One does not need to examine Christian Zionism for more than five minutes to see that it is not remotely biblical. "And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, and heirs according to promise." Gal. 3:29. All the promises of the Bible find their "yes" in Jesus Christ and His church, which is spiritual Israel. None of the promises of the Bible apply, in the Christian era, to carnal Israel.
So the question is, "why is Christian Zionism so popular among American evangelicals?" There are doubtless several factors, but I believe that the most important is a false sentiment among conservative Christians regarding the Jews, connected with a comprehensive misconception of what Judaism is.
Many conservative Christians believe that Jews are essentially Old Testament Christians. Both Jews and Christians share a belief in the divine inspiration of the Old Testament, but we Christians also have the New Testament. Because the Hebrew Scriptures comprise about 75% of the Bible, and the Greek Scriptures only 25%, it stands to reason that Jews and Christians must be about 75% alike, right?
According to this naïve and false view, the differences between Jews and Christians are denominational differences—perhaps extreme denominational differences, like the differences between Catholics and Protestants—but Jews and Christians are all basically still in the same religious boat.
But as this article will demonstrate, modern Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament. It is not a biblical faith. It is something else entirely.
The Talmud
Modern Judaism is Talmudic Judaism. Jews training to be rabbis seldom study the Torah (the books of Moses) other than the portions quoted within the Talmud, much less the rest of the Old Testament. Jews studying to be religious leaders, or rabbis, study the Talmud.
What is the Talmud? There are two versions of the Talmud—the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud is smaller, and has had far less impact than the Babylonian Talmud, so a reference to “the Talmud,” without more, is a reference to the Babylonian Talmud.
The Babylonian Talmud comprises 34 large volumes, thousands of pages, and was written partially in Hebrew but mostly in Aramaic—the Aramaic used in 1st through 5th Century AD Babylon. Although the Talmud is central to the life and culture of diaspora Judaism, very few Christians know anything about it.
The Talmud is composed of two sections: the Mishnah and the Gemara. In the Mishnah are the actual laws (whether from the Torah or from oral tradition, mostly the latter), which were accumulated between 200 BC and 200 AD. The Gemara is a large collection of rabbinic commentaries on the laws within the Mishnah, formed over the following three centuries, until the end of the 5th Century AD, so the process of compiling the Talmud took about seven hundred years. The Gemara, the rabbinic commentary, comprises the great bulk of the Talmud, about 90% of it.
The Talmud was already being formed in Jesus’ day; Jesus rejected it, because rabbinic traditions were being substituted for the actual law of Moses:
“They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”
And he continued, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God), then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother. Thus you nullify the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.” Mark 7:7-13
In that passage, Jesus is condemning the emerging Mishnah, and also in the one below:
“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?” Mat. 23:16-17
Note that there is nothing in the law of Moses about swearing by the temple, or the gold of the temple; these were thing rabbis invented to argue about. The next five centuries of Talmudic development occurred during the Christian era; since the Talmud was being written by rabbis who rejected Christ, it became an anti-Christian document.
The Talmud is explicitly Anti-Christ and Anti-Christian
Why even produce such a document? As noted above, the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures, comprise three quarters of the Bible, which would seem to be plenty for the rabbis to contend with. If you want to produce a commentary in which hundreds of different rabbis give their opinions on various passages, why not comment on the actual Hebrew Scriptures, which Christians agree are divinely inspired?
The answer is contained in the question: It is exactly because Christians claim—and have always claimed, even in the apostolic days—that the Old Testament is part of our Scriptures, and that passages such as Genesis 22, Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and dozens of others clearly point to Christ, that the Christ-rejecting rabbis needed to produce something of their own, something Christians could not use in their argument that Christ is the true Messiah and the Son of God. The point of the Talmud was to create a source of authority for the Jews who rejected Jesus Christ.
In the Talmud, Mary (or Miriam) has been unfaithful her husband, and has borne a son by her lover, a man named Pandera (or Panthera). She has been convicted of adultery and driven out by her husband, a carpenter. The Talmud does not give the name of Miriam and Pandera’s bastard son, but several rabbinic sources mention “Jesus the son of Pandera,” so the Talmud could safely assume knowledge of his identity. Some commentators say that Pandera was a Roman soldier, tying Jesus to the hated Romans.
It is worth pausing to note that Islam believes in the virgin birth. Quran 19:19-22 states:
“[Gabriel] said, "I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you [news of] a pure boy [i.e., son]. She said, "How can I have a boy while no man has touched me and I have not been unchaste?" [Gabriel] said, "Thus, your Lord says, 'It is easy for Me, and We will make him a sign to the people and a mercy from Us. And it is a matter [already] decreed. So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place.”
