TALMUD (Aram. talmūd, instruction; connected with Heb. lāmad, to learn). The name given to the comprehensive compilation of laws and ceremonial regulations pertaining to Rabbinical Judaism together with the elaborate discussion of those laws and regulations. As already implied in this definition, the Talmud consists of two divisions, which in the compilation are kept distinct: (1) the laws and regulations which are technically comprised under the designation Mishnā (literally, teaching, then used concretely for ‘the law,’ as that which is taught or which is the outcome of teaching); (2) the discussion and elaboration of the laws, comprised under the term Gĕmārā (literally, ‘supplement,’ ‘completion,’ and then also in the sense of ‘tradition,’ ‘doctrine’). The language of the Mishna is Hebrew; that of the Gemara Aramaic, which both in Palestine and Babylonia drove out Hebrew as the popular speech.
Of these two divisions, the compilation of the
Mishna comes first in the order of time and also
in importance. In its present form it consists of
six main divisions known as Sĕdārīm, comprising
63 treatises or Massektōth. This comprehensive
compilation, which is attributed to Rabbi Jehuda
ha-Nasi (c.219 ) represents the close of an
intellectual and religious process that may be
said to date from the acceptance of the ‘Priestly
Code’ through Ezra and Nehemiah in 444
as the supreme and sole standard of religious
observances and secular regulations. The acceptance
of this code definitely established obedience
to a law for which divine origin was claimed as
the test for fidelity to Yahweh. The observer of
the law was the only type of the faithful Jew
possible under this conception of religious duty. Such a principle necessarily led to the study of the law as the highest vocation of the individual. The law could not be observed unless it was known and thoroughly understood, and generations of scholars arose who strove to determine the exact meaning of the enactments in the codes and to account for numerous existing practices not specifically recorded in them, by deduction from principles underlying the code itself. The attempts to deduce the established religious practices and the constantly growing ceremonial details from the law itself resulted naturally in the formation of smaller and larger collections, which may have served either as notes for the pupils or as guides for the teachers, and despite a certain opposition that always manifested itself against committing to writing the large body of oral tradition, which, according to the theory of Rabbinic theology, was revealed simultaneously with the written law at Sinai, it was inevitable, if the practices established by or based upon this oral tradition were to maintain their hold as ingredient parts of Judaism, that they should be given a fixed form equally with the ‘written’ law. We have direct evidence for the existence of ‘Mishnaic’ compilations prior to the days of Rabbi Jehuda ha-Nasi, but the general acceptance
which his compilation met naturally drove the
earlier (and probably more incomplete) ones
out of the field. Traces of these are to be found
in the supplement to the Mishna, where enactments
and observations are referred to which differ
from those found in the Mishna; they are
designated as the Bāraythā (i.e. outside). Another collection of this kind is known as the Tōsephtā (‘addition’), which, however, partakes of the character of the Gemara.