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| |  | Object/Symbol | Home » » » Jesus in the Talmud | | | | | | | Description: | | Scattered throughout the Talmud, the founding document of rabbinic Judaism in late antiquity, can be found quite a few references to Jesus--and they're not flattering. In this lucid, richly detailed, and accessible book, Peter Schfer examines how the rabbis of the Talmud read, understood, and used the New Testament Jesus narrative to assert, ultimately, Judaism's superiority over Christianity. The Talmudic stories make fun of Jesus' birth from a virgin, fervently contest his claim to be the Messiah and Son of God, and maintain that he was rightfully executed as a blasphemer and idolater. They subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection and insist he got the punishment he deserved in hell--and that a similar fate awaits his followers. Schfer contends that these stories betray a remarkable familiarity with the Gospels--especially Matthew and John--and represent a deliberate and sophisticated anti-Christian polemic that parodies the New Testament narratives. He carefully distinguishes between Babylonian and Palestinian sources, arguing that the rabbis' proud and self-confident countermessage to that of the evangelists was possible only in the unique historical setting of Persian Babylonia, in a Jewish community that lived in relative freedom. The same could not be said of Roman and Byzantine Palestine, where the Christians aggressively consolidated their political power and the Jews therefore suffered. A departure from past scholarship, which has played down the stories as unreliable distortions of the historical Jesus, Jesus in the Talmud posits a much more deliberate agenda behind these narratives. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Peter Schäfer | | Hardcover:
| 232 pages | | Publisher:
| Princeton University Press | | Publication Date:
| January 15, 2007 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0691129266 | | Product Width:
| 1.56 centimeters | | Product Height:
| 2.37 centimeters | | Product Weight:
| 0.01 pounds | | Package Length:
| 9.21 inches | | Package Width:
| 6.3 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.02 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.93 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 22 reviews |
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38 of 44 found the following review helpful:
 Essential Biblical ScholarshipMar 16, 2009
By Eric Bergerud
I heartily second the glowing reviews Jesus and the Talmud has received from the scholarly community across the board. This is an important book, ably described by many scholars in the "Editorial Reviews" section. I would like to add, in particular, to the praise toward the book's clear and very accessible style. I teach and write history for a living, and not all academics make things so easy on their readers.
I suppose the David Dukes of the world will find ammunition in Schaefer's work as long as the people they appeal to don't read it. I suppose also that some Jewish readers who do not understand the world of the distant past or the Middle Ages might have bruised feelings. Such are the dangers when entering into waters that spill onto some very ugly history of the last hundred years.
I find Schaefer's argument completely convincing. Considering the rapid spread of the "Jesus movement" in the 1st century (and especially when considering that Jesus' earliest followers, like Paul, came to the synagogues spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean,) it strikes me as naive to believe that many, perhaps most, Jews of the era never heard anything of the "good news" and that what they did hear they simply ignored. It also certainly makes sense that Jews in and around what is now Israel, whose rabbis compiled the Jerusalem Talmud, would have been much more circumspect when dealing with the new Christians than those living in the Mideast whose leaders created the Babylonian Talmud. It would be interesting to know what Jews thought of the early Christians during the Temple period, but other events were much closer and important. After the Jewish revolts against Rome in Judea (66-135 CE)Jews remaining in Roman territory had good reason to keep their heads down. Jews in the Fertile Crescent, however, were either at the fringe of the Roman Empire or, before Constantine, living under Sassanid Persian rule, a friendlier environment. There rabbis could write what they believed.
And as Schaefer shows, the leaders of Rabbinic Judiasm, displayed no affection for the increasingly powerful Christian movement. How could they? Political and cultural pluralism were not commonly found outside the contemporary world. the Christians claimed that a Jew was the revealed son of God. With an issue like this it is hard to find grounds for polite disagreement. If the Christians were right, the foundations of Rabbinic Judaism were built on sand. In the event, the Christian message was rejected by most Jews. (And, although Schaefer's book by necessity deals with the writings of the Jewish religious elites, I think it a fair assumption that ordinary Jews understood their leaders and agreed with them.) It would be likewise difficult to believe that as Christianity became the biggest religion in the world that the guardians of the Torah and Talmud would or could ignore it. So, in disparate pieces, rabbis constructed an alternate narrative that struck not at Christianity itself but upon the figure of Christ. This narrative represented literal history no more than did the Gospels and like the Christian writings were filled with symbolism. No doubt this reflected deeply held and sincere feelings. It was also important to discourage Jews in Christian lands to solve a lot of problems and simply convert. So, what developed, according to Schaefer was a kind of counter-narrative to the Gospels that portrayed Jesus as illegitimate, a trickster, a monumental liar and a betrayer of his people. Naturally this implied Christians were, at best, dupes. So, if this led some rabbis to picture Jesus as sharing a particularly grisly corner of hell with Titus, destroyer of the Temple, it all made sense.
