General knowledge · Religion & belief

The Torah and the Talmud

Mishnah c. 200 CE; Babylonian Talmud completed c. 500 CE

Judaism — the Written Law and the Oral Law

Judaism holds that revelation at Sinai came in two forms: a Written Law, the five books of Moses, and an Oral Law explaining how to live by it. The written text is copied by hand onto a parchment scroll and read through in the synagogue over a year. The oral tradition was finally set down in writing, first as the Mishnah compiled by Judah the Prince around 200 CE, then with the centuries of debate that grew around it — the Gemara — to form the Talmud, of which the Babylonian version completed around 500 CE became the authoritative one.

How to spot them

▸Written Law and Oral Law — five books on a scroll, and the vast commentary that interprets them
▸Mishnah plus Gemara equals Talmud; there is a Babylonian version and a shorter Jerusalem one
▸Maimonides' count of 613 commandments: 248 positive, 365 negative
▸A printed page with the text in the centre and Rashi in the inner margin

Key facts

Copied out by hand on parchment by a scribe called a sofer, and read through in a yearly cycle

The Sefer Torah; a single error can render the scroll unfit for use

Six orders of the Oral Law, set down in writing by Judah the Prince around 200 CE (c. 200)

The Mishnah — its orders cover seeds, festivals, women, damages, holy things and purities

Maimonides counted 613 commandments in it: 248 positive and 365 negative

The mitzvot; 365 matching the days of the solar year

A Babylonian version finished around 500 CE, and a shorter Jerusalem one a century earlier

The Bavli is far longer and carries greater authority than the Yerushalmi

Rashi's commentary printed in the inner margin of every page of the Vilna edition

The 11th-century French commentator Shlomo Yitzhaki; the Tosafot occupy the outer margin

A page a day, a cycle of roughly seven and a half years, begun by Meir Shapiro in 1923 (1923)

Daf Yomi; the Vilna edition runs to 2,711 double-sided folios

The annual reading cycle ends and immediately restarts at the festival of 'Rejoicing in the Law'

Simchat Torah; the scrolls are carried round the synagogue in seven circuits

Fifty-four weekly portions, each named from its opening words, one of which a boy or girl chants at thirteen

The parashah, read at a bar or bat mitzvah

Key ideas

The Talmud does not usually settle arguments. It preserves the minority view alongside the majority, and much of the page is a record of reasoning rather than a list of rulings — which is why studying it is itself treated as a religious act.

Quick-fire facts

•Torah in the narrow sense means the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy
•A synagogue scroll is written by hand by a sofer on parchment, without vowels or punctuation
•Maimonides enumerated 613 commandments — 248 positive and 365 negative
•The Mishnah is arranged in six orders (sedarim): Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim and Tohorot
•Gemara is the later analysis of the Mishnah; Mishnah and Gemara together make the Talmud
•The Babylonian Talmud has 63 tractates and, in the standard Vilna edition of 1880–86, 2,711 folio pages
•Daf Yomi, the practice of studying one folio a day, was proposed by Rabbi Meir Shapiro in 1923; a cycle takes about seven years and five months
•Rashi — Shlomo Yitzhaki of Troyes, died 1105 — wrote the standard commentary printed in the inner margin
•Pirkei Avot, 'Ethics of the Fathers', is the tractate of the Mishnah devoted to moral maxims rather than law
•Maimonides' Mishneh Torah (completed 1180) is a code of Jewish law; his Guide for the Perplexed is philosophy

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Sources

BBC Religion & Ethics — The Torah
BBC Religion & Ethics — The Talmud
My Jewish Learning — Talmud 101