Judaism

The Tanakh, the Talmud, and Jewish Sacred Texts

Judaism's scripture is the Tanakh, also called the Hebrew Bible: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings. Rabbinic tradition holds that an Oral Torah, later written down in the Mishnah and the Talmud, was given at Sinai beside it. Orthodox Judaism teaches this today; Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Jews read revelation differently, and historians trace a longer process.

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What are the Jewish sacred texts?

In rabbinic tradition, Jewish sacred texts fall into two parts: the written scripture, called the Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and the Oral Torah, the tradition that explains it. The word Tanakh is formed from the first letters of its three sections: Torah (the five books of Moses), Neviim (the Prophets), and Ketuvim (the Writings).1

The Oral Torah is the teaching that, in rabbinic tradition, explains the written text and was handed down by word of mouth. Its main written forms are the Mishnah, the Talmud, and midrash, collections of sermons and interpretations that follow the biblical text; commentaries and codes of law came later.234 The Zohar, a central work of Kabbalah (Jewish mystical teaching), is attributed by tradition to Shimon bar Yochai; Gershom Scholem argued that Moses de Leon wrote it in late 13th-century Spain.5

Text What it is When it took shape
The Tanakh Torah, Prophets, and Writings1 Probably organized in some way by the end of the first century CE, Hayes says; the Orthodox Union holds that the Men of the Great Assembly fixed its books67
The Mishnah In rabbinic tradition, the first major written collection of the Oral Torah, in six orders38 Edited by Judah ha-Nasi at the beginning of the third century CE3
The Talmud Later sages' discussion of the Mishnah, in Jerusalem and Babylonian versions9 The Babylonian Talmud draws on teaching from the first to the early seventh century CE10

What is the Oral Torah?

Rabbinic tradition holds that the Oral Torah, the authoritative explanation of the written Torah, was given to Moses at Sinai together with it.2 The Orthodox Union, an Orthodox organization, teaches that it passed from teachers to students until the hardships of Jewish history threatened its loss. Judah ha-Nasi then compiled the Mishnah, it says, and Ravina and Rav Ashi the Gemara.8 In the Talmud, the sage Shammai says he has two Torahs, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.11

One Talmud passage reads Exodus 24:12 as naming every layer: the tablets, the Torah, the Mishnah, the Prophets and Writings, and the Talmud.12 Moshe David Herr argues that the written laws could not have been kept without such a tradition, since the Torah forbids work on the Sabbath without defining it.2

Other readings exist. Herr writes that the Sadducees kept a written book of decrees and held that the written word obligates. The Pharisees, he writes, held that the sages carry the Oral Law's authority and develop it in each generation.2 Theodore Friedman, in the same article, reports that Conservative circles understand the Oral Law's divine origin in a non-literal way. The Reform rabbi David Einhorn called the Talmud a medium through which the divine may be reached, but not the divine itself.2

How were the texts composed and handed down?

Jewish tradition, as the Talmud records it, names the authors of the books and traces the Oral Torah to Moses, while historians describe a longer process of writing and editing. The movements differ on how far they accept it, as the section on revelation shows.131214

The tradition's account

A Talmud teaching lists who wrote each book: Moses the Torah, Joshua his own book, Samuel, David, and Jeremiah theirs. The Men of the Great Assembly, it says, wrote Ezekiel, the Twelve, Daniel, and Esther. The sages debated who wrote the Torah's last eight verses, on Moses' death: Joshua, in one view, or Moses at God's dictation, in another.1315

Maimonides (1135 or 1138 to 1204 CE) traces the Oral Torah through forty generations from Moses to Rav Ashi. In his account, Judah ha-Nasi wrote it down as the Mishnah because students were growing fewer and the Jewish people were being scattered, and Rav Ashi later composed the Babylonian Talmud.161718

The historians' view

Hayes describes the documentary hypothesis, given its classic form by Julius Wellhausen in 1878. It explains the Torah's doublets and contradictions by four sources, J, E, D, and P, written from about the tenth century BCE to the exile or after. Hayes adds that Wellhausen's dating of P is still hotly debated.14

Stephen Wald dates the Mishnah's editing to the early third century CE. He describes the Babylonian Talmud as taking shape over many centuries, before and after Rav Ashi, with most of its anonymous framing probably written long after him. He adds that the Mishnah's contents grew from a process that began long before its editing.310

Hayes notes that the Dead Sea Scrolls, some from the fourth and third centuries BCE, show a high degree of agreement with the later text, though with some fluidity.6 The Writings section describes the manuscripts, and How ancient texts are dated explains the methods.

How did the texts gain authority?

Jewish tradition and historians describe the Tanakh's authority differently.

