For People Who Think There Was No Historical Jesus

[EGross]

She only translated the introduction as a tease, but that are about 32 other pages, so there's a lot of meat in it. Her point is that, depending on the society, the form of the polemic will change. Notice how much it sounded like an Arab proclamation more than a jewish one due to assimilation into that culture, which is amazing.

But the other point is that it seems to merge other elements that are not in the European flavor, and that the Jews inserted things that the Muslims would certainly have objected to, since they love Mary and Joseph. Or, in other words, that the text was brought into Arab lands, was edited and played with, while the original elements remained in place. She also compares it to a Christian polemic that says that Islam was an offshoot of Christianity, with a similar Jewish one that says that Mohammed met with Christian leaders:

The Christian polemical texts modify crucial details of the meeting, and present the claim that the religion preached by Muh˙ammad was actually the result of an extended period of study with the monk. At the end of this period, Muh˙ammad composed the Qur’a¯n as a summary of these teachings in order to convey them to his kinsmen. According to the Christian polemical rewriting of the account, Islam is nothing but an offshoot of Christianity. Similarly, late medieval Jewish chroniclers report a story about Muh˙ammad’s formulation of his new religion with the help of a group of advisors including the Christian “Buh˙ayran”

So there is a nice comparison with how Jews perceived Jesus and how they perceived Mohammed, and while neither are history, one can see history through the fables. And the references are a wealth of information that I didn't already have.

Now, originally, I was researching the texts that reside in the Russian museum, which are in Aramaic, not Hebrew, which puts it at an earlier dating than the one this author is using. But it still has some socialogical intrest just the same.