Paul in Jewish Texts

This material is striking because it places Paul in a surprisingly favorable role within a Jewish polemical tradition that otherwise mocks Jesus and early Christianity, making Paul’s positive treatment especially revealing.

The point is not to use the text as a biography of Paul. Its value is more specific: it preserves a form of reception memory in which Paul functions as the figure through whom Christians are separated from Jewish law and communal life.

Within the Jewish counter-narratives collectively known as Toledot Yeshu — which present a largely polemical, dismissive, and often satirical account of Jesus (Yeshua) — there appear passages that refer to Paul. A number of surviving recensions are composed in an Aramaic dialect characteristic of the third and fourth centuries, blending features of Babylonian Aramaic and Targumic traditions. These narratives, transmitted primarily through oral culture and shaped as fluid, literary compositions to facilitate memorisation, were on occasion also committed to writing. The text reproduced below derives from a manuscript dating to the fifteenth or sixteenth century.

Original Hebrew — Ashkenazi A / Strasbourg Recension (Approximate Passage)^[1]

English Translation

(Approximate and fluent rendering, faithful to the original text):

The opinion of the sages concurred with the view of a man named Eliyahu. [...]

Eliyahu travelled from the Hadrianeum in Tiberias to Antioch and proclaimed throughout all the borders of Israel: "Let all who believe in Yeshu rally to me!" [...]

He declared to them: "I am the emissary of Yeshu; he has sent me to you." [...]

He told them: "Yeshu sends you peace and says: 'I am with my Father in heaven, at His right hand, until He exacts vengeance upon the Jews.'" [...]

Eliyahu said to them: "Whoever desires to be with me in the world to come, let him withdraw from the congregation of Israel." [...]

“And let him not associate with them, for my Father in heaven has already rejected them.” [...]

“In place of the Passover of Israel, institute for yourselves the Day of Resurrection.” [...]

“Circumcision and uncircumcision are of no consequence.” [...]

“And every creature that the Holy One, Blessed be He, created in His world, from the tiny mosquito to the great elephant — shed its blood upon the earth and consume it.” [...]

And Eliyahu continued in this manner until he had separated them from Israel. And this is the very Eliyahu who taught them those statutes that are not good; and he did so for the sake of the religion of Israel. The Christians call him Paul.

Analysis

This passage, drawn from the latter sections of the text, describes how Paul — ostensibly acting under rabbinical guidance and in the name of safeguarding Judaism — systematically distanced Christians from Jewish observance, thereby facilitating the definitive separation of the two communities. Alternative recensions, such as those preserved by Wagenseil and Huldreich, contain broadly similar though textually variant accounts.

What makes this especially striking is the wider tone of the text itself. This is not a sympathetic Christian witness exalting Jesus and then naturally praising Paul alongside him. On the contrary, the work is deeply hostile to Jesus and often mocking in its treatment of him. Precisely for that reason, its treatment of Paul becomes more revealing, not less. If even a tradition so distant from Christian reverence can still present Paul as a figure through whom separation from Jewish law and life was successfully advanced, that contrast is not a trivial curiosity. It suggests that Paul's historical image had already taken on a meaning quite distinct from the honour of Jesus himself.

Paul's Overwhelming Presence in the New Testament: An Unresolved Paradox

If one accepts this narrative as historically grounded, Paul appears remarkably successful in his alleged mission. During his ministry, Prophet Jesus is presented as keeping his twelve apostles constantly at his side, along with the seventy disciples with whom he convened periodically. Yet the portions of the New Testament devoted to the apostles and disciples together constitute only about 23 per cent of its total content. By contrast, nearly half of the New Testament, thirteen of its twenty seven books, is traditionally attributed to Paul, and approximately two thirds of the Acts of the Apostles concerns Paul and his activities.

In sheer volume, the Pauline corpus exceeds the Gospel of Luke, one of the four canonical Gospels, by nearly two and a half times. That a man who never encountered Jesus in person, never conversed with him, and is portrayed as hostile to his followers during the period of Jesus's prophetic mission could later declare himself an apostle on the basis of visionary claims preserved in Acts 9, 22, and 26; 1 Corinthians 15:8, and then so profoundly reshape the doctrinal and institutional structure of the faith, remains a striking historical phenomenon.^[2]

In the Gospels, even where the message later opens toward all nations, this is not presented as an abandonment of Israel. Jesus's public mission remains overwhelmingly directed toward the people of Israel (Matthew 10:5–6; Matthew 15:24), while the wider proclamation is framed only in the closing narrative scenes as beginning from Jerusalem and then extending outward (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). Pauline theology, by contrast, does more than carry the movement into the Gentile world. It detaches belonging from the Torah-shaped framework that had long ordered Jewish covenantal life, so that circumcision, food laws, and the traditional boundaries separating Israel from the nations no longer stand at the centre in the same way (Galatians 5:2–6; Romans 14:14). Nor was the difficulty merely legal. Jewish faith was also formed around an uncompromising confession of divine oneness (Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29; 1 Corinthians 8:4–6). From within such a religious world, Paul's theological framework could hardly be received as a minor development or natural continuation, but rather as a far-reaching rupture. For a broader discussion of this shift, see the homepage section on the break from Judaism.^[3][4][5]

[1] Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch (eds.), Toledot Yeshu ("The Life Story of Jesus") Revisited, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 143 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011). The Strasbourg manuscript (Ashkenazi A recension) is held at the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg.

[2] For Paul's visionary calling claims, see Acts 9, 22, and 26; see also 1 Corinthians 15:8. For the twenty-seven-book New Testament canon, the thirteen letters traditionally attributed to Paul, and Paul's large share of Acts, see The New Testament and standard canon summaries.

[3] On Jesus's mission first to Israel and only later to the nations, see Matthew 10:5–6; 15:24; 28:19; Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8.

[4] On circumcision, food laws, and the loosening of Torah-shaped boundary markers in Pauline theology, see Galatians 2:7–9; 5:2–6; Romans 1:16; 14:14; 1 Corinthians 7:19.

[5] On divine oneness in Jewish scripture and the Gospels, and on Paul's placement of Jesus within an exalted sphere of lordship and devotion, see Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29; 1 Corinthians 8:4–6; Philippians 2:9–11.