The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 74- The Talmud and Christ: Challenges in Biblical Interpretations

• Paul

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We examine how the Talmud has influenced Biblical interpretation in our latest episode—where we challenge the norm by reexamining how the Old Testament might have been intended to spotlight Jesus Christ all along. 

How does a compilation of Jewish oral traditions influence Christian commentaries and translations, sometimes diverging from the original biblical texts? We promise an enlightening discussion that demystifies the Sanhedrin’s role in the New Testament, often misunderstood due to Talmudic influences, and compels us to reconsider the sources we rely upon for biblical interpretations. 

Join us as we navigate the intricate landscape of ancient Judaism's textual traditions, shedding light on the historical figures like St. Epiphanius and St. Jerome, who played pivotal roles in engaging with Jewish converts to Christianity. We explore the complex dynamics of Pharisaic and Rabbinic Judaism and the evolution of oral traditions into written texts, driven by cultural shifts. Our deep dive into biblical interpretation highlights the contrasting reliance on the Oral Torah versus a literal reading, urging listeners to appreciate the richness that historical and cultural contexts bring to biblical narratives. This episode offers a thought-provoking bridge between historical traditions and modern interpretations, challenging the conventional wisdom of relying solely on the Bible for spiritual insights.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Speaker 1:

Well, welcome to a new episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, and we might do a couple of episodes on the Talmud. Well, it's written documents that claim to be a compilation of an earlier oral tradition within Judaism. Now we'll find out exactly what we mean by these terms in a moment. But the reason we want to examine this is because one of our obsessions is understanding the Old Testament the way it was originally intended to be understood, and we believe that that is in a Trinitarian way, focused on Christ, god the Son, god the Word, the second God, as Philo would call him, the second God as Philo would call him. So the whole of the Old Testament is about centered on Jesus Christ, and Jesus himself says that in John 5 and John 8. You know, he just says like Moses is just writing about me, so he's like I'm the centerpiece of the law, and the law presents him as this great high priest, the divine priest and the divine sacrifice, the anointed one. The concept of being the anointed one comes out of the law. Where the high priest is, is is bathed, really, in buckets of oil at his ordination, and sacrifices, too, are covered in oil, and so on. So all the understanding of Messiah, anointed, one comes out of the law and then the prophets are exegeting the law and we agree with the early church leaders that what we call the Old Testament is completely Trinitarian, completely centered on Jesus, and was intended to be, that the original authors had that intention, that understanding of theology of truth, and the correct interpretation is that. Now I say all that because there is a tradition within Christianity and this is something we were going to explore that would say well, the way we should understand the Old Testament is not so much depend on Jesus, the apostles, the early church leaders, but rather here are things like the Talmud and the claims of Judaism and like what is Judaism in the sense? You know, when does that come into existence, that concept of this thing? So, and that does not think the Old Testament is Trinitarian, centered on Jesus Christ, and so on.

Speaker 1:

And yet it is referenced surprisingly often in Christian commentaries. I mean really often, and as we go on we'll cite some examples of this that are so common in modern Christian culture, where people just take it to be literally from the Bible, but it isn't from the Bible. There's no reference to some things that are just commonly believed, and sometimes even translators translate the Bible in a way that isn't an accurate translation of what's actually written, but they translate it according to what the Talmud claims is true, and you might say, well, that can't be, that cannot be. But there's a very common example, pj, why don't you just open us up with that one on the? What is the ruling body of uh in the in the gospels? Is there a ruling body in in of of religious leaders, and what is it called?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so in a lot of translations of scriptures you'll get this impression that there is a legislative body called the town sanhedrin. Yeah, that is mentioned in the talmud, and so they say that's well, that's got to be it. But the greek word we get is synodrion, which just means council, and so if any other group have a council in acts especially, we see that word synodrion Like synod and the Church of England has a synod where you call together like a ruling body.

Speaker 1:

So it's just. There is something called a synod and there are all kinds of synods in the New Testament.

