Jesus in the Talmud

Notes to Chapter 1 15125. This “Jew” is an important link between the Gospel traditions, the Talmud,and the later Toledot Yeshu, and the traditions that he presents are clearlyolder than the sixties and seventies of the second century C.E.26. Origen, Contra Celsum I:28; translation according to Origen: Contra Celsum,trans., introd., and notes by Henry Chadwick, Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1953, pp. 28–31.27. Ibid. I:32. See also Eusebius, Eclogae propheticae III:10 (Eusebii PamphiliEpiscopi Caesariensis Eclogae Propheticae, ed. Thomas Gaisford, Oxford1842, p. 11): the Jews argue maliciously that Jesus “was fathered from a panther(ek panthēros).”28. Only Ms. Vatican 108 identifies the child as “Jesus the Nazarene” (seeabove, n. 9).29. t Hul 2:22 (y Shab 14:4, fol. 14d; y AZ 2:2, fol. 40d); t Hul 2:24; seebelow, pp. 42, n. 9, 54.30. Hence it does not come as a surprise that Ernst Haeckel in his notoriousWelträthsel uses Jesus’ non-Jewish father as “proof ” that he was not “purely” Jewishbut partly descended from the “superior Aryan race” (Ernst Haeckel, DieWelträthsel. Gemeinverständliche Studien über Monistische Philosophie, Bonn:Emil Strauß, 9th ed., 1899, p. 379).31. Another almost contemporary author, the Christian theologian Tertullian(second and early third century C.E.), calls Jesus the son of a carpenter and aprostitute (quaestuaria: De Spectaculis, 30); see above, p. 112.32. Adolf Deissmann, “Der Name Panthera,” in Orientalische Studien Th.Nöldeke zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag, vol. 2, Gießen: A. Töpelmann, 1906, pp.871–875; idem, Licht vom Osten, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 4th ed.,1923, p. 57.33. Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, pp. 243, 264ff.34. As Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, p. 265, seems to suggest.35. A tradition that obviously starts with the Egyptian magicians contendingwith Moses (Ex. 7–12). On ancient Egyptian magic, see Jan Assmann, “Magicand Theology in Ancient Egypt,” in Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar andSymposium, ed. Peter Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg, Leiden—New York—Köln: Brill, 1997, pp. 1–18. The epitome of syncretistic, Greco-Egyptian magicare the magical papyri from Egypt; see Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek MagicalPapyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells, Chicago and London: Universityof Chicago Press, 1986, and his introduction, pp. xlivff. On the Talmud’sassessment of Egyptian magic see b Qid 49b: “Ten kabs [measure of capacity] of