The Oral law is a foundation pillar of normative rabbinic Judaism. Yet as David Weiss Halivni often noted, there is debate within the sources as to the nature and origin of the Oral law and of the value placed on legal premises founded in written Scripture as opposed to those credited entirely to received tradition. Further, Halivni wrote, Scripture, rather than immaculate is actually "maculate," not a single thread but rather the account of an "unfolding" of the divine Will. Thus, for Halivni, incumbency rests with the Oral law and its expositors, who are tasked with creating a synthetic and vibrant religious life from the maculate Scriptural sources of divine revelation. This paper seeks to understand Halivni's theology of the pivotal years from Ezra to the Mishna, when Judaism transitioned away from Revealed word to a sole reliance on communally interpreted Oral Law. In his narratives of Israel's history, Halivni centered the role of Ezra, who, renewing the covenant with the people after Exile, inherited a text that was inconsistent and unclear. In Ezra, Halivni wrote, we see the birth of a sort of "restoration" theology, the beginning attempt to create a unity of theological vision (and thus a coherent halakha) from a maculate scripture. For Halivni, the Mishna does not arise ex nihilo, but is rather—as this paper will argue—a radical theological statement about the rabbinic role in restoring a lost coherence to divine revelation.