page_title: Jesus in the Talmud
hierarchical_section_title: Jesus in the Talmud
context_page_description: There are several passages in the Talmud which are believed by some scholars to be references to Jesus. The name used in the Talmud is "Yeshu", the Aramaic vocalization of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
  The identification of Jesus with any number of individuals named Yeshu has numerous problems, as most of the individuals are said to have lived in time periods far detached from that of Jesus; Yeshu the sorcerer is noted for being executed by the Hasmonean government which lost legal authority in 63 BC, Yeshu the student is described being among the Pharisees who returned to Israel from Egypt in 74 BC, and Yeshu ben Pandera/ben Stada's stepfather is noted as speaking with Rabbi Akiva shortly before the rabbi's execution, an event which occurred in c. 134 AD. These events would place the lifetime of any Yeshu decades before or after the birth and death of Jesus.
  The first Christian censorship of the Talmud happened in the year 521. However, far better documented censorship began during the disputations of the Middle Ages. Catholic authorities accused the Talmud of containing blasphemous references to Jesus and his mother, Mary.
context_section_description: There are several passages in the Talmud which are believed by some scholars to be references to Jesus. The name used in the Talmud is "Yeshu", the  Aramaic vocalization (though not spelling) of the Hebrew name Yeshua.
  The identification of Jesus with any number of individuals named Yeshu has numerous problems, as most of the individuals are said to have lived in time periods far detached from that of Jesus; Yeshu the sorcerer is noted for being executed by the Hasmonean government which lost legal authority in 63 BC, Yeshu the student is described being among the Pharisees who returned to Israel from Egypt in 74 BC,  and Yeshu ben Pandera/ben Stada's stepfather is noted as speaking with Rabbi Akiva shortly before the rabbi's execution, an event which occurred in c. 134 AD. These events would place the lifetime of any Yeshu decades before or after the birth and death of Jesus.
  The first Christian censorship of the Talmud happened in the year 521. However, far better documented censorship began during the disputations of the Middle Ages. Catholic authorities accused the Talmud of containing blasphemous references to Jesus and his mother, Mary. Jewish apologists during the disputations said there were no references to Jesus in the Talmud. They asserted that Joshua was a common Jewish name, along with its derivations, and that the citations referred to individuals other than Jesus. 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. 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. 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. "Minimalists" include Jacob Z. Lauterbach (1951) ("who recognize[d] only relatively few passages that actually have Jesus in mind"), 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), and Schäfer (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).
  Some editions of the Talmud are missing some of the references, which were removed either by Christian censors starting in the 13th century, or by Jews themselves due to fear of reprisals, or some were possibly lost by negligence or accident.  However, most modern editions published since the early 20th century have restored most of the references.
caption: Depiction of Jesus as a young Jew by Rembrandt
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