II. The Tanatm, or Teachers nfthe Lmo ofKew-Test. Times. — 1. Name and Bate of the Tanaim. — The appella- tion Tanaim is Aramaic (a'^XDH, sing. "^XSr, frequen- tative of the Chaldee n:n=Hebrew ^V3, to rej^eui), and literally denotes i-epeaters of the lau\ or teachers of the law. The Hebrew equivalent for this title is "^I'UJ r.lrbn, while in the New Test, this class of teachers are denominated vof^ioSi^d(jKa\oi (Luke v, 17; Acts v, 34). These teachers of the law are also called the sar/es, the wise (D'^^in, ffo<poi), elders (C'IpT, 7rpEa(3oTepoi, Succa, 46; Sabbath, 64), and in later times rabbaitan ("2"l)=0M?- teacher, rabbani ( = 'Paf3l3ovvl, Mark x, 51; John xx, IG), rabbon, and rabbi. See Rabbi. It is only rarely that the great doctors of this period are called d^lSTD, scribes (comp. Kelim, 13 b). The period of the Tanaim begins with the famous Antigonus of Soho (B.C. 200), and terminates with Gamaliel III ben- Jehudah I (A.D. 220), in whose presidency the Sanhe- drim, and with it the college, was transferred from Jabneh to Tiberias, thus extending over 420 years.
2. The Woi-k of the Tanaim. — The labors and tenets of these doctors of the law are of the greatest interest to the Christian student of the New Test., inasmuch as it was in their midst that our Saviour appeared; and as both Christ and his apostles frequently refer to the teachings, and often employ the very language of the Tanaim. The chief aim of the doctors of the law dur- ing this period was —
(1.) To fix and forinularize the views and expositions of their predecessors, the Sopherim, and to pass them as laws. Thus fixed and established, these views were term- ed llalachCiih (p^zhTX) = laws : they are composed in He- brew and expressed in laconic and often enigmatical for- mulae. The formularizing of these Halachoth was espe- cially needed, since the successive ascendency of the Per- sians, Egyptians, Syrians, and Romans over Palestine greatly influenced the habits and conduct of the Jewish people, and since the scribes themselves, as we have seen, did not set forth their opinions as final. The re- lation which the work of the Tanaim, or the rof-ioSicd- tTKuXoi, in this department bears to that of the scribes will be better understood by an example. The scribes deduced from the words " When thou liest down and when thou risest up" ("jTCIpjl "i^ZTTj, Ueiit. vi, 7), that it is the duty of every Israelite to repeat both morn- ing and evening the sections of the law (i. e. Deut. vi, 4-9; xi, 13-21) which proclaim the unity of God, with- out specifying the hours during which the passages are to be recited ; while the voiioCiSdcrKaXoi, accepting tliis deduction of the scribes as law (Tizhtl), fixed the time when this declaration about the unity of God is to be made by every Israelite, without mentioning the length of the section to be recited, or that it is a duty to do so, because they founded it upon the interpretation of the Sopherim (Mishna, Berakoth, i, 1-5).
(2.) The Tanaim compiled cxegetical rules (Hnia) to show how these oiiinions of the scribes, as well as the expansion of these views by doctors of the law, are to be deduced from the Scriptures. See Ismael bkn-
Elisa ; Scripture, Interpretation among the Jews. The study of the connection between the opin- ions of the scribes formularized into Halachoth and the Bible was called the Midrash, or exposition of the
Scriptures (n"inin:n ■c^'y-ci).
(3.) They developed the ritual and judicial questions hinted at in the Pentateuch in accordance with the re- quirements of the time and the ever-changing circum- stances of the nation. As the period over which the work of these teachers of the law extended was very long, and as the older doctors of this period expressed their definitions of the Halachoth in extremely concise and sometimes obscure formuhe, many of these Hala- choth, like the Scriptures, needed further elucidation, and became the object of study and discussion among the later Tanaim. These discussions, as well as the different modes of exposition whereby the sundry Hala- choth were connected with the Bible, which reflect the mental characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the partic- ular teachers and schools, were gradually collected and rubricated, and now constitute the contents of the Mish- na and the commentaries on the Pentateuch entitled Mechilta, Siphra, and Siphri, a description of which is given in the article Midrash. For the other work of the most distinguished among these doctors of the law, we must refer to the article Saniiedriji. It must be re- membered that this supreme court and chief seat of learn- ing dates from the commencement of the Tanaic period.
3. Development of Doctrine itnder the Tanaim. — (1.) It is characteristic of the scribes of the earlier period that, with the exception of Ezra and Zadok (Neh. xiii, 13), we have no record of their names. A later age honored them collectively as the men of the Great Syn- agogue, the true successors of the prophets {Pirke A both, i, 1); but the men themselves by whose agency the Scriptures of the Old. Test, were written in their pres- ent characters, compiled in their present form, limited to their present number, remain unknown to us. Never, perhaps, was so important a work done so silently. It has been avcU argued (Jost, Judenthum, i, 42) that it was so of set purpose. The one aim of those earlj' scribes was to promote reverence for the law, to make it the groundwork of the people's life. They would write nothing of their own, lest less worthy words should be raised to a level with those of the oracles of God. If interpretation were needed, their teaching should be oral only. No precepts shotdd be perpetuated as resting on their authority. In the words of later Judaism, they devoted themselves to the Mikra (i. e. recitation, reading, as in Neh. viii, 8), the careful study of the text, and laid down rules for transcribing it with the most scrupulous precision (comp. the tract Sophe- rim in the Jerusalem Gemara).