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 Schäfer 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.
Schäfer 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.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 2.5 / 5.0
irresponsible claims:
The citations in this work are indeed of a man named Yeshua, but are almost certainly NOT the Yeshua ha Notzri who is the Jewish Messiah, the Christ. There are far too many unexplained discrepancies between the accounts of the Yeshua of the Bible and the Yeshua of the Talmud. The only value to this work is that it demonstrates the LACK of evidence for the claims Schafer makes therein.
Second Hand Perceptions:
Is Jesus written of within the Talmud? This book says that he is. I am not convinced that the actual man Jesus (Yeshu, Yeshua, whatever) is written of in the Talmud. Of course, Dr. Shafer's book is not new for the subject but he takes the matter seriously to make the case that Jewish writers in the Talmud did believe Jesus to be the son of a 'hair dresser' (a promiscuous woman)--not a virgin; a bastard from a foreigner rather than the son of the Most High, a divine or semi-divine being; an apostate rather... more info
A goyim's interpretation:
"We are not the murderers of the Messiah and the Son of God, nor the king of the Jews as Pilate wanted to have it. Rather, we are the rightful executioners of a blasphemer and idolater, who was sentenced according to the full weight, but also the fair procedure, of our law... For the first time in History, we encounter Jews who, instead of acting defensively, raise their voice and speak out against what would become the perennial story of the triumphant Church" The above are not a quote from the... more info
Very Good Book, Idiot Followers:
Why don't we see such works more often? No, not because "the Jews" control "the establishment". Rather--as most (though not all) of the four- and five-star reviews here show--such a book would becomes a magnet to the ignorant antisemitic fringe, who shower the author with undesired praise and attention for "daring to say THE TRUTH about the evil Jews". In fact, of course, Schafer's book does nothing of the kind--nor does he intend to. It was well known that the Talmud and other Jewish writings of the... more info
