Ben Shapiro recently stirred up a controversy when he said that gentiles are only required to follow the Noahide laws. To a lot of people that sounded harmless, even generous. Jews have 613 commandments, the rest of us have seven, and as long as we keep those seven we are in good standing with God. But it didn’t take long for critics to start digging into the rabbinic tradition behind those seven laws, and what they found raised some eyebrows.
The first issue is the death penalty. The Talmud and later rabbinic authorities like Maimonides teach that a gentile who breaks the Noahide laws is liable for execution. The second issue is whether these laws are even biblical in the first place, or whether they are a rabbinic construction that was later read back into Genesis. The third issue, and the one that has gotten the most attention, is what this means for Christians. Many people argue that under Judaism, saying Jesus is God counts as idolatry. Idolatry is one of the seven Noahide laws. So by that logic, Christians would be violating the Noahide laws and could in theory be put to death. Yet Ben Shapiro has also said positive things about Christianity and seems to encourage people to become Christians. That is a strange combination if he really believes Christian worship is a capital offense.
I want to be upfront about something. I am a bit biased toward Ben Shapiro. I have listened to him for years, I appreciate a lot of what he has done, and I don’t think he is secretly hoping for Christians to be executed. But that is exactly why I want to take this seriously instead of brushing it off. This article is an attempt at an honest breakdown of what the Bible says, what Ben’s tradition actually teaches, and where the real tensions are. We will go through all of these issues in depth.
What Are the Noahide Laws?
The Noahide laws are seven commandments that rabbinic Judaism teaches are binding on all of humanity, not just Jews. The name comes from Noah, since after the flood all people descend from him. The traditional list from the Talmud (Sanhedrin 56a) is:
Do not worship idols.
Do not blaspheme (curse) God.
Do not murder.
Do not commit sexual immorality (incest, adultery, bestiality, and related sins).
Do not steal.
Do not eat flesh taken from a living animal.
Establish courts of justice.
The organization Jews for Judaism makes the case that these laws are biblical and that most of them can be found in Genesis. Their argument works by pointing to commands and incidents in the early chapters of Genesis and treating them as evidence that God gave these rules to all mankind. For example, the command to Adam about what he may eat is read as a hint toward several of the laws, and Genesis 9 is pointed to for the prohibition on murder and on eating flesh with its lifeblood.
Having looked at it closely, I think they are broadly right that the content is biblical, but the case that it all comes from Noah is awkward. Only a couple of the laws actually show up in the Noah story. Genesis 9:4 forbids eating flesh with its lifeblood, and Genesis 9:5 and 6 say that whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed, because man is made in the image of God (Genesis 9). That one is strong and clearly universal. The rest are drawn out of the text through interpretation and then described as “explicit,” which they really aren’t. Even Maimonides is more careful than the popular presentations. He says six of the commandments were given to Adam and one was added for Noah, and he admits these are a received tradition that the Torah only “appears” to support (Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 9:1). So “Noahide” really means the laws for the children of Noah, which is everyone, not seven laws handed to Noah himself.
That said, if you go through the whole Bible you can find strong support for each individual law:
Idolatry: Gentile nations are condemned for worshipping false gods all over the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 12:29 to 31, Jeremiah 10, Isaiah 44). In the New Testament, Paul describes the pagan world as having “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images” (Romans 1:23), and Acts 15:20 tells gentile believers to abstain from things polluted by idols.
Blasphemy: Sennacherib of Assyria is judged for mocking the God of Israel (2 Kings 19:22 to 28). Leviticus 24:16 applies the penalty for blasphemy to the foreigner as well as the native.
Murder: Genesis 9:6, Cain in Genesis 4, and Amos 1 where nations are judged for violence and atrocities in war. Romans 1:29 lists murder among the sins of the gentiles.
Sexual immorality: Leviticus 18:24 to 28 says the nations of Canaan were driven out of the land because of these sexual sins, which shows they applied to non-Israelites. Sodom is another example. Acts 15 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 to 10 carry this forward.
Theft: Exodus 20:15, and the prophets condemning nations for plunder and robbery (Nahum 3:1, Habakkuk 2:6 to 8). Ephesians 4:28 tells former pagans to stop stealing.
Flesh from a living animal: Genesis 9:4, and in a related way the Acts 15 prohibition on blood and strangled animals.
Courts of justice: Genesis 9:6 implies human accountability for bloodshed, and Romans 13:1 to 4 describes governing authorities as God’s servants to punish wrongdoing.
So the individual laws hold up well. The bigger problem is that the list is too narrow. The Bible condemns gentiles for a lot more than these seven things, and we will come back to that later in the article.
