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Talmud Yerushalmi תלמוד ירושלמי
The Talmud of the Land of Israel — the amoraic academies of Tiberias, Tzippori, and Caesarea working through the Mishnah in the century and a half after Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. Completed earlier and more abruptly than the Bavli (Talmud Bavli), it preserves the Eretz Yisrael branch of the mesorah that the Bavli's eventual dominance overshadowed.
I. Who
- Hebrew
- תלמוד ירושלמי
- Also known as
- Jerusalem Talmud, Palestinian Talmud, Talmud of Eretz Yisrael
- Era
- amoraim
II. When
- Traditional
- composed by R' Yochanan, about three hundred years after the Destruction (per the Rambam's reckoning)
- Academic
- redacted in Tiberias c. 360–400 CE; tractate Nezikin earlier, likely Caesarea
- Duration
- ≈50 years
- Precision
- approximate
IV. What
- Language
- Galilean (Jewish Palestinian) Aramaic and Hebrew
- Redaction
- Traditionally credited to R' Yochanan and his academy in Tiberias; on any reckoning the extant text continues past his death, and its close coincides with the collapse of the patriarchate's world in 4th-century Eretz Yisrael.
- Structure
- Gemara on the Mishnah's (B0003) orders Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, and Nezikin plus part of Niddah — 39 tractates; no gemara on Kodashim. Markedly terser than the Bavli, without its developed anonymous dialectic.
V. How do we know
| Claim | Evidence | Confidence | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| "R' Yochanan composed the Talmud Yerushalmi in the Land of Israel about three hundred years after the destruction of the Temple" — the Rambam's statement of the traditional attribution.
Taken traditionally as founding authorship: R' Yochanan's academy created the project, though the extant text cites amoraim well after him. The Rambam's own "three hundred years after the Destruction" (c. 370 CE) already implies a date beyond R' Yochanan's lifetime.
|
tradition | ★★★☆☆ | |
| Academic scholarship dates the redaction to Tiberias c. 360–400 CE, ending abruptly without a Bavli-style redactional layer, with tractate Nezikin differing enough in language and style to indicate separate (likely Caesarean, earlier) redaction. | reconstruction | ★★★★☆ |
|
| The Rambam sequences the two Talmuds explicitly: Rav Ashi composed the Bavli about a hundred years after R' Yochanan composed the Yerushalmi — the tradition's own statement that the Yerushalmi came first. | tradition | ★★★★☆ |