THE PHARISEES, THE TALMUD,
AND MODERN JUDAISM
Chapter Summary
Bible scholars are aware that Jesus Christ denounced the Pharisees. He said they nullified all the Commandments of God by their Tradition, "teaching for doctrines the commandments of men" (Mark 7:13; Matt. 15:6-9, etc.). His invective, in truth, cannot be equalled. All of Matthew 23 is like a whiplash. He likened Pharisaism to a whited sepulchre, indeed beautiful outwardly, but "inside full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness." Christ climaxed one condemnation after another with the expletive, "Hypocrites!" He called the Pharisees children of them that killed the Prophets. He foretold they would go on killing, crucifying and persecuting until the guilt for all the righteous blood shed from Abel on down would be upon them. "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" Christ asked.
Christ is as utterly devastating of Pharisaism in the record of John 8. Although He admitted that His hearers were descendants of Abraham, He said they were, spiritually, of the devil. Christ told them:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because the truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar and the father of it (John 8:44).
The Missing Link
"But," says the disinterested Christian, "what has that to do with us today? What a group of Pharisees did two thousand years ago is over and done with!"
However, the missing link in Christian understanding on the subject of "Pharisees" is best supplied by the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (1943):
The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single piece of that literature … and the study of it is essential for any real understanding of Pharisaism.
Concerning the Pharisees, the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia says:
With the destruction of the Temple (70 A.D.) the Sadducees disappeared altogether, leaving the regulation of all Jewish affairs in the hands of the Pharisees. Henceforth, Jewish life was regulated by the Pharisees; the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the older priestly tradition (Abot 1:1). Pharisaism shaped the character of Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future.
Historically speaking, scripture believers had accepted Christ as the Messiah foretold. They were no longer "Jews," but called themselves "Christians." They were persecuted as such by the Pharisees. The word "Pharisee" comes from the word "separated."
The Babylonian Talmud, Sole Authority
You may ascertain by turning to top Jewish authorities today that the Babylonian Talmud, the written form of the Tradition of the Pharisees, is the sole authority of the so-called "Jewish" religion, or Judaism.
Rabbi Louis Finklestein was chosen in 1937 by the Kehillas (Jewish communities) of the World as one of the top 120 Jews best representing "a lamp of Judaism" to the World, together with Maxim Litvinov (Finklestein), the Communist Commissar and bank robber terrorist; atheist communist Albert Einstein; those indefatigable Marxist reds, Harold Laski and his friend Felix Frankfurter (U.S. Supreme Court Justice) who shared honors with Rabbi Finklestein and others. Finklestein has long headed the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, with branches in New York and Los Angeles. In his two-volume work "The Pharisees." Rabbi Finklestein writes:
Pharasaism became Talmudism … But the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. When the Jew … studies the Talmud, he is actually repeating the arguments used in the Palestinian academies. From Palestine to Babylonia; from Babylonia to North Africa, Italy. Spain, France and Germany; from these to Poland. Russia and Eastern Europe generally, ancient Pharasaism has wandered.
In Rabbi Finklestein's history of the Jews, he states:
The Talmud derives its authority from the position held by the ancient academies. (i.e. Pharisee) The teachers of those academies, both of Babylonia and of Palestine. were considered the rightful successors of the older Sanhedrin . . . At the present time, the Jewish people have no living central authority comparable in status to the ancient Sanhedrins or the later academies. Therefore, any decision regarding the Jewish religion must be based on the Talmud as the final resumé of the teaching of those authorities when they existed.
[page 2] (The Jews — Their History, Culture, and Religion , Vol. 4, p. 1332, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949).
"The Talmud: Heart's Blood of the Jewish Faith," was the heading of a November, 1959, installment of a bestselling book by the Jewish author, Herman Wouk, which ran serially in the New York Herald-Tribune.
To quote:
The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe — whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists — we follow the Talmud. It is our common law.
Why Was It So Often Burned?
Why is the Talmud kept so unknown to non-Jews? Why was there no usable English translation of the Talmud until the Soncino Edition, 1934-48? Why, in European history, when the laws of the Talmud became commonly known, was it burned over and over by order of the Popes, excoriated by Martin Luther, denounced everywhere, and its followers exiled from one country after another down through the centuries?
