 |
| Jesus as a young Jew by Rembrandt |
strange information that may be regarded as a faint and distorted echo of the Gospels’ stories about Jesus’ family background and his parents.1
Since neither source mentions, however, the name “Jesus” but instead resorts to the enigmatic names “Ben Stada” and “Ben Pandera/Pantera” respectively, their relationship to Jesus is hotly disputed. I will analyze the Bavli text in detail and demonstrate that it indeed refers to the Jesus of the New Testament and is not just a remote and corrupt echo of the New Testament story; rather, it presents—with few words and in the typically discursive style of the Bavli—a highly ambitious and devastating counter-narrative to the infant story of the New Testament.
The version of our story in Shab 104b is embedded in an exposition of the mishnaic law, which regards the writing of two or more letters as work and hence forbidden on the Sabbath (m Shab 12:4). The Mishna discusses all kind of materials that might be used for writing, and of objects upon which one might write, and states that the prohibition of writing includes also the use of one’s own body as a writing object. From this the logical question arises: But what about tattoos?2 Are they, too, to be regarded as writing and hence forbidden on Sabbath?3 According to R. Eliezer, the answer is yes (they are forbidden on Sabbath), whereas R. Yehoshua allows it (in the Tosefta parallel it is the Sages).
The Tosefta and both the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud elaborate further upon this Mishna. According to the Tosefta, R. Eliezer responds to the Sages: “But did not Ben Satra learn only in such a way?”4 — in other words, did he not use the tattoos on his body as an aid to facilitate his learning (hence, weren’t they clearly letters and therefore forbidden to be “written” on Sabbath)? This is bad enough, but the two Talmudim come up with an even worse explanation of why tattooing one’s body on Sabbath is forbidden, when they have Eliezer ask: “But did not Ben Stada bring forth witchcraft from Egypt by means of scratches/tattoos (biseritah) upon his flesh?”5 In all three versions the Sages dismiss R. Eliezer’s objection with the counterargument that Ben Satra/Stada6 was a fool and that they would not let one fool’s behavior influence the implementation of Sabbath laws.
It is within this context that the Talmud (Shab 104b)7 proceeds with a clarification of the enigmatic “fool’s” family background. The text is only preserved in the uncensored manuscripts and printed editions of the Bavli; I quote according to Ms. Munich 95 (written 1342 in Paris), with some variations in the footnotes:
"(Was he) the son of Stada8 (and not on the contrary) the son of Pandera? Said Rav Hisda: the husband (ba'al) was Stada, (and) the cohabiter/lover (bo'el) was Pandera. (But was not) the husband (ba'al) Pappos ben Yehuda and rather his mother Stada?9 His mother was [Miriam],10 (the woman who) let (her) women’s [hair]11 grow long (megadla [se'ar] neshayya).12 This13 is as they say about her14 in Pumbeditha: This one turned away from (was unfaithful to) her husband (satat da mi-ba'alah)."
This is a typical discourse of the Bavli, which tries to clarify the contradiction between two traditions: according to one received tradition, the fool/magician is called “son of Stada” and according to another one he is called “son of Pandera.”15 What, then, is his correct name?16 In other words, the Talmud is concerned about the problem that the same person is called by two different names and not about the question of who this person is (the answer to this latter question is obviously presupposed: everybody seems to know it). Two different answers are provided.
First, Rav Hisda (a Babylonian amora of the third generation and an important teacher at the academy of Sura; d. 309 C.E.) suggests that the person in question had, as it were, two “fathers” because his mother had a husband and a lover,17 and that he was called “son of Stada,” when referring to the husband and “son of Pandera,” when referring to the lover. Against this, an anonymous author comes up with a different solution: No, he argues, his mother’s husband was not some “Stada” but rather Pappos b. Yehuda, a Palestinian scholar (not portrayed as a sage and without the title “Rabbi”) of the first half of the second century C.E., and in fact it was his mother who was called “Stada.”18 If this is so, the last step of the mini-discourse in the Bavli continues, we need to explain this strange name “Stada” for his mother. The answer: His mother’s true name was Miriam, and “Stada” is an epithet which derives from the Hebrew/Aramaic root satah/sete' (“to deviate from the right path, to go astray, to be unfaithful”). In other words, his mother Miriam was also called “Stada” because she was a sotah, a woman suspected, or rather convicted, of adultery. This anonymous explanation is located in Pumbeditha, Sura’s rival academy in Babylonia.
