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| Bruce James "Lecture" on the development of the Talmud© 2004 by Bruce H. James Judaism believes that the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai directly by G-d. The 613 commandments, at least generally, were written down into what we know as the Five Books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). But many details and instructions regarding these commandments were not written down. The Written Torah itself hints at this at several places, most obviously at Deut. 12:21, where G-d says "Then you may slaughter of your herd and flock...as I have commanded you." One problem, nowhere in the written Torah is there any commandment regarding how to slaughter. From this verse we know that the method was taught by G-d to Moses and he, in turn, orally taught those details to Joshua and the Elders, who in turn passed it on to their successors, and so on. Many commandments beg for further definition, such as the fact that the Torah forbids working on Shabbat, but it does not tell us what "work" entails for this purpose. But its apparent from the story in Numbers 15:32-36 that the Jewish people in fact knew what acts of work were forbidden on Shabbat. In those verses we learn that the congregation found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, but they brought him to Moses for determination of punishment, since they had not yet been taught what punishment was appropriate. According to our tradition, Moses learned of 39 categories of work from G-d at Mt. Sinai and conveyed those orally to future generations. Mishna, Shabbat 7:2. A violation of any act proscribed within these 39 categories is therefore a Biblical violation since it was directly taught by G-d. The rabbis, especially the Pharisees, preserved the orally transmitted Torah lessons from generation to generation with special care not to deviate from the teachings. They also legislated rabbinic commandments, which are of a lower level of importance than Biblical commandments, in order to create a "fence around the Torah" -- that is these rabbinic commandments were designed to help average Jews from violating Biblical commandments. So, in summary, there were three levels of commandments -- (1) those commandments specifically mentioned in the Written Torah; (2) G-d given commandments known from the Oral Torah; and (3) rabbinic ordinances. The Torah, in many places recognizes these three types of commandments, e.g. "...I command you this day to ... keep His commandments and His statutes and His ordinances...." Deut. 30:16. By referring to G-d's "commandments", "statutes", and "ordinances", the Torah is recognizing the existence of the written Torah commandments, the Oral Torah commandments, and the Rabbinic ordinances. In Mishna Avot we have a record of how the oral law was passed down from generation and which sages were charged with preservation and teaching of the oral law, demonstrating an unbroken chain. The history of the subsequent transmission of the Oral Torah and the creation of the Talmud was recorded in the Iggeret Rav Shirer Hagaon, a letter from the head of the famous Babylonian academy of Jewish study at Pumpedesia (now a part of Baghdad) which had a continuous history dating back to the destruction of the First Temple through a generation or two after Rav Shirer died (1000 CE). This letter is cited in Maimonedes' (Rambam) introduction to the Mishna Torah. In the letter Rav Shirer explains that the oral law was faithfully and accurately transmitted, with no disputes among the rabbis, until the time of the Roman conquest of Israel. At that time, students were not as attentive to their teachers as they should have been (students would attend to their teachers 24/7 and in that way would absorb not only the formal lessons of their teachers but also the thought process involved). The first dispute in Torah learning occurred under the leadership of Rav Avtaylon. In the next generation, the zuggim, Hillel and Shammai, were reported to disagree on three issues of law. However, in the subsequent generation, the competing academies of Hillel and Shammai disagreed on numerous issues. Yet, both honored their disagreements by requiring that students memorize and teach the alternative views as well as those opinions of their teachers. Eventually the disagreements became so profound, especially with the death of thousands of students at the hands of the Romans, that Rabbi Judah the Prince (Yehuda HaNasi, aka "Rebbe") collected all of the oral law into a survey of the laws known as the Mishna. Where opinions were in dispute, Rebbe quoted all views, usually by the name of the teacher known for the lesson. But Rebbe excluded some teachings and these were preserved into collections known as B'raisot, which continued to be memorized and passed down. Scholars then would study Rebbe's Mishna but compare those teachings with those of similar B'raisot in order to determine the law and to resolve disputes. Eventually, these studies and debates among the post-Mishnaic era rabbis were recorded in a form known as Gemara. So, using the Mishnas of Rebbe for structure and organization, the Mishna and Gemaras were combined into volumes of books known today as the Talmud. There is a Jerusalem Talmud that contains the teachings of the teachers in Israel, and a Babylonian Talmud, that was completed nearly 200 years later in the 6th century CE, containing (mostly) the debates of the rabbis of Babylonia. This latter version is the one most-often cited because of its breadth of analysis. The Talmud also includes various other theological discussions among the rabbis including speculation about the Messianic Era, reward and punishment, and more, as well as Midrash -- stories that fill in the gaps of Biblical stories, often to teach lessons, rather than solely for their own truth -- and ancient explanations of resolutions to apparent conflicts in the books of the Bible. Because these teachers were closer in time to the events of the Bible and because they represented an unbroken chain of teaching, we consider their undisputed teachings to be authoritative. Of course, this was not the end of the Oral law. Later scholars wrote commentaries or attempted codifications of the law. In addition, bodies of case law exist, called Responsa literature, in which we see how later rabbis applied the teachings of the Torah, written and oral, to cases that could not have anticipated by the scholars of the Gemara and Mishna eras. Baruch Gershom © 2004 by Bruce H. James |
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