Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Reviewed by Pablo M. Iturrieta (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2016
After reading this book, what is clear is that any future student of the subject of Jesus in the Talmud, and many other subjects related to the development of rabbinic literature and Jewish-Christian relations, will be compelled to take account of this monumental work.
History of a Marginal Disciple: The Figure of Jesus in the Talmud. A New Paradigm
REJ 177, 2018
This article discusses a Talmudic mention of Jesus in the Babylonian version of Sanhedrin 107b. The analysis concerns mainly the implicit polemical aspects permeating the text. I will endeavor to describe the way in which the Talmudic authors regard Christianity at a late period. The argument of this article lies principally in two points: on one hand, Joshua ben Perahjah's ambiguous attitude towards his disciple Jesus is an expression of the soul-searching of the Talmudic Sages in relation to the first Christians; on the other, this passage provides evidence of self-criticism inherent in the world of the Talmud. RÉSUMÉ Cet article apporte un nouvel éclairage sur le passage talmudique de Sanhedrin 107b mentionnant Jésus de Nazareth. Ce texte, déjà très commenté, fait l'objet d'une relecture qui s'oriente sur les représentations du personnage de Jésus dans la conscience talmudique. L'approche des rédacteurs est ambivalente : d'une part, on rejette Jésus et le christianisme qu'il est censé incarner ; d'autre part, on émet d'im-plicites regrets sur ce rejet à une époque où il est trop tard pour changer le cours de l'histoire. L'analyse se fonde sur différentes perspectives, tels les motifs littéraires qui composent le texte, les représentations métaphoriques qu'on y décèle et enfin les polémiques voilées qui en découlent. This article proposes an analysis of the famous Talmudic passage in San-hedrin 107b, which also figures with some variations in Sota 47a. Jesus is depicted in this passage in a most singular way-that is, as the wayward disciple of a Talmudic sage. Because of the great similarity between these two parallel versions, we will cite only the first of the two texts. The story is introduced by the following interesting prologue:
Jesus's Birth Story in the Talmud and New Testament Writings
The way Jesus’s birth story is depicted in the Jewish and Christian traditions undoubtedly impacts the historical and theological significance of Jesus in each of the religions’ perspective. In Christianity, Jesus, born of virgin conception is true Messiah of Davidic descent. In Judaism, Jesus, born out of wedlock to a promiscuous mother was an illegitimate Jew. Schafer’s ‘historical-contextual’ approach (2007) identified the Talmudic texts as being accounts of what caught the attention of the rabbis in their retelling of the New Testament accounts. He argued that “they [we]re literary answers to a literary text, the New Testament, given under very concrete historical circumstances.” Viewing the Talmudic material as purely a literary response to a literary text fails to take into consideration the complex processes underlying the origins of the tradition let alone account for the diversity of the Jewish perceptions of Jesus, before, during and after the New Testament writings. The study applies a literary historical analysis in conjunction with the historical-contextual approach to investigate the origins of the rabbinic and New Testament portrayals of Jesus’s conception to give a more accurate understanding of both texts. The main claim of the study is: the Talmudic representation of Jesus’s virginal conception could not have been a literary response to a literary text. Rather, the Talmudic picture of Jesus takes its origin as a pre-Gospel narrative that continued and spread in the Roman context gradually evolving with the changing nature of Jewish-Christian relations in the formative centuries of both religions to culminate into the polemical tract of the Toledot Yeshu between the fourth and seventh centuries C.E.
Biblical Annals 3 (2013) 495-498.
The main thesis of his new book is very challenging for scholars dealing with Jewish-Christian relations in the first centuries. It reads as follows: "Not only the emerging Christianity drew on contemporary Judaism but the rabbinic Judaism, too, tapped into ideas and concepts of Christianity to shape its own identity… the two sister religions engaged in a profound interaction during late antiquity" (p. 1). The German version of the title of this book was provocatively called The Birth of Judaism from the Spirit of Christianity. P. Schäfer in his investigation tries to take a stand between the attitude of Travers Herford (Christianity in Talmud and Midrash [London: Williams & Norgate] 1903) who recognized Christianity as the main target of rabbinical Judaism and the attitude of Daniel Boyarin (Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Press] 2004) who regards Christianity as an integral part of the rabbinic Judaism mind-set. In his research P. Schäfer also makes reference (often in a critical way) to the three important monographs which deal with this