Behind the Mockery: Jewish Responses to Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection

The Steinsaltz edition has reinstated the text. For a discussion of this and other such texts, see Peter Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2007).

Regarding his ties with the government, see below.

For a discussion of this law, focusing on the next verse about taking the body down see Marty Lockshin, “A Corpse Left Hanging Overnight Is a ‘Cursing of God’,” TheTorah (2020) (see more below).

Jacob Z. Lauterbach suggests that this refers to the Roman government, alluding perhaps to reports that Pilate hesitated to execute him. It could also refer to the ruler of the House of Herod, or perhaps, to the Christians’ closeness to the government after the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century. See Jacob Z. Lauterbach, “Jesus in the Talmud, in his Rabbinic Essays (Hebrew Union College, 1951), 473-570 [esp. 490–500]; Thierry Murcia (Jésus dans le Talmud et la littérature rabbinique ancienne [Brepols, 2014], 440–441) offers another possibility for the phrase qarov la-malkhut: certain Toledot Yeshu traditions mention Mary as being close to Queen Helena of Adiabene, a convert to Judaism who moved to Jerusalem and may have met Jesus.

Peter Schäfer sees this as an early source dating from the tannaitic period. Schäfer (Jesus in the Talmud [Princeton University Press, 2007], 170, n.62) mentions the possibility that baraitot are late but does not think this is the case here. In contrast, Jacob Lauterbach (“Jesus in the Talmud” 490–500) and most recently Thierry Murcia (Jésus dans le Talmud, 423–473) have argued that this baraita is late—fourth century according to Lauterbach (p. 500); perhaps several centuries later according to Murcia (p. 442). Ulla, in any case, responding to the baraita, lived in the late 3^rd and early 4^th centuries. If Lauterbach and Murcia are correct, the story may be influenced by motifs found in the developing body of Toledot Yeshu literature. Lauterbach points out a number of problems with the passage: (1) the order to send the herald ahead of him every day for forty days is unprecedented; (2) Jesus was hanged after being stoned, although hanging is only done for blasphemers, which Jesus was not; but see Acts 5:20 and 10:39; (3) there is no mention of the Romans. He concludes that the baraita is “a legend made up by guesswork and misunderstanding of various legends and popular reports about Jesus” (497).

On this, A.J. Berkovitz, “Was Haman Hanged, Impaled, or Crucified?” TheTorah (2021).

On the god Mercurius (Merculis, Mercury or Hermes) in rabbinic literature, see Saul Lieberman, “Palestine in the Third and Fourth Centuries: III. Rabbinic Parallels to the Thirteenth Sibylline Book (Continued),” Jewish Quarterly Review 37 (1946): 42-54. According to Lieberman, Mercurius is the pagan deity most frequently mentioned in rabbinic literature and seems to have been quite popular in Palestine.

Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, eds., Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity (Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999) [Heb.], 216-217 (no. 33, lines 85-90).

Translation from Hagith Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2008), 152–153; see also Sarit Kattan Gribetz, “Hanged and Crucified: The Book of Esther and Toledot Yeshu,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited: A Princeton Conference, ed. P. Schäfer et al.; Mohr Siebeck 2011), 159-180 (at 159).

The text never states explicitly, but the fact that the speaker describes himself as the one who planted all the trees from the time of creation, and references Jesus, someone who had not yet been born, strongly implies that the speaker is God. See discussion in the כוכבי אור [“The Stars of Light”] commentary of Meir Rose (or Roz), in ספר מאורות המגילה [The Book of the Lights of the Megillah] (Kiryat Sefer, 5755), 452 n. 14. The Aramaic is taken from this edition.

The Aramaic here is in the form of an alphabetic acrostic, which explains the long list of trees and some of the obscure terms used to describe them.

See Jastrow s.v. אַכְסַנְדַּרְיָא.

Ben Pandera/Panthera is one of the Sages’ insulting names for Jesus, implying that he was fathered by a Roman soldier named Pandera.

See Michael Meerson and Peter Schafer, eds., Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, 2 vols. (Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Since the various versions diverge substantially it is impossible to create a single edition which could be considered authoritative. This definitive collection of Toledot Yeshu texts therefore gathers all the texts and reproduces them sequentially and allows the reader to compare the various versions and draw their own conclusions. As is to be expected, the later versions are more elaborate than the earlier ones. Many of the elements of the talmudic passage in Bavli Sanhedrin 43a appear in various versions of Toledot Yeshu.

This text comes from MS Strasbourg 3974, a 17^th-century Hebrew manuscript.

