22
CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD
it is not improbable that the existing Mishnah and
the existing Tosephta are only two out of many
contemporary collections great or small, two com-
pilations founded upon the works of many previous
teachers, and that of these two, 11 one was taken and
the other left." The two collections might almost
have exchanged names, so that what is now known
as the Mishnah might conceivably have come to be
looked upon as Tosephta to the other. And, al-
though the one enjoys a sort of canonical authority
not recognised in the other, yet for historical pur-
poses they are both of equal value, since both con-
tain traditions dating from the earliest centuries of
the common era. The contents of Tosephta are,
as will have appeared above, mainly Halachah ; but
Haggadah also is found, as in the case of the Mish-
nah, and in greater abundance.
The works above described, viz., Mishnah, Gemaras,
and Tosephta, have for their common purpose the
development and definition of Halachah as the rule
for the right conduct of life, the expansion into
minute detail of the principle,
Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and
strength.
But the Rabbinical literature includes
another very extensive class of works, in which the
same principle is dealt with in a somewhat different
manner. The generic name for works of this class is
I
Midrash,'
i.e.
exposition ; and the common character-
istic of them all is that they are free commentaries
upon books or portions of books of the O.T.
Perhaps commentary is hardly the right word ;
for
the Midrash does not profess to explain every point
of difficulty in the text with which it deals, and, as
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