What the heck is the Talmud?

Question

I heard it was some kind of Jewish book, but I haven't a clue what about. Does anyone know?

Answer 1

Text considered as the authoritative record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish Law, ethics, customs, legends and stories.

Answer 2

The Torah is the Five books of Moses.

When G-d taught Moshe the Torah at Mount Sinai, He didn't just give Moshe a written text (that wouldn't take 40 days!). Rather, G-d explained what everything meant. These explanations are what we call "the Oral Torah" or "the Mishna."

The Jewish people preserved the Mishna as an unwritten teaching for about 1,400 years. After the destruction of the Second Temple, the leading Sage Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi realized a long exile was about to begin, and that if the Mishna wasn't written down it would become lost. He thus took the unprecedented step of writing it down.

Not long after this, the leading Sages in Babylon again saw a decline in scholarship, so they wrote a more comprehensive explanation of the Mishna, called the Talmud.

For more details about the Talmud, check out:
http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_39_-_Talmud.asp

Answer 3

A good analogy would be books talking about what is Constitutional. What would Thomas Jefferson have thought about regulating the internet? We don't know but we could talk about it.

The Talmud is the same way. It is a discussion about how people are supposed to apply the Bible to their daily lives...and not just during prayer.

Answer 4

It's a collection of Jewish religious nonsense written long after the Old Testament and Jesus.