T Talmud The Talmud of Judaism is a collection of commentaries It is the extended and loosely organized elaboration of selected tractates of the Mishnah, an earlier religious book Its contents are not limited by the Mishnah but often serve as the base for wide-ranging discussions Ancient rabbis found all kinds of reasons for recording their discussions on Talmudic topics, and this eventually became the constitution of medieval Jewish life It is the source for the Torah among rabbinic Jews today, binding on orthodox Jews Legal rulings within the Talmud are called the Halakhah, and the interpretations and the stories that support the rulings are the Haggadah Technically the Talmud means the whole body of rabbinic materials, namely, the Mishnah and its later commentaries, while the Gemara refers specifically to the commentary on the Mishnah In common parlance, however, the Talmud refers to the Gemara, or commentary on the Mishnah, written between 200 and 600 c.e The writers of the Talmud are the “sages” of various periods of Jewish history The rabbis before the Mishnah are called the tannaim, from a Hebrew word meaning “teach” or “repeat.” The rabbis who lived after the Mishnah are called the amoraim, from an Aramaic word meaning “discuss.” The sevoraim come after the amoraim, and their name comes from the Aramaic word for “reconsider” or “rethink an opinion.” Finally come the geonim, from the Hebrew word for “learned,” usually applied to the authoritative later teachers The Talmud loosely follows the organization of the Mishnah, divided into the orders or tractates, then chapters, and then paragraphs The technique of developing the topic is to go over each phrase of the Mishnah and discuss it thoroughly Sometimes digressions slip in and go on for pages before the Mishnah lines are taken up again For several generations sages debated and consulted about the meaning of the Mishnah These discussions were collected and passed down orally or as makeshift documents Additions and revisions and shifting within the collections meant that they were not standardized texts Sometimes free associations of ideas and even extraneous materials were included and added to the confusion of the collections As time went on, rabbis felt free to comment on the original commentaries in order to give clarity and relevance The earliest comments were mostly law related: brief, apodictic statements of law; later, comments were longer dialectical treatments of laws and principles There grew to be two centers where Jews compiled available Gemara into their own Talmuds: Palestine and Babylonia The Yerushalmi, or Palestinian, Talmud mostly reflects the work of Galilean rabbis, and it was completed by the mid-fifth century c.e It is characterized by brevity and an absence of clarification and editorial transitions, which is in keeping with its early dating Its discussions are seen as elliptical and terse, but occasionally dialogues arise and show development of argument and resolutions The Bavli, or Babylonian, Talmud was completed by the year 500 c.e However, there are discussions that show development over a longer time period (450–650) The Bavli is far more worked out than 451