Jesus in the Talmud

102 Chapter 9relates the “malicious slander” about the Jews, capturing, fattening, slaughtering,and finally consuming the flesh of a foreigner (Greek) in a bizarreritual. 23 In our anti-Christian version, the clandestine symposium consistsof the two elements of cannibalism and sexual orgies among the participants,more precisely (in Tertullian) incestuous sexual orgies. The moredetailed description in the second quotation from Tertullian, with theblood of the slaughtered child collected by the bread and then shared byall the participants, is clearly a parody of the wine and bread of the Eucharist.24 And the incestuous sexual orgy seems to be an inversion of theChristian command to love one another. 25 Hence, according to the earlyChurch Fathers, the Jews take up a propaganda narrative that was originallydirected against them and turn it into a powerful anti-Christianweapon with the declared goal to discredit the new sect once and forever.Ironically, in our Eliezer b. Hyrkanos story, it is the Jewish rabbis whoadopt this anti-Christian propaganda and apply (part of ) it to one ofthem—to mark, and eliminate, him as the arch-heretic.MagicThe other striking feature of the Christian sect and its founder is magic.Only in the Bavli (in the figure of the student of Yehoshua b. Perahya) it isconnected directly with the person of Jesus: this student (Jesus) was notonly indecent and prone to sex; he also set up an idolatrous brick worshipand, as the Talmud explains, led Israel astray by his magical practices.The remaining allusions to magic are preserved in Palestinian sources:first indirectly, in R. Eliezer b. Hyrkanos’ inclination to supporting his argumentby miracles; and second and most prominently, in the two storiesabout the Christian magicians (Jacob of Kefar Sama and the anonymoushealer) who heal in the name of Jesus.That Jesus was a magician is, next to or (often) together with the accusationof sexual promiscuity, the other “trademark” of Christianity as reflectedin the early pagan and Christian sources. As we have seen, theNeoplatonic philosopher Celsus has the son of the adulterous countrywoman acquire magical powers in Egypt and imagine, because of these