Jesus in the Talmud

4 Introduction1699 dissertation, submitted at the University of Altdorf by the ProtestantOrientalist Rudolf Martin Meelführer, Jesus in Talmude (“Jesus in theTalmud”). 8 Unlike Wagenseil, who was highly influential and widelyread, his student Meelführer was almost immediately forgotten; both,however, were surpassed in their influence by Johann Andreas Eisenmenger’sGerman work in two volumes, Entdecktes Judenthum (“JudaismUnmasked”), which would become—until well into the modern period—a major source for anti-Semitic attacks against the Jews. 9Whereas in the early modern period the “Jesus in the Talmud” paradigmserved almost solely as an inexhaustible source for anti-Jewish sentiments,the subject gained more serious and critical recognition in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the extensive relevant literaturea few authors deserve special attention: 10 Samuel Krauss presented thefirst scholarly analysis of the Toledot Yeshu, based on an edition and comprehensiveanalysis of the variant versions of the text (1902), which eventoday remains the authoritative treatment of the subject. 11 A year later, in1903, Travers Herford published his Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, 12which would become the standard book about Christianity and Jesus inrabbinic sources, particularly in the English-speaking world. Herford’s approachcan be called maximalistic in every regard: not only are the manypassages that mention the minim (“heretics” in the broadest sense of theterm) dealing almost without exception with Christians, but he also concludesthat almost all the passages in the rabbinic literature that have beenremotely connected with Jesus and his life indeed refer to Jesus. The factthat he is rather restrained with regard to the value of the rabbinic sourcesas evidence for the attempt to reconstruct the historical Jesus 13 does not detractfrom his generally maximalistic and quite naive approach.The first attempt to examine the relevant rabbinic passages about Jesusand Christianity critically and to provide a text critical edition and translationwas made in 1910 by the Christian German scholar Hermann L.Strack (the same Strack who gained enormous reputation through hisfamous Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash) 14 in his 1910 monographJesus, die Häretiker und die Christen nach den ältesten jüdischen Angaben. 15Strack set a sober tone, not only with regard to the historical value of therabbinic evidence but also with regard to the number of the relevant passages,that was to become a major trend particularly in German-language