Toledot Yeshu - Christian Response

Christian Response

Christian polemicists from the 9th through 20th centuries have used the Toledot to inflame Christian hostility towards Jews.

In 1405, the Toledot was banned by Church authorities. A book under this title was strongly condemned by Francesc Eiximenis (d. 1409) in his Vita Christi. But in 1614 it was largely reprinted by a Jewish apostate, Samuel Friedrich Brenz, in Nuremberg, as part of his book vilifying his former religion, titled "Skin Shed by the Jewish Snake".

An indirect witness to the Christian condemnation of the book can be found in one manuscript of the Toledot, which has this cautionary note in its introduction:

should be shown only to people of discretion, for one never knows what the morrow may bring. ... I copied it from three different pamphlets from three different countries, not just one, The contents of all these pamphlets were identical, except that I wrote it in the language of prudence .

Martin Luther quoted the Toledot (evidently the Strassburg version) at length in his general condemnation of Jews in his book Vom Schem Hamphoras in 1543.