Rabbinic Judaism, also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, or Judaism espoused by the Rabbanites, has been the mainstream form of Judaism since the 6th century CE, after the codification of the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbinic Judaism has its roots in Pharisaic Judaism and is based on the belief that Moses at Mount Sinai received two items from God: the "Written Torah" and the "Oral Torah". The Written Torah is the Torah itself and the Oral Torah explanations of the Written Torah transmitted word-of-mouth. Often, these are known as the Written and Oral Law. At first, it was forbidden to write down the Oral Torah because the rabbis feared that it would become rigid and lose its flexibility, but after the destruction of the Second Temple they decided to write it down in the Talmud and other rabbinic texts.