The Talmud and the Death Penalty
Before getting into the death penalty, it helps to understand what the Talmud is. It is not a rulebook where every line is a command. It is a massive record of rabbinic debates, with majority and minority opinions, stories, objections, and answers. A Jew is not bound by every opinion recorded in it, in the same way a lawyer is not bound by every dissenting opinion in a Supreme Court case. But it would be a mistake to stop there, because Orthodox Judaism does treat the Talmud as the final authority on Jewish law, and when the debate settles on a ruling, that ruling is binding. So the question isn’t “is this in the Talmud,” it is “what does the Talmud conclude, and has it been accepted as law?”
On the death penalty for gentiles, the Talmud is uncomfortably clear. Sanhedrin 57a records three positions:
Position Capital offenses
Rav Yosef’s report of what was taught in the study hall Three: sexual immorality, murder, and blasphemy
Rav Sheshet’s correction Four: those three plus idolatry
Rav Huna, Rav Yehuda, and the other students of Rav All seven
What stands out is that there is no position in the debate that rejects the death penalty. The disagreement is only over how many of the laws carry it. And the one position that leaves out idolatry, the three law view, is immediately challenged and corrected within the discussion to four by adding idolatry back in. So every surviving position includes idolatry as a capital offense.
Maimonides, the most influential codifier of Jewish law, went with the broadest view. He writes that a gentile who violates any of the seven commandments is executed by the sword (Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 9:14). He even says that Moses was commanded to compel all the inhabitants of the world to accept these laws, and that whoever does not accept them should be executed if they are under Jewish authority (Kings and Wars 8:10).
Some later authorities argue that death is the maximum punishment rather than a mandatory one, so a court could punish less severely. That softens things a little, but it still leaves execution on the table.
You also can’t escape this by simply saying “there’s no Sanhedrin.” That is a common defense, but Maimonides assigns enforcement of the Noahide laws to courts established among the gentiles themselves, and to Jewish authority when Jews have the power to enforce it. The lack of a Sanhedrin doesn’t automatically make the teaching irrelevant. What the Orthodox commentary on Chabad’s translation does say is that few, if any, Torah leaders today feel justified in claiming that kind of authority.
It is worth noting that modern Israel has no such laws. Israel’s criminal law comes from British Mandate law and Knesset legislation, not from the Talmud, and religious courts there only handle matters like marriage and divorce. Even when Jews have had real political power, they have not tried to enforce the Noahide death penalty. So in practice, modern Jews, including most religious Jews, largely ignore it.
But practice and teaching are two different things. On the question of what the tradition teaches, Ben Shapiro’s critics seem to be right. The Talmud, without a dissenting voice, prescribes the death penalty for at least some of the Noahide laws, and every position that survives the discussion includes idolatry. That leads to the obvious next question.
Is Worshipping Jesus Actually Idolatry in Judaism?
This is where things get interesting. At first glance the answer looks like a plain yes. The deeper you go, the murkier it gets.
The case that it is idolatry
The Mishnah defines idolatry broadly. It includes worshipping a deity in its customary manner, bowing to it, sacrificing to it, accepting it as a god, or saying to it “you are my god” (Sanhedrin 60b). It is not limited to statues. The Talmud even deals directly with worshipping a human being. In Sanhedrin 61b, it uses Haman as an example of a man who claimed to be a god, and says that one who worships a person out of belief in his divinity is liable. There is a disagreement between Abaye and Rava about someone who bows out of love or fear without truly accepting the object as divine, but a Christian who sincerely calls Jesus God doesn’t fit into Rava’s exception. He really does believe it.
So I don’t find any definition of idolatry in the Talmud that clearly excludes Jesus. Maimonides draws the conclusion directly and classifies Christians as idolaters, for gentiles as well as Jews. Under this strict view, Christianity is forbidden idolatry for everyone, and a Christian gentile would be violating one of the capital Noahide laws.
The shituf view
But that isn’t the only Jewish position. Starting in the Middle Ages, a number of authorities developed the concept of shituf, which means “partnership” or “association.” The idea is that a person who worships the one Creator God, but associates something else with Him, is not committing idolatry in the same way as someone who worships a different god entirely. Christians do not think they are worshipping a second god alongside the God of Israel. They believe Jesus is the God of Israel, the Creator who made heaven and earth, incarnate.
The concept goes back to the Tosafot, the medieval commentators on the Talmud, who discussed whether Jews could accept an oath from a Christian who swore by the saints and by God. They concluded that because Christians intend the Creator when they swear, and because gentiles were not commanded against association, it was permitted (Torah Musings). Later authorities, most famously the Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles), cited this, and some later rabbis expanded it into a broader view that gentiles are not forbidden to worship God with shituf.
