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You will be required to verify your subscription. Watch your email for the response. En l'an The Future of the Past. Open Philology Project digitized books Loading I moved it to its own space here beginning in The primary focus of the project is notice and comment on open access material relating to the ancient world, but I will also include other kinds of networked information as it comes available. AWOL is the successor to Abzu , a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world, founded at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago in Together they represent the longest sustained effort to map the development of open digital scholarship in any discipline.
Facsimiles of Egyptological books from http: From the Persepolis Fortification Arc Handlist of Greek Manuscripts in the British Libra Open Access Image Database: Archive ouverte de photog It is written in Mishnaic Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis dating from before the Common Era through to the fifth century on a variety of subjects, including halakha , Jewish ethics , philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics.
The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature. Talmud translates as "instruction, learning", from a root LMD "teach, study". Originally, Jewish scholarship was oral. Rabbis expounded and debated the Torah the written Torah expressed in the Hebrew Bible and discussed the Tanakh without the benefit of written works other than the Biblical books themselves , though some may have made private notes megillot setarim , for example of court decisions. This situation changed drastically, mainly as the result of the destruction of the Jewish commonwealth and the Second Temple in the year 70 and the consequent upheaval of Jewish social and legal norms.
As the rabbis were required to face a new reality—mainly Judaism without a Temple to serve as the center of teaching and study and Judea without at least partial autonomy—there was a flurry of legal discourse and the old system of oral scholarship could not be maintained. It is during this period that rabbinic discourse began to be recorded in writing. The oldest full manuscript of the Talmud, known as the Munich Talmud Cod. The process of "Gemara" proceeded in what were then the two major centers of Jewish scholarship, Galilee and Babylonia.
Correspondingly, two bodies of analysis developed, and two works of Talmud were created. The older compilation is called the Jerusalem Talmud or the Talmud Yerushalmi. It was compiled in the 4th century in Galilee. The Babylonian Talmud was compiled about the year , although it continued to be edited later. The word "Talmud", when used without qualification, usually refers to the Babylonian Talmud. While the editors of Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud each mention the other community, most scholars believe these documents were written independently; Louis Jacobs writes, "If the editors of either had had access to an actual text of the other, it is inconceivable that they would not have mentioned this.
Here the argument from silence is very convincing. The Jerusalem Talmud, also known as the Palestinian Talmud, or Talmuda de-Eretz Yisrael Talmud of the Land of Israel , was one of the two compilations of Jewish religious teachings and commentary that was transmitted orally for centuries prior to its compilation by Jewish scholars in the Land of Israel.
It is written largely in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic , a Western Aramaic language that differs from its Babylonian counterpart. This Talmud is a synopsis of the analysis of the Mishnah that was developed over the course of nearly years by the Academies in Galilee principally those of Tiberias and Caesarea. Because of their location, the sages of these Academies devoted considerable attention to analysis of the agricultural laws of the Land of Israel. It is traditionally known as the Talmud Yerushalmi "Jerusalem Talmud" , but the name is a misnomer, as it was not prepared in Jerusalem.
It has more accurately been called "The Talmud of the Land of Israel". Its final redaction probably belongs to the end of the 4th century, but the individual scholars who brought it to its present form cannot be fixed with assurance. By this time Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire and Jerusalem the holy city of Christendom. In , Constantine the Great , the first Christian emperor, said "let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd.
The compilers of the Jerusalem Talmud consequently lacked the time to produce a work of the quality they had intended. The text is evidently incomplete and is not easy to follow. The apparent cessation of work on the Jerusalem Talmud in the 5th century has been associated with the decision of Theodosius II in to suppress the Patriarchate and put an end to the practice of semikhah , formal scholarly ordination.
Some modern scholars have questioned this connection: Place and date of composition.
Despite its incomplete state, the Jerusalem Talmud remains an indispensable source of knowledge of the development of the Jewish Law in the Holy Land. It was also an important resource in the study of the Babylonian Talmud by the Kairouan school of Chananel ben Chushiel and Nissim ben Jacob , with the result that opinions ultimately based on the Jerusalem Talmud found their way into both the Tosafot and the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides.
