All religions have their lunatic fringes. ALL of them. The idea of burning books is repugnant to me. Y`all have heard the oldie but goodie that ``some village is missing its idiot``. We lived through Falwell, the Swaggarts (sp) and a number of others. This is just one more. I expect that if there is a God out there, then this guy is in a serious amount of shit with the Boss anyway.

The Torah is the first five books of the Old Testament.

The following is from Wiki, and says it more clearly than I could.

``The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd "instruction, learning", from a root lmd "teach, study") is a central text of mainstream Judaism, in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history.

The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), the first written compendium of Judaism's Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), a discussion of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh.

The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably. The Gemara is the basis for all codes of rabbinic law and is much quoted in other rabbinic literature. The whole Talmud is also traditionally referred to as Shas (ש"ס), a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the "six orders" of the Mishnah.``