Jesus in the Talmud

[TheRabbi]

I admittedly don’t read fluidly Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic, so I am in this case trusting the scholarship of the aforementioned author.

That's a mistake. These "scholars" make their living and reputation by reading controversial things into texts and getting debate started. This gets them invited to speaking engagements all over the country.

 

[simchat_torah]

If you doubt the references, you are doubting the references from the head of the Judaic Studies department from Princeton, whose reputation among the scholarly community, I believe, would be in peril after publishing such spurious references.

I highly doubt his entire professional scholastic career hinges on whether he is correct lon this one issue. However, if it does, I'm afraid his career will soon come to a close. Moreover, the references are correct, but his conclusions are wrong. Dead wrong.

Tell you what, instead of relying entirely upon one person's book, why don't you vary your studies a bit? Relying on one person is a dangerous thing.

First Simchat, Let’s get several things straight. Pomposity scares me not

I wasn't being pompous. I was being brutally honest. Whether you got the citations from a book or a website matters not. The point is: You didn't get them from your own studies or from reading the Talmud.
I'm sorry you failed to grasp the higher point I was making, which was not the specific source of your citations, but merely that you are wholly unfamiliar with what you cited and relied upon a third party source to provide them for you.

Secondly you don’t know anything about me so for you to be making ignorant unfounded assumptions about me is perhaps illustrative of your own personal diminutiveness.

Mmm, big words for someone attempting to argue about a subject for which he is ignorant. Tell you what, read the Talmud, read the references, find a variety of sources, and then we might have some grounds to debate. Until then, debating you would be unfair... as you are wholly unprepared for it.

And just for your information the words such as Paris and Vatican are the names of the libraries where they manuscripts are housed.

Which further shows your ignorance. To prove that Jesus is in the Talmud it would be completely useless to cite which libraries the manuscripts reside! How goofy. I think what happened was you picked up the book, copied and pasted the citations and had no idea what it was that you were citing. What library the manuscripts reside has nothing to do with the debate, and any rational person entering the debate would not have used those totally unnecessary sources!

What WOULD have been utterly ESSENTIAL to the debate is actually citing the sources and context, not some mini snippet. Providing less than a sentance for references that are paragraphs in length does not suffice for providing source text. Citing 4 words and a comma does not count as providing context for a passage that is multiple paragraphs (as though it were plainly obvious that "husband Stada, lover Pandera" is about Jesus???? lol, c'mon).

What happened here, and you have not been man enough to admit it, is that you are completely ignorant as to what the Talmud says. You've never read it. You don't even know what the full passages say in regards to Jesus. You don't know the history behind the stories in the Talmud. You (maybe) have read a book about the subject, posted arrogantly and authoratatively, stating as though fact that Jesus the Christian Messiah is in the Talmud. When pressed for details you provided barely even quotations of snippets from a book, not the Talmudic references and context itself.

If you'd like to give this a REAL attempt, please... see me in the formal debate thread. And one last time, the link is here:
http://foru.ms/t6335926-formal-debate-challenge-does-jesus-appear-in-the-talmud.html#post40199185

IF you follow the guidelines set out in the debate thread, I garuntee you will earn respect in reply posts. But if you make a mockery of "debate" as you have in this thread, I will certainly request that you be removed from the thread.

 

[simchat_torah]

That's a mistake. These "scholars" make their living and reputation by reading controversial things into texts and getting debate started. This gets them invited to speaking engagements all over the country.

Absolutely. People like this want to make money by stretching a Talmudic passage that states "husband Stada, lover Pandera" to somehow be a reference to Jesus.
If this is seriously one of the "proofs" he provides in his book then I believe we could outright dismiss the entire book as bunk without even giving it a second thought.

 

[ContraMundum]

That's a mistake. These "scholars" make their living and reputation by reading controversial things into texts and getting debate started. This gets them invited to speaking engagements all over the country.