The tradition's account

The Orthodox Union teaches that Moses received every word of the Torah by direct communication from God, that the Prophets transmitted messages God spoke to them, and that the Writings were composed by people inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Men of the Great Assembly, it holds, determined which books the Tanakh contains.7

The Mishnah says All the Holy Scriptures defile the hands.19 It records rabbis disputing whether the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes do too.19

The historians' view

Hayes writes that the Torah probably reached fixed, authoritative status first, then the Prophets, and finally the Writings, and that probably by the end of the first century CE all of it was organized in some way. She adds that the Apocrypha, writings from about 200 BCE to 100 CE, were widely used by Jews but not considered equal in status to the Tanakh's 24 books.6

In rabbinic tradition, the Mishnah and Talmud carry authority as the record of the Oral Torah. Wald writes that the Mishnah became the foundation of both Talmuds and shaped most of Jewish practice down to the present day.3 Maimonides holds that the rulings of the Babylonian Talmud bind all Jews, since the entire Jewish people accepted them.17

How do the Jewish movements see revelation?

The modern Jewish movements differ on how the Torah was revealed. The Orthodox Union teaches that Moses received the Torah as dictation from Heaven, a doctrine the Encyclopaedia Judaica calls Torah min ha-Shamayim.720 The Encyclopaedia Judaica reports that the nineteenth-century Orthodox school of Torah im derekh erets held the Masoretic text to be an authentic record of divine communication. Some widely recognized Orthodox authorities, it adds, reject any approach that weakens this doctrine, though a few voices ask for less mechanical ones.20

Reform rabbis have stated their view in several platforms. The 1999 statement calls Torah God's ongoing revelation to the Jewish people, and the 1976 statement holds that Torah results from the relationship between God and the Jewish people.2122

The Conservative movement's 1988 statement, Emet Ve-Emunah, describes several views, from a personal encounter with God, in which some believe God spoke in actual words, to an ongoing discovery of truths about God through nature and history.23 Reconstructionist Judaism, founded by Mordecai Kaplan, sees Judaism as the product of the Jewish people's historical experience, Richard Hirsch writes; Kaplan did not hold that revelation is supernatural.24

How are the texts interpreted?

Rabbinic interpretation includes midrash, commentaries, and codes of law.4 The Encyclopaedia Judaica calls Rashi (1040 to 1105 CE), of Troyes in France, the leading commentator on the Tanakh and the Talmud.25

Maimonides compiled the code called the Mishneh Torah around 1180 CE, and Joseph Caro's Shulchan Aruch was first printed in Venice in 1565. With the notes of Moses Isserles on Ashkenazi custom, Louis Rabinowitz writes, it became acceptable to Ashkenazim, while Caro's text suited Sephardim.1626 Emet Ve-Emunah describes Conservative halakhah as developing through rabbinic decision; Reform's 1999 statement commits Reform Jews to study the mitzvot.2722

How do Rashi and historians read Isaiah 7:14 and the Book of Daniel?

Rashi and historians read these two passages differently, as the columns below show. In the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, Isaiah 7:14 reads: Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign: behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14)28

The tradition's account

Rashi explains the young woman as Isaiah's own wife, who would conceive in the fourth year of King Ahaz. He rejects the reading that the child is Hezekiah, since by his count Hezekiah was born nine years before his father reigned.29 The Talmud places Daniel among the Writings, credits the Men of the Great Assembly with writing it, and says that Daniel, unlike Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, was not a prophet.131530

Rashi reads Daniel's seventy weeks (Daniel 9:24-27) as 490 years, from the First Temple's destruction to the Second's, and the anointed one cut off as Agrippa, king of Judea when the Second Temple fell.31

The historians' view

Hayes reads Isaiah 7:14 as a sign Isaiah gave to Ahaz, during the siege of Jerusalem in 734 BCE, about a child soon to be born. She notes that the Hebrew word means a young woman, that the Greek translation used a word that can mean virgin, and that Matthew drew on the Greek.32 She dates Isaiah 40 to 55 to the Babylonian exile, after Jerusalem's destruction and long after the eighth-century prophet.33

She dates Daniel 7 to 12 to 167 to 164 BCE, under the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, and reads the seventy weeks as a coded count whose last week is his reign.34 Harold Ginsberg, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, also places those chapters in his reign.35

The Gospel of Matthew reads Isaiah 7:14 as fulfilled in the birth of Jesus, and Athanasius read Daniel's seventy weeks as pointing to Jesus; the Christianity Sacred Texts page gives that reading.3637

How is the Tanakh translated?

The Talmud credits an Aramaic translation of the Torah to Onkelos, a convert,30 and the Greek Septuagint was made for Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria around the third or second century BCE.6

This site quotes the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 English translation, prepared by editors appointed by the Society and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. It is in the public domain, uses older English such as "thou", and follows the Hebrew verse numbering.28

Sources

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