The Talmud is a record of rabbinical discussions pertaining to Jewish law, biblical interpretation, ethics, customs, and history. It is the basis for all codes of rabbinical law and is much quoted in other Jewish literature.
The Talmud has two basic components: the Mishnah (c. 200 C.E.), the first written compendium of Judaism‘s Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 C.E.), a rabbinical discussion of the Mishnah and related writings that often ventures into other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. Printed editions of the Talmud also contain later commentaries from rabbinical authorities through the Middle Ages. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably.
The Mishnah forms the core of the Talmud. It is a compilation of legal opinions and debates of leading rabbis of the second century. The rabbis of the Mishnah are known as tannaim, meaning roughly “sages.” Since it sequences its laws by subject matter instead of by biblical context, the Mishnah discusses individual subjects more thoroughly than the Midrash, and it includes a much broader selection of halakhic (legal) subjects than the Midrash. The Mishnah’s topical organization thus became the framework of the Talmud as a whole.
In the three centuries following the redaction of the Mishnah, rabbis throughout Palestine and Babylonia analyzed, debated and discussed that work. These discussions form the Gemara (גמרא). The rabbis of the Gemara are known as amoraim (sing. amora אמורא). Gemara means “completion,” from gamar גמר : Hebrew to complete; Aramaic to study.
Much of the Gemara consists of legal analysis. The starting point for the analysis is usually a legal statement found in a Mishnah. The statement is then analyzed and compared with other statements in a dialectical exchange between two (frequently anonymous and sometimes metaphorical) disputants, termed the makshan (questioner) and tartzan (answerer).