Richard Carrier and the Talmud

In Dr. Kipp Davis' YouTube video "Reviewing Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus", part 1", He brings up some very good points concerning Carrier's lack of scholarship when it comes to using Rabbinical literature. It's clear, as Dr. Davis states, that Carrier doesn't know Aramaic and relies on translated Talmudic texts. Moreover, I suggest that Carrier might have used misleading explanations from Evangelical writers like Michael Brown.

I want to talk about two points Dr. Davis raised as problematic when used by Carrier. There are some basics that those who haven't studied the text for years might not know.

First, the Babylonian Talmud, specifically in tractate Sanhedrin (pages 90a-113b), is called "Chelek." It's about "All of Israel has a SHARE in the World to Come." It's one of the least grounded chapters in the Babylonian Talmud, often referred to as "the Bavli."

There's a common way to break down an argument:

1. Rabbi 1 says a
2. Rabbi 2 says b
3. Rabbi 3 says c
4. Rabbi 4 (or "Rabbis") refutes the claims of 1-3.

Here's an often-misquoted example from Tractate Makkot (paraphrased):

1. Tanna Kamma - Executing a person every 7 years is a bloody court.
2. Rabbi Elezar ben Azariah - Executing every 70 years is a bloody court.
3. Rabbi Akiva - No one should ever be executed.
4. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel - Nonsense! Executions are necessary.

Now, let's look at the argument in Sanhedrin 98b. Remember, "what is his name" in Rabbinical writings often means "what are his characteristics?" Rabbis were held in high esteem, blessed by God. So, here's a simplified version:

1. Students of Rabbi Shilo said "Shilo"
2. Students of Rabbi Yannai said "Yinnon"
3. Students of Rabbi Chanina said "Chanina"
4. Rabbis dismiss it.

Note that these names rhyme with the teachers' names and are unique, found only once in the Tanach, showing specialness. The Rabbis counter by saying he could be cursed by God (illness was a curse), of lowly stature (a servant of Rebbi), and use Isaiah 53:4 to challenge the elitists.

There's a lot to unpack here. To claim that a 6th-century writing about views of a messiah shows they believed he'd suffer is questionable. Isaiah 53 was used as a teaching tool, not necessarily to express a belief.

Now, the Messiah ben Joseph claim Carrier used. You can find the text in the Bavli, tractate Sukkot, page 52a.

Note that for centuries, scribes added anti-Christian inserts, later redacted. "Messiah ben Yosef" appears once, negatively connected to evil inclination. Centuries later, it meant a prophet or precursor to Messiah ben David.

In the Talmud, he's a deceiver mourned at the end because followers feel absurd. Another view is that followers mourn him as their one and only. Carrier says Jews anticipated their messiah's death, but ignores later sentences. Messiah ben David asks if he'll suffer, and God says "Nah!"

Messiah ben David wasn't expected to die, only the pretender, the deceiver. By the Talmud's time, failed messiahs existed, so God's statement might nod to them. A possible polemic against Yeshu HaNotzri.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers!

V'Zot HaBeracha - Deut 33:1-34:12

With Yom Kippur followed by only a couple of days before Shabbat and then going right into Sukkot, there isn't a lot of time to go into a long explanation, but let me go into a bit about this very last parashah.

The blessings that Moses is giving before he dies is reminiscent of those given by Jacob to his sons. In fact, Moses is using very similar groupings while defining the extra importance of the priesthood.

Now keep in mind, Moses had already finished writing the Torah and giving it to the Levites (or was it the Priests?) to keep with them and carry. So who was writing this chapter?

Moses is again telling us of the use of iron in the making of protective gear.

And then there is this:

This is certainly speaking from the future, looking backward at the time when the prophets supposedly prophesied, and comparing them to Moses. It should be noted that the land is not called Israel, but the people were called Israel, and so, it is speaking of no Israelite would ever be born who was as great as Moses from the time that these words were written.

Moses was not the author, but the primary character.

And that ends this blog.

Thank you for reading.

Ha'azinu - Deut 32:2-32:52

This week's Torah portion is almost always referred to as a "song".

This is based on the verse from the previous chapter (31:19) which has God saying to Moses, "So now, write this song for yourselves and teach it to the children of Israel..."

And then God says a lot more. and it ends with (31:22): "And Moses wrote this song on that day and taught it to the children of Israel...".

So what was that song that God authored?

Was this song like the "Book of Yahweh's Wars" or "Book of the Covenant" which either were long lost texts for which there was a cultural memory (or simply terms that were literary devices for texts that did not exist)?

Or was it this chapter of the Torah?

