Scholarship on Literary text: JTS 2529.1

“[ ... ... ] if you do not find me nor my body, on the cross—

I ascended to the firmament of Heaven, and you will not see me.” They crucified him

alive, and stoned him with stones, and he died on the cross.

And they did not want to take him down from the cross. R. Yehoshuʿa said to them:

[For it is written, ‘Do not let his corpse remain overnight] on the cross’, etc.”

R. [Yehoshuʿa] said: [“Bring him down] from the cross.” They buried him in the [water]-channel

[in the gar]den of R. Yehudah the gardener. When these

[peop]le whom he had misled came, they did not find him on the cross;

they surrounded and caught [the Jews and] said to them:

“Yeshu our master told us the truth, (that) the Jews are dealing with a lie. If

If you crucified him on the cross, where did his body go?

In [truth], he ascended to Heaven.” Pelatus the governor summoned

Yehudah the gardener, and said to him: “The man whom you (pl.) have crucified—

what did you (sg.) do with his body?” R. Yehudah answered: “My master! Yeshu the wicked

knew what is written in the Torah, ‘Do not let his corpse remain overnight on the cross’, and he misled these people,

and said to them, ‘If you come and do not find me

on the cross—I ascended to Heaven’. And now, if

our master wishes, I will bring him, and will show his body

to them, and they will believe and will know that it is Yeshu the wicked.”

R. Yehudah the gardener went and brought him up from his tomb, and threw a rope

on his leg and dragged him in all the streets of Tiberias, and they proclaimed

the great God of Heaven, besides whom there is [none].” [He brought] him

to Pelatus the governor, and he summoned [the people] whom [he had mis]led,

and there were those who believed, and there were those who did not bel[ieve].

Pelatus the governor [answered] and said to Yehudah the gardener: “[...]

whom you (pl.?) buried in the water-trough—and now, hurry

and bury him in the place where they bury the dead.” Yehudah

the gardener went and buried him in the water-holes (?). The day on which

Yeshu the Nazarene, the wicked, was crucified was the fourteenth day of the month

of Nisan. And when they returned and brou[ght h]im out of [his tom]b

and dragged [him in the streets of Ti]berias [ ... twe]nty-

first of the month of [Nisa]n. He who brought a [great] judgment [upon Yeshu]

the wicked—He will [quic]kly bring a judgment and retribution

on the enemies of His people, and (on) whoever abandons the worship of the God of

[Heaven] and worships and bows down to the name of Yeshu the wicked ...