Re: talmud

From: Jonathan D. Safren (yonsaf@beitberl.beitberl.ac.il)
Date: Fri Dec 19 1997 - 15:48:56 EST


Andrew Kulikovsky wrote:

> Does anyone out there know if and where it is possible to find the
> Talmud (preferably Babylonian, and in English) on the web?
>
> Could those on the b-hebrew list reply to me personally, since I am not
> on that list.
>
> Cheers und Froh Weinachten!
> Andrew
> --
> Andrew S. Kulikovsky B.App.Sc(Hons) MACS
> Software Engineer
> CelsiusTech Australia
> Module 6, Endeavour House,Technology Park,
> The Levels, S.A. 5095
> Phone : +61 8 8343 3837 (Direct)
> Fax : +61 8 8343 3778
> Email : anku@celsiustech.com.au
>
> "There's no gene for the human spirit."

Dear Andrew,
I found the following information at the Snunit site (www.snunit.k12.il)
and am transmitting it to you. I know that Snunit has an online Talmud in
Hebrew/Aramaic, but was unable to find it in English. Perhaps you will have
better luck.
Yours,
Jonathan D. Safren
Dept. of Biblical Studies
Beit Berl College

The Bible and Talmudic Litrature on the Web

Authors: Itzik Yarchi, Ofer Margo, David Rashty, Prof. Nava Ben-Tzvi
Snunit Educational Information System, The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem

Abstract

One of the main purposes of the World Wide Web, we believe, is to
provide easy access to widely available data bases which are of
general interest to the public. A database enabling easy browsing and
full text searching of the Bible and of the Talmudic Literature , is
in our opinion, a prime example of such a database. In this article
we describe a database containing the Bible and the Talmudic
Literaure that we implemented, in Hebrew, on the World Wide Web. We
discuss the implementation of this database, it's user interface, and
some of its features. We discuss in more detail two of the advanced
features that distinguish this database from the 'traditional'
printed versions of the Bible: a) the cross-references generated
between the Bible and the Talmudic Literature, and implemented as
HTML links, and b) The ability to conduct full text searches on the
entire text.

Introduction

The Jewish tradition is based on two laws: The Written Law, and the
Oral Law. According to Jewish belief, both laws were given together
at Mount Sinai.

The Hebrew Bible is made up of three sections. The first, The Five
Books of Moses (the "Torah"), constitutes the Written Law. The
second and the third sections, Prophets and the Writings, contains
various books written during the periods of the first and the
beginning of the second temple. The Bible was compiled during the
first millennium, B.C.

The Talmudic Literature, composed of the Mishna, Tosefta and the
Talmud (the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud) is the
first codification of the Jewish "Oral - Law". It was compiled during
the second, third and fourth centuries, A.D.

The ability to search the Bible and the Talmudic Literature in
'full text' (i.e - search for a specific word or words that appear
anywhere in the text) is, of course, of great importance to students
and scholars. Until recently, the only way to do such a search was
to use a Concordance - a voluminous book in which all the words
appearing in the Bible are listed in alphabetical order. For each
word the places in the Bible where it appears are listed. In recent
years several CD's that enabled a full text search of the Bible
became available on the market[1]. There were still no widely
available and simple to use tools enabling a full text search of the
Bible using the internet.

The Talmudic Literature quotes the Old Testament frequently, in order
to prove or disprove claims or to bring examples. Most versions of
the Talmudic Literature designate the chapter (but not the verse)
from which each quote was taken. The Bible, compiled a long time
before the Talmudic Literature, of course doesn't have cross-
references to those quotes.

Thus another desired feature, concerning the databases of the Bible
and the Talmudic Literature, is a thorough cross-referencing between
the Bible and the Talmudic Literature, based on the quotes described
above, and the ability to easily follow those cross-references. It
is desirable that the cross-references from the Talmudic Literature
to the Bible will point not only to the chapter, but to the exact
verse quoted. On the other hand, each verse in the Bible, quoted in
the Talmudic Literature, should have cross-references pointing to
those quotes.