Let's look at it for a moment.

Verses 1-14 is from the point of view of Moses, telling the people how good Yahweh has been to them.
Verses 15-19 is also from Moses point of view, telling the people that they are going to screw up, follow other Gods, and piss off Yahweh.
Verses 20-26 is Moses telling us what Yahweh will say, speaking from His point of view. Spoiler: He will be pissed.
Verses 27-33 is Moses again telling us about how God will aid the enemies of the Jews to defeat them to teach them a lesson.
Verses 34-35 is Yahweh speaking, "Vengeance is Mine!"
Verses 36-38 is Moses again, mocking the other Gods.
Verses 39-42 Is Yahweh saying that he will destroy the enemies of the Jews and take them back.
Verse 43 is the first time the word "sing" appears, and it is Moses crying out for the goyim to sing praises for Israel, because if they don't, such people will be destroyed as His enemies.
Verses 44-52 Back to the narrator speaking of Moses in the 3rd person.

 So if you believe that this chapter is true, then how much of this is really a song, if it is a song? Verses 1-43?

And if you believe that God composed a song and taught it to Moses who taught it to the people, how much of this would have been from Yahweh?

Some points to Ponder

Is it possible that it is called a song because some time in the future, the goyim will sing praises to to God about the Jewish people?

Is this really the song taught by Yahweh in chapter 31, or is this something else and that song is long lost?

The beginning of this chapter starts with a biblical parallelism, which I explain in this post. Not all songs begin with a parallelism and not all parallelisms are song. It appears to be a unique style that later writings share.

This chapter shares a common theme that is expressed in Isaiah 51-53: God was pissed off, the Jews repented, and He comes to their defense and in Isaiah 54, warns the goyim to back off! Interestingly enough, chapter 53 also starts with a biblical parallelism, and there is a lot that these two chapters have in common.

Conclusion

This chapter is certainly not the song that was being referred to in chapter 31, and most of the "song" isn't even from the point of view of Yahweh.

It does have a nice rhythm when read correctly, but as for being the song that Yahweh taught in chapter 31, I assert that this isn't what was taught and that this chapter is likely a later insert given that it has a similar style and feel of some of the later prophets.

Vayeilekh - Deut. 31:1-31:30

This very short Torah portion is joined with Nitzevim, and while there are less than three dozen verses, there are a couple of interesting points that I wanted to bring up concerning the duplication of stories from multiple sources.

Now you may wonder how there can be multiple versions in such a short portion and nobody taking notice of it.

At the beginning of the portion, Moses tells the people that he cannot go with them and that, at age 120, he was done. He then writes a Torah and gives it to the priests who would be carrying the ark.

Except that the priests did not carry the ark (See Numbers 7:9).

He then reminds the priesthood that during the 7th year, perhaps he was referring to the shmittah year, the priesthood would gather all the people together and read the Torah, and to do this always.

Verse 14 appears to be a repeat of this story, but with variations.

In this one, Yahweh tells Moses that his time is near, reminds Moses that the Jews will turn to idolatry and go into exile, and then told Moses a song to write down (which will be revealed in the next chapter). And when Moses finished writing the Torah to the very end, he handed it to the Levites and told them to carry the Torah with them by the Holy Ark that they were assigned to carry.

There is no command to read it to the people, just Moses swearing to the land and the heavens to witness that the Jews would sin and wicked things would happen to them, Then Moses prepared to sing the song.

It appears that this first version was written by the priestly group, which not only showed how special they were, but giving them the power to call the people together to hear a reading by the priesthood.

The second version was not from the priestly caste, but from another, which not only invoked the chastising demeanor of God, repeatedly, but assigns the Torah to the non-priests to carry with them. It is interesting that in later periods, the Levites, having little to do, were assigned as musicians and singers within the Temple, and that the segment that includes the giving of the song does so to those who would be the singers in later generations.

And the other point?

Even though Moses wrote the Torah all the way to the end and gave it to the Levites (version 2), there are still several more chapters left in the book!

It's just something to notice.

Nitzavim - Deut. 29:9-30:20

In this week's Torah portion, there are a couple of special markings that, if you normally read from a translation, you would never see.

The Masoretic Marks

Somewhere around the second century CE, a group of Jewish leaders decided not only what version of the older texts would be used, but how they would be read. Some markings I have already covered, such as the קרי, which means "although the word is spelled this way, you will instead read it as though a different word is in place. Here is an example of that:

Another form of marking that only occurs once is the use of a bracket to super-emphasize a verse. You can see this use of the letter nun (נ) circled in turquoise in the example below (Numbers 10:35-36):

And there are two other masoretic markings, that are used, which are in this weeks portion: (1) changing the letter size, and (2) adding dots above the text.

