I’ve got some factual-answer questions about Jewish religious books, but I’m asking them in GD rather than GQ because I have a definite feeling that debate will ensue.
I know that for Jews the Torah is the first five books of the Bible, regarded as God’s Law promulgated in a historical context – God told Adam this, Noah that, Abraham something else, and in particular expounded at length on what the righteous man should do to Moses.
The Law is coupled with the Prophets and Writings to produce the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, equivalent to the Old Testament of Protestant Christians, though with the books in a different order.
Is there a real difference in how a Jew regards Torah and the other books of the Tanakh?
To understand the Law, rabbis wrote commentaries, which were collected into stuff called the Mishna and the Talmud, of which there appear to be two versions: Jerusalem and Babylonian.
How are these works regarded? “Holy”? Commentary? If, for example, IzzyR or zev_steinhart wrote a commentary on Deuteronomy, could that ever hope to be included in the Talmud, if it were respected enough? Is there a “closed canon” on what’s in the Talmud?
What’s the difference between the Mishna and the two Talmuds? When you refer to “in the Talmud” do you mean one of those? If so which one?
What are halakha and haggadah, and how do they fit into the above picture? What’s with the stories of rabbis saying or doing something off the wall? I can usually get the point to the stories, but how do they fit into serious study of Judaism?
On a “phyisical” level, a Torah scroll has greater holiness than a book of prophets that is handwritten by a sofer (Jewish scribe) on parchment.
As far as content goes, there is a difference as well. We believe that the Pentatuch was dictated word-for-word by God to Moses. The other prophets, however, received their messages from God, but the words are their own words and the way in which they chose to express God’s message is their own. As such, the words of the Torah have a greater holiness than the words of the prophets. Details of the laws, for example, can be derived from the words of the Torah, but not from the prophets.
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Your understanding of the Talmud is (again, from the Orthodox POV) somewhat different than the way you describe it.
We believe that the written Torah was given along with an Oral explaination. As I’ve posted on these boards before, many of the commandments, as given in the Torah, simply do not contain enough detail to be able to fulfill them properly. The details of these commandments was given in the Oral explaination. This oral tradition was passed down from generation to generation. However, as years passed, there was a danger of the oral tradition being lost. Therefore, Rabbi Yehudah (circa 100 CE) compiled the Mishna, which consists of brief notes on case law. However, many of the details and explanations of the Mishna were not written down.
In later years, there was a fear that even this would be lost. As a result, Ravina and Rav Ashi (circa 500 CE) gathered all the teachings and arguments surrounding the Mishna and compiled the Gemara (or Babylonian Talmud). A similar process by scholars in Israel resulted in the Jerusalem Talmud.
These works, collectively, are the Talmud.
Many other later commentaries have been written on the Talmud and the Bible. While not part of the Talmud per se, they are certainly respected. The commentary of Rashi (1035-1100) on both the Talmud and the Bible is considered the most important and authoritative commentary on these works. However, other commentaries have been written and continue to be written to this day.
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Please see above for the difference between the Mishna and the two Talmuds. Usually the term “Talmud” refers to the Babylonian Talmud, but it could also refer to the whole collection collectively.
Aggada is the portion of the Talmud (interspersed throughout) that is not legal teachings, but rather homolitic teachings on the Bible, tales of the Rabbis, or anything else that is not halachic in nature.
Aggada is intersperesed throughout the gemara. The gemara tends to read like someone who took notes at a debate of a rabbinical meeting. Ideas are put forth, proofs to those ideas advanced, and refutations of those proofs given. Most of the time a decision on a matter will be arrived at; however, sometimes a matter will be left unresolved. Sometimes, one subject will touch upon another and the discussion will go off on to an unrelated tangent, which may be either halachic or agaddic in nature.
Nitpick, Zev. Laws in their entirety can only be derived from the words of the Torah. Details of laws already in the Torah can indeed be derived from the prophets. Example: the details of laws relating to official documents which are derived from Jeremiah.
Chaim, nitpick on your nitpick: As I understand it, it’s not that we derive (via any of the 13 Middos) the details of these laws from the terminology used in connection with Jeremiah’s sale of land, but rather that we corroborate that such-and-such is the correct procedure by reference to what he did.
It seems to me that Zev is more correct, given the rule that divrei Torah midivrei kabbalah lo yalfinan (we can’t derive laws by comparing terminology between the Torah and the rest of the Bible). Note that even where a prophet states a detail of halachah (for example, the rules for the kohanim in Ezekiel ch. 44), the Talmud states (Sanhedrin 22b, et al) that these were indeed part of the original oral tradition from Sinai, meaning that we would know this law even if the prophet hadn’t written it down - so it seems that, strictly speaking, we never do derive any detail of Torah law from the Prophets or Writings.
I almost fear to put my own 2 cents here, after the really knowledgable posters have already given most of the information, but I think it’s proabably important for the later codification of halacha to be considered as well.
Nobody, when finding out whether something is allowed or forbidden, will turn to the Talmud as their source - they will generally go to the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (17th Century?), or some similar book, which is a systematic law book, and which gives order to the Talmud, which as has been mentioned can go all over the place. For example, the name of each book of the Talmud might refer to one area of law (eg Shabbos - The Sabbath), but include discussions and other rulings which relate to a whole range of different areas of law.
This codification goes on to the present day, with major Rabbis giving rulings on issues of the day (eg IVF, cloning, etc). In general, if they have good sources for their opinions in the Talmud, they are considered to have a right to rule in that way.
Although these later books of halacha don’t have the same ‘holiness’, they are in many ways more important to the day to day lives of religious Jews than the Talmud (although the Talmud is studied more systematically).
Are any of you familiar with the “deuterocanonical books” (AKA the Apocrypha) – the 15 books, plus expansions on Esther and Daniel, which are recognized by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches (and to a small extent by us Anglicans and the Methodists), and derive from the Septuagint? I know they’re not regarded as Scripture, but does a Jew have anything at all to do with them?
Obviously, as you note, we don’t consider these books to have any kind of sanctity or authority. On the other hand, as far as I know, there’s no specific halachic objection to reading them.
The Wisdom of Ben Sirach is frequently quoted in the Talmud (sometimes even as though it were part of the canonical Bible); individual episodes from some other books (such as Judith, Bel and the Dragon, and I/II Maccabees) are mentioned, usually without attribution, in other classical Jewish sources; and still others (such as the Wisdom of Solomon) are, so far as I know, pretty much used only by historians and other specialists.