Sure, and it also includes that having sexual intercourse with a 3 year old is ok. Sorry to everyone for being so crass but it is in there and people need to be warned what they are opening themselves up to. Maybe things not written down were not actually from the Lord but contrived by men.
I couldn't agree more with this statement. I remember a few years ago, having a discussion on a forum I used to host, with a lady who was undergoing lessons from a rabbi. At the time I knew virtually nothing about modern Judaism, and couldn't understand where she was getting some of the stuff she was coming up with. When it came to light about her situation with the rabbi though, I was forced to begin to look into these things for myself, just in order to be able to Scriptural arguments against what she was saying.
When I first began to read about the "oral" Torah being the so called instruction that Moses was given that had not been recorded in writing, it began to dawn on me how potentially dangerous it all was. Maybe I wasn't the first, but it immediately hit me as being virtually identical to the RCC view of the equal authority of Scripture and apostolic traditions, which I do not believe is true where the apostlic tradition/doctrine is not one and the same as the New Testament writings we have in the canon of the Bible.
The true "rule of faith"—as expressed in the Bible itself—is Scripture plus apostolic tradition, as manifested in the living teaching authority of the Catholic Church, to which were entrusted the oral teachings of Jesus and the apostles, along with the authority to interpret Scripture correctly.(From Catholic Answers website)
The bottom line is that, regardless of how strongly it may be denied, the "traditions" that are of the chosen few, become more powerfully adhered to than the written Word of God that has been revealed to all men. As some have said in this thread already, read the Talmud and you will begin to get an idea of the mentality of the Scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day. But wasn't it that very fact that Jesus so often vehimently rebuked?
Mark 7:1-8 (ESV)
1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem,
2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed.
3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders,
4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.)
5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
My advice from personal experience, would be to never study what the Talmud has to say without an open Bible right next to it. If you are prepared to do that however, using the Bible as the rule by which everything is measured against, then you will reap the benefits greatly. For in virtually every page you will see mis-quotes and Scripture twisting like you've never seen it before, all to justify some of the most wicked perversions of the flesh you can stomach. Whilst at the same time pointing at you as the heretic in the room.
One other thing is this, also from experience. If you end up going toe to toe with a rabbi, keep it simple and stick to the core essentials of the faith. These guys have often been hearing the Talmud taught from infancy, and have stock rebuttals to the truth of the New Testament writings that can be very convincing indeed. I remember having my faith shaken to the core regarding the virgin birth, that took me weeks to recover from, because they knew Hebrew and I didn't.
That's my tu'penny worth anyway.
