Mishnah  The Mishnah or Mishna (; , "study by repetition", from the verb "shanah" , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions known as the Oral Torah. It is also the first major work of rabbinic literature. The Mishnah was redacted by Judah ha-Nasi at the beginning of the third century CE in a time when, according to the Talmud, the persecution of the Jews and the passage of time raised the possibility that the details of the oral traditions of the Pharisees from the Second Temple period (536 BCE – 70 CE) would be forgotten. Most of the Mishnah is written in Mishnaic Hebrew, while some parts are Aramaic. The Mishnah consists of six orders (', singular ' ), each containing 7–12 tractates (', singular ' ; lit. "web"), 63 in total, and further subdivided into chapters and paragraphs. The word "Mishnah" can also indicate a single paragraph of the work, i.e. the smallest unit of structure in the Mishnah. For this reason the whole work is sometimes referred to in the plural form, "". The term ""Mishnah"" originally referred to a method of teaching by presenting topics in a systematic order, as contrasted with "", which followed the order of the Bible. As a written compilation, the order of the Mishnah is by subject matter and includes a much broader selection of halakhic subjects, and discusses individual subjects more thoroughly, than the "Midrash". The Mishnah consists of six orders (', singular ' ), each containing 7–12 tractates (', singular ' ; lit. "web"), 63 in total. Each ' is divided into chapters (', singular ') and then paragraphs (', singular ""). In this last context, the word "mishnah" means a single paragraph of the work, i.e. the smallest unit of structure, leading to the use of the plural, ""Mishnayot"", for the whole work. Because of the division into six orders, the Mishnah is sometimes called Shas (an acronym for "Shisha Sedarim" – the "six orders"), although that term is more often used for the Talmud as a whole. The six orders are:  In each order (with the exception of Zeraim), tractates are arranged from biggest (in number of chapters) to smallest. A popular mnemonic consists of the acronym "Z'MaN NaKaT."