Highlighting Text

First, let's look at the dots.

As you can see in the section in the yellow box, there are 11 dots over three words. This is from Deuteronomy 29:28.

I chose yellow for a specific reason, because these dot groupings, where they occur, are like using a highlighter pen on the parchment.

What it means is that some unknown person who had the authority to do so felt that something was important enough to make a marking as if to say, "this is important!"

The problem is, the person who did that never tells you why, so it is always open to interpretation. Sometimes the interpretation is obvious, and sometimes it isn't. It is like reading a book with a kindle and seeing that someone else had highlighted a section of the text. If it strikes you as interesting, then you might know why it was highlighted. If not, then you might not.

And there are a LOT of commentaries on people interpreting these dots. Yet so many of them are reading far more into it than simply going, "someone 1800 years ago thought that this passage was interesting enough to highlight".

Let's think about this example for a minute.

The passage reads "Secret things are for for our Yahweh-Elohim, and the revealed things are for us and for our children forever, to do all of the words of this Torah."

Here is one interpretation that you won't find, especially by those who hold that these dots are a tradition passed on from Moses:

What was going on 1800 years ago?

Christianity was about 2 centuries old, and had not only taken the "Old Testament" as the foundation of their ideology (along with a number of New Testament texts), but had reinterpreted the Old Testament passages in ways that were...odd to the Rabbis.

Is it possible that the person in authority who highlighted that the Torah "is for US and for OUR CHILDREN" was making a statement for Jews to see? As for the last word, it can be translated as "eternity" or "witness".

That is certainly a possibility.

Letter Size Changes

The other strange marking style is the shrinking and enlarging of letters. And this one happens so close to the dotted verse that it gives some strength to the argument.

The first shrunken letter appears in the Genesis 2:4

אֵלֶּה תוֹלְדוֹת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְהָאָרֶץ, בְּהִבָּרְאָם

"These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created..."

But a changed letter size it often used to encourage an Rabbinically imposed view, so instead of the normal "when they were created", it reads "with a heh, they were created". Or, as Rashi has interpreted it, since "Yah" is composed of a yud and a heh, then this world was created with one of the letters of His name, and the world to come was created with the other letter. (The concept of a "world to come" is about as old as the Masoretic texts).

But in this week's portion you have an enlarged letter:

This verse, Deuteronomy 29:27, is just prior to the dotted verse. This verse speaks of those who would cast away their covenant and incur God's wrath by serving Gods that they had never known before, and ends with:

"...and [Yahweh] will cast you out to another land, as it is this day."

I have yet to see anyone comment on this. I was teaching a teenager how to lein, recite this, and it confused him that in this occurrence of an enlarged letter, there is no marking to indicate a change in voice that often happens.

So here is my interpretation, and it works perfectly with the verse that followed.

The three letters prefixing that word is UShY (ושי). These are also the same letters in YeShU. And the large letter with the two that follows could be read as "is yours", or "If the God Yeshu is yours, you have broken your covenant...".

This is akin to the prayer that Jews say about Christians three times a day, "For they bow to vanity and rik...and to a god that helps them not." The gematria for rik is the same value as for "YeShU". (There is an interesting history about the aleinu prayer that I may cover at another time).

Summary

As I already noted, the Masorites who added these marks did not leave notes as to why. Furthermore, there was no committee that was agreeing to add marks. And the person who did the textual tweak to verse 27 may not have been the same one who did so with verse 28. And it is also possible that a later scribe may have added his own single letter change or tapped on a few dots, and copyists included that.

We really don't know who did the markings, nor exactly when each one occurred, nor the exact intent.

Some intentions seem a bit more clear than others.

The idea that 1800 years ago, some Rabbis were ticked off enough at the Christians to make a comment in their Holy Book about their feelings does tickle me, though!

Ki Tavo (Part 2) - Deut. 26:1-29:8

Obscurity in Scripture

In this week's Torah portion, there are a lot of words and phrases that we really are not 100% certain of their meaning.

For those who do not hold the Torah as God's word to His people, that's not a problem. For those who do, well, they try to not think of the question, "Why would an Omniscient Being dictate a text with words that He knew that we wouldn't know the meaning?" 

And to those Apologists who claim that God couldn't tell humanity about planets because they wouldn't understand it (plus there was no Biblical Hebrew word for "planet"), they need to come to terms with the problem that Scripture doesn't care if people don't understand what words mean. To combat this, we simply give them meaning that "feels right".

Here are some examples from this week's portion.