The Talmud's basic law is that only the Pharisee Jew ranks as a man, or human being. All others rank as animals, "the people who are like an ass — slaves who are considered the property of the master." The attitude resulting from such teachings has been resented by non-Jews in all countries and centuries. Such resentment, however, is always portrayed by Jews as "persecution of the Jews."
Moses, on the contrary, was most insistent upon having one law for the stranger and for the "home-born" and in teaching that the stranger must not be oppressed. (Exodus 12:49; Lev. 24:22, Num. 9:14; 15:15-16, 29, etc.) In fact, he ordered: "Love ye therefore the stranger; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deu. 10:19) It was only the abominators he warned against.
Babylonian Talmud — The Law
The Babylonian Talmud is the law for so-called Judaism. However, its pornographic, anti-Gentile and anti-Christian doctrines have often caused hostility against it. It may then be argued by some Jews that there is a Palestinian Talmud which is innocuous. Nevertheless, you may look up the fact that Jewish authorities state it was lost for a thousand years, has missing parts and lacks the "Gemara" and other essentials, and is only used as a scholar's curiosity. Note the statement of British Chief Rabbi Hertz in his foreword to the Soncino edition of the Babylonian Talmud :
The Palestinian Talmud … was for many centuries almost forgotten by Jewry. Its legal decisions were at no time deemed to possess validity, if opposed by the Babylonian Talmud.
Was Christ Just to Pharisees?
Without some knowledge of the written form of the "Tradition of the Pharisees," the Babylonian Talmud, one is unable to intelligently judge whether Jesus Christ was fair and just in His acid denunciations of Pharisaism, or not. One needs proof, offered by the irrefutable exhibits from Jewish authorities (set forth elsewhere herein) that the Talmud reverses every one of the Ten Commandments, the teachings of Moses and the Prophets, and enshrines their opposites under a "whited sepulchre" which is a disguise for murder and "all uncleanness," as Christ charged. Murder of non-Pharisees is always permitted; theft, sodomy, incest, rape are all permitted. For example, the righteousness of grown men violating baby girls under three is a favorite topic for discussion in book after book of the Talmud.
Talmudic literature is one long paean of praise for the very name Babylon, and all that it means to Babylonian Talmudism today, whereas it is a term of reproach in Old and New Testaments.
Note the Foreword to the first English translation of the Babylonian Talmud by the late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, J.H. Hertz, who, like Rabbi Finklestein, was one of the 120 Jews chosen in 1937 by the Kehillas of the World as best holding up the "lamp of Judaism:"
The beginnings of Talmudic literature date back to the time of the Babylonian Exile in the Sixth pre-Christian Century … When a thousand years later, the Babylonian Talmud assumed final codified form in the year 500 after the Christian era, the Roman Western Empire had ceased to be. (See Exhibit 30).
Rabbi Hertz extolls the Babylonian Exile, saying: "The Babylonian Exile is a momentous period … During that Exile Israel found itself. It … rediscovered the Torah and made it the rule of life …"
What he really means is that it was discovered how the Torah or Bible could be used as a "whited sepulchre" for Babylonian degeneracy, as even a cursory study will reveal.
One Rabbi Akiba was a First Century Talmud "sage," of whom Moses was even supposedly jealous! (See Exhibit 32). Rabbi Hertz lauds Rabbi Akiba
Akiba was the author of a collection of traditional laws out of which the Mishna actually grew. He was the greatest among the rabbis of his own and of succeeding times … His keen and penetrating intellect enabled him to find a Biblical basis for every provision of the Oral Law.
Still enthusing over the Babylonian derivation of Pharisaism, Rabbi Hertz continues (See Exhibit 34):
When we come to the Babylonian Gemara, we are dealing with what most people understand when they speak or write of the Talmud. Its birthplace, Babylonia, was an autonomous Jewish center for a longer period than any other land; namely from soon after 586 before the Christian era to the year 1040 after the Christian Era — 1626 years. (Exhibit 34)
[page 3] You will note in reproductions of Talmud pages that the word "Gemara" designates the argumentation of the rabbis, the ultimate decision being summarized as the "Mishnah." |
