Criticism of the Talmud

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Criticism of the Talmud includes criticisms and attacks on the Talmud's doctrines, laws, and authority. In his work The History of the Talmud, historian Michael Levi Rodkinson observed that critics of the Talmud "have varied in their character, objects and actions" and recorded critics and persecutors such as Anan ben David, the Karaites, Nicholas Donin, Johannes Pfefferkorn, Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, the Frankists, Denis Diderot, and August Rohling. Other critics include Elizabeth Dilling, Justinas Pranaitis, Israel Shahak, and Uriel DaCosta. Some criticisms are based on quotations from the Talmud that are taken out of context, and are misleading because clarifying information is omitted. Historian Heinrich Graetz states that many of the faults of the Talmud are because it contains a vast amount of material, compiled by a large number of authors: "[m]ore than six centuries lie petrified in the Talmud.... Small wonder, then, that if in this world the sublime and the common, the great...

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