Israel In Prophecy

Last Name

SCHÄFER

First Name

Peter

Title

Jesus in the Talmud

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Year

2009

Group

ANT1

Comments

Amazon Review/s
Note: Jesus in the Talmud points out that the Talmudic references to Jesus aren't intended as pieces of information on the historical character Jesus of Nazareth. The observation that the Talmud lacks value as a historical source on the "real" Jesus is therefore beside the point. Yet, most scholars who studied the issue took this approach to the material. Schäfer's angle is different: he sees the Talmudic statements as a veiled polemic against Christianity as it looked like during the period when the Talmudic tractates were written down (post 70 C.E.), neither more nor less. It is difficult to believe that as Christianity became the biggest religion in the world that the guardians of the Torah would or could ignore it. So, in disparate pieces, rabbis constructed an alternate narrative that struck not at Christianity itself, but upon the figure of Christ. This narrative represents literal history no more than those rabbis thought of the historicity of the Gospels account and, like the Christian writings which they disbelieved, were filled with symbolism. It aimed at discouraging Jews in Christian lands to solve their problems by simply converting to Christianity. So, what developed, according to Schäfer was a kind of counter-narrative to the Gospels that portrayed Jesus as illegitimate, a trickster, a monumental liar and a betrayer of his people, even though there is no historical proof for the latter.

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