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The Bible and Talmudic Literature on the Web<br />

Itzhak Yarhy<br />

Snunit Edu. Info. System<br />

Hebrew University of Jerusalem<br />

Israel<br />

itzyar@www1.huji.ac.il<br />

Ofer Margon<strong>in</strong>ski<br />

Snunit Edu. Info. System<br />

Hebrew University<br />

Israel<br />

omargo@www1.huji.ac.il<br />

David Rashty<br />

Snunit Edu. Info System<br />

Hebrew University<br />

Israel<br />

rashty@www1.huji.ac.il<br />

Prof. Nava Ben Tzvi<br />

Science Teach<strong>in</strong>g Center<br />

Hebrew University<br />

Israel<br />

nava@mail.snunit.k12.il<br />

The Jewish tradition is based on two laws: The Written Law and the Oral Law. Accord<strong>in</strong>g to Jewish belief,<br />

both laws were given together at Mount S<strong>in</strong>ai. The Hebrew Bible, compiled dur<strong>in</strong>g the first millennium, BC ,<br />

and constitutes the written law. The Talmudic Literature, composed of the Mishna, Tosefta and the Talmud<br />

(the Palest<strong>in</strong>ian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud) is the first codification of the Jewish “Oral - Law”. It was<br />

compiled dur<strong>in</strong>g the second, third and fourth centuries, AD .<br />

The ability to search the Bible and the Talmudic Literature <strong>in</strong> ‘full text’ (i.e. - search for a specific word or<br />

words that appear anywhere <strong>in</strong> the text) is, of course, of great importance to students and scholars. Until<br />

recently, the only way to conduct such a search was to use a Concordance - a volum<strong>in</strong>ous book <strong>in</strong> which all the<br />

words appear<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the Bible are listed <strong>in</strong> alphabetical order. For each word the places <strong>in</strong> the Bible where it<br />

appears are listed. In recent years several CD’s that enable full text search of the Bible became available on the<br />

market [Bar Ilan Univ. The Responsa], but there were still no widely available, simple to use tools, enabl<strong>in</strong>g a<br />

full text search of the Bible on the Internet.<br />

The Talmudic Literature quotes the Old Testament frequently, <strong>in</strong> order to prove or disprove claims or to br<strong>in</strong>g<br />

examples. Most versions of the Talmudic Literature designate the chapter (but not the verse) from which each<br />

quote is taken. The Bible, compiled a long time before the Talmudic Literature, of course doesn’t have cross<br />

references to those quotes. Thus another desired feature <strong>in</strong> databases of the Bible and the Talmudic Literature,<br />

is a thorough cross referenc<strong>in</strong>g between the Bible and the Talmudic Literature, based on the quotes described<br />

above, and the ability to easily follow those cross references.<br />

We created a database conta<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g the Bible and the Talmudic Literature, <strong>in</strong> Hebrew (ISO 8859-8) [Nussbacher<br />

& bourv<strong>in</strong>e, 1993][Snunit, 1995] on the Web, that has the follow<strong>in</strong>g features:<br />

A. Full text search of the Bible and Talmudic Literature<br />

B. Easy to use, Hebrew <strong>in</strong>terface for a graphical browser work<strong>in</strong>g on a variety of operat<strong>in</strong>g systems.<br />

C. Cross references from the Talmudic Literature to the Bible and vice versa, implemented through HTML<br />

l<strong>in</strong>ks.

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