Christianity in Jewish literature
Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 11:56 pm
The presence of Jesus in Jewish literature--principally in the Babylonian Talmud under the name Yeshu ha-Notzri--is frequently mentioned in efforts to sustain the notion of the historicity of Jesus. It's a rather strange idea considering there are no references to Jesus in the Jerusalem Talmud, where one should think it would be more likely to find mention of him, if he really started out in Palestine. There is a corollary that says that Jesus has been edited out of the Jewish literature, which of course might be true, or he could have been edited into it.
If anyone knows any tangible historical means of getting real evidence for Jesus from the traditional Jewish sources, I'd love to hear it. I've also heard people use the Birkat ha-Minim cited for evidence of christians at least from the time of "Javneh". The Birkat ha-Minim contains a curse of heretics (minim) which, in two versions of a mediaeval text found in the Cairo geniza (Fustat), also contained reference to the Notzrim, ie both the minim and the notzri were to be cursed according to these documents, so at least there were at least christians from the end of the first century according to Jewish sources, right? Well, not so fast. The idea of the Birkat ha-Minim deriving from Javneh is not too problematic, but the curse was originally commissioned by Rabban Gamaliel (Ber. 28b) against minim and that commission contained no reference to any notzrim, so it should be unlikely that the original production by Samuel the Short who undertook the commission would have mentioned notzrim. In fact, although Justin refers to Jews cursing christians, the first church fathers specifically mentioning curses against Nazoreans were Epiphanius and Jerome in the 4th century, so again the Jewish evidence seems not to support early christianity.
Anyone with ideas to find useful references to Jesus in history from Jewish literature?
If anyone knows any tangible historical means of getting real evidence for Jesus from the traditional Jewish sources, I'd love to hear it. I've also heard people use the Birkat ha-Minim cited for evidence of christians at least from the time of "Javneh". The Birkat ha-Minim contains a curse of heretics (minim) which, in two versions of a mediaeval text found in the Cairo geniza (Fustat), also contained reference to the Notzrim, ie both the minim and the notzri were to be cursed according to these documents, so at least there were at least christians from the end of the first century according to Jewish sources, right? Well, not so fast. The idea of the Birkat ha-Minim deriving from Javneh is not too problematic, but the curse was originally commissioned by Rabban Gamaliel (Ber. 28b) against minim and that commission contained no reference to any notzrim, so it should be unlikely that the original production by Samuel the Short who undertook the commission would have mentioned notzrim. In fact, although Justin refers to Jews cursing christians, the first church fathers specifically mentioning curses against Nazoreans were Epiphanius and Jerome in the 4th century, so again the Jewish evidence seems not to support early christianity.
Anyone with ideas to find useful references to Jesus in history from Jewish literature?