The Great Forgery: With or Without Idolatry?

That man, who was a danger to the Jewish people, was judged and executed according to Torah law.

The stoning and hanging of Yeshu (Jesus) is recorded in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 43b): "On the eve of Passover, they hung Yeshu the Nazarene. A herald went forth for 40 days before him: Yeshu the Nazarene is to be stoned for sorcery and enticing and misleading Israel. Whoever knows of a defense for him, let him come and state it. But no defense was found, and they hung him on the eve of Passover." Ulla said: "Do you think Yeshu the Nazarene had a possible defense? He was an enticer! And the Merciful One said, 'Do not spare him or conceal him.' Rather, Yeshu the Nazarene was close to the kingdom."

An enticer is one of the four offenders condemned to death by the court (an enticer, a rebellious son, a rebellious sage, and false witnesses), whose sentence must be proclaimed publicly, as it is stated: "And all the people shall hear and fear, and they shall no longer act presumptuously" (Deuteronomy 17:13). According to Rabbi Akiva, they wait until the nearest festival, and execute them during the festival in front of all Israel. Thus they did with Yeshu the Nazarene, stoning him according to halachic procedures. His hanging, central in the Christian religion, was far less grand than described. He was not hung alive but only after he was pushed off the stoning platform and died. If he did not die from the fall, he was stoned to death with rocks. In any case, his dead body was what was hoisted onto a beam.

Yeshu's death was a severe blow to his followers. To avoid being considered fools for believing in a mere mortal who died disgracefully, his disciples began spreading fanciful tales, claiming his grave opened on the third day, and he ascended to heaven bodily. Rabbi Chaim Vital relayed an undisclosed detail from those days: the Jews attempted to refute the lies that the disciple of the Nazarene spread, claiming he ascended bodily, by publicly displaying his dead body, which they had taken out of the grave in Jerusalem, throughout the length and breadth of Israel, to show unmistakably that Yeshu's body was decomposing on earth, not wandering the heavens. Eventually, his body was cast into one of the pits in the Upper Galilee, whose exact location Rabbi Chaim Vital specifies. Understandably, this location is not the same as that in Jerusalem, where tens of thousands of Christians flock naïvely, though initially he may have been buried near Jerusalem.

As the early Christians' stories about their false messiah's death lacked factual basis, various narratives and depictions, contradicting each other, spread among them. From these contradictions, multiple Christian denominations later emerged, each sanctifying a different version about the figure. The contradictions were so stark that churches battled each other over heretical deviations from their accepted stance.

The Jews, for the most part, rejected the futile sermons of Yeshu's disciples and their attempts to portray him as the Messiah. To them, "it became a matter of mockery and ridicule, akin to laughing at the actions of a monkey when it imitates human deeds" (Maimonides, Epistle to Yemen). Failing to convey their absurdities to the People of Israel, the followers of the false messiah sought luck among neighboring nations, where Christianity indeed flourished.

The first Christians' rejection by their Jewish brethren, who stubbornly rejected anything contrary to their ancestral tradition, directed their fervor towards spreading Yeshu's ideas among pagan nations. Gradually, the early Christians abandoned observance of Jewish law and adopted idol worship, presenting it under a new facade. They considered connecting with Yeshu and believing in him as the central mission. They placed his image and statues everywhere. Furthermore, they included him in their worship. Christian churches were adorned with idolatrous artworks depicting him and his mother. Hypocritically, the Christian church fathers banned non-Christian idol worship, relying on the Torah's prohibition "You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness" (Exodus 20:3); yet they allowed the worship of Yeshu and his mother, occasionally even other idols. Christians tried hard to justify these practices, seeking to purify their idolatry with myriad rationalizations. The various tendencies within early Christianity and the opposing views between those Christians who were devotees and those who abandoned the tradition found their way into Christianity's foundational texts, the so-called 'New Covenant' or Gospels, attributing contradictory statements to Yeshu regarding observing the Torah. The Sages, aware of the paradoxes in Christian texts, scorned the inconsistent and unprincipled Christians.