Following the formation of the modern state of Israel there is some interest in restoring Eretz Yisrael traditions. For example, rabbi David Bar-Hayim of the Makhon Shilo institute has issued a siddur reflecting Eretz Yisrael practice as found in the Jerusalem Talmud and other sources. The Babylonian Talmud Talmud Bavli consists of documents compiled over the period of late antiquity 3rd to 5th centuries.
The Babylonian Talmud comprises the Mishnah and the Babylonian Gemara, the latter representing the culmination of more than years of analysis of the Mishnah in the Talmudic Academies in Babylonia. The work begun by Rav Ashi was completed by Ravina, who is traditionally regarded as the final Amoraic expounder. Accordingly, traditionalists argue that Ravina's death in CE [15] is the latest possible date for the completion of the redaction of the Talmud.
However, even on the most traditional view a few passages are regarded as the work of a group of rabbis who edited the Talmud after the end of the Amoraic period, known as the Savoraim or Rabbanan Savora'e meaning "reasoners" or "considerers". The question as to when the Gemara was finally put into its present form is not settled among modern scholars. Some, like Louis Jacobs , argue that the main body of the Gemara is not simple reportage of conversations, as it purports to be, but a highly elaborate structure contrived by the Savoraim roughly — CE , who must therefore be regarded as the real authors.
On this view the text did not reach its final form until around Some modern scholars use the term Stammaim from the Hebrew Stam , meaning "closed", "vague" or "unattributed" for the authors of unattributed statements in the Gemara. See eras within Jewish law. There are significant differences between the two Talmud compilations.
The language of the Jerusalem Talmud is a western Aramaic dialect, which differs from the form of Aramaic in the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud Yerushalmi is often fragmentary and difficult to read, even for experienced Talmudists. The redaction of the Talmud Bavli, on the other hand, is more careful and precise.
The law as laid down in the two compilations is basically similar, except in emphasis and in minor details. The Jerusalem Talmud has not received much attention from commentators, and such traditional commentaries as exist are mostly concerned with comparing its teachings to those of the Talmud Bavli. Neither the Jerusalem nor the Babylonian Talmud covers the entire Mishnah: The Babylonian version also contains the opinions of more generations because of its later date of completion.
For both these reasons it is regarded as a more comprehensive collection of the opinions available. On the other hand, because of the centuries of redaction between the composition of the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud, the opinions of early amoraim might be closer to their original form in the Jerusalem Talmud. The influence of the Babylonian Talmud has been far greater than that of the Yerushalmi. In the main, this is because the influence and prestige of the Jewish community of Israel steadily declined in contrast with the Babylonian community in the years after the redaction of the Talmud and continuing until the Gaonic era.
Furthermore, the editing of the Babylonian Talmud was superior to that of the Jerusalem version, making it more accessible and readily usable. According to Maimonides whose life began almost a hundred years after the end of the Gaonic era , all Jewish communities during the Gaonic era formally accepted the Babylonian Talmud as binding upon themselves, and modern Jewish practice follows the Babylonian Talmud's conclusions on all areas in which the two Talmuds conflict.
The structure of the Talmud follows that of the Mishnah, in which six orders sedarim ; singular: Each tractate is divided into chapters perakim ; singular: A perek may continue over several up to tens of pages. 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. 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. In addition to the Mishnah, other tannaitic teachings were current at about the same time or shortly thereafter.
The Gemara frequently refers to these tannaitic statements in order to compare them to those contained in the Mishnah and to support or refute the propositions of the Amoraim. 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. In the three centuries following the redaction of the Mishnah, rabbis in Israel and Babylonia analyzed, debated, and discussed that work.
These discussions form the Gemara. The Gemara mainly focuses on elucidating and elaborating the opinions of the Tannaim. The rabbis of the Gemara are known as Amoraim sing. Much of the Gemara consists of legal analysis. The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements used in different approaches to biblical exegesis in rabbinic Judaism or - simpler - interpretation of text in Torah study exchanges between two frequently anonymous and sometimes metaphorical disputants, termed the makshan questioner and tartzan answerer.