Another version states that Jesus used his magical powers to cause any tree he was hanged from to break. He had not thought to protect himself from the cabbage since it was not a tree, and this proved to be his undoing:

ומיד דחפוהו וסחבוהו לבית הסקילה וסקלוהו בשעת ההיא שעת ששית של ערב פסח היה וערב שבת היה ואחר שסקלוהו אוציאוהו מבית הסקילה ותלוהו על העץ כדין הנסקלים וכל עץ שרצו לתלותו עליו נשבר כי השביע בחייו בזמן שידע השם לכל העצים שלא יקבלו שידע שסופו לתלות מאחר שהסית והדיח וכשף והפרצים חשבו שמרוב צדקתו לא קבלוהו העצים מה עשו חכמי ישראל הביאו קלח גדול של כרוב ותלוהו בקלח של כרוב שזה לא השביע והניחו שם עד בא השמש.

They immediately pushed him and dragged him to the stoning house and stoned him at that time. It was the sixth hour of Pesach eve and Sabbath eve. After they stoned him, they took him from the stoning house and hanged him on a tree, according to the law of the stoned ones. And every tree upon which they wanted to hang him broke, since during his life when he knew the Name, he put a spell on the trees, so that they would not hold him. He knew that his death would be by hanging since he seduced and incited and practiced sorcery. His villains thought that the trees did not hold him because of his great righteousness. What did the sages of Israel do? They brought a large cabbage stalk and hanged him on that cabbage stalk, since he did not cast a spell on it, and they left him there until sunset.

Source: New York, JTS, MS 2221 (dated 1699); see Meerson and Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu, 1:107 (Heb.); 2:199 (Eng.); for a description of the MS, see p. 23. For a discussion of this motif, see Sarit Kattan Gribetz, “Hanged and Crucified: The Book of Esther and Toledot Yeshu,” ibid., 159–80 [pp. 162–163]. See also Michael Meerson, “Meaningful Nonsense: A Study of Details in Toledot Yeshu,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited: A Princeton Conference, ed. Peter Schäfer et al.; (Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 181–95; Hillel I. Newman, “The Death of Jesus in the Toledot Yeshu,” Journal of Theological Studies 50 (1999): 59–79.

Both of these traditions would seem to recall the parable of Jotham in Judges 9 in which Jotham tells of the trees gathering to appoint for themselves a king and neither the olive tree, nor the fig tree nor the grapevine is willing to give up its productive life in order to rule over others, until the thornbush was approached and agreed on condition that the others would come to take shelter in its shade; if not they would all be consumed by fire. None of these parallels is perfect, but the common denominator is the reluctance of the trees to allow themselves to be used for a degrading purpose.

St Petersburg, RNL, MS Evr I.274; Meerson and Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu, 1:164 (Eng.); 2:77 (Heb.) (with adjustments).

In the Talmud, the stoning is depicted as taking place first, and then the body is hung or impaled on a pole, but in Toledot Yeshu, Jesus is stoned while already on the tree:

ויתלו אותו על העץ וירגמוהו באבנים ומת על העץ והעמידו עליו גל אבנים ולא רצו שיורידוהו מן העץ בערב.

They hanged him on the tree and stoned him and he died on the tree. And they erected over him a pile of stones and did not want to take him down from the tree in the evening.

In a different manuscript, Meerson and Schäfer, Toledot Yeshu, 2: 77 (Heb.); 1:164–165 (Eng.). The phrase from this verse, כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי, understood as “Because a hanged man is cursed by God,” features prominently in anti-Christian polemics. The term talui or “hanged person” became a common epithet for Jesus in rabbinic and medieval sources.

The term talui or “hanged person” became a common epithet for Jesus in rabbinic and medieval sources.

The text reads:

והורידוהו מן העץ וקברוהו בתעלת המים בגן יהודה.

And they took him down from the tree and buried him in the channel of water in Yehudah’s garden.

The text reads:

ענה יהודה ואמר להם: "אי אדני זה יישו הרשע היה יודע מה שכת[וב] בתורתנו 'לא תלין וגו׳' והתעה לאנשים אלה בדבריו באמור להם אם תבואו למחר לא תמצאוני על העץ כי אעלה לשמים. עתה אם רצון אדוני אני אראה את נבלתו לעיני הכל ויאמינו הכל כי הוא ישו הרשע."

