Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (1898)
TAL'MUD,THE (teaching,). This body of Jewish laws upon all topics is divided into two parts - the Mishna, or the text, and the Gemara, or commentary. The Mishna ("repetition") is a collection of various Jewish traditions, with expositions of Scripture-texts.
These, the Jews pretend, were delivered to Moses on the mount, and were transmitted from him, through Aaron, Eleazar, and Joshua, to the prophets, and by them to the men of the Great Synagogue and their successors until the second Christian century, when Rabbi Jehuda reduced them to writing, and so he is the collector of the existing Mishna. The Gemara ("teaching") is the whole body of controversies and teachings which arose in the academies after the close of the Mishna.
There are two of them, known, in connection with the Mishna, as the Jerusalem Talmud (third and fifth century), prepared by the rabbis of Tiberias, and the Babylonian Talmud (fifth century). The Talmud is useful as an aid in studying the teaching of Christ. It explains some of his allusions, and, as a Teacher sent from God, proves his unique superiority to the Jewish doctors of the Law.