The Babylonian Talmud in Selection

THE word Talmud means study. The Talmud is a record of about a thousand years of accumulated Jewish learning and wisdom in all fields of endeavor: Law, religion, ethics, history, science and folklore. This lore is called Oral Law, in contra-distinction to the Bible, which is the Written Law. Tradition has it that this Oral Law was indicated to Moses and handed down by him to future generations; in each generation the great teachers of the period in turn handed it down, amplified but still in oral form, to the next generation.