Jewish oral and written law

Overview

Recall questions on the Tanakh, the written and oral Torah, the Mishnah and Gemara, the rabbinic generations, the chain of transmission in Pirkei Avot, the Babylonian Talmud, halakhah, the Shulkhan Arukh and responsa, and how Orthodox and Progressive Jews regard the oral and written law.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the word Tanakh stand for, and how does the Torah fit inside it?

   Model answer

   Tanakh is an acronym built from the first letters of its three divisions: Torah (the five books of Moses), Nevi'im (the Prophets) and Ketuvim (the Writings). Torah in the narrow sense is the first of those divisions, the Pentateuch, and it alone is written on the scroll read publicly in synagogue. In a wider sense Jews use the word Torah for the whole body of divine teaching, written and oral together, which is why the term can mean either a scroll or an entire tradition.

2. 2

   Jewish teaching separates a written Torah from an oral Torah. What is the difference between them?

   Model answer

   The written Torah, Torah shebichtav, is the fixed text of the five books. The oral Torah, Torah shebe'al peh, is the body of interpretation, application and detail that Orthodox Jews hold was given alongside the text at Sinai and passed on by word of mouth for generations before being committed to writing. On this view the two are one revelation in two forms, not a text plus later human commentary.

3. 3

   Why do Orthodox Jews argue that a written text alone could not have been enough?

   Model answer

   Because the written commands are compressed to the point of being unworkable on their own. Rest is commanded on Shabbat without any definition of the work being prohibited; tefillin are commanded without a description of what they are or how they are worn; animals are to be slaughtered in a manner the text never sets out. Orthodox Jews conclude that an authoritative interpretive tradition must have accompanied the text from the start, otherwise the law could never have been kept.

4. 4

   What is the Mishnah, and how is it arranged?

   Model answer

   The Mishnah is the first comprehensive written statement of the oral law, edited in the land of Israel around 200 CE under the direction of Judah ha-Nasi. Rather than following the order of scripture it is arranged by subject into six orders, covering agriculture, festivals and Shabbat, marriage and family law, civil and criminal law, the sacrificial system, and ritual purity. It records disputes as disputes, often preserving a minority view alongside the accepted ruling.

5. 5

   What is the Gemara, and what does it produce when joined to the Mishnah?

   Model answer

   The Gemara is the record of generations of rabbinic analysis of the Mishnah: objections, resolutions, derivations from scripture, case law, and narrative and ethical material woven in. Mishnah and Gemara together make up the Talmud. Because the Gemara preserves the reasoning and not only the conclusion, the Talmud reads as an ongoing argument rather than a finished code.

6. 6

   Who were the Tannaim, the Amoraim, the Savoraim and the Geonim?

   Model answer

   The Tannaim are the sages whose teachings make up the Mishnah, roughly the first two centuries CE. The Amoraim are the later sages whose discussions form the Gemara. The Savoraim are the generation of editors who worked over the Babylonian text after the main redaction. The Geonim are the heads of the Babylonian academies from roughly the seventh to the eleventh centuries, whose written rulings carried authority across the Jewish world. Each stage claims to be transmitting, not inventing.

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