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Yeshu (Hebrew language: Yēšū) is the name of possibly one individual or numerous separate individuals mentioned in rabbinic literature. The name is thought by some to refer to Jesus when used in the Talmud. The name Yeshu is also used in other sources before and after the completion of the Babylonian Talmud. It is also the modern Israeli spelling of Jesus.
The identification of Jesus with any number of individuals named Yeshu has numerous problems, as most of the individuals with this name in Rabbinic texts are referenced as having lived in time periods far detached from, and non-overlapping with that of Jesus. For example, Yeshu the sorcerer is noted for being executed by the Hasmonean government which lost legal authority in 63 BC, Yeshu the student is described being among the Pharisees who returned to Israel from Egypt in 74 BC, and Yeshu ben Pandera/ben Stada's stepfather is noted as speaking with Rabbi Akiva shortly before the rabbi's execution, an event which occurred in c. 134 AD. During the Middle Ages, Ashkenazi Jews authorities were forced by Holy Orders to interpret these passages as being in relation to the Christian beliefs about Jesus of Nazareth. As historian David Berger observed,
In 1240, Nicholas Donin, with the support of Pope Gregory IX, referred to Yeshu narratives to support his accusation that the Jewish community had attacked the virginity of Mary and the Christology. In the Disputation of Paris, Yechiel of Paris conceded that one of the Yeshu stories in the Talmud referred to Jesus of Nazareth, but that the other passages referred to other people. In 1372, John of Valladolid, with the support of the Archbishop of Toledo, made a similar accusation against the Jewish community; Moses ha-Kohen de Tordesillas argued that the Yeshu narratives referred to different people and could not have referred to Jesus of Nazareth. (1998). 9780800631222, Augsburg Fortress. ISBN 9780800631222
Asher ben Jehiel also asserted that the Yeshu of the Talmud is unrelated to the Christian Jesus.Tosafot HaRosh (Nashim 47a)
There are some modern scholars who understand these passages to be references to Christianity and the Christian figure of Jesus,Robert E. Van Voorst. Jesus outside the New Testament. 2000 . p. 124. "This is likely an inference from the Talmud and other Jewish usage, where Jesus is called Yeshu, and other Jews with the same name are called by the fuller name Yehoshua, "Joshua"" and others who see references to Jesus only in later rabbinic literature. Johann Maier argued that neither the Mishnah nor the two Talmuds refer to Jesus.Johann Maier, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Uberlieferung (Ertrage der Forschung 82; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978)
Another explanation given is that the name "Yeshu" is actually an acronym for the formula ( ), meaning "may his name and memory be obliterated".David M. Neuhaus, 'How Israeli Jews' Fear of Christianity Turned Into Hatred,' Haaretz 6 February:'The religious public in Israel is in many cases aware of the traditional interpretation of the term “Yeshu”: an acronym in Hebrew for “may his name and memory be blotted out.” .' There are instances in the Talmud where the name "Yeshu" is written with gershayim, a punctuation mark used to indicate acronyms or abbreviations, Hebrew punctuation guidelines, § 31, Academy of the Hebrew Language however, this only occurs in a single Masekhet.Sanhedrin 107b:12 The earliest known example of this theory comes from medieval Toledot Yeshu narratives. This has led to the accusation, first voiced by the Anti-Judaism writer Johann Andreas Eisenmenger in his Entdecktes Judenthum, that "Yeshu" was always such a deliberately insulting term for Jesus. Eisenmenger claimed that Jews believed that they were forbidden to mention names of false gods and instead were commanded to change and defame them and did so with Jesus' name as they considered him a false god. He argued that Jesus' original name was "Yeshua" and as Jews did not recognize him as saviour ( moshia`) or that he had even saved ( hoshia`) himself, they left out the ayin from the root meaning "to save". Eisenmenger's book against Judaism was denounced by the Jews as malicious libel, and was the subject of a number of refutations.
