Transcription
Hi, this is Matt Baker. On this channel, I've discussed a lot of different religious texts, including the Bible, the Quran, the Polycanon, the Hindu scriptures, and even the Book of Mormon. But one religious text that I haven't really talked much about is the Talmud.
The Talmud is a very important text in Judaism, but unfortunately, outside of Judaism, it's extremely misunderstood. For example, it's not uncommon to hear people claim that the Talmud says all sorts of nasty stuff, like that it's okay to, quote unquote, have sex with a three-year-old, or that non-Jews are animals and that therefore it's okay for Jews to lie to, steal from, or even kill non-Jews. On the flip side, I've also seen posts claim that the Talmud is very progressive because it teaches that there are eight genders. Well, in today's video, I'm first of all going to explain what exactly the Talmud is, and then I'm going to explore in detail whether or not the Talmud actually says any of these things.
Now, in Judaism, it is always recommended that a person study with others rather than alone. I therefore asked two peers to review the script for this video. So, I want to give a special thanks to Zevy Slavin from the YouTube channel Seekers of Unity and Dr. Justin Sledge from Esoterica for providing their feedback. I highly recommend both of these channels, so I'll leave links to both of them in the description.
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Okay, let's now delve into the Talmud. In Judaism, there are three very important texts, all of which start with the letter T: the Torah, the Tanakh, and the Talmud. The Torah is actually just the first part of the Tanakh, the other two parts being the Nevi'im and Ketuvim. In fact, the word Tanakh itself is simply an acronym: T standing for Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim, or in English, instruction, prophets, and writings. As a whole, the Tanakh is for us Jews the complete Bible. So, no New Testament, just what Christians call the Old Testament, minus any apocryphal books, and arranged a bit differently.
The Talmud, on the other hand, is not a part of the Tanakh and hence is not considered a part of the Jewish Bible, which means that it does not carry the same level of authority. The Talmud is a separate book altogether, and in fact, it postdates the New Testament. Well, sort of. You see, the Talmud has two distinct layers, and the earliest one, the Mishna, meaning "to review," reached its final written form around 200 CE. However, it contains material that had been passed down orally for many centuries. Traditionally, this oral material is said to go all the way back to the time of Moses, which is why it's also called the oral Torah. However, from a secular perspective, it more likely goes back no further than the second temple period. During that period, it was actually forbidden to write down these oral traditions. But following the destruction of the temple and the subsequent Bar Kokhba revolt, this changed because there was a very real possibility that the traditions would be lost. If you want to learn more about the early rabbis whose sayings the Mishna is based on, I actually did a video on that, which I'll link to in the description.
The Talmud's second layer, the Gemara, which means "to complete," and was written primarily in Aramaic, was added even later. It consists of commentary on the Mishna that was added around 500 CE in Babylon. Now, as an aside, there's actually a Jerusalem version of the Gemara as well, which means that there's also a Jerusalem Talmud. But since when most people talk about the Talmud, they mean the Babylonian Talmud, that's the one I'll be referring to.
But here's the thing. The Talmud doesn't give the complete Mishna first and then the complete Gemara second. No, instead, on each page, there's a little bit of the Mishna as well as a little bit of the Gemara. But it gets even more complicated than that. Although those are the only two official layers, most modern versions of the Talmud also include even more layers, such as the commentary of Rashi and the commentary of the Tossafists, both of which date to the medieval period, which is why every Talmud page ends up looking more like a scrapbook rather than a regular book page. Ironically, this format was actually based on medieval texts about Catholic canon law, which looked quite similar.
Now, all of these complex Talmud pages are, however, arranged according to subject. There are six major divisions called orders, and these are, in English: Seeds, which deals with agriculture; Festivals; Women, which is actually about family law in general; Damages, which covers both civil law and criminal law; Holies, which is mostly about the temple; and Purities, which deals with ritual cleanliness. Each of these orders is then broken down further into tractates. I won't go through them one by one, but here on screen you can see a brief English translation for each one.
