There are two Talmuds, the one called the Talmud of the Occidentals, or the "Jerusalem" (Palestine) Talmud, which was closed at Tiberias, and the other, the " Babylonian" Talmud. The first of these now extends over 39 treatises of the Mishna only, although it once existed to the whole of the first five Sedarim or portions. Its final redaction—falsely attributed to R. Jahanan (died 279)—probably belongs to the end of the 4th c. A.D. ; but the individual academies and masters through whom it received its completion cannot now be fixed with any degree of certainty. There is less dismission and more precision of expression in this than in the second or Babylonian Talmud, emphatically styled " our Talmud," which was not completed until the end of the 5th c., and which makes use of the former. As the real editor of the Babylonian Talmud, ii to be considered Rabbi Ashe, president of the academy of Syra in Babylon (365-127A.D.). Both the Mishna and the Palestine Gemara had, notwithstanding the brief period that had elapsed since their redaction, suffered greatly, partly by corrup tions that had crept into their (unwritten) text through faulty traditions, partly through the new decisions arrived at independently in the afferent younger schools—of which there flourished many in different parts of the Dispersion—and which were at times contradictory to those arrived at under different circumstances in former academies. To put an end to these disputes, and the general confusion arising out of them, which threat ened to end in sheer chaos, R. Ashe, aided by his disciple and friend Abina, or Rabina (abbr. from Rab Abina), commenced the cyclopean task of collecting anew the enor mous mass of Halachistic material which by that time had grown up. The method he pursued was simple enough. His disciples met twice a year at Syra, in spring and in autumn. At the spring gathering, he gave out all the paragraphs of one treatise; and the disciples had the task to find out until the autumn meeting what opinions the differ ent schools had pronounced on the special points thereof. He then investigated the critically, and put it into shape according to a certain order. This process took him, with the assistance of ten secretaries, no less than thirty years; and another thirty years were spent by him in the revision of the work, with which he proceeded in the same manner as he had done with the compilation itself. The final close of the work, however, is not due, as generally stated, to R. Jose, his successor at the academy (died 475), but to the school of the Saburaim at the end of the 5th century.
The Babylonian Talmud, as now extant, comprises the Gemara to almost the whole of the 2d, 3d, and 4th Sedarim (portions), further to the first treatise of the first, and to the first of the last order. The rest, if it ever existed, seems now lost. The whole work is about four times as large as the Jerusalem one, and is 36 treatises, with the commen taries generally added to them in our editions (Hasid and Tosafoth), fill 2,947 folio leaves. The language of the Talmud its, as we said, Aramaic (western and eastern), or " Chaldee," closely approaching to Syriac. The minor idiomatic differences between ' the two are easily accounted for by the different time and place; but the additional matter—quotations and fragments from older Midrash and Gemara collections, Haggada, etc.—is, as before stated, principally written in Hebrew. • The masters of the Mishna (Tanaim) and of the Gemara (Amoraim) were followed by the Saburaim (see above). The code of the oral law had come to a close with the second named; and not its development, but rather its proper study, elucidation, and carrying into practice, was the task of the generations of the learned that followed. Apart from
this, the Aramaic language itself began to die out as the popular language, and required a further study. The Saburaim no longer dared to contradict, but only opined on the meaning and practicability of certain enactments, and undertook the task of inculcating and popularizing the teachings laid down by their sires: apart from bestowing proper care upon the purity of the text itself, and adding some indispensable glosses. Their activity was at its height in the 8th c., when liaraiim (see JEWISH Sacvs), which utterly denied the authority of the Talmud, sprang into existence. Respecting, however, this authority of the Talmud itself, there has never been anything approaching to a canon icity of the code, or of a reception of it as a binding law-book by the whole nation. The great consideration in which it was always held is owing partly to its intrinsic value, and to the fact of its becoming the basis of all further development of Jewish literature (it being undeniably the most trustworthy receptacle of the traditional Jewish law), and partly to a prosecution against the Jews in the Persian empire at the time of Jesdegerd II., Firuz, and Kobad, who closed the schools and academies for a space of nearly 80 years, during which this book was the sole authoritative guide of public conscience, and remained endowed with its importance even when the schools were restored. The best commentaries of the Mishna are by Maimonides and Bartenora; of the Babylonian Tal mud by Bashi (q.v.) and the Tosafists of France and Germany. An abstract of the Tal mud for practical (legal) purposes by Maimonides (q.v.) is called Mishne Thorah. The Mishna was first printed at Naples, 1492; the Talmud of Jerusalem at Venice about 1523. The Babylonian Talmud was first published at Venice in 1520. It is generally printed in twelve folios, the text on the single pages being kept uniform with the pre vious editions, to facilitate the references. No translation of the Gemara has ever been carried further than a few single treatises. The complete Mishne, on the other hand, has been translated repeatedly into Latin, German, Spanish, etc., by Surenhus, Rabe, Jost, and others. We must refrain, in this place, from attempting a general characteri zation of the Talmud, a work completely sui generis. It will assuredly some day, when properly investigated, prove one of the most important records of humanity. Nothing can give even an approximate idea of the immensity of material, historical, geographi cal, philological, poetical, that lies hidden in its mounds. A contribution to the records of fanaticism may also be found in the " exoteric" history of the Talmud, which was, albeit utterly unknown save by a few garbled extracts, prohibited, confiscated, burned, and generally prosecuted and inveighed against by emperors, popes, theologians, and fanatics generally, from Justinian down almost to our own day, as perhaps no other book has ever been. In our own times, however, its value begins to be recognized by great scholars, not merely as the only source of the knowledge of Judaism, but as the chief source—next to the gospels—even for the history of the origin and early days of Christianity; a notion long ago hinted at by eminent divines like' Lightfoot and others. See also JEWS, MmitAsti, HALActra, HAGGADA; and an important essay in the Literary _Remains of Em. Deutsch, author of the above article.