Excerpt from The Talmud: Its Relation to Judaism and the Attitude of the Jews Towards Society
Thus the simple reading of the Bible-character rests on traditions handed down by the very generations and men who also handed down the interpretations contained in the Talmud; and as the Christian church honours the Jewish Bible as the source of its faith, this, in so far as it rests on the word of the Bible, is built on a basis of Talmudic tradition. This is what Hillel pointed out to a heathen who wished to be admitted to membership in the Jewish community by accepting the written Law while rejecting the unwritten. Hillel showed him that he himself, for the mere reading of the written Law, was obliged to rely entirely upon tradition. So necessary for the carrying out in practice of the written Law, and so presupposed by it, is tradition, that those very sects which, in the course of time, arose within the pale of Judaism and rejected the Talmudic tradition found themselves obliged to set up a tradition of their own. And they all have also vanished in the course of time, with the survival of only a small section of the Karaites. The only Judaism of historic import which has held its God-appointed way through the centuries and through the nations, is Talmudic Judaism the Judaism nourished, sustained and preserved by Talmudic tradition.
In addition to traditions which go back to the time of Moses, the Talmud also contains judicial and instructive utterances, decisions and illustrations of later teachers and sages, which, as consequences, applications or interpretations, are deduced from or added to those traditions, and are invested with an equal authority. These form the Halacha, or the Halachic part of the Talmud. Then there are individual views, proverbs, parables,& c., with no claim to binding authority; and these form the Haggadah, or Haggadistic part of the Talmud.
The Talmud consists of two works, of which the older one the Mishna - contains the traditions current at the time of its reduction to writing in aphorisms of close-packed sententiousness, the interpretations of which, however, remained traditional and oral. Some 250 years later these interpreting traditions were also reduced to writing in a work called the Germara. This Germara, a voluminous work, is in form unique in literature. It consists of almost verbally-reported discussions which took place in the schools. It therefore records opposing opinions, and only the results finally arrived at are valid for practical guidance, and these are systematically arranged and classified into codes.
From this slight sketch it will easily be seen that the Talmud is no mere supplement to Judaism which might be rejected without thereby affecting the character of Judaism, but is rather the one source from which Judaism has flowed, the basis upon which Judaism is built - the very soul which informs and sustains Judaism. In fact Judaism, as embodied in the historic phenomenon of the Jewish race, and as manifested in its mental and moral capacities and virtues, which not even the enemies of Judaism can deny, Judaism is wholly and solely an outcome of Talmudic teaching and of the system of education and culture followed and fostered by it.
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