ABSTRACT
Born of Judaism, the Christian “heresy” ends up supplanting idolatrous paganism to become the official religion of the Roman Empire. For rabbis, this means that one “prostitute” casts out another. They advise their fellow Jews to keep their distance from the new religion and the seduction she employs. Jesus and his followers are therefore brought to life in parodic tales. Rabbis use Jesus as their mouthpiece to present Christianity as a neo-idolatry. As an idolater, seducer, and sorcerer, Jesus becomes the founder of his own cult. Rather than Jesus himself, however, the Christian contemporaries of the rabbis are the targets of the polemic.
