What is the Authority for Judaism? | Rapp Report Daily 0076 | Striving for Eternity

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The Sources of Authority in Second Temple Judaism

I'm going to take a look at what it is that Judaism believes. When we speak of Judaism today, we're speaking of Second Temple Judaism, which is different than Biblical Judaism. As we look at Second Temple Judaism, we see that they have four sources of authority.

First is what's called the Tanakh. It's what we would call the Old Testament. This is broken up into three sections. You'll often see it referred this way in the New Testament even, is it is referred to as Moses, referring to those first five books, the prophets, referring to the major and minor prophets, and the writings.

Those would be the three subdivisions of what we would call the Old Testament, or what would be referred to as Tanakh. Now, there is a Midrash. The Midrash is a interpretation or commentary on the Tanakh.

Then you have the Mishnah. Now, where the Tanakh is the written law, the Mishnah is the oral law that was supposedly handed down from generation to generation, and eventually written down. This is where things like Kabbalah focuses much of their time.

It's a very mystical book. Then you have the commentary on the Mishnah, which is called the Talmud. This is where you get rabbinical law from. Much of what we say with Second Temple Judaism is from the Talmud.

The Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah, which again is that oral tradition, oral law. So this is a commentary. This is also something that gets changed over time. But when we look at modern Judaism, it is based mostly from the Talmud and not the Tanakh, or what we would call Old Testament.

That is what we see in the authority in Judaism.

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