Overview

The historical Jesus is as elusive as he is appealing. Everyone wants to find who the man really was. Scholars pour over the pages of the New Testament and apocryphal literature for any clue about his true identity. People have looked in all places for answers--except one. The Talmud contains a powerful counter-narrative to the Christian and scholarly consensus about Jesus. Did Jesus live in the first century BCE? Was he the son of a Roman soldier? Did he perform magic? Why was he executed? These are all questions that the Talmud answers, pointing us closer to knowing who the historical Jesus was and when he lived. Within these pages, you will find a clear presentation of the Talmud's narrative and some of the implications of this narrative for our understanding of Jesus as a Jewish man from Greco-Roman Palestine.

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9781666750850

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"""Whatever the historical value of the Talmud is for the description of the development of the early Jesus movement, Jordan Lavender has written an excellent account of the certainly 'inherently biased, ' but 'only alternative' version of that history which can be found in the Talmud. In addition to bringing together what the Talmud has to say about Jesus, his family, his disciples, and his early followers, the author gives access to this alternative reading to non-talmudic specialists."" --Markus Vinzent, author of Writing the History of Early Christianity ""Jesus the Nazarene combines common sense with great erudition, a formula rarer in Life of Jesus studies than one might imagine. A. Jordan systematically sets forth Talmudic references and discussions about the Jewish heretic and Christian Savior. . . . Jordan's aim is modest: if there does exist a coherent and plausible ancient non-Christian account of Jesus, alternative to that in Christian Scripture, doesn't it deserve fair consideration?"" --Robert M. Price, editor, The Journal of Higher Criticism ""This book offers a final facet in the Quest-for-the-Historical-Jesus genre by comparing Jesus for the first time with 'the only alternative tradition among ancient sources'--the Jewish Talmud. A. Jordan's survey of Jesus in the Talmud exceeds in scope and depth any previous research into the subject, and his conclusions reflect both the nature of the source, and by his own admission, the limits of the source."" --James R. Edwards, author of The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition"

"""Whatever the historical value of the Talmud is for the description of the development of the early Jesus movement, A. Jordan has written an excellent account of the certainly 'inherently biased, ' but 'only alternative' version of that history which can be found in the Talmud. In addition to bringing together what the Talmud has to say about Jesus, his family, his disciples, and his early followers, the author gives access to this alternative reading to non-talmudic specialists."" --Markus Vinzent, author of Writing the History of Early Christianity ""Jesus the Nazarene combines common sense with great erudition, a formula rarer in Life of Jesus studies than one might imagine. A. Jordan systematically sets forth Talmudic references and discussions about the Jewish heretic and Christian Savior. . . . Jordan's aim is modest: if there does exist a coherent and plausible ancient non-Christian account of Jesus, alternative to that in Christian Scripture, doesn't it deserve fair consideration?"" --Robert M. Price, editor, The Journal of Higher Criticism ""This book offers a final facet in the Quest-for-the-Historical-Jesus genre by comparing Jesus for the first time with 'the only alternative tradition among ancient sources'--the Jewish Talmud. A. Jordan's survey of Jesus in the Talmud exceeds in scope and depth any previous research into the subject, and his conclusions reflect both the nature of the source, and by his own admission, the limits of the source."" --James R. Edwards, author of The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition"

Author Information

A. Jordan holds a PhD in linguistics and is an active independent scholar interested in linguistics, politics, and religion, particularly the historical Jesus, the development of Christianity, and the Gospel of Thomas.

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