ABSTRACT
Although the Hebrew Bible is the collection of sacred writings for three of the world's major religions, Jews live their lives today more according to the Talmud-a set of laws, ethical principles and homilies dating from the first five or six centuries of the common era. This corpus presents the reader with an extensive commentary on the Bible, in part a direct explication of verses and in part a compendium of laws only loosely based on Scripture. The Talmud has two major parts: the older Hebrew strand called Mishnah (m. ), and the later Hebrew and Aramaic strand called gemārā. The gemārā is preserved in two recensions, the Palestinian(y. )and Babylonian (b. ). The spokesmen of the Talmud are called 'sages' or 'rabbis'.