Early-20th-century writers such as and Klausner assume that references to Yeshu and Yeshu ha Notzri in the Talmud relate to Jesus. Indeed, in the Septuagint and Greek language Jewish texts such as the writings of Josephus and Philo of Alexandria, Jesus is the standard Greek translation of the common Hebrew name Yehoshua (Joshua), Greek having lost the h sound, as well as of the shortened form Yeshua which originated in the Second Temple period. Jesus was also used for the name Hoshea in the Septuagint in one of the three places where it referred to Joshua son of Nun.) The term "Yeshu" is not undisputedly attested prior to the Talmud and Tosefta, let alone as a Hebrew original for "Jesus". (In the case of the Jesus of Christianity, Clement of Alexandria and St. Cyril of Jerusalem claimed that the Greek form itself was his original name and that it was not a transliteration of a Hebrew form.) Origin of the Name Jesus Christ in The Catholic Encyclopedia Adolf Neubauer (19th century), aware of the problem but believing the term to be a reference to Jesus, argued that it was a shortened form of Yeshua resulting from the final letter ayin no longer being pronounced.A. Neubauer, Jewish Controversy and the Pugio Fidei, in The Expositor, no. 7, 1888, p. 24) Hugh J. Schonfield argued in a similar fashion that it was the northern pronunciation resulting from a silent ayin.Hugh J. Schonfield, The History of Jewish Christianity, From the First to the Twentieth Century London, Duckworth, 1936 This view was shared by Joachim JeremiasJ. Jeremias, Neutestamentliche Theologie, Gütersloh, 1973, vol. I, p. 13 and who argue that it was the Galilean pronunciation. The views of these theological scholars however are contradicted by the studies of Hebrew and Aramaic philologist E. Y. Kutscher, Professor of Hebrew Philology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and member of the Hebrew Language Academy, who noted that although the ayin became a silent letter it is never dropped from written forms nor is its effect on the preceding vowel lost (the change of the "u" to the diphthong "ua") as would have had to occur if Yeshu were derived from Yeshua in such a manner. Kutscher noted moreover that the guttural ayin was still pronounced in most parts of Galilee.E.Y. Kutscher, Studies in Galilean Aramaic, Ramat-Gan, 1976 pp. ??
The surname ben Pandera is not found in the Talmud account. (Rodkinson's translation drawing on the Tosefta account paraphrases the reference to Yeshu having taught Jacob by "so taught Jeshu b. Panthyra", in this case not translating "Yeshu" as "Jesus".) The name is found again in the text Kohelet Rabba 10:5 where a healer of the grandson of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi is described as being of ben Pandera. The source of this account is Shabbat 14:4-8 and Avodah Zarah 40 in the Jerusalem Talmud, but there ben Pandera is not mentioned. The word Yeshu is however found as a secondary marginal gloss to the first passage in the Leiden manuscript which together with the Midrashic version show that the account was understood to be about a follower of Yeshu ben Pandera. (Herford again takes liberty and adds "in the name of Jeshu Pandera" to his translation of the Talmud passages despite these words not being in the original text. Schäfer similarly provides a paraphrased translation mentioning "Jesus son of Pandera" which he admittedly has constructed himself by combining the Talmudic and Midrashic texts and the marginal glosses.) Kohelet Rabba also relates the account of Rabbi Eliezer ( Kohelet Rabba 1:24) in this case some copies mention Yeshu ben Pandera as in the Tosefta passage but others instead read peloni a placeholder name equivalent to English "so-and-so".
Jeffrey Rubenstein has argued that the accounts in Chullin and Avodah Zarah reveal an ambivalent relationship between rabbis and Christianity. In his view the tosefta account reveals that at least some Jews believed Christians were true healers, but that the rabbis saw this belief as a major threat. Concerning the Babylonian Talmud account in Avoda Zarah, Dr. Boyarin views Jacob of Sechania as a Christian preacher and understands Rabbi Eliezer's arrest for minuth as an arrest by the Romans for practising Christianity (the text uses the word for heretic). When the Governor (the text uses the word for chief judge) interrogated him, the rabbi answered that he "trusted the judge." Boyarin has suggested that this was the Jewish version of the Br'er Rabbit approach to domination, which he contrasts to the strategy of many early Christians, who proclaim their beliefs in spite of the consequences (i.e. martyrdom). Although Rabbi Eliezer was referring to God, the Governor interpreted him to be referring to the Governor himself, and freed the rabbi. According to them the account also reveals that there was greater contact between Christians and Jews in the 2nd century than commonly believed. They view the account of the teaching of Yeshu as an attempt to mock Christianity. According to Dr. Rubenstein, the structure of this teaching, in which a biblical prooftext is used to answer a question about Biblical law, is common to both the rabbis and early Christians. The vulgar content, however, may have been used to parody Christian values. Dr. Boyarin considers the text to be an acknowledgment that rabbis often interacted with Christians, despite their doctrinal antipathy.
A medieval account of Jesus, in which Jesus is described as being the son of Joseph, the son of Pandera (see translation of the 15th-century Yemenite Jews manuscript: ), gives a contemporary view of Jesus and where he is portrayed as an impostor.
