Validating the ‘Jesus is boiling in Semen’ Babylonian Talmud Quote

As the first of my new series of articles validating famous quotes from the Talmuds we have one of the most infamous which is the claim from Folios 56b and 57a of Tractate Gittin from the Babylonian Talmud that Jesus is ‘boiling in semen’.

To quote van Voorst translation of the passage concerned:

‘[Onkelos the son of Kalonymos, nephew of the Roman general and emperor Titus, who desired to become a proselyte] called up Balaam [from the world of the dead] by necromancy. He said to him, ‘Who is honored in this world?’ He [Balaam] replied, ‘Israel.’ ‘What about [my] joining them?’ He replied, ‘You shall not seek their peace or their prosperity all your days’ (Deut. 23:6) He said to him, ‘What is your punishment?’ He replied, ‘To be in boiling semen.’

He called up Jesus by necromancy. He said to him, ‘Who is honored in this world?’ He [Jesus] replied, ‘Israel.’ ‘What about joining them?’ He replied, ‘Seek their good, do not seek their harm. Injuring them is like injuring the apple of your own eye.’ He said, ‘What is your punishment?’ He replied, ‘To be in boiling excrement.’ As a teacher has said, ‘Everyone who mocks the words of the wise is punished by boiling excrement.’ (1)

Now this is not the most obvious reference since we can see that Jesus is explicitly referred to as ‘boiling in excrement’ despite attempts to claim otherwise by jews like David Lange and Rabbi Gil Student (of ‘Jews for Jesus’) which I have debunked in detail in a separate article. (2)

However, ‘Balaam’ in the Babylonian Talmud is traditionally associated by scholars to be a ‘code word’ – in reality an insulting nickname –used by the jewish scholars and rabbis for Jesus. (3) This however is doubted by some scholars (4) but never-the-less the attempts by Student to falsely manufacture some kind of ‘scholarly consensus’ is complete and utter nonsense.

Student’s objection – possibly plagiarised from Van Vorst – (5) is however a valid one that we need to address.

He writes that:

‘Interestingly, if someone were to claim that Yeshu in the passage above is Jesus, then Balaam cannot also refer to Jesus because both Balaam and Yeshu are in the passage together. In other words, it is self-contradicting to claim that the passages above about Balaam’s mother being a harlot or dying young refer to Jesus and to claim that the passage above about Yeshu being punished also refers to Jesus. You can’t have it both ways.’ (6)

This superficially seems like a really good counter-argument because how – as Student rightly asked – can we have ‘Balaam’ as Jesus conversing with Onkelos in the first part of the passage and he is said to be boiling in semen in Gehenna but then Onkelos converses with Jesus as Jesus in the second part of the passage where-in we are told that Jesus is now boiling in excrement in Gehenna.

Thus, unless Jesus appears twice in the same passage and can be given two different punishments in Gehenna then ‘Balaam’ in Gittin 56b cannot be a ‘code word’ for Jesus.

Or can it?

This is where Student – and Lange who uncritically cites him and intimates some specialist knowledge of the Babylonian Talmud – are being more than a little dishonest and instead being deliberately credulous to support their predetermined position.

Student and Lange have pointedly failed to inform their readers that the Babylonian Talmud is a work which was rewritten and revised over a significant period of time – probably 100-200 years if not longer – and Gittin’s reference to ‘Balaam’ is one of the earlier ones we know of, so it wasn’t added later ‘in response to Christian persecution’ or some such mendacious excuse. (7)

Gittin 56b-57a is about the ‘arch-villains of jewish history’ (8) and how they are punished ‘because, obviously, punishment stands in direct relationship to their crime committed against Israel’. (9)

‘Balaam’ is used by the rabbinic writer because:

‘Balaam is presented as an outsider who seduces the people of God to false religion, a traditional picture shared by rabbinic writers.’ (10)

And ‘Balaam’ is indeed often used interchangeably with ‘Jesus’ in the Babylonian Talmud (11) and ‘Balaam’ was considered to be most prominent culprit for evil by the jewish sages and writers of the time. (12)

This is why Van Vorst’s objection is simultaneously both valid and invalid, because while he states:

‘The wide field of Balaam references in the New Testament, Philo and rabbinic Judaism reflect a long polemical tradition that typologically identifies many people as “Balaam.” Its specific application to Jesus is untenable.’ (13)

The fact remains that just because ‘Balaam’ was used widely by jews to refer to different people doesn’t mean that it… well… doesn’t mean Jesus because it is ‘non-specific’ but rather what it means is that Jesus is in fact one possible meaning of the use of ‘Balaam’ by jews of the time.

