The Talmud Quotes

“But it’s not the multi-volume, two-million-word, densely argued version. It’s a highly abridged version, containing some of the stories and ethical teachings from the Talmud. Aspirational Koreans appreciate that Talmud study is an effective way of training the mind in problem solving. Combing its cut–and-thrust method of debate with the more rigid Confucian methods of teaching gives Korean students a multi-dimensional, educational experience that is unheard of anywhere else in the world.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Talmud has come into contact in its fifteen-hundred-year history, perhaps the most unusual has been the experience in South Korea. There, the Talmud has been adopted as a primary school text.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“The trouble was that although Leviticus forbade a man from marrying his brother’s widow Deuteronomy demanded that, if there had been no children from her first marriage, the widow had to marry her dead husband’s brother. According to Deuteronomy, Henry had been obliged to marry Catherine. Unless he could find a way out.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“When Daniel Bomberg, a printer working in Venice, approached the Vatican asking for a licence to print a full copy of the Talmud, the Pope agreed. It is worth contemplating what the Pope’s answer might have been, had he not been an admirer of Reuchlin, and had Reuchlin not fought so hard against the Talmud’s enemies.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Sola scriptura contends that Scripture is complete; it holds absolute authority over the believer.19 This position is of course far removed from the rabbinic principle that the Bible can only be understood through a tradition of interpretation, which is found in the Oral Law. Sola scriptura is closer to the literalist, Karaite position.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“King Ferdinand, who was himself partly descended from Jewish stock8 consulted the bishops. The bishops’ solution took even the Old Christians by surprise. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“He was a key figure in what would become known as the logic-chopping, dialectical Talmudic school of the tosafists. It would seem, from the style in which the tosafists wrote, that it wasn’t just Christian scholars studying Jewish texts. The tosafists were learning new methods of analysis from their Christian counterparts.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Gershom was the first European scholar to try to reconcile the Talmud’s world view to the reality of living in a Christian society. He’d lived through good times and bad; intellectual and cultural dialogue when conditions were favourable and harsh realities when they weren’t.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“In Europe it reached Spain, Provence, France and Italy, extending northwards through Germany, to the Rhineland cities of Mainz, Speyer and Worms. It was here the Talmud had its first serious encounter with an unfamiliar culture – and it was here, over the course of the next few centuries, that it was scrutinized as never before, both by its friends and by its enemies.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“It all had to do with the fixing of the calendar, and a squabble over a couple of missing days.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“But Saadia wasn’t just quarrelsome; he was a good strategist. His persistent attacks achieved the outcome he had wanted, a complete break between the Talmud academies and the Karaites.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Saadia had been born in Fiyum, in Egypt. He was known locally as al-Faiyumi. Like the Karaites, Saadia had been influenced by the rationalist, Islamic school of Mu’tazilite philosophy.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Bustanai now had two wives, one Jewish and one Persian. However, the Persian wife, as a prisoner of war, was technically a slave and the sons of his Jewish wife tried to exclude her children from inheriting their father’s title. The scholars of the Babylonian academies found in favour of the children of the Persian princess, ruling that Bustanai had liberated her from her status as a slave.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“In fact the two religions are so close in terms of their structure that the tenth-century rabbinic leader Saadia Gaon would unselfconsciously refer to Jewish law as shar’ia, to the prayer leader in a synagogue as an imam and the direction in which Jews faced when praying as qibla.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Unlike Christianity, the laws and beliefs in Islam and Judaism are derived through a process of reasoning and scholarship; there are no councils or synods to rule on doctrine, ethics or behaviour.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Both names mean a ‘pathway’ or a ‘way to go’.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“The Jewish system of law is called halacha, the Islamic system is called shar’ia.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“Far from it; the Talmudic centres were so distant from Arabia, and the prevailing lifestyles so different that we can imagine a local, exotic Jewish culture which would have been virtually unrecognizable to a Jew from Babylon.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“It has been argued that the hostility of the Arabian Jewish tribes to Mohammed was due to his alliances with dissenting Jewish sects.8 Our modern conception of religion prevents us from appreciating just how fluid the ancient faiths were.”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“In fact their presence in the Arabian Peninsula was so influential that for a short period in the sixth century the royal household of Yemen converted to Judaism.6”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress

“41 Mishnah Avot 3.23. 4 The compilation of the Talmud Rabbi Tarfon said, The day is short and there is much work, the workman are lazy but the wages are high, and the master of the house is pressing.1 The academies in Babylon”
― Harry Freedman, The Talmud – A Biography: Banned, censored and burned. The book they couldn't suppress