Johann Maier (15 May 1933[1] – 16 March 2019)[2] was an Austrian scholar of Judaism, and was founder and, for thirty years, director of the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Cologne.
Maier was appointed director of the Martin Buber Institute for Jewish Studies at its founding in Spring 1966.
[7] One of Johann Maier's notable areas of research is regarding the dating and origin of passages relating to Jesus in the Talmud.
[13] Maier's argument that the name Yeshu in the texts is a later interpolation[14] depends in part on his general conclusion that Palestinian Jewry was unconcerned with Christianity before Constantine.
[15] Van Voorst (2000) has depicted Maier's position that the Jesus references in the Talmud were added later in the Middle Ages as the other extreme of the more uncritical early view of R. Travers Herford (1906) who took all texts as being original.