Babylonian Talmud - The Center and Source of Judaism

Along with mathematics, philosophy, Confucianism, and the great classics of the religious traditions of the Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist intellect, the Talmud is one of the enduring writings of human civilization. In common with other classics of humanity, it undertakes the great task of the civilizing intellect: to convey a cogent vision of humanity in a just society - to form of the bits and pieces of the workaday world a coherent conception of the social order. Through the details of normative law and theology, the Talmud records Judaism's master-narrative of the human condition.

The Talmud consists of a law code and a commentary on that code. The code is called the Mishnah (ca. 200 C.E.), a systematic exposition of sixty topics, and is held by Judaism to record the originally oral part of the Torah that was revealed by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The commentary is called the Gemara or (somewhat confusingly) simply, the Talmud (ca. 600 C.E.). The Gemara or Talmud is organized around laws of the Mishnah and also contains compositions devoted to Scripture's law and theology, which explain and amplify passages of the written part of the Torah of Sinai (known by Christianity as "the Old Testament"). Thus: the Mishnah + the Gemara = the Talmud. Simply stated: the Mishnah presents laws and is about life, while the Gemara analyzes laws and is about the Mishnah.

The Gemara's analytical, argumentative commentary on the Mishnah's law emphasizes applied reason and practical logic, explains the regular and the routine rules of conduct and conviction, and harmonizes cases where different laws seem to conflict in principle. Its discussions cover the protracted age fromMoses at Sinai to the seventh century of the Common Era, thus drawing on nearly two millennia of the Judaic culture, lived out both in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia. Its exposition of law and theology, though cumulative over time, forms a systematic account of the norms of behavior and belief set forth in one brief span of time at Sinai in order to portray a timeless world of reason and order.