JESUS IN THE TALMUD DOES NOT HAVE A FLATTERING PROFILE
THE ARGUMENT THAT JESUS IS NOT IN THE TALMUD
Jesus as a Jew is remarkably absent from the Jewish tradition but there are some exceptions.
To many, this means that the Jews knew the man was not worth the attention or did not exist.
In the book Jesus in the Talmud, Peter Schäfer complains about Johann Maier's book which says that the evidence from Jesus' time that he lived is nil. It's all later reports. Quote, “This is, in many respects, an amazing and disturbing book. It presents the most comprehensive, painstakingly erudite treatment of the subject so far. Maier has sifted through all the secondary literature, even if only remotely relevant, and showers the reader with excruciating details about who wrote what and when. More important, all the rabbinic sources that have ever been brought into connection with Jesus are analysed in every possible regards, with Maier taking great pains not just to discuss bits and pieces ripped out of context but to examine them always within the larger literary structure in which they are preserved… according to Maier, there is hardly any passage left in the rabbinic literature that can be justifiably used as evidence of the Jesus of the New Testament. The rabbis did not care about Jesus, they did not know anything reliable about him, and what they might have alluded to is legendary at best and rubbish at worst.”
Not all agree that Jesus is not in the Talmud. If he is
not then clearly they thought that to ignore him was better than trying to
dignify his story with counter-arguments.
THE JEWS ON THE LIFE OF JESUS
The Talmud speaks of a Yeshu but likes to avoid saying his name a lot of the
time. We are not certain if the person who seems to be Jesus in it is our Jesus.
The Talmud contains information that dates back to the time of Jesus and the
Mishnah part of it was finished and written at the start of the third century
AD. The Babylonian Talmud and the Palestine one were completed later. The Rabbis
were very strict about learning their material off by heart and any teacher who
forgot his material had to relearn it from his students. Forgetting even a
single word of the Mishnah was regarded as bad as losing one’s soul (page 164,
165, He Walked Among Us).
The Christians say that it seems that the Jews grew more and more reluctant over
time to condemn Jesus by name in case their books would be burned by the growing
Christian Church. We read that they did not do this suddenly but over time they
were less and less inclined to name Jesus (page 45, The Jesus Event and Our
Response). If they were afraid of Christians then why did they name Jesus
sometimes even in insulting contexts? Why did they not remove all the references
to Jesus? Why not call him (if it is him) such and such a one which they did at
times all the time? Why did they leave references to Jesus in? They knew what
the Christians were like and knew that if they called Jesus such and such they
would still be in bother. The Christians did not have the resources to persecute
Jews in every land so we can dismiss Church bigotry for the Jew’s behaviour. The
Jews’ behaviour is so bizarre. It looks as if they had figures in their books
that they thought might be Jesus but didn’t want to name them Jesus in case
Jesus never existed or simply because the evidence for him was a garbled mess.
They didn’t want to give the Jesus myth any historical basis.
A part of the Talmud called the Barita says that Jesus sneered at the wisdom of
Israel and transgressed against it and also quotes him as saying that he said
good things about Israel (page 45, The Jesus Event and Our Response). These
statements need not be contradictory.
The Talmud speaks of a lot of Jesuses and the Bible Jesus may have been a
fictional person based on one of these characters. When the gospels say Jesus
taught in the Temple and the Temple Guards did not know him at his arrest and
gives lots of clues that Jesus was not well-known, it indicates that there was
no such man and that the Talmud might have mistaken the man Jesus was based on
for Jesus. The Gospels show then that the Talmud, if it confuses Jesus with
other people then it was not because of sloppiness.
Mary was said to have descended from kings and princes (b. Sanh., 106 A). If so
then the Jews did believe that Jesus was royalty even though the gospels say
they did not and even said they had no heir or claimant to the throne but
Caesar! The gospels hint that they did not have genealogical proof that Jesus
was royal. The Talmud would not say she was royal unless it believed they had.
If Mary could prove it she would not have been poor for there would have been so
many who would have been pleased to finance her for she could give Israel its
king or even Christ king. The Talmud is denying the gospel picture of a poor
Mary who had to ride about on a donkey and give birth in a stable because there
was no room at the inn.
Jewish tradition says Mary was a hairdresser. Now, barbers and hairdressers were providers of minor medical treatments. Hairdressers provided abortion philters or tools for killing a later term foetus.
Some of the information may be a garbled remembrance of what Christians were saying about Jesus.
