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5 unusual facts about Jesus in the Talmud


Jesus in the Talmud

Lauterbach, Jacob Z., "Jesus in the Talmud” in Rabbinic Essays, Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1951 (reprinted by Ktav, 1973).

On the other side stand scholars such as Joseph Klausner (1925), following R. Travers Herford (1901) and Bernhard Pick (1887), who believed that the Talmud gives some insight into Jesus as a historical individual.

Daniel J. Lasker, 2007, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel ""Introduction to 2006 Reprint Edition", of Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, by R. Travers Herford, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2007

R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, KTAV Publishing House Inc, 2007.

Herford, R. Travers, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, London: Williams & Norgate, 1903 (reprint New York, KTAV, 1975)


John P. Meier

On the question of references to Jesus in the Talmud, Meier considers the thesis of Joseph Klausner (1925) that some very few rabbinic sources, none earlier than about than late 2nd or early 3rd century, contain traces of the historical Jesus.


see also

Francis George

In 2007, he asked Jews to reconsider descriptions of Jesus in the Talmud as a "bastard" in exchange for a softening of traditional Catholic prayers calling for Jews to be converted to Christianity.

Sources for the historicity of Jesus

Peter Schäfer states that there can be no doubt that the narrative of the execution of Jesus in the Talmud refers to Jesus of Nazareth, but states that the rabbinic literature in question are not Tannaitic but from a later Amoraic period and may have drawn on the Christian gospels, and may have been written as responses to them.