Jesus in the Talmud

96 Chapter 9information. Time and again I have argued that such an approach doesnot yield much (if anything at all), that it is simply the wrong question addressedto the wrong texts. Our rabbinic texts do not preserve, and did notintend to preserve, historical information about Jesus and Christianity thatcan be compared to the New Testament and that throws new (and different)light on the New Testament narrative. Such a naive attitude—whichdominates most, if not all, of the relevant research literature, although todifferent degrees and with different conclusions—must be dismissed onceand for all. This applies to the positivistic attempt to rediscover and justifythe rabbinical texts as historical sources for the life of Jesus (for whichstands, as the most prominent exponent, Travers Herford) as well as to theno less positivistic attempt to prove the opposite and to conclude from thisthat the rabbinic stories are worthless and in most cases do not even referto Jesus at all (for which stands, as the most extreme proponent, JohannMaier)—neither approach leads very far and is a futile exercise in sterilescholarly erudition.Moreover, either approach misjudges the literary character of both theNew Testament and the rabbinic sources and underestimates the acumenof their authors. It has long been accepted in most camps of New Testamentscholarship (except for its fundamentalist and evangelical branches)that the New Testament is anything but a report of “pure” historical facts,of what has “really” happened—although, of course, this does not meanthat it presents just fiction. Rather, it is a retelling of “what happened” inits own way or, more precisely, in quite different ways by its different authors.And it has been equally accepted by most scholars of rabbinic Judaismthat the same is true for rabbinic literature, namely that the rabbiswere not particularly interested in “what happened”—for such a historisticand positivistic approach they reserved the disparaging judgment maide-hawa hawa (“what happened happened”)—but tell a story of theirown: also, not just fiction but their interpretation of “what happened” intheir peculiar and highly idiosyncratic way. 2This is precisely what takes place in our rabbinic stories about Jesusand the Christian sect. These stories are a deliberate and carefullyphrased retelling—not of what “really happened” but of what has come toor captured the rabbis’ attention. And the source to which they refer is notsome independent knowledge of Jesus, his life, and his followers that has