The Talmud is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also traditionally referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the "six orders". The term "Talmud" normally refers to the Babylonian Talmud, though there is also an earlier collection known as the Jerusalem Talmud.

The Talmud has two components. The first part is the Mishnah, the written compendium of Judaism's Oral Torah (Torah meaning "Instruction", "Teaching" in Hebrew). The second part is the Gemara (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. The term Talmud can be used to mean either the Gemara alone, or the Mishnah and Gemara as printed together.

The whole Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Aramaic. The Talmud contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law and is much quoted in rabbinic literature.