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DISCLAIMING OR RECLAIMING THE TRADITION Jewish scholars of the early Wissenschaft des Judentums (the 19th-century “Sci- ence of Judaism”) explicitly disowned this ill-reputed work, calling it “tasteless” and “miserable”, a “spurious and mischievous” book, a “pile of dump in a dark corner of Jewish literature” or even an “invention of the anti-Semites”.20 Only a few explicitly defended it as a reaction to Christian persecution or dared con- sider it “harmless” when compared to Christian attacks on Jews and Judaism.21 In the 18th century, Moses Mendelsohn had already firmly asserted (echoing Wagenseil) that Toledot Yeshu was “a miscarriage from the times of legends” and recognized as such by each and every Jew.22 And a little more than a centu- ry earlier, the Venetian rabbi Leone Modena had called it “a lie and a mockery”, adding that it was a disgrace for Jews to believe in such nonsense.23 Obviously such dismissals also aimed to deflect accusations of blasphemy and the aura of scandal surrounding the narrative since the Middle Ages. So, for example, Zalman Zvi of Aufhausen wrote his Yudischer Theriak (Jew- ish Antidote), published in 1615, as an “antidote” to the calumnies spread by a Christian convert from Judaism, Samuel Friederich Brenz, and roundly replied with regard to Toledot Yeshu that “in all his life [he had] never seen such a book”, accusing Brenz of having written it himself in order “to beat and slander us with it”.24 And Josel of Rosheim, the Jewish delegate at the Habsburg court, in a letter of July 1543 addressed to the City Council of Strasbourg requested that Martin Luther’s book Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi (Of the Ineffable Name and the Generation of Christ), which included a German translation of Toledot Yeshu, be prohibited on account of the violence the Re- former’s anti-Jewish slurs had already caused in a number of German cities.25 Jo- sel insisted that the Jews had little if any knowledge of the blasphemous story future publication, was also mentioned in a number of contemporary newspapers; see e.g. the “New York Letter” in The Jewish Chronicle (19 November 1897). On Comstock and his campaign for public morality, see now Werbel 2018. 20 Graetz 1853–1870, vol. 10, 302, Steinschneider 1850, 409; Karpeles 1909, vol. 1, 325; Neubauer 1888, 81–82; Schechter 1900, 415; Porges 1902, 173; 177. Richard Gottheil (1897), commenting on the Chinski case (see above, n. 19), noted that he had “seldom read a viler production” (i.e. Toledot Yeshu) and hoped that the punishment meted out to its publisher would be “severe enough to deter him from ever attempting to write again in a similar strain”. For a discussion, see also Horbury, forthcoming (a), with reference also to earlier examples. 21 Jellinek 1877, vol. 6, x; Karpeles 1902, vol. 2, 165: “Die vielfach entstellenden Sagen, die die Grundlage dieser kleinen Schrift bilden, sind aber doch immer sehr harmlos den scharfen Angriffen gegenüber, die das Judentum schon in den Tagen der Kirchenväter erfahren hatte.” 22 Mendelssohn 1974, 362, and cf. Wagenseil 1681, “Confutatio Libri Toldos Jeschu,” 1 [25]. 23 Modena 1960, 43 (III, 9). See Fishman 2003; Facchini, forthcoming. 24 See now Faierstein 2016, here at 48–49 (I, 7). 25 Fraenkel-Goldschmidt 2006, 398–417. See above, n. 10. 34 | Daniel Barbu www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1