Emotions in the Margins: Reading Toledot Yeshu after the Affective Turn

In 826 C.E., Agobard, bishop of Lyon, published a treatise entitled De Judaicis superstitionibus, detailing and ridiculing the ‘superstitions’ of the Jews. The details Agobard recounts make clear that the bishop is referring to a medieval Jewish parody of the story of Jesus’ life, known as Toledot Yeshu (Life of Jesus), composed in Aramaic sometime before the second half of the eighth century and later translated into Hebrew. Toledot Yeshu tells the story of Jesus’ life in a biting, vulgar tone. It was a text composed and used by Jews as an anti-Christian polemic, and as an internal document to bolster the faith of fellow Jews, oftentimes those who found themselves drawn in some way to Christianity and who needed encouragement not to stray from Judaism. There is no single uniform text; each manuscript tells a different version of the story – some with slight variations, others with drastic differences in tone, style, and plot. Included here is a very preliminary transcription and translation of the opening passages of a Judaeo-Arabic manuscript of Toledot Yeshu currently owned by Princeton University Library [Princeton Hebrew MS. 18, fol. 1r-9v / C0932]. The selected passage recounts the story of Yeshu’s conception and birth as well as the discovery of his father’s identity by the sages. The manuscript is written in eastern script that dates to the 16th century. It belongs to the Group II manuscripts according to the Schäfer/Meerson manuscript groupings