Speaker 2:

But they're not permanent, they're not constitutional, they don't legislate. So really, what we see in the New Testament is that if Herod or the high priest or whoever it might be who's officially in charge but knows what they're about to do might be unpopular, but knows what they're about to do might be unpopular, they'll gather together a synod of popular or famous or well-respected people to help it all go down a bit better or easier. So that just seems to be it. So actually, the book stops with the king or the high priest or the governor and that's it. He's in, in charge, he gets to say whatever he wants to say, he gets to pass whatever laws he wants to pass. But you get all this uh, rioting, and you know the bible mentions a lot of that going on that the jews often did riot if they didn't like what the legislator said. But it is monarchical, it is um inherited from father to son as well.

Speaker 1:

So the structure is monarchy and there are constitutionally appointed people. But often nowadays, yeah, people think no, no, it was actually ruled by the sanhedrin. Yeah, and people just say that confidently. But that isn't in the bible, that's from the talmud.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and we're and there's, and it's all ad hoc in the new testament. He just he's like yeah, there's just like yeah, yeah councils.

Speaker 1:

That happen, right, yeah, now then, what well, let's get into then. What is? What is the talmud? Let's, let's take this. Let's take this slowly because, um, you will often, if you're used to reading commentaries, sometimes even bible translations reference talmud in the bottom and commentaries I mean a guy who I like a lot generally, john Gill, and he's a sort of 18th century Bible commentator yeah, I like him, but he does this a lot references rabbinic Judaism and Talmud references, and even from when I was little, I always thought I wonder why he does that, what is that about?

Speaker 1:

And only much later did I really come to understand what that is. Because it seems strange to me that Christian commentators would look at what a different religion thinks about Christian texts, because I'd be quite nervous of using Islamic sources to understand the New Testament or the Old Testament, even though Muslims do have lots to say about the Old Testament and the New Testament. But it's very rare, very rare, for commentators to reference Muslims, muslim books about the Old Testament and the New Testament. But it's very common, very common, and certainly in certain, some circles, for them to do that like look at this totally different religion, judaism, and say what do they think about the Christian texts of the Old Testament and the New Testament. So, first of all, what is it? What is the Talmud? First of all, let's deal with what is its claimed history Like. What does it? What is no? First of all, what is it? Just, let's define what it is. What does it First of all? What is it? Just let's define what it is. What's at the core of it?

Speaker 2:

things like that, right so it's composed of two main parts. Sometimes it'll have more divisions, but there's two main bits they talk about. One is the Mishnah, the other is the Gemara. So the Mishnah claims to be um, a collection of oral traditions that may go back to 800 bc. They say um, and then a guy compiles it, probably around 200 ad. They think, uh, but they often dispute exactly the time it's supposed to happen.

Speaker 2:

So the idea of it is a guy in 200 AD thinks there's all these oral traditions you need in order to understand the Bible. So you've got to go to this source of oral tradition first, then you can understand the Bible. And then he thinks after the fall of Jerusalem, we're losing all these oral traditions. That will mean the Bible is lost forever, you know, in terms of it being properly understood. So I've got to write down all these oral traditions I can, and that's the Mishnah. That's the basic idea, and again you'll see people tell the story differently and in quite crucial ways. But that's the general gist of what you tend to see, of what the mission hour is. And then you got the gemera, which is people commenting on that from later centuries and things, so that. And then you get other things like the tractates and things that get added on sometimes, but okay so what we're essentially dealing with, then?

Speaker 1:

the claim is that there is a thousand years of oral tradition about the meaning of the Hebrew scriptures, running from, say, 800 BC through to 200 AD something like that the thousand years of collected interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and then that is collected into a written document. Well, not quite. It is more complicated than that. So even the claim isn't that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the claim is that he codifies all the orality into a single oral text which then is repeated until 600 AD.

