Talmud (from Heb. lamad, 'to learn;' i.e. 'The Study') is the name of the fundamental code of the Jewish civil and canonical law, comprising the Mishna and the Gemara, the former as the text, the latter as the commentary and complement. We have spoken under EXEGESIS of the gradual development of this 'Oral' or Post-mosaic Code, and at MISHNA have referred to the older collections upon which the Mishna was framed before being finally redacted in the form in which we now possess it. The oldest codification of Halachoth, or single ordinances, is due to the school of Hillel (q.v.). Simon, son of Gamaliel II. and great-grandson of Gamaliel I., mentioned in the New Testament, and his school carefully sifted the material thus brought together. He died 166 A.D. His son Jehudah Hannasî, commonly called Rabbi, who died 219, and his disciples brought the work to its close in six portions (Sedarim), 63 treatises (Mesichtoth), and 524 chapters (Perakim), which contain the single Mishnas. But besides this authoritatively compiled code there were a number of other law collections, partly anterior to it, and not fully embodied in it, partly arising out of it—as supplements, complements, bylaws, and the like—partly portions of the ancient Midrash, partly either private text-books composed by the masters of the academies for their lectures or enlargements of the existing Mishna. All this additional legal material was collected, not rarely together with the dissensions which begot it, under the name of Baraitoth, 'foreign,' 'external,' by Chaiya and his school, in the succeeding generation. Not to be confounded with them, however, are the collections of Toseftas, 'supplements,' or Great Mishnas, which, commenced at the time of Jehudah Hannasî himself, and continued after his death by his scholar Chaiya and Hoshiaya, embody much of what has been purposely left out in the concise Mishna, which only embraced the final dicta and decisions. Such 'additions' we possess now to 52 treatises, forming together 383 Perakim or chapters. All these different sources of the 'Oral Law'—finally redacted before the end of the 3d century, though probably not committed to writing until 550 A.D.—belong to the period of from about 30 B.C. to about 250 A.D. This great mass of legal matter, although apparently calculated to provide for every case, if not for all times, was yet found insufficient. The dicta of later masters, the decisions of the courts, the discussions on the meaning and purport of special traditions, the attempts at reconciling apparent contradictions in the received material, the amplifications or modifications of certain injunctions rendered necessary by the shifting wants and conditions of the commonwealth—all these and a number of other circumstances made a further codification peremptory.
We must not omit to state here that this Mishna (Mathnisin), although it contained nothing but what were indigenous laws and institutions, was yet not a little influenced—if the very fact of its redaction was not indeed caused—by the spirit of the times. At Berytus, at Alexandria, at Rome the legal schools were then in their most vigorous stage of development, and everywhere system and method were being introduced into what till then had been a vast complex of traditional and popular institutions, decrees, and decisions. The Mishna in all respects fulfilled the conditions reasonably to be demanded from such a text-book as it was intended to form; it was clear, concise, complete, and systematic, and moreover composed in as classical a Hebrew as still could be written in those days of decadence of the 'sacred language.'
The further development of this supplementary, oral, or second law—in fact rather an exegesis thereof—together with the discussions raised by apparent contradictions found in the individual enactments of the Mishnic doctors, is called Gemara—i.e. Discussion, Complement, or, according to another explanation, Doctrine. This Gemara contains, apart from the Halacha, which is generally written in Aramaic, also a vast number of non-legal, chiefly Hebrew, fragments—homiletic matter, tales, legends, and the like—called Haggada.
There are two Talmuds, the one called the Talmud of the Occidentals, or the 'Jerusalem' (Palestine) Talmud, which was closed at Tiberias, and the other the 'Babylonian' Talmud. The first of these now extends over thirty-nine treatises of the Mishna only, although it once existed to the whole of the first five Sedarim or portions. It originated in Tiberias in the school of Johanan, who died 279 A.D. Its final redaction probably belongs to the end of the 4th century; but the individual academies and masters through whom it received its completion cannot now be fixed with any degree of certainty. There is less discussion and more precision of expression in this than in the second or Babylonian Talmud, emphatically styled 'our Talmud,' which was not completed until the end of the 5th century, and which makes use of the former. As the real editor of the Babylonian Talmud is to be considered Rabbi Ashe, president of the academy of Sora in Babylonia (375–427 A.D.). Both the Mishna and the Palestine Gemara had, notwithstanding the brief period that had elapsed since their redaction, suffered greatly, partly by corruptions that had crept into their (unwritten) text through faulty traditions, partly through the new decisions arrived at independently in the different younger schools—of which there flourished many in different parts of the Dispersion—and which were at times contradictory to those arrived at under different circumstances in former academies. To put an end to these disputes and the general confusion arising out of them, which threatened to end in sheer chaos, Rabbi Ashe, aided by his disciple and friend Abina or Rabina I. (abbr. from Rab Abina), commenced the cyclopean task of collecting anew the enormous mass of Halachistic material which by that time had grown up. The method he pursued was simple enough. His disciples met twice a year at Sora, in spring and in autumn. At the spring gathering he gave out all the paragraphs of one treatise; and the disciples had the task to find out until the autumn meeting what opinions the different schools had pronounced on the special points thereof. He then investigated the whole critically, and put it into shape according to a certain order. This process took him, with the assistance of ten secretaries, no less than thirty years; and many years were spent by him in the revision of the work, with which he proceeded in the same manner as he had done with the compilation itself. The final close of the work, however, is greatly due to Rab Abina II., head of the Sora academy (473–499). He was the last of the Amoraim expounders, who used merely oral tradition. After them came the Saboraim, the reflecting, examining, critical, the real completers of the Babylonian Talmud, and by many in ancient and modern times declared to have first reduced Mishna and Talmud to writing.
