Book review: The Talmud Tested, and Found Wanting

Book Review 

Alexander McCaul’s “The Talmud Tested”

Reviewed by Mickey Henry

TribalTheocrat.com

The Talmud Tested, and Found Wanting

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.”  Jeremiah 6:16 (KJV)

Alexander McCaul’s The Talmud Tested, a book originally published in the 19th century under the title The Old Paths, Or The Talmud Tested By Scripture; Being A Comparison Of The Principles And Doctrines Of Modern Judaism With The Religion Of Moses And The Prophets, has recently been republished by Independent History & Research with an all new introduction by Christendom’s foremost living scholar of rabbinic Judaism, Michael Hoffman.  This consistently Christian critique of Judaism is a very important work of scholarship in a field that, with the exception of Hoffman and a handful of others, has been almost entirely neglected by the modern Church.

Style and Divisibility of the Book

The chapters comprising the contents of The Talmud Tested were originally written by McCaul as a series of 60 individual weekly installments.  In each installment, a particular topic is selected and dissected in a formulaic manner:
1. The topic is introduced.
2. The position of modern Judaism is detailed from authoritative Judaic sources.
3. The position of the Old Testament is stated.
4. The position of Judaism is shown to be in violation of the Old Testament.
5. The position of the New Testament is stated, and shown to be in agreement with the Old.
6. The installment is summarized, and the superiority of Christianity as the proper interpreter of the Old Testament is further established.

The book is topical or episodic in nature, and the reader may choose to interact with as little or as much of the book as he chooses, generally without regard to order.  At nearly 700 pages, this tome is outwardly intimidating to the slow reader or the novice, but in actuality is effortlessly divisible without loss of comprehension.  My suggestion:  read Hoffman’s introduction and the first two chapters, then read as few or as many of the topics as interest you, and finish with the summary and restatement of the core argument in the final chapter.

Stylistically, even though this book was written at a time known for its stilted language, the weekly installments making up its chapters were originally employed as missionary tracts for general consumption. Its scholarship is considerable, but McCaul is nevertheless eminently readable.

Topics Covered by the Book

The following is a list of topics covered in The Talmud Tested (a few of the topics are discussed in multiple installments):
1. Rabbinism not a Safe Way of Salvation
2. Implicit Faith not due to the Rabbis
3. Rabbinic Injustice to Women, Slaves, and Gentiles
4. Rabbinic Intolerance towards other Nations
5. Talmudic Intolerance contrasted with the Charity of the Bible
6. Compulsory Conversion of the Gentiles
7. The Feast of Purim
8. Rabbinic Contempt for the Sons of Noah
9. Christians cannot be reckoned amongst the “Pious of the Nations of the World”
10. Rabbinic Washing of Hands
11. Rabbinic Artifices respecting Leaven at the Passover
12. The Passover a Type of Future Deliverance
13. Severity of the Rabbinic Ordinances
14. Severity and Artifice
15. Sabbath Mixture
16. Intolerance of Rabbinic Prayers
17. Rabbinic Legends
18. Rabbinic Magic
19. Astrology
20. Amulets
21. Charms
22. Sabbatic Laws
23. Fast for the Destruction of the Temple
24. Rabbinic Excommunication
25. New Year’s Day
26. Justification
27. Day of Atonement
28. Feast of Tabernacles
29. Prayers for the Dead
30. Almsgiving
31. Priests and Levites
32. Rabbinic Ideas of the Deity
33. Title of Rabbi
34. Sanhedrin
35. Contempt for the Female Character
36. Polygamy
37. Divorce
38. Rabbinic Laws concerning Meat
39. The Birth of Messiah
40. Slaughtering of Meat
41. Laws concerning Meat with Milk
42. Rabbinism oppressive to the Poor
43. Gentile Wine
44. Mourning for the Dead
45. Dispensation from an Oath
46. Meritoriousness of Circumcision
47. Cruelty to the Unlearned

A “Safe” Book on Judaism

McCaul wrote with a missionary intent:  to draw the Judaic peoples away from the yoke of rabbinic oppression and works righteousness to salvation in Jesus Christ.  The Talmud Tested is frank and unrelenting in its assessment of the Talmud and the other authoritative texts of Judaism, but McCaul treats the Judaic peoples themselves with charity.   There is nothing in this book similar to Old Right “Jew hate”, and that makes it an ideal candidate for a church library, a homeschool course on comparative religions, or for those who, due to the almost universal sentimentalism of our age, find such blistering polemics unattractive.

