a collection of Jewish traditions. There are two works which bear this name, the Talmud of Jerusalem, and the Talmud of Babylon. Each of these is composed of two parts; the Mishna, which is the text, and is common to both, and the Gemara or commentary. The Mishna, which comprehends all the laws, institutions, and rules of life which, beside the ancient Hebrew scripture, the Jews thought themselves bound to observe, was composed, according to the unanimous testimony of the Jews, about the close of the second century. It was the work of Rabbi Jehuda (or Juda) Hakkadosh, who was the ornament of the school at Tiberias, and is said to have occupied him forty years. The commentaries and additions which succeeding Rabbis made were collected by Rabbi Jochanan Ben Eliezer, some say in the fifth, others say in the sixth, and others in the seventh century, under the name of Gemara, that is, completion, because it completed the Talmud. A similar addition was made to the Mishna by the Babylonish doctors in the beginning of the sixth century according to Enfield, and in the seventh according to others. The Mishna is divided into six parts, of which every one which is entitled order is formed of treatises, every treatise is divided into chapters, and every chapter into mishmas or aphorisms. In the first part is discussed whatever relates to seeds, fruits, and trees; in the second, feasts; in the third, women, their duties, their disorders, their contracts, marriages, and divorces; the fourth treats of the damages or losses sustained by men or beasts, of things found, deposits, usuries, rents, farms, partnerships in commerce, inheritance, sales and purchases, oaths, witnesses, arrests, idolatry; and here are named those by whom the oral law was received and preserved; in the fifth part are noticed what regards sacrifices and holy things; and the sixth treats... The Talmud of Babylon is most valued by the Jews; and this is the book to which they refer when they speak of the Talmud in general. An abridgement of it was in the 12th century made by Maimonides, in which he rejected some of its greatest absurdities. The Gemara is stuffed with dreams and chimeras, with many ignorant and impertinent questions, and the style is very coarse. The Mishna is written in a style comparatively pure, and may be very useful in explaining passages of the New Testament where the phraseology is similar. This is indeed the only use to which Christians can apply it; but this renders it valuable. Lightfoot had judiciously availed himself of such information as he could derive from it. Some of the popes, with a barbarous zeal, and a timidity of spirit for the success of the Christian religion, which the belief of its divinity can never excuse, ordered great numbers of the Talmud to be burned. Gregory IX. burned about twenty cart-loads, and Paul IV. ordered 12,000 copies of the Talmud to be destroyed.

The last edition of the Talmud of Babylon, printed at Amsterdam, is in twelve vols. folio. The Talmud of Jerusalem is in one large folio.