Relation to Midrash

Relation to Midrash.

In consequence of the original identity of "Talmud" and "Midrash," noted above, the former term is sometimes used instead of the latter in tannaitic sentences which enumerate the three branches of traditional science, Midrash, Halakah, and Haggadah (see Ber. 22a [comp. M. K. 15a and Yer. Ber. 6c, 39]; Kid. 30a; Suk. 28a; B. B. 134a; Ab. R. N. xiv. [comp. Masseket Soferim, xvi. 8]; Yer. B. K. 4b, 31 [comp. Sifre, Deut. 33]; Tosef., Sotah, vii. 20 [comp. Yer. Sotah 44a]), while sometimes both "Talmud" and "Midrash" are used (M. K. 21a; Ta'an. 30a); it must be noted, however, that in the editions of the Babli, "Gemara" is usually substituted for "Talmud," even in the passages here cited. The word "Talmud" in all these places did not denote the study subsequently pursued by the Amoraim, but was used instead of the word "Midrash," although this did not preclude the later introduction of the term "Talmud" into tannaitic sayings, where it either entirely displaced "Midrash" or was used side by side with it.

After the term "Talmud" had come to denote the exegetic confirmation of the Halakah, it was applied also to the explanation and exposition of halakic passages in general. As early as the end of the tannaitic period, when the halakot were finally redactedby the patriarch Judah I. and were designated as "Mishnah," a term originally applied to the entire system of traditional learning, the Talmud was developed as a new division of this same science; and it was destined to absorb all others. In a baraita dating, according to the amora Johanan, from the days of Judah I. (B. M. 33a; comp. Yer. Shab. 15c, 22 et seq.), the Mishnah and the Talmud are defined as subjects of study side by side with the "MiKra" (Bible), the study of the Talmud being mentioned first. To this baraita there is an addition, however, to the effect that more attention should be given to the Mishnah than to the Talmud. Johanan explains this passage by the fact that the members of Judah's academy, in their eagerness to investigate the Talmud, neglected the Mishnah; hence the patriarch laid stress upon the duty of studying the Mishnah primarily. In these passages the word "Talmud" is used not in its more restricted sense of the establishment of halakot by Biblical exegesis, but in its wider signification, in which it designates study for the purpose of elucidating the Mishnah in general, as pursued after Judah's death in the academies of Palestine and Babylon. This baraita is, furthermore, an authentic document on the origin of the Talmud.

Three classes of members of the academy are mentioned in an anecdote referring to Judah I. (B. B. 8a): (1) those who devoted themselves chiefly to the Bible ("ba'ale MiKra"); (2) those whose principal study was the Mishnah ("ba'ale Mishnah"); and (3) those whose main interest lay in the Talmud ("ba'ale Talmud"). This is the original reading of the passage, although the editions mention also the "ba'ale Halakah" and the "ba'ale Haggadah" (see below). These three branches of knowledge are, therefore, the same as those enumerated in B. M. 33a. Tanhum b. hanilai, a Palestinian amora of the third century, declared, with reference to this threefold investigation ('Ab. Zarah 19b): "Let the time given to study be divided into three parts: one-third for the Bible, one-third for the Mishnah, and one-third for the Talmud." In Kid. 33a this saying is quoted in the name of the tanna Joshua b. Hananiah, although this is probably a corruption of the name of Jose b. hanina (amora). Yudan, a Palestinian amora of the fourth century, found in Eccl. xi. 9 an allusion to the pleasure taken in the three branches of study, MiKra, Mishnah, and Talmud.