ABSTRACT
The central text of Jewish tradition was a document that attested to the centrality of the sacrificial cult in Jerusalem. The disastrous results of the Jewish rebellion against Rome brought an end to the centrality of the Temple altar as the prime locus for Jewish religious practice. The Tannaitic midrashim often quote authoritative rabbinic pronouncements, whereas the edited works of those pronouncements quote exegeses or rabbinic statements found also in the Tannaitic midrashim. The edited works of authoritative rabbinic pronouncements based on traditions and, to a much lesser extent, some of the earlier exegeses compose a set of rabbinic materials known today as Mishnah and Tosefta. The combination of Mishnah and Gemara together make up Talmud. Over the centuries, the Yerushalmi was far less studied than the other Talmud, the Bavli. When one reads rabbinic polemic, it is often difficult to discern exactly which sect the rabbis are engaged with.