Another important function of Gemara is to identify the correct biblical basis for a given law presented in the Mishnah and the logical process connecting one with the other: 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.
Within the Gemara , the quotations from the Mishnah and the Baraitas and verses of Tanakh quoted and embedded in the Gemara are in either Mishnaic or Biblical Hebrew. The rest of the Gemara, including the discussions of the Amoraim and the overall framework, is in a characteristic dialect of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic. Overall, Hebrew constitutes somewhat less than half of the text of the Talmud. This difference in language is due to the long time period elapsing between the two compilations.
During the period of the Tannaim rabbis cited in the Mishnah , a late form of Hebrew known as Rabbinic or Mishnaic Hebrew was still in use as a spoken vernacular among Jews in Judaea alongside Greek and Aramaic , whereas during the period of the Amoraim rabbis cited in the Gemara , which began around CE, the spoken vernacular was almost exclusively Aramaic. Hebrew continued to be used for the writing of religious texts, poetry, and so forth. The first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg —23 [22] [23] [24] [25] with the support of Pope Leo X.
Almost all printings since Bomberg have followed the same pagination. Bomberg's edition was considered relatively free of censorship. Following Ambrosius Frobenius 's publication of most of the Talmud in installments in Basel, Immanuel Benveniste published the whole Talmud in installments in Amsterdam —, [31] Although according to Raphael Rabbinovicz the Benveniste Talmud may have been based on the Lublin Talmud and included many of the censors' errors. The edition of the Talmud published by the Szapira brothers in Slavuta in is particularly prized by many rebbes of Hasidic Judaism.
In , after an acrimonious dispute with the Szapira family, a new edition of the Talmud was printed by Menachem Romm of Vilna. Known as the Vilna Edition Shas , this edition and later ones printed by his widow and sons, the Romm publishing house has been used in the production of more recent editions of Talmud Bavli. The convention of referencing by daf is relatively recent and dates from the early Talmud printings of the 17th century, though the actual pagination goes back to the Bomberg edition. Earlier rabbinic literature generally refers to the tractate or chapters within a tractate e.
It sometimes also refers to the specific Mishnah in that chapter, where "Mishnah" is replaced with "Halakha", here meaning route, to "direct" the reader to the entry in the Gemara corresponding to that Mishna e. However, this form is nowadays more commonly though not exclusively used when referring to the Jerusalem Talmud. Increasingly, the symbols ".
These references always refer to the pagination of the Vilna Talmud. In the Vilna edition of the Talmud there are 5, folio pages. Lazarus Goldschmidt published an edition from the "uncensored text" of the Babylonian Talmud with a German translation in 9 vols. The text of the Vilna editions is considered by scholars not to be uniformly reliable, and there have been a number of attempts to collate textual variants. There have been critical editions of particular tractates e.
Henry Malter 's edition of Ta'anit , but there is no modern critical edition of the whole Talmud. Modern editions such as those of the Oz ve-Hadar Institute correct misprints and restore passages that in earlier editions were modified or excised by censorship but do not attempt a comprehensive account of textual variants. One edition, by rabbi Yosef Amar, [35] represents the Yemenite tradition, and takes the form of a photostatic reproduction of a Vilna-based print to which Yemenite vocalization and textual variants have been added by hand, together with printed introductory material.
Collations of the Yemenite manuscripts of some tractates have been published by Columbia University. A number of editions have been aimed at bringing the Talmud to a wider audience. The main ones are as follows. The translation was carried out by a group of 90 Muslim and Christian scholars. Raquel Ukeles, Curator of the Israel National Library's Arabic collection, as "racist", but she considers the translation itself as "not bad". 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 The earliest Talmud commentaries were written by the Geonim c.
Although some direct commentaries on particular treatises are extant, our main knowledge of Gaonic era Talmud scholarship comes from statements embedded in Geonic responsa that shed light on Talmudic passages: One area of Talmudic scholarship developed out of the need to ascertain the Halakha. Early commentators such as rabbi Isaac Alfasi North Africa, — attempted to extract and determine the binding legal opinions from the vast corpus of the Talmud.