But all of this is just what the Talmud is comprised of and what it looks like. What's actually more important to understand is the purpose behind the Talmud, because this is where the misunderstanding set in. Obviously, based on the section titles, you can probably guess that the overall purpose has something to do with law. Wikipedia confirms this by defining the Talmud as the central text of rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law and Jewish theology.
Now, most of us aren't lawyers, and therefore when we hear "primary source of law," we probably assume that this means that the Talmud is some sort of collection of law codes or lists of rules. But you see, the concept of law is actually way more complicated than that. The Torah, at least in some parts, does contain law codes, but the Talmud does not. Let me give you an example. In the Torah, in Exodus 20:15, it says, "Thou shalt not steal." Then a bit later in 22:1, it gives more details. It says, for example, that if a person steals a cow and then slaughters it, that person has to pay the original owner five cows in return. But here's the thing. The Torah does not spell out what to do in every possible situation. No law code in the world can do that. So for Jewish law, this is where the Talmud comes in. The Talmud is basically the equivalent of a bunch of lawyers bringing up scenarios and then arguing about what the correct application of the law code would be. In modern times, that's what we call case law. Ever wonder why lawyers have so many leather-bound books on their shelves? Well, most of those books are not law codes. They are case books. And a case book is the best analogy I have for what the Talmud is. Just like how lawyers study cases to better understand the law, Jewish law experts study the Talmud to better understand Jewish law, which in Hebrew is called halakha.
But the Talmud contains even more than just case law. It also contains what's called aggadah, which includes stories, folklore, and even mystical ideas. It's therefore important to remember that if you see a quote from the Talmud, well, first of all, it could be fake or mistranslated, but let's assume it's genuine and accurate. That quote could be from a story rather than from a legal ruling. It also could be from a case that ended up having no ruling at all. It could also represent a minority opinion, a rejected opinion, an opinion that never actually applied to anything in the real world, a ruling that used to apply but no longer does. Or finally, and this one is very important, a ruling that has since been clarified by yet another book about Jewish law, such as the Mishna Torah by Maimonides or the Shulchan Aruch by Joseph Karo. Plus, if you watched my video on Jewish denominations, you might remember that different branches of modern Judaism take different approaches to Jewish law. For example, Orthodox Jews see it as binding and eternal, but Reform Jews do not.
So, the bottom line is this: The purpose of the Talmud is not to give definitive answers to everything about Jewish law. Rather, the purpose of the Talmud is to demonstrate how to think about the law and how to argue about the law. In other words, it's about the process, not the end result. So, you can't just randomly take a quote from the Talmud and say, "Aha, that's what all Jews believe about X, Y, or Z."
Okay, with all that said, let's now jump into some specifics. I'll start with one of the most outrageous accusations. And trigger warning, this has to do with child rape. Here's a flyer that has been making the rounds recently, which can be traced back to an anti-Semitic white supremacist group. I'm using it because it's representative of the kind of crazy things that get said about the Talmud by those who don't know what they're talking about. For example, it claims that the Talmud says that a man who engages in intercourse with a girl less than three years of age has done nothing, insinuating that Judaism allows adult males to rape toddlers. So, what's going on here?
Well, whenever you see a quote taken out of context, the first thing you have to do is put it back into its context. Well, the context of Ketubot 11b is a discussion about dowries. In particular, a discussion about whether or not a bride should or should not be considered a virgin in certain situations, because in those days, being a virgin made her eligible for a higher dowry. So, the question comes up, what if a bride was raped when she was a little girl? A dark scenario, I know, but unfortunately one that happens far too often. And the ruling given in the Talmud is, in such a case, the bride should still be considered to be a virgin and thus she still qualifies for the higher dowry. So when the Talmud says a man who engages in intercourse with a little girl has done nothing, what it means in context is a rapist who rapes a little girl has not taken away her virginity. Big difference. Sure, you can still argue that the whole passage supports negative patriarchal practices, but you cannot argue that the passage supports pedophilia.