Hence, it becomes clear that both explanations begin with the assumption that our hero’s mother had both a husband and a lover, and that they only disagree about the name of the husband (Stada versus Pappos b.Yehuda). The name Pandera for the lover is made explicit only by Rav Hisda but seems to be accepted in the Pumbeditha explanation as well, because it presupposes the mother’s adultery and does not suggest another name for the lover. That Pappos b. Yehuda is identified as the husband originates from another story in the Bavli, transmitted in the name of R. Meir, that Pappos b. Yehuda, when he went out, used to lock his wife in their house—obviously because he had reason to doubt her fidelity (b Git 90a). This behavior on the part of Pappos b. Yehuda is quite drastically compared to that of a man who, if a fly falls into his cup, puts the cup aside and does not drink from it any more—meaning that Pappos b. Yehuda not only locks away his wife so that she cannot go astray but that he also refrains from intercourse with her because she has become doubtful.
The dubious reputation of our hero’s mother is further emphasized by the statement that she grew her hair to a great length. Whatever the original meaning of the odd phrase,19 the context in Shabbat 104b/Sanhedrin 67a clearly suggests that Miriam’s long and apparently unfastened hair was indicative of her indecent behavior. Another passage in the Talmud (Er 100b) describes the epitome of a “bad woman” as follows: “She grows long hair like Lilith (megaddelt s'a'ar ke-Lilit),20 she sits when making water like a beast, and she serves as a bolster for her husband.” Similarly, the story in Gittin continues with a “bad man who sees his wife go out with her hair unfastened21 and spin cloth in the street with her armpits uncovered and bathe with (other) people”—such a man, it concludes, should immediately divorce his wife instead of continuing to live with her and having intercourse with her. A woman who appears bareheaded and with long hair in public, this seems to be presupposed here, is prone to all kinds of licentious behavior and deserves to be divorced.22
If the Bavli takes it for granted that our hero’s mother was an adulteress, then the logical conclusion follows that he was a mamzer, a bastard or illegitimate child. In order to be put in this mamzer category it did not matter whether his biological father was indeed his mother’s lover and not her legal husband—the very fact that she had a lover made his legal status dubious. Hence the uncertainty that he is sometimes called Ben Stada and sometimes Ben Pandera. But nevertheless, the Talmud seems to be convinced that his true father was Pandera,23 his mother’s lover, and that he was a bastard in the full sense of the word.
Searching for evidence outside the rabbinic corpus, scholars have long pointed to a remarkable parallel in the pagan philosopher Celsus’ polemical treatise Alethe¯s Logos, written in the second half of the second century C.E.24 and preserved only in quotations in the Church Father Origen’s reply Contra Celsum (written ca. 231–233 C.E.). There, Celsus presents a Jew25 as having a conversation with Jesus himself and accusing him of having “fabricated the story of his birth from a virgin.” In reality, the Jew argues, he [Jesus] came from a Jewish village and from a poor country woman who earned her living by spinning. He [the Jew] says that she was driven out by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, as she was convicted of adultery. Then he says that after she had been driven out by her husband and while she was wandering about in a disgraceful way she secretly gave birth to Jesus. And he says that because he [Jesus] was poor he hired himself out as a workman in Egypt, and there tried his hand at certain magical powers on which the Egyptians pride themselves; he returned full of conceit, because of these powers, and on account of them gave himself the title of God.26
In another quotation Celsus repeats these allegations put into the mouth of a Jew and even communicates the name of Jesus’ father:
"Let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where the mother of Jesus is described as having been turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultery and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera (Panthe¯ra)."27
This story has much in common with the short discourse in the Talmud: the hero is the son of an adulteress, he returned from Egypt with magical powers and, most important, the name of his mother’s lover (his father) was Panthera. The only difference between the versions in the Talmud and in Celsus is the fact that Celsus makes it explicit that the child, born from the poor Jewish adulteress and the soldier Panthera, was the very Jesus whom the Christians regard as the founder of their faith, whereas the Talmud keeps silent about the proper name of the child.28 But this does not pose a real problem because the Talmud, as we have seen, is not concerned about the identity of the child but about the strange phenomenon of two different names used for his father. Moreover, several rabbinic sources do mention Jesus as the son of Pandera,29 and it can be safely assumed, therefore, that the Talmud presupposes the knowledge of this identity. The punch line of this attribution, of course, is the fact that Jesus, through his father Panthera/Pandera, becomes not only a bastard but even the son of a non-Jew.30
These congruencies make it highly probable that both the Talmud and Celsus draw on common sources (most likely originally Jewish sources) that relate that Jesus of Nazareth was a bastard because his mother was an adulteress (Miriam)31 and his father was her lover (Pandera/Panthera). Some scholars, most radically among them Johann Maier, want to conclude from the fact that the name Panthera is relatively common in Latin inscriptions32 and that the spelling of its equivalent in the Hebrew sources varies considerably, that there must have been some different Jesus with the patronymic Panthera/Pandera/Pantiri (or similar forms) who cannot and should not be traced back to the one and only Jesus of Nazareth.33 Although such a possibility cannot be excluded, it does not seem very likely. The different versions of the name Panthera are still similar enough to be attributed to the same person, and such an attribution certainly does not require that all of the various forms of the name be philologically traced back to one ur-form (Panthera).34 Moreover, and more important, the name is not common at all in Hebrew or Aramaic, and this fact alone Celsus’ Jew in the late second century C.E. and the Babylonian Talmud in a presumably early fourth-century tradition refer to the same counter-narrative of Jesus’ family background, which evidently is an inversion of and polemic against the New Testament narrative of Jesus’ birth. Several motifs are characteristic:
1. Jesus “returns” from Egypt as a magician. In the New Testament, Jesus’ parents Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with the newborn infant because King Herod threatens to kill the child (Mt. 2:13ff.). Herod had heard about Jesus from the magicians who came from the East to pay tribute to Jesus as the newborn King of the Jews (Mt. 2:2). Egypt was regarded in antiquity as the classical land of magic,35 and Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament36 as well as in rabbinic sources37 as someone with supernatural powers (healing, commanding the demons, etc.). That Jesus is labeled a magician in a derogatory sense is, therefore, an inversion of the New Testament, which connects him (positively) with magicians, with Egypt, and with healing powers.