Indeed – as Schaefer notes – the key to this conundrum of why if ‘Balaam’ is Jesus and Jesus is Jesus in Gittin 56b-57a is because – as the ‘Balaam’ reference in Gittin 56b is one of the earliest – (14) the ‘Balaam’ as Jesus reference was actually the first one and Jesus as Jesus came later being added by a jewish writer/editor who didn’t understand that the ‘Balaam’ meant was Jesus and/or believed that Jesus was a jewish heretic not a gentile as would be required by the ‘Balaam’ reference. (15) In addition, Jesus’ identification with ‘the sinners of Israel’ – essentially Jesus seen as a jewish heretic – was also likely a later addition by a jewish writer/editor in Schaefer’s view. (16)

Evidence for this is not hard to come by when we note that ‘Balaam’ and Jesus were both inexplicably given near identical punishments in Gittin 56b-57a (17) and the fact is that while Balaam was considered the ‘Prophet of the Nations’. (18) Peoples of the ‘Congregation of the Lord’ (aka Israelites) could be – and had been – excluded from that status exactly ‘because they hired Balaam to curse Israel’. (19)

Further ‘Balaam’ didn’t necessarily have to mean ‘gentile’ either – another common false objection given by Student to such an identification – since ‘Balaam’ is referred to in Tractate Sanhedrin 10 as an ‘Israelite commoner’. (20) Thus, the rabbinic belief that Jesus was a jewish heretic suggested by Gittin 57a is no bar to Gittin 56b’s reference to ‘Balaam’ being a ‘code word’ for Jesus.

Hence Schaefer’s point that ‘Balaam’ isn’t a hard and fast category which in order for ‘Balaam’ not to be a ‘code word’ for Jesus it has to be, because unless ‘Balaam’ is a hard and fast category then ‘Balaam’ could be a ‘code word’ for Jesus and jews like Student and Lange cannot afford for it to be.

Hence why they deliberately ignore the status of the Babylonian Talmud as – what Umberto Eco would call – an ‘open work’ that has been significantly edited and rewritten over time, because in so doing necessarily brings in the possibility that the Talmudic sages/editors simply made a mistake or changed their mind and included Jesus twice either deliberately as both a ‘Prophet of the Gentiles’ (‘Balaam’) and a ‘jewish heretic’ or mistakenly in the belief that the earlier mention of ‘Balaam’ was referring to someone else.

In conclusion then we cannot but help agree with Schaefer that what while it seems implausible that ‘Balaam’ is Jesus is being punished – according to the Babylonian Talmud – in boiling semen in Gehenna, while Jesus as Jesus is also being punished – according to the same text – in boiling excrement in Gehenna.

The fact that these two references are somewhat contradictory – Jesus could after all be being punished in boiling mixed semen and excrement if we follow the Babylonian Talmud’s claims – doesn’t mean they are mutually exclusive as Student and Lange would like you to believe!

So yes, the Babylonian Talmud does claim that Jesus is being punished ‘in boiling semen’ in Gehenna.

References

(1) Robert E. Van Voorst, 2000, ‘Jesus Outside The New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence’, 1st Edition, William B. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, pp. 110-111

(2) See my article: https://karlradl14.substack.com/p/validating-the-jesus-is-boiling-in

(3) Van Vorst, Op. Cit., p. 110; Frederick Fyvie Bruce, 1974, ‘Jesus and Christian Origins outside the New Testament’, 1st Edition, Hodder and Stoughton: London, p. 59

(4) For example: Van Vorst, Op. Cit., pp. 114-116

(5) Compare Ibid. to https://www.jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/jesus-in-the-talmud/\

(6) https://www.jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/jesus-in-the-talmud/ also cited by https://www.israellycool.com/2024/12/03/does-the-talmud-really-say-jesus-is-boiling-in-excrement/

(7) Van Vorst, Op. Cit., p. 115

(8) Peter Schaefer, 2007, ‘Jesus in the Talmud‘, 1st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton, p. 87

(9) Ibid.

(10) Van Vorst, Op. Cit., p. 110, n. 76

(11) Schaefer, Op. Cit., pp. 32-33

(12) Ibid., p. 31

(13) Van Vorst, Op. Cit., p. 115

(14) Ibid.

(15) Schaefer, Op. Cit., p. 89

(16) Ibid., p. 90

(17) Ibid., p. 89

(18) Ibid., pp. 85; 89

(19) Ibid., p. 86

(20) Van Vorst, Op. Cit., p. 115

(21) Schaefer, Op. Cit., p. 86