Wow....sounds exactly like liberal NT "scholars" to me.

 

[TheRabbi]

Absolutely right. I think the NIV editors made huge blunders in their New Testament. They created questions in the minds of Evangelicals that even I don't see as valid.

 

[debi b]

The Tosefta and Braitot are always brought to clarify matters.

I recently purchased a copy of Tosefta - it is unpointed making it a bit of a challenge for me. I have an English version, but there were times I wanted to understand what was being translated.

 

[TheRabbi]

Who translated the Tosefta?

 

[Talmidah]

I believe there is a translation by Neusner. Not sure about others.

 

[torahgrandma]

What WOULD have been utterly ESSENTIAL to the debate is actually citing the sources and context, not some mini snippet. Providing less than a sentance for references that are paragraphs in length does not suffice for providing source text. Citing 4 words and a comma does not count as providing context for a passage that is multiple paragraphs (as though it were plainly obvious that "husband Stada, lover Pandera" is about Jesus???? lol, c'mon).


Absolutely. People like this want to make money by stretching a Talmudic passage that states "husband Stada, lover Pandera" to somehow be a reference to Jesus.
If this is seriously one of the "proofs" he provides in his book then I believe we could outright dismiss the entire book as bunk without even giving it a second thought.

Marcus Jastrow's Dictionary of the Talmud ([FONT=&quot]A Dictionary of the Targumim, Talmud Babli, Talmud Yerushalmi and Midrashic Literature)[/FONT], which is used by many orthodox Jews in their scholarly study of the Hebrew and Aramaic words found in the Talmud states: "Pandera (Pantera, Panteri) surname of Joseph the father of Jesus of Nazereth. Jastrow also states that the Aramaic term panter is a panther or a leopard.

I am sure you probably have a copy on your bookshelf Simchat, so please check it out for yourself.

Here is a wiki bio about Jastrow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Jastrow

Also, these quotes from the Jewish Encyclopedia may be of help to you:

The Jewish legends in regard to Jesus are found in three sources, each independent of the others—(1) in New Testament apocrypha and Christian polemical works, (2) in the Talmud and the Midrash, and (3) in the life of Jesus ("Toledot Yeshu'") that originated in the Middle Ages. It is the tendency of all these sources to be-little the person of Jesus by ascribing to him illegitimate birth, magic, and a shameful death….


The earliest authenticated passage ascribing illegitimate birth to Jesus is that in Yeb. iv. 3. The mysterious phrase "that man" cited in this passage as occurring in a family register which R. Simeon ben Azza is said to have found seems to indicate that it refers to Jesus (see Derenbourg in "R. E. J." i. 293), and here occur also the two expressions so often applied to Jesus in later literature—"that anonymous one," (the name of Jesus being avoided) and "bastard"; for which in later times was used). Such a family register may have been preserved at Jerusalem in the Judæo-Christian community.


Birth of Jesus.
…It is certain, in any case, that the rabbinical sources also regard Jesus as the "son of Pandera", although it is noteworthy that he is called also "Ben Stada" (Shab. 104b; Sanh. 67a).


http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=254&letter=J&search=jesus#2

 

[TheRabbi]

The isssue is not whether the Talmud speaks of Yeshu Ha Notsri/Jesus of Nazareth. The issue is, which one? There were many. The name pool was very small back then, as evidenced by the Talpiyot tomb.

The point is that there was another Yeshu HaNotzri/Jesus of Nazareth who lived long before the Christian Jesus and his execution is mentioned in the Talmud. In fact Nazareth likely produced many, many men named Jesus.

 

[muffler dragon]

The point is that there was another Yeshu HaNotzri/Jesus of Nazareth who lived long before the Christian Jesus and his execution is mentioned in the Talmud. In fact Nazareth likely produced many, many men named Jesus.

From what I have read, Nazareth wasn't more than a couple family dwelling in first century CE; therefore, I don't know that there would be a plethora of such persons. However, I don't know if HaNotzri always references the locale.

