talmud

Is anything written by a Jew a Jewish text, and who decides?

Commentaries on the three paragraphs of the Shema read Jewish concepts both out of and into the text.

On attending to mourners, anticipating dying, accepting death, and appropriate burial rites.

The Talmud treats the law as a given; its agenda is to see how the different understandings of that law relate to each other.

The sequence of the six orders follows the precedent of Scripture

In working out the ideas behind the statements of the rabbis, the Talmud serves not as a law code but as a work of Jewish legal theory.

Together with the Mishnah, these texts make up what is known as Rabbinic Judaism.

On the various motivations and interests which brought Jews into a cross-generational conversation called Talmud.

A description of Judaism's primary book of Jewish legal theory.

The Oral Torah reflects an attempt to create an eternal Judaism, unaffected by the setbacks that had afflicted the Jewish people in the preceding two centuries.