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I still can’t see how Mary remaining a virgin after the birth of Jesus would be considered proper according to the Talmud
Forgive me, but the Talmud not only was composed around 700-800 years after the Incarnation by those Jews who did not accept our Lord (interestingly the assumption they were a majority is not supportable, since we lack reliable figures particularly concerning the population of Ethiopia, where all Christians, who are a majority, are of Jewish descent, as are at least half of Suroye, Mar Thoma and Antiochian/Melkite Christians (“Rum Orthodox”). It contains content that is generally regarded as an anti-Christian polemic (which resulted in it being prohibited in several European countries unless that section was removed, basically it accuses our Lord of having set up a “fish-worship.”
It is basically a Rabinnical commentary on the Mishnah, which was what the Scribes critiiczed by our Lord were working on, but would not complete until the fifth century - writing down the Oral Torah followed by the Pharisees but rejected by the Sadducees, Hellenic Jews, the Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews) and later the Karaite Jews, who appeared around the time the Mishnah was published in opposition to Rabinnical Judaism in general (one could argue…incorrectly, that the Pharisees invented Sola Scriptura…in fact they rely on an interpretive consensus which was reached using a system of logic and analytical philosophy called the Kalaam which was later used in Islam and is of some interest to Christians.
At any rate, the Talmud is not relevant to Christianity or the Virgin Mary, since we have no evidence suggesting St. Joseph and the Theotokos were Pharisees, and additionally our Lord made the Scribes and Pharisees, whose views the Talmud represents, the primary subject of his criticism in the Gospels.
What will likely perplex many on both sides of the argument is why you would not cite the writings of the Early Church Fathers who were in some cases disciples of St. John the adoptive son of the Theotokos, but instead cite a Jewish religious text based on Pharisaical Judaism rather than the Jusaism of the Sadducees or Essenes or others, a text rejected by many Jews such as the Karaites and Beta Israel, which is explicitly non-Christian written centuries later, but then reject the writings of church fathers who were contemporaries of the
Geonim (the Talmudic “sages”).
At any rate regarding the Talmud, my view is that citing it represents an Appeal to Unqualified Authority, a logical fallacy, since the contributors to it did not believe in the Virgin Birth by their own admission.
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I should also add I love the Jews very much and was horrified by the attack on them in 2023 and am revolted by anti-Semitism. However, I would note they do not promote the Talmud to Christians as a guide to running our church (indeed orthodox Jews believe it is sinful to teach the Torah to gentiles), and conversely I don’t tell Jews to use the Mystagogical Commentaries of St. Cyril of Jerusalem or the Philokalia as the basis for how to run their synagogue services. I would also note some Messianic Jews make use of those parts of the Talmud that pertain to liturgy which I don’t object to, since the Babylonian and Jerusalem editions of the Talmud each contain lectionaries, which disagree with each other, but one can see a relationship between Jewish prayer and the Christian divine office in the Babylonian Talmud, so it is useful in that respect (also, since the Karaite liturgy is basically the same as the Rabinnical liturgy was at the time the Talmud was written, before the insertion of Kabbalah into the latter in the centuries following the publication of the Zohar, particularly by the Chassidim.
Thus my point is the Talmud is extremely useful in studying Rabinnical Judaism, but not Second Temple Judaism nor Christianity.