In the long run, of course, this situation developed an ugly chemistry. Christians often viewed Jews as particularly nasty infidels and Jews responded with quiet contempt. Indeed, the segregation of the Jewish from the Christian communities in Europe was a reciprocal relationship. Jews lived in an often hostile environment. However, if isolation was not enforced inside the community, its leaders feared (with good reason I'd guess) that conversion would eat away at the heart of Judaism itself.
This is the kind of subject that must be addressed if we are to understand fully the relationship that existed over nearly 2,000 years between Christians and Jews. As it stands the shadow of the 3rd Reich makes it very difficult to describe the full and complex web that made up this relationship over time. It has done so to the extent that recent accounts that have emphasized a series of outrages committed by Christians against the Jews have, in my view, obscured the superstitious, parochial and violent atmosphere that existed throughout Christian lands until the French Revolution. For instance, much has been made understandably about the murder of Jews along the Rhine and in Jerusalem during the First Crusade. However, it is almost certain that far more Christian Cathar "heretics" were killed during the Albigensian Crusade. And if Jews suffered pogroms and discrimination in Early Modern Europe, they were better off than eccentric women in rural Europe some 30,000 of which were killed as witches. I am not trying to compare horror stories here. But at some point and at some level we have to accept the past as it was, a fascinating but often crude and brutal place. And we should realize that this brutality was apportioned with a kind of ugly equality.
The point to remember is that we do not live in the world of antiquity or the Middle Ages. And Hitler is dead and disgraced. Scholars of all stripes should continue "full steam ahead" in studying the intersection between the forces that shape history and religious faith as it played out in the past.
Eric Bergerud
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Very Scholarly: Includes an Ironic Counterpart to Christian Charges of Jewish DeicideApr 07, 2012
By Jan Peczkis
"Scholar and Thinker"
Agree with this author or not, he is no intellectual lightweight. He teaches Judaic studies at Princeton University, and Rabbi Burton L. Vizotzky (on the outside book cover), calls Schaefer the premiere "Christian-Hebraist" of our time. His approach rejects the extremes of Travers Herford, who saw Jesus in many Talmudic texts (p. 4), and Johann Maier, who saw virtually none. Maier had overemphasized the deconstruction of literary sources (pp. 5-8), and relied on a stilted history of manuscripts. (p. 144).
The TOLEDOT YESHU is not part of this investigation. (p. 7). Although commonly thought of as being medieval, some versions of TOLEDOT YESHU may go back to Late Antiquity. (p. 2).
The most explicit Jesus passages in the Bavli (Babylonian Talmud) date back, at the earliest, to the late-200/early-300 A. D. (p. 8). Schaeffer includes a helpful tabular Appendix (pp. 132-144) that details the various editions of the Bavli, listing the relevant verses and their comparative translations. [As a non-Jew, I found it a rewarding experience to read the printed and online Talmud myself. Particularly instructive verses deal with Jesus the Bastard Son (Sanhedrin 67a, Shabbat 104b), His execution (Sanhedrin 43a), and Him burning in hell in hot excrement (Gittin 57a). One useful online source, though in denial about Him in the Talmud, is the English Soncino Babylonian Talmud, located at halakhahdotcom.]
Discrepancies between Bavli and the New Testament accounts have been used to argue that there is no Talmudic reference to Jesus at all. Instead, such discrepancies can be accounted for by 1) The rabbis' superficial knowledge of Christianity reflected by frequent elementary blunders, 2) Accounts written in code so as to afford plausible denial in case of Christian hostility, and/or 3) A creative mockery of Christian doctrines. Schafer emphasizes the latter.
Except for not mentioning the name of the Child, the Bavli essentially repeats anti-Christian Celsus' tale of Jesus being the product of an adulterous affair involving the soldier Panthera/Pandera, as also mentioned by several rabbinical sources. (pp. 18-20). Contrary to objections, the name Panthera is not that common, and the story is distinctive and stable enough to refer unambiguously to Jesus. (e. g., p. 20, 141; see also p. 98). The account is a creative mockery of the Virgin Birth of Christ and His claim to be of Messianic Davidic lineage.
