Judaism discovered

Jesus in the Talmud

It was the standard disinformation practice of apologists for the Talmud to deny that it contains any scurrilous references to Jesus. According to this customary charade, to assert the truth that the Talmud contains disgusting and pornographic blasphemies against Jesus is "hateful and antisemitic." The truth cannot be hateful however, except in the eyes of those who hate the truth. Truth is not "anti" anyone, for the truth sets everyone free. While major Zionist and rabbinic organizations charged with the mission of deceiving Christians and gentiles through their mouthpiece media, such as the ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, continue to stonewall and maintain the covert charade by denying that there is anything significant in the Talmud which libels the Christian savior, the position of certain Judaic scholars over the years has undergone an alteration and more have leaned toward revealing the actual rabbinic doctrine on this subject.

In the latter part of the 20th century, for example, Hyam Maccoby was willing to concede in a book intended mainly for scholars and specialists, that it "seems" that: "The Talmud contains a few explicit references to Jesus...These references are certainly not complimentary...There seems little doubt that the account of the execution of Jesus on the eve of Passover does refer to the Christian Jesus...The passage in which Jesus' punishment in hell is described also seems to refer to the Christian Jesus. It is a piece of anti-Christian polemic dating from the post-70 CE period..." ⁴³³

Maccoby's qualification that the Talmud "seems^M to attack Jesus Christ, was gradually replaced by more unambiguous confirmation by other Judaic scholars later in the 20th century. But whether or not Talmudists confirm, qualify or deny it, we are not dependent on their admissions or spin for documentary evidence of the disgusting and hateful references to Jesus in the Talmudic texts themselves, for example in BT Sanhedrin 43a, Sanhedrin 107b, Sotah 47a, Shabbos 104b and Gittin 57a.

In 1984 Prof. Robert Goldenberg wrote: "Many famous legends about personalities in the Bible make their first appearance in the Talmud...rabbinic narrative includes folklore, stories about angels and

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demons, and gossip about all sorts of surprising people (Nero became a convert to Judaism, Jesus was an Egyptian magician and so on)." ^4M

By 1999, certain Orthodox Judaic organizations were even more forthcoming, openly admitting that the Talmud describes Jesus as a sorcerer and a demented sex freak. These rabbinic organizations make this admission perhaps out of the conceit that their supremacy is so well-entrenched in the modern world that they need not concern themselves with adverse reactions. On the website of the Chabad-Lubavitch group, we find the following statement, accompanied by citations from the Talmud:

"The Talmud (Babylonian edition) records other sins of 'Jesus the Nazarene.' 1. 'He and his disciples practiced sorcery and black magic, led Jews astray into idolatry, and were sponsored by foreign, gentile powers for the purpose of subverting Jewish worship (Sanhedrin 43a). 2. He was sexually immoral, worshipped statues of stone (a brick is mentioned), was cut off from the Jewish people for his wickedness, and refused to repent (Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a). 3. He learned witchcraft in Egypt...(Shabbos 104b)." (End quote from Chabad-Lubavitch). ⁴³⁵

BT Gittin 57a says Jesus is in hell, being boiled in "hot excrement" (feces).

BT Sanhedrin 43a states: "On Passover Eve they hanged Jesus of Nazareth. And the herald went out before him for 40 days and proclaimed, Jesus of Nazareth is going to be stoned⁴³⁶ because he practiced sorcery, incited and led Israel astray. Whoever knows of an argument that may be proposed in his favor should come and present that argument on his behalf. But the judges did not find an argument in his favor, so they hanged him on Passover Eve...Did Jesus of Nazareth deserve that a search be made for an argument in his favor? Surely he incited others to idol worship..." ⁴³⁷

Jesus "went and set up a brick to symbolize an idol and bowed down to it...Anyone who sins and also causes the community to sin is not permitted to

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do repentance. And a Sage said: Jesus performed magic and incited the people of Israel and led them astray." (BT Sanhedrin 107b). ⁴³⁸

Through the middle and late 20th century a sincere seminarian, for example, in many cases would be laughed out of the seminary classroom if he asserted that the rabbinic texts contained hateful and vile invective against Jesus. The mainline Protestant and Catholic churches in that period ordained tens of thousands of clergymen who had been indoctrinated to believe that there was no noteworthy anti-Jesus polemic in the sacred rabbinic texts. The principal scholars and texts relied upon to promulgate this fallacy were as follows: Hermann L. Strack, author of Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash and Jesus die Hdretiker und die Christen nach den dltesten judischen Angaben, who claimed that the Talmud said little about Jesus. Similar denials were proffered by Hebrew University Professor Joseph Klausner in his 1922 book, Yeshu ha-Notzri; by Morris Goldstein in Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (1950) and by Jacob Lauerbach, in his essay "Jesus in the Talmud" in Rabbinic Essays. ⁴³⁹

The most formidable and effective of these apologists is Johann Maier of Cologne University, author of the 1978 work, Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Uberlieferung ("Jesus of Nazareth in Talmudic Tradition"), a book crammed with sophisticated arguments and impressive-looking charts seeking to demonstrate that there is no Christian Jesus in the Talmud. The judgment of Talmud scholar Peter Schafer on Maier's work is that it constitutes a "chimera of rationalistic and positivistic historicity...evoked almost as if to evade the real questions."

Maier's main contention is that the Talmud is unreliable as an actual historical source of information about Jesus. This is true. We have no argument with this assertion. It grieves us to see so many Christians foolishly turning to the Talmud for supplementary information about Christ and His time. As Schafer astutely affirms, "The historical Jesus does not appear in our rabbinic sources; they do not provide any reliable evidence of him, let alone historical 'facts' that deviate from the New Testament and therefore must be taken seriously."

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Yet what is significant are the Talmud's fantasies about Jesus as the formative basis for what Judaism taught about Him. Of course the Talmud lies about Jesus. Hitler lied about Judaics, but the fact that they were lies cannot justify anyone claiming that Hitler wasn't in fact defaming Judaics or referring to Judaics. The same is true for the Talmud. It is a fantasy, but at the same time this fantasy serves to inform and direct the rabbinic teaching concerning Jesus Christ that is imparted to Judaic youth generation after generation, as well as to humanity at large through popular books such as The Passover Plot and influential movies like The Last Temptation of Christ and The Da Vinci Code. What Prof. Schafer points to in his important book, Jesus in the Talmud, is the historical significance of the Talmud vis a vis Jesus Christ. The Talmud is not a reliable record of Jesus' life; far from it. It does however, constitute valid testimony of the Antichrist hate propaganda (Schafer styles it "counternarratives") that Judaism erected over time as a reply to the challenge of the Gospel:

"...these (mainly) Babylonian stories about Jesus and his family are deliberate and highly sophisticated counternarratives to the stories about Jesus' life and death in the Gospels — narratives that presuppose a detailed knowledge of the New Testament, in particular of the Gospel of John, presumably through the Diatessaron and/or the Peshitta, the New Testament of the Syrian Church...they are polemical counternarratives that parody the New Testament stories, most notably the story of Jesus' birth and death. They ridicule Jesus' birth from a virgin, as maintained by the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and they contest fervently the claim that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. Most remarkably, they counter the New Testament Passion story with its message of the Jews' guilt and shame as Christ killers. Instead, they reverse it completely: yes, they maintain, we accept responsibility for it, but there is no reason to feel ashamed because we rightfully executed a blasphemer and idolater. Jesus deserved death, and he got what he deserved. Accordingly, they subvert the Christian idea of Jesus' resurrection by having him punished forever in hell and by making clear that this fate awaits his followers as well, who believe in this impostor. There is no resurrection, they insist, not for him and not for his followers; in other words, there is no justification whatsoever for this Christian sect that impudently claims to be the new covenant...This...is the historical message of the (late) talmudic evidence of Jesus...the rabbis drafted...a powerful

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counternarrative that was meant to shake the foundations of the Christian message: for, according to them, Jesus was not born from a virgin, as his followers claimed, but out of wedlock, the son of a whore and her lover; therefore, he could not be the Messiah of Davidic descent, let alone the Son of God." ⁴⁴⁰

By the twenty-first century, long-standing denials by Talmudists and Zionists and their gentile apologists concerning Jesus in the Talmud were slowly being discredited after having held sway over Christians for decades. Judaism's new storyline, as of this writing, is to pretend there never were any significant denials and that, "of course negative portrayals of Christ are in the Talmud and the rabbis have never denied it." They just "obscured" it "a little." David Klinghoffer demarcates this new line in "What the Talmud Really Says About Jesus":

"...the scandalous passages indeed refer not to some other figure of ancient times but to the famous Jesus of Nazareth. What exactly is so scandalous? How about Jesus punished in Hell for eternity by being made to sit in a cauldron of boiling excrement? That image appears in early manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud, as does a brief account of Jesus' trial and execution—not by the Romans but by the Jewish high court, the Sanhedrin. The Jewish community...has been content to let them remain obscure and unknown...it seems fair to say now...that the Talmud is every bit as offensive to Christians as the Gospels are to Jews. The Talmud's scattered portrait of Jesus unapologetically mocks Christian doctrines including the virgin birth and the resurrection." ⁴⁴¹

The reader is directed to Mr. Klinghoffer's statement that the "Jewish community" has been content to let the evil sayings of the Talmud about Jesus "remain obscure and unknown." That's wrong from two perspectives: the rabbinic and Zionist "community" actively taught those hateful things about Jesus within their religion, while actively denying to the world that they were present in their sacred texts. This fact must not be suppressed by the KLinghoffers of the world. Those who insist on German accountability for every one of the crimes ascribed to them from 1939-1945, ought to be accountable themselves for their own documented misprision. The rabbis did

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not just passively content themselves with "obscurity." They actively proclaimed to the Christian world that Jesus Christ was not in the Talmud.

Second, Klinghoffer claims that the Talmud is "every bit as offensive to Christians as the Gospels are to Jews." This statement is an attempt to establish a parity between the two, where none exists. The rabbis are offended at the truth which the New Testament represents. Christians are offended at the disgraceful libels and malice in the Talmud, in addition to its pornographic scurrilities and obscenities directed against Christianity. The admission, by Klinghoffer and others, that Jesus is indeed in the Talmud, has brought with it no substantive analysis of the long record of rabbinic denials and falsification that preceded this revelation. All memory of rabbinic dissimulation on this subject seems to have been expunged; or at least that's the objective. The failure to recall the record of their deception however, will ensure that it happens again in some other field of human knowledge or endeavor where prevarication and deception advance the cause of Judaism. We should deny them the incentive to lie about the contents of the Talmud in the future by documenting their past lies and the methods they employed to lend those lies credibility. These methods amount to a system. Mr. Klinghoffer is eager to have us pass over Judaism's system of dissimulation as quickly as possible.

The new line on Jesus in the Talmud with its accompanying amnesia about the scope and extent of the former denials, is not solely the province of adherents of Judaism such as David Klinghoffer. To put it over on the public, it is necessary that "distinguished Christians" advance the amnesia as well. The pope's own preacher (i.e. "preacher to the papal household"), from the pontificate of John Paul II through that of Benedict XVI, has been Rev. Father Raniero Cantalamessa. In a sermon given in the Vatican in May 2007 Cantalamessa stated, "From the accounts of Jesus' death present in the Talmud and in other Jewish sources...one thing emerges: the Jewish tradition has never denied the participation of the religious leadership of the time in Christ's condemnation. It has never defended itself by denying the fact but rather by denying that the fact constituted a crime and that it was an unjust condemnation." ⁴⁴²

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This is the new line now that the cat is out of the bag. After centuries of denials and of castigating anyone who dared to report truthfully that the Christian Messiah was attacked in the Talmud as a foul sorcerer, it's all forgotten. There will be no price to pay in credibility or prestige for "the Jewish tradition" because the record of their lies and denials about Jesus in the Talmud have been neatly sent down the memory hole by the likes of the "preacher to the papal household." The Newspeak now has it, in the words of Klinghoffer, that "The Jewish community...has been content to let them (negative depictions of Jesus in the Talmud) remain obscure and unknown..." This suggests a passive act ("let them remain") rather than an active campaign to confuse, conceal and mislead. Father Cantalamessa is too slippery to follow Klinghoffer's lead directly. Read his language. Cantalamessa implies that there is an admirable candor and courage reflected in the Talmud ("Jewish tradition") having taken credit for the death of Jesus. What he omits is the important fact that the rabbis of Judaism who are the custodians of the Talmud, for centuries shamelessly lied, and procured from their gentile stooges similar mendacious denials that Jesus was in the Talmud. Klinghoffer and Cantalamessa approach the issue from two different directions, but the result is the same. The chameleon has changed the shade of its skin again, to suit the Zeitgeist and the Zionist "experts" and illustrious gentile "papal preachers" play along, with the result that memory of the documentary record in this regard is nearly lost. Let us see how much of that memory we can salvage.

According to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, "To agitate Christian readers, anti-Talmud writers often attempt to portray the Talmud as demeaning the figure of Jesus." ⁴⁴³ So, the ADL as recently as 2003 was still asserting that the Talmud contained no major polemic against Christ. By the ADL's reasoning, "anti-Talmud writers" are never dispassionately committed to the discovery and dissemination of the truth about what the Talmud teaches about Jesus, but rather, they only "portray" the Talmud as "demeaning" Jesus in order to "agitate" Christians. Consequently, those who seek to publish what the Talmud teaches about Jesus are, in the view of the

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ADL, "agitators" who do so only from impure motives, to inflame relations between Christians and Judaics.

How the ADL arrived at this conspiracy theory is not revealed, but the undercurrent of intimidation is clear: those researchers who write candidly and accurately about how Jesus is defamed in the Talmud are seeking to "agitate Christians." No reputable scholar would want a career-killing stigma like that attached to his research and most scholars are thereby intimidated from pursuing the truth about the Talmudic depiction of Jesus. Furthermore, according to the ADL, "the Talmud only refers to Jesus in a handful of places, and though these references may not reflect the courteous ecumenicism of the modern world, neither are they particularly inflammatory." ⁴⁴⁴

Gosh, it would appear that Mr. Klinghoffer and our peter piper papal preacher are somehow not aware that one of the most powerful Zionist lobbies in the world, as of 2003, was still clinging to the old script. One wonders how they could possibly be unaware of this fact and how they could pronounce with such sweeping generalization and certainty "the Jewish tradition has never denied the participation of the religious leadership of the time in Christ's condemnation." True, the uncensored Babylonian Talmud itself, doesn't deny it. But there is a rabbinic and Zionist tradition of denying "the Jewish tradition," i.e. the authentic contents of the Talmud. Gaining access to uncensored translations of the relevant Talmud texts has for non-Judaics, until recently, been a difficult, daunting and highly controversial endeavor.