Celsus in his discourse The True Word gives the name as Panthera in Greek. This name is not known from any graves or inscriptions, but the surname Pantera (a Latin rendering) is known from the 1st-century tombstone of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera.Marcello Craveri, La vita di Gesù, Feltrinelli, Milano, 1966 Origen (c. 248 AD) responded to Celsus' claim by saying that Pantheras was the patronymic of Saint Joseph the husband of Mary on account of his father, Jacob, being called Panther. An alternative claim was made in the Teaching of Jacob (634 AD) where Panther is said to be the grandfather of Mary.Hugh Joseph Schonfield, According to the Hebrews, Duckworth, 1937 Friedrich August Nitzsch (1840) suggested that the name may refer to a Panthera being a lustful animal and thus have the meaning of "whore", additionally being a pun on parthenos meaning virgin. Herford also considered the Greek pentheros meaning father-in-law, however he dismissed all of these forms including Celsus' Panthera as spurious explanations of the Hebrew Pandera as they do not match phonetically. He noted that Hebrew would have represented the sounds correctly if any of these were the origin. The interpolated form Panthyra appearing in the Rodkinson translation of the Talmud suffers the same problem.
Neubauer understand the name to be Pandareus. Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles and Chronological Notes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1887–1895 The Toledot Yeshu narratives contain elements resembling the story of Pandareus in Greek mythology, namely stealing from a temple and the presence of a bronze animal.
Robert EislerRobert Eisler, Alexander Haggerty Krappe, trans., The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist according to Flavius Josephus' recently rediscovered 'Capture of Jerusalem' and other Jewish and Christian sources, The Dial Press, 1931 considered the name to be derived from Pandaros. He also argued that it may not have been a real name but instead as a generic name for a betrayer. He notes that in the Iliad, Pandaros betrays the Greeks and breaks a truce confirmed by solemn oath. He argues that the name came to be used as a generic term for a betrayer and was borrowed by Hebrew. The name is indeed found in Genesis Rabba 50 in the expression qol Pandar (literally "voice of Pandaros" denoting false promises of a betrayer) used as a derogatory placeholder name for a judge of Sodom. The -a at the end of the form Pandera can be understood to be the Aramaic language definite article.
Klausner noted objections by other scholars on grammatical and phonetic grounds to the translation of Notzri as "Nazarene" meaning a person from Nazareth (Hebrew Natzrat), however the etymology of "Nazarene" is itself uncertain and one possibility is that it is derived from Notzri and did not mean a person from Nazareth.William David Davies, Dale C. Allison, A critical and exegetical commentary on the gospel according to Saint Matthew, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1997
In 1180 AD Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Melachim 11:4 briefly discusses Jesus in a passage later censored by the Church. He uses the name Yeshua for Jesus (an attested equivalent of the name unlike Yeshu) and follows it with HaNotzri showing that regardless of what meaning had been intended in the Talmudic occurrences of this term, Maimonides understood it as an equivalent of Nazarene. Late additions to the Josippon also refer to Jesus as Yeshua HaNotzri but not Yeshu HaNotzri.David Flusser, The Josippon (Josephus Gorionides), The Bialik Institute, Jerusalem, 1978
Among other passages, the Talmud names Yeshu HaNotzri (Jesus the Nazarene) as a character who was sentenced by God to spend his afterlife in Tzoah Rotachat for having “mocked the words” of the Jewish sages:
In the Florence manuscript of the Talmud (1177 AD) an addition is made to Sanhedrin 43a saying that Yeshu was hanged on the eve of the Shabbat.
According to Dr. Rubenstein, the account in Sanhedrin 107b recognizes the kinship between Christians and Jews, since Jesus is presented as a disciple of a prominent rabbi. But it also reflects and speaks to an anxiety fundamental to Rabbinic Judaism. Prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70, Jews were divided into different sects, each promoting different interpretations of the law. Rabbinic Judaism domesticated and internalized conflicts over the law, while vigorously condemning any sectarianism. In other words, rabbis are encouraged to disagree and argue with one another, but these activities must be carefully contained, or else they could lead to a schism. Although this story may not present a historically accurate account of Jesus' life, it does use a fiction about Jesus to communicate an important truth about the rabbis. Moreover, Rubenstein sees this story as a rebuke to overly harsh rabbis. Boyarin suggests that the rabbis were well aware of Christian views of the Pharisees and that this story acknowledges the Christian belief that Jesus was forgiving and the Pharisees were not (see Mark 2:1–2), while emphasizing forgiveness as a necessary rabbinic value.
