digest
The Romans saw the greatness of Rome, its legal system, its engineering, its highways, and its empire. On the other hand, the Jews resented Rome. They resented its paganism, its violence, and the fact that it was a corrupt society. That corruption was slowly seeping into the Empire, and the Jews felt this and correctly so. Eventually the Empire would collapse, because all great empires fall from within, not just from without. The corruption of Rome, its sadism, its violence, and its immorality took away the soul of Rome and would allow the barbarians eventually to overwhelm them.
The Jews concentrated on their studies, on their way of life, and on producing the Mishnah, as I mentioned before. In the year 200, the great Rabbi Judah the Prince, who was a friend of the Roman Emperor Antoninus, edited and published the Oral Law of Sinai in the form of the Mishnah for the first time. We don't know which Antoninus it was. It could be Antoninus Pius, who was the Roman Emperor. It could be the famous Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor. It could be his son. But Rabbi Judah was friends with the emperor, and there was a period of great relaxation and tension and decrees between the Jews and the Romans, especially in the Land of Israel. It was during that propitious time that Rabbi Judah the Prince edited and published publicly, for the first time, the Oral Law of Sinai in the form of the Mishnah.
There had been a tradition among the Jews that the Oral Law, based on the word "oral," was never to be written down. When you write something down, it freezes it, and the Oral Law was dynamic, always subject to creativity. Nevertheless, Rabbi Judah the Prince realized that the Jewish people were going into a long and difficult exile and would not be able to maintain a purely oral tradition because of the troubles that would befall them. So he took it upon himself to write, edit, and publish all of the Oral Law until his time. That became the Mishnah. The Mishnah became the foundation of the Talmud, and the Mishnah and Talmud together are the foundation of Rabbinic Judaism until today and of Jewish life. It is not an exaggeration to say that religious Jews today still live a Talmudic way of life, because that is the basis for our behavior, our value system, and the way we look at the world.
So from the year 200 on, the Oral Law was now subject to being written. It retained its creativity, but that creativity was expressed in writing and in books, and no longer just in oral lectures.
My name is Bar Lev, and I thank you for watching. For more on Jewish history, go to jewishhistorydotorg.