Let us return to the ADL's story line: "But the Talmud bears much harsher animus towards the biblical figure of Balaam, the pagan magician who sought to curse the Jews as they traveled through the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. Rabbinic tradition ascribes other crimes to Balaam as well, and in various places describes some of the punishments he may have suffered after his death. In the nineteenth century, when the field of academic Jewish studies was in its infancy, a small group of Jewish scholars suggested that in some cases the term Balaam in the Talmud may be a code word for Jesus. Though later scholars showed that this suggestion could not be true (for reasons pertaining to the context of the Balaam references and the lack of manuscript variants substituting Jesus for Balaam), anti-Semites

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have ever since claimed that the true hatred that Judaism possesses for Christianity is expressed in these coded expressions against Balaam found in the Talmud."⁴⁴⁵

According to the all-knowing gedolim of the ADL, aside from a handful of wayward "Jewish scholars" it is mainly dastardly "anti-Semites" who assert that in the Talmud Balaam is a code-word for Jesus. If the ADL will pardon our inexcusable impudence in seeking to think for ourselves, let us parse the texts of the Babylonian Talmud to determine the truth.

BT Berakoth 17b: "There is no breach, that is: may our company not be like that of David from which issued Ahitophel (who made a breach in the kingdom of David)...may our company not be like that of Saul from which issued Doeg the Edomite (who went forth to evil ways). And no outcry: may our company not be like that of Elisha, from which issued Gehazi (who became a leper and thus cried out, 'Unclean, unclean!). In our broad places: may we produce no son or pupil who disgraces himself in public like Jesus of Nazareth."

The words "like Jesus of Nazareth" appear in the original Talmud and in Babylonian Talmud manuscripts Oxford Opp. Add. 23 (366) and Paris Heb. 671. But in the Talmud manuscripts known as Munich 95 and Firenze II.1.7, following the phrase "in public" the name Jesus of Nazareth has been removed. Prof. Peter Schafer states (p. 154), "In the Soncino and Vilna printed editions, the text has been tampered with by the censor."

The Mishnah at Sanhedrin 10:2 declares, "Four ordinary people have no portion in the world to come...Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel and Gehazi." But, nota bene, in Berakoth 17b, the Gemara (not "anti-semites") puts Jesus in the place of Balaam to indicate that Jesus is another Balaam!

Who was Balaam? He is the one who seduced Israel into the sexually-oriented idolatry of Baal-Peor. Consequently, the passage in BT Berakoth 17b is more than just an attack on Jesus as damned to perdition along with Doeg, Ahitophel and Gehazi. Orthodox rabbis and scholars would be conversant with the original damnation formula of the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 10:2: "Balaam, Doeg, Ahitophel and Gehazi" and would be aware that the formula in Berakoth 17b: "Ahitophel, Doeg, Gehazi and Jesus of Nazareth" reflected the fact that Jesus had been chosen to represent Balaam as symbolic of one of

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the supremely evil four personages damned by the early Pharisaic oral tradition.

According to the ADL, which has often partnered with the U.S. government in sponsoring programs for U.S. troops, public schools and police departments, for us to point out that the Talmud identifies Jesus with Balaam is not an act of historiography or scholarship, it is an act of antisemitic "agitation" without legitimate scholarly value. In other words, it smacks of a hate crime. Therefore, the exposition you have read thus far about Jesus in the Talmud and Jesus as a symbol of Balaam, you should not have read. According to the ADL, we have not written it to tell the truth, to cast accurate light on a shrouded history or present verifiable Talmudic statements about Jesus Christ. Rather, we have done it mainly to "agitate Christian readers." This is an example of the paranoid inquisitorial mentality par excellence, which imputes to the spirit of free inquiry, a diabolic substratum if it leads to conclusions that contradict rabbinic disinformation.

By means of their accusation about "agitation," it would not be difficult for the ADL to convince the European Union that this book which you are reading constitutes hate speech and on that basis should be banned. Such a ban, if implemented, would be a device for preventing this writer from presenting to the public, documentary truths about the contents of sacred rabbinic books which are themselves a form of agitation against Christians — an agitation, which, because it emanates from the Holy People — is one which Christians in a "pluralistic, open society" must submit to, by self-censoring and silencing themselves. According to the ADL, to compare Babylonian Talmud tractate Berakoth 17b with Mishnah tractate Sanhedrin 10:2 and draw the conclusion that the rabbinic "sages" were indeed drawing a parallel between Balaam and Jesus, is an act of "anti-Semites." Thus scholarship, when it exceeds the bounds prescribed by the rabbis and their ADL thought cops, becomes an act not of advancement of knowledge but of "racist hatred."

Schafer, with reference to BT Berakoth 17b and Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:2, states, "Jesus-Balaam is now the paragon of an idolater...by enticing all of Israel into idolatry. He did it 'in our streets,' that is, as the Talmud

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explains, publicly and unabashedly—just as Balaam did, his 'master' and model." ⁴⁴⁶

Schafer concedes in the first edition of his 2007 book (we specify the date and edition because Schafer could be made to recant or self-censor in subsequent editions, as Prof. Ariel Toaff was forced to recant his revisionist ritual murder history under threat of Israeli arrest), that Balaam is a "model" for Jesus in the Talmud. From the beginning, the rabbinic transcript of the Pharisee oral tradition represented by the Mishnah, intended Balaam to serve as a code for Jesus (with apologies to the ADL). There are two clues that tend to indicate that this is the case. First, if we look at the context of the passage, taking Sanhedrin 10 as a whole into account, we see that what is at issue in Sanhedrin 10, is the destiny of all Israel. The preceding verse, Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1 reads, "All Israelites have a share in the world to come." 10:1 then proceeds to list the "fine print" (exceptions) which cause certain Israelites to have no portion in the world to come. For example, 10:1, at the fourth clause states that "he who reads heretical books" will have no portion in the world to come. At this stage in early rabbinic Mishnaic Judaism, this was a reference to the reading of the New Testament.

Second, in the catalogue of the four Israelite miscreants who were sent to damnation — rather than eternal life — Balaam indeed must be a code for Jesus, because Balaam was not an Israelite, he was a pagan. Jesus was the Israelite. Thus, BT Berakoth 17b in the Gemara is actually unlocking the secret code in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:2, and that is why, when the Christian Church was energetic and vigilant, this passage in Berakoth became one of the most heavily redacted in the entire rabbinic corpus, not simply because this passage disrespected Jesus in the limited verbatim sense of Berakoth's text in 17b, but because it was a key to unlocking an encrypted form of the name of Jesus ("Balaam"), thus pointing to an entire, centuries-long tradition of execrating and ritually damning Jesus Christ from the very dawn of the formation of rabbinic Judaism in the first century A.D. This testifies to the inherently inflammatory character of Orthodox Judaism as an institutionalized form of relentless ritual cursing and blasphemy of the Name of Jesus Christ, rather than, as the ADL claims, a religion with a few fleeting rabbinic references in a "handful of places, that, while not exactly

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"courteous," are not "particularly inflammatory" either. When the textual pieces of the puzzle are fitted together however, we find that woven throughout the sacred books of Orthodox Judaism, is a staggering and incessant hatred of Jesus Christ which renders Judaism incapable of reform, since it cannot abandon its blasphemy without gutting the central core of its innermost creed.

We now leave the foolish ADL pamphlet and address the larger body of denial material, by turning our attention to the attack on Jesus in BT Sanhedrin 107b. Jesus is mentioned by name in that text, so there is no doubting his presence in the verse: "One should not act like Elisha who pushed Gehazi away with two hands, causing him to lose his place in the World to Come, nor should one act like Yehoshua ben Perahyah, who pushed Jesus the Nazarene away with two hands." ⁴⁴⁷ This Talmud passage acts as a polemical counter to Jesus' statement that a man who looks on a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart. It depicts Jesus doing that very thing, for which he is denounced by his rabbi ("Yehoshua ben Perahyah"). The sacred rabbinic texts ritually degrade Jesus by imagining him in their fantasy literature doing that which He never did during His lifetime, grovel before them. Sanhedrin 107b reads as follows: "Yehoshua ben Perahyah...rose and headed back to Eretz Israel. He happened upon a certain inn where he was shown great honor. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah said, 'How lovely is this inn.' His disciple Jesus said to him, 'Master, this inn is not so lovely, for the innkeeper's wife's eyes are oval and unattractive.' Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah said to Jesus, 'Wicked man! Do you engage yourself in looking at the eyes of a married woman?' Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah immediately took out four hundred shofars and placed a ban upon his errant disciple." ⁴⁴⁸

The next section of this Talmud passage has Jesus begging his rabbi-master to receive him back into his good graces: "Jesus appeared before his master several times and said to him, 'Accept me back, for I have repented/ but Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah paid no attention to him." ⁴⁴⁹ After this

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scene, the Talmud enacts a little charade concerning the issue of repentance. Jesus requests it, the rabbi refuses it, but then the rabbi "intends" to gesture to Jesus with a hand signal that is meant to indicate that Jesus is accepted back, but Jesus, of course, "misinterprets" the signal. This then leads to the two most scathing indictments of Jesus Christ in the whole of the Talmud, the charge that He was an idolater and a sorcerer and that He deceived the Israelite people: "Jesus misinterpreted the signal, and thought that his master was pushing him away again. So he went and stood up a brick to symbolize an idol and bowed down to it. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah said to him, 'Repent.' Jesus said to him: 'But surely it is from you yourself that I learned, Anyone who sins and also causes the community to sin is not permitted to do repentance.' And a sage said, 'Jesus performed magic and incited the people of Israel and led them astray." ⁴⁵⁰ Prior to the publication of the Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud, this passage was heavily censored in Talmud manuscripts, substituting for the name of Jesus the generic words, "the disciple" (see the Vatican HO ms. and the Munich 95 ms.).

To know the context of this passage is to know how much greater is the sting intended for Jesus. The rabbi who is Jesus' master in these Talmud verses and before whom Jesus alternately commits sin and begs forgiveness is a zug, one of the legendary founding fathers of Judaism. For Jesus to be led about by this "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah" and for "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah" to be placed in a position to catch Jesus in the act of sinning, and then to condemn Jesus as a "wicked man," furnishes the fantasy gratification that the rabbis of the Oral Tradition never had when Jesus was actually in their midst.

The pattern of lies Judaism weaves through its sacred texts is most telling. The Talmud teaches new generations of Judaics that Jesus was subordinate to one of the highest and holiest of all rabbis, the nasi (elected head of the Sanhedrin) and more importantly, "one of the sages responsible for maintaining the chain of the Oral Law" (the foundation of the religion of the Pharisees, i.e. Judaism). It was this "Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perahyah" who stood witness as Jesus lusted and idolized in the Talmud's account.

This fantasy projection onto history and historical persons is a fixture of the Talmudic mentality. Of course there never was any Rabbi Yehoshua ben

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Perahyah: "After having established the chain of tradition from Moses through the members of the 'Great Assembly/ the Mishna proceeds first to certain individuals (Shimon the Righteous, Autigonos from Sokho) and then with altogether five 'pairs,' all of them shrouded in the mists of history, reaching safer historical ground only with the pair (Hillel and Shammai)...Except for Shimon b. Shetah and Hillel/Shammai, little is known about these early 'pairs/ who are presented as the 'forefathers' of the rabbis. And why of all possible candidates, Yehoshua b. Perahyah is chosen as the one who fled to Egypt...remains dubious...This is but another anachronistic attempt of the rabbis to backdate a later (second century C.E.) rabbininic institution to a much earlier period..." ⁴⁵¹

BT Sanhedrin 107b is not just a put-down of Christ. It reflects the rabbinic need to manipulate history to such an extent that persons who never existed and events that never took place are fabricated so that an enemy can be ritually degraded. Jesus is made subservient to a rabbi who history teaches never existed. Jesus is shown engaged in events that never occurred. Perhaps this is why Churchianity has had to deny or minimize Jesus' place in the Talmud: as soon as one establishes that Jesus is the one who is being attacked, the view that the Talmud is of God becomes untenable for any true follower of Jesus Christ, because the passages mentioning Jesus are not only sordid, they are lies, and grandiose ones at that, from a religion that institutionalizes false witness. This is the discernment obtained from a profound and objective study of Judaism; therefore few acts are more forbidden in the "democratic" West than deep and unflinching scrutiny of Judaism and its sacred books.

The Talmud's next encounter with Jesus, in the form of one of his disciples, occurs in BT Avodah Zarah 16b-17a and here the protagonist is Rabbi Eliezer, one of the chief Pharisees of the later first century to early second century A.D., known formally as Rabbi Eliezer ben Hycranus (also spelled Hykranus). In this passage, Rabbi Eliezer is mistaken (by one of Trajan's magistrates circa 109 A.D., according to the Soncino editors), for a min (Christian) and put on trial. (The note on this passage in the Soncino edition states, "abstract noun...Min...'heresy with special reference to

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Christianity). Using techniques of mental reservation and equivocation, Rabbi Eliezer tells the alleged Roman judge that he considers the judge trustworthy (the Soncino has him declaring, "I acknowledge the Judge as right"). This in turn, BT Avodah Zarah 16b-17a informs us, caused the judge to respond, "Because you acknowledge me as trustworthy, you are acquitted." Of course, the clever Rabbi Eliezer did not at all regard the judge as trustworthy. His reference was to the Supreme Judge, not the judge before whom he stood as a defendant. He thereby cleverly allowed the judge to deceive himself.

After his acquittal, the Talmud has Rabbi Eliezer's student, Rabbi Akiva (also spelled "Aqiva" and "Akiba") ask him if he was arrested due to the fact that he may actually have been tainted with the heresy (of Christianity). Rabbi Eliezer answers by saying that at one time in the past he encountered "in the upper market of Sepphoris one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth." Rabbi Eliezer quotes words he attributes to Jesus' alleged disciple, "Jacob of Kefar-Sekaniah" approvingly, concerning prostitutes and money used to build a toilet for the High Priest. This latter bit of psychopathic-sexualis is a recurring Talmudic obsession, as we have seen, having nothing to do with any Christian pronouncement, but it is a challenge for the rabbis to get away from toilet themes for very long, and this passage reflects that mania. Rabbi Eliezer states: "Jacob of Kefar-Sekaniah said to me: 'It is written in your Torah, Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot into the House of the Lord. May such money be used for making a toilet for the High Priest?' I made no reply. He said to me, 'Thus was I taught by Jesus of Nazareth, For the hire of a harlot has she gathered them and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return. They came from a place of filth, let them return to a place of filth.' These words (of Jacob quoting Jesus who is citing a portion of Micah 1:7), pleased me very much, said Rabbi Eliezer and that is why I was arrested as a min."

In other words, the Christian, "Jacob," is concluding, in his last utterance, that the money earned from prostitution can be used for pubic works, such as building latrines for the High Priest. Rabbi Eliezer is well-pleased with this line of thought coming from a Christian disciple who directly cites Jesus as his inspiration. Is this an example of a rabbi approving of Christian teaching, however indirectly? It would be, if this account from BT Avodah Zarah 17a concluded at this point. But the very next passage is

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going to impart one of the essential Antichrist teachings of the religion of Judaism. Rabbi Eliezer states, "I was arrested as a min because I transgressed the scriptural words, 'Remove thy way far from her—which refers to a min—and come not nigh to the door of her house—this refers to the harlot."

The Talmud is here teaching that Jews are not to heed or follow Christ or his disciples and teachings, even when those teachings are in accord with the word of God (in this case, Micah 1:7). It is not what is taught that matters. It is the identity of the teacher that counts. The teacher — Jesus Christ, in the person of his disciple "Jacob" — is a heretic, therefore he is to be discounted even when he speaks the truthl Christianity is itself a form of prostitution and a Jew must not go to the door of "her" (Christianity's) house (Proverbs 5:8).

Here we see one form Judaism will take throughout the centuries, in its resistance to conversion to Christ. Though it took a while, this passage returns to the familiar accusation that Christianity and Christian saints are sexually promiscuous. We have seen Blessed Mary, the Mother of Jesus, accused in this fashion, and here in BT Avodah Zarah 17a we have Christ, His disciples and teachings portrayed in this manner. This libel is repeated with monotony throughout the sacred rabbinic texts. In the Midrash Quolet Kabbah, a Palestinian Jew converts to Christianity: "He had indeed become one of those evil ones...These heretics sent a message to Rabbi Jonathan, 'Come, share in deeds of loving kindness for a bride.' The rabbi went and found the Christians each taking a turn having sexual intercourse with the bride. He exclaimed: 'This is the way Jews behave?"

BT Avodah Zarah 16b-17a forms part of a continuing rabbinic pedagogy for succeeding generations of Judaics in which truth is ruled to be not relevant as a factor when it pertains to the gospel of Jesus Christ. In BT Avodah Zarah 16b-17a, the Christian disciple's use of the scripture is confirmed as truthful by Rabbi Eliezer. But truth is not relevant here. The rabbinic tradition, having twisted the scripture in Proverbs 5:8, has forever convicted Christianity of being a form of prostitution. On the basis of this conviction by the rabbis, in their eyes it doesn't matter whether the gospel of Jesus is indeed the truth. The gospel is evil, even though it is truthful, because the rabbis have declared the one who brings these truths to be a heretic, a min.

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This Talmud section, once it is made known among true believers in Christ, is quite damaging to the propaganda prospects of Judaism and therefore it becomes necessary to cast doubt upon its veracity. That task has fallen to a number of exegetes, but the leader of the pack is the afortementioned Johann Maier who, in his Jesus von Nazareth in der talmudischen Uberlieferung contends that almost all such references are either "later additions" or wholesale forgeries. Peter Schafer of Yale and Daniel Boyarin, Professor of Talmud at the University of California at Berkeley, disagree. ⁴⁵² Schafer, in his statement on the accounts given in BT Avodah Zarah 16b-17a observes that they "...reveal...knowledge of the Christian sect and its hero, and this knowledge is not just a distorted and vague hodgepodge of this and that, but a well-designed attack against what the rabbis experienced as the reality of the Jewish-Christian message."

When not reviling Jesus, the Babylonian Talmud attacks Mary, His Mother, with nauseating epithets, insults and aspersions against her moral character. Some of the Talmudic falsehoods about Mary are centered on tales of a certain "Pandera" (Sanhedrin 67a), and his consort, called alternately "Sedata" and "Miriam the hairdresser." Just as the ADL with pompous derision attempted to deny the Balaam/Jesus connection, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, the nasi of the revived Sanhderin, writes in a similar vein concerning the Jesus/Pandera links: "Christian censors as well as popular tradition identified 'ben Setada' and 'ben Pandera' with Jesus of Nazareth because of the similarity of several aspects of the two stories. However, Tosafot regarded this identification as impossible because of the chronology."

Blessed Mary, called "Miriam the hairdresser" in the Talmud, is vilified as a "promiscuous woman," while the other name assigned to her, "Sedata" is a synonym for adulteress. In a footnote to tractate BT Shabbath 104b in the Soncino Talmud we read as follows: "In the uncensored text this passage follows: Was he then the son of Stada: surely he was the son of Pandira? — Said R. Hisda: The husband was Stada, the paramour was Pandira. But the husband was Pappos b. Judah? —His mother was Stada. But his mother was

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Miriam the hairdresser? It is as we say in Pumbeditha: This one has been unfaithful to her husband (satat da mi-ba'alah)."^{y 453}

In the Babylonian Talmud, according to tradition, the fool/magician (Jesus) is called 'son of Stada' and according to another one he is called 'son of Pandera.' The Talmud is concerned about the fact that the same person is called by two different names. Rav Hisda (a Babylonian amora of the third generation and an important teacher at the academy of Sura; died 309 A.D.), states that the person in question had, as it were, two "fathers," because his mother had a husband and a sex partner, and that Jesus was called 'son of Stada,' when referring to the husband, and 'son of Pandera,' when referring to the sex partner. Another Talmudic source states that Jesus' mother's husband was not some "Stada," but rather Pappos b. Yehuda, a Jewish-Palestinian scholar of the first half of the second century A.D., and in fact it was Jesus' mother who was called "Stada."

We need to explain this strange code-name "Stada" for the mother of Jesus. His mother's name was Miriam (Mary). "Stada" is a grave insult. Schafer found that "Stada" is derived from the Hebrew/Aramaic root word satah/sete ("to deviate from the right path, to go astray, to be unfaithful"). In other words, his mother Miriam was also called "Stada" because in the eyes of the rabbis she was asotah, a woman suspected, or convicted, of adultery. The Steinsaltz version of BT Sanhedrin 67a states: "the inciter's mother was Miryam the (woman's) hairdresser...a promiscuous woman: that one (setat da) strayed from her husband." ⁴⁵⁴

Establishing a Legal Principle for Courtroom Entrapment of Christ and Christians

Another significant passage regarding Jesus ("the inciter") in BT Sanhedrin 67a concerns the concealment of defense witnesses and the right of the court to "entrap" Him. The rabbis approve of both. "(T)he Mishnah follows the position of the Sages, and teaches that an inciter is regarded as a hedyot — a fool — regarding the concealment of witnesses. The inciter is

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treated as a fool who has little regard for his own life, and so the court may conceal witnesses in order to entrap him...in the case of a person who is suspected of incitement to idolatry, the court may intentionally hide witnesses in order to apprehend the offender...this is precisely what they did to the well-known inciter, the son of Setada...who was hanged for his crime on the eve of Passover...the inciter was known as the son of Sedata. But her lover was in fact the inciter's father, named Pandera, and so the inciter was also known as the son of Pandera." (BT Sanhedrin 67a [Steinsaltz]). ⁴⁵⁵

Pandera and Balaam

These vile passages are closely related to those in the Babylonian Talmud at tractate Shabbath 104b, which describe Jesus (the "inciter") as one who "brought forth witchcraft from Egypt" and his mother, "Miriam the hairdresser" as a woman of loose morals who had intercourse with men other than her husband. Schafer: "If the Talmud takes it for granted that Jesus' mother was having sex with someone other than her husband, then it follows that Jesus was a mamzer, a bastard. In order to be categorized as mamzer it didn't matter whether his biological father was indeed his mother's sex partner, and not her legal husband, the supposed fact that she had committed adultery made Jesus' legal status dubious. Hence the uncertainty, in that his father is sometimes called Ben Stada and sometimes Ben Pandera."

The context of Shabbat 104b/Sanhedrin 67a suggests that Mary's supposedly long and uncovered hair ("megadla neshayya") was indicative of her allegedly indecent behavior. In the lecherous minds of the rabbis, a woman who appears bareheaded and with long hair, in public, is prone to all sorts of lewd conduct (cf. BT Gittin 90a). Of course there is no proof that Mary the mother of Jesus ever went about in this manner, but it indicates the resentment the rabbis felt at the liberty Jesus dispensed to His female followers. Describing his mother as allegedly going about without a head-covering — which remains a Talmudic requirement for many frum ("observant") female followers of the rabbinic traditions to this day — is one expression of that resentment.

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There is also independent evidence of the existence of the Jesus-Pandera teaching in Judaism, in the writings of Celsus, the second century A.D. pagan opponent of Christianity, who attacked it by quoting the calumnies of the rabbis which were current in his time, in his tract, Alethes Logos (called "True Doctrine," although literally, "True Word"), and which are precisely those of the Talmud: "Celsus opens the way for his own attack by rehearsing the taunts leveled at the Christians by the Jews. They are: Jesus was born in adultery and nurtured on the wisdom of Egypt." ⁴⁵⁶ Celsus' works are lost, but we know of him through his third century Christian challenger, Origen, who quoted him at length in Contra Celsum ("Against Celsus"). Celsus employs the opinions of the rabbis concerning Jesus, in his campaign against Christianity, in the form of a Judaic about whom he inquires concerning what this Judaic may know about Jesus. The Judaic replies: "...he (Jesus) came from a Jewish village and from a poor country woman who was driven out by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, since she had been convicted of adultery. After she had been driven out by her husband and while she was wandering about in a disgraceful manner, she secretly gave birth to Jesus. Because he (Jesus) was poor, he hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and there tried his hand at certain magical powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves; he returned fall of conceit, because of these powers, and on account of them gave himself the title of God." ⁴⁵⁷

Celsus, writing in 178 A.D., gives us exactly the description of Jesus that would be committed to writing in the Babylonian Talmud a few hundred years later. Origen analyzes the statement which the Judaic conveyed to Celsus: "Let us now return to where the Jew is introduced, speaking of the mother of Jesus, and saving that 'when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera...those who have blindly concocted these fables about the adultery of the Virgin with Panthera,...on account of its extremely miraculous character...It was was to be expected, surely, that those who would not believe the miraculous birth of Jesus would invent some falsehood." ⁴⁵⁸

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As Origen documents, Celsus' Judaic informant might as well have been quoting from a volume of the Talmud turned to Gittin 90a and Shabbath 104b. But these rabbinic statements would not be committed to writing in those Talmud tractates for another few hundred years, indicating that these malicious lies about Jesus, his mother and his patrimony, were well-established dogma in Judaism as early as 178 A.D. They were subsequently and formally institutionalized by being committed to writing in the holiest books of Judaism. "It is certain, in any case, that the rabbinical sources also regard Jesus as the 'son of Pandera." ⁴⁵⁹

Like the ADL's claim that asserting that Balaam is a code word for Jesus is an expression of antisemitic bias, another bogus response of Talmudic apologists has been to claim that the Babylonian Talmud's Pandera is a reference to the father of another ancient Jesus, not Jesus of Nazareth. They also claim that the name Pandera is a common one in Latin i.e. "gentile" inscriptions from the period, which is true. But, as Prof. Schafer points out, the name Panthera/Pandera is highly uncommon in Hebrew and Aramaic usage, "and this fact alone makes the connection to Celsus' Panthera obvious."

The Offspring of the Father of Lies

The rabbis patently saw Christianity as a competing creed, whose Davidic Messiah had to be delegitimized by any means, including the most common rabbinic means, that of lying about Him. Those who take the word of the rabbis in these matters can be assumed to be wrong as a general principle, and those who doubt the word of the rabbis can assumed to be generally right. Jesus clearly taught that these religious leaders "abode not in the truth." He declared that their father was the "father of lies." It's interesting that the controversy turns on a patronymic. According to Jesus Christ, falsehood had a father and that father has spiritual children.

Who was correct, the rabbis of Babylon when they taught that Jesus' father was a gentile and Jesus therefore a bastard, or Jesus, when he taught that the Pharisees' father was "the Father of Lies"? Much depends on our answer, because Christian believers must be guided by their Master's Word and proceed through life, scholarship, and texts with His Word in mind.

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Those who claim the mantle of Christ and then give the deceptions of the rabbis the benefit of the doubt, are a type of Judas, which is to say, a type of satan (John 13:27). This deception finds its climax in the work of the Antichrist (2 Thess. 2: 3-12), which is the nature of the religion of Orthodox Judaism since its inception in the first century A.D., to personify Antichrist. The witness of Christianity challenges this personification. But what happens to that challenge, when there no longer is a faithful witness?

