262 A History of Judaism
of rabbinic works in the course of the first millennium ce. We have
already made considerable use of the rabbinic compilations of the tan-
naitic period compiled in the third century, notably the Mishnah and
Tosefta, and the exegetical commentaries on Exodus, Leviticus and
Deuteronomy, because they contain important information about the
period before 70 ce (see Chapter 2). The Mishnah is divided into six
sedarim (orders), which between them contain sixty- three tractates:
zeraim (‘seeds’), on agricultural law; mo’ed (‘set feasts’), on laws of fes-
tivals; nashim (‘women’), on the status of women as it affects men
(betrothal, marriage and divorce law); nezikin (‘damages’), on civil and
criminal law; kodashim (‘sacred things’), covering primarily the rules
for offerings in the Temple; tohorot (‘purities’), dealing with pollution
and how it is transmitted. Most tractates begin by considering the impli-
cations of a biblical law. Thus, for instance, the first tractate, berachot
(‘blessings’), described when and how the Shema should be recited in
the morning and the evening, but the form is not biblical exegesis: the
relevant biblical text is assumed rather than cited at the start of each
tractate, and some tractates, such as ketubot (‘marriage contracts’), deal
with topics for which there is no biblical base. The Tosefta (‘Addition’)
is very similar to the Mishnah in structure, tone, content and size, but
(unlike the Mishnah) it lacks signs of any clear editing. The Tosefta
contains tannaitic material not in the Mishnah, sometimes just indepen-
dently preserved and sometimes as a complement to the corresponding
Mishnaic discussion.
These works are dwarfed in size and scope by the Babylonian Tal-
mud, a massive compilation of legal enactments, ethical statements,
biblical exegesis, ritual injunctions, liturgical rules, social commentary,
narratives and homilies, and many other disparate elements, from
astronomy to astrology and from magic to medicine. Structured as an
expansive commentary (termed gemara, ‘completion’) on the greater
part of the Mishnah, the Babylonian Talmud comprises primarily say-
ings of amoraim (‘speakers’ or ‘interpreters’), Babylonian and Palestinian
rabbis who taught between c. 200 and c. 500 ce, although it also con-
tains tannaitic sayings found neither in the Mishnah nor in the Tosefta.
Compiled in c. 600 ce, the commentary attempts to show how all
apparently redundant statements in the Mishnah can be understood as
necessary if properly interpreted. At times this leads to somewhat
implausible explanations of these statements, particularly since any
opinion attributed to a specific rabbi must be consistent with every
other opinion attributed to that rabbi elsewhere. The Babylonian