The Babylonian Talmud, as now extant, comprises the Gemara to almost the whole of the 2d, 3d, and 4th Sedarim (portions), further to the first treatise of the first, and to the first of the last order. The rest, if it ever existed, seems now lost. The whole work is about four times as large as the Jerusalem one, and its thirty-six treatises, with the commentaries generally added to them in our editions (Rashi and Tosafoth), fill 2947 folio leaves. The language of the Talmud is, as we said, Aramaic (Western and Eastern), closely approaching to Syriac. The minor idiomatic differences between the two are easily accounted for by the different time and place; but the additional matter—quotations and fragments from older Midrash and Gemara collections, Haggada, &c.—is, as before stated, principally written in Hebrew.
The masters of the Mishna (Tannaim) and of the Gemara (Amoraim) were followed by the Saboraim (see above). The code of the oral law had come to a close with the second named; and not its development, but rather its proper study, elucidation, and carrying into practice was the task of the generations of the learned that followed. Apart from this, the Aramaic language itself began to die out as the popular language, and required a further study. The Saboraim no longer dared to contradict, but only opined on the meaning and practicability of certain enactments, and undertook the task of inculcating and popularising the teachings laid down by their sires; apart from bestowing proper care upon the purity of the text itself, and adding some indispensable glosses. Their activity was at its height in the 8th century, when Karaism (see JEWISH SECTS), which utterly denied the authority of the Talmud, sprang into existence. Respecting, however, this authority of the Talmud itself, there has never been anything approaching to a canonicity of the code, or to a reception of it as a binding law-book by the whole nation. The great consideration in which it was always held is owing partly to its intrinsic value, and to the fact of its becoming the basis of all further development of Jewish literature (it being undeniably the most trustworthy receptacle of the traditional Jewish law), and partly to a prosecution against the Jews in the Persian empire at the time of Yezdigerd II., Firuz, and Kobad (439–531), who closed the schools and academies for a space of nearly eighty years, during which this book was the sole authoritative guide of public conscience, and remained endowed with its importance even when the schools were restored. The best commentaries of the Mishna are by Maimonides and Bartenora; of the Babylonian Talmud by Rashi (q.v.) and the Tosafists of France and Germany. An abstract of the Talmud for practical legal purposes by Maimonides (q.v.) is called Mishne Thorah. The Mishna was first printed at Naples, 1492; the Talmud of Jerusalem at Venice, by D. Bomberg, 1523. The Babylonian Talmud was first published at Venice by him in 1520. It is generally printed in twelve folios, the text on the single pages being kept uniform with the previous editions, to facilitate the references. No translation of the Gemara has ever been carried further than a few single treatises. The complete Mishna, on the other hand, has been translated repeatedly into Latin, German, Spanish, &c. by Surenhus, Rabe, Jost, and others. We must refrain in this place from attempting a general characterisation of the Talmud, a work completely sui generis, which is assuredly one of the most important records of humanity. Nothing can give even an approximate idea of the immensity of material, historical, geographical, philological, poetical, that lies hidden in its mounds. A contribution to the records of fanaticism may also be found in the 'exoteric' history of the Talmud, which was, albeit utterly unknown save by a few garbled extracts, prohibited, confiscated, burned, and generally prosecuted and inveighed against by emperors, popes, theologians, and fanatics generally, from Justinian down almost to our own day, as perhaps no other book has ever been. In our own times, however, its value begins to be recognised by great scholars, not merely as the only source of the knowledge of Judaism, but as the chief source—next to the gospels—even for the history of the origin and early days of Christianity; a notion long ago hinted at by eminent divines like Lightfoot and others.
See also JEWS, MISHNA, EXEGESIS, and an essay in the Literary Remains of Em. Deutsch, original author of the above article. Moïse Schwab has translated the Jerusalem Talmud into French (Paris, 1871; retranslated into English). The Babylonian Talmud has been translated or adapted by J. M. Rabinowicz in his Législation Criminelle du Talmud (Paris, 1871), and Législation Civile du Talmud (5 vols. Paris, 1877); Aug. Wünsche, Der Jer. Thalmud in seinen haggadischen Bestandtheilen ins Deutsch übers. (Zurich, 1880), and Der Bab. Thalmud in seinen haggadischen Bestandtheilen (Leip. 1886); N. Brüll, Die Entstehungsgeschichte d. Bab. Thalmud, in Jahrbücher f. Jüd. Gesch. u. Lit. ii. (1876); Z. Frankel, Introductio in Thalmud Hierosol. (Breslau, 1870); W. Bacher, Die Agada d. Palæstinensischen Amoræer (Strasb. 1892); Jastrow, Dictionary of the Targumim and the Talmud (Lond. 1887–92).