tannan.

1718 H. Prideaux Old & New Test. Connected II. ii. 67 The Tanaim or the Mishnical doctors.

a1831 Encycl. Metrop. (1845) IX. 639/2 He [sc. Antigonus of Socho] was the founder of the school of the tannain or mishnical doctors, by which name all the doctors of the Jewish law are distinguished, who lived between the death of Simon [the Just] and the middle of the second century after Christ.

1888 Encycl. Brit. XXIII. 36/1 The Mishnic doctors..were and are called Tannaim.

1906 Jewish Encycl. XII. 49/1 The period of the Tannaim, which lasted about 210 years (10–220 C.E.).

1911 Encycl. Brit. XXVI. 399/1 The term tanna is used in the Talmud of those teachers who flourished in the first two centuries of the Christian era.

1950 L. S. Thornton Revelation & Mod. World ix. 283 The rabbinical teacher was known as a tanna, that is a ‘repeater’ of the tradition.

1977 New Yorker 17 Oct. 48/3 Rabbi Gabriel used to remind her that, even according to the strictest letter of the law, kissing and embracing are permitted and that tannaim and amoraim frolicked with their spouses in bed.

1919 H. A. A. Kennedy Theol. Epist. i. 17 These were due to the wisdom of many teachers, of whom the most famous were the so-called Tannaites.

1950 L. S. Thornton Revelation & Mod. World ix. 283 There was a ‘tannaite’ succession of teachers which traced its genealogy back through successive pairs of rabbis to the men of the Great Synagogue.

1957 Encycl. Brit. XV. 458/1 The Midrash of the schools, often called Halakhic or Tannaite (i.e. Mishnaic) Midrash.

1905 Jewish Encycl. X. 633/1 In rabbinical literature careful discrimination must be made between the tannaitic period and that of the Amoraim.

1941 G. G. Scholem Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism ii. 51 The tradition of Tannaitic mysticism and theosophy was really alive among them [sc. the later Merkabah mystics].

1969 D. Daube Roman Law iii. 158 Tannaitic law, that is to say, the early Talmudic law of, say, 100 BC to AD 200.