Jesus in the Talmud

4. The Torah TeacherThe Talmud does not relate anything about Jesus’ life until his veryend, his violent death. It does have, however, some vague notion ofhim as a Torah teacher, and this is quite in accordance with Jesus’ portrayalin the New Testament (see in particular the so-called Sermon on theMount in Matthew 5–7; according to Luke 19:47, Jesus was teaching everyday in the Temple, and “the chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of thepeople kept looking for a way to kill him”). 1 One story in the Bavli presentsJesus as such a Torah teacher, in dialogue with the contemporary rabbis,and even preserves his halakhic exegesis. In the typical rabbinic fashion, histeaching is transmitted through the mouth of one of his faithful students.However, what is striking here is the fact that the story is not concernedwith Jesus himself (and also very little with his student) but rather with asupposed rabbinic follower of Jesus and his teachings, in other words, that itattacks the Christian sect through the mirror of the rabbinic perception ofChristianity. The story appears in Bavli Avodah Zarah 16b–17a, but thistime we are in the possession of earlier Palestinian parallels. 2 I translate theBavli version according to the Vilna edition and will refer to the variantreadings in the Bavli manuscripts as well as in the parallels where necessary:Our rabbis taught: When R. Eliezer was arrested because of heresy(minut), they brought him up to the tribune to be judged. The