Why do Christians reject the Talmud?

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Interesting. I’ve heard of the Ba’al Shem Tov. A good man. Was it acceptable for him to write amulets in his own name? What was his position about putting Kabbalah above Talmud? I find that a bit shocking; because isn’t it the duty of every observant Jew to study the Talmud along with the Law?
 
Is it possible, as Christians believe, Jesus will come again to judge all of humanity and save the universe. Is it possible, this second coming is what the Jewish people are expected as their Messiah? The same messiah but not recognized the first time but is the second time?
 
Huh. Interesting. BUt, isn’t one of the signs of HaMeshiach that he’d be able to pronounce the Tetragrammaton?
 
Of course it’s possible that Jews will recognize Jesus as the Messiah when He comes again. It says so, all over the OT and NT.

Zechariah 12:10 is one that first comes to mind:
“And I will pour out upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications. And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced. And they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one who is in bitterness for his first-born.”
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There are a bunch of these. Obviously they are not going to convince everyone, but obviously they were seen as convincing by the earliest members of the Church, which was basically nothing but Temple Judaism Jews at first.
 
Rabbi said:
It is also noteworthy, I think, of mentioning that the Parisees also gave us the prophets, and yet, Christians somehow reject our Oral Torah when they accept the former. In fact, the whole Bible is based on oral tradition. As you know, biblical Hebrew is made up of 22 constants and no values, it was the rabbis who introduces vowels into the text so that you could read your Bible, so isn’t it odd that Christians reject the teachings of our Sages? Even Jesus himself said that the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, and if that doesn’t mean they possesses sole knowledge of Torah, what does it mean?
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You bring up some very good points, that should be talked about more. I don’t know why this thread automatically closes in less than 10 hours, but maybe another thread can be made that has the normal “closes 14 days after the last reply” timeline.

Anyway, Tradition plays a major role in both Catholicism and Judaism, and we all agree that the Bible is based on tradition.
I think when it comes to Oral Torah, the difference is largely perspective and early Christian experience.

If I’m not mistaken, Oral Torah was spoken by God to Moses, and transmitted verbally until written down to be better preserved in the Mishna and then Talmud?. So for a Christian, it’s not that Oral Torah necessarily would be rejected as wrong or not from God. Clearly the Apostles would have believed it came from God. However, we believe that Jesus was not just the Messiah, but God himself, living on Earth. The same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, incarnated among us. So for the early Christians, the things God (Jesus) told and taught the Apostles verbally would have been on comparative in authority with the Oral Torah. And so would have started a new oral tradition among his followers. On some points Jesus agrees with Torah and Mishnah, on some points he puts larger fence around the Torah, and on other points he fulfills the Law. In Jesus’ own words “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”(MT 5:17). The oral teaching of Jesus would then have taken precedence over Oral Torah. Some examples are fulfillment of dietary laws and a “larger fence”/stricter law around divorce.

Any historian would tell you I’m simplifying things here, and I likely am.

Similar to Oral Torah, the verbal teachings of Jesus were put into writing to be preserved and to be shared more widely. These are the Gospels. Prior to the Gospels, the Apostles sent letters to Christian communities instructing them in these teachings. Centuries later, collections of different Gospels, letters, and some other writings on Jesus were gathered together, assessed, and some were chosen to be added to the end of the Hebrew Bible, creating what we Christians call the NewTestament.

So much of that early oral law from Jesus became scripture for Christians, unlike the Mishnah and Talmud.Those teaching of Jesus (and the Apostles) not recorded in the New Testament continue on in Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, which in my opinion are probably the closest thing we have to Oral Torah.
 
You raise good points. However; I would see Jesus as both God and the Oral Torah wrapped into one, with the Sermon on the Mount as Moshe Rabbeinu receiving the Written Torah on Mount Sinai.

As for the Mass: One can easily see the Last Supper as a Passover seder. And the bread of the Presence in the tabernacle Of meeting in the Torah as prefiguring the Communion host at the Mass.

Also: I always felt sorrow for the Jews that they don’t have the Temple in order to perform the offerings for atonement. I always wondered: How do Jews handle not having the Temple; since only with the Temple can they gain forgiveness of sins?
 
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I speak of my experience. An Israeli Jew whose blog I follow and from whom I found wisdom and help in several matters, said that according to the Jewish Law the Torah cannot be taught to non-Jews. He said his father too taught the Torah legitimately (as a Rabbi) to non-Jews to gain an existance and even if his father was family that was still not alright. He was giving the example of John Hagee the leader or Cornerstone Church who obviously (to the blogger) had been taught about it and yet John Hagee interprets in a free way that leads sometimes to many questionable ideas and even some that are quite anti-Semitic.
This is my reason why I decided to not buy the Torah and read it a few years back. If this is a rule then I don’t know… who gave it but God?
 
I have to admit; Hagee’s crazy in my opinion. As for the admonition against teaching Torah to non Jews; I think I can see for two reasons: 1) Teaching the Gentiles the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) In the Kabbalistic sense, it’s giving the secrets of the universe in the hands of those who are unprepared and ignorant in its proper uses.

