Talmud
The Talmud is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and second in authority only to the Hebrew Bible, the first five books of which form the Torah. It is a primary source of Jewish law and Jewish theology. It consists of the part of the Oral Torah compiled in the Mishnah and its commentaries, the Gemara. It records the teachings, opinions and disagreements of thousands of rabbis and Torah scholars—collectively referred to as Chazal—on a variety of subjects, including Halakha, Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, and folklore among other topics. Until the Haskalah in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish culture in nearly all communities and foundational to "all Jewish thought and aspirations", serving also as "the guide for the daily life" of Jews.
"Talmud" is used interchangeably with "Gemara". The text is made up of 63 tractates, each covering one subject area. The language of the Talmud is Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Talmudic tradition emerged and was compiled between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the Arab conquest in the early seventh century. Traditionally, it is thought that the Talmud itself was compiled by Rav Ashi and Ravina II around 500 CE, although it is more likely that this happened in the middle of the sixth century.
The word "Talmud" commonly refers to the Babylonian Talmud, not the earlier Jerusalem Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud is the more extensive of the two and is considered the more important.
Etymology
Talmud translates as "instruction, learning", from the Semitic root lmd, meaning "teach, study".The two Talmuds
In antiquity, the two major centres of Jewish scholarship were the Talmudic academies in Syria Palaestina and Babylonia. A Talmud was compiled in each of these regional centres. The earlier of the two compilations took place in Galilee, either in the late fourth or early fifth century, and it came to be known as the Jerusalem Talmud. Later, and likely some time in the sixth century, the Babylonian Talmud was compiled. The latter Talmud is usually what is meant when the word "Talmud" is used without qualification. Traditions of the Jerusalem Talmud and its sages had a significant influence on the milieu out of which the Babylonian Talmud arose.Jerusalem Talmud
The Jerusalem Talmud is known by several other names, including the Palestinian Talmud, and the Talmud of the Land of Israel. The Jerusalem Talmud was a written codification of oral tradition that had been circulating for centuries, representing a compilation of the Palestinian rabbis' teachings about and textual analyses of the Mishnah found across regional centres of the Land of Israel in the Galilee. It is written largely in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic language that differs from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, it Babylonian counterpart. The compilation was likely made between the late fourth to the first half of the fifth century.Despite its incomplete state, the Jerusalem Talmud remains an indispensable source for the study of the development of Halakha in the Holy Land. It was also an important primary source for the study of the Babylonian Talmud by the Kairouan school of Chananel ben Chushiel and Nissim ben Jacob, with the result being that opinions ultimately based on the Jerusalem Talmud found their way into the Tosafot and the Mishneh Torah by Maimonides. Ethical maxims in the Jerusalem Talmud are scattered and interspersed throughout the legal discussions of the several treatises, many of which differ from those in the Babylonian Talmud.
Babylonian Talmud
The Babylonian Talmud consists of documents compiled over the period of late antiquity. During this period, the most important of the Mesopotamian Jewish centres of learning included the Talmudic academies in Babylonia, such as Nehardea, Nisibis, Mahoza, Pumbedita, and the Sura Academy, which was probably located about south of Baghdad.The Babylonian Talmud is the culmination of centuries of analysis and dialectic of the Mishnah and Hebrew Bible in the Talmudic academies in Babylonia. According to tradition, the foundations of this process of analysis were laid by Abba Arika, a disciple of Judah ha-Nasi. Tradition ascribes the compilation of the Babylonian Talmud in its present form to two Babylonian sages, Rav Ashi and Ravina II. Rav Ashi was the president of the Sura Academy from 375 to 427. At this time, he began compiling the Talmud, a written project passed on and completed by Ravina II, the final Amoraic expounder of the Oral Torah. Traditionally, the latest year for the compilation of the Talmud is typically placed at 475, the year Ravina II died. However, even among those who hold traditional views, a final redaction is still thought to have been made by the Savoraim in the sixth century.
Comparison
Unlike the Western Aramaic dialect of the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud uses a Babylonian Aramaic dialect. The Jerusalem is also more fragmentary due to an incomplete redaction process. Discussions in the Babylonian Talmud are more discursive, rambling, and rely more heavily on anecdote and argumentation by syllogism and Inductive reasoning; those in the Jerusalem Talmud are more factual and apply argumentation through logical deductive reasoning. The Babylonian Talmud is much longer, with about 2.5 million words in total. Proportionally more of the Babylonian material is non-halakhic Aggadah, constituting a third of its material, compared to a sixth of the Jerusalem. The Babylonian Talmud has received significantly more interest and coverage from commentators.Maimonides drew influence from both Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, although he favored the latter over the former when principles between them conflicted. As the Palestinian Jewish community declined in influence and the Babylonian community became the intellectual center of the Jewish diaspora, the Babylonian Talmud became the more widely accepted and popular version. Whereas the Jerusalem Talmud only includes the opinions of Palestinian rabbis, the Babylonian Talmud also includes Babylonian authorities. As such, it is regarded as more comprehensive.
Neither Talmud covers the entire Mishnah. For example, the Babylonian commentary only covers 37 of 63 Mishnaic tractates. In particular:
- The Jerusalem Talmud covers all the tractates of Seder Zeraim, while the Babylonian Talmud covers only tractate Berakhot. This might be because the agricultural concerns discussed in Zeraim were not as important in Babylonia. As the Jerusalem Talmud was produced in the Land of Israel, it consequently has a greater interest in Israelite geography.
- Unlike the Babylonian Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud does not cover the Mishnaic Kodashim, which deals with sacrificial rites and laws about the Jerusalem Temple. A good explanation for this is not available, although there is some evidence that a now-lost commentary on this text once existed in the Jerusalem Talmud.
- In both Talmuds, only one tractate of Tohorot is examined, that of the menstrual laws.
Structure
Mishnah
The Mishnah is a compilation of legal opinions and debates. Statements in the Mishnah are typically terse, recording brief opinions of the rabbis debating a subject; or recording only an unattributed ruling, apparently representing a consensus view. The rabbis recorded in the Mishnah are known as the Tannaim. These tannaim—rabbis of the second century CE—"who produced the Mishnah and other tannaic works, must be distinguished from the rabbis of the third to fifth centuries, known as amoraim, who produced the two Talmudim and other amoraic works".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 subjects than the Midrash. The Mishnah's topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole. But not every tractate in the Mishnah has a corresponding Gemara. Also, the order of the tractates in the Talmud differs in some cases from that in the Mishnah.
Gemara
The Gemara is broadly speaking a commentary on the Mishnah. This commentary arises from a longstanding tradition of rabbis analyzing, debating, and discussing the Mishnah—shakla v'tarya—ever since it was compiled. The rabbis who participated in the process that produced this commentarial tradition are known as the Amoraim. Each discussion is presented in a self-contained, edited passage known as a sugya.Much of the Gemara is legal in nature. Each analysis begins with a Mishnaic legal statement. With each sugya, the statement may be analyzed and compared with other statements. This process can be framed as an exchange between two disputants, termed the makshan and tartzan. Gemara also commonly tries to find the correct biblical basis for a given law in the Mishnah as well as the logical process that connects the biblical to the Mishnaic tradition. This process was known as talmud, long before the "Talmud" itself became a text.
In addition, the Gemara contains a wide range of narratives, homiletical or exegetical passages, sayings, and other non-legal content, termed aggadah. A story told in a sugya of the Babylonian Talmud may draw upon the Mishnah, the Jerusalem Talmud, midrash, and other sources.