It’s refreshing to read a book critical of Judaism that does not assent to its central lie:  the fiction that modern Judaism is the religion of the Old Testament.  For Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament, but is the evolution of the Pharisaic system as authoritatively stipulated by the Talmud.  When reading authors like Douglas Reed, it is difficult to take them seriously as astute critics of Judaism when they openly subscribe to its biggest lie.  McCaul wrote with utter fidelity to the New Testament as well as the Old; a claim that may only rightly be made of a handful of others, such as Hoffman, Elizabeth Dilling, and Johann Andreas Eisenmenger.

Christianity Better Comprehended

The study of comparative religion has the rewarding effect of drawing out the distinctions in one’s own beliefs.  I found McCaul to be an able and clear-minded theologian, and would recommend reading The Talmud Tested on the basis of Christian studies alone.  But because modern Judaism is the evolution of Phariseeism, studying Judaism in particular has an illuminating effect on many New Testament passages.  The difficult “you’ve heard it said” passages of the Sermon on Mount (Matthew 5) are immediately clarified when you realized that Christ was attacking specific Pharisaic perversions of God’s Law that denied the role of the Law in the life of the mind and turned sanctification into nothing but a rigid, entirely externalized observation of a set of rules.  I found especially instructive McCaul’s explanation of the parable of the Good Samaritan as a pointed condemnation of the Pharisaic oral law teaching that a Jew may do nothing to save the life of a Gentile in distress.

Why Purchase this Edition?

A moment’s search will quickly reveal that other facsimiles of this book are available, so why purchase this edition?  The reasons are threefold:

1. Independent History & Research, Hoffman’s imprint, was painstaking in the preparation of this reprint.  A fine original was used as the source, and professionally scanned.  There are no missing or misaligned pages, no underlining or margin notes, no stains or unintelligible words.  The print is crisp and easily readable.

2. Hoffman wrote an excellent 20-page introduction to this edition.  I found the context he provided very helpful.  Further, an extensive extract from a historical work detailing McCaul’s labors with the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews provides much useful background.

3. Christendom has all but forgotten its scholars.  Purchasing this edition supports the continued work of Michael Hoffman.

The Bottom Line:

Highly recommended.  Buy it from Independent History & Research, read it, and purchase additional copies to pass on to your church elders and other serious Christians.

The Talmud Tested may be purchased directly from Independent History and Research here:

http://revisionisthistorystore.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-talmud-tested-by-professor-of.html

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Latest Talmud book from Independent History and Research

The Talmud Tested

A Comparison of the Principles and Doctrines of Modern Judaism with the Religion of Moses and the Prophets

By Alexander McCaul

Professor of Hebrew and Rabbinic Literature at Kings College, London 

With an introduction and bibliography by Michael Hoffman

“...unparalleled knowledge of Jewish history, religion and Hebrew...the foremost gentile expert on Jewish matters.”—John J. Moscrop, Measuring Jerusalem

"An apologetic and polemic almost without rival." —Walter Riggans, Biographical Dictionary

Partial list of Contents

Judaism’s perversion of Moses • Rabbinic injustice to women, slaves and gentiles • Rabbinic intolerance toward other nations •Hatred in the Talmud contrasted with charity in the Bible •Compulsory conversion of gentiles •Judaism’s ‘anti-semitic’ attitude toward fellow Jews regarded as am ha’aretz •Impoverished Jews whipped for accepting help from Christians •Converts to Christianity to be killed •Rabbinic contempt for sons of Noah • Intolerance of rabbinic prayers •Rabbinic lies and legends •Judaism a heathen religion: astrology, charms and amulets •Excommunication in Judaism •Synagogue system based on the oral law •Members of the Sanhedrin had to be skilled in magic •Polygamy •Divorce •Judaism’s oppression of the poor •Propaganda techniques and tricks of rabbinic deceit •Judaism as moral and intellectual slavery. •Rabbinic authority exalted above all others •Jews forbidden to love their gentile neighbors •Rabbinic permission to violate God’s commands •The rabbinic criminal code • The impenitent Jew at the tribunal of God’s judgment • and much more.

What is unique about this book?