Alfasi's work was highly influential, attracted several commentaries in its own right and later served as a basis for the creation of halakhic codes. Another influential medieval Halakhic work following the order of the Babylonian Talmud, and to some extent modelled on Alfasi, was "the Mordechai ", a compilation by Mordechai ben Hillel c.
A third such work was that of rabbi Asher ben Yechiel d. All these works and their commentaries are printed in the Vilna and many subsequent editions of the Talmud. A 15th-century Spanish rabbi, Jacob ibn Habib d. It was intended to familiarize the public with the ethical parts of the Talmud and to dispute many of the accusations surrounding its contents.
There are many passages in the Talmud which are cryptic and difficult to understand. Its language contains many Greek and Persian words that became obscure over time. A major area of Talmudic scholarship developed to explain these passages and words. These commentaries could be read with the text of the Talmud and would help explain the meaning of the text.
Jechiel created a lexicon called the Arukh in the 11th century to help translate difficult words. By far the best known commentary on the Babylonian Talmud is that of Rashi rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, — The commentary is comprehensive, covering almost the entire Talmud. Written as a running commentary, it provides a full explanation of the words, and explains the logical structure of each Talmudic passage. It is considered indispensable to students of the Talmud. Medieval Ashkenazic Jewry produced another major commentary known as Tosafot "additions" or "supplements". The Tosafot are collected commentaries by various medieval Ashkenazic rabbis on the Talmud known as Tosafists or Ba'alei Tosafot.
One of the main goals of the Tosafot is to explain and interpret contradictory statements in the Talmud. Unlike Rashi, the Tosafot is not a running commentary, but rather comments on selected matters. Often the explanations of Tosafot differ from those of Rashi. The Tosafot commentaries were collected in different editions in the various schools. The benchmark collection of Tosafot for Northern France was that of R. The Tosafot that are printed in the standard Vilna edition of the Talmud are an edited version compiled from the various medieval collections, predominantly that of Touques.
Over time, the approach of the Tosafists spread to other Jewish communities, particularly those in Spain. This led to the composition of many other commentaries in similar styles. A comprehensive anthology consisting of extracts from all these is the Shittah Mekubbetzet of Bezalel Ashkenazi. Other commentaries produced in Spain and Provence were not influenced by the Tosafist style. Like the commentaries of Ramban and the others, these are generally printed as independent works, though some Talmud editions include the Shittah Mekubbetzet in an abbreviated form.
In later centuries, focus partially shifted from direct Talmudic interpretation to the analysis of previously written Talmudic commentaries. These later commentaries include "Maharshal" Solomon Luria , "Maharam" Meir Lublin and " Maharsha " Samuel Edels , and are generally printed at the back of each tractate.
Another very useful study aid, found in almost all editions of the Talmud, consists of the marginal notes Torah Or , Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah and Masoret ha-Shas by the Italian rabbi Joshua Boaz , which give references respectively to the cited Biblical passages, to the relevant halachic codes and to related Talmudic passages. Most editions of the Talmud include brief marginal notes by Akiva Eger under the name Gilyon ha-Shas , and textual notes by Joel Sirkes and the Vilna Gaon see Textual emendations below , on the page together with the text.
During the 15th and 16th centuries, a new intensive form of Talmud study arose. Complicated logical arguments were used to explain minor points of contradiction within the Talmud. The term pilpul was applied to this type of study. Usage of pilpul in this sense that of "sharp analysis" harks back to the Talmudic era and refers to the intellectual sharpness this method demanded.
It is written largely in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic , a Western Aramaic language that differs from its Babylonian counterpart. This page was last edited on 20 December , at The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. There is a quoted Talmudic passage, for example, where Jesus of Nazareth is sent to Hell to be boiled in excrement for eternity. Retrieved 18 November The law as laid down in the two compilations is basically similar, except in emphasis and in minor details.
