Condensing research concerning questions of religion which encompass the social history of ideas and the religious use of language, this text deals with: the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture; the relationship of the religious ideas people hold to their world; and the religious meaning of the formalization of language that characterizes the Mishnah in particular. In discussing how the Mishnah relates to Scripture an analysis is presented, based on a systematic application of a single taxonomic programme. Then an examination is made of how the stages in the unfolding of the Halakhah of the Mishnah relate to the principal events of the times which delinte those stages. Finally attention is given to methods of interpreting the rhetorical forms of the Mishnah in the context of the social culture laid bare by the socio-linguistics of the documents concerned.