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I was listening to a Chabad.org presentation about The Munich Talmud, a 1300s handwritten Talmud. My question is: Is that Talmud censored?

Wikipedia says it is not censored and that it is a faithful copy with everything in it, no censorship. I have a PDF copy... But wanted to make sure I had a Talmud Bavli without any alteration; just as it was meant to be. Sorry if this question is disrespectful, but I'm an agnostic, not a Christian, and have taken a keen interest in Jewish things.
Thank you.

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    Welcome to the site. To your question: Well, we don't have the original Talmud copy. There are scholarly attempts to reconstruct parts of the original material, but these are just hypotheses. So even an uncensored Talmud manuscript cannot be regarded as "unaltered" because of textual variants that develop from generations of variant traditions and scribal errors.
    – Harel13
    Commented Sep 3 at 20:07
  • Usually when people speak of "censorship" in Jewish texts, they mean Christian/Papal censors of the early modern period. Being a 14th century manuscript, this clearly predates that. Not sure if that's what you're looking for.
    – Double AA ♦
    Commented Sep 3 at 20:14
  • @DoubleAA I don't know why "censorship" would be arbitrarily confined to the pope or the early modern period; from your link: "The first notice of Jews having been forced to expurgate... dates from... 1263..."
    – b a
    Commented Sep 3 at 20:37
  • Quick clarification -- does this question include self-censorship on any level or is the use of the word "censorship" intended to include only external intrusion?
    – rosends
    Commented Sep 3 at 20:43
  • Hi and welcome to Mi Yodeya. This is just an attempt to clarify some things for the sake of site policy, not a comment on your actual content. Is there something specific you can bring from chabad.org and Wikipedia to a) back up your statements and b) demonstrate more directly what you are having a problem with in their sources, quotes and reasonings?
    – Rabbi Kaii
    Commented Sep 3 at 20:46

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Yes, the Munich 95 manuscript is censored, but not in a matter as exhaustive as some later manuscripts. For a list of Jesus-related censored and uncensored passages in the Munich manuscript and several other manuscripts, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud, pp. 131-144 (link). See also David Instone-Brewer, "Jesus of Nazareth’s Trial in the Uncensored Talmud", Tyndale Bulletin 62 (2011), pp. 269-294, which I think will also be useful for your studies. Consider also googling the words "Munich 95" and "censor" or "censorship" for more discussions on the matter.

As I mentioned in the comments, unfortunately we don't possess any Talmudic manuscript that hasn't ever been altered. We don't have the original Talmud copy. Rabbis, Talmud scholars, and historians spend years trying to unravel millennia of variant traditions, textual evolution and scribal errors to try and recreate the original text and decipher the original meaning of the Jewish sages (I myself have attempted that with regards to one particular passage in Bavli Shabbat, and I'm well aware that though IMO it's well-argued, it's just a hypothesis).

I can refer you to some studies on the textual tradition of particular tractates, though I believe most of these are in Hebrew.

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    You yourself having done it wouldn't necessarily mean much, so I am pointing people to your profile to demonstrate that it does indeed mean a lot, given your credentials :) +1, as usual
    – Rabbi Kaii
    Commented Sep 4 at 14:00
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    @RabbiKaii 😅 good point, thanks. The theory is part of a soon-to-be published peer-reviewed paper (my first, B"H).
    – Harel13
    Commented Sep 4 at 14:03
  • Thank you! Thanks also to Mi Yodeya.
    – King of Sumer and Akkad
    Commented Sep 5 at 14:06

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