The late midrashic, paytanic, and targumic literature

INTRODUCTION This chapter describes an important segment of the spiritual-literary activity of the Sages in the Land of Israel in the period beginning with the completion of the Mishnah in c. 200 ce and ending with the conquest of the Middle East by the Muslims. The literary activity and compositions of this era under discussion should be viewed as an expansion and continuation of the spiritual activity of the tannaitic period, that is, the period before 200 ce, in which the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the early midrashic literature (the tannaitic midrashim on the biblical books Exodus to Deuteronomy) came into existence. During this post-tannaitic period there also appeared two extensive works that require and justify a separate treatment: the Palestinian Talmud (whose development ended abruptly in the first quarter of the fifth century) and the Babylonian Talmud (which was edited at the end of the same century). Needless to say, the type of literature that will be discussed here, with the exception of the Targums (the Aramaic translations of Scripture), continued to be composed after 640 – indeed until after at least the thirteenth century – although this later history requires a separate analysis.