because you differ about him in the most extreme fashion and have no sure knowledge (1) of any part of his story.

Likewise (2), the Jews are agreed that he never claimed any share of divinity, the very claim you attribute to him. Their ultimate hope, in fact, was that he might make such a claim, for that would have strengthened their hand against him. The reason this allegation became so widespread is also known: their rabbis and scholars of old—whose names are still remembered—feared that the masses might follow him, for he was upon a way readily accepted by hearts free of ulterior motive. So they circulated many slanders against him, and among them was the charge that he laid claim to divinity, merely to dampen people’s enthusiasm for him.

Furthermore, the Jews themselves are so divided over his affair that their very disagreement shows they have no certainty (3) about any report concerning him. Some say he was simply a man from among them, whose father and mother were well known, and they even brand him the son of an adulteress (4)—far exalted is he, and far exalted is his truthful, pure, virgin mother, whom no man ever touched; may God fight them, how deluded they are! They call his supposed adulterous father Bandirā the Roman (Pandera) and his mother “Mary the hair-dresser,” and claim that her husband, Joseph son of Judah, found Bandirā upon her bed, learned of the matter (5), abandoned her, and disowned the child.

Other Jews turn away from this assertion and maintain that his father was Joseph son of Judah, Mary’s husband. They say that the reason the epithet “mamzer” (6) clung to him was that, one day, while he was with his teacher Yehoshua ben Perachiah and the rest of the disciples