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The Talmud is structured as a commentary to an earlier work of literature,
the Mishnah.
This lecture will provide an overview of the Mishnah and
work through the Mishnah passage that treats false testimony.
There are three genres of literature that discuss what is sometimes called
the Oral Law.
That is legal traditions that were considered binding on the rabbinic
community, but were not explicitly included in the Hebrew Bible.
These genres are Mishnah, Midrash, and Talmud.
The Mishnah is basically a law code.
It is organized by topic.
Each tractate deals with a specific legal topic and
each chapter usually deals with a particular facit of that topic.
The Mishnah is written in Hebrew in a distinctive, concise style.
Legal opinions are stated relatively tersely, often without explanation or
justification.
Though both stories and
biblical interpretation are found in the Mishnah, these are relatively rare.
Midrash is a form of biblical interpretation.
Much of Midrash is legal in nature and
shows how the Oral Law can be derived from scriptural verses.
But Midrash is not organized as a code would be organized.
Instead of being organized by topic as the Mishnah is, works of Midrash
are typically organized according to the order of the biblical verses.
Unlike Mishnah and Midrash, the Talmud is less its own genre of text and
more an all encompassing combination of Mishnah, Midrash and many other genres.
As I mentioned, the Talmud is formally structured around the Mishnah.
One could say then that the Talmud contains the entire Mishnah.
The Talmud also contains Midrash.
Often the Talmud will ask a question about the Mishnah and answer it with a Midrash.
Although much of the Talmud is formulated as a multigenerational conversation about
the Mishnah by the rabbis, it also includes long and
sometimes fantastical stories, occasional theologizing, and snippets of folk-wisdom.
One of the Talmud's defining features is its tendency to leave disputes between
rabbis over important matters, unresolved.
And unlike the Mishnah, which is written entirely in Hebrew,
the Talmud is written in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic.