What does Judaism actually say about Jesus?

Judaism says Jesus is not God and not the Messiah. On their view the Messiah still hasn’t come. But Christians keep hearing that we share “Judeo-Christian” values with rabbinic Judaism, as if we’re basically the same faith with a different ending. If that’s true, we have every right to know what their own central book says about the Person our whole faith is built on. So let’s just read it.

First, what the Talmud is

The Talmud isn’t the Old Testament. It’s the Torah we share plus centuries of rabbis arguing about how to apply it. Each section starts with the Mishnah (the oral tradition, written down) and then the Gemara (the rabbis debating it). The Babylonian Talmud was put together in Babylon in the centuries after the Temple fell in 70 AD, and Maimonides later boiled its rulings down into his law code, the Mishneh Torah.

Most of it is honestly boring: endless legal detail for every situation you can imagine. Jews don’t treat it as infallible, and the rabbis in it disagree with each other constantly. But it’s the foundation of rabbinic Judaism, and it’s the world of the Pharisees Jesus kept confronting in the Gospels. Once you read it, you understand why He was so hard on them, and why He still prayed for them.

What it says about Jesus

The most famous passage is a story in Gittin 56b–57a. Onkelos, the nephew of the Roman emperor Titus, wants to convert, so he raises three people from the dead through necromancy and asks each one about the next world.

Titus tells him the Jews’ commandments are too many to keep, so go fight them instead, and admits his own punishment is being burned and scattered over the seven seas every day. Balaam tells him not to seek Israel’s peace, and says his own punishment is being “cooked in boiling semen.” Then Onkelos raises “Jesus the Nazarene.” Jesus tells him the opposite of Balaam: “Their welfare you shall seek, their misfortune you shall not seek.” And still, His punishment is the worst one in the story: “He is punished with boiling excrement. As the Master said: Anyone who mocks the words of the Sages will be sentenced to boiling excrement.”

Then the Talmud admits who He was to them: “Balaam, who was a prophet, wished Israel harm, whereas Jesus the Nazarene, who was a Jewish sinner, sought their well-being” (Gittin 57a). By their own telling, Jesus wanted good for His people, and He gets the worst punishment anyway, for questioning the rabbis. That’s exactly what He did to their faces: “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men” (Matthew 23:13).

The Talmud also takes credit for His death. Sanhedrin 43a: “On Passover Eve they hung the corpse of Jesus the Nazarene after they killed him by way of stoning. And a crier went out before him for forty days, publicly proclaiming: Jesus the Nazarene is going out to be stoned because he practiced sorcery, incited people to idol worship, and led the Jewish people astray.” The same page explains why the court bothered with a herald at all: “Jesus was different, as he had close ties with the government.” The Gospel records the same charge from the religious leaders: “We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God” (John 19:7).

It calls His miracles sorcery, and says where He got it. Shabbat 104b: “Didn’t the infamous ben Stada take magic spells out of Egypt in a scratch on his flesh?” That lines up with the one time the Gospels put Jesus in Egypt, as a child (Matthew 2:13-15). Notice they don’t deny the miracles. They just say the power had to come from somewhere else.

It writes Him into a story as a student who got thrown out. Sotah 47a and Sanhedrin 107b say Rabbi Yehoshua ben Peraḥya pushed Him away, and Jesus “stood up a brick and worshipped it as an idol.” Then the verdict: “Jesus performed sorcery, incited Jews to engage in idolatry, and led Israel astray” (Sanhedrin 107b). Elsewhere it holds Him up as the example of a student who “overcooks his food in public, i.e., sins in public and causes others to sin, such as in the well-known case of Jesus the Nazarene” (Sanhedrin 103a). Peter Schäfer, a Princeton scholar of Judaism, reads that “spoiled dish” line as a sexual accusation.

And it goes after His followers. When Rabbi Yishmael’s nephew, ben Dama, was bitten by a snake, “Ya’akov of the village of Sekhanya, who was a heretic, a disciple of Jesus the Nazarene, came to treat him, but Rabbi Yishmael did not let him do so,” and ben Dama died (Avodah Zarah 27b). The same Ya’akov shows up again in Avodah Zarah 17a.

What it says about His mother

Shabbat 104b names His mother “Miriam, who braided women’s hair,” and explains her nickname: “This one strayed from her husband.” It says He was fathered by another man: “His mother’s husband, who acted as his father, was named Stada, but the one who had relations with his mother and fathered him was named Pandeira.” Sanhedrin 67a repeats the same story. And Sanhedrin 106a, in the Balaam passages the Jewish Encyclopedia ties to Jesus, says: “This woman was descended from princes and rulers, and was licentious with carpenters.”

This is an attack on the virgin birth, and it’s old. Celsus, a pagan writer quoted by the church father Origen, has a Jew tell the same story: Mary was thrown out by her carpenter husband for adultery and had her child by a soldier named Panthera (Origen, Against Celsus 1.28, 1.32). Schäfer says the match between Celsus and the Talmud shows they’re drawing on the same early Jewish slander.

Toledot Yeshu: the whole story told as a lie

Outside the Talmud, a medieval Jewish story called Toledot Yeshu (“the life of Jesus”) tells it all in one piece. Jesus is a bastard, mocked by the other children as the son of Pandera, thrown out of the congregation, who sneaks into the Temple, cuts God’s holy name into his thigh, and uses it to do His miracles and fool the people. Mika Ahuvia writes that “according to some late medieval sources, it was a Jewish custom to read Toledot Yeshu on Christmas Eve” (Ancient Jew Review, 2014).

The Gospel saw this coming. After the resurrection, the chief priests paid the guards to say “His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept,” and “this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day” (Matthew 28:13, 15). The cover story never stopped. It just got written down.

“That’s not our Jesus”

The Talmud insults Jesus Christ, but the rabbis try to downplay it. At the Disputation of Paris in 1240, Rabbi Yechiel argued that the Yeshu in the Talmud wasn’t the Christian Jesus: “not every Louis born in France is king.” Some rabbis still say that today, or say it’s just one rabbi’s opinion, or that you have to read it in Hebrew.

But they know who Balaam and Yeshu point to. The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) calls “Balaam” a “pseudonym” “given to Jesus in Sanh. 106b and Giṭ. 57a.” Peter Schäfer’s book Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton University Press, 2007) concludes these passages are deliberate parodies of the New Testament stories about Jesus. And Sefaria’s modern English translation of Gittin 57a names Him outright: “Jesus the Nazarene.” For centuries, printed editions dropped or swapped the name (partly under Church censorship), and the 1935 English Soncino edition started putting it back.

Maimonides, and rabbis today

Maimonides, the most important legal authority in Judaism, wrote in his law code: “Jesus of Nazareth who aspired to be the Mashiach and was executed by the court... Can there be a greater stumbling block than Christianity?” He says Christianity caused “the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord” (Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 11:4).

Rabbis still teach this today. In a video clip, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi says a Christian who follows “a man-made book” and admires “JC” “is actually a bigger criminal than someone that lives like an animal,” because the Christian replaced God’s “real prophet with a fake prophet.” One question for him: has any other man in history been crucified and come back to life three days later?

What it says about Gentiles

A Gentile is anyone who isn’t Jewish. The Hebrew word is goyim, which just means “the nations.” So if you’re a Christian who isn’t Jewish, this is talking about you.

• Gentiles aren’t even called “man”: “you, the Jewish people, are called adam, but gentiles are not called adam” (Keritot 6b). Bava Metzia 114b says the same.

• You don’t have to return a Gentile’s lost item, and “it is permitted to financially benefit from a business error of a gentile” (Bava Kamma 113b). The same page does say “it is prohibited to rob a gentile.”

• In court, if the Jew can’t win under either law, Rabbi Yishmael says “one approaches the case circuitously, seeking a justification to vindicate the Jew” (Bava Kamma 113a). Rabbi Akiva disagreed.

• “With regard to a Christian... it is always prohibited for a Jew to engage in business with him” (Avodah Zarah 7b).

• “A gentile who engages in Torah study is liable to receive the death penalty” (Sanhedrin 59a).

• “A gentile who struck a Jew is liable to receive the death penalty” (Sanhedrin 58b).

• Gentiles are “suspected of bestiality,” and a Jewish woman “may not deliver the child of a gentile woman” (Mishnah Avodah Zarah 2:1).

• Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: “The best of the gentiles, kill; the best of serpents, crush its brain” (Mekhilta and Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach, on Exodus 14:7).

• Maimonides: “if we see an idolater being swept away or drowning in the river, we should not help him. If we see that his life is in danger, we should not save him” (Mishneh Torah, Foreign Worship 10:1).

• Gentiles aren’t lifted out of a pit, while “the heretics, and the informers, and the apostates are lowered into a pit, but not raised out of it” (Avodah Zarah 26b).

Some will say the Jewish Encyclopedia notes most of this isn’t applied today. Maybe. But these are still the rabbis’ readings of the same Old Testament we read, and no Christian reading of Scripture has ever ended at “you can keep your neighbor’s lost wallet if he’s the wrong kind of person.” Scripture says the opposite: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

What it says about children

It also has disgusting passages involving children (Ketubot 11a–11b, Niddah 44b, Sanhedrin 52b, Sanhedrin 54b, Yevamot 60b). Even if someone says it’s “just one rabbi’s opinion,” the question stands: why was that an acceptable opinion to write down and keep for fifteen hundred years?

Rabbis over God

The Talmud even has a story where the rabbis beat God in an argument. In Bava Metzia 59b, a voice from heaven sides with Rabbi Eliezer, the other rabbis overrule it anyway, and God is said to smile and say: “My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me.”

They also build loopholes around God’s commands and think it’s fine. Hillel’s prosbol keeps a debt alive through the seventh year (Gittin 36a), even though the Law says every creditor shall release it (Deuteronomy 15:2). Jesus called out this exact habit to the Pharisees’ faces with the Corban loophole: “Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition… Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition” (Mark 7:9, 13).

That’s the thread through all of it. In the Talmud the rabbis sit over God’s Word. So when Jesus questioned the rabbis, He committed the one sin they couldn’t forgive.

How Christians react

Christians reading these passages for the first time react the same way. In the comments under these videos, the same things come up again and again. Most believers had no idea this was in the Talmud. “Judeo-Christian” is an oxymoron, because rabbinic Judaism is something else from the faith Jesus fulfilled. The usual defenses (“it’s out of context,” “nobody believes that anymore,” “you didn’t read it in Hebrew”) never explain why it was written down and kept. Some put it bluntly: “The best argument against Judaism is to read the Talmud out loud.” “What the Torah prohibits, the Talmud permits.” “Remember, they’ll call you everything but a liar.” “Jews: You should be ashamed of yourself for interpreting God’s law that way. Jesus: Friend, I wrote the law.” One reader pointed out that the rabbis spent ink and paper slandering a man centuries after He died, right when Christianity was spreading. And many said they pray for Jewish people to see the truth, including Jewish converts asking prayer for their own families.

Jesus told us to expect this: “Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man’s sake. Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy” (Luke 6:22-23).

The gospel is for them too

Here’s where we have to be careful. None of this is a reason to hate Jewish people. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11), and He still went to the cross for them.

Remember who wrote half the New Testament. Paul was a Pharisee who hunted Christians down and watched Stephen get stoned to death. And he wrote: “Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief... This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:13, 15). If God saved Saul, He can save any rabbi who has read every one of these pages.

So expose the sin, and don’t lose your mercy. A Christian who wants to see Jewish people suffer has forgotten the gospel that saved him. Pray for them like Jesus did.

So is “Judeo-Christian” real?

No. Christianity and rabbinic Judaism share the Old Testament, and they read it in opposite directions. One says Jesus is the Messiah who fulfilled it. The other’s central book says He was a sorcerer, a bastard, and a man boiling in excrement for questioning the rabbis. So when someone says “Judeo-Christian,” this is what rabbinic Judaism’s own central text says about the Jesus our whole faith is built on. “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

Built from these videos: “Here’s What The Talmud REALLY Says” (UNTO AGES), “These Jewish teachings on Jesus will disturb you...” (Sanctus), “What Talmudic Rabbis Don’t Want Gentiles To Know” (Born Again Barbarian), “Exposing The Evil In The Talmud” (Underground Outlaw Entertainment), and a “TALMUD” livestream. Every Talmud quote is from Sefaria’s William Davidson English edition.

Keep reading: Question 18 (all religions the same) · Question 25 (where you were born) · Question 23 (just a good teacher)