This one's for the liars that try to downplay the Talmuds importance to modern Judaism. They say it is commentary, a museum of debates, ignore it and read Moses. Well, the book does not agree.
Eruvin 21b. Raba to his son: be more careful with the words of the Scribes than with the words of the Torah. Torah has positive and negative commands. Transgress a decree of the Scribes and the penalty named is death. Same page: he who scoffs at the words of the Sages is condemned to boiling excrement. That is not a critic’s paraphrase. That is the tractate.
Shabbat 31a. Shammai to the man who wanted to convert: two Torahs. Written, and oral. The oral, communicated by mouth, is called the more precious. Later hands say the words of the Soferim are like words of Torah, and in places give them equal or greater force. The covenant line they hang it on is Exodus 34: Moses made a covenant over the words by mouth.
This is the system, written text on the table. Oral ruling in the chair. Where they collide, the chair wins, and mocking the chair is the crime.
Jesus already named the move, Mark 7: you leave the commandment of God and hold the tradition of men. You nullify the word for the sake of your tradition. Matthew 15 says the same. John 8:44 is the charge to the party that would not take Moses as final. He did not say their commentaries were irrelevant. He said the commentaries had replaced the command.
So the dismissal Deceit, to call the Talmud a side book and the argument never has to open Eruvin. Call the man who opens it a bigot and the page stays shut. It ranks the Scribes over the text and prices a scoff at death and filth.
Do not let them lie and say the ranking is not there, it is.