Ken Fleischmana, age 16, of Santa Cruz, Calif., for his question:

WHEN WAS THE TALMUD WRITTEN?

The Talmud is the central sass of Jewish law sad tradition. Talmud comas from a Hebrew word that means "instruction" sad it is a collection of teachings that hays been written by Jewish scholars. The lifelong task of writing down the oral law was dons by Rabbi Judah the Prince in Palestine in about A.D. 200.

According to the scholars, when Moses came down from Mount Sinai after receiving the Ten Commandments from God,, he also brought back another set of laws to be passed on by word of mouth.

Tradition says that Moses gave to the Jewish people the Torah, the written law made up of the first five books of the Old Testament. He also taught them the unwritten or oral law, which was then headed down from one generation to the next.

The oral law was used to explain the meaning of the written law.

After many hundreds of years it became necessary to write down the oral law. The explanations were difficult for one person to memorize and often the leaders disagreed as to which explanation of the law was correct.

It was then that Rabbi Judah put the material into writing.

The material is arranged in six groups that are called orders: agriculture; the Sabbath and festivals; marriage; civil and criminal law; ritual sacrifices: and cleanliness.

The orders are then subdivided further into 63 tracts or books. The whole work is called the Mishaa, meaning the second law.

A new aeries of oral explanations then developed around the Mishna. These were put into written form later sad called the Gemara. Theca two parts make up the Talmud. The Mishna is the text and the Gemara is a aeries of comments and notes.

Two versions of the Gemara exist: one compiled in the 4th Century by scholars of Palestine and the other in the 5th by scholars of Babylonia.

The Mishna together with the Palestinian Gemara is known as the Palestinian Talmud. The Mishaa with the Babylonian Gemara is known as the Babylonian Talmud.

The Talmud has two kinds of literature: Halakha, which is the law, and Haggada, which is made up of stories, legends and sermons that explain the spirit of the law.

The complete Talmud covers all parts of religious sad secular life.

Because of this, it is important not only as a study of religion sad philosophy but also as a history of Middle Eastern civilizations.

Orthodox and Conservative Judaism today accept the Talmud's authority as divine. Reform Judaism, however, doesn't believe that the Talmud has absolute binding power.

All groups, however, agree that the Talmud is important in Jewish history and they value its teachings.