The image of the sea is often used to depict the vastness of the Talmud, a work of law and commentary on that law, that is one of the highest literary achievements of the Jewish tradition. A cornerstone of Halakhah (Jewish law), the Talmud extends beyond the confines of legal matters to include narrative discourse. There are in fact two Talmuds—the Palestinian Talmud (PT), or Talmud Yerushalmi, which was produced in Israel in the late fourth or early fifth century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud (BT), or the Talmud Bavli, editorially completed in Babylonia in the sixth century or seventh century. When the term “Talmud” (from the Hebrew limed, “to teach”) is used alone, it refers to the Babylonian Talmud. Less than half the size of the Babylonian Talmud, the Palestinian Talmud is written mostly in a dialect of Western Aramaic, and was produced in the Galilean academies of Sepphoris, Tiberias, and Caesarea. Like the Palestinian Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud includes Mishnaic and post- Mishnaic Hebrew but was written in an Aramaic that is akin to Syriac, the eastern Aramaic dialect then prevalent in Babylonia. Replete with legend and moral teachings as well as law, the Talmud has remained one of the major documents by which Judaism is understood.
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