The Quran is far more charitable to Mary than is the Talmud. Islam accepts Jesus miraculous birth to a virgin, whereas the Talmud says that Jesus is the product of Mary’s adulterous affair with a Roman soldier.
In the gospels, Mary and Joseph flee with Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s murder spree. But according to the Talmud, Jesus went down to Egypt to learn magic and sorcery from the Egyptians; the miracles Jesus worked were nothing but magic tricks. By contrast, Islam teaches that Jesus, Isa, was one of the greatest of the prophets, and that Allah allowed and empowered him to perform miracles.
The Talmud teaches that Jesus was not the Messiah, and was not a prophet. As Ben Shapiro recently said, the Talmudic position is that Jesus was just a Jew who rebelled against Rome and was crucified for his trouble. But the eternal punishment that Jesus, according to the Talmud, is now suffering, indicates a belief that he was far worse than just an ordinary zealot who rebelled against Rome: Jesus is now languishing in a cauldron of boiling semen. This distinguishes Jesus from ordinary gentiles who oppose the Jews; they are condemned to boil eternally in a cauldron of excrement.
By contrast, Islam teaches the Second Coming of Jesus. Muslims believe that Jesus will return to the earth at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, will kill the Al-Masih ad-Dajjal (“The False Messiah”), disperse Gog and Magog, assume rulership of the world, establish peace and justice, die (for the first time) and be buried alongside Muhammad in the fourth reserved tomb of the Green Dome in Medina. In Islam, Jesus is the fourth most sacred person, who returns to earth at the fourth most sacred site in Islam, and ushers in the millennium.
Here is an interesting fact: Islam’s view of Christ is much closer to Christianity than is the Talmud’s view of Christ. In Judaism, Jesus Christ was the bastard product of Mary’s adulterous affair with a Roman soldier; he went to Egypt to learn magic, worked magic tricks, was killed by the Romans, and is boiling in a big vat of semen. In Islam, Jesus is the miraculous product of a virgin conception and birth, was one of the greatest of the prophets, worked divine miracles, and will return to earth to usher in an earthly millennium. Until quite recently, I believed that Judaism was closer to Christianity, much closer, than is Islam. But not only is that wrong, it is absurdly, ludicrously wrong.
A Double Standard in the Law
The Talmud rejects equality under the law. Jews are privileged under Talmudic law, just as Muslims are under Sharia law:
"Rabbi Hanina said: If a gentile smites a Jew, he is worthy of death, for it is written, And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian. R. Hanina also said: He who smites an Israelite on the jaw, is as though he had thus assaulted the Divine Presence; for it is written, One who smiteth man [i.e. an Israelite] attacketh the Holy One."
Pay close attention to the brackets: A “man” means a Jew; non-Jews are not human. The savage tribes of north America each believed they were the “human beings,” and no one in those other tribes was fully human. Talmudic Jews believe exactly the same thing: that they, the Jews, are the only real human beings.
Gentiles are animals, called goyim, which means cattle. The term goyim is in common use among Jews, and not all Jews know that goyim means animal or cattle, but that is what it means. Orthodox Judaism believes that Jews are the only true human beings. Naturally, then, smiting a Jew carries the death penalty; rabid dogs are put down. And, in the Talmud, there is of course no death penalty for a Jew who has killed a gentile.
The Talmud Excuses Child Abuse
The Talmud teaches that when Adam was making an inventory of the animals, he wasn’t just naming them, he was, er, trying them on for size:
"Rabbi Eleazar further stated: What is meant by the Scriptural text, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”? This teaches that Adam had intercourse with every beast and animal but found no satisfaction until he cohabited with Eve." Babylonian Talmud, Yebamoth 63a. Rabbi Eleazar was an important scholar of the oral law in the years immediately following the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.”
So the Talmud teaches that Adam, before sin, before the Fall, practiced mass bestiality. That was strange, but this one raises the “ick” factor considerably:
Rab said: Pederasty with a child below nine years of age is not deemed as pederasty with a child above that. Samuel said: Pederasty with a child below three years is not treated as with a child above that." Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 54b.
The modem commentator's note explains: "Rab makes nine years the minimum; but if one committed sodomy with a child of lesser age, no guilt is incurred. Samuel makes three the minimum." Rab is the nickname of Rabbi Abba Arika (175?-247 A.D.), the founder of the Jewish academy in the Persian city of Sura, one of the three great Jewish academies in Persia. See Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, 6 vols. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, [1893] 1945), II, pp. 512-22.
