For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[EGross]

Actually, the Yeshu (not a Hebrew name found anywhere. It's an acronym) story in the Talmud does not have any magic powers at all, and it was obviously a later edit to make him an unlearned fellow with an eye for the ladies, who has an ego problem and worships idols. No powers. And the older texts don't seem to have the polemics. Centuries later, the Rabbis would perform an internal censoring "Enough is enough!" to get rid of of stuff finding it's way into the texts. Today, the uncensored versions are published by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, although he doesn't go back to the oldest text, but uses the ones just before the censoring, which makes for an interesting read to see how far the editors went.

A later story, many centuries later, do the who supernatural polemic with him flying into the sky and some other rabbi has to fly up and piss him down (gotta love those Spaniards and their bathroom humor). At the time, forced conversions were going on, so they fought back by lampooning the enemy. Interestingly enough, it may have helped the conversion cause more than hinder it.