The issue of false witness conveyed in a pornographic and scurrilous manner has, in the past, often been the dominant trope in studies by Christians critical of what the Talmud teaches. But the Babylonian Talmud is not simply gratuitously insulting and defaming Christ and His mother. Mary was a chaste and humble Israelite woman. How can she merit any defamation whatsoever, except for the fact that she gave birth to the Messiah of Israel? For that birth she is declared by the rabbis to have been lewd, shameless, an adulteress and a nymphomaniac, whom her husband had to lock up to keep her from having sex with other men (BT Gittin 90a). In the case of Mary, the Talmud is purely a vehicle for vengeance and resentment. In other cases however, it represents both revenge and an attempt at refuting Jesus' teachings. The classic exchange between the Pharisees and Jesus in John chapter 8, is a case in point. Jesus confronts the Pharisees with their attempts to kill Him. Here Jesus establishes the existence of two fathers, His Father and the Father of the Pharisees who are the founders of the petrified Phariseeism that became Judaism. He declares that those who murder truth-tellers are not Abraham's children. They have another Father (8:37). Jesus' Father, "the one who sent me," is Truth (John 8:26). He then tells the Pharisees, "What I, for my part, speak of, is what I have seen with my Father; but you put into action the lessons you learned from your father" (8:38). This causes them to become defensive and indignantly protest that, "We were not born of fornication." (8:41). Racially of course, the Pharisaic Jews were correct. They were genetically descended of Abraham (8:37), yet Jesus insists that their real father is not Abraham. What can He mean? How can the Pharisees be wrong in light of the racial reality of their descent? Jesus is working on the principle that the son behaves like his father and that by their murderous and deceitful actions, the religious leaders of the Jews are demonstrating that the devil is their spiritual father. The Jewish religious leaders see in the charge a claim that they are

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illegitimate. Jesus is speaking spiritually, and as always, the Pharisees are thinking racially. They have no cogent answer to Jesus, whose exposure continues to build in intensity, until reaching its zenith in John 8:44.

Their posthumous "answer" to Jesus, their Vesprit de Vescalier ⁴⁶⁰ became part of their early oral tradition as conveyed by Celsus, and eventually it formed the pedagogy of their written texts. Rather than trying to answer the indictment — that they sought to murder their own Messiah — they formulated a rejoinder entirely in racial terms, circumscribed by their access-controlled, semi-secret {for Judaics only) Talmudic texts: Mary was a lustful adulteress, Jesus was born in fornication. These insults are more than insults, they are an attempt to build a hedge around the Gospel, to fence Judaics out and away from the appeal of what Jesus promised to the Jews who believed in Him: that they would find truth and freedom (8:32). The Talmudic insults are not just a matter of false witness. They are intended to immunize Judaics against attraction to the Messiah of Israel. This is a far more serious offense than pornographic invective. This is the shutting of the door of salvation. This is ensuring that Judaics will die in their sins (8:24). Everyone who cooperates with the Talmud to any degree, who minimizes its evil, who rhapsodizes over its alleged "good parts" and "wisdom," who receives its followers and exponents "in brotherhood," is guilty of hating Judaics to such an extent that they are assisting in guaranteeing that they will die in their sins. This is what the demonic trap of Judaism ultimately is: "Jew-hate" in its purest synthesis.

"The most bizarre of all the Jesus stories (in the Talmud) is the one that tells how Jesus shares his place in the Netherworld (hell) with Titus and Balaam, the notorious arch enemies of the Jewish people. Whereas Titus is punished for the destruction of the Temple by being burned to ashes, reassembled, and burned over and over again, and whereas Balaam is castigated by sitting in hot semen, Jesus' fate consists of sitting forever in boiling excrement. This obscene story has occupied scholars for a long time, without any satisfactory solution. I will speculate that it is again the deliberate, and quite graphic, answer to a New Testament claim, this time

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Jesus' promise that eating his flesh and drinking his blood guarantees eternal life to his followers" ⁴⁶¹

Catholic Cardinal George Makes Reference to the Talmud's Attacks on Jesus

As denials become untenable, the "fortress" is being abandoned in this "Revelation of the Method" age of ours. Increasingly, the customary stonewalling and denials that the Christian Jesus was in the Talmud, or that most derogatory references are not to him but to a "Balaam" who has no connection to him, are being dropped in certain forums and venues. We saw this in the controversy over the Roman Catholic Church's 1962 Tridentine Good Friday prayer for the "Jews," which was altered by Pope Benedict XVI as a response to rabbinic pressure. "He removed the age-old references to Jews' 'blindness' and the request that God 'take the veil from their hearts."⁴⁶² The pope did, in fact, retain in the prayer a call to "acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men." The never-satisfied rabbis and Zionists lived up to their reputation and remonstrated with the pope over their continued dissatisfaction with even the modified Good Friday prayer. In an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops, asked the rabbis who were offended by the prayer, if it was time for Judaics to "to look at some of the Talmudic literature's description of Jesus as a bastard, and so on, and maybe make a few changes in some of that?" This is an unprecedented statement from a modern Catholic cleric in the post-Vatican II era; and it may be an inkling of a movement to go beyond the usual tail-between-the-legs whimpering which the modern Vatican usually evinces in reply to any charge by Talmudists that Catholicism is hateful or racist toward Judaics. We hope that Cardinal George's statement is a harbinger of courageous candor. However, the Vatican knows how to play Kabbalistic games and often nothing is as it seems on the surface concerning pronouncements from the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Pardon our skepticism, but we can't help wondering if Cardinal George's statement wasn't an attempt at some vigorous bargaining in a quid pro quo negotiation with Judaism's power base, concerning the Vatican's freedom of movement within its own liturgy. In

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other words, was Cardinal George making a principled stand in defense of Jesus, or was he playing the bad cop in an elaborate stage play at which the Vatican, after the rabbis, is past master? Without corroborating evidence we do not wish to assert outright, with certainty, a conclusion that impugns George's motives and intent. However, we do believe that it is our obligation to call Christians to vigilance concerning the Vatican's predilection for playing chess games with diabolic forces. We note that it wasn't long before a Vatican "good cop" came forward, almost as if on cue, representing the pillar of chesed, to soften and modify Cardinal George's original statement. In early 2008, in a letter to the ADL, "Cardinal William Keeler, a veteran of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, stepped in to try to smooth relations. 'Cardinal George respects the fact that there can be no comparison between passages in the Talmud...which do not now play any significant role in Jewish life or worship, with some texts from the rites of 1962..." ⁴⁶³

"Passages in the Talmud...do not now play any significant role in Jewish life or worship"? Come again, Cardinal Keeler? Was it not your own fellow cardinals who recently studied none other than the "insignificant" Talmud with the New York rabbi who tormented the nuns of Auschwitz? Is not the Talmud studied daily in every Orthodox yeshiva and kollel in the world? Are not Orthodox Judaism's constantly referenced, god-like "sages of blessed memory" (Chazal), the authors and promoters of the very oral law and traditions which the Talmud embodies? Once again, we witness a Big Lie advanced on the basis of personal prestige ("from the pen of a cardinal") and depending for its credibility on the abject ignorance of the Christian public on this subject. But aside from these bewildering prelatical maneuvers worthy of Don Corleone, we do at least have Cardinal George on record attesting, in 2007, to what the Church Fathers, saints, intrepid scholars and those of us who have been in this mission field for decades, have testified to all along, that the "Torah SheBeal Pek" of Judaism excoriates the person and blessed name of Jesus Christ. The defilement of Jesus Christ as "Yoshke" and getchke (idol) routinely spews forth from the mouths of Orthodox Judaics, as has been documented on camera, on the Internet and recorded on DVD in this Revelation of the Method information age. "Jesus Christ" is repeatedly spoken as a swear-word in dozens if not hundreds of Hollywood movies.

