The rabbis, the Mishnah and the Talmud
Rabbis in the Land of Israel and Babylonia write down the oral law and centuries of debate about it, creating the Talmud, the backbone of Jewish life ever since.
- From the Maccabees to the Mishnah — Shaye J. D. Cohen, Westminster Press (1987)
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
- Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History — Joseph Telushkin, William Morrow (1991)
- Judaism — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The rabbis taught that Moses received two Torahs at Sinai: the written one, and an oral Torah explaining how to live it, passed from teacher to student. Around 200 CE, Rabbi Judah the Prince, leader of the Jews in Roman Palestine, edited this oral teaching into the Mishnah, a compact law code in Hebrew covering everything from prayer and farming to marriage, damages and the Temple.
- From the Maccabees to the Mishnah — Shaye J. D. Cohen, Westminster Press (1987)
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
Generations of rabbis then discussed the Mishnah line by line. Their debates were compiled into the Jerusalem Talmud, around 400, and the larger and more authoritative Babylonian Talmud, edited in the great academies of Babylonia over the following two centuries or so. Written in Aramaic and Hebrew, the Talmud mixes law, stories, medicine, ethics and humour, and often ends a debate without a decision. It records famous disputes, such as those between the gentle Hillel and the strict Shammai, and keeps the losing view because, as the rabbis put it, both are “the words of the living God”.
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
- Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History — Joseph Telushkin, William Morrow (1991)
- Judaism — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The Talmud became a portable homeland. The medieval French scholar Rashi (1040–1105) wrote the commentary printed beside it on every page. Later codes, such as Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and the sixteenth-century Shulchan Aruch, turned its debates into practical law, which Orthodox Jews still follow as halakha, “the way to walk”.
- Jewish People, Jewish Thought: The Jewish Experience in History — Robert M. Seltzer, Macmillan (1980)
- Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History — Joseph Telushkin, William Morrow (1991)
Why it matters today
The Talmud is why Jewish culture prizes argument, questions and learning. Its pages preserve minority opinions alongside majority rulings, and for 1,500 years Jewish boys, and now many women too, have studied it in pairs, out loud, arguing. That habit of debate, and the reverence for the scholar, shapes Jewish life far beyond the yeshiva.