Torah and Talmud Flashcards
The first five books of the Jewish Bible are called the
Torah
The centrepiece of the Jewish library is the
Hebrew bible or tanakh
The ____ reigns supreme in terms of prestige and sanctity.
Torah
Tanakh stands for
Torah - The five books of Moses
Nevi’im - the prophets
Ketuvim - The Scriptures or writings
Almost all ____ components of Judaism are considered to have their source in the Torah.
legal
The Torah is considered by traditional Jews to have been given in its entirety to ____ at Sinai.
Moses
____ Judaism was the period after the destruction of the second temple during the first six centuries C.E.
Rabbinic
The law was given to human beings and it is up to them to ____ that law
interpret
The Mishna was completed in early ____ century C.E.
third
The Mishna became the basis for two additional works set out to discuss the Mishna which are known as the ____.
Talmud
After the destruction of the Temple, and the subsequent inability to sacrifice, the Pharisees turn to the study of the Torah and acts of ____ as a means of obeying the law.
lovingkindness
There are two Talmud known as
The Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud
The ____ Talmud would eventually achieve a preferred status and become the basis for legislation.
Babylonian
The writings of the Jewish rabbis were considered not much less than the Torah itself and were often called the ____
Oral Torah
The ____ followed the text of the Torah as a sort of commentary or exegesis, but is not limited to just that.
Midrash
____ is a collection of halakhah, which means law in general or a particular law. The most authoritative such collection was attributed to Judah the Prince, around 200 CE.
Mishnah
Where as the Talmud would serve as a basis for ____ ___, it is anything but a law manual or legal code. The Talmud is the embodiment of 300 years of rabbinic learning.
Jewish law
The ___ is a legal document arranged in topics. It’s six sections cover all aspects of Jewish religious and social behaviour.
Mishnah
The six sections of the Mishna are
Agricultural law, festivals, marriage laws, civil law, temple law, and aspects of ritual purity.
Israel is bound by the covenant to serve ____ ____, which are elaborated in the Torah.
Yahweh’s laws
The Palestinian or Jerusalem Talmud was completed around ___ CE and the Babylonian Talmud was completed around ___ CE
400 / 500
The conservative Sadducees rejected innovations that were not sanctioned by the written Torah, but the ____ believed that alongside the written Torah, God has given Moses oral instructions that have been passed down from generation to generation.
Pharisees
In the Midrash, a Biblical commentary, an important distinction is made between ____, nonlegal material, and ____, legal material.
aggadah / halakhah
The Babylonian Talmud is huge and complex and only accessible through ____, of which the most authoritative was written by Rushi (Rabbi Solomon Ben Isaac, 1040-1105)
commentaries
All of this material (Tanakh, Midrash, and Talmud) is also sometimes referred to ____ as Torah. Indeed, the term Torah can refer to the whole of the Jewish law and lore.
collectively
The Pharisees openness to oral tradition enabled them and their successors the rabbis to ____ to changed circumstances (notably the destruction of the temple and life in exile and Diaspora) in contrast to the Sadducees who were too closely linked to the Temple to survive its destruction.
adapt
The Talmud is a record of ____, rather than fixed answers, and to study Talmud is to participate in debates that have been conducted for centuries.
debates
For hundreds of years, the Talmud was used as the basis for formulating ____ legal texts.
systematic
One such systematic approach, by ____ in the 12th century, was to remove the names of the participants in the Talmudic discussions, there about projecting attributed opinions as the universally recognised law.
Maimonides
The most famous codification is the ____ ____ - the Spread Table, compiled by Rabbi Joseph Karo, 16th century CE.
Shulhan Arukh
The word ____ means study or knowledge
Talmud
A different type of primary legal literature is known as ____. For centuries, Jewish authorities were asked questions not only by the local community but by Jews who considered their opinions the definitive statement on any legal issues.
responsa
