Jesus in the Talmud

xAcknowledgmentshonored us with their presence), but also and above all because of thetime Israel and I spent together preparing the seminar. At first we wantedto meet briefly to discuss the structure and strategy of the seminar sessions,but soon our meetings became longer and longer, until we spenthours reading the texts together—brainstorming together and drivingeach other to ever bolder interpretations and conclusions. Much of whatwill appear on the following pages, in particular with regard to the exegesesof the talmudic sources, has its root in these preparations and the subsequentseminar sessions. It would be a fruitless exercise to seek to divideup the birthright of certain ideas and suggestions, but I do not hesitate toacknowledge gladly and gratefully that this book in its present formcould not have been written without the experience of this joint enterprise.The students’, the colleagues’, and above all Israel Yuval’s creativityand ingenuity contributed greatly to many of the ideas developed inthis book.Research on the Babylonian Talmud has considerably advanced recently.Venturing into a field that is not my primary research area, I hadthe good fortune that Richard Kalmin of the Jewish Theological Seminaryof America in New York was kind enough to read a draft of the manuscript.I owe him thanks for his many helpful suggestions, further clarificationsof complicated talmudic texts, and corrections of several mistakesor misreadings. With regard to the New Testament—a field of which Ican claim even less competence—Martin Hengel, my longtime mentor,senior colleague, and friend, generously commented on the manuscriptand showered upon me an embarrassingly rich cornucopia of advice, improvement,further insights, bibliographical details, and, not least, corrections.(I wish I had taken advantage of his erudition at an earlier stage ofwriting the manuscript: it would have been considerably improved.) It iswith admiration for his work and with heartfelt gratitude for his continuoussupport since I became his assistant at the University of Tübingenthat I dedicate this small volume to him. My Princeton colleaguesMartha Himmelfarb and Elaine Pagels read parts of the manuscript andmade many helpful suggestions. The two anonymous readers for the Presstook the trouble of reading an early draft of the manuscript and giving memuch useful advice. I am deeply grateful to all of them. As always, I must