I'll admit that any statement that the Mishnah existed in written form by the turn of the 2nd century CE is speculation. As far as I know, no scroll containing it as a stand-alone text exists. All we know for sure is that some sort of standardized text by that name was circulating and formed the nucleus of both the Talmuds, so perhaps by the end of the 4th century CE.
However, I have read that the Mishnah text of the printed editions of the Jerusalem Talmud is the same as that of the printed editions Babylonian Talmud, but the comments in the JT suggest that they were commenting on a similar but slightly different Mishnah text. This betrays intent on the part of the editor/publisher of one or more of the printed editions of the JT to discount the Mishnah contained in his exemplars, and despite the fact that the JT was composed earlier than the BT and less fantastic than the BT, the JT becomes a secondary text to the BT, useful only for the comparative value (always to confirm, never to negate the BT) and not for the authority of the text it contains.
As for why the text of the Mishnah contains major disagreements over how specific temple rituals were performed before 70 CE, I believe that J Neusner had suggested that the Mishnah was intended to portray an idealized version of what temple rituals and other ritual requirements should be like when God permits the temple to be rebuilt. Jews could hold some real expectation of this until the war of Ben Kosiba. After then, barring a miracle, it was all a pipe dream, and speculation could run wild. It all became purely academic, and in a way, theological.
DCH
PS: I see that bmuch of this is dealt with in more detail in the book you cited:
Orality, Narrative, Rhetoric: New Directions in Mishnah Research
semiopen wrote:I think Johnson is mistaken. His book seems to have been for mass consumption, and it was written in 1987 before there was a strong group of Rabbinic scholars.
Note how he says that the Mishnah was complete and even edited into a book. I've spent my last several posts discussing this, maybe he is right and all the Rabbinics experts I've quoted are wrong, but if he is, it is because he was lucky.
I've quoted many different wikis which also seem oblivious to any advances in Rabbinic studies. Personally, I was also unaware until I attended the ASJ convention last December. Several posts above, I mentioned that I'm not aware of any strong voices that challenge the concepts I've discussed here.
Orality, Narrative, Rhetoric: New Directions in Mishnah Research http://hartman.org.il/Blogs_View.asp?Ar ... Type=Blogs
It seems that whatever was put into oral tradition by the Rabbis turned into shit, even if there were the best of intentions. This was even with stuff that one might figure they'd get right such as actual descriptions of the temple rituals. After all these were actual things that happened not so long before the Tannaic process started.
When I first saw DCH's post, I wasn't so sure about whether the Mishnah was written down. I'm pleased that I seem to have guessed correctly that it wasn't. There seem to be many oral traditions that had some sort of Mishnah at the bottom of it. Much of the material may have been similar but there were significant differences.