Hen 41(1/2019) ISSN 0393-6805 ARTICLES / ARTICOLI JESUS’ TRIAL IN THE LATIN TALMUD Tractate Sanhedrin and its Translation in the Extractiones de Talmud Federico Dal Bo, University of Heidelberg * Whoever intended to investigate how Christianity is represented in the Babylonian Talmud and to understand what reasons Christian authorities might have had for stigmatizing this work would probably be surprised by the rela- tive scarcity of pertinent material – at least in the textus receptus. 1 The pres- ence of Jesus in the Vilna edition is indeed quite modest, when not hidden. And yet this hardly reflects the primitive intentions of the text – rather the necessity of negotiating both with censorship and self-censorship. 2 The Latin * Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Heidelberg in connection with the project “Ma- terial Text Cultures” (SFB 933). For more information, see: http://www.federicodalbo.eu/. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Piero Capelli (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) for the thorough reading of a first draft of this paper as well as Prof. Dr. Alexander Fidora (Universitat Autòno- ma of Barcelona), Prof. Dr. Chaim Harvey Hames (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba), Dr. Ulisse Cecini (Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona), Prof. Dr. Beth Berkowitz (Barnard College), and the two anonymous reviewers for their many suggestions. This article was written as I was the recipient of a Marie Curie fellowship at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona in connection with the ERC-founded international project “The Latin Talmud,” directed by Prof. Dr. Alexander Fidora. For more details, see: http://pagines.uab.cat/lattal/. 1 The canonical edition of Vilna (1835) is based on the edition princeps of Daniel Bomberg (Venice 1520-1549) that became the common basis for all subsequent editions of the Talmud. The Bomberg edition – including Mishnah, Gemara, Rashi, and Tosafot – is usually free from Christian censorship, whereas the Vilna edition reflects both Christian censorship and Jewish self-censorship. An uncensored edition of the Talmud with a German translation was published by Lazarus Goldschmidt (1897-1936). Textual variants were published by Nathan Rabinovicz in his Diqduqe Soferim. Variae Lectiones in Mishnam et in Talmud Babylonicum (1867-1897), later reflected in the unfinished modern edition Gemara Shelema, edited by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Kasher (1960). The present article quotes from the textus receptus published in the dig- ital edition Responsa Project (Version 24), Bar-Ilan University, 2017. Talmudic manuscripts are quoted from the digital edition published by the Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research of the Jewish Theological Seminary (Version 5), Jewish Theological Seminary, 2002. 2 Scholarship on Jesus’ trial in the Talmud has recently been influenced by Peter Schäfer who argues that the several narratives on Jesus from the Babylonian Talmud would be a rabbinic answer to the Gospel of John. See: P. Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). An important contribution is the recent monograph by Thierry Murcia, Jésus dans le Talmud et la littérature rabbinique ancienne (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). This text examines in detail the most relevant passages from Rabbinic and Talmudic literature on Jesus, addressing lexical, textual, and historical issues.