Talmud

The Talmud (Hebrew תַּלְמוּד, German instruction, study) is one of the most important literary works of Judaism. It consists of two parts, the older and the younger Mishnah Gemara, and is available in two editions ago, the Babylonian ( Talmud Bavli ) and the Jerusalem Talmud ( Talmud Yerushalmi ). The Talmud itself does not contain legal texts, but also shows how the rules of the Torah were in practice and in everyday life understood and interpreted by the rabbis.

• 4.1 antiquity
• 4.2 Middle Ages
• 4.3 Modern Times

Origin and Meaning

The Talmud exists in two major issues. After the scope and weight of the Talmud Bavli on content, the Babylonian Talmud (abbreviated: VC ), the more important work. He was born in the relatively large, enclosed Jewish settlements that existed after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the Jewish friendly Persian Empire, specifically in Sura and Pumbedita. This area was in Judaism traditionally referred to as " Babylon", although a city or a state such a name no longer existed since the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in the 5th century BC. As the contributing authors, the Rabbi Abba Arikha apply ( called Raw), Samuel Jarchinai ( Mar) and Rav Ashi.

Next to it is the considerably shorter, in its provisions often less stringent and less important Talmud Yerushalmi, who was born in Palestine. In ancient times it was called eretz israel talmud ( Talmud Land of Israel) or Talmud de - maaraba ( Talmud of the West). Today we usually call him Talmud Yerushalmi ( Jerusalem Talmud ). In the scientific literature it is referred to as " of Palestinian Talmud " (abbreviated: pT). Christian Scholars call him sometimes Palestinian Talmud. This is true according to Jewish tradition, which goes back to Maimonides, the most important author Rabbi Yochanan.

When it is simply spoken of the Talmud, is usually meant the Babylonian Talmud.

The first print of the Talmud comes from Daniel Bomberg, a product coming from Antwerp Christian who was in Venice, 1516-1539. Introduced by Bomberg Folio count is still used today.

Structure and Content

There are various methods of material breakdown in the Talmud:

Tradition layers

The core of the Talmud, the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה ( teaching through ) repeat). It is to that part of the Torah (Hebrew תּוֹרָה ), the God according to Jewish tradition Moses at Mount Sinai has revealed verbally and also initially only transmitted orally in the subsequent period, the 1st or 2nd century but eventually codified been. Your final shape has written in Hebrew Mishna in the second century under the editorial leadership of Judah ha - Nasi. It is identical in the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud essentially.

The second layer of the Talmud, the Gemara ( Aramaic: גמרא teaching, scholarship ), which consists of commentary and analysis on the Mishnah in Aramaic. They are the fruit of extensive and deep philosophical discussions among Jewish scholars, especially in the academies of Sura and Pumbedita. Starting from the most purely legal issues links to other areas such as medicine, science, history or education were made. Even the more objective style of the Mishnah was enriched with various fables, legends, parables, riddles, etc.. The Gemara was completed between the 5th and 8th centuries. Unlike the standard versions of the Mishnah, the Gemara soft in the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian issue from one another.

In the Babylonian Talmud, finally, as a third layer, the comments from a later time once. These are so far especially those of Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchak (called " Rashi " ), an action in France and Germany in the 11th century Talmudic scholar.

The constant development of the tradition through discussion, comment and analysis characterizes the continuous dialectical style of the Talmud. The preferred means of representation is the dialogue between various rabbinical schools of thought, which leads to a decision at the end and reproduces the relevant state of the tradition.

Usually, the individual parts of the text are arranged so that the Mishnah is in the middle of each side. Left and below it an L-shape is framed by the Gemara. The text strip along the top inside edge of a page containing the comments of Rashi, at the outer edge and, if necessary, at the bottom, finally, any further comments.

Functional and stylistic classification

Transverse to the already mentioned division of the Talmud in the three layers tradition is the division into the practical interpretation of the statutory provisions ( Halacha, הלכה ) and the narrative and edifying ( homiletic ) considerations ( Aggada, אגדה ). It is found only in the two layers comment, but hardly in the existing almost exclusively of Halacha Mishnah.

In his poem Ben Yehuda Halevy Heinrich Heine compares the halacha with a " fencing school where the best athletes dialectical (...) drove their fighter games". The Aggadah, which he called " Haggadah " is the name falsely, was, however, " a garden, high fantastical " in which it " beautiful old legends, angel tales and legends ", use " silent martyr histories, hard songs, wisdom sayings (...)".

Objective classification

A third classification system is ultimately based on objective principles. Both Talmuds are, as their underlying Mishnah, in six "orders" ( Seder, סדר ) divided, in turn, in 7 to 12 tractates ( masechet, מסכת ). The treatises in turn consist of sections and ultimately from individual Mischnajot.

The title of the orders are:

• Seraim ( זרעים, " sowing" ): agricultural levies to priests, people in need, strangers
• Moed ( מועד, "Hard Times" ): Hard and Fast Days
• Nashim ( נשים, "Women" ): Family Law
• Nesikin ( נזיקין, " Damages" ): criminal and tort law
• Kodaschim ( קדשים, " sanctuaries " ) cult of sacrifice among others
• Ṭohorot ( טהרות, " cleaning " ): purity of victims venues, including

Language

In addition to the Hebrew is mainly Aramaic language of the Talmud. The Talmud is usually studied in the original languages ​​.

In Jewish publisher appeared from 1929 to 1936, the first and only complete and uncensored German translation of the Babylonian Talmud. The translation is by Lazarus Goldschmidt. This edition comprises 12 volumes. In page setup it differs from the standard editions. The Mishnah is set in small caps. Below this is the Gemara in the standard rate. It is introduced in each case with the set in uppercase word " Gemara ". Additional comments on the Mishnah or Gemara are set as footnotes. In the original edition and the reprint there is only a table of contents for each band, no table of contents for all volumes. The division into sections not give these directories again.