 

[simchat_torah]

to HT/TG:

I am sure you probably have a copy on your bookshelf Simchat, so please check it out for yourself.

Its refreshing to see you actually providing substanance to a debate HT... but this isn't the thread for which I will continue to debate. This has been stated many times over. If you want, bring your evidence to the thread above in the debate section and I'll gladly address it there.



to md:

Fyi... outcroppings of developed civilization have been found near Nazareth dating back 9,000 years (supposedly). Numerous masonry homes have been found dating to the first couple of centuries c.e., and these would have been for the more wealthy at the time. Archeologist James Strange has found evidence of roughly 2,000 people living permanently within the borders of Nazareth during Jesus' time. There were numerous outcroppings around the city as well, which could have driven the population significantly higher for the "Nazareth region."

James Strange reference: *E. Meyers & J. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, & Early Christianity Nashville: Abingdon, 1981*

 

[muffler dragon]

to md:

Fyi... outcroppings of developed civilization have been found near Nazareth dating back 9,000 years (supposedly). Numerous masonry homes have been found dating to the first couple of centuries c.e., and these would have been for the more wealthy at the time. Archeologist James Strange has found evidence of roughly 2,000 people living permanently within the borders of Nazareth during Jesus' time. There were numerous outcroppings around the city as well, which could have driven the population significantly higher for the "Nazareth region."

James Strange reference: *E. Meyers & J. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, & Early Christianity Nashville: Abingdon, 1981*

Thanks, ST.

1981 is much older than what I had suspected. I guess it depends on who performs the archeology.

 

[simchat_torah]

The only thing cited from James Strange is the citation that roughly 2,000 people lived within the city limits of Nazareth. The rest of the info came from other sources.

 

[simchat_torah]

More Citations for md


Stone houses: Chad Fife Emmett (1995). Beyond the Basilica:Christians and Muslims in Nazareth. University of Chicago Press, 16.

Archeological Evidence of civilization dating back to 9,000 c.e.: Goring-Morris, A.N. “The quick and the dead: the social context of Aceramic Neolithic mortuary practices as seen from Kfar HaHoresh.” In: I. Kuijt (ed.), Social Configurations of the Near Eastern Neolithic: Community Identity, Hierarchical Organization, and Ritual (1997)

 

[torahgrandma]

to HT/TG:Its refreshing to see you actually providing substanance to a debate HT...

I am not HaTorah...I am Torah Grandma, thank you.

but this isn't the thread for which I will continue to debate. This has been stated many times over. If you want, bring your evidence to the thread above in the debate section and I'll gladly address it there.

This is where I posted my substantiated information, this is where we shall discuss it....unless of course you have no response

 

[simchat_torah]

This is where I posted my substantiated information, this is where we shall discuss it

nice try. I won't be playing games. You have a choice. But I already know what you have chosen.

 

[torahgrandma]

nice try. I won't be playing games. You have a choice. But I already know what you have chosen.

No games here Mr Simchat, but let me clarify it for you. Everything that I post here is for the other members of the forum. When you talk, I post more. There are a whole lot of cats in the bag, so I am hoping that the discussion will continue. If not, I may just post them all anyway. .

 

[simchat_torah]

Just as deceitful and full of games as ever Higher Truth. I'm not going to bite on your bait. And if you had any integrity at all, you'd at least post your evidence in a formal debate thread where you can be held accountable.

 

[torahgrandma]

Just as deceitful and full of games as ever Higher Truth. I'm not going to bite on your bait. And if you had any integrity at all, you'd at least post your evidence in a formal debate thread where you can be held accountable.

Debate 101:

An ad hominem attack or false allegations utilized as a smoke screen is not a good substitute for a well constructed rebuttal.

A lot of people are admitting that the passages are about Jesus of Nazareth......Jewish people....

http://www.shalomctr.org/node/556