A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi,
and the Midrashic Literature/Preface |A Dictionary of the
Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic
Literature by |Hebrew or Aramaic Abbreviations→| The literature
embraced in this Dictionary covers a period of about one
thousand years, and contains Hebrew and Aramaic elements in
about equal proportions. The older Hebrew elements, which may
conveniently be called the Mishnaic, and can in part be traced
back to the first, if not to the second, century B. C. E., may
be considered a continuation of the Biblical Hebrew — Biblical
Hebrew tinged with Aramaisms. It is therefore apt to throw
light, more directly than its successor, on many obscure words
and passages in the Bible; nevertheless, the material for
Biblical exegesis deposited in the later literature is an
inexhaustible mine, which still awaits exploitation by
sympathetic students. Besides the Mishnah and the Tosefta, the
Mishnaic period embraces Sifra and Sifré, Mekhilta, an