Does the Talmud really say Jesus in burning in excrement?

1. What the Talmudic text actually contains and where the quote comes from

The contested language comes from Tractate Gittin folios 56b–57a, where a narrative about necromancy and postmortem interrogation of a spirit appears and the interlocutor is reported as replying that he is punished “with boiling excrement” (a location called Tzoah Rotachat) and that his ashes are gathered and burned daily ^{[1] [2]}. Multiple modern translations and summaries reproduce the phrase “boiling excrement” or “boiling in hot excrement” as part of that passage ^{[6] [7]}.

2. Who is “Yeshu” — a straightforward identification or a contested label?

The text in question names a figure called Yeshu (or a variant), and some readers — Christian apologists and popular writers — take that name to mean Jesus of Nazareth and therefore conclude the Talmud asserts Jesus suffers this fate ^{[8] [6]}. Other scholars and Jewish groups caution that “Yeshu” was a common name in antiquity, that the Talmudic corpus contains multiple figures and redactional layers, and that some talmudic passages thought to reference Jesus may instead refer to other characters or are later polemical insertions, so the identification is disputed ^{[4] [3] [5]}.

3. Textual complexity, redaction history, and scholarly treatments

Talmudic passages were transmitted in manuscripts, glosses, and medieval extractions; contemporary critical scholarship highlights variant readings, later censorial edits, and the extractiones tradition that shaped how medieval Latin and later readers understood these lines ^[5]. Brill’s academic treatments discuss the chapter on “Jesus’s punishment in Hell” and the larger textual history, signaling that the passage’s meaning and referent cannot be settled by a single surface reading ^[5]. Some modern analysts therefore argue for caution about treating the phrase as a literal doctrinal statement about the historical Jesus ^[5].

4. How modern actors use the passage — apologetics, polemic, and agendas

The quote has been deployed by both critics and defenders: some Christian writers and polemicists cite the passage to accuse rabbinic Judaism of deliberate insult toward Jesus, while many Jewish defenders and scholars either contextualize the passage as referring to a different figure or emphasize historical pressures (censorship, persecution) that produced hostile or oblique references in the Talmud ^{[9] [3] [6]}. Commercial and ideological bloggers often present the claim bluntly as “the Talmud says Jesus is boiling in excrement,” whereas academic accounts (and Jewish apologetics groups like Jews for Judaism) underscore ambiguity and the need to distinguish between various Yeshus, textual layers, and later redactions ^{[4] [3]}.

5. Conclusion — a direct answer with limits of the evidence

Yes: the Babylonian Talmud’s Gittin 56b–57a contains a passage in which a figure called Yeshu is described as being punished in “boiling excrement,” and some translations and commentators read that as a Talmudic statement about a Jesus-like figure ^{[1] [2] [6]}. No: whether that passage refers to the historical Jesus of Nazareth is contested by scholars and Jewish organizations, who point to commonality of the name, different possible referents, manuscript and redactional complications, and polemical contexts that complicate a direct identification ^{[4] [5] [3]}. The plain textual claim — that a Yeshu is said to be in Tzoah Rotachat — exists in the Talmudic tradition; the interpretive claim — that the Talmud is directly calling the Christian Jesus to such torment — remains disputed and depends on philological, historical, and theological judgments beyond the bare text ^{[1] [5] [4]}.