What the Talmud Reveals About the Purity of the Jewish Race
The Talmud says that the Jews who returned to Judea, under Ezra and Nehemiah, after the Babylonian captivity consisted of those whose racial purity had been defiled either by unlawful marriages, by proselytism, by those born out of wedlock, and those simply gathered up off the streets who didn’t know who their fathers and mothers were.
‘For Ezra went not up out of Babylon, until he had rendered it pure as flour….the gloss explains thus; ‘He left not any there that were illegitimate in any respect, but the priests and Levites only,[1] and Israelites of a pure and undefiled stock….Therefore he brought them to Jerusalem, where care might be taken by the Sanhedrim fixed there, that the legitimate might not marry with the illegitimate.’ (Lightfoot, vol. 2, pp. 7-8.)
The Babylonian Talmud, of course, represents the viewpoint of the “Jews” who did not return from Babylon, and therefore is biased against the faction that returned to Judea. Contrary to what the Talmud reports, the Biblical account is clear that the Jewish leaders of the time “proudly regarded the community, and it alone, as the true remnant of Israel.”[2]
Since the Messiah was to come from the lineage of David, it was necessary that the record of His genealogy be carefully documented. The Biblical record is pure, clean, and authoritative. However, the Talmud makes it clear that the family records of those who purported to be of “pure” Jewish blood were highly suspect:
‘R. Jochanan said, By the Temple, it is in our hand to discover who are not of pure blood in the land of Israel: but what shall I do, when the chief men of this generation lie hid?’ (that is, when they are not of pure blood, and yet we must not declare so much openly concerning them.) ‘He was of the same opinion with R. Isaac, who said…A family (of the polluted blood) that lies hid, let it lie hid….(…Some eminent man, by a public proclamation, declared it [a certain family] impure) ‘But he caused another which was such’ [that is, impure] ‘to come near. And there was another which the wise men would not manifest.’
When it especially lay upon the Sanhedrim, settled at Jerusalem to preserve pure families, as much as in them lay, pure still; and when they prescribed canons of preserving the legitimation of the people…, there was some necessity to lay up public records of pedigrees with them: whence it might be known what family was pure, and what defiled….’I saw (saith he, [Simon Ben Azzai]) a genealogical scroll in Jerusalem, in which it was thus written; ‘N., a bastard of a strange wife.” Observe, that even a bastard was written in their public books of genealogy, that he might be known to be a bastard, and that the purer families might take heed of the defilement of his seed. Let that also be noted: ‘They found a book of genealogy at Jerusalem in which it was thus written; ‘Hillel was sprung from David. Ben Jatsaph from Asaph….’
It is, therefore, easy to guess whence Matthew took the last fourteen generations of this genealogy, and Luke the first forty names of his; namely, from the genealogical scrolls at that time well enough known, and laid up in the public…repositories, and in the private also. And it was necessary, indeed, in so noble and sublime a subject, and a thing that would be so much inquired into by the Jewish people as the lineage of the Messiah would be, that the evangelists should deliver a truth, not only that could not be gainsaid, but also that might be proved and established from certain and undoubted rolls of ancestors (CNT, vol. 2, pp. 9-14).
[For Paul] The Church fulfills the functions of the faithful remnant, and is interpreted by Paul in terms of the remnant doctrine of the Old Testament. In the death of Jesus the Old Israel had come to an end, and yet in the Resurrection it had begun anew, and there was therefore a real continuity between the Israel of the Old Testament and the Christian Church, and in the latter Paul sees the world-wide growth of the true Israel, an Israel formed of those who had accepted the claims of Jesus as Messiah (Davies, Paul, 75).
Davies discusses how that Paul‘s patriotism and nationalism influenced his religion: “Once a Jew, always a Jew” and says that: “Nationalism has rightly been called ‘man’s other religion’.” He quotes W.R. Smith in saying that amongst the Semites, there was a solidarity of gods with their worshippers; that they considered the gods as literally part of their kinship group.
People, god and land formed one inseparable unity: to change one’s god would be equivalent to changing one’s nationality: the destruction of a people would mean the disappearance of its god (ibid., 77).
Cook, [S.A.] writes: ‘People and land are essentially one (cf. Hosea 1.2), each is Yahweh‘s inheritance (I Sam.26:19, cf. Zech.2.12) and Israel is sown or planted (Hosea 2.23, Amos 9.15) in a land which Yahweh gave his servant Jacob (Ezek. 28.25)…. There is a strong sense of soil (Prov.10.30): the land is inalienably Israel’s (Lev.25.23)…Naaman must take away with him Israelite soil in order to worship Yahweh fitly in his own land (2 Kings 5.17) and strangers entering the sacred land must learn the cult of the God of the land’ (17.26f) (ibid., n. 2).
The ‘great refusal’ of Jesus by Israel meant the death of ‘Old Israel‘, a doom is pronounced on the Temple {Note 5: Matt. 26.60b-1; cf Acts 6.14; Mark 13.2, (14).58.} the fig tree will no longer bear fruit. {Note 6: Mark 11.13. See also Mark 12.1f. for the figure of the vineyard.} Nevertheless, the ‘Temple‘ will be raised up, {Note 7: Mark 14.58; Matt. 26.60b-1; John 2.19.} a ‘New Israel‘ will be established, and in the Eucharist the disciples are being treated as the nucleus of the ‘New Israel’ (ibid., 101).
[Eph.2.11f] In short, the Gentiles ‘in Christ‘ had ceased to be strangers and foreigners and had become Israelites in the true sense (ibid., 113).
As evidence of the proselytizing of the heathen by Judaism: Quoting the Sibylline Oracles 4, lines 24-34, shows that there were certain minimum moral requirements for the heathen.
Not only outside Palestine but within its borders, there had grown up a literature setting forth the demands that Judaism made on the heathen, and the influence of this literature had permeated all Christian exhortation (ibid., 134).
Proselytes need have no drop of genetic blood from Abraham, yet claimed to be “Jews”.
[1] The lists of the priests given by Ezra differs from that in the book of 1 Esdras, although the totals are the same in both books as well as in Nehemiah. which indicates that the genealogies of the priests and Levites were more carefully preserved than other genealogies. See Harrelson, OAA p. 9-10, footnote.
Harrelson states that racial integrity was probably much higher in the exile than in those who were left behind in Judea and the ban on mixed marriages was more carefully observed there. Metzger interprets Ezra 9:1-10:44 as saying that it was the people who had remained in Judea who had corrupted the community with mixed marriages. However, the Biblical text shows that it was the “people of Israel, the priests, and the Levites,” Ezra 9:1. Ezra gathered them together “because of the transgression of those that had been carried away,” (9:4). The phrase “carried away” is the one used to indicate those who had been taken to Babylon.
In Ezra 10:5, it was the “chief priests, the Levites, and all Israel,” and in 10:7, the message was to “all the children of the captivity.” The decree to assemble for judgment against mixed marriages contained the threat that those who would not come up in three days, “his substance should be forfeited and himself separated from the congregation of those that had been carried away” 10:8. The list in 10:18-44 is that of the sons of the priests who had committed this offense.
It seems, therefore, that the Biblical account indicates that the mixed marriages were principally among those who had returned from the captivity, and not merely those who had remained in Judea (ibid., p. 18, note on 8:68-9:36.)
[2] “Those returning to Palestine considered themselves the purified remnant of Israel, whom Yahweh had redeemed from bondage and made heirs to the consummation of his promises,” (Bright, History of Israel, 379 and 431).