Defending the Talmud requires pretending it is not what it claims to be, ignoring what Jesus said about rabbinic tradition, and repeating apologetics talkingpoints designed for evangelicals who don’t know the difference. It requires recasting a rival authority as a neutral commentary, flattening a false religion into a pile of harmless opinions, and assuring believers that a book written to oppose Christianity contains spiritual wisdom worth mining. That is exactly what is now happening in public, and it should alarm anyone who still cares about evangelizing Jews or discipling Christians.
This article dismantles the claim that the Talmud is merely Torah exegesis, explains why Jesus never defended it and in fact condemned the very tradition from which it emerged, and traces how evangelicals are being subtly catechized into defending a text that claims divine authority alongside Scripture. It also exposes why appeals to scholarly nuance, linguistic consultation, and selective quotation miss the real issue, which is authority, not footnotes.
Finally, it confronts an uncomfortable comparison most Christians have never been forced to consider. The Koran denies Christ, but the Talmud actively desecrates Him. One rejects the gospel. The other was written to oppose it. That distinction matters, and ignoring it has consequences the church is already beginning to feel.
When Douglas Wilson recently sat upon the TPUSA stage and defended the Talmud from criticism, the most offensive part was not that he is factually wrong about the Talmud and obviously so. It is that his words were familiar. The cadence, the caveats, the careful minimization, the insistence that critics are being unfair because the thing under scrutiny is allegedly more complicated than they are allowing, all of it reads like a catechism already memorized. It was, verbatim, the defense that Rabbinic Jewish apologists provide when doing interfaith diplomacy with American evangelicals, when they become privy the Jewish holy book’s blasphemous claims about Christ, its repletion of animus toward Christians, and its hostility toward Christian values.
When Wilson assured the audience that the Talmud is not a slag heap of worthlessness and that Christians should be careful not to wholesale criticize it because it is merely a collection of various rabbinical thoughts, painting it like sub-reddit of competing viewpoints with missing moderators, he was not improvising. Wilson was reciting. Wilson was repeating Jewish apologetics word-for-word, right down to the part where the Talmud’s anti-Christian messaging is framed as rare, or perhaps unclear, and the Christian critic is scolded into submission by a paternal tone and an unspoken insinuation they’re either imaging it or are secretly antisemitic.
This was not a one-off comment or a slip of the tongue, and it was not the product of some momentary lapse in theological rigor. Wilson has already given us the paper trail. In American Milk and Honey, he praises the Talmud as a mountain range full of gold and silver mines, conceding that there are long tunnels and dead rats but insisting the material is productive and valuable if one only knows how to dig. That is not the language of a man cautiously engaging a hostile text for academic purposes. It is the language of someone trying to rehabilitate it. It is also a posture that flatly contradicts the way Wilson once spoke about false religions, rival authorities, and books that claim divine sanction while perverting God’s Word. The contradiction is not subtle. It is brazen.
I’d really like to meet the man who has so plumbed the depths of God’s Word, deciphered all the prophets, comprehended all the Sacred Oracles, and bottomed out the quarry of Holy Writ, that he must now go digging in another mine with a fool’s confidence the mother-lode has somehow missed him. Is it really true that the holy book of a false religion has valuable insights not found in the Christian Bible? Wouldn’t they need to be independent of the Christian Bible for Wilson’s commendation make sense, in order for the one’s flirtation with the Talmud to be worth the risk?
FLIP FLOPS AS A BUSINESS MODEL
Changing positions is not new for Wilson, and that is part of the problem. He has made a career out of holding two opinions on the same issue in different eras, monetizing both sides of the swing, and collecting applause from whichever audience happens to be paying attention at the moment. Long before I stopped endorsing him, I noticed that pattern (and said so whenever I gave him a compliment, to even out the praise). There are articles still up at Pulpit & Pen where I pointed out this repeated tendency on matters ranging from theonomy to the Post-Civil War Consensus to Federal Vision. I simply had not yet learned to call it what it is. Pick any controversy Wilson has touched and you can usually find him on both sides of it at different times, issuing statements with equal confidence and demanding equal admiration. And in terms of audience capture, it works. By the time his position is no longer novel and has become problematic, he’ll write another book or blog post opposing those who took his position too far, throwing under the bus everyone who he convinced to take his side, doing the most impressive backward moonwalk for a man of his girth, back into the bushes (like Homer Simpson in the meme) just in time to watch the rear tires get their second bump before disappearing into the greenery.
