Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus in the Talmud 111an exceptionally feeble interpretation that does not explain anything. Nodoubt, it is Jesus whom R. Hiyya attacks as the “son of the whore” whoclaims to be God, of equal rank with the God of whom the Jews say that heis the only and single one.Resurrection and EucharistThe prerequisite for Jesus’ claim to be the Son of God is the belief in hisresurrection: it is only through his resurrection and subsequent ascent toheaven that the executed criminal can prove that he is indeed the Son ofGod. Our rabbinic texts, all in the Bavli, emphasize that Jesus, the newBalaam, does not have a portion in the world to come: his fate is that hemust be punished in hell forever, with no chance of redemption—andthe same is true for his followers: they better give up any hope of earningeternal life in his succession, as his apostles promise.We have seen how Justin Martyr puts a similar attack on Jesus’ allegedresurrection (it was a magical deceit concocted by his disciples) into themouth of the Jews. But the Jews do not stand alone in such an assessmentof the Christian belief in resurrection. Lucian of Samosata (ca. 120–ca.180 C.E.), the great Greek satirist, ridicules the Christians’ hope of beingimmortal. In his Death of Peregrinus Lucian exposes Peregrinus—a Cynicphilosopher, for some time sympathetic to the cause of the Christians,who burned himself alive in order to demonstrate his indifference topain—as a swindler, and in this context he gets to talking about a similarlystupid belief of the Christians: “You see, for one thing, the poor devilshave convinced themselves they’re all going to be immortal and live forever,which makes most of them take death lightly and voluntarily givethemselves up to it.” 61Whether or not this satirical answer to one of the core beliefs of Christianityis inspired by Jewish polemical sources (although this possibilitycannot be ruled out: his native language was Syriac), 62 it clearly reflectshow widespread it was in the Jewish as well as in the Greco-Roman world.It is left to the vicious acumen of Tertullian to summarize what the Jewsthink of Jesus. When he vividly imagines the last day of judgment—with