But whether understood minimally or maximally, the notion of “Torah” in the opening paragraph of tractate Avot seems to adumbrate the talmudic idea of “the Oral Torah,” according to which Moses at Mount Sinai received two Torahs from God: the written Torah, what we call the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, Genesis through Deuteronomy; and the Oral Torah, which supplemented and explicated the written Torah. According to various passages in the Talmud, the contents of the Mishnah derive from the Oral Torah.15 Rabbinic Judaism is the Judaism of the Oral Torah.
