When Did the Oral Torah Become a Written Text?

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Sages of the Talmud observed a profound upheaval in the world, questioning whether the laws of the Torah were still suited to their time. They deliberately set aside the written “Torah of Moses” to conceive a new Torah—this time unwritten—which would gradually supplant the former. Some scholars have argued that the prohibition against writing aimed to preserve the Oral Torah as a dynamic entity, capable of evolving across generations in response to changing circumstances. Others have suggested that the concept of an “Oral Torah” was more of an ideological construct than a tangible reality.

Many Talmudic scholars, such as Nahman Krochmal (1785–1840), Zechariah Frankel (1801–1875), David Zvi Hoffmann (1843–1921), and Hanoch Albeck (1890–1972), engaged in a genuine intellectual competition to determine the period in which the Mishnah was redacted. Their hypotheses ranged from the time of Hillel and Shammai—well before the destruction of the Temple—to the era of Yehuda Hanasi in the early third century CE. They thus faced a complex question: how could the prohibition against writing be reconciled with the necessity of reliably transmitting the oral tradition?

Researchers specializing in ancient texts must first analyze the literary nature of the documents, taking into account their multiple contexts in order to grasp their original perception. They must not confuse legend with history, nor associate historical events with myths. This is particularly crucial since some narratives—such as those concerning David and Solomon—can be misleading, belonging more to the realm of historical fiction than factual testimony. Moreover, it is evident that contemporary Talmudic scholars struggle to reach a definitive stance on a fundamental issue: do the legends of the Talmud reflect an ancient reality, and did its protagonists truly exist, or are they merely narrative figures?

Among modern scholars, Jacob Nahum Epstein (1878–1952) played a crucial role in the study of the Talmud’s redaction. Based on internal textual evidence, Epstein concluded that a written version of the Mishnah must have undoubtedly existed and was available to the sages of the Talmud. Like Maimonides before him, he adopted a rational approach to the limitations of human memory, which is incapable of preserving complex legal debates intact for generations and recalling them when needed. He also questioned the notion of a strict prohibition against writing, asserting that if such a rule had indeed existed, the sages themselves had not always adhered to it.

Like other scholars, Abraham Goldberg (1913-2012) attempted to address the issue in a somewhat opaque manner. According to him, the Mishnah is a compilation of laws and narratives structured by Yehuda Hanasi into a fundamental collection. However, the exact meaning of the term “structured” in a collection remains enigmatic. Was it truly a written text or merely a corpus memorized and transmitted orally? The question of whether, during the time of Yehuda Hanasi, the Mishnah was recorded on scrolls remains unanswered.

The scholar Isaiah Gafni contested Epstein’s conclusions and sought to neutralize the issue by suggesting that Yehuda Hanasi had “organized the Mishnah orally,” in accordance with the prohibition on writing imposed by Rabbi Akiva. However, this explanation does not resolve the dilemma of whether Yehuda Hanasi actually wrote the Mishnah or if its transmission relied solely on memory. Gafni also emphasizes that many midrashim were compiled and written down several centuries after the 7th century, in the context of the Muslim conquest. He refers to this new literature as “preparation for the collection and editing of the material of the Oral Torah,” while asserting that there is no certainty to confirm that this material was indeed transcribed.

However, it seems that Gafni does not fully grasp the absurdity of the term “oral collection and editing.” In principle, can purely oral content be edited, and if so, how? His conclusion that there is no certainty that this material was indeed written illustrates the tension between orality and writing. He attempts to avoid this contradiction by suggesting that the writing of the Mishnah was secondary: “The diffusion of the Mishnah took place through its official teaching in study halls, and the question of its transcription remains marginal.” Yet, this statement overlooks an essential reality: the dating of the Mishnah’s writing is a key element in understanding the society in which it was created. Despite Epstein’s conclusions, scholars continue to refrain from deciding whether the Mishnah and the Talmud were written down or remained oral for more than a thousand years.

