Jesus in Sasanian Babylonia

AS Peter Schäfer informs us in this important, powerful, and absorbing volume, Christian anti-Semitism and supersessionism on the one hand and Jewish apologetics on the other have marred earlier scholarly attempts to study Jesus's portrayal in the Talmud. Most misguided, however, are those scholars, chief among them Johann Maier, who dismiss the talmudic traditions about Jesus as nonsensical rubbish on the grounds that they contain no reliable information about the historical Jesus. Maier, in fact, concludes that rabbinic literature refers in most instances to a Jesus other than Jesus of Nazareth, thinking thereby to have concluded the discussion and to have consigned the talmudic traditions to oblivion.¹

Schäfer argues convincingly (1) that the talmudic traditions are speaking about Jesus of Nazareth; (2) that they contain no historically reliable evidence about the founder of Christianity independent of what can be found in Christian traditions; and (3) that these conclusions represent only the beginning of the story rather than the end. What the Talmud has to say on the subject, Schäfer proposes, is of crucial importance because of what it tells us about fourth-century (and later) Jewish attitudes toward Jesus and Christianity. What the rabbis of Babylonia had to say about Jesus is not simply to be dismissed as bizarre nonsense but rather is to be appreciated as the rabbis' brilliant but bitter polemical responses to Christianity, the development and maturation of which had immense political, social, and religious consequences for Jews and against which they were engaged in a life and death struggle. The comments of the rabbis are couched in an idiom that is often foreign to nonspecialists, and these comments are often transmitted in the context of larger discussions concerned primarily with issues that seem strange to the uninitiated. It is necessary, therefore, to decipher the rabbis' comments and make them intelligible to those not immersed in rabbinic patterns of argumentation, and this is perhaps Schäfer's most important contribution. In addition, Schäfer repeatedly shows himself to be a skilled and sensitive exegete. Particularly innovative are his demonstrations of the interpretive importance of close attention not only to the immediate context of scriptural verses cited in rabbinic midrash but to the fuller context, whether the surrounding verses, the entire chapter, or even an entire biblical book.²

As Schäfer reads the evidence, the Talmud supplies us with fragments of a counter-Gospel, a Jewish perspective on the events of Jesus's life, despite the fact that this counternarrative is preserved haphazardly and scattered throughout the pages of the Bavli, no more than a drop in the proverbial sea of the Talmud. This Jewish Gospel derives from a point of view hostile to Christianity and sympathetic to Judaism as understood and taught by the rabbis, in contrast to the New Testament Gospels, which are all, to differing degrees and in varying ways, hostile to Jews and Judaism. Schäfer passionately insists that what the Talmud has to say about Jesus is important in its own right, and not simply for what it teaches us about Christian origins. The Talmud's statements about Jesus are often ferocious and at times even obscene (pp. 13, 82–94), but never gratuitously so, since these statements were the rabbis' ammunition against Christianity's core beliefs, which they used to make the case that Christianity was utterly false and that Jesus and his followers were hopelessly deluded. Those interested in the history of Jewish-Christian relations will find in these statements a perspective without parallel in other literatures, since the rabbis uttered these statements from a position of relative strength vis-à-vis the more vulnerable Christian communities of Sasanian Persia.

A discussion in bShab 104b will exemplify the importance of Schäfer's work and the riches he has uncovered in the talmudic statements about Jesus:³

Mishnah:

1. 1. One who scratches a mark on his flesh,

2. 2. R. Eliezer declares him liable...