The Palestinian (Jerusalem) and Babylonian Talmuds

Following its redaction in the early third century CE, the Mishnah became the central oral text in the rabbinic curriculum. Several generations of sages known as amoraim (sg., amora) and their disciples studied the Mishnah in relation to associated baraitot. Individual paragraphs of Mishnah were analyzed, and the various tannaitic views cited therein would be explained, challenged, supported, expanded, or delimited. The amoraim might derive general principles of action or judicial decision-making from the cases of the Mishnah, introduce precedents and exemplary court cases, draw analogies between the case in the Mishnah and cases in other areas of the law, attempt to systematize the views of individual rabbis, show or create a biblical basis for the Mishnah’s teachings, and so on. The explanations and discussions of the Mishnah generated by the amoraim were ultimately woven together into superstructures of commentary and argumentation (gemara, from the Aramaic term for “study”) by anonymous (stam) redactors. The term Talmud refers to the totality of Mishnah plus its gemara commentary.

Because the Mishnah was studied by amoraim in both Palestine and Babylonia, each of these centers produced its own Talmud. The Palestinian Talmud (also known as the Jerusalem Talmud or the Yerushalmi), compiled by rabbis in northern Palestine, was finalized before 400 CE. The Babylonian Talmud, compiled by rabbis in Babylonia, is at least four times the size of the Palestinian Talmud (somewhat more than two million words) and reached its final form as late as the seventh century CE. Debates about its dating persist, and—despite intensive and impressive research over the past fifteen years—we are still generally ignorant about life in Sasanian Mesopotamia, where the work was for the most part written.

Because scholars traveled between the two centers, traditions and teachings of Palestinian sages were transmitted to Babylonia and are found on nearly every page of the Babylonian Talmud, while some Babylonian teachings were transmitted to Palestine and are to be found in the Palestinian Talmud. The Palestinian Talmud covers the first four orders of the Mishnah, while the Babylonian Talmud covers the middle four orders and two additional tractates.

The Palestinian Talmud is a concise work composed primarily of brief comments, glosses, and explanations of the Mishnah around which it revolves. The Babylonian Talmud is far more elaborate and developed. It eventually eclipsed the Palestinian Talmud to become the classic text and exemplar of rabbinic Judaism, referred to simply as the Talmud. Amoraic traditions of the third to fifth centuries CE are embedded by later anonymous editors (savoraim) from the sixth and seventh centuries CE in complex dialectical structures whose elaborate and discursive debates and discussions (sugyot; sg., sugya) leave the Mishnah far behind. Many of these discussions are literary and intellectual masterpieces, carefully crafted tours of a set of related rabbinic teachings, biblical verses, legal principles, hypothetical test cases, and aggadic material (about one-third of the Babylonian Talmud is aggadah, nonlegal literary material). Although most of the material is presented in dialogue form—questions and answers, objections and rejoinders, refutations and counter-refutations—it is quite clear that talmudic discussions do not generally record actual conversations, if only because the participants in these “debates” often lived in different periods and geographical regions. The anonymous editors brought a wide variety of source materials together in a grandly orchestrated piece.