Speaker 1:

So then it's written down. Okay, so let's take this in stages. So there's 1,000 years of disparate oral traditions. Then a dude in 200 AD this is the claim says oh wow, there's a thousand years of all kinds of disparate oral traditions here, which, if Jewish people are becoming dispersed around the world, that is under threat, this body of oral material. So then he collects the oral material and produces like a definitive in his mind this is the claim, oral tradition. That's a compilation, then that carries on as an oral tradition for maybe another 400 years or something, and then or 300 years or whatever. And then the claim is that that then is collected into a written form, maybe 550 AD sort of time, is it? Yeah, by Ravina and Ravashi. That's what I've heard.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they yeah, it gets, gets. Uh, yeah, all these figures and everything. You get a lot of debates about who exactly does what, but yeah, I think that's the most common attributions. So they tend to say the guy who compiles it all in 200 ad is called judah hanazi, but recently that's been questioned. Quite interestingly, there's a very fascinating PhD by Jeremy Zalman Tabic. I guess he's Dr Jeremy now. This was only last year. He wrote this, but showing how that traditional attribution cannot be true and lots of the stuff that seems to be attributed to this guy who's supposed to live in 200 ad really makes much more sense for the fourth or even fifth centuries ad. So that's even the oral compilation stuff, but uh, so I guess we shouldn't get into that too much.

Speaker 1:

Can you give any of his argument of why it cannot be from 200 ad the?

Speaker 2:

his main thing is quite interesting in that it's patristic, but he's Jewish, but he's just saying look, the patristic stuff is like this is a Christian guy writing about what's happening at the time.

Speaker 2:

And also, when we look at St Epiphanius, he was a Jew and he converted to Christianity and he talks to a lot of other jews, like saint joseph of tiberius, and he had been. Saint joseph had been a jew for and until deep in his adulthood, really only converted to christianity as an old man. But he becomes an amazing christian. But, um, so when people write off, like all christians, christians won't really have understood what's going on. That is obviously difficult for St Epiphanius because he had been a Jew, so it's his own tradition, he's received it and he admits, though, as an old man, like, oh, maybe I'm getting details wrong, because obviously you can get rusty, but on the other hand, when it comes to the basic idea of what's going on, what, what's the tradition of education, who who's who, sort of thing, basically it will be very difficult for him to get that wrong, and why is that relevant to the dating, though?

Speaker 2:

so right, yeah, so epiphanius and saint jerome, he's got a similar story. He befriends lots of jews who convert to christianity, so he's a similar useful source. They, when you follow patristics like them, you see that the jews have no centralized rabbinate, they have no sanhedrin, they have nothing like that. They have no centralized authority for teaching or for legislating or anything. And and the Talmud seems to suggest, or the Mishnah seems to suggest they would.

Speaker 2:

So then, but then Epiphanius and Jerome refer to patriarchs who then have apostles they send out to the diaspora and things. And so if you have nothing like that until at least the time of Oregon, he refers to someone who's called a patriarch but he doesn't seem to have that much authority, really A guy called Julius. So you've got that guy. But then when you get to Ephraimus and Jerome, you do so. Then he's saying, really, when we look at this guy who's supposed to compile the Mishnah or give it its final redaction or something, he needs this sort of authority, he needs the centrality of Jewish hierarchy and everything that external sources say is not present.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so in order for there to have been the single guy who could gather disparate oral traditions because when you first explained to me about the gathering together of the disparate oral traditions into a single definitive tradition, my first thought was, like what an extraordinary amount of authority that guy must have had to be able to pull that off and say, listen, I know you got like, even if you accept the story of like a thousand years of different oral traditions milling around and this guy can step into that and go, okay, everybody here, like your individual ones, need to be replaced by this, uh, compilation, you'd have to have absolutely extraordinary authority, or either structural authority or personal authority or something, to pull that off and impose that on a on a very large geographical area.

Speaker 1:

So that what he's saying this guy's PhD, one of his points is to say, when we look at, because the early church fathers reference Judaism and what's going on with rabbis and things, and they're saying that one, there isn't any centralized structure, there's nothing like a Sanhedrin, there isn't anyone with that level of authority, and just their description of the situation is such that it's very hard to imagine this scenario of a guy doing what they claim that that did happen. This like so okay then, so, um, that's why it's not totally clear. Okay, but the claimed history is 200 AD-ish gathered. This guy gathers it and then has a kind of definitive oral history. Then at 550, that's possibly collected together, is it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, in written form. They start to, partly because Gnostics start criticising anything, that any religion that is based on Aurelii, because they just say, well, you can just start making things up and they've got a point. So they pressure Zoroastrianism into writing down its oral text into the Avestas and their sacred documents, and so there seems to be a lot of reason to assume that that same line of attack they were doing was what prompted Judaism to do that. So, yeah, around 550, that's when we really get the Avestas being written down.

Speaker 1:

So that's the Zoroastrian test. Yeah, so what you're getting then in the sixth century is a movement across, like Persian empire, and then into the West, of that as well, of religious traditions, uh, becoming textual, becoming textual, and the gnostics are partly responsible for that, manichaeus and so on. Zoroastrians do that, and therefore that same like cultural moment impacts judaism yeah and judaism then says right, let's solidify this into a textual form.

Speaker 2:

Right. And they say the reason they had failed to do that previously is because supposedly rabbinic Judaism had a ban on writing down anything that wasn't scripture. And they claim the Pharisees did that. But we know they obviously didn't, because Saints Philo and Josephus were Pharisees and they've written stuff. So we just have Pharisaic stuff to read. So we know that isn't true. But there is reason to believe that later on the rabbinic. So we have to divide between Pharisees and rabbinists. So some people don't.

Speaker 2:

If they believe in the Talmud, they think, well, the rabbinists keep the Pharisaic spirit going more or less perfectly. But that clearly shows that's not true. And there's several other important differences. And there's an interesting argument that is authentic that ban on writing. Because they say, look at how it describes the septuagint and it's so clearly not what the septuagint actually says, so hilariously false. They cannot have had access to written text or else someone would have corrected what's just a blatantly ridiculous claim. So there's things like that that go on.

Speaker 2:

But then you think, well, if the Pharisees actually did write things down and then they've lost track of the oral traditions representing the truth, uh, by the time they've written down the talmuds, then there must have been enough time for really significant corruption.

Speaker 2:

So if josephus, he's writing in the end of the first century and then there's still people writing some things down that are Pharisees in the Jewish revolt in the second century, there has to be a much longer time than just that, you know, the mid second century AD to 200 AD till we see that amount of corruption of the authentic tradition. So, like you know, with the Septuagint example, it just says here is a list of like a dozen things. The septuagint says that the Hebrew Bible doesn't and they do, you know. And then they talk about it and none of them are in the septuagint. It's crazy that they didn't check it. So that shows obviously they couldn't have done, or else they would have done, but there has to have been longer than just 50 years for that to happen. So that's quite a key thing for saying there was a process of redaction between the Mishnah being created as an orality and it finally being published, or else they'd never let things like that through. Really, Okay.

Speaker 1:

So the idea here is that there are two traditions of judaism, like pharisaical judaism was happy with written texts and then they would have had the septuagint and reading the septuagint and writings of josephus philo, all that kind of stuff. So for them you couldn't have said, you couldn't say false things about the septuagint, because they just had it to read and that was. We know that's going on right into the second century. But then you can't like when you, when we look at the, this mishnah, it says things about written texts, like the septuagint especially, that are crazy mistaken, so that if people had recently been reading the Septuagint they'd know that isn't true. So that actually, to say that there's this compiled, definitive compilation of things as early as, say, 200 or 220, it's hard to account for that, because you'd really need hundreds of years of people not consulting techs to be able to get like this, because what is said about the septuagint is just crazily wrong. So it how you'd think, well, well, could you get that level of cultural amnesia in, just say, 50 years or 70 years, but you might get it into 300 years like crazy myths being said about the Septuagint.

Speaker 1:

So what you're showing us there is that, this idea. So there is like this oral tradition and that rabbinical Judaism does ban these written texts thing, but that it all gets locked down in, say, 200 AD or 220 AD. That is not. It's not just only you saying it, this guy with his PhD, you saying it, this guy with his PhD, okay, but then you maybe. Then the idea is that maybe in the 6th century it is actually written down, because now there's a different cultural moment and that lots of religious traditions are saying let's commit our stuff to written form. That is happening, and then and we're still just trying to define what it is that we're dealing with and then once it's in a written form, and then there are two traditions of written form. So we'll come to that.

Speaker 1:

But I just wanted to get a clarity that when you've got this written form, what happens then? For, say, the next thousand years is Gemara, where you've got people adding explanatory notes to the written Mishnah. So the Mishnah gets written down. Their claim is that's say 6th century. And then there's this other thing 6th century. And then there's this other thing which is people are adding additional explanatory interpretive notes to that and then that that stuff becomes part of this whole talmud. Is that correct?

Speaker 2:

yeah, so they usually have the uh gamera lasting like one, like maybe 100 or 300 years, but there is a redactional process of that seemed to go much later. So, like when Maimonides quotes from the Talmud, there's one time where he says one of these in the Mishnah it's supposed to say we agree with the Greeks when it comes to science. And then that isn't in the Mishnah as we have it, so that got edited out at some point to try probably someone trying to get rid of the idea that there's any sort of greek syncretism of philosophy or anything. Uh, before maimonides really so.

Speaker 1:

so the point then is, it's not that there's uh like an indefinite amount of interpretive footnotes added. That period only lasts maybe 150 to 300 years, and then the whole thing's locked down the idea is.

Speaker 1:

So, by maybe 800 or something, it's kind of locked down and that is the talmud. Yeah, the, it's the oral tradition locked into a written form and their period of extra explanatory notes being added 150 to 300 years of that. Then the idea is that's locked down and that's the Talmud that stays set and fixed and that is handed down and becomes really the core of Judaism Talmud, isn't it that, then, so that what what Judaism is is not directly formed by, say, the ancient Hebrew scriptures, what it's really formed by, say, the ancient Hebrew scriptures, what it's really formed by. And the wiki page says this that the Talmud is actually the center of Judaism, that it's this set of oral traditions that are then put into a written form, that are then interpreted and explained and filtered and so on, and that text then is so it's not, uh, it's not directly the hebrew scriptures, it's this kind of ancillary collection of texts that are supposed to be related to the scriptures.

Speaker 1:

Because, if we remember, this is important and maybe let's deal with this for the end of this episode is this idea that what it's supposed to have been because what are all these oral traditions that are supposed to have been floating around from 800 BC through to 200 AD or whatever is it is, is the idea that the Hebrew scriptures cannot be understood alone but require this additional like body of oral traditions that make sense of the written Hebrew text of the Bible, and it's like. So it's effectively a kind of like a comment not exactly a commentary, is it, but it's like something that is supposed to give the correct understanding of the hebrew yeah, they call yeah, so they call the concept like the oral torah and there are like what one?

Speaker 2:

that like sort of helpful, uh, look at seeing exactly how it works. There are jews that reject it we'll have to talk about them later because that that will be very complicated but they're called Karaites. And when it comes to this one passage in the Law of Moses, it says thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother's milk. And so the rabbinists say what has been not included in the text but is remembered through oral tradition is that Canaanites believed by mixing milk and meat you would gain spiritual power. And so Moses bans that because it's sort of idolatry.

Speaker 2:

But Karaites say it's just because it's disrespectful to boil something in something that the mum gave to give it life, so it's disrespectful to the animal. You shouldn't be disrespectful to the animal, so don't do that. So they say you can eat a cheeseburger. Karaites and Ethiopian Jews who were called Hamanot Jews they also have that interpretation they say you can have cheeseburgers just fine and everything it's like, but if you deliberately got cheese made from the mum's milk and everything it's like, that would be disrespectful, and so that's it. So the other group who say you don't use the Oral Torah they say you just try and understand it in the Bible and you think well, here's a load of laws Moses has about respecting animals. It's probably just about that, whereas in the Oral Torah idea of rabbinism it's like no, there's a secret thing that was understood to Moses' audience but isn't clear to us now. But we've preserved it.

Speaker 1:

Therefore, you need to listen to us before you read the Bible, or else you don't understand the verse Right. So that is the key thing to end this episode with this idea that, because you often hear Christian commentators say, oh, in order to understand that, you have to know this like fable, or this. You have to know, like the Cadenites did this, or the Egyptian magicians did this, or there's, and they'll have these like background stories that then cause the idea is, ah, you have to know this background story or this additional thing, and then that changes the way you're going to read that thing. And that idea that there's this kind that the Bible doesn't basically give you what you need to know to understand it, but that there's all these myths and fables that are additional to it and been preserved in oral tradition. That is what is necessary to understand the bible. That is a really important thing for us to grasp. That this notion of a talmud, that is, a body of material that people think is necessary as an additional revelation alongside the Bible, that is a problem.