Under this lenient view, Christian belief and worship may be permitted for gentiles under Noahide law, even though it is still forbidden for Jews under their own covenant. A Jew who worshipped Jesus would be committing idolatry, but a gentile Christian would not be breaking the Noahide laws.
There is a real debate about how far shituf goes. Some say the Tosafot only meant it for the narrow question of oaths and never meant to permit Christian worship itself. Others read it as a general statement about what gentiles are allowed to believe. Either way, it is a genuine strand of Orthodox thought and not a modern liberal invention.
If Ben Shapiro holds the shituf view, his position starts to make sense. He could believe the Noahide laws are binding on all gentiles, believe that idolatry is a capital offense, and still believe Christianity is a perfectly acceptable path for gentiles, because under his view Christianity is not idolatry for them. Encouraging someone to become a Christian would then be encouraging them toward the God of Israel, not away from Him.
“The custom of their ancestors”
There is also a passage in the Talmud that some people use to argue that even if Christian worship would technically be idolatry, gentiles practicing it out of upbringing aren’t really guilty of it. In Chullin 13b, Rabbi Yohanan says:
“Gentiles outside the Land of Israel are not idolaters; rather, they are merely holding onto the custom of their ancestors.”
The idea is that most gentiles are not committed idolaters by conviction. They are following the religion they were raised in. Later authorities like the Tosafot used this to permit business dealings with Christian neighbors, and the Rema used similar reasoning to be more lenient about wine handled by gentiles (Ohev Sholom). Some modern writers compare it to the concept of the tinok shenishba, the “captured child,” a Jew raised without knowledge of Judaism who isn’t held fully responsible for his sins because he never knew any better.
This passage deserves real weight, but it also proves less than people want it to. The surrounding discussion actually says the majority of gentiles are not committed idolaters, which means some are. And the legal question it was answering was narrow: whether meat slaughtered by a gentile should be presumed to be an idolatrous offering. It doesn’t say that someone raised in a religion is exempt from Noahide liability. The tinok shenishba comparison is an analogy that later writers make, not something the Talmud itself states. And a sincere Christian who truly believes Jesus is God is not simply going through the motions of an inherited custom. He believes it.
So the honest summary is this. Under the strict view, worshipping Jesus is idolatry for gentiles and Jews alike. Under the shituf view, it is permitted for gentiles but forbidden for Jews. And the “custom of their ancestors” principle gives a real basis for leniency toward gentiles in practice, even if it doesn’t settle the theological question. Which of these Ben Shapiro holds is the whole question. However I would like to move this to a different topic of what the bible says are universal laws as promised earlier.
The Council of Jerusalem and the Noahide Laws
One of the most interesting parts of this whole discussion is that Christianity has its own version of this question, and it was answered in the New Testament. In Acts 15, the early church held a council in Jerusalem to decide whether gentile converts had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses. Peter argued that salvation is through the grace of Jesus and that gentiles should not be burdened with the whole law. James then proposed that gentiles be told to abstain from four things (Acts 15):
Things polluted by idols
Sexual immorality
What has been strangled
Blood
The overlap with the Noahide laws is hard to miss. Idolatry, sexual immorality, and something close to the prohibition on eating flesh from a living animal are all there. The idea behind both is also the same. Gentiles do not need to become Jews to be right with God, but there are some basic requirements that apply to them.
The parallel is not exact. Acts 15 has four restrictions, not seven, and murder, theft, blasphemy, and courts are not mentioned. Many scholars think the closer parallel is actually Leviticus 17 and 18, which lay out the rules that applied to foreigners living among Israel, including the same prohibitions on idol sacrifices, blood, strangled meat, and sexual immorality. The written Noahide list in the Talmud also comes later than Acts, so we can’t say the apostles were quoting it, though they may have been drawing on an earlier Jewish tradition about what gentiles owe God.
The significance is this. Both Judaism and the early church recognized that God’s law was given to Israel, but that gentiles were still accountable to God for some basic moral and religious standards. The apostles, who were all Jews, reached a conclusion that looks a lot like the rabbinic one. The difference is in the foundation. For the rabbis, gentiles are righteous by keeping the seven laws. For the apostles, gentiles are saved by grace through faith in Jesus, and those restrictions were guidance for living in fellowship with Jewish believers, not a way to earn standing with God. And of course, the council treated faith in Jesus as the center of it all, which is the very thing the strict rabbinic view calls idolatry.
A Better Biblical Standard
Earlier I said the Noahide laws are too narrow. When you look at everything the Bible actually condemns gentile nations and individuals for, and everything God says He hates, seven laws don’t come close to covering it.
What God condemned the nations for in the Old Testament
Child sacrifice: The Canaanites burned their sons and daughters to their gods, which God calls an abomination (Deuteronomy 12:31, Leviticus 18:21).