Alexander McCaul reproduces on page after page of this volume, passages from the Babylonian Talmud and other sacred rabbinic texts in their original Hebrew and Aramaic, and then translates them into English, so there can be no question of misquoting, or “taking out of context.” The Talmud Tested offers incontestable documentary proof that Judaism leads it followers to mental and spiritual bondage in this world and eternal damnation in the next. Michael Hoffman writes: “This is the most convincing and comprehensive Christian textbook on Judaism since Eisenmenger, and it has the advantage of being in English, in clear, modern type. Open-minded persons who study it from cover to cover are unlikely to be deceived by the rabbis to any considerable degree ever again. Dr. McCaul’s phenomenal scholarship effectively inoculates his readers against the epidemic of Talmudic confusion engulfing our nation.”

A Personal Note from Michael Hoffman

"It has long been our objective to publish Alexander McCaul’s masterwork. He was the Victorian Eisenmenger (though he sometimes disparaged his German predecessor for the often caustic and satirical tone Dr. Eisenmenger adopted; Prof. McCaul was sensitive in how he approached potential Judaic converts). What is best about the McCaul book, besides being in English, are the numerous Hebrew citations printed on many pages and then translated into English, which he uses to convict the rabbis, by their own words, of deceit, guile, malice, idolatry etc. This edition of The Talmud Tested  from Independent History and Research represents the clearest and most readable McCaul facsimile on the market, and it is supplemented by the new introduction, wherein readers learn of the extent to which “Jews” were considered the natural object of missionary zeal, when Christianity was still worthy of the name. If thousands of copies of this book were to be circulated among Christian leaders and open-minded persons of good will, we could see something wonderful develop."

Softcover. 715 pages (660 + 55 page introduction). $27.95 plus shipping

Sample from the book:

Documented on pp. 236-237: "The fabulous exaggerations of the Talmud...this subterfuge”

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Help to publicize this monumental exposé: download, print out and distribute our advertising flyer

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Pope Benedict’s new book and the conversion of the “Jews"

by Michael Hoffman

The pope's new book on Jesus Christ and the Jews, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, has been published. I will be reading it early next week and my full review will appear in "Revisionist History" newsletter.

From excerpts I have read online, the book is written in the classic mode of casuistry, the post-medieval Roman Catholic lawyer’s corollary to the Talmud’s lawyerly pilpul.

By means of this casuistry the pope is saying one thing to the Left and the rabbis, but provides enough cover for his thesis so that the Right and conservative Catholics can allow themselves to believe that he really didn't say what the rabbis and the Left are saying he did say.

What a tangled web! Whatever happened to plain speech? “Let your yes be yes, and your no be no; anything else is of the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

The Vatican and the rabbis do not heed Christ's sage admonition, that's for sure. For example, Purim, the Talmudic feast of revenge, is just around the corner on the rabbinic calendar, Adar 14 (March 19-20). On Purim, every Judaic male is required to get so drunk he can't tell the difference between Haman and Mordechai. The Talmud obligates adult Judaic males to become intoxicated at Purim, then warns them of the potential dangers of such inebriation (Babylonian Talmud, Megila 7b). The Talmud provides a plausible denial loophole for its own command to Judaic males to become intoxicated with alcohol. Bottom line: for centuries Judaic males have gotten hopelessly drunk on Purim.

Pope Benedict's casuistry reflects the plausible denial stratagem exhibited in Megila 7b: while the pope does not affirm in Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week the theory holding that “Jews” will be saved independently of Christ, he does suggest the Church should not be targeting “Jews" for conversion efforts.

Observe this tangled web of papal casuistry: [1] "Don't convert the ‘Jews,’ [2] but they do need Christ to be saved."

[1] Don't convert the “Jews” — absolutely delights Pharisaic Judaism and the Left.

[2] "Jews" still need Christ to be saved — provides a face-saving escape clause for the pope’s Right-wing.

Benedict "approvingly quotes" Cistercian abbess and "Biblical writer" Hildegard Brem: “The church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God.”

I'm going to "approvingly quote" the founder of the Christian Church (just in case His words count for anything next to those of abbesses and pontiffs): “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” (Matthew 15:24)

Let's see now, at the beginning of His ministry Jesus focused his conversion efforts solely on the House of Israel, but since then, that focus has been abrogated? Or would the casuists prefer to employ the word "derogated"?

