Event Details

Toledot Yeshu (TY) is a long-lived polemical body of literature that treats the life of Jesus, entertaining to
some, obnoxious to others. This anti-Christian narrative has been a best-seller among Jews since its initial
anonymous composition in Late Antiquity and continuing through medieval and modern times. Recent
research has highlighted the extent of its popularity and its wide variety of renditions among European Jewish
communities. TY, though, was also highly popular among Jews living under Muslim rule in the Near East
and Mediterranean. It is attested in a surprising variety of renditions in Judeo-Arabic, and also circulated
extensively in the Near East in Hebrew. In my presentation, I will introduce the composition, highlighting and
detailing its early and significant Judeo-Arabic attestations. I will also contextualize the Jewish presentation
of Jesus within the Arabic-speaking contexts of the medieval Near East, considering how this parodical Jewish
story transmitted so extensively forms part of a multi-confessional patchwork of traditions about Jesus in
Arabic.