The abuse of the Talmud in Judaism and anti-Semitism

Since the Talmud was identified in the perception with the very essence of Judaism itself, attacks were directed against the Jews usually also against this.

Antiquity

Early on, Jews were dealing with the law on religion prohibits multiple times. Such a prohibition is specified by the rabbinic historiography as one of the reasons of the Bar Kochba revolt. In the year 553, Emperor Justinian I, a law that forbade the study of Jews interpret rosis, which the Mishnah or employment with the Halacha was generally meant. Pope Leo VI. renewed later this ban.

Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages there was greater hostility against the Talmud. Some of these attacks came from Jews converted to Christianity. So the Talmuddisputation of Paris in 1240 came from the convert Nicholas Donin, which had been done in 1224 by the rabbis in the spell and was converted to Christianity in 1236. In 1238, he called in a font with 35 points against the Talmud its prohibition of Pope Gregory IX. As a result of the disputation between Donin and Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph was there in 1242 the first major Talmud combustion.

1244 Pope Innocent IV decreed the destruction of all first editions of the Talmud. He revised this judgment in 1247 on Jewish request, but prompted the censorship of the Talmud, and commissioned at the same time an investigation committee of the University of Paris, which included 40 experts, including Albertus Magnus. The Commission came to a renewed conviction, which was announced in 1248.

In a further disputation on the Talmud between the fallen and converted from Judaism Pablo Christiani and the Jewish scholar Rabbi Moses ben Nachman 1263 in Barcelona declared King of Spain, however, Rabbi Moses ben Nachman winner. By the end of the 16th century, then disputations, councils and church gatherings were accompanied by bans, confiscations and burns of the Talmud. Pope Julius III. made in 1553 in Rome seize the plant and publicly burn the collected specimens on 9 September, the Jewish New Year. Then the Inquisition came on the scene, which recommended the rulers in all Christian countries in a decree Talmud burns. Under threatening with their loss of property Jews should be forced to deliver the Talmud copies within three days. Christians should be punished with excommunication if they should dare to read the Talmud to maintain or to assist Jews in this matter.

In anti-Jewish publications sites were quoted from the Talmud, to bring the Jewish religion and tradition into disrepute. In part, it is at the " citations " counterfeit. But the real quotes are usually torn out of context and take account of the prevailing form of dialogue in the Talmud, often controversial approach to a topic not invoice. In Talmudic discourse are often aware untenable theses ( such as: " non-Jews are not human " ) thrown into the discussion in order to refute them then in the dialog. Use Antijudaisten to the present preferably those " theories ", but conceal the following antitheses, so that a corrupted overall impression of the religious guidance of the Talmud and the Jewish religion altogether arises.

A rare exception was the humanist Johannes Reuchlin, who is considered the first non-Jewish German and Hebrew scholar, who learned the Hebrew language and script for better understanding. He published a Hebrew grammar, wrote about Kabbalah and defended the Talmud and the Jewish scriptures in a dispute with Johannes Pfefferkorn.

Modern Times

The reformer Martin Luther called in 1543 in his treatise On the Jews and Their Lies next to the burning of synagogues and Jewish homes and the confiscation of all Jewish books, including the Talmud. But the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation in the Talmud in 1559 on the first Index of Forbidden Books.

In the 17th century there were some humanists and Christian Hebrew scholar, who took the Talmud against the then -Judaism in the protection and tried, with the help of the Talmud and rabbinic literature to better understand the New Testament and Christianity. The Basel theologian Johann Buxtorf the Younger in 1629 translated the religious-philosophical works Guide of the Perplexed of the medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides and completed in 1639 that the Elder begun by his father Johann Buxtorf Lexicon chaldaicum, talmudicum et rabbinicum. The Anglican theologian John Lightfoot presented in Horae Hebraicae Talmudicae of 1685 for the first time along the Talmudic parallels to the New Testament.

The anti-Jewish author Johann Andreas Eisenmenger collected the passages from the known to him rabbinic literature, especially the Talmud, which were likely to discredit Judaism and to encourage anti-Jewish prejudices, and published them in 1700 under the title is discovered Judaism. The work is considered the most popular of the many written by Christian authors against the rabbinic literature polemics and served for example, for August blank diatribe The Talmud Jew and for many anti-Semites of the 19th and 20th centuries as a source for their defamation.

The practice of abusing the Talmud to the denigration of Judaism and the Jews is widespread even today, both in the Christian religious anti-Judaism, as in Islamic religious anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in the secular.

Expenditure

• The Babylonian Talmud. Selected, translated and explained by Reinhold Mayer. Wilhelm Goldmann, Munich 1963 ( about 600 pages)
• Lazarus Goldschmidt (translator ): The Babylonian Talmud, 12 vols, Frankfurt / M. 2002, ISBN 3-633-54200-0 (reprint, originally Berlin 1929-1936 )
• I. Epstein, ed, The Babylonian Talmud. Translated into English with notes, glossary and indices, 35 vols, London 1935-1952 (reprinted in 18 volumes, London, 1961)
• The Talmud Bavli Schottenstein Edition. English Edition. Artscroll Mesorah. New York
• The Talmud Bavli Safra Edition. French Translation from Artscroll Mesorah Publishers. New York

Concordances

• Chayim Yehoshua Kasovsky, thesaurus Talmudis. Reperiuntur Concordantiae verborum quae in Talmudim Babilonico, 41 volumes, Jerusalem 1954-1982
• Biniamin Kosowsky, thesaurus Nominum Quae in Talmudim Babylonico Reperiuntur, Jerusalem 1976 ff