Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus’ Punishment in Hell 89We can hardly take for granted that the master’s explanation of the crime(ridiculing the words of the Sages) is presupposed in our Bavli narrative 26and hence that the crime committed by Jesus/the sinners of Israel was indeedridiculing the Sages. Tempting as this interpretation may be—notleast in view of the talmudic story portraying Jesus as a bad disciple 27 —it ismore likely that our Talmud editor uses the parallel from Bavli Eruvin in orderto explain a weird punishment for a crime the original circumstances ofwhich were unknown to him. 28 Nor can we take it for granted that the second(anonymous) comment in the Bavli (“Come and see the difference betweenthe sinners of Israel and the prophets of the gentile nations”) belongsto the original core of our narrative or, more precisely, that it reflects theoriginal core and that therefore the “sinners of Israel” were the original subjectof our story and not Jesus. 29 No doubt that the final Bavli editor wantedthe text to be understood this way, but he may have had his own agenda. Ofcourse, he refers to the difference between the prophets of the gentiles (Balaam)and the sinners of Israel with regard to the advice they give Onqelosand not with regard to their punishment and their presumed crime: Balaamspeaks against Israel, whereas the sinners of Israel speak in their favor. Theirpunishment, in contrast, is strikingly similar because it hardly makes muchof a difference whether one sits in the Netherworld in boiling semen or inboiling excrement. Hence, despite their very different attitudes toward Israel,they are inflicted with almost the same punishment, or to put it differentlyand more precisely: the sinners of Israel’s positive attitude toward Israel,acquired postmortem in the Netherworld, did not change their fateand did not affect their punishment in Gehinnom (they have to serve theirtime, no matter what they think of Israel now). It may well be that this ironyis what the Bavli editor wants to convey with his remark.Furthermore, if we consider the Tosefta’s statement about the time thedifferent categories of sinners spend in the Netherworld, the “sinners ofIsrael” and the “sinners of the nations” fall into one category (after twelvemonths in Gehinnom they cease to exist), and the heretics and the destroyersof the Temple into another (they are punished forever). So withregard to their punishment (and the presumed crime related to it) there isno difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the nations(Balaam). This makes the Bavli’s remark, with its emphasis on the advicegiven to Onqelos, even more obscure or forced. It is not at all incongruous,