The charge given by Jesus later in His ministry, to carry the Gospel to the gentiles, to the ends of the earth, Pope Benedict reverses, in favor of what the pontiff terms a “sequence": first the “full number” of the Gentiles comes to the faith, and only then the Jews.

So Jesus had it wrong. He sought to convert the Jews first. He wasn't aware of the "sequence"!

The pope quotes St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s advice to one of his predecessors, Pope Eugene III, that “a determined time has been fixed” for the conversion of the Jews “that cannot be anticipated.”

Clever! The pope has switched gears and is alluding to eschatology, the Pauline prediction of Judaic conversion in general, in some form and to some extent (we know not the particulars), at the end of time.

This process would, however, never forbid the conversion of individual "Jews" before the end time, and it never did. Ecclesiastic history testifies to militant missionary efforts toward Judaics.  Otherwise, what were Peter and Paul doing in the Church in the first place? Why didn't Christ just convert the Roman Centurion, the Samaritan woman and any other gentile He chose, and make them apostles and disciples, leaving His call to the Simons and Sauls to the time when the "full number" of the gentiles would be converted?

No doubt Dr. Scott Hahn and other august PhD. theologians beholden to the Novus Ordo Seclorum, will resolve these “seeming" contradictions and tie them into a neat traditional package, exactly corresponding to "what the Church has always taught."

But the Church has always taught that from motives of charity and compassion we should free Judaics from the shackles of bondage to the religious system based on the Babylonian Talmud, and lead them to the love, grace and mercy of Jesus.

Catholic Saints like Vincent Ferrer responded heroically to the call to convert Judaics. Among Protestants, international missionary organizations were founded, such as the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews. In the space of a few decades of the 19th century, nearly 1800 Judiacs were converted and baptized in the Society's London chapel in Palestine Lane, and thousands more were converted throughout Germany and eastern Europe. One of the leaders of the Society, Rev. Dr. Alexander McCaul, warned of the sins which Judaics commit as long as they remain in Judaism:

"Every man who uses the prayers of the synagogue, there confesses himself to God as a believer in the oral law, and consequently ready to execute all its decrees of cruelty, fraud and persecution...That is his profession in the synagogue; when he then comes forth from the solemn act of Divine Worship and tells me that he is...charitable and that he abhors persecution, how can I possibly believe him?..so long as their words and their deeds contradict each other, a mist hangs over them...There is falsehood somewhere and the only possible mode of removing this appearance is by a public renunciation of the oral law...To their God they owe it, for by the blasphemies of the oral law, His character is misrepresented and His name blasphemed."

Judaism is an offense to God — now — at this moment! Pope Benedict XVI, by "suggesting" that Jews need not convert to faith in Jesus Christ "at this time in history," is abandoning them to their sins, and ultimately to damnation, for no one is saved by their race!

Who then is the "Jew hater"? Is it the Christian evangelist who converts Judaics, or the Catholic casuist who leaves them to die without Christ?

The rabbis claim to be the defenders of the "Jews." Are they not actually their worst enemies? And what of a pope who, by retarding missionary efforts, cooperates with the Christless agenda of rabbinic Judaism?

Michael Hoffman is the author of Judaism Discovered, an 1100 page textbook and reference work. He is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press.

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...Benedict sensitively touches upon a major problem that has plagued Catholic-Jewish relations all throughout history: converting Jews. This topic has been the focus of considerable discord in Catholic-Jewish relations in recent years...As a theological conservative, Benedict has written previously that the Jewish covenant at Sinai has been superseded. But his supersessionism has always been focused on the end of time, and he has maintained that Jewish unification with the church is “hardly possible, and perhaps not even desirable before the eschaton.” In his latest book, he expands this idea, insisting that for now “Israel retains its own mission” and that saving Israel “is in the hands of God” — meaning, presumably, not in the hands of Christian missionaries. Had Christians followed this doctrine throughout the millennia...Jews would have been freer to practice their faith with dignity. Benedict’s expectation of the future acceptance of Christian faith by everyone takes the practical threat out of Christian supersessionism for Jews today."

— Rabbi Eugene Korn, "Benedict’s ‘Jesus’ and the Jews”
Forward newspaper, March 9, 2011

(Korn is American director of the Israeli "Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation" in Efrat and Jerusalem, and editor of Meorot: A Forum of Modern Orthodox Discourse).

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