Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on April 1, 2014

From New World Encyclopedia

The Talmud (Hebrew: ) is a record of rabbinical discussions pertaining to Jewish law, biblical interpretation, ethics, customs, and history. It is the basis for all codes of rabbinical law and is much quoted in other Jewish literature.

The Talmud has two basic components: the Mishnah (c. 200 C.E.), the first written compendium of Judaism's Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 C.E.), a rabbinical discussion of the Mishnah and related writings that often ventures into other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. Printed editions of the Talmud also contain later commentaries from rabbinical authorities through the Middle Ages. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably.

Did you know?

The Talmud contains the opinions of hundreds of rabbis, often including strong disagreements on many subjects. Like the Bible itself, it can be used to support varying positions on many subjects.

There are two versions of the Talmudthe Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmudeach containing basically the same Mishnah but a different Gemara. Of these, the Babylonian Talmud is larger, better edited, and more influential. Other commentaries were also added to later editions of the Talmud.

In European history, the Talmud was sometimes suppressed by the Catholic Church, and it became a source of anti-semitic literature in modern times, when excerpts from it were quoted to "prove" ideas of Jewish arrogance and hatred toward Gentiles. In fact, the Talmud contains the opinions of hundreds of rabbis, often including strong disagreements on many subjects. Like the Bible itself, it can be used to support varying positions on many subjects.

Rabbinical tradition holds that the Talmud expresses a sacred Oral Torah, equally authoritative to the Written Law given to Moses at Sinai. Originally, Jewish legal and biblical scholarship was also oral. This situation changed drastically, however, mainly as the result of the defeat of the Jewish Revolt against Rome in the year 70 C.E. and the consequent upheaval of Jewish social and legal norms. As the rabbis were required to face a new realityespecially the fact of Judaism without a Templethere was a flurry of legal discourse and the tradition of oral scholarship was committed to writing.

The earliest recorded Oral Law may have been of the midrashic form, in which Jewish legal discussion was structured as exegetical commentary on the Pentateuch. An alternative form, organized by subject matter instead of by biblical verse, became dominant about the year 200 C.E., when Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi redacted the Mishnah.

The Mishnah forms the core of the Talmud. It is a compilation of legal opinions and debates of leading rabbis of the second century. The rabbis of the Mishnah are known as tannaim, meaning roughly "sages." Since it sequences its laws by subject matter instead of by biblical context, the Mishnah discusses individual subjects more thoroughly than the Midrash, and it includes a much broader selection of halakhic (legal) subjects than the Midrash. The Mishnah's topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole.

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Talmud - New World Encyclopedia - Info:Main Page - New ...

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