millennia ago and no longer exists. The current Oral Law,

probably datesfrom the timewhen the Written Lawwasfirst read and
expounded to the people [by Ezra]. This oral expounding inevitably
led to differingexplanations. Hence in later times it was necessaryto
reduce to writing the explanations considered authoritative and
correct. This processbegan in the time of Hilleland Shammai (endof
Ist century s.c.) and came to be called mishnah .. , Frequently, each
teacher would compilehis own Mishnah.t"

42 H. Danby(trans), TheMishnah, p. 446.
43 ibid, p. 446, footnote no. 1.
44 Dictionary ofthe Bible, p. 382.
45 ibid, p. 616.
46 ibid, p. 954.