One of the most controversial books in history,
Toledot Yeshu recounts the life story of Jesus from a negative and anti-Christian perspective. It ascribes to Jesus an illegitimate birth, a theft of the Ineffable Name of God, heretical activities, and, finally, a disgraceful death. Perhaps for centuries, the Toledot Yeshu circulated orally until it coalesced into various literary forms. Although the dates of these written compositions remain obscure, some early hints of a Jewish counter-history of Jesus can be found in the works of pagan and Christian authors of Late Antiquity, such as Celsus, Justin, and Tertullian. In the Middle Ages, the book became the object and tool of a most acrimonious controversy. Jews, Christians, and atheists - such as Ibn Shaprut, Luther, and Voltaire - quoted and commented on
Toledot Yeshu, trying to disprove the beliefs of their opponents and revealing their own prejudices. Due to the offensive nature of the book, scholars have until recently paid little attention to
Toledot Yeshu. In 2007, Peter Schäfer launched a project at Princeton University to prepare a scholarly edition with translation and commentary based on all the available manuscripts (about 150). Along with this project, Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch organized an international conference, attended by the leading scholars of the subject, to discuss the present state of research. The conference contributions, published in this volume, mark a new stage in
Toledot Yeshu research.
Table of contents:
Peter Schäfer: Introduction -
Michael Sokoloff: The Date and Provenance of the Aramaic
Toledot Yeshu on the Basis of Aramaic Dialectology -
Peter Schäfer: Agobard's and Amulo's
Toledot Yeshu -
William Horbury: The Strasbourg Text of the Toledot -
Adina M. Yoffie: Observations on the Huldreich Manuscripts of the
Toledot Yeshu -
Michael Stanislawski: A Preliminary Study of a Yiddish »Life of Jesus« (
Toledot Yeshu): JTS Ms. 2211 -
Pierluigi Piovanelli: The
Toledot Yeshu and Christian Apocryphal Literature: The Formative Years -
Eli Yassif:
Toledot Yeshu: Folk-Narrative as Polemics and Self Criticism -
Philip Alexander: The
Toledot Yeshu in the Context of Jewish-Muslim Debate -
Sarit Kattan Gribetz: Hanged and Crucified: The Book of Esther and
Toledot Yeshu -
Michael Meerson: Meaningful Nonsense: A Study of Details in
Toledot Yeshu -
Ora Limor and
Israel Jacob Yuval: Judas Iscariot: Revealer of the Hidden Truth -
John Gager: Simon Peter, Founder of Christianity or Saviour of Israel? -
Galit Hasan-Rokem: Polymorphic Helena -
Toledot Yeshu as a Palimpsest of Religious Narratives and Identities -
Yaacov Deutsch: The Second Life of the Life of Jesus: Christian Reception of
Toledot Yeshu -
Paola Tartakoff: The
Toledot Yeshu and Jewish-Christian Conflict in the Medieval Crown of Aragon.
