Loading…

Introduction to Rabbinic Literature is unavailable, but you can change that!

The rabbis are as important today as they were two thousand years ago, at the dawn of the literature that came to be named after them. The Mishnah, the Tosefta, the Talmud, the collections of Midrash, and other writings ascribed to the ancient rabbis—the oral Torah—were gradually produced between the first and the seventh centuries of the Common Era. What began as the rabbis’ comments and...

centuries to our own day and produced most of the Judaic systems that now flourish. That Judaism, drawing upon older materials of course, beginning with the Old Testament itself, finds its definitive symbol in the Torah, written and oral. Its distinctive myth appeals to the story that at Sinai God revealed revelation, or “Torah,” to Moses in two media. One medium for revelation was in writing, hence “the written Torah,” Torah shebikhtab, corresponding to the Old Testament of Christianity.2 The other
Pages 5–6