Wilson has become something like a theological maverick against his own archive, bravely rebelling against yesterday’s Douglas Wilson while asking you to trust today’s version with the same uncritical loyalty. And he does it with that impressive fatherly tone with baritone wisdom, shaking his head and wondering aloud how anyone could be so spiritually immature as to believe the position he had yesterday, finishing with a stern admonition that they grow up.
That trick works only as long as the audience believes the changes are organic rather than opportunistic. In this case, the timing and the talking points make that belief impossible to maintain. This defense of the Talmud did not grow out of careful study or reluctant concession. It arrived fully formed, wearing someone else’s yarmulke.
“FINE BROTHER” IS NOT A SHIELD
This is where the predictable scolding chorus begins warming up. We are told to be careful because Wilson is a “fine brother.” We are reminded that he is a “faithful minister.” The nouns in those phrases are not being challenged. The adjectives are subjective and either beside the point or in need of re-evaluation. Neither functions as a defense for the claims he made regarding the Talmud. Please understand my lore, and that I heard these things said of Russell Moore and Tim Keller, long before it was cool to criticize them, and it didn’t work on me then, either. Orthodoxy is not proven by reputation, and error is not excused by a résumé. If something is false, it must be defended or repented of. Complimenting the man who said it is not a third option.
I will not countenance the line now forming that treats criticism as betrayal and correction as disloyalty. That emotional blackmail only works on people who have confused celebrity with authority. The church is not served by pretending that theological error becomes harmless when spoken by someone we like. Loyalty to Christ has never required silence when His truth is undermined, and it has never been strengthened by pretending otherwise.
WHEN JESUS GETS DRAGGED INTO IT
The reason so many evangelicals are angry right now is not because they are paranoid or uncharitable. It is because they are watching something real happen in real time. At Insight to Incite, I’ve thoroughly documented the growing influence of Israeli and Jewish advocacy organizations within the evangelical church, from CUFI to Friends of Zion to Faith By Works to FIRM and beyond. What once could be dismissed as fringe now shows up in pulpits, conferences, and publishing houses with alarming regularity. When dispensationalists do it, no one is surprised. When covenant theologians start repeating the same apologetics, people notice. Wilson’s defense of the Talmud is not an isolated incident. It is a bellwether.
Anger in this context is not the problem. Betrayal is. Christians are rightly alarmed when leaders who once spoke clearly begin softening their language, qualifying their warnings, and defending texts that deny Christ. That alarm is not hatred. It is doctrinal muscle memory. When the shepherd starts praising the wolf’s literature, the sheep are allowed to feel uneasy.
Wilson crossed the Rubicon when he attempted to sanctify his defense of the Talmud by dragging Jesus into it. When criticized on X, Wilson claimed that he had merely defended parts of the Talmud like Jesus and attacked parts of it like Jesus. This is not a controversial claim. It is a nonsensical one. The Mishnah, the earliest layer of what would become the Talmud, was compiled roughly two hundred years after Christ. The Jerusalem Talmud took shape centuries later. The Babylonian Talmud was completed later still. Jesus neither defended nor attacked any part of it because it did not exist.
The only way this claim could make even a semblance of sense is if Wilson is referring to the oral traditions that later crystallized into the Talmud. That does not help him. Jesus had nothing commendable to say about those traditions. He condemned them openly. He rebuked the Pharisees for nullifying the Word of God by their tradition. He accused them of placing human commandments over divine ones. They did not applaud His nuance. They crucified Him for it.
The only loose inference I can think of that could argue Jesus commended Rabbinic tradition is when he told the Pharisees that they tithed from their spice rack of dill and cumin, following it with, “and ye should.” But that is easily enough argued that this was reference to the Ceremonial Code rule of tithing from first fruits. Herbs have first fruits also, so it’s a stretch to claim Jesus was referencing a Rabbinical suggestion.