Faced with these uncertainties, some scholars use vagueness and ambiguity to maintain a form of consensus. A striking example of this is the explanation by Vered Noam, an Israel Prize laureate, who tried to define the nature of the Mishnah for her students. She highlights an insoluble contradiction between the idea of an Oral Torah and the existence of a written Mishnah as early as the 3rd century CE. In her view, the Mishnah was already a book, providing the Talmudic sages with a dense and authoritative text of unparalleled significance. However, she later revises her position, stating, “This book, although it was not written, became an absolute reference.” This blatant contradiction illustrates the inability to resolve the very nature of the Mishnah, which hinders historians from drawing conclusions about the society that produced it.

The bold researcher Yaakov Sussmann dared to confront one of the most controversial issues in scholarship: the antagonism between Oral Torah and the written text. To do so, he proposed setting aside the two letters of Sherira Gaon, dated to the 10th century, in order to directly examine the Talmudic text, stripped of its later interpretations. To his credit, he challenged the conclusions of his teacher Jacob Nahum Epstein, and after a meticulous analysis of the sources, he reached a decisive conclusion: the Sages of the Talmud did not have any written works, and the Mishna continued to be taught exclusively orally.

Sussmann suggests that the Talmud may have been written down shortly before its dissemination within the Jewish world, but it likely did not exist in written form prior to the 10th century. He questions the idea that the Mishna was “sealed” by Yehuda Hanasi and categorically rejects the notion that it was transcribed. In other words, Yehuda Hanasi did not write a work called the Mishna. He provides solid evidence to support his thesis: in Talmudic schools, there is no indication of the reading of a written text. The teaching relied entirely on oral transmission, based on listening. However, this method posed a major risk: the possibility of forgetting, as everything depended on human memory.

Sussmann solved this problem by emphasizing that when a disagreement arose among the Sages, they did not refer to a written text, but to memory professionals—true living libraries—who could be called “memorizers” or “books with two voices.” The precision of the text was preserved through mnemonic techniques and constant repetition of the unwritten content, thus ensuring the faithful transmission of Yehuda Hanasi’s work. He also highlighted that the Sages of the Talmud did not hesitate to enrich this oral tradition with comments, corrections, and modifications.

Similarly, the question of the primacy of the oral over the written also haunted the authors of the Quran. Originally, they opposed putting the text in writing: “Woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and then say: ‘This is from God,’ in order to exchange it for a small price” (Surah Al-Baqarah 79). Islamic tradition holds that the Quran and the Hadith were preserved orally from Muhammad until the 10th century, thanks to professional memorizers tasked with ensuring the official transmission of an unwritten text. However, with the expansion of conquests, governors, fearing the loss of memorizers on the battlefield, hastened to commit these texts to writing. The theologian Muhammad Al-Bukhari (810-870) even emphasizes the physiological impossibility of memorizing 200,000 hadiths that had never been written down.

One question remains: how can one distinguish between comments, corrections, and modifications in the absence of a written source? Sussmann acknowledges that the terminology associated with the oral differs from that of the written. Yet, when describing the unwritten Mishna of Yehuda Hanasi, he uses vocabulary that is inherently scriptural: signature, edition, text, corrections, transformations, revision—as though the Sages existed after the invention of printing. Can one reasonably conceive of the editing and revision of strictly oral content? Is it possible to memorize and structure hundreds of legal debates transmitted solely by word of mouth? According to the author, “For us, heirs of Western culture, for whom intellectual creation seems unimaginable without the use of books and libraries, it is difficult to conceive of an intellectual production that is free from writing. Yet it is now established that, in ancient societies, literary creation could endure without the use of writing.”

