Talmud

(i.e. doctrine, from the Hebrew word “to learn”) is a large collection of writings, containing a full account of the civil and religious laws of the Jews. It was a fundamental principle of the Pharisees, common to them with all orthodox modern Jews, that by the side of the written law, regarded as a summary of the principles and general laws of the Hebrew people, there was an oral law, to complete and to explain the written law. It was an article of faith that in the Pentateuch there was no precept, and no regulation, ceremonial, doctrinal or legal, of which God had not given to Moses all explanations necessary for their application, with the order to transmit them by word of mouth. The classical subject is the following in the Mishna on this wing: “Moses received the (oral) law from Sinai, and delivered it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets and the prophets to the men of the Great Synagogue.” This oral law, with the numerous commentaries upon it, forms the Talmud. It consists of two parts, the Mishna and Gemara.

TAL'MUD,THE (teaching,). This body of Jewish laws upon all topics is divided into two parts - the Mishna, or the text, and the Gemara, or commentary. The Mishna ("repetition") is a collection of various Jewish traditions, with expositions of Scripture-texts. These, the Jews pretend, were delivered to Moses on the mount, and were transmitted from him, through Aaron, Eleazar, and Joshua, to the prophets, and by them to the men of the Great Synagogue and their successors until the second Christian century, when Rabbi Jehuda reduced them to writing, and so he is the collector of the existing Mishna. The Gemara ("teaching") is the whole body of controversies and teachings which arose in the academies after the close of the Mishna. There are two of them, known, in connection with the Mishna, as the Jerusalem Talmud (third and fifth century), prepared by the rabbis of Tiberias, and the Babylonian Talmud (fifth century). The Talmud is useful as an aid in studying the teaching of Christ. It explains some of his allusions, and, as a Teacher sent from God, proves his unique superiority to the Jewish doctors of the Law.

Part of speech: noun (n.)

The body of the Jewish civil and canonical law not comprised in the Pentateuch.