A Digital Edition of A Classical Hebrew Text: The Digital Mishnah Project

How does one create a digital edition of a classical text, and what do we learn from it? The Mishnah is in many ways a foundational text for contemporary Jews, and continues to be part of the curriculum of formal and informal study. A legal compendium of about 200 AD/CE , the Mishnah is also significant for understanding late-second-century Jews in Palestine. Yet no critical edition of the text exists. The Digital Mishnah Project aims to produce a born-digital edition that will take into account the full array of manuscript and other evidence, and automate the process of comparing variant readings and assessing the relationships between manuscripts. Conceived as a tool rather than an edition, the Project will certainly make it easier for those who wish to track the text back to its earliest form to do so. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that its contribution to medieval book culture. As a tool, its design should draw on but also further develop the resources for other such editions, in any language. The presentation will feature a demo, followed by a discussion of some of preliminary observations.