Gemara

[Mr. X]

I'd like to post something thats been bothering me for a while. I couldn't find a proper forum for it, but since I've brought it up to teachers who couldn't really answer it, I guess here is a good spot. So here is my vent:

Here we are, a 4,000 year old religion, and our main source of laws is only 1,000 years old. I understand that we made a transition from Templar Judaism to Rabbinic Judaism, but the laws couldn't have been that different during Temple times. Yes, we are also taught that it is Oral Law of the Mishna expanded, and I'm not here to question that, but the Gemara is the Rabbi's trying to figure out what the Mishna is trying to tell us. So is it that for the the time between the Har Sinai giving of the Mishna until the destruction of the Second Temple we knew what the Mishna was telling us, and the we suddenly forgot? I just don't understand how the laws couldn't have been set down straight right away. Why did it take till about 1,000 years ago?

Feel free to give your opinions, thats one thing I'm looking for in responses. Thanks.

[Digital Messiah]

im not really sure, i think it had something to do with use being exhiled and stuff.

[Confuzedinlimbo]

I agree. Also, we probably had some code of laws before, but maby it wasn't written down in one book. But things are forgotten and maby one person remembered and decoded to write it down. I do n't really know, but it sounds logical, doesn't it?

~confuzed in limbo~ your starchild~

[Bongo_Dude]

The point of mishna and gemara is that everything to that point had been word-of-mouth and it was compiled when there was a fear that oral transmission might not work. thus the laws had been around for the four thousand years but werent writtne down until more recently

- B.D.

-B.D.

[Mr. X]

but the rabbi's in the gemara are from the last thousand years and they only figured out the solutions to all these problems the gemara brings up in the last thousand years, thats the issue i'm having

[Bongo_Dude]

but rabbis are coming up with solutions to problems even today. Maybe some of the situations hadnt been around at the torah's time. Also, the transmission of the oral code could have varied from various teachers/sources, and therefore the arguments the rabbis in the gemara had were based on a single source and just different interpretations of that source. It all comes from the original

- B.D.

[TheBlueGreenMystery]

i think its that way long ago, before gemara and mishna time, almost everyone back then knew the torah shebial peh (oral torah). and they knew what it meant, and all the laws regarding it. but as time passed, and new empires came into existence, oppressive empires (i.e. rome), we were afraid we would forget. so the rabbis decided to record THE BASIC oral torah in mishnas, so they would see that basic and remember it all. but as time passed further, we forgot most of it and were only left with the mishnas which were written down. now we had a problem, which was that we didnt understand what they meant. this brings forth the time of the gemara, where we relearn it. thats one solution.
a second solution, which i think makes more sense, is that if there was no gemara, then one day someone would ask a question (say, in accordance with one that would have been asked in gemara) and if they wouldnt know the answer, they would deem that law invalid and stop following that law, thinking it doesnt make sense. so gemara wrote out all the questions and answers they could think of right then and there, so that we wouldnt have this problem. keep in mind that they knew that as time passed on we got... "stupider" (regarding torah, anyways), and since they realized they wanted to record all the knowlege they could as soon as possible.

[Bongo_Dude]

ditto

- B.D.