Yoma from Babylonia to Egypt: Ritual Function, Textual Transmission, and Sacrifice

As recent research has emphasized, the Mishnah tractate Yoma is a model par excellence of the category of Mishnah tractates that take the form of narrative and describe key institutions of the lost Temple and its rituals. But even among those tractates, Yoma is unique in that it served as a source for liturgical recitation in what became the Avodah liturgy. This paper will look at the complex relationships between textual transmission and liturgical recitation in the history of the tractate by examining internal and external textual evidence. In particular, this discussion includes a detailed analysis of a papyrus fragment from Oxyrhynchus that has received insufficient attention so far. It is argued from this evidence that the tractate's literary nature coalesced with the substance of the tractate to produce a virtual enactment of sacrifice for its reciters and performers.