Crossword-Solution: MISHNA 6 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

For morals are a personal affair; in the war of righteousness every man fights for his own hand; all the six hundred precepts of the Mishna cannot shake my private judgment; my magistracy of myself is an indefeasible charge, and my decisions absolute for the time and case.

The Mishna declares unfit either as 'judge or witness,' 'a cubea-player, a usurer, a pigeon-flier (betting-man), a vendor of illegal (seventh-year) produce, and a slave.' A mitigating clause--proposed by one of the weightiest legal authorities, to the effect that the gambler and his kin should only be disqualified 'if they have but that one profession'--is distinctly negatived by the majority, and the rule remains absolute.

There are not a few words which occur elsewhere only in Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther: there are some pure Aramaic words, some words even which belong to the Hebrew of the Mishna.

This explains the feverish activity of the early creators of the Mishna, of Hillel, Shammai, and others, and it interprets also the watchword of still older fame, "Make a fence about the Law." If up to that moment religious usage in its development had kept abreast of the requirements of social and individual life, the requirements out of which it had grown forth, it now became a national function, and its further evolution advanced with tremendous strides.

The legislative activity of all the dictators--such as, Rabbi Jochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiba, the Hillelites, and the Shammaites--was formulated in the Mishna, the "oral law," which was the substructure of the Talmud.