Traditional Christian teachings on Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ, though abandoned by most branches of Christianity, remain relevant. The German-Nazi made Holocaust has been blamed on these Christian teachings even though the connection between the two is, at most, extremely tenuous. Schaefer's research turns this on its head: The Jews not only admit responsibility for the death of Christ, but they actually take credit for it, and throw it back in the face of the Christians. (p. 74).
The fact that the relevant Bavli accounts refer to stoning, and not Crucifixion of the malefactor, has been used to discount their association with the death of Jesus. Schaefer, instead, points out that the reference to stoning, and the ignoring of Pilate's sentence, were a way for Jews to assume complete credit for the execution of this seducing Jewish Heretic according to Jewish law (pp. 71-72). It may even be to take credit for being persistent in manipulating Pilate to have Jesus put to death in accordance with their judgment against Him. (p. 74).
The reference to the malefactor's closeness to the Roman government has been used to discount it being a reference to Jesus, as He has never been known to have such ties. The answer is straightforward. For a time, Pilate was the Roman governor who was the protector of Jesus, seeing no criminality in Jesus, and trying to have Him spared and Barabbas crucified instead. (pp. 73-74).
The reference to Jesus sentenced to an eternity in hell sitting in boiling excrement is a creative mockery of His Resurrection. (p. 82-on). It may even be a more creative mockery--of His teaching that foods pass through the person and come out in the latrine, but do not defile the person (Christ's point being that evil thoughts and deeds actually do.). (p. 91).
The author provides much to consider. Even if Schaefer is completely mistaken about the Talmudic verses, and even if the Jews had nothing to do with the death of Jesus Christ, it certainly was not for lack of trying. The lucid Talmudic references as to what to do to with idolaters and false messiahs are unambiguous. Finally, even if the passages in the Talmud originally referred to someone else, they certainly came in handy as weapons against Jesus Christ.
The anti-Christian statements in the Talmud are commonly framed as a Jewish reaction to Christian persecution. Schafer, in contrast, thinks that the relevant persecution in Christian-ruled Palestine has been exaggerated. (p. 116). [Of course, the informed reader realizes that such events as the Crusades, expulsions of Jews from many Christian-majority nations, compulsory ghettoization, etc., were still centuries in the future.] In Babylon, the rulers at the time were Persian Zoroastrians, and they were the ones who persecuted--Christians more than Jews. (pp. 116-117). Far from being a lashing-out against Christian persecution, the anti-Christian teachings in the Bavli actually originated from the freedom of the Babylonian Jews to express their anti-Christian sentiments, and even as an act of Jewish-Persian collaboration against the Christians. (pp. 121-122).
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
 Inflammatory material handled in a scholarly and interesting way.Feb 06, 2012
By Peter S. Bradley
"Peter Sean Bradley"
Peter Schafer does a terrific job of threading the needle on a subject that could be inflammatory in any of several directions. Professor Schafer handles the incindiary subject matter of slurs against Jesus and his mother by focusing on matters of scholarly interest, namely by examining what the Talmudic texts meant about the interaction between Jewish and Christian communities and Palestine and Babylon and about the knowledge of Jewish writers with the basic Christian narrative.
It shouldn't be surprising to find that there were some really vile slurs against Jesus, his mother and disciples floating around in Jewish communities during the period from the 2d to the 4th Century. Judaism and Christianity were engaged in a forceful debate about the meaning of Jewish and Christian identity, and as Oscar Skarsaune argues in In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity there was a heated competition between Christians and Jews for adherents.
We know about the Christian anti-Jewish side of the inter-religious slandering competition. "Jews" are described in the Gospel of John as being children of Satan; a fair number of early Christian fathers wrote embarrassingly anti-semitic tracks; and there was a tradition that equated Jews with being "God-killers."
It would be unimaginable to think that Jews wouldn't respond in kind.
As Professor Schafer points out they did by regularly inverting the Gospel narratives. So, in place of Jesus' birth from the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mary, or Miriam, is a whore and an adulterer, and Jesus is a "mamzer" (bastard) whose real father was a Roman soldier names "Panthera." (Professor Schafer speculates that the theme of intentional inversion may be seen in the name "Pantera," which seems to invert "Parthenos" (virgin-birth) to "Panthera." (panther.)
If that isn't enough, Jesus was a bad son, a brick-worshipping idolater and a magician. Jesus' disciples recanted, pled for mercy and were killed. Jesus was never resurrected, rather he spends eternity boiling in excrement, in another inversion of the Gospel narrative that his followers should eat his flesh.