Today, the Internet, and more specifically, the World Wide Web, is
the main tool through which it is possible to make public databases
widely available. This can be done through interfaces that are
attractive and easy to use on one hand, and powerful enough to
provide sophisticated search and retrieval capabilities on the other
hand.

We set a goal for ourselves to put a database containing the Bible
and Talmudic Literature, in Hebrew (ISO 8859-8) [2,3,4] on the Web,
that has the following features:

A. Full text search of the Bible and Talmudic Literature.

B. Easy to use, Hebrew interface for a graphical browser working on a
variety of operating systems.

C. Cross-references from the Talmudic Literature to the Bible and
vice versa, implemented through HTML links.

In the paper, we first shortly describe the basic architecture and
implementation of the database. We then describe in some detail the
database as seen from the users point of view. We describe the
algorithm that was used to find the exact verse in the Bible that
the Talmudic Literature quotes from. (We describe this algorithm in
some detail because we believe the ideas on which it is based can be
easily applied in a range of other applications). Finally we present
a summary and a short discussion.

The Basic architecture and implementation

The database itself is simply a collection of HTML pages, one for
each chapter. The files can be accessed directly (when the user asks,
for example, to view a specific chapter) by the different browsers.
Alternatively, the files can be searched, using 'WAIS'[5,7]. We used
FreeWAIS 0.5 [6](with some modifications needed to adapt it to
Hebrew) to index the files, and to serve the queries. A
'WAISGate'[8] is responsible for the interface between the WAIS
server and the client's browser. (This 'WAISGate' is based on the
'WAISGate' supplied with the Cern httpd server.) The WAISGate
presents the search forms[9] to the user, processes the queries
entered by the user, and sends them to the WAIS server. It also
receives the answers from the WAIS server, processes them and
presents them to the user (Figure 1). The answer presented to the
user is basically a list of HTML links to verses (Figure 5).
Special modules were added to the WAISGate in order to support Hebrew
Search and return the list of matching verses according to the
conventional order of the books in the Bible.

The cross-references between the Talmudic Literature and the Bible
are implemented as HTML links embedded in the files that make up the
databases. Those links were created by Perl scripts running 'off-
line'. First, using advanced heuristics and search techniques, the
exact verse from which each quote in the Talmudic Literature was
taken was found. Then it was easy, using another Perl script, to
create the cross-references back from the Bible to the Talmud.

A users point of view of the system

We must emphasize that the database, HTML forms and menus associated
with it, are implemented solely and completely in Hebrew. However,
for the sake of clarity we included several figures in English - they
are simply a 'translation' of the HTML forms and pages the user sees
in Hebrew, to English.

The main entrance to the database is through the URL http://
www1.snunit.k12.il/kodesh/kodesh.html When accessing this URL the
user is presented with a menu from which he can choose whether he
wants to browse the Bible, the Mishna, the Tosefta, and the Talmud.

Then the user has the following options (Figure 2):

1) He may choose to descend through a series of menus to a specific
chapter, and read it. This series of menus reflects the
hierarchical
structure of the Bible and the Talmudic Literature.

2) He may search the Bible or the Talmudic Literature for specific
keywords.

Reading a specific chapter

In the database, each chapter is represented as an HTML page (See
Figure 3). When reading the chapter, the user can go either to the
next chapter, to the previous one, or back to the menus.

The Talmudic Literature texts quote often from verses in the Bible.
In the database those quotes are represented as HTML links pointing
to the exact verse from which the quote was taken.

On the other hand, when a specific verse is quoted from the Talmudic
Literature, it appears highlighted as an HTML link in the Bible.
Pressing this link brings up to the user a different version of the
chapter, which includes HTML links to the places in the Talmudic
Literature that quote this verse. (Figure 4) Thus the user can easily
view the commentary from the Talmudic Literature available for each
verse.



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