Jesus in the Talmud

There are several passages in the Talmud which are believed by some scholars to be references to Jesus. The name used in the Talmud is "Yeshu", the Aramaic vocalization (although not spelling) of the Hebrew name Yeshua.

In the modern era, there has been a variance of views among scholars of the possible references to Jesus in the Talmud, depending partly on presuppositions as to the extent to which the ancient rabbis were preoccupied with Jesus and Christianity. This range of views among modern scholars on the subject has been described as a range from "minimalists" who see few passages with reference to Jesus, to "maximalists" who see many passages having reference to Jesus. These terms "minimalist" and "maximalist" are not unique to discussion of the Talmud text; they are also used in discussion of academic debate on other aspects of Jewish vs. Christian and Christian vs. Jewish contact and polemic in the early centuries of Christianity, such as the Adversus Iudaeos genre. "Minimalists" include Jacob Z. Lauterbach (1951) ("who recognize[d] only relatively few passages that actually have Jesus in mind"), while "maximalists" include Herford (1903) (who concluded that most of the references related to Jesus, but were non-historical oral traditions which circulated among Jews), and Schäfer (2007) (who concluded that the passages were parodies of parallel stories about Jesus in the New Testament incorporated into the Talmud in the 3rd and 4th centuries that illustrate the inter-sect rivalry between Judaism and nascent Christianity).

The first Christian censorship of the Talmud occurred in the year 521, as noted by Reverend James Parkes in "The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue" (p. 392). More extensive censorship began during the Middle Ages, notably under the directive of Pope Gregory IX. Catholic authorities accused the Talmud of blasphemous references to Jesus and Mary. Jewish scholars refuted these claims, stating that there were no references to Jesus in the Talmud and that names like Joshua were common and unrelated to Jesus. These disputations led to the removal of many references from subsequent editions of the Talmud.

Some editions of the Talmud, particularly those from the 13th century onward, are missing these references, removed either by Christian censors, by Jews themselves out of fear of reprisals, or possibly lost through negligence or accident. However, most editions of the Talmud published since the early 20th century have seen the restoration of most of these references.