Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on February 6, 2015

For the related article discussing the Hebrew name Yeshu as found in Talmud and other Jewish literature, see Yeshu. For the similar sounding Hebrew or Aramaic name, see Yeshua (name).

The Talmud contains passages that some scholars have concluded are references to Christian traditions about Jesus. The history of textual transmission of these passages is complex and scholars are not agreed concerning which passages are original, and which were added later or removed later in reaction to the actions of Christians. Scholars are also divided on the relationship of the passages, if any, to the historical Jesus, though most modern scholarship views the passages as reaction to Christian proselytism rather than having any meaningful trace of a historical Jesus.[citation needed]

The first Christian censorship of the Talmud happened in the year 521.[1] However, far better documented censorship began during the disputations of the Middle Ages. Advocates for the Christian church alleged that the Talmud contained insulting references to Jesus and his mother, Mary. Jewish apologists during the disputations said there were no references to Jesus in the Talmud, and claimed Joshua and its derivations was a common Jewish name, that they referred to other individuals. The disputations led to many of the references being removed (censored) from subsequent editions of the Talmud.

In the modern era there has been a variance of views among scholars of the possible references to Jesus in the Talmud, depending partly on presuppositions as to the extent to which the ancient rabbis were preoccupied with Jesus and Christianity.[2] This range of views among modern scholars on the subject has been described as a range from "minimalists" who see few passages with reference to Jesus, to "maximalists" who see many passages having reference to Jesus.[3] These terms "minimalist" and "maximalist" are not unique to discussion of the Talmud text, they are also used in discussion of academic debate on other aspects of Jewish vs. Christian and Christian vs. Jewish contact and polemic in the early centuries of Christianity, such as the Adversus Iudaeos genre.[4] "Minimalists" include Jacob Z. Lauterbach (1951) ("who recognize[d] only relatively few passages that actually have Jesus in mind"),[3] while "maximalists" include Herford (1903), (who concluded that most of the references related to Jesus, but were non-historical oral traditions which circulated among Jews),[5][6] and Schfer (2007) (who concluded that the passages were parodies of parallel stories about Jesus in the New Testament incorporated into the Talmud in the 3rd and 4th centuries that illustrate the inter-sect rivalry between Judaism and nascent Christianity[7][pageneeded]).

Some editions of the Talmud are missing some of the references, which were removed either by Christian censors starting in the 13th century,[8] or by Jews themselves due to fear of antisemitic reprisals, or some were possibly lost by negligence or accident.[9] However,[citation needed] most modern editions published since the early 20th century have restored most of the references.

During the Middle Ages a series of debates on Judaism were staged by the Christian church including the Disputation of Paris, the Disputation of Barcelona, and Disputation of Tortosa and during those disputations, Jewish converts to Christianity, such as Pablo Christiani and Nicholas Donin claimed the Talmud contained insulting references to Jesus.[10] An early work describing Jesus in the Talmud was Pugio Fidei ("Dagger of Faith") (c. 1280) by the Catalan Dominican Ramn Mart, a Jewish convert to Christianity.[11] In 1681 Johann Christoph Wagenseil translated and published a collection of anti-Christian polemics from Jewish sources, with the title Tela Ignea Satan, sive Arcani et Horribiles Judorum Adversus Christum, Deum, et Christianam Religionem Libri (Flaming Arrows of Satan, that is, the secret and horrible books of the Jews against Christ, God, and the Christian religion) which discussed Jesus in the Talmud.[11] The first book devoted solely to the topic of Jesus in the Talmud was the Latin work Jesus in Talmude published in 1699 by Rudolf Martin Meelfhrer, a student of Wagenseil at Altdorf.[12] In 1700, Johann Andreas Eisenmenger published Entdecktes Judenthum (Judaism Unmasked), which included descriptions of Jesus in the Talmud, and which would become the basis of much anti-Semitic literature in later centuries such as The Talmud Unmasked written in 1892 by Justinas Bonaventure Pranaitis.[13]

Starting in the 20th century the topic of Jesus in Judaic literature became subject to more unbiased, scholarly research, such as Das Leben Jesu nach judischen Quellen written in 1902 by Samuel Krauss, which was the first scholarly analysis of the Judaic anti-Christian polemic Toledot Yeshu (The Biography of Jesus).[12] In 1903, Unitarian scholar R. Travers Herford wrote Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, which became the standard work on the topic in the Christian world, and he concluded that a large number of references referred to Jesus, not as a historical individual, but instead as the messiah of Christianity.[14] In 1910, Hermann Strack wrote Jesus, die Hretiker und die Christen nach den altesten judischen Angaben, which found no evidence of a historical Jesus in the Talmud.[12] In 1922 Joseph Klausner wrote Yeshu ha-Notzri (Jesus of Nazareth) which concluded that "the evidence [for a historical Jesus] in the Talmud is scanty and does not contribute much to our knowledge of the historical Jesus; much of it is legendary and reflects the Jewish attempt to counter Christian claims and reproaches" but he did conclude some material was historically reliable.[15] In 1950 Morris Goldstein wrote Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, including sections on the Toledoth Yeshu. In 1951, Jacob Z. Lauterbach wrote the essay Jesus in the Talmud.[16] In 1978 Johann Maier wrote Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen berlieferung, in which he concludes that there is virtually no evidence of the historical Jesus in the Talmud, and that the references to Jesus were "legendary" and probably added late in the Talmudic era "as a reaction to Christian provocations".[17] In 2007, Peter Schfer wrote Jesus in the Talmud in which he tried to find a middle ground between "anti-Jewish Christian" and "apologetic Jewish" interpretations. He concluded that the references to Jesus (as the messiah of Christianity) were included in the early (3rd and 4th century) versions of the Talmud, and that they were parodies of New Testament narratives.[18]

In the first few centuries CE, there were many sects of Judaism (such as Pharisees, Essenes, and Sadducees) each claiming to be the correct faith.[19] Some scholars treat Christianity, during that era, referred to as Early Christianity, as simply one of many sects of Judaism.[20] Some sects wrote polemics advocating their position, and occasionally disparaging rival sects. Some scholars view the depictions of Jesus in the Talmud as a manifestation of those inter-sect rivalries thus the depictions can be read as polemics by the rabbinic authors of the Talmud which indirectly criticized the rival sect (Christianity), which was growing and becoming more dominant.[21]

Peter Schfer concluded that the references were not from the early tannaitic period (1st and 2nd centuries) but rather from the 3rd and 4th centuries, during the amoraic period.[22] He asserts that the references in the Babylonian Talmud were "polemical counter-narratives that parody the New Testament stories, most notably the story of Jesus' birth and death"[23] and that the rabbinical authors were familiar with the Gospels (particularly the Gospel of John) in their form as the Diatessaron and the Peshitta, the New Testament of the Syrian Church. Schfer argues that the message conveyed in the Talmud was a "bold and self-confident" assertion of correctness of Judaism, maintaining that "there is no reason to feel ashamed because we rightfully executed a blasphemer and idolater."[24]

By way of comparison the New Testament itself also documents conflict with rabbinical Judaism, for example in the John 8:41 charge "We are not born of fornication."[25] and "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?"[26] and in return in the description in Revelation of a "synagogue of Satan."[27]

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Jesus in the Talmud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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