The period of the elaboration of these Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (tradition) lasted somewhere about a hundred years or a little more. The great teachers who busied themselves in this work are ordinarily termed the Mishnic Rabbis—the Talmud term for them being Tannaim.
In the last years of the second century the Mishnah or first part of the Talmud was virtually closed, and the great Rabbinic schools then busied themselves in further commenting upon and explaining the Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (traditions) of the Mishnah; these further comments and explanations are known as the Gemara.
This second part of the Talmud, known as “Gemara,”[155] the complement of the first or Mishnic portion, was the outcome of the labours of several hundred Doctors or Rabbis. Two famous schools of Rabbinical study carried on the great work of commenting on the Mishnah. The one, the Palestinian, had its headquarters in Tiberias. The chief centres of the other, the Babylonian, were Sura and Pumbeditha. In both these compilations the same Mishnah is the text on which the vast body of commentary is based. But the Gemara, or commentary, is in many cases different. The Palestinian Talmud in the form which now exists is much shorter than the Eastern or Babylonian work. The Palestinian Rabbis worked from about the year of our Lord 190; their work was closed in the middle of the fifth century. The labours of the Babylonian doctors may be dated from the last years of the second, and were closed in the middle or later years of the sixth century.
The Babylonian—the larger Talmud, containing the Mishnah and Gemara, which has come down to us fairly intact, fills some twelve large folio volumes, and covers no less than 2947 folio leaves in double columns; or in other words, 5894 pages written in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Rabbinic. The nature of these vast compilations is described more in detail in a later section of this Fifth Book.
The Talmudic term for the doctors of the Gemara is Amoraim.
The one purpose and object of the Talmud, followed out with a changeless and restless industry by the doctors of the Mishnah and the Gemara, from the year 70 to nearly the close of the sixth century—that is to say, for a period of some five hundred years—was the Glorification of Israel. Law and legend, rule and tradition, massed together with rare skill, all dwell on this. The Jews, and only the Jews, were the people chosen by God. If they would but honour Him and serve Him faithfully they would in the end win the exceeding great and promised reward. The way, and the only way, to know Him and to serve Him was pointed out with unerring lucidity and a marvellous wealth of detail in the mighty compilation of the Talmud. They were strictly warned against encouraging proselytes. The ineffable blessings belonged to the Jew and to the Jew alone. Again, the exceeding great reward belonged not to the successful Jewish soldier, but to the Jew who kept the stern Law handed down from Moses to prophet, and by prophet to scribe, and by scribe to the Rabbis who compiled the Mishnah and Gemara, which together make up the Talmud. The question of revolt against Rome found no place in the Talmud teaching.
After the three great wars—especially after the first, which closed with the destruction of the Temple—the Jew had no nationality, no country. He needed none. He had something far greater. He, and only he, was possessor of the blessed Divine Law; the solitary heir of its glorious promises.
The Talmud became the bond which linked together in one solid group the Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria, of Rome and Babylonia. Its power over the Jewish mind became boundless. It possessed indeed a wondrous fascination for every child of Israel. It impressed upon each member of the scattered race, in a way no teaching had ever previously done, the consciousness who he was, and what was the awful nature of his inheritance. Strong in this consciousness, he endured all the wrongs and persecutions, the cruel acts and yet more cruel words which have been, with rare interludes, his lot since A.D. 70. All through the subsequent ages he endured a bitter persecution, which even in our own day and time is still in many lands constantly ready to break out against him.