According to Jews, many of the Torah’s laws are entirely meaningless without further elaboration. Therefore, some type of “Talmud” was taught to Moses at Sinai together with the written Torah. This is what we know as the Oral Law. Thus, the wisdom and debates of the Talmud, in all their diverseness and variety, may be accurately seen as correct and eternal Torah truths, as “the words of the living God.”  https://aish.com/is-the-talmud-the-word-of-god/  Why do Christian apologists and scholars show hypocrisy? On one hand, they say Jews are honest keepers of God’s word and then reject Talmud although Rabbinic Judaism or mainstream Judaism consider it inspired.  What is the Christian response?

This charge is totally unsupported and outrageous.  NO JEW would ever say that the laws of the Torah are meaningless!!!!  Do you have a quote to support this outrageous and false statement?  I am sure you do not.

What we could say is that many of the laws in the Torah have a deeper underlying meaning in addition to the literal meaning.  For example, laws about wearing clothing with more than one material has a deeper meaning.  It is about the Jews not mixing with other peoples.  It is about maintaining ritual purity.  The writers of the Talmud, the Mishnah and other Jewish writings were helping the Jews to understand the deeper underlying meaning of their texts.  And, by the way, your statement that the Talmud was taught to Moses at Sinai could not be more incorrect.  The Talmud is an assortment of Jewish writings from the very early centuries AD, not from 1400 BC!  They were writing commentary, not prophecy, and the writers of the Talmud did not consider their writings to be inspired.  These were not inspired commentary, but they were helpful commentary from teachers of the Law in order for the Jews to better understand God’s desire for them as a people.

The charge of hypocrisy is totally unfounded.  We ought to be careful about throwing out such charges without support.  Like Jews, Christian scholars can and do read the Mishnah, the Talmud and other Jewish interpretations of the Hebrew scripture.  In addition, Christians write commentaries of their own on the Hebrew scripture, as well as the New Testament.  This is a part of normal scholarship, in which those with a deeper experience and knowledge of scripture help the average Jew or Christian to understand the Bible and the will of God more deeply.  Where is the hypocrisy here?  This charge is completely unfair!  Mainstream Jews do NOT consider Talmud inspired in the same sense that they consider the Torah inspired.  This is simply a false statement.  Besides, the opinions of Jews today are not beholden on Christians.  Christians have the same Old Testament canon as the Jews do today.  Jesus definitely did NOT consider the Talmud, the MIshnah or other Jewish writings to be inspired.  He did not quote from them, except a couple of times, in which he spoke against the traditions of the Pharisees.  The only writings that Jesus accepted as inspired are the 37 books of the Old Testament, and they are the only ones he quoted.

John Oakes