As I have hinted at in the previous entry, there are more “gospels” than the four the Christian world are familiar with. While the church was spreading its roots both during and after his earthly ministry, the Jewish leaders all had something to say about our guy.  We aren’t too sure what they were saying while he was alive or even immediately after his death BUT over the next couple centuries, they started to record their thoughts and discussions on both Jesus and his church. Today we will examine one of the more provocative and interesting ones from the Jerusalem Talmud tentatively dated to the late 200’s to mid 300’s CE. (This work itself was finished compiling sometime around 350CE so this entry would have to have been written prior to this.) It reads as follows:

When he came back to Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Yehoshua arrived at a certain inn. The innkeeper stood before him, honoring him considerably, and overall they accorded him great honor. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Peraḥya then sat and was praising them by saying: How beautiful is this inn. Jesus the Nazarene, one of his students, said to him: My teacher, but the eyes of the innkeeper’s wife are narrow [terutot]. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Peraḥya said to him: Wicked one, is this what you are engaged in, gazing at women? He brought out four hundred shofarot and excommunicated him. Every day Jesus would come before him, but he would not accept his wish to return.
One day, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Peraḥya was reciting Shema when Jesus came before him. He intended to accept him on this occasion, so he signaled to him with his hand to wait. Jesus thought he was rejecting him entirely. He therefore went and stood up a brick and worshipped it as an idol. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Peraḥya said to him: Return from your sins. Jesus said to him: This is the tradition that I received from you: Anyone who sins and causes the masses to sin is not given the opportunity to repent. The Gemara explains how he caused the masses to sin: For the Master said: Jesus the Nazarene performed sorcery, and he incited the masses, and subverted the masses, and caused the Jewish people to sin. Sotah 47a 13-14 Jerusalem Talmud

Basically, Jesus was in a group with his Rabbi as they entered a dining hall. The rabbi states what a nice hall it was but Jesus thought he was commenting on the “waitress” and went on to offer his less than flattering opinion on her. The rabbi then cast him out of the group. Jesus tried several times to beg to be let back in only to misread a signal from the rabbi and storm off. In anger, he started a cult worshipping a brick. Who knew? Jesus does not like women whose eyes are too close together!

OK, before you fire up your fingers to send me a hate mail or death threat in the comments, postpone your outrage for a bit. More than likely this is not a historical account. Jesus is receiving in this story what many a celebrity experiences now in the tabloids and online; haters.

At the time this was written, the church was spreading like wildfire and leeching people from the newly established Rabbinical Judaism (after the Romans tore the temple down in 70CE). The Christians of this era had made themselves be quite the problem for the rabbis as the church was still somewhat attached to the synagogues. At one point, the rabbis even sent out notices to quit allowing the “nazarenes” to lead prayers in the synagogues. The separation pains were great and the Nazarene movement was a real threat. The Rabbis needed to knock Jesus the Nazarene down a couple of notches and make him less appealing to their flock in the event they are ever tempted to be converted. 

We see this all the time in the modern days. As a man, I MAY have been guilty of this a time or two when I was younger. When my lady would remark about a certain celebrity being hot or having a crush on Orlando bloom, I would instantly have to put him down. Immature yes but very common. When Tom Cruise shot to the top of every woman’s “bucket list” in the 1980s, it was followed very quickly by one million husbands saying that he is probably gay or pointing out that he is five feet tall. It happens and is something we desperately all need to learn to resist.

It would seem that the same sort of thing is happening in the Jerusalem Talmud. It is much more insulting than how it first appears. He is implied to be a womanizer, ignorant, hot headed, disobedient blasphemer who is causing Jewish people to be the same. He never finished his studies, implying that he shouldn’t be teaching. The The fact that he is worshipping a brick is more than likely an insult about his origins as a tekton; not a learned man like those telling the tale.

There were no newspapers or church publications back then as the technology wasn’t advanced enough (almost everyone was illiterate anyway.) The synagogue would be one of the central places people would get their vital information in their lives especially when it came to matters of faith. They were intentionally, actively, preemptively turning their congregation off to Jesus of Nazareth and his followers.

Then again, it may also be true! Smart money is on the “hater” hypothesis though.