Avot on the Transmission of the Oral Torah

Mishnah Avot 1:1 opens with a genealogy of authority: “Moses received Torah at Sinai and handed it on to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly.” (The Great Assembly is a body of prophets and sages in the Second Temple period.) The chain ends with the rabbis themselves. The “Torah” received at Sinai in this mishnah is not the written text of scripture but the Oral Torah—interpretations, teachings, and traditions transmitted from sage to sage. By tracing this oral tradition back to Sinai, the rabbis claimed the continuity of divine revelation and their relationship to it, even as they developed new forms of Jewish leadership. Rabbinic authority was thereby rooted in tradition but exercised through interpretation.