Pilpul practitioners posited that the Talmud could contain no redundancy or contradiction whatsoever. New categories and distinctions hillukim were therefore created, resolving seeming contradictions within the Talmud by novel logical means.
In the Ashkenazi world the founders of pilpul are generally considered to be Jacob Pollak — and Shalom Shachna. This kind of study reached its height in the 16th and 17th centuries when expertise in pilpulistic analysis was considered an art form and became a goal in and of itself within the yeshivot of Poland and Lithuania. But the popular new method of Talmud study was not without critics; already in the 15th century, the ethical tract Orhot Zaddikim "Paths of the Righteous" in Hebrew criticized pilpul for an overemphasis on intellectual acuity.
Many 16th- and 17th-century rabbis were also critical of pilpul. By the 18th century, pilpul study waned. Other styles of learning such as that of the school of Elijah b. Solomon, the Vilna Gaon , became popular. The term "pilpul" was increasingly applied derogatorily to novellae deemed casuistic and hairsplitting. Authors referred to their own commentaries as "al derekh ha-peshat" by the simple method to contrast them with pilpul. Among Sephardi and Italian Jews from the 15th century on, some authorities sought to apply the methods of Aristotelian logic , as reformulated by Averroes.
Today most Sephardic yeshivot follow Lithuanian approaches such as the Brisker method: In the late 19th century another trend in Talmud study arose. Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik — of Brisk Brest-Litovsk developed and refined this style of study. Brisker method involves a reductionistic analysis of rabbinic arguments within the Talmud or among the Rishonim , explaining the differing opinions by placing them within a categorical structure. The Brisker method is highly analytical and is often criticized as being a modern-day version of pilpul. Nevertheless, the influence of the Brisker method is great.
Most modern day Yeshivot study the Talmud using the Brisker method in some form. One feature of this method is the use of Maimonides ' Mishneh Torah as a guide to Talmudic interpretation, as distinct from its use as a source of practical halakha. Rival methods were those of the Mir and Telz yeshivas. As a result of Jewish emancipation , Judaism underwent enormous upheaval and transformation during the 19th century. Modern methods of textual and historical analysis were applied to the Talmud. The text of the Talmud has been subject to some level of critical scrutiny throughout its history.
Rabbinic tradition holds that the people cited in both Talmuds did not have a hand in its writings; rather, their teachings were edited into a rough form around CE Talmud Yerushalmi and CE Talmud Bavli. The text of the Bavli especially was not firmly fixed at that time. The Gaonic responsa literature addresses this issue.
Teshuvot Geonim Kadmonim, section 78, deals with mistaken biblical readings in the Talmud. This Gaonic responsum states:. But you must examine carefully in every case when you feel uncertainty [as to the credibility of the text] - what is its source? Whether a scribal error?
Or the superficiality of a second rate student who was not well versed? And since they erred in the first place In the early medieval era, Rashi already concluded that some statements in the extant text of the Talmud were insertions from later editors. The emendations of Yoel Sirkis and the Vilna Gaon are included in all standard editions of the Talmud, in the form of marginal glosses entitled Hagahot ha-Bach and Hagahot ha-Gra respectively; further emendations by Solomon Luria are set out in commentary form at the back of each tractate.
The Vilna Gaon's emendations were often based on his quest for internal consistency in the text rather than on manuscript evidence; [61] nevertheless many of the Gaon's emendations were later verified by textual critics, such as Solomon Schechter , who had Cairo Genizah texts with which to compare our standard editions.
In the 19th century Raphael Nathan Nota Rabinovicz published a multi-volume work entitled Dikdukei Soferim , showing textual variants from the Munich and other early manuscripts of the Talmud, and further variants are recorded in the Complete Israeli Talmud and Gemara Shelemah editions see Critical editions , above. Today many more manuscripts have become available, in particular from the Cairo Geniza. The Academy of the Hebrew Language has prepared a text on CD-ROM for lexicographical purposes, containing the text of each tractate according to the manuscript it considers most reliable, [63] and images of some of the older manuscripts may be found on the website of the Jewish National and University Library.