Theopedia

Talmud

The Talmud is the written record of rabbinic Judaism’s oral law, the body of interpretation and legal tradition Jewish teachers held to accompany the written Torah. Petrus van Mastricht defines it by its own Hebrew root: the word “denotes teaching or a book for teaching, or the sum of Jewish teaching revealed by God to Moses on Mount Sinai in order to be propagated only by a living voice.”1 Rabbinic tradition held that this teaching had circulated orally since Sinai, but the dispersal and persecution of the Jewish people eventually forced it into writing.1

Compilation and Structure

The Talmud took shape in stages, over several centuries. Rabbi Judah HaNasi compiled its core text, the Mishnah, around AD 200. Rabbi Yochanan later expanded that material substantially, producing the Jerusalem Talmud; the Babylonian Talmud followed, supplemented by Rabbi Ashi from around AD 427 and brought to its final form around AD 500, after which “the Jews are not permitted to add or subtract anything.”2 Both versions pair the Mishnah, the base text, with the Gemara, a layer of “disputations, commentaries, and a supplement” built on top of it, the whole divided into six orders, each order into books, and each book into chapters.2

Reformed Assessment

Reformed theologians who addressed the Talmud’s own claim to authority rejected it. Mastricht frames the dispute as a live one among Jewish groups themselves before applying it to Christian teaching: “The Pharisees with their followers affirm that it does [have divine origin and authority]. The Sadducees, Samaritans, and Essenes, whom the Christians join, cry out against it.”3 The point is narrow: on this one question, whether an oral law with binding divine authority was given to Moses alongside the written Torah, Christians share the negative answer those Jewish groups gave, not their theology more broadly.

Mastricht’s case against treating the Talmud as divinely authoritative rests on the sufficiency of the written law itself. He argues that Scripture nowhere commands observance of anything beyond what is written,4 and presses the human origin of the Talmud’s own compilers: neither Judah HaNasi, nor Yochanan, nor Ashi “were divinely inspired, as even the Jews themselves testify.”3 Since, “as the Jews admit, it originated by a private impulse, and not by any specific divine commandment or prompting,” it is “not a God-breathed writing.”3 He adds a comparative point: “The Jew cannot present anything in favor of the authority of the Talmud that likewise the Muslim could not present for his own Qur’an,” since both rest the claim on an unverifiable transmission rather than public, written revelation.3 Mastricht’s conclusion is blunt: the Talmud “contains many absurdities, falsehoods, and wicked things, injurious to God, men, and the truth.”3

Interest to Christians

Rejecting the Talmud’s claim to divine authority has not kept Reformed scholars from studying it. The Particular Baptist theologian John Gill, introduced to rabbinic study by John Skepp, “began to devour Hebraic and Rabbinic literature,” reading “the Targums, the Mishnah, the Talmuds, and Rabbot, and their ancient commentaries.”5 Read this way, as historical and linguistic evidence rather than as a rule of faith, the Talmud shows how rabbis of its era interpreted Messianic prophecies and other Old Testament texts, material still useful for exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester, ed. Joel R. Beeke (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), chap. 2, “Holy Scripture,” sec. XXVIII, 247. ↩ ↩2

  2. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, chap. 2, sec. XXVIII, 247-248. ↩ ↩2

  3. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, chap. 2, sec. XXVIII, 248. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, chap. 2, sec. XXVII, 245. ↩

  5. Steven Tshombe Godet, “Gill’s Context, Life, and Works,” in “The Trinitarian Theology of John Gill (1697-1771): Context, Sources, and Controversy” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015), 64-65. ↩