It is surprising that some researchers, like Sussmann, rely on clichés to resolve contradictions. While the Sages practiced magic, the Talmud rejects the idea that such magic could have produced texts, thereby reminding us of the conventional limits of human memory. These memory constraints sometimes forced the Sages to transgress the prohibition against writing in order to preserve the Oral Torah. What then motivates the persistence of some researchers who claim that a text never written down could still have been edited and commented upon? Sussmann’s argument echoes an old anecdote about a Yemeni capable of reciting the entire Talmud from the first to the last page, and vice versa. It is hard to accept that mere memory could guarantee the unaltered transmission of a text that was never committed to paper. This stance seems more like an apologetic defense of the “noble savage” in contrast to “us, adherents of Western culture,” a rhetoric reminiscent of that used by Christian missionaries upon their arrival in the colonies.

This stubborn adherence to the tradition that the Mishna was “sealed” by Judah Hanasi contradicts Sussmann’s conclusions, which state that the Mishna was not a written book in front of the editors of the Talmud. Yet, it maintains ambiguity by claiming that the fact the Mishna was not written down is not of crucial importance. In my view, asserting that the Mishna was not written during his lifetime holds no decisive significance, but rather represents a desperate attempt to uphold the traditional position despite the logic of research. If, as he asserts, the Mishna was not written at the time of the Talmud editors, an essential question arises: when did the Sages choose to ignore the prohibition against writing in order to compose such a monumental work, divided into the Mishna and Talmud? Those who seek an answer within the Talmud itself will encounter silence due to the lack of historical context. What happened in the history of the Sages to lead them to make this change? Was this turning point the result of internal debates, or the decision of a charismatic authority? Who was this authoritative figure who led the group of writers who organized and composed such a complex body of literary material? Was the decision made without opposition from the faithful to the prohibition of writing? Was the writing process gradual or the product of a centralized effort? Unfortunately, these questions remain underexplored in Talmudic research.

Talmud scholars have not devoted as much attention to the question of its composition as biblical scholars have to dating their texts. This relative indifference goes against the intrinsic link between the Talmud and Judaism, as well as the gap between the priests of the Temple and the religion of the Sages. A thorough study of Talmudic manuscripts could confirm the estimate that its composition was completed before the 10th century. The first occurrences of the terms “Mishna” and “Talmud” likely date to the 9th century CE. They appear for the first time in a manuscript of fragments from Pirqoy ben Baboy, discovered in the Cairo Geniza. However, it remains uncertain whether all the writings of the Sages were available to him, or if it was an exhaustive collection.

Researchers have two hypotheses to explain the dating of the Talmud’s composition. The first suggests that the Talmud was indeed defined as the Oral Torah, but the Sages nonetheless wrote down certain texts despite the prohibition. Around the 10th century, editors might have compiled these early manuscripts, grouping them together without true editing, thus giving rise to the work we know today. The second hypothesis suggests that all legends, anecdotes, and laws remained exclusively oral for many centuries. It was only in the 10th century, during the time of Saadia and Sherira Gaon, that a significant group of editors would have set down the popular legends transmitted orally and structured the ongoing halakhic debates of their time, creating a previously unseen work. In my opinion, it is unlikely that halakhic debates were recorded before reaching the Talmudic editors. In that case, they would likely have cited their sources to support their arguments.

If the Talmud as we know it was compiled just before its dissemination in the Jewish world, it is likely that its compilation did not precede the early 10th century. Hence, the characteristic laws of the Talmud would essentially reflect the world in which its editors lived and their own ideologies. The hundreds of names of Sages who participate in the debates could thus refer to contemporary figures or have been chosen arbitrarily for literary purposes.

This does not mean, however, that the social context, customs, proverbs, and popular beliefs present in the Talmud did not exist before its writing down. The writings of the Sages were likely crafted by dozens of editors who lived in different periods. Moreover, it is important to highlight that its acceptance within various Jewish communities faced numerous oppositions, and a considerable amount of time passed between the completion of its composition in the 10th century and its gradual dissemination in codex form by the 12th century.