TALMUD

Talmud, a Chaldaic word signifying 'doctrine,' and sometimes used to designate the whole teaching of the Jewish law, comprising all the writings included in what we call the Old Testament, as well as the oral law or Mishna, with its supplement or commentary the Gemara, but more frequently applied only to the Mishna and Gemara.

The main body of the Talmud - in the second of these two senses - consists of minute directions as to conduct. Its contents are hence very miscellaneous, and they are as varied in their character as in their subject. Much of it is taken up with regulations of the most puerile nature, and not a little with details only fitted to excite disgust. In other parts again there are passages containing the loftiest expression of religions feeling, passages which are said to be the source of almost all that is sublime in the liturgy of the Church of Rome, and those liturgies which have been mainly derived from it. Interspersed throughout the whole are numerous tales and fables, introduced for the sake of illustration.

The Jews are carefully instructed in it, and its very language is sometimes quoted and acknowledged in the New Testament. The injunctions referred to in the sermon on the mount as having been 'said by them of old time' (properly, the elders) are all from the Mishna.

The Gemara was originally an oral commentary of the Mishna, as the Mishna itself was originally an oral commentary of the Mikra, or written law. It consisted of the explanations and illustrations which the teachers of the Mishna were in the habit of giving in the course of their lessons.

These oral comments were handed down from age to age, differing of course in different localities, and gradually increasing in quantity; and they were at last committed to writing in two forms, the one called the Jerusalem and the other the Babylonian Gemara, or, with the addition of the Mishna, which is common to both, the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud.

The Jerusalem Talmud is the earlier and by much the smaller of the two. The language of both the Gemara is a mixed Hebrew, but that of the Babylonian Gemara is much less pure than the other; in the narrative portions, designed as popular illustrations of the other parts, It comes near the Aramic or vernacular dialect of the Eastern Jews. The style is in both cases extremely condensed and difficult. The Mishna with its corresponding Gemara, is divided into six orders or principal divisions. The subjects of these orders are agriculture, festivals, women, damages, holy things, and purifications.

These orders at subdivided into sixty-three tracts, to which the Babylonian Gemara adds five others, thus containing sixty-eight tracts in all. Other divisions of the Talmud are the Halaka, the doctrinal and logical portion; Hagada, the rhetorical or imaginative portion; and Cabala, the mystical portion, Including theosophy and magic.

Many translations of parts of the Talmud have appeared.