Controversial Talmudic Interpretations

Three of the major treatises of the Talmud are found extensive passages which give

legal endorsement to seduce and marry three-year-old baby girls.

In fact, many of the greatest rabbis of the Talmud,

including Simeon ben Yohai,

upheld this privilege.

Today in Israel, thousands of Jews go to Meron every year

to venerate the memory

of Simeon ben Yohai, one of the most respected rabbis in the

history of Judaism.

In one of dozens of endorsements of child sex, Simeon ben Yohai said, "A

proselyte under the age of three years and a day is permitted to marry a priest."

Agreeing with Ben Yohai, the great Rava said,

"When a grown-up man has intercourse

with a little girl, it is nothing. For when the girl is less than this,

three years

and a day, it is as if one put the finger into the eye." The

footnote to this

passage says, "As tears come to the eye again and again,

so does virginity

come back to the little girl under three years." The same section confirms that

sexual activity with small boys is in the same category.

The intercourse of a small boy is not regarded as a sexual act.

In addition to adulterers, Christ, in the story of the Good Samaritan,

portrayed

the Pharisees as racial bigots, too self-righteous to respond to the

suffering of

one who was not a Jew. It is true because of the wickedness of the

Canaanites,

which included sodomy and infant sacrifice,

Israel had been commanded by God to be

harsh in her treatment of the inhabitants of the land.

God made it clear that the Canaanites were not simply to be avoided,

but destroyed.

By the time of the New Testament, this method of preserving God's kingdom by

separation and the sword had become obsolete.

God no longer made a racial difference between men.

But the Pharisees were unfazed by God's new agenda.

The Talmud was finally written down nearly five centuries after Christ, yet its

critical, even homicidal attitudes toward Gentiles

might have been lifted out of

the Book of Joshua. However, the quickest way to grasp the Talmudic

view of

Gentiles is not directly from the Talmud, but from the Jewish encyclopedias.

If we quote an isolated opinion from the Talmud, a rabbi may quickly object saying,

"But that is not the overall opinion of the Talmud.

That is not the definitive view."

What the Jewish encyclopedia provides us is a definitive overview of perhaps

hundreds of rabbinic statements on any subject, giving us accurate summaries of

what the Talmud generally teaches.