It exists in a number of different versions, none of which is considered either canonical or normative within Rabbinic literature,[1] but which appear to have been widely circulated in Europe and the Middle East in the medieval period.
The Toledot portrays Jesus (known as Yeshu by the author) as an illegitimate child who practiced sorcery, taught a heretical Judaism, seduced women, and died a shameful death.
In some versions of Toledot Yeshu, Jesus is noted to have revived a man from the dead, turn clay statues into flying birds, and lift his arms like the wings of an eagle, ascending towards the heavens for an airborne battle with Judah Iskarioto.
As Joseph Dan notes in the Encyclopaedia Judaica, "The narrative in all versions treats Jesus as an exceptional person who, from his youth, demonstrated unusual wit and wisdom, but disrespect toward his elders and the sages of his age.
[7] The opinion of noted advocate of Christian-Jewish reconciliation, Father Edward H. Flannery, is representative: This scurrilous fable of the life of Jesus is a medieval work, probably written down in the tenth century.
[8]This disregard has recently shifted towards a growing level of discussion on the text's possible scholarly use as a window into the early history of Jewish-Christian relations.
As Flannery states: Most offensive to Christians were Jewish insults to the person of Christ, about which St. Justin, Tertullian, Eusebius, Hippolytus, and Origen complained [...] In his Against Celsus [A.D. 248], Origen provides an idea of the caliber of the insults: Jesus, illegitimate son of Panthera, a Roman legionary, was a charlatan and a magician killed by the Jews; after His death, marvels were invented by His disciples concerning Him.
[19] Although individual anecdotes that make up the Toledot Yeshu may all come from sources dating before the sixth century, there is no evidence that their gathering into a single narrative is that early.
[b][29] [30] Some of the anecdotes recounted in the Toledot seem to have been drawn from non-canonical early Christian writings known as apocryphal gospels, datable to the 4th–6th centuries AD.
In chapter 17 Justin claims that the Jews had sent out "chosen men" throughout the Roman Empire to polemicize against Christianity, calling it a "godless heresy".
[38] An indirect witness to the Christian condemnation of the book can be found in one manuscript of the Toledot, which has this cautionary note in its introduction: [This booklet] should be shown only to people of discretion, for one never knows what the morrow may bring.
[39]Martin Luther quoted the Toledot (evidently the Strassburg version) at length in his general condemnation of Jews in his book Vom Schem Hamphoras in 1543.
[41] Long unknown to Christians, the Toledot was first translated into Latin by Ramon Martí, a Dominican friar, toward the end of the 13th century,[4] in a work entitled Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos ("The Dagger of Faith against the Moors and the Jews").
During the reign of Queen Helena, two bronze dogs were placed at the entrance of the Temple in Jerusalem, to deter intruders from stealing the secret of the Shem HaMephorash, the ineffable name of God.
Though Helena is amazed at the miracle, the Jews are in uproar, and Jesus flees to the upper Galilee, where he sends word to the queen not to fight on his behalf.
The elders of Israel ask Helena to request an audience with Jesus, and then allow a man named Juda Scariot into the Temple to learn the secret of the Shem HaMephorash.
Injured and disoriented, Jesus is then beaten by a mob wielding pomegranate branches, and is brought before Helena to plead his case.
In 1681, Wagenseil, a professor at the University of Altdorf, published a Hebrew text of the Toledot Yeshu with a Latin translation, in a book titled "Satan's Flaming Arrow" (Tela Ignea Satanae).
Supplementary chapters tell of Nestorius and his attempts to keep Christians obeying Jewish custom, and the story of Simeon Kepha who is construed to be the Apostle Peter or Paul.
He gathered 310 young men and proclaimed himself the Messiah, claiming Isaiah's "a virgin shall conceive and bear a son" and other prophets prophesied about him.
Pandera and Miriam move to Nazareth and change their names, while Yeshua comes of age and travels to Jerusalem to study under Rabbi Joshua ben Perachiah.
As such a thing was considered disrespectful, the Rabbis investigate Yeshua, and after traveling to Nazareth and learning from Miriam that he is a bastard, they expel him from the Temple after pronouncing a curse of damnatio memoriae over him.
Dejected, Yeshua adopts the name "Yeshu" to reflect the rabbis' curse over him, and begins preaching a heretical interpretation of the Torah.
Three rabbis, led by one Judah ben Zechariah, petition Herod for permission to try Yeshu for violating the Law of Moses, and the king acquiesces.
To stymie the city's discontent, an agent of Herod tells the people that Yeshu had been resurrected by a bout of heavenly fire three days after his execution.
However, Rabbi Judah boasts that Yeshu's corpse still remains in a filthy cistern in Jerusalem, and upon confirming this, the people of Ai rise in rebellion.
Samuel Krauss reprinted a version recounting that Miriam had been betrothed to a nobleman by the name of Yochanan, who was both a descendant of the House of David, and a God-fearing Torah scholar.
[3] In Yochanan's absence her neighbor, Yosef ben Pandera forced himself upon her,[d] coercing her into an act of sexual intercourse during her Niddah (i.e., menstruation, a period of ritual impurity during which relations are forbidden according to Jewish Law).
"[3] Krauss's book, Das Leben Jesu nach juedischen Quellen, published in Berlin in 1902, contained a study of nine different versions of the Toledot, and remains the leading scholarly work in the field (but has not yet been translated into English).
In Umberto Eco's Baudolino, set in the XII century, the character Rabbi Solomon is introduced translating the Toledot Yeshu for the curiosity of a Christian cleric.