Calling this betrayal is not hyperbole. It is description. To defend the Talmud as a helpful theological resource for Christians is to defend a book that exists to deny Christ, contradict the gospel, and enthrone rabbinic authority over Scripture. To claim Jesus did the same is to enlist Him in the service of that denial. Thirty pieces of silver would at least have been an explanation. Doing it for free is worse.
That ground must be cleared before anything else can be said. Before we talk about what the Talmud teaches, before we compare it to other false religious texts, before we weigh its dangers, we have to be honest about what is happening in the church right now. Men who once spoke clearly are speaking carefully. Warnings are being replaced with qualifications. Lines that used to be bright are being smudged into tasteful pastels. Wilson did not create this trend, but he is now participating in it, and his stature makes the damage greater, not smaller.
Once that is acknowledged, the rest of the argument becomes unavoidable
WHAT THE TALMUD CLAIMS TO BE
Before any comparison can be made, the fog has to be burned off. The Talmud is not a pile of marginal notes scribbled by bored rabbis killing time between synagogue services. It is the holy book of Rabbinic Judaism. Full stop. That’s what it is anyone who says differently is misinformed or lying. It presents itself as such and testifies of itself that it is the written form of an Oral Law given by God to Moses at Sinai, transmitted through the elders, preserved by the Pharisees, and eventually committed to writing so it would not be lost (Mishnah, Avot 1:1).
That claim is not peripheral. Rabbinic Judaism explicitly teaches that both the Written Torah and the Oral Torah were revealed at Sinai and are binding with equal authority, which is why the Talmud functions not as commentary but as law (Mishnah, Avot 1:1; Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 5a). Exegesis submits to Scripture. The Talmud does not. It speaks over Scripture. In Rabbinic practice, the Bible does not interpret the Talmud. The Talmud interprets the Bible, resolves disputes, and binds the conscience of its adherents accordingly (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b).
Once that is understood, Wilson’s defense collapses under its own weight. You cannot defend a book that claims divine authority and then pretend you are merely engaging a helpful reference text. You cannot praise its supposed insights without reckoning with the fact that those insights are offered as binding interpretations that override Scripture itself. Calling it a mountain range with a few gold mines does not soften the problem. It confirms it. Gold mined from a false authority is still counterfeit currency.
AUTHORITY IS THE ISSUE NOT QUOTATIONS
Christians often lose the plot here because the Talmud quotes Scripture constantly. That fact is supposed to reassure you. It should alarm you instead. Quoting the Bible does not make a system biblical any more than Satan quoting Scripture made him righteous (Matthew 4:6). The issue has never been whether verses appear on the page. The issue is who gets the final word.
The Talmud does not allow God to speak plainly in His own Word. It domesticates Scripture, buries it under layers of rabbinic opinion, and then demands allegiance to the rabbis as the real authority (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 88b). One rabbi postulates an interpretation, another refines it, another contradicts it, and another resolves the contradiction by inventing a loophole. The Law of God is loosened where it bites too hard and tightened where it suits the system, which is why rabbinic literature is filled with legal fictions designed to circumvent plain biblical commands (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 21b).
That system requires teachers, succession, and an insider caste to tell you what God really meant, because Scripture is considered insufficient on its own (Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 14a). Jesus condemned this explicitly when He rebuked the Pharisees for nullifying the Word of God by their tradition and placing human commandments above divine ones (Mark 7:8–13). Claiming the Oral Law was meant to remain oral is not a virtue. It is an admission that the system is designed to be unverifiable, unfalsifiable, and unaccountable, which is why disputes are resolved by rabbinic authority rather than appeal to the text itself (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b).
This is also why appeals to the KJV translators consulting the Talmud are a lie by omission. Early modern translators consulted Jewish sources for linguistic and grammatical insight into Hebrew and Aramaic, not to adopt rabbinic theology or authority, which is standard practice in philology and does not imply endorsement of doctrinal claims (cf. historical records of early modern biblical scholarship). No one thinks the KJV is secretly Anglican because the translators read Chaucer. That talking point exists to lull Christians into thinking the Talmud is a friendly helper rather than a rival authority.
A BOOK WRITTEN AGAINST CHRIST
The Talmud did not emerge in a vacuum. It is the product of the Pharisees, their teachings systematized and preserved, and this is not disputed by Rabbinic Jews. It is openly acknowledged in their own tradition (Mishnah, Avot 1:1). Christ and His apostles offered a broad and unambiguous condemnation of Pharisaic tradition, not as a misguided branch of faithful Judaism, but as a system that opposed God’s Word (Matthew 23:1–36; Mark 7:8–13).
Chronology matters. The Mishnah was compiled around AD 200, roughly two centuries after Christ (standard scholarly dating). The Jerusalem Talmud took shape around the fourth century, and the Babylonian Talmud reached its final form between the fifth and sixth centuries (standard scholarly dating). Christianity already existed. The gospel had already spread. The New Testament had already been written. The Talmud was composed in a post-Christian world and in response to Christian claims.
That response is not neutral. When the Talmud addresses Jesus, it does so polemically. He is portrayed as a sorcerer, a deceiver, illegitimate, and punished in the afterlife, whether framed as narrative, parable, or polemic (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a; Gittin 57a). The contempt is not accidental. It is the point. The Talmud exists to contradict Christian interpretations of the Old Testament, deny Jesus as Messiah, and undermine apostolic teaching.
This is why the parasite analogy fits. The Talmud feeds on Scripture, reinterprets it to suit its ends, and weakens the host so it cannot resist. Calling that exegesis is like calling a hostile takeover a merger. Christians would never tolerate this move from any other religion. No one argues that the LDS Institute Manual deserves respect because it is based on the Bible. It is based on the Bible precisely so it can contradict it, which is exactly the same logic at work here.
WHY THE KORAN IS LESS OFFENSIVE
This brings us to the comparison that makes people uncomfortable. The Koran is a false book produced by a false prophet proclaiming a false gospel. No Christian should hesitate to say that (Galatians 1:8). Yet when it speaks of Jesus, it does so with a degree of respect that the Talmud refuses. The Koran teaches that Jesus was born of a virgin, that He came from God, that He was a prophet, and that He will return (Qur’an 3:45–47; 4:157–159; 5:110). It denies His divinity and crucifixion, which is damnable error, but it does not delight in desecrating Him.
The Talmud does. It goes out of its way to humiliate Christ, to smear His mother, and to invert the gospel into mockery (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a; Gittin 57a). This is why traditional Jewish teaching has historically regarded Islam as preferable to Christianity, because Islam is considered strictly monotheistic while Christianity is viewed as theologically worse due to its confession of Christ (rabbinic legal discussions on idolatry and monotheism).
None of this is said to praise Islam. It is said to expose how catastrophically wrongheaded it is for a Christian minister to defend the Talmud. One false religion denies Christ. The other exists to oppose Him. That distinction matters. The Talmud was written with Christianity in view. The Koran was not.
This matters now because the church is being catechized whether it realizes it or not. Rival authorities are being normalized. Books that deny Christ are being praised for their supposed wisdom. All of it is done politely, carefully, and with just enough humor to dull resistance. That is how serious error spreads among people who pride themselves on discernment.
The Talmud is not a helpful tool for Christians. It is not a neutral commentary. It is not a mountain range waiting for the right miner. It is a rival authority, a hostile text, and a book written to contradict the gospel. That makes it more ominous to Christianity than the Koran, not because Islam is true, but because the Talmud knows exactly what it is opposing.
REVISITING ANTIOCH
Wilson, James White, and a german pastor cornered Joel Webbon to demand he discipline a church member for a meme that leaned upon an allegedly antisemitic trope for humor. Webbon listened to their concerns, heard them out, and politely explained that the ecclesiastical protocols or judgments of his local congregation wasn’t under the purview of online evangelical influencers. And that kicked off months of condemnations and anathemas from them, that haven’t stopped yet. It was made considerably worse when a recording of the call proved the men had lied about their claims in regard to the conversation. And given the actual facts presented, there’s not a more charitable way to describe it than lie. That is the charitable version, and you dont’ want to hear the uncharitale one. I came to that conclusion by evaluating the facts long before I knew Webbon or put a dog in the fight. It was obvious and demonstrable. The evidence spoke for itself.
Weeks later, the group ignored their own promise to address their lying, and instead published a hastily and poorly written pronouncement known as the Antioch Declaration that alleged growing antisemitism, and demanded (among other things) that Christians not question the Post War Consensus, labeled “the received accounts.” Within a day of its publication, I stated publicly that it appeared to be written to provide cover for Pete Hegseth, who attends a church affiliated with Wilson, from accusations Christian ethno-nationalism everyone anticipated would be brought up in his senate confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense. I was attacked as speculating upon the motivations of their heart, right up until Wilson admitted this in an interview. Thankfully, his senate inquisition was too busy focusing on his now-repentant sin in his past and not his church affiliation. But that doesn’t change the fact that this group of men were willing to cause a schism in the church and denounce a sizable portion of it as antisemitic for political optics.
Given that political posturing is the reason Wilson gave for the Antioch Declaration is it really that outlandish to assume that his about-face on Rabbinic Judaism and his betrayal of His own Confession of Faith is concerned (as it relates to Covenant Theology’s view of Israel) is politically motivated, really that outlandish? Surely it’s not inconceivable that as Wilson sat upon the stage, he had to give the answer required for those who sit upon such a stage. Defending Israel or Talmudic Judaism is the “jumping in” ceremony of Right Wing influence. It’s the Bar Mitzvah for Gentiles who want to share in the institution-approved influence, a right of passage, if you will. Surely it’s lost on no one that as Ben Shapiro lead a denunciation ritual from that same stage at that same event and is demanding that anyone critical of anything Jewish or Israel be banished from power politics, there was only one acceptable answer to the question asked him. And Wilson gave the approved one. But not the true one.
NOt long after their demands to Webbon, the gentlemen from Ogden too a pilgrimage to Moscow, ID for a face-to-face with Doug Wilson. The gist of that modern day, more pathetic version of the Diet of Worms was Wilson demanding that the group widely known just as “Ogden” recant, disavow, and denounce anyone who Wilson demanded on grounds of closeted antisemitism. Do that, they get carrots. Fail to do it, get the stick. Ogden chose the stick.
At this point in the timeline, I was still neutral. But in the days that followed Wilson’s spearheading of the Webbon ambush and Godfather-like demands of Ogen, we’ve seen a Douglas Wilson with an all knew skin suit, shed like a snake in the spring-time, revealing an all-new Wilson. And this one gives full-throated defenses of a false religion’s holy book that was written explicitly for the expressed purpose of providing an opposition alternative to Christianity growing in the Roman empire and beyond. And it was a defense that left any sane Christian slack-jawed, hardly believing our ears that he gave the an answer not only approved by Washington’s power elite, but of Talmudic Judaism.
But I repeat myself.
I know that a certain segment of Reformed evangelicalism has crossed their fingers, hoping that I don’t link up with Webbon or Ogden or any of the other Christian Nationalists. And that’s not a hard ask, considering I’m not a Christian Nationalist for the reasons I’ve expressed elsewhere, many times. But you cannot possibly fathom how hard it is to see Wilson’s betrayal of our shared confession and Savior, his breathless defense of a false, anti-Christ religion, and not intuitively side with whatever thing he’s criticizing. After all, I’ve seen what WIlson defends. I have to assume that which he criticizes can’t be half bad.
And whatever that is, whatever or whomever you want to call it that he’s up in arms about, and is telling us is the next great bug-bear, can’t be half as bad as what he’s become. One could argue, I suppose, it’s possible to go too far in advocating for the defense of Christian nationhood (although what that looks like, I’m not sure). But for the love of God (literally), if what it requires to oppose that supposed danger is defending the sacred literature of false religions whose authors are all currently in hell, and to defend and endorse them as valuable sources of truth, I say no thanks. I’m good.
The hyphen in the term, Judeo-Christian, is a deceitful puncuation mark. And the way this modern day jot-and-tittle is being defined by Wilson is an actual wedding between two opposing religions. That error, as egregious as it is, is a far bigger danger to Christianity than a meme that finds humor in bigoted tropes. Because that’s not nearly as bad as finding valuable theological insight in the pages of the Talmud.
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