Yehudah answered and said to them, “No, my lord, this Yeshu the wicked knew what is written in our Scripture, ‘You shall not leave overnight, etc.’ And he led these people astray with his words, when he said to them, ‘If you come tomorrow, you will not find me on the tree, because I will ascend to heaven.’ Now, if my lord wills it, I will show his corpse to everyone, and everyone will believe that it is Yeshu the wicked.”

The text reads:

גזר בו והלך והוציא מן הקבר וקשר חבל ברגליו והיו מושכין אותו כמו כלב בתוך השוק של טבריא והיה המכריז אומר ראו הכל זה ישו בן פנדירא או לא? הלא זה הוא שמרד באלהי השמים שאין לו דמות וצורה.

[Pilate] ordered him, and he went and took [Yeshu] from the grave. They tied a rope around his feet, and they were dragging him like a dog through the market in Tiberias. And the herald said, “See all of this! Is this not Yeshu, son of Pandera? Is not this he who rebelled against the God of heaven, who has no image or form?”

The text reads:

הביאוהו לפני פילטוס וראה שהוא ישו וסרחונו היה הולך למרחוק לא היו יכולין כל רואיו לסבול. אז גזר ההגמון ליהודה בעל הגן זה שהיה משכו לך קברהו במקום אחר.

They brought him before Pilate, and he saw [that] it was Yeshu. His stench was spreading far, and all who saw him were not able to tolerate [it]. Then the governor ordered Yehudah the gardener, the one who was dragging Yeshu, “Go bury him somewhere else.”

Kattan Gribetz, “Hanged and Crucified”; see also Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud; Newman, “Death of Jesus”; William Horbury, “The Trial of Jesus in Jewish Tradition,” in The Trial of Jesus: Cambridge Studies in Honour of C. F. D. Moule, ed. E. Bammel (SCM Press, 1970) 103–121. For a discussion of how Jews made use of this text on Christmas Eve, see Shai Alleson-Gerberg, “Nittel Nacht: An Inverted Christmas with Toledot Yeshu,” TheTorah (2016).

The Gospels do not actually claim that the Jews executed Jesus, though. For a discussion, see Tamás Visi, “Did the Jews Crucify Jesus?” TheTorah (2014).

Joseph Ibn Kaspi, “Matsref la-kesef” [A crucible for silver], = id., Mishneh khesef [Double the money], vol. 2 (Cracow 1906; repr. Jerusalem 1970), 107-109; Marc Saperstein, “Jewish Responses to the Passion Narratives,” in The Passion Story: From Visual Representation to Social Drama, ed. Marcia Kupfer; (Penn State University Press, 2008) 191–202, 256–58 (see 194); Ram Ben-Shalom, “Between Official and Private Dispute: The Case of Christian Spain and Provence in the Late Middle Ages,” AJSR 27.1 (2003) 23–71 (see 27-29).

He offers a third defense (listed as the first), namely, that since Jesus grew up as a normal human being, and only when he was grown up did he start claiming that he was God, how can the Jews be blamed for not believing him:

ידוע כי ישו גדל עמנו מנעוריו, אוכל ושותה ושוחק עם נערינו ועושה כל צרכי יתר הגוף אין ראוי לאמרם. ואחר כי גדל והיה על דרך משל כבן עשרים שנה, שוטט ברחובותינו ובבתי כנסיותינו, ואמר שהוא אלוה, עם היותו גם אז שוקד בעניינו מכל צרכי הגוף ומלבושיו כמלפנים. החנם חרפנוהו והכינוהו?... אבל נניח שהיה אלוה, והוא מתנכר מתחפש בבגדים כאחד היהודים האמללים. מה פשענו ומה תעינו? אבל הוא התענו!

It is known that Jesus grew up with us from his youth, eating and drinking and playing with our youth and attending to all the rest of his bodily needs, which it is not appropriate to mention. Then, when he grew up and was about twenty years old, wandering through our streets and our synagogues, and saying that he was a god, all the while being careful to attend to all the needs of his body and his clothing as before. Did we vilify him and beat him for no reason?... But even assuming that he was a god, and he dissembled and disguised himself in clothes like one of the unfortunate Jews, what did we sin and what did we do wrong, for it was he who deceived us! [emphasis added]

Hebrew from J.D. Eisenstein, אוצר הויכוחים [Polemics and Disputations] (New York, 1926), 76 (col. 2).

See, Joseph Kimchi, The Book of The Covenant, trans. Frank Talmage (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972), 76.

David Berger (ed./trans.), The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the Niẓẓaḥon vetus (Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979), 137 (Heb.), 198 (Eng.). The translation above is based on this translation, but with adjustments.