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LEFT TALMAGE 238 TALMUD full pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. He held this charge till 1899, when he resigned in order to apply himself wholly to lite- rary work. He was for many years the editor of the "Christian Herald" and was the author of "Crumbs Swept Up," "Woman: Her Powers and Privileges"; "From Manger to Throne"; "Every-Day Religion"; etc. He died in Washington, D. C. April 12, 1902. TALMUD, the name of the funda- mental code of the Jewish civil and can- onical law, comprising the "Mishna" and the "Gemara," the former as the text, the later as the commentary and comple- ment. The oldest codification of Hala- choth, or single ordinances, is due to the school of Hillel. Simon, son of Gama- liel II., and great-grandson of Gamaliel I., mentioned in the New Testament, and his school carefully sifted the mate- rial thus brought together. He died A. D. 166. His son Jehudah Hannasi, commonly called Rabbi, who died 219, and his disciples brought the work to its close in six portions (Sedarim), 63 treatises (Mesichtoth), and 524 chapters (Perakim), which contain the single "Mishnas." But besides this authorita- tively compiled code there were a num- ber of other law collections, partly ante- rior to it, and not fully embodied in it, partly arising out of it — as supplements, complements, bylaws, and the like — part- ly portions of the ancient Midrash, partly either private text-books composed by the masters of the academies for their lectures or enlargements of the existing "Mishna." All this additional material was collected, not rarely together with the dissensions which begot it, under the name of "Baraitoth," "foreign," "exter- nal," by Chaiya and his school, in the succeeding generation. Not to be confounded with them, how- ever, are the collections of "Toseftas," "supplements," or "Great Mishnas," which, commenced at the time of Jehu- dah Hannasi himself, and continued after his death by his scholar Chaiya and Hoshaiya, embody much of what has been purposely left out in the concise "Mishna," which only embraced the final dicta and decisions. Such "additions" we possess now to 52 treatises, forming together 383 Perakim or chapters. All these different sources of the "Oral Law" — finally redacted before the end of the 3d century, though probably not commit- ted to writing till A. D. 550 — ^belong to the period of from about 30 B. C. to about A. D. 250. The further development of this sup- plementary, oral, or second law — in fact rather an exegesis thereof — together with the discussions raised by apparent contradictions found in the individual en- actments of the Mishnic doctors, is called "Gemara" — i. e. discussion, complement, or, according to another explanation, doc- trine. This "Gemara" contains, apart from the Halacha, which is generally written in Aramaic, also a vast number of non-legal, chiefly Hebrew, fragments — homiletic matter, tales, legends, and the like — called Haggada. There are two "Talmuds," the one called the "Talmud of the Occidentals," or the "Jerusalem (Palestine) Talmud," which was closed at Tiberias, and the other the "Babylonian Talmud." The first of these now extends over 39 treat- ises of the "Mishna" only, though it once existed to the whole of the first 5 Sed- arim or portions. It originated in Ti- berias in the school of Johanan, who died A. D. 179. There is less discussion and more precision of expression in this than in the second or "Babylonian Talmud," emphatically styled "our Talmud," which was not completed until the end of the 5th century, and which makes use of the former. As the real editor of the "Babylonian Talmud" is to be consid- ered Rabbis Ashe, president of the Acad- emy of Sora in Babylonia (A. D. 375- 427). Both the "Mishna" and the Palestine "Gemara" had, notwithstanding the brief period that had elapsed since their re- daction, suffered greatly, partly by cor- ruptions that had crept into their (un- written) text through faulty traditions, partly through the new decisions arrived at independently in the different younger schools — of which there flourished many in different parts of the Dispersion — and which were at times contradictory to those arrived at under different cir- cumstances in former academies. To put an end to these disputes and the general confusion arising ^ out of them, which threatened to end in sheer chaos, Rabbi Ashe, aided by his disciple and friend Abina or Rabina I. (abbreviated from Rab Abina), commenced the cyclopean task of collecting anew the enormous mass of Halachistie material which by that time had grown up. This took him, with the assistance of 10 secretaries, no less than 30 years; and many years were spent by him in the revision of the work. The final close of the work, however, is greatly due to Rab Abina II., head of the Sora Academy (473-499). He was the last of the Amoraim expounders, who used merely oral tradition. After them came the Sa- boraim, the reflecting, examining, criti- cal, the real completers of the Babylon- ian Talmud, and by many in ancient and modern times declared to have first re-