Evidence · Case 01 · Historical Jesus
The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a)
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
The Babylonian Talmud, a collection of Jewish teaching compiled between about 200 and 500 AD, records in tractate Sanhedrin 43a that a man called Yeshu was “hanged on the eve of Passover” after a herald spent forty days calling for anyone to defend him. The details differ sharply from the Gospels: the passage says he was to be stoned for sorcery and for leading Israel astray, and it describes a Jewish court, not a Roman one. Most scholars treat it as a late, polemical memory, possibly of Jesus and possibly conflated with someone else. Its value is as a hostile witness that a Yeshu was executed around Passover, not as confirmation of the Christian account.
Sources
Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, folio 43a
Objections & responses
- Sanhedrin 43a says Yeshu was hanged, had five disciples with different names, and was tried by a Jewish court after a forty-day search for defense witnesses. None of that matches the Gospels. Isn’t this a different Yeshu?
Every one of those discrepancies is real, which is why scholars debate whether each Yeshu passage refers to Jesus of Nazareth. Two details still point toward him: hanged was standard rabbinic language for crucifixion, and execution on the eve of Passover matches John’s chronology exactly. The mismatches are best read as a hostile tradition garbling and reshaping a memory for polemical purposes, centuries after the fact. This passage is backup with clear limits, and nothing here rests on it.