Schafer does a nice job of showing how these odd stories actually play a role in crafting a powerful "counter-narrative" in the Jewish community against Christian claims. Thus, rather than disclaiming responsibility for the death of Christ it seems that the Jewish community - particularly the Babylonian community - was proudly saying that "yes, the Jews did kill Jesus, which is what he deserved as a blasphemer and an idolater."
Schafer discounts the possibility that the odd stories found in the Talmud have any historical significance for understanding the life of Jesus. Rather, the stories have significance in showing what the Jewish community new later, and how it responded to the insurgent threat of Christianity.
Schafer concludes his short - approximately 130 page - text with discussion about the differences between the Palestinian and the Babylonian communities. My sense was that the scandalous stories about Jesus were few and far between in the Talmud's of both communities. Moreover, when the stories were told, the stories themselves were not so much the center of attention, but rather the stories were taken as a given and the information that the stories related were used to make some other point about Jewish law and customs. One of things that I take-away from this book is that even if the scandalous things said about Jesus were few and far between in the Talmud, I suspect that these stories circulated in a fairly unrestrained fashion in discourse between and among Jewish and Christian communities.
In any event, these stories were more often to be found in the Babylonian Talmud. Schafer points out that the reason for this may have been the fact that Babylon was under the control of Zoroastrian Persians, and, after the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, Persia began to look at Christians as a potential "Fifth Column" and began a long period of persecuting Christians in the Persian Empire. The Jewish community of the Persian Empire may have been emboldened in that context to, as Professer Schafer argues, "take up, and continue, the discourse of their brethren in Asia Minor."(p. 129.)
From my standpoint, I find the mention of the Zoroastrian persecution of Christians to be something I don't think I had heard about before. Likewise, my next book will probably be Robert Louis Wilkens'John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century. After reading this book, I will probably have a better context to weigh the rhetorical excesses of Chrysostem because this book suggests that the "norm" of inter-religious discourse was not particularly edifying.
Excellent source of infoOct 07, 2011
By John B. Todd
This book is an exceptional source of information. It is well documented by a scholar with impeccable credentials. This is definitely not Political Correct material and it will never be found in main-stream media. This is a great source and it is a shame that the general public will never find this information; the boot of censorship in America being complete.
Hints From The New TestamentSep 23, 2011
By Robert D. Sanchez
"Clear Lake Man"
It has often been said that where there is smoke there is fire. Perhaps more on point "where there is smoke there is often fire." The theme of this book is that the Jewish Talmud presents the New Testament Jesus in the most unfavorable light. Heretic, blasphemer, self-idolator, born out of wedlock, magician, etc. Throughout the NT these charges are brought up against Jesus and are answered. Jesus' cures and wonder working are not the work of demons but the work of God. What appears in the Talmud written centuries after the ministry of Jesus were issues which were present during the actual ministry of Jesus.
With regard to him being born out of wedlock the NT offers some hints that at least some of Jesus' contemporaries thought of him as being born out of wedlock.
Matthew 1:1-18 lists four four women besides his mother Mary in Jesus' genealogy. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba out of a plethora of male ancestors. All our four of these women had been stained with some form of sexual sin or irregularities. Was this to show that God works through unchaste women and that even if rumors of Mary's infidelity were true it was less important? God worked through unchaste women before and he can do it again.
In Mark 6:1-6 Jesus is addressed as being the Son of Mary. In Jewish traditions the son was always identified as being the son of the father. This leads some to conclude that Jesus' father was unknown or uncertain. In Luke 4:22 the crowd asks if Jesus isn't the son of Joseph or in other words "Jesus isn't the son of Joseph." In John 8:41 the religious establishment responds to Jesus' accusations by declaring that they were not born illegitimately, as if by implication Jesus was.
In the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus (Acts of Pilate), a late third century work, confirms that the accusation that Jesus was born illegitimate were well known. In Nicodemus 11:7-16 Jesus is questioned by Pilate concerning the status of his birth.
None of this "proves" anything other than that the accusations and implications made in the Talmud are mirrored within the Gospels themselves from the middle First Century to the early Second Century AD.
Where there is smoke there may be fire. Based on the author's premise the Talmudic verses about Jesus are a literary work in response to a literary work, the Gospels. The main point of the Talmud is not to "prove" anything to the Christians but to solidify the corporate identity of the Jewish people. To think that the Rabbis would not respond in kind with invective against an earlier invective found in the Gospels and Epistles is naive at best and arrogant at worst.
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