Okay. Next up is the claim that Jews view Gentiles, meaning non-Jews, as animals, based on several quotes from the Talmud. In this case, it is true that the Talmud does say in several places that Gentiles are like donkeys. But why does it say that and in what context? Well, first of all, in each case, the Talmud is hearkening back to a verse from the Bible. Ezekiel 23:20, which I'll quote to you in my own words, because most English Bible translations aren't explicit enough. It's talking about a certain Jewish woman who, quote, "desired to have sex with foreign men who had penises like donkeys," unquote. Now, for one thing, this entire chapter is actually just one big metaphor, in which the woman represents the kingdom of Judah as a whole prior to the Babylonian exile, but it was actually written after the exile, during a time when Judea was being resettled. And the point of the passage was to try and dissuade Jews from marrying non-Jews. It's basically saying, don't be tempted to intermarry with non-Jews, because if you do, we'll end up losing our national identity like we did last time.
The other important thing to understand is that this passage was written at a time when the Jews were now under foreign rule, something that would last for a long time. Thus, for the first time ever, Jews had to follow both foreign laws as well as their own religious laws. In some cases, the laws were the same, like don't murder, don't steal. But in other cases, they were different, like when it came to ritual matters or rules about marriage. This is important for understanding why the Talmud sometimes brings up this donkey verse in reference to Gentiles.
As an example, let's look at Yevamot 98a, in which a situation is brought up involving twin brothers, one of whom converts to Judaism while the other does not. The question is, if the Jewish brother were to die, would the Gentile brother then have to marry the widow as required by Jewish law, something called a levirate marriage? The answer is no. Because once someone converts to Judaism, their connection to their birth family gets severed. Thus, while the new convert is responsible for following Jewish law, his original family is not. In other words, the two brothers fall into two different legal categories. The Talmud hearkens back to the donkey verse in Ezekiel to back this up. So, it's not saying that Gentiles are actually similar to donkeys. It's simply saying, albeit in a very weird way, that Gentiles don't have to follow Jewish religious customs because, well, they're not Jews.
A similar thing is going on in this passage, Bava Metzia 114b, which says, "Jewish people are called man, but Gentiles are not called man." Again, this appears to be saying that Gentiles are not human. Well, like the donkey passages, this passage is once again referring to a verse from Ezekiel. This time, Ezekiel 34:31, where the Hebrew word for man is *adam*. In the Bible, the word *adam* is used in many different ways. Sometimes it just means Adam, the first human, but other times it means any human or humankind in general. But there's another way it's used, and that is to refer to a specific group of humans, namely the Jews, because it was only the Jews who believed that they were descended from a first human named Adam. It is in this sense that the word *adam* is used in both Ezekiel and Bava Metzia. This becomes clear when the passage is put into context. Once again, the Talmud is talking about Jewish law. In this case, ritual law, not laws that apply to both Jews and Gentiles. What it says is that the graves of Gentiles do not render a person impure. Because Jews are *adam*, but Gentiles are not *adam*. You see, there's a ritual law in Judaism that says if you visit a cemetery, you become ritually unclean and hence you have to do certain things to make yourself clean again before you're allowed to read from the Torah. So all that the Talmud is saying here is that this rule is for Jews only. It's not saying that Gentiles are not human.
Now, at this point, I want to remind you that the Talmud is not a law code, nor does it carry the same weight as the Bible. It's simply a collection of case law mixed with some interesting anecdotes. So, what's important is not anyone's sentence, but rather the entire picture that it paints. And the fact is, for every strange, puzzling sentence that a person can pull out of the Talmud at random, there are literally dozens of others that are crystal clear about what Judaism teaches. And both the Bible and the Talmud clearly state that all human life is holy and should be treated thus, regardless of whether a person is a Jew or a Gentile. Therefore, when it comes to the accusations that the Talmud says it's okay for Jews to cheat, steal from, or even kill Gentiles, rather than go through every misunderstood passage, let me instead show you some places where Jewish law is crystal clear on these issues. In Hullin 94a, it clearly says, "It is forbidden to deceive anyone, even a gentile." In Bava Kamma 113a, it clearly says theft from a gentile is forbidden. And in the Mishna Torah by Maimonides, it clearly says when it comes to the laws regarding the punishment for murder, obviously these apply with regard to a gentile. I could list many more, but unfortunately, there are some people out there who don't really want to understand the Talmud at all. They just want to make Jews look bad. So, beware of quotes from the Talmud stated without any context. Many of them are fake, or else they've been cherry-picked in a way to misconstrue the actual meaning of the passage. The full text of the Talmud is freely available online, so you can always check them for yourself. The website that I use, which also contains lots of other Jewish texts, is called Sefaria. I'll leave a link to it in the description.
