Since the times of Ezra and Nehemia, the rabbis commented and discussed the Torah, and the Tanach in general, orally, without writing it down, although some took notes in private, as in the case of the rulings of the rabbinical courts. At the time of the Roman conquest of the Kingdom of Judah, a great number of halachic norms were produced, which made it difficult to maintain the oral system, so the words of the sages began to be written down.

According to the epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon, the great upheaval that followed the destruction of the Temple and the uprising of Bar Kochba, put that set of norms known as the Oral Torah in danger of being lost, because there were no longer the conditions to transmit them orally from teacher to student, given the restrictive policies of the Romans. Therefore, Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi made the decision to compile them and put them in writing. This is how the Mishnah was born.

The Mishnah is the collection of those laws and oral traditions that already existed. The rabbis who contributed to its formation are known as Tanaim, of whom we have information about approximately 120. The period during which the Mishnah was compiled lasted about 130 years and spanned five generations. It even included many conflicting commentaries that arose between the different academies (yeshivot), such as those of Hillel and Shammai.

In the year 220 CE, the Mishnah was edited and published. In the following four centuries, the Mishnah was analyzed and debated in the yeshivot of the two most important Jewish communities of the time: that of Eretz Israel and that of Babylon. These commentaries, known as Gemara, were in turn edited and published in each place and together with the original Mishnah, produced, in one case the Talmud Yerushalmi, made in Israel and in the other the Talmud Babli, made in Babylon. The Yerushalmi was finished a century earlier, mostly because of the religious persecution that the Romans launched in Eretz Israel against the rabbis and their academies. In both places, dozens of rabbis, known as Amoraim, over eight generations, contributed to the formation of the Talmud.

Orthodox Rabbi Aaron Parry, in his book The Talmud, tells us: “Almost everyone is familiar with the story of how Moses received the Ten Commandments from God, but what is less known about this story is that Moses and God had a good talk on that mountain and that it covered much more than could be inscribed on the Tablets that he brought with him when he came down. It is this information, the Oral Torah, which was transmitted orally from God to Moses and then from Moses to the generations that followed him, that is the basis for the Talmud.”

This must be understood more metaphorically than literally. The foundation of Judaism is definitely the Torah that Moses received at Sinai, but the building that was built on top of it is due to the work of many sages. The Talmud was written by many with the inspiration of One.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Joseph Telushkin “Jewish Literacy” and others.