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These facts should make it very difficult indeed for the multitude of so-called "Christians" who prattle about a "Judeo- Christian" heritage and make common cause with Talmudic rabbis, to maintain their facade as followers of Our Savior.
Schonfxeld's Passover Plot claims Jesus faked his death on the cross

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The movie, The Passover Plot, produced by Menahem Golan and starring Zalman King as Jesus the faker, is drawn from the book of the same name and represents the sort of everyday, run-of-the-mill Antichrist hate speech that permeates our society without stirring significant critical notice, protest or boycott. Hugh J. Schonfeld's bestselling Passover Plot claimed that Jesus staged His crucifixion, and had himself drugged on the Cross to make it look as though he were dead. The book was reissued for its 40th anniversary in 2005.

An elementary error often made by sloppy and ignorant critics of Judaism and in turn exploited by the rabbis to indict all critical scrutiny of Judaism, is the claim that "Jesus is horribly defamed in the Talmudic book Toledot Yeshu." The problem is, the notorious Toledot Yeshu is not a Talmudic book. It has no canonical status in Judaism. Its status is that of folklore. Originating in late antiquity, it was widely circulated by Judaics in Europe from the early medieval period onward and portrays Jesus in particularly hateful terms, with special emphasis on Him as a magician and con-man. Accounts in the multiple editions published over the centuries vary, but in general He is depicted as having staged his own resurrection. In a contest of magical prowess, Jesus loses to a rabbi. Canonical or not, this popular writing became a major source for the average Judaic's knowledge of Jesus from the early Middle Ages up to the dawn of the twentieth century.

Dr. Shahak states: "The Editio Princeps of the complete Code of Talmudic Law, Maimonides* Mishneh Torah — replete not only with the most offensive precepts against all Gentiles but also with explicit attacks on Christianity and on Jesus (after whose name the author adds piously, 'May the name of the wicked perish')..-" ⁴⁶⁵

"According to the Talmud, Jesus was executed by a proper rabbinical court for idolatry, inciting other Jews to idolatry, and contempt of rabbinical authority. All classical Jewish sources which mention his execution are quite happy to take responsibility for it; in the talmudic account the Romans are not even mentioned. The more popular accounts — which were nevertheless

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taken quite seriously —such as the notorious Toledot Yeshu are even worse, for in addition to the above crimes they accuse him of witchcraft. The very name 'Jesus' was for Jews a symbol of all that is abominable and this popular tradition still persists... The Hebrew form of the name Jesus —Yeshu —was interpreted as an acronym for the curse, 'may his name and memory be wiped out,' which is used as an extreme form of abuse. In fact, anti-zionist Orthodox Jews (such as Neturei Karta) sometimes refer to (Zionist founder Theodore) Herzl as 'Herzl Jesus' and I have found in religious zionist writings expressions such as 'Nasser Jesus' and more recently 'Arafat Jesus." ⁴⁶⁶

While the sacred texts of Judaism gloat over the death of Christ and "are happy to take responsibility for it," the official position of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as imposed on the producers of the Oberammergau Passion Play ⁴⁶⁷ is that the Romans alone, not the Pharisees, were guilty of Christ's death and that it was Pilate, not Caiphas, who actively conspired in His assassination. This line has been endorsed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops ⁴⁶⁸ and by Pope John Paul II, who conferred the Knighthood of St. Gregory on ADL officer Leonard Zakim.⁴⁶⁹ It is also promoted in Hollywood films such as the CBS-TV miniseries "Jesus," nationally televised in May, 2000.

The historian Daniel-Rops writes: "We certainly cannot look to the Talmuds for any direct historical information regarding Jesus. All that the rabbis let us know about him is hostile, insulting and malevolent. Sometimes he is referred to under the name of Balaam the son of Behor, 'the false prophet' who led Israel astray; sometimes under his real name of Jesus of Nazareth, but always with some insulting qualification, such as the liar, the impostor or the bastard. These fables even crystallized in the rabbinical tradition to form a blasphemous pseudo-biography, the Toledoth Yeshu which circulated among the Jews...According to this compilation, Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary, the wife of a perfumer and of a Roman soldier, called Pandara or Panthera. He was taken by his stepfather to Egypt where he studied sorcery and was thus enabled to seduce Israel. He was arrested as

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an agitator and a sorcerer and turned over to the Sanhedrin, spending forty days in the pillory before he was stoned and hanged at the Feast of the Passover. This repellant fable is so full of absurdities that it is idle to combat it; the stepfather of Jesus is called Josue ben Parania, although the personage of that name died 78 years before the Christian era. The reference to Mary as a perfumer comes obviously from confusion with Mary Magdalen because 'Magdala' can mean a hairdresser, while the name Panthera is probably due to an imperfect understanding of Greek since parthenos means virgin and the Christians have always referred to Christ as the Son of the Virgin." ⁴⁷⁰

Those proselytes of modern Laodicean Judeo-Churchianity, who think themselves wise, continue to believe that the Talmud is a reliable guide to the Old and New Testaments. Oxford University's Prof. G.B. Caird thinks that the Talmud is helpful to understanding the New Testament: "In the first place, it would never have occurred to a Jew to consider the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit as a substitute for normal parenthood (see Niddah 31a: 'There are three partners in the production of man: the Holy One, blessed be he, the father, and the mother.' Cf. Sotah 17a; Genesis R (abah)..."⁴⁷¹ Hence, the Talmud, written centuries later in Babylon, and its tractate Niddah, on rabbinic nonsense regarding menstruation; along with the Midrash, with its plethora of fantastic tales which the rabbis added to the Scriptures, comprises, for Prof. Caird, and other academics of his generation, compelling insight into the mindset of the Jews of first century Palestine. Pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic endorsements of rabbinic exegesis and the Midrash are not uncommon either. In a 1944 work, Back to the Bible,⁴⁷² bearing an imprimatur, and a foreword by Archbishop Richard Downey of Liverpool, England, Jesuit Father Cuthbert Lattey makes the following astonishing statement: "A more difficult problem of literary form may be broached under the rubric, midrash, a Jewish word of suitable meaning

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which serves as a more or less technical term for historical fiction. We are familiar with such a literary form in our own literature; many a novel introduces historical persons or events but weaves round them a tale of fiction. And nobody thinks of calling the authors liars. It may be taken for granted, then, that midrash does not of itself involve formal error, and therefore, so far as that goes, it cannot be excluded a priori from the Bible, provided that the fiction in question be not unworthy of God on other grounds" (p. 39).

In March, 2007 the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University issued the following press release: "Liberty Obtains Babylonian Talmud. Liberty University's library has a major new acquisition: a complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud. Acquired at the urging of Liberty Seminary President Ergun Caner, this 73-volume collection is an English translation of extensive rabbinic interpretations of the Law of Moses, written between the first century and about 800 AD....Liberty Seminary students wishing to understand the Jewish mindset and worldview have available this resource of incomparable value. Old Testament students will benefit from this Jewish source for interpreting the Old Testament." ⁴⁷³ Here we go again. Future Christian leaders will learn how to interpret the Old Testament better by relying on the oral traditions of the Pharisees which Jesus condemned prior to their having been committed to writing and then further distorted in pagan Babylon. To compound the farce, Falwell's school purchased the censored ArtScroll translation of the Talmud.