TALMUD. A word derived from the Hebrew verb lamed, be has learned. It means doctrine. Among the modern Jews, it signifies an immense collection of illus trative of their laws and usages, forming twelve folio volumes It consists of two parts--the Mishua and the Gemara. The Mishua is a collection of Rabbinical rules and precepts, made in the second century of the Christian era. The whole civil constitution and mode of thinking, as well as language of the Jews, had gradually undergone a complete revolution, and were entirely different, in the time of our Savior, from what they had been in the early periods of the Hebrew com monwealth. The Mosaic books contained rules no longer adapted to the situation; and its new political relations, con nected with the change which had taken place in the religious views of the people, led to many difficult questions, for which no satisfactory solution could be found in their law. The rabbins undertook to supply this defect, partly by commen taries on the Mosaic precepts, and partly by the composition of new rules, which were looked upon as almost equally binding with the former. These comments and additions
were called the oral traditions in contradistinction to the old law or written code. The rabbi Juda—surnamed the Holy— was particularly active in making this collection-150 B. C. which received the name of Mishna, or second law. The later rabbins busied themselves in a similar manner in the composition of commentaries and explanations of the Mishna. Among these works that of the rabbi Jachanan (composed about 230 A. D.) acquired the most celebrity, under the name of Gemara— Chaldaic for completion or doctrine. This l%Iishna and Gemara, together, formed the Jerusalem Tal mud, relating chiefly to the Jews of Palestine. But after the Jews had mostly removed to Babylon, and the synagogue of Palestine had almost entirely disappeared, the Babylonian rabbins gradually composed new commentaries on the Mishna, which, about 500 A. D., were completed, and thus formed the Babylonian Talmud. Many Masonic traditions are drawn from the Talmud; and it contains a more comprehensive description of Solomon's Temple than can be found any where else.