the expression "Haggadah") had been largely augmented in the half-century preceding the catastrophe of A.D. 70.
The group of eminent Rabbis who arose after the fall of the City and Temple, and who set themselves the task of reconstituting Israel on a new and purely religious basis, took these Halachah, studied them, meditated on them,—no doubt recast many of them to suit the new position of the people, now that the Temple and its complicated ritual of sacrifice and public prayer had disappeared, and framed them into an elaborate system of regulations, thus pointing out how the Law might be rigidly observed in all the relations of ordinary life.
This great and elaborate work is termed the Mishnah[1]—or "Repetition,"—the term originally derived from the method in which it was elaborated. It was not written down in the first instance, but was repeated again and again by the more famous teachers and heads of schools to their pupils. The term "Mishnah" came in time to signify "the second Law," but that was not the original meaning; it belonged to a period when the whole instruction was oral.
The period of the elaboration of these Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (tradition) lasted somewhere about a hundred years or a little more. The great teachers who busied themselves in this work are ordinarily termed the Mishnic Rabbis—the Talmud term for them being Tannaim.
In the last years of the second century the Mishnah or first part of the Talmud was virtually closed, and the great Rabbinic schools then busied themselves in further commenting upon and explaining the Halachah (rules) and Haggadah (traditions) of the Mishnah; these further comments and explanations are known as the Gemara.
This second part of the Talmud, known as "Gemara,"[1] the complement of the first or Mishnic portion, was the outcome of the labours of several hundred Doctors or Rabbis. Two famous schools of Rabbinical study carried on the great work of commenting on the Mishnah. The one, the Palestinian, had its headquarters in Tiberias. The chief centres of the other, the Babylonian, were Sura and Pumbeditha. In both these compilations the same Mishnah
- ↑ The Mishnah and the Gemara are explained in detail below on p. 358.