Shabbat 104b relates that a ben Stada brought magic from Ancient Egypt in incisions in his flesh. Sanhedrin 67a relates that a ben-Stada was caught by hidden observers and hanged in the town of Lod on the eve of Passover. The debate then follows. It begins by asking if this was not ben Pandera rather than ben Stada. This is refuted by the claim that it is both, his mother's husband was Stada but her lover was Pandera. This is countered with the claim the husband was Pappos ben Yehuda (a 2nd-century AD figure elsewhere remembered as having locked up his unfaithful wife and visiting Rabbi Akiva in jail after the Bar-Kokhba revolt) and that the mother was named Stada. This is then refuted by the claim that the mother was named Miriam, the dresser of women's hair, but that she had gone astray from her husband (a Miriam the daughter of Bilgah, is mentioned elsewhere as having had an affair with a Roman soldier). In Aramaic, "gone astray" is satat da, thus a Midrashic meaning for the term Stada is obtained. Real historical relationships between the figures mentioned cannot be inferred due to the Midrashic nature of the debate. Pappos and Miriam might have been introduced simply as a result of their being remembered in connection with a theme of a woman having gone astray.
Ben-Stada is also mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud. In Shabbat 12:4 III he is mentioned as having learnt by cutting marks in his flesh. In Sanhedrin 7:12 I he is mentioned as an example of someone caught by hidden observers and subsequently stoned. This information is paralleled in the Tosefta in Shabbat 11:15 and Sanhedrin 10:11 respectively.
Other Rishonim, namely Rabbi Jacob ben Meir (Rabbeinu Tam), Nachmanides, and Yechiel of Paris explicitly repudiated the equation of the Yeshu of the Talmud and Jesus. Menachem Meiri observed that the epithet Ha-Notzri attached to Yeshu in many instances was a late gloss.
In 1554 a papal bull ordered the removal of all references from the Talmud and other Jewish texts deemed offensive and blasphemous to Christians. Thus the Yeshu passages were removed from subsequently published editions of the Talmud and Tosefta.Simon Cohen, Isaac Landman ed. The Universal Jewish encyclopedia: an authoritative and popular presentation of Jews and Judaism since the earliest times, The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia inc., 1941, article Censorship Nevertheless, several church writers would refer to the passages as evidence of Jesus outside the Gospels.
Recently, some scholars have argued that Yeshu is a literary device, and that the Yeshu stories provide a more complex view of early Rabbinic-Christian interactions. Whereas the Pharisees were one sect among several others in the Second Temple era, the Amoraim and Tannaim sought to establish Rabbinic Judaism as the normative form of Judaism. Like the rabbis, early Christians claimed to be working within Biblical traditions to provide new interpretations of Jewish laws and values. The sometimes blurry boundary between the rabbis and early Christians provided an important site for distinguishing between legitimate debate and heresy. Scholars like Jeffrey Rubenstein and Daniel Boyarin argue that it was through the Yeshu narratives that rabbis confronted this blurry boundary.
According to Jeffrey Rubenstein, the account in Sanhedrin 107b recognizes the kinship between Christians and Jews, since Jesus is presented as a disciple of a prominent rabbi. But it also reflects and speaks to an anxiety fundamental to Rabbinic Judaism. Prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70, Jews were divided into different sects, each promoting different interpretations of the law. Rabbinic Judaism domesticated and internalized conflicts over the law, while vigorously condemning any sectarianism. In other words, rabbis are encouraged to disagree and argue with one another, but these activities must be carefully contained, or else they could lead to a schism. Although this story may not present a historically accurate account of Jesus' life, it does use a fiction about Jesus to communicate an important truth about the rabbis. Moreover, Rubenstein sees this story as a rebuke to overly harsh rabbis. Boyarin suggests that the rabbis were well aware of Christian views of the Pharisees and that this story acknowledges the Christian belief that Jesus was forgiving and the Pharisees were not (see Mark 2), while emphasizing forgiveness as a necessary rabbinic value.
An intermediate view is that of Hyam Maccoby, who argues that most of these stories were not originally about Jesus, but were incorporated into the Talmud in the belief that they were, as a response to Christian missionary activity.
The name Yeshu has also been found in a fragment of the Jerusalem Talmud from the Cairo Genizah, a depository for holy texts which are not usable due to age, damage or errors. Flusser takes this as evidence of the term being a name; however, the standard text of the Jerusalem Talmud refers to one of the numerous Rabbi Yehoshuas of the Talmud and moreover the fragment has the latter name at other points in the text.
Yeshu is also mentioned in Isaac Luria's "Book of the Reincarnations", chapter 37. Within the long list of Jewish it is written:
A similar legend was reported by a Spanish monk when he visited Safed in 1555, with the difference in that the place was not where he was buried but where he hid.
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