Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus in the Talmud 129Jewish Diaspora community could argue—a new and self-confident Diasporacommunity, far removed in time and place from both the turmoil ofthe emerging Christianity in Asia Minor in the late first and early secondcenturies C.E. and of the continuously strengthening Christian power inthe Palestine of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Babylonian Jews in theSasanian Empire, living in a non-Christian and even progressively anti-Christian environment, could easily take up, and continue, the discourseof their brethren in Asia Minor; and it seems as if they were no less timidin their response to the New Testament’s message and in particular to theanti-Jewish bias that is so prominent in the Gospel of John. They foughtback with the means of parody, inversion, deliberate distortion, and notleast with the proud proclamation that what their fellow Jews did to thisJesus was right: that he deserved to be executed because of his blasphemy,that he will sit in hell forever, and that those who follow his example upuntil today will not, as he has promised, gain eternal life but will share hishorrible fate. Taken together, the texts in the Babylonian Talmud, althoughfragmentary and scattered, become a daring and powerful counter-Gospel to the New Testament in general and to John in particular.