Jesus in the Talmud

1. Jesus’ FamilyThe rabbinic literature is almost completely silent about Jesus’ lineageand his family background. The rabbis do not seem to know—or elsedo not care to mention—what the New Testament tells us: that he was theson of a certain Mary and her husband (or rather betrothed) Joseph, a carpenterof the city of Nazareth, and that he was born in Bethlehem, thecity of David, and hence of Davidic origin. It is only in the BabylonianTalmud, and there in two almost identical passages, that we do get somestrange information that may be regarded as a faint and distorted echo ofthe Gospels’ stories about Jesus’ family background and his parents. 1Since neither source mentions, however, the name “Jesus” but instead resortsto the enigmatic names “Ben Stada” and “Ben Pandera/Pantera” respectively,their relationship to Jesus is hotly disputed. I will analyze theBavli text in detail and demonstrate that it indeed refers to the Jesus of theNew Testament and is not just a remote and corrupt echo of the New Testamentstory; rather, it presents—with few words and in the typically discursivestyle of the Bavli—a highly ambitious and devastating counternarrativeto the infant story of the New Testament.The version of our story in Shab 104b is embedded in an exposition ofthe mishnaic law, which regards the writing of two or more letters as workand hence forbidden on the Sabbath (m Shab 12:4). The Mishna discusses