For if you apply gematria and notarikon, the numerological exegetical techniques; you can unlock these secrets. The modern Bible Code concept in the popular imagination. Like knowing how to pronounce the Tetragrammaton; knowing these Kabbalistic secrets gives the unprepared and ignorant, a cosmic nuclear weapon.
 
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The Psalms? I’m aware that some folks can put the Psalms to magical uses.
 
Catholicism is the flowering of authentic Judaism; modern-day Judaism is an invention of the rabbis as developed in the Talmud. There are no priests, no temple and no sacrifice in contemporary Judaism…
 
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Gab; the Jews do the best they can while remaining in their tradition.

As a Catholic; yes I believe Jesus fulfilled the Law. But; we have to remember: Judaism is where we came from; our roots are in the Law, Writings and Prophets.

The Jews are our older brothers in the Faith.
 
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I read your response; don’t know why they closed down the thread prematurely. I do not agree at all with that Israeli you follow. He is wrong, from my understanding and education. In fact, I can quote a source straight from the Talmud Bavli: Sanhedrin 59a.

“Rabbi Yochanan said: a Gentile who studies Torah is liable for death as it says (Deuteronomy 33:4) ‘Moses commanded us the Torah as a heritage.’ It is a heritage for us and not for them… Rabbi Meir would say: how do we know that even a Gentile who engages in the study of Torah is like a Jewish high priest? As it says (Leviticus 18:5) 'Which man shall do [i.e. study] and by which he shall live [in the afterlife].”'It does not say ‘priests, Levites, and Israelites’ but ‘man.’ We learn from here that even a Gentile who engages in the study of Torah is like a Jewish high priest."

A Gentile’s obligation is to focus primarily on the 7 Nochaide laws, this, however, does not equate the Gentile’s spiritual worth to that of a Jew’s as 7-613. Still, what was R. Yochanan’s point? In context, we learn that he wasn’t merely talking about Gentiles NOT studying Torah, but merely that a Gentile should not study those laws which only pertain to Jews (i.e., Shabbos). Why? Because G-d did not give the Gentiles that part of the covenant (even though one could convert into it, but that’s another matter). R. Meir’s point was that those Gentiles who study their portion of the law is akin to a Jewish High Priest. The central concept is that a Gentile should never step outside of his role as a Gentile, and the same with a Jew. To sum it up, the Talmud never teaches that a rabbi should forbid a Gentile to study Torah, this is merely a common anti-Semitic claim, and that Israeli has his right to his hashkafa (his opinion) as long as he doesn’t call it halacha (Jewish law).

Also, John Hagee is very anti-Semitic.
 
It is true that Catholicism came before Orthodox Christianity in the East.
 
You are right. Our Chazal teach that G-d passed on the Oral Torah through Moshe, who passed it on to Yehoshua, to the men of the great assembly, etc. (Pirkei Avot, Ch.1). In fact, some would argue that Jesus was a Pharisee who practiced our Mesorah, as he said the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat, and the fact that one can’t understand the New Testament without knowledge of our Oral Torah. For example, what is a shabbat’s day journey in Acts 1:12?

One last point, you are correct in oral authority. Hebrew is made up of 22 consonants, with no vowels. So Shabbat (שבת) can mean about seven different things without nekuddot (the vowel imprint marks), which, by the way, was created by the Masoretes, or, to be frank, rabbis in the 10th century. So my conclusion is simple: either you celebrate a strong oral tradition which has been passed down for over 3,000 years, or you create your own Talmud, your own Church tradition, your own interpretation, in spite of truth, and therefore, make the Bible say whatever you want it to, and that, my friend, is what I call dangerous, because the ball game is now operating without an umpire to call out those who make a strike, and anything can be said or done, and when anything can be said or done, nothing matters. And this is exactly what happened with Christian Protestantism, and notice how every person is pretty much his own church!
 
Apart from the actual disagreements, I’ve discovered (after doing some self-initiated comparative studies a few years back) there is a lot of ignorace and misunderstanding on both sides of the fence; the misunderstandings usually result from ignorance, which naturally results when each side stops paying attention to the other side in order to worship in their own particular way.

The causality could be as basic as the time of week of worship. In Judaism, the sabbath is Friday night into Saturday; according to Genesis when God rested at the end of the week, which was somehow determined to be a Friday. For Catholics (and most Christians) the sabbath is Saturday evening into Sunday, since Jesus was resurrected on Sunday.

Once an assembly splits in this manner, neither side may pay much attention to what the other is doing, and that’s the beginning of the ignorance. Over time the “telephone” effect sets in, and, while new issues are discreetly addressed on either side, the ignorance becomes further escalated as the two sides grow apart and go in their own directions. If, then, someone on Side-A should say to one of the other people on Side-A, “What do the people on Side-B think of issue-xyz?”, their friend will try to explain it as best they can, but its usually just cursory or contrived info.

This explanation, which I call a “projected disagreement”, explains what happens beyond the “actual, fundamental disagreements” that caused the initial split in the first place. To discuss fundamental disagreements is usually different - and it can be risky to pursue, unless everyone has open and honest respect for one another despite their differences.
 
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