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Rabinical Judaism has always held that the books of the Tanach (aka The Old Testament, the written law) have always been transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition. Jews point to the text of the Torah, where many words are left undefined, and many procedures mentioned without explanation or instructions; this they argue means that the reader is assumed to be familiar with the details from other, oral, sources. This parallel set of material was originally trasmitted orally, and came to be known as the oral law. However, by the time [Judah Ha-Nasi]? (200 CE) much of this material was edited together into the Mishnah. Over the next four centuries this law underwent discussion and debate in both of the world's major Jewish communities (in Israel and Babylon), and the commentaries on the Mishnah from both of these communities eventually came to be edited together into compilations known as the Talmud. Halakha or Jewish law and custom thus is not based on a literal reading of the Torah or the rest of the Tanakh, but on the combined oral and written tradition, which includes the Tanakh, Talmud Bavli (the Babylonian Talmud) and Talmud Yerushalmi (the Talmud of Jerusalem--something of a misnomer, since it was edited north of Jerusalem--also known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel or the Palestinian Talmud.) |
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