Verse 26:5 - ארמי אבד אבי ("Arami oved avi").

Some interpret this as "My father was a fugitive Armenian", "My father was a straying Armenian", the Septuagint rends this as "My father abandoned Aram". The Vulgate has "An Armenian persecuted my father". Many reinterpret this to speak of Jacob and Laban (Rashi, Ibn Ezra), even though the Torah never refers to anyone as an "Armenian", although Laban did speak Aramaic, which is a different issue. Some interpret this to speak of Abraham (Rashbam). And some have a different twist on it, with Laban and "my father" not being explained (the Passover Haggadah, Onkelos).

So whatever this special phrase means that a Jew is supposed to say when he goes to the Temple with his first fruits...nobody is really in agreement.

Verse 28:4 - עשתרות - (Ashterot)

This is the same name of the Goddess (or the town named after the Goddess) in Genesis 14:5. It is sometimes translated to "lambing" or "birthing the flock", but nobody is really certain. The Goddess connection is never looked at.

Verse 28:5 - ומשארתך - (u'mishartekha)

This is a word of unknown origin. Some translate it as a kneading bowl (Onkelos), some as a "residue" (Rashi).

Verse 28:22 - בשחפת - (b'shakhafet)

This is likely a disease of some sort. Onkelos sees it as "consumption", Rashi as a wearing away of the flesh, Saadiah as malfunctioning lungs, and the Rashbam as a general variety of illnesses.

Verse 28:32 - אל - (El)

This word has a number of meanings, and because of these, different interpreters will choose a different meaning, depending on their comfort zone for "there will be no El in your hand". Is it God? Power? An Idol? There is no universal agreement.

And more!

Yes, there are more verses in this week's portion with strange and obscure words. I have presented a handful to give you a taste of what it a common occurrence throughout the Torah.

Of course, a traditionalist will say, "See! That proves that the Oral Torah is true, because without it you cannot understand the written Torah!"

The problem with that is the lack of agreement by those who believed in the Rabbinical construct called, "The Oral Torah".

Ki Tavo - Deut. 26:1-29:8

There are a number of expressions that often creep into our conversation:

Everything happens for a reason

Somebody up there likes me

What did I do to deserve this? 

These and many other expressions that are often directed at the idea of some Divine exercise of  "reward and punishment" stems from this very Torah portion.

Sure, chapter 26 of Leviticus is certainly a list of terrible things that God will do to you if you don't keep His rules. But this week's version not only has twice as many punishments listed (96 according to the count in Midrash Tanchuma), but it is preceded by 11-12 curses (depending on if you count #12 as a summary or a separate curse) of things people do in secret.

This view is damaging to society because it creates the view that anything bad that befalls upon another person is because he or she sinned. Are you a guy who was betrothed to a young woman who was raped (verse 28:30)? God was punishing you. Or maybe she wasn't raped, but committed adultery instead. Again, God was punishing you, and they were his vehicles.

Of course, how this affects any punishment for adultery or rape when it was apparently God's will requires a lot of philosophical gymnastics.

This is one of the core philosophies of the Westboro Baptist Church which pickets funerals.

They are simply echoing a sentiment found in The Babylonian Talmud by Rav Ammi (Shabbat 55a), that if not for sin, no one would die. And the idea that the children would die for the sins of their fathers was also acceptable as well. Here is a snippet from Shabbat 32b:

One of the horrible things about this week's Torah portion is that it defined and encourages such a mindset - that anything bad that happens, it's all your fault and it is a "gift" from God who you should credit as being "the True Judge".

If you see someone mourning the loss of a loved one, do you accept that it was the result of sin and try to help correct the sinner, or do you give comfort?

That is the dilemma that literalists go through who accept that all punishment is the result of sin.

If there is a drought, then obviously the people of the town have sinned. Sure, they look like good people, but it's probably a secret sin. So the only way around this is to atone for it through fasting. At one time, self-flagellation was also considered a remedy.

 The belief in a Heavenly Reward and Punishment has done much to impact who we are as human beings. It is a factor that was used to control people, to tell them that all the good that they have is from God, but also, all of the evil as well. And the only way to avoid the evil is to keep every single rule (28:1) that God set down, and the only way to have good in your life if to keep every single rule, and the only way to get rid of the evil in your life, beside returning to doing every single rule is to work with the religious leadership who will atone for you.

Little good can come out of this view.

And it is this view that festers among many of the religious, especially the one who blame those who died in a hurricane as deserving of God's wrath for any number of stupid reasons (e.g., God opposed that town's passing of a law that permits gay marriage.).

One would think that none of these people had ever read the Book of Lot.