** Not everything in the Talmud is bad, a short example.

Not everything in the Talmud is bad…

…just like not everything written by evangelicals is bad.  You have to have discernment to see the good stuff and reject the bad stuff.  Many of the sages of old actually had very keen insights about prophecy and halacha.  And you’ll also find some good gems in there that show sometimes their “public stance” on something was for the purpose of showing a united front against the roman church, but privately they held a more reasonable interpretation.

For example, in interpreting Zechariah’s prophecy that they will “look upon Me whom they have pierced…”  The official rabbinic line is that it’s supposed to be “up to me [in faith]” or “upon them [those pierced by enemies in the battle]“  and “because of him whom they…” and try to say that the second verb somehow has a different subject than the first one in the sentence, all sorts of contrived ways to avoid interpreting the passage as it reads literally.

Rashi, in his commentary on the Tanakh, upholds these views.  However, in his commentary on the Talmud, he writes:

The words “the land shall mourn” are found in theprophecy of Zechariah and he prophecies of the future that they shall mourn on account of messiah, son of Yosef…”  [Sukk 52a]

This is not the only double-take Rashi did.  Another example would be Isaiah 53, which in his commentary on the Tanakh he interprets as referring to the Jewish people but in the commentary on the Talmud says it concerns messiah.

Another example is about as blatant as you can get:  Concerning Psalm 21, Rashi says:

Our Rabbis have expounded it of the King Messiah, but it is better to expound it further of David himself, in order to answer to heretics…

So much for unbiased scholarship.  The commentary on the Tanakh was apparently written as propaganda to throw off the Roman church from thinking there were any points of agreement in their reading of the prophets, etc.

Later, Aben Ezra wrote “All those heathens shall look to me to see what I shall do to those who pierced Messiah son of Yosef.”  Still a bit contrived, but at least admits Messiah is the subject of the passage.

Arbanel:  “It is more correct to interpret the passage of Messiah, son of Yosef…[as] in the treatise Sukkah [referring to Bab. Tal. Sukk 52a]…”

There are even Talmudic texts that admit there is a being, whom they call Metatron, who “has the same name as YHVH” and “will share the throne of Elohim” and is “the bruiser of hasatan.”  (see Sandhed. re Ex 23:20)

There are gems in that manure pile.  Just dig for them and wash off afterwards.