Witchcraft and the occult: Divination, sorcery, omens, mediums, and consulting the dead are listed as the abominations for which the nations were driven out (Deuteronomy 18:9 to 12). Babylon is condemned for its sorceries (Isaiah 47:9 to 13).
Pride and self-exaltation: The king of Tyre is judged for saying “I am a god” (Ezekiel 28). Babylon is judged for saying “I am, and there is no one besides me” (Isaiah 47:8). Nebuchadnezzar is humbled for his arrogance (Daniel 4).
Cruelty in war: Amos 1 and 2 condemn Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, and Moab for atrocities like ripping open pregnant women, selling whole populations into slavery, and pursuing their brothers with the sword without pity.
Human trafficking: Gaza and Tyre are condemned for delivering entire communities into slavery (Amos 1:6, 1:9).
Neglecting the poor: Sodom’s sin was that she had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not help the poor and needy (Ezekiel 16:49).
Violence and bloodshed: Nineveh is called the “bloody city, all full of lies and plunder” (Nahum 3:1), and God was ready to judge it for its violence in Jonah 3:8.
Mistreating God’s people: Edom is judged for gloating and violence against Israel (Obadiah), and Egypt for oppressing the Israelites (Exodus).
Sexual sin: Leviticus 18 lists incest, adultery, homosexual acts, and bestiality, and says the nations were expelled for them.
What God says He hates
Proverbs 6:16 to 19 gives a list of things the Lord hates: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers. Elsewhere God says He hates divorce and violence (Malachi 2:16), dishonest scales (Proverbs 11:1), injustice in court (Proverbs 17:15), and false worship (Amos 5:21 to 24, where He even hates Israel’s own feasts because there is no justice behind them).
The New Testament
The New Testament is just as broad. In Romans 1:18 to 32, Paul indicts the pagan world for suppressing the truth about God, idolatry, sexual immorality, homosexual acts, and then a long list: unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, hating God, insolence, arrogance, boasting, inventing evil, disobedience to parents, foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness. Galatians 5:19 to 21 lists sorcery, drunkenness, jealousy, fits of anger, and divisions. 1 Corinthians 6:9 to 10 includes greed, drunkenness, and swindling. Revelation 21:8 adds cowardice, lying, and sorcery.
Why this matters
Many of these could be stretched to fit under one of the seven Noahide categories. Child sacrifice falls under idolatry and murder, and human trafficking can fall under theft, since the rabbis counted kidnapping as a form of stealing. But a lot of what God condemns doesn’t fit anywhere. Pride, lying, greed, drunkenness, envy, neglecting the poor, cruelty, and dishonoring parents are not part of the seven, and yet these are exactly the sins God holds gentile nations accountable for again and again.
The rabbis would say some of these are covered by broader principles or by natural moral reasoning, and that the seven laws are categories rather than a complete list. That is fair to an extent. But if the standard really is “only the seven,” then a gentile could be proud, greedy, drunk, dishonest, and cruel to the poor while still being considered righteous. The Bible does not present it that way. The biblical standard is the whole character of God, which is why Paul concludes that all have sinned and fall short (Romans 3:23), Jew and gentile alike. A minimal checklist doesn’t capture that, and it can’t save anyone, which is the whole point of the gospel.
Conclusion
So where does that leave us? The Noahide laws are broadly biblical in their content, even if the case that they all come from Noah is a stretch, and the list is too narrow to capture everything God actually holds the nations accountable for. The Talmud does teach the death penalty for violating at least some of these laws, and every surviving position in the debate includes idolatry. The “there’s no Sanhedrin” defense doesn’t fully get around this, though it is true that modern Israel has no such laws and that Jews have not tried to enforce them even when they have had power.
Whether worshipping Jesus counts as idolatry depends on which strand of Jewish tradition you follow. Under Maimonides and the strict view, it does, for gentiles as well as Jews. Under the shituf view, it is permitted for gentiles though forbidden for Jews. And the “custom of their ancestors” principle offers further grounds for leniency, even if it doesn’t settle the question. Meanwhile, the Council of Jerusalem shows that the early church wrestled with the same question of what gentiles owe God, and arrived at an answer that overlaps with the Noahide laws but rests on a very different foundation.
I don’t think Ben Shapiro wants Christians executed, and his encouragement of Christianity suggests he likely holds something like the shituf view. But that is my guess, not something he has clearly said. Given how much attention this has gotten, I hope he will clarify his interpretation. Does he believe Christian worship violates the Noahide laws? Does he follow Maimonides or the more lenient authorities? And how does he understand the death penalty passages in his own tradition? Those are fair questions, and his Christian audience deserves straight answers.
