Jesus in the Talmud

68 Chapter 6part of the biblical verse, the Mishna returns to the question of who ishanged and why. The phrase qilelat elohim is again ambiguous 24 and hereinterpreted as a “curse against God,” in the sense that the criminal has uttereda curse against God by cursing God’s name. In other words, he isthe blasphemer (megaddef ) who, according to the Sages (and of coursealso to R. Eliezer), deserves to be hanged.Against this background, it is clear for the authors of our Bavli narrativethat Jesus was first stoned and then hanged. 25 This is fully concurrent withthe mishnaic Halakha. The same is true of the reason for his stoning andhanging: he was a sorcerer and enticed Israel into idolatry. Both crimes areexplained in full detail in Mishna Sanhedrin: whereas the above-quotedMishna mentions only the blasphemer and the idolater, later on theMishna gives a much longer list of crimes that deserve the capital punishment,among them the mesit, the maddiah, and the mekhashshef (sorcerer)26 —precisely as listed in our Bavli narrative. The mesit is someonewho seduces an individual to idolatry, 27 whereas the maddiah is understoodas someone who publicly entices many into idolatry. 28 Jesus, theTalmud tells us, was both: he not only enticed some individual but all ofIsrael to become idolaters. To make things worse, he was also a sorcerer inthe sense defined more precisely in the Mishna: someone who reallypractices magic and not just “holds people’s eyes” (ha->ohez et ha-