Now, there's still a few more things regarding the Talmud that I'd like to discuss. One is the issue of whether or not the Talmud refers to Jesus. On this matter, there is a variety of opinions. This is because the references are not clear. They often place Jesus in the wrong century and use other names for him, such as Ben Stada or Ben Pandera, both of which I discussed in the video before this one. Personally, I tend to agree with Peter Schäfer, the author of *Jesus in the Talmud*, who claims that the Talmud does in fact refer to Jesus in several places, but in more of a literary way than a literal one.
The example I'd like to point to is one that many Christians understandably find very offensive. In Gittin 57a, it describes a person named Jesus the Nazarene as burning in hell, in fact, burning in excrement in hell. First of all, in this passage, Jesus is just one of three famous individuals who are all described as being punished in the afterlife. The other two being Emperor Titus, who destroyed the second temple, and the prophet Balaam, who was hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel. From the Talmud's perspective, all three of these men were mere humans, and all three committed a terrible sin against the Jews. In Jesus's case, it was leading people away from Judaism and teaching them to adopt what Jews consider to be pagan practices, such as the Eucharist, which involves eating the flesh of Jesus. In all three cases, the Talmud describes a punishment that parallels the sin. According to Peter Schäfer, the choice to have Jesus burning in excrement was likely a very graphic but poetic way for the writers of the Talmud to state their objection to the practice of the Eucharist.
As a whole, though, the Talmud actually has very little to say about Jesus. Whenever he is mentioned, it's always as just a small aside. This is because when the Talmud was written, Christianity was still in its infancy, and Jesus was nowhere near the famous figure that he is today. Nor was the New Testament the only major source for his life. The writers of the Talmud likely had other sources to rely on, ones that told a story that was very different from the now dominant Christian version. So that's why the Talmudic references to Jesus seem so out of place to the modern ear.
Now, there's one last thing I want to discuss. Lately, I've seen a lot of people posting this, which seems to indicate that the Talmud promotes the idea of eight different genders. In this case, I'd say that the Talmud is being made to seem more modern than it really is. The writers of the Talmud definitely thought in terms of biological sex, not gender, and for the most part, saw things in terms of a strict binary: male and female. However, as with everything in the Talmud, exceptions are discussed. The only real exception being an *androgynos*. According to Mishna Bechorot 4, an *androgynos* is neither a male nor a female, but rather a unique creation. But this was not the equivalent of what is today called non-binary. It was almost certainly a reference to someone that is born intersex. In the same passage, the term *tumtum* is used, but it does not describe a *tumtum* as a fourth category. Rather, it states that a *tumtum* is either a male or a female. It's just that the sex cannot be easily determined due to some medical issue. And the remaining four terms really boil down to just two: *einayim* and *saris*. *Einayim* are always considered to be female, and *saris* are always considered to be male, even though in both cases they are assumed to be infertile and may develop features associated with the opposite sex. The word *saris* is usually translated as eunuch, and two types were recognized: those who were born a eunuch due to some sort of congenital deformity, and those who were made a eunuch by way of castration. However, there was only ever one type of *einayim* recognized in the Talmud, and that was a female that was born with some sort of condition that made her infertile, such as what we now know to be Turner syndrome. So, at most, one gets seven categories, not eight, and only one that doesn't fall under either male or female. But my main point is that these Talmudic categories do not neatly match with modern categories such as transwoman, transman, and non-binary. As discussed in this My Jewish Learning article, one can reinterpret them as such. And Judaism is certainly no stranger to reinterpretations, but it would be misguided to think that the Talmud directly parallels certain 21st-century notions.
Okay, so that was some important things to understand about the Talmud. If you want to learn more about the Talmud, it's always recommended that you study alongside a Talmudic scholar rather than just try and read it yourself. The best way to find one of those would be to contact your nearest synagogue. Thanks for watching.
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