Higher criticism of the Talmud
The Talmud is presented as an analysis of the Mishnah, as opposed to a later, competing, teaching. Generally, the rabbis of the Talmud will not disagree with their counterparts from earlier generations. In fact, for an Amoraic opinion to be accepted as authoritative it must be in accordance with the teachings of at least one of the Tannaim.
However, historians of Judaism note that the current text of the Talmud is artificially smooth; the text, having been edited by the Savoraim (post-Talmudic rabbis), "covers up" many disagreements between the rabbis of the Mishnah and the rabbis of the Talmud. The present text of the Talmud thus shows little disagreement.
Many ultra-Orthodox Jews view higher criticism of the Talmud as inappropriate, and perhaps heretical. (Most Orthodox Yeshivas and Kollels do not teach most students about this subject.) At the same time, many within Modern Orthodox Judaism (and most non-Orthodox Jews) do not have a problem with historical scholarship in this area.
In the essay "Rabbinic Authority", Modern Orthodox Jewish scholar Eli Turkel writes:
- "What is the reason that later generations never disagree with a halacha in the Talmud? In the introduction to Mishne Torah, Maimonides declares that the sages after the generation of Rav Ashi and Ravina accepted on themselves not to disagree with any halacha in the Gemara. Thus, even if individual portions of the Gemara were ADDED BY LATER GENERATIONS they did not change the halacha. This viewpoint is reiterated by Rav Yosef Karo in his commentary on Mishne Torah (Kesef Mishne on Maimonides' Hilchot Mamrim 2:1, also Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik in Two Kinds of Tradition in Yahrzeit lectures vol. 1.). It is interesting to note that Rav Yosef Karo mentions this only with regard to the Mishna and Gemara. There is no such ruling with regard to Gaonim and Rishonim. Rav Yosef Karo, among the early generations of Acharonim, recognized no formal barrier to disagree with a Rishon or a Gaon."
Thus, some Orthodox scholars are comfortable with admitting that when someone writes "later generations never disagree with a halacha in the Talmud", this is in effect only a legal fiction. In practice, legal authorities did disagree with what was in the Talmud, and in some cases actually changed the Talmud itself! This new Talmudic text then becomes legally binding, and we thus act as if there was no change.
There is much classical and Modern Orthodox literature on this subject. A good summary may be found in "Modern Scholarship in the Study of Torah: Contributions and Limitations" Edited by Shalmom Carmy. (Jason Aronson, Inc.)
External Attacks on the Talmud
The history of the Talmud reflects in part the history of Judaism persisting in a world of hostility and persecution. Almost at the very time that the Babylonian savoraim put the finishing touches to the redaction of the Talmud, the emperor Justinian issued his edict against the abolition of the Greek translation of the Bible in the service of the Synagogue. This edict, dictated by Christian zeal and anti-Jewish feeling, was the prelude to attacks on the Talmud, conceived in the same spirit, and beginning in the thirteenth century in France, where Talmudic study was then flourishing.
The charge against the Talmud brought by the convert Nicholas Donin led to the first public disputation between Jews and Christians and to the first burning of copies of the work (Paris, 1244). The Talmud was likewise the subject of a disputation at Barcelona in 1263 between Nahmanides (Rabbi Moses ben Nahman) and Pablo Christiani. This same Pablo Christiani made an attack on the Talmud which resulted in a papal bull against it and in the first censorship, which was undertaken at Barcelona by a commission of Dominicans, who ordered the cancelation of passages reprehensible from a Christian point of view (1264).
At the disputation of Tortosa in 1413, Geronimo de Santa Fé brought forward a number of accusations, including the fateful assertion that the condemnations of pagans and apostates found in the Talmud referred in reality to Christians. Two years later, Pope Martin V, who had convened this disputation, issued a bull (which was destined, however, to remain inoperative) forbidding the Jews to read the Talmud, and ordering the destruction of all copies of it. Far more important were the charges made in the early part of the sixteenth century by the convert Johann Pfefferkorn, the agent of the Dominicans. The result of these accusations was a struggle in which the emperor and the pope acted as judges, the advocate of the Jews being Johann Reuchlin, who was opposed by the obscurantists and the humanists; and this controversy, which was carried on for the most part by means of pamphlets, became the precursor of the Reformation.
An unexpected result of this affair was the complete printed edition of the Babylonian Talmud issued in 1520 by Daniel Bomberg at Venice, under the protection of a papal privilege. Three years later, in 1523, Bomberg published the first edition of the Palestinian Talmud. After thirty years the Vatican, which had first permitted the Talmud to appear in print, undertook a campaign of destruction against it. On New-Year's Day (September 9, 1553) the copies of the Talmud which had been confiscated in compliance with a decree of the Inquisition were burned at Rome; and similar burnings took place in other Italian cities, as at Cremona in 1559. The Censorship of the Talmud and other Hebrew works was introduced by a papal bull issued in 1554; five years later the Talmud was included in the first Index Expurgatorius; and Pope Pius IV commanded, in 1565, that the Talmud be deprived of its very name.
The first edition of the expurgated Talmud, on which most subsequent editions were based, appeared at Basel (1578-1581) with the omission of the entire treatise of 'Abodah Zarah and of passages considered inimical to Christianity, together with modifications of certain phrases. A fresh attack on the Talmud was decreed by Pope Gregory XIII (1575-85), and in 1593 Clement VIII renewed the old interdiction against reading or owning it. The increasing study of the Talmud in Poland led to the issue of a complete edition (Cracow, 1602-5), with a restoration of the original text; an edition containing, so far as known, only two treatises had previously been published at Lublin (1559-76). In 1707 some copies of the Talmud were confiscated in the province of Brandenburg, but were restored to their owners by command of Frederick, the first king of Prussia. The last attack on the Talmud took place in Poland in 1757, when Bishop Dembowski, at the instigation of the Frankists, convened a public disputation at Kamenetz-Podolsk, and ordered all copies of the work found in his bishopric to be confiscated and burned by the hangman.
The external history of the Talmud includes also the literary attacks made upon it by Christian theologians after the Reformation, since these onslaughts on Judaism were directed primarily against that work, even though it was made a subject of study by the Christian theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1830, during a debate in the French Chamber of Peers regarding state recognition of the Jewish faith, Admiral Verhuell declared himself unable to forgive the Jews whom he had met during his travels throug
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The Talmud (התלמוד) is considered an authoritative record of rabbinic discussions on Jewish law, ethics, customs, legends and stories. It is a fundamental source of legislation, customs, case histories and moral exhortations. The Talmud comprises two components, the