thumb|The Talmud on display in the [[Jewish Museum of Switzerland brings together parts from the first two Talmud prints by Daniel Bomberg and Ambrosius Froben.|250x250px]]

The Talmud (; , 'study' or 'learning') 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 along with the texts in Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings). 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 Talmud is written in a combination of Aramaic and Hebrew. 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 authoritative.

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

thumb|A page of a medieval Jerusalem Talmud manuscript, from the [[Cairo Geniza]]

The Jerusalem Talmud is known by several other names, including the Palestinian Talmud (which is more accurate, given that it was not compiled in Jerusalem), and the Talmud of the Land of Israel ( or ). 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 (especially those concerning agricultural laws) found across regional centres of the Land of Israel in the Galilee (principally those of Tiberias, Sepphoris, and Caesarea). It is written largely in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic language that differs from Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, its 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<!--'Babylonian Talmud' redirects here-->

thumb|right|A full set of the Babylonian Talmud

The Babylonian Talmud () consists of documents compiled over the period of late antiquity (3rd to 6th centuries). During this period, the most important of the Mesopotamian Jewish centres of learning included the Talmudic academies in Babylonia, such as Nehardea, Nisibis (now Nusaybin), Mahoza (al-Mada'in, south of modern Baghdad), Pumbedita (near present-day al Anbar Governorate), 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 (175–247), 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. 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.

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 (ritual purity laws) is examined, that of the menstrual laws (Niddah).

Structure

The structure of the Talmud follows that of the Mishnah, divided into Six Orders (known as the Shisha Sedarim, or Shas) of general subject matter are divided into 63 tractates (masekhtot; singular: masekhet) of more focused subject compilations, though not all tractates have Gemara. Each tractate is divided into chapters (perakim; singular: perek), 517 in total, that are both numbered according to the Hebrew alphabet and given names, usually using the first one or two words in the first Mishnah. A perek may continue over several (up to tens of) pages. Each perek will contain several mishnayot.

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 (literally, "repeaters", or "teachers"). 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 (literally, "speakers"), 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——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 (often anonymous, possibly metaphorical) disputants, termed the (questioner) and (answerer). 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.

Baraita

The traditions that the Gemara comments on are not limited to what is found in the Mishnah, but the Baraita as well (a term that broadly designates Oral Torah traditions that did not end up in the Mishnah). The baraitot cited in the Gemara are often quotations from the Tosefta (a tannaitic compendium of halakha parallel to the Mishnah) and the Midrash halakha (specifically Mekhilta, Sifra and Sifre). Some baraitot, however, are known only through traditions cited in the Gemara, and are not part of any other collection.

Minor tractates

In addition to the Six Orders, the Talmud contains a series of short treatises of a later date, usually printed at the end of Seder Nezikin. These are not divided into Mishnah and Gemara.

Language

The work is largely in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, although quotations in the Gemara of the Mishnah, the Baraitas and Tanakh appear in Mishnaic or Biblical Hebrew. Some other dialects of Aramaic occur in quotations of other older works, like the Megillat Taanit. The reason why earlier texts occur in Hebrew, and later texts in Aramaic, is because of the adoption of the latter (which was the spoken vernacular) by rabbinic circles during the period of the Amoraim (rabbis cited in the Gemara) beginning around the year 200. A second Aramaic dialect is used in Nedarim, Nazir, Temurah, Keritot, and Me'ilah; the second is closer in style to the Targum.

Manuscripts

The only complete manuscript of the Talmud, Munich Codex Hebraica 95, dates from 1342 (view scan). Other manuscripts of the Talmud include:

  • Cairo Genizah fragments
  • Date: earliest ones from the late 7th or 8th century
  • Context: earliest manuscript fragment of the Talmud of any kind
  • Ms. Oxford 2673
  • Date: 1123
  • Context: Contains a significant portion of tractate Keritot; earliest Talmudic manuscript whose precise date is known
  • Ms. Firenze 7
  • Date: 1177
  • Context: earliest Talmudic whose precise date is known and contains complete tractates
  • MS JTS Rab. 15
  • Date: 1290
  • Location: Spain
  • Bologna, Archivio di Stato Fr. ebr. 145
  • Date: 14th century
  • Vatican 140 Another medieval chronicle records that "On Wednesday, 13 Kislev, 811 SE (500 CE), Ravina the End of Instruction son of Rav Huna died, and the Talmud stopped." According to Moses da Rieti, "Ravina and Rav Ashi compiled the Talmud but they did not complete it, and Mar bar Rav Ashi and Mareimar et al. sealed it in the days of Rabbah Jose ... he headed the academy for 38 years after succeeding Ravina, until 4274 AM (514 CE), and in his days the Babylonian Talmud was sealed, which was begun and largely redacted in the days of Rav Ashi and Ravina".

The Wikkuah, a description of the 1240 Disputation of Paris, records that Yechiel of Paris claimed that "the Talmud is 1,500 years old", which would put it in the 3rd century BCE. Pietro Capelli suggests that it must have been traditional among medieval Ashkenazic Jews to date the Talmud from its beginning instead of its completion. Later manuscripts of the Wikkuah adopt the usual system of dating it to the time of Ravina II. Nicholas Donin, by contrast, claimed that the Talmud was only composed "400 years" before, i.e. around 840&nbsp;CE. The text was most likely completed, however, in the 6th century, or prior to the early Muslim conquests in the mid-7th century at the latest, on the basis that the Talmud lacks loanwords or syntax deriving from Arabic. By comparison, Islamic-era rabbinic documents are heavily influenced by Arabic writing, convention, and loanwords, and rabbinic writings came to be exclusively written in Arabic by the 8th century.

Recently, it has been extensively argued that Talmud is an expression and product of Sasanian culture, as well as other Greek-Roman, Middle Persian, and Syriac sources up to the same period of time. The contents of the text likely trace to this time regardless of the date of the final redaction/compilation.

Additional external evidence for a latest possible date for the composition of the Babylonian Talmud are uses of it by external sources such as Letter of Baboi () and chronicles like the (9th century) and the Iggeret of Rabbi Sherira Gaon (987).

In Jewish scholarship

From the time of its completion, the Talmud became integral to Jewish scholarship. A maxim in Pirkei Avot advocates its study from the age of 15.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz writes that "If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the central pillar ... No other work has had a comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life, shaping influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life" and states: