LOL! It was the Roman Catholic Church who banned the Talmud for all Christianity!!! The forbidden book list was discontinued only about 25 years ago!!!
Don't you remember what happened when Martin Luther wanted the Bible written in German so all the people could read it? Major, major problem for the Roman Catholic Church!! How could the church stay in control if everyone could read the holy book?
http://talmud.faithweb.com/
The Talmud is to the Jews what the "new" testament is to Christians.
No, Jewish law has no such prohibition. There is a famous story about a non-Jew asking a famous Rabbi (I forget his name) to summarize the Talmid while standing on one leg. The Rabbi responded, "Do not do unto others as you would not want done onto you. The rest is commentary. Now go study the commentary."
Several hundred years later the Christians got rid of the double negative and it is now called the "Golden Rule."
here's an on-line translation
http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/talmud.htm
However- it's kinda' long and so much of it deals with the minutia of ancient (and some modern) Jewish traditions. Might be more useful to get a book about the Talmud that extracts its pearls of wisdom.
No, it's not. Besides, even if it was, gentiles aren't under Jewish law, so why would it matter? That is confusing. It was Catholic law that gentiles could not read the Talmud, however.
The translations above are good. However, I must warn you, it is difficult going.
Nope- non-Jews can read the Talmud. There is no "official" translation, and none of the on line translations are complete or authoritative. the only complete translation was only completed a couple of years ago and is currently being edited. As such, it is still under copyright and its doubtful that the publishers, Artscroll, will put it into the public domain any tine soon.
Also, you need to realize that the Talmud is a HUGE volume of work. The translations are generally three of four pages of English for each page of Hebrew text due to the fact that the Talmud uses very concise language- which often needs elucidation on its own! The Artscroll series is a mere 72 volumes.
One way of studying it is to do a folio a day (so around 4-8 pages of English a day.) I study this way (its called deaf yo mi and there is a calendar most people follow)- and this way it takes a mere 7 years! Don't kid yourself its easy- it takes an hour to two hours to do this daily if you read all the notes provided!
It does make it affordable as you only need to buy a volume every 30-40 days instead of trying to buy all 72 volumes at once!
Anyways, the art scroll website is http://www.artscroll.com
Is it true that by jewish law it is forbidden for gentiles to read the Talmud?
