PHILIP ALEXANDER - Did Rabbis Write Down the Mishnah? 

The Mishnah, the Talmuds and the Midrashim are among the masterpieces of Jewish literature from late antiquity. Between them, they raise many questions, not least how they were composed, and then transmitted to future generations.
To answer these questions, Professor Alexander turned to the documentary and artefactual evidence for orality and writing in Rabbinic culture, to show how writing held a far greater role in the process than usually thought.
Phillip Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Post-biblical Jewish Literature at the University of Manchester. He is also a former President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and a founding Director of the Manchester University Centre for Jewish Studies. He is currently supervising a project to produce a catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts in the John Rylands Library Manchester.