I resort, yet again, to comparisons with Islam: Muhammad’s close disciple, Abu Bakr, who became the first caliph (successor) after Muhammad’s death, gave him his six year-old daughter, Aisha; Muhammad consummated his marriage to Aisha when she was nine years old. But here we have the Talmud saying, “nine is fine,” and another rabbi saying “it is okay to molest a three year-old girl because at that age, the hymen will grow back.” [See the video, below, for a Rabbi saying exactly that, at 33:49]
Do you see why Jesus rejected the whole project of Talmud?
By departing from, the letter of the Mosaic law, time after time, the rabbis abandoned the spirit of Mosaic law as well. This is why Jesus began so many of His public lessons with the phrase, "You have heard it said ... but I say unto you." He was waging war with the both the spirit and the letter of Talmudic law, for it violates both the spirit and the letter of biblical law. Gary North, The Judeo-Christian Tradition, p. 103
Nullifying the Word of God Through Tradition
God commanded the complete destruction of the Canaanites in large part because they persisted in child sacrifice. The clearest command in the Old Testament is that there shall be no child sacrifice by or among Israel:
“And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the Lord.” Lev. 18:21.
“Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molech is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him. I myself will set my face against him and will cut him off from his people; for by sacrificing his children to Molech, he has defiled my sanctuary and profaned my holy name. If the members of the community close their eyes when that man sacrifices one of his children to Molech and if they fail to put him to death, I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molech. Lev. 20:2-5. (See, also, Deut. 12:31; 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chron. 28:3; Psalm 106:37-38; Isa. 57:5; Jer. 32:35; Ezek. 16:20-21; 23:37)
Note that the second passage does not specifically refer to fire. And yet we find this is the Talmud:
MISHNAH: He who gives of his seed to Molech incurs no punishment unless he delivers it to Moelch and causes it to pass through the fire. If he gave it to Molech but did not cause it to pass through the fire, or the reverse, he incurs no penalty, unless he does both.
The Mishnah teaches that it is okay to sacrifice your child to Molech provided you do not pass him through the fire, and okay to pass the child through the fire [burn him alive] provided you do not offer him to Molech! You just cannot do both. Thus do the “traditions of men” do away with a clear biblical command proscribing child sacrifice. The rabbinic commentary makes it worse:
GEMARA (rabbinic commentary): The Mishnah teaches idolatry and giving to Molech. Rabbi Abin said: Our Mishnah is in accordance with the view that Molech worship is not idolatry .... Rabbi Simeon said: If to Molech, he is liable; if to another idol, he is not. Rabbi Aha the son of Raba said: If one caused all his seed to pass through [the fire] to Molech, he is exempt from punishment, because it is written, of thy seed implying, but not all thy seed.
So you have three rabbis giving three different commentaries, all of which are horrendous:
1) Rabbi Abin says: worshipping Molech is not idolatry,
2) Rabbi Simeon says: it is okay to sacrifice your children to other idols, just not to Molech,
3) Rabbi Aha, son of Raba, says: it is okay to burn your children in sacrifice to Molech, so long as it is all of them (or not all of them, the comment is unclear).
This is what is known as “Talmudic reasoning”: you take a perfectly good law, but one you don’t want to obey, think up an exception, or two or three, and then interpret your exceptions so as to swallow the rule.
Are you beginning to appreciate the phrase, “synagogue of Satan,” which is what Jesus called the Jews who rejected Him and persecuted His followers? (Rev. 2:8-9; 3:7-9) The Talmud is the product of seven hundred years of the best minds within the synagogue of Satan, and all 34 volumes are not worth one chapter of the New Testament.
Summary
The Hebrew Scriptures are Christian; they are part of our Bible, and everything in them points to Jesus Christ and helps us understand His mission and ministry. The Old Testament and modern Jews have little to do with each other, because Jews have adopted the Talmud as their authority. For most of the time between the 6th Century and now, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewish culture, and foundational to “all Jewish thought and aspirations,” serving also as “the guide for the daily life” of Jews.
Modern Judaism formed around the Talmud. The Talmud is not about God’s law. It is a non-inspired commentary on human tradition, full of outrageous contradictions and absurdities. Judaism is a man-made, uninspired religion that is contrary to Christianity, and was intentionally designed to be anti-Christ. Islam is much closer to Christianity, and far less anti-Christian, than is Judaism.
Below is an interesting video from someone in the "reformed tradition” (i.e., a Presbyterian or Calvinist) who is responding to what Douglas Wilson said at TPUSA (which is linked to and commented on in part 4 of this series). While acknowledging some of the things pointed out above, Wilson argued that there is still exegetical gold in the Talmud. Really? This video, made by a very knowledgeable Christian scholar, argues that there is nothing in the Talmud that Christians will find helpful, although it does provide great insight into contemporary Judaism. The first part is a little slow, but the video really picks up in the last half: