What exactly IS the Talmud?

[Momo-P]

I know this may sound like weird question, but I've never received a clear answer. I did look it up, but what I got didn't really strike me as straightforward, not to mention I obviously need a Christian perspective of it. Each time I do hear Christians talk of it, they never regard it in a positive light. Something about how it's not really God's laws and has more to do with their personal opinions? I mean, I don't think I've even heard modern day Jews really mention it well either so...anyone wanna tell me? ^^;;;

[EricTheFred]

[quote="Momo-P (post: 1364791)"]I know this may sound like weird question, but I've never received a clear answer. I did look it up, but what I got didn't really strike me as straightforward, not to mention I obviously need a Christian perspective of it. Each time I do hear Christians talk of it, they never regard it in a positive light. Something about how it's not really God's laws and has more to do with their personal opinions? I mean, I don't think I've even heard modern day Jews really mention it well either so...anyone wanna tell me? ^^]

First, careful with statements like 'it's not really God's laws' around the faithful of Judaism; they're likely to take offense.

Basically, the Talmud is the thing that separates modern Rabbinical Judaism from it's predecessors, such as those mentioned in the bible, like Pharisitical and whatever the adjective form of 'Sadducee' is. The Essenes who left us the Dead Sea Scrolls were yet another sect with their own teachings, and a large part of the Scrolls are made up of these. Rabbinical Judaism began in the late Roman Empire, after the Diaspora, as Jews were trying to reassemble the shattered remains of their various sects into a cohesive whole again (things got very confused after they were spread out over the Empire, and in many cases beyond it, since quite a number of Jews fled to lands beyond Roman law during that time.) Early Rabbis began recovering and codifying older teachings, especially those of the Pharisees, and coming up with agreements among them on various things that once separated the different sects.

The Talmud starts with Mosaic Law (the Ten Commandments + the Mitzvot, meaning the rest of the law found in the Torah) This is what Christianity sees as the 'Old Testament Law.' It then builds upon it with all the various and sundry conclusions by Jewish scholars, which they have made by reasoning first from Mosaic Law, then as a lesser source the rest of the Tanakh (the entire Bible as accepted in Judaism), then as a third-tier source the conclusions of prior scholars.

The first compilation of these teachings is late second century, so it reflects fairly strongly Pharisee teachings, with influence from early Christianity (early Christians and post-Diaspora Jews often intermixed communities and even congregations.) A few centuries later, a longer Talmud was written, which was basically the original + revisions and extensions made after the original compilation. It's this Talmud that I believe is largely the same as is taught today.

So, the Talmud relates to the Tanakh in pretty much the same way as the Sharia relates to the Koran, or the teachings of whatever denomination you belong to relate to the Christian Bible.

[Momo-P]

First, careful with statements like 'it's not really God's laws' around the faithful of Judaism; they're likely to take offense.

Oh no, I wouldn't ever say anything around them, the only reason I did here was since you were all Christians. ^^;

But anyways, that does help a bit. One of the biggest reasons it kind of threw me for a loop was the discovery that it talks about how guys could marry and have sex with three-year-old girls. I could understand giving a daughter in marriage young, but to even allow sex...just kind of made me wonder if this was really from God, or more from men.

[EricTheFred]

[quote="Momo-P (post: 1364928)"]Oh no, I wouldn't ever say anything around them, the only reason I did here was since you were all Christians. ^^]

Personally, I can't imagine any of the Jewish persons of my acquaintance ever approving of such a thing.

I'm no expert and can't speak to the claim, but I do, from other things I've read, have an idea what might be going on here.

I don't recall any specific laws in the Bible discussing sex with minors. There may be, but I don't know. However, Talmudic law cannot add any new ideas; it can only derive 'new' laws by determining how the existing laws may be applied to new situations (for example, they had to figure out at one point whether turkeys are kosher.) They are very conservative in their approach: male homosexuality is expressly forbidden in the Bible but they do not like most Christian authorities extend this to female homosexuality. It doesn't literally say so in the Bible, so they can't.

So, if at some point early rabbis were confronted with child molestation cases, and the cases are recorded in the Talmud, then they would have had to make a ruling as to whether the adults were commiting a religious offense.

Remember the rabbis are not the secular authority. The Talmud is formed after the Diaspora. They are only the religious authority. They aren't being asked about jail terms and such, but about the sort of punishments a synagogue can hand out, such a getting fined or thrown out or such. If they couldn't find anything in the Bible to forbid it, then all they could do was give a metaphoric shrug and leave it to the secular authorities to deal with.

[Momo-P]

So in short, when God hadn't given them a direct law concerning something, they pretty much had to make and educated guess? Obviously that's understandable since we all have to do it now, but it makes sense as to why some very incorrect teachings were able to sneak through.

Also as for the child marriage thing...now I've seen something conflicting with what I originally read, so I have no idea if the sex thing is allowed for little girls or not, but I'd obviously kind of hope not.

[Bobtheduck]

Jesus spoke against the Talmud specifically (well, some of it... it wasn't finished until a long time after Jesus earthly ministry, but a good portion of it existed then) when he said, as an example, people who pay extra tithe but don't take care of their parents are sinning by breaking one of the Ten commandments. While this could apply to much in the world of Judeo-Christian tradition, the specific example he was referring to when he mentioned "you treat man-made rules as though they were doctrine" that his audience would have understood at the time was the Talmud as it existed then.