Footnote 3 – The Jewishness of Jesus
The few references to Jesus in the talmudic writings and the Toledot Yeshu traditions are without historical value. The few talmudic references are late polemics. The description of Jesus in Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews 18.63–64 may well be a later interpolation into the text. At least some of its statements (“he was the messiah … on the third day he appeared to them restored to life”) sound like the products of a Christian editor. (See Louis H. Feldman, letter, Queries & Comments, BAR 09:05) While some scholars argue that the Gospel of Thomas and other noncanonical Gospels contain authentic teachings of Jesus, no one thinks that they give historical data about him.