2. Celsus portrays Jesus’ parents as poor: his father was a carpenter and his mother a poor country-woman who earned her living by spinning. The New Testament does not say anything about Mary’s family background, but it mentions explicitly that Joseph, her betrothed, was a carpenter (Mt.13:55).38 The Talmud remains silent about his parents’ means—unless one wants to see in the strange epithet megadla neshayya given to his mother an allusion not to her long hair but to her profession as a manual worker (the Aramaic word megadla can mean “plaiting” but also “weaving”).
3. The most pungent counterargument against the evangelists’ narrative is, of course, the assertion of Jesus’ illegitimate birth from an adulterous mother and some insignificant lover. It parries the claim of Jesus’ noble Davidic lineage to which the New Testament attaches such great value: Matthew starts with his genealogy (Mt. 1) which leads back directly to David and calls him, as well as his “father” Joseph, “son of David” (Mt. 1:1, 20; Lk. 1:27, 2:4); he is born in Bethlehem, the city of
David (Mt. 2:5f.; Lk. 2:4), and hence is the Davidic Messiah (Mt. 2:4; Lk. 2:11). No, the Jewish counternarrative argues, this is all nonsense; he is anything but of noble origins. His father was by no means a descendant of David but the otherwise unknown Panthera/Pandera ( just a Roman soldier, according to Celsus, in other words a non-Jew and a member of the hated Roman Empire that so visibly and horribly oppressed the Jews).
Much worse, in turning Jesus into a bastard, the counternarrative takes up the contradictions within the New Testament story about Jesus’ origins and ridicules the claim that he was born from a virgin (parthenogenesis). The New Testament itself is remarkably vague about this claim. Matthew, having established Jesus’ genealogy from Abraham down to Joseph, concludes with Jacob who “fathered Joseph, the husband39 of Mary, who gave birth to Jesus, who is called Messiah” (Mt. 1:16). This is clear enough: Jesus is the son of the couple Joseph and Mary, and the Davidic lineage comes from his father Joseph, not from his mother. Only under this premise, that Joseph was his real father, does the emphasis put on his genealogy make sense.40 Yet after this dramatic beginning Matthew suddenly reveals that Mary was not married to Joseph but just betrothed and that she expected a child before they were legally married (1:18). This discovery troubled Joseph,41 who was a just man, and he decided to dismiss her (1:19)—but in a dream it was revealed to him that her child was “from the Jesus’ Family 21 Holy Spirit” (1:20). When he woke up from his dream, Joseph took Mary as his legal wife and accepted her son (1:24f.).42
The Jewish counter-narrative points to the inconsistencies within Matthew’s birth story. It does not spend time on the legal intricacies of betrothal and marriage but maintains that Joseph and Mary were indeed married, not just betrothed. The bizarre idea of having the Holy Spirit intervene to make him the father of Mary’s child is nothing but a cover-up of the truth, it maintains, namely that Mary, Joseph’s legal wife, had a secret lover and that her child was just a bastard like any other bastard. Joseph’s suspicion, whether he was Mary’s husband or her betrothed, was absolutely warranted: Mary had indeed been unfaithful to him. He should have dismissed her immediately as was customary according to Jewish law.
This powerful counternarrative shakes the foundations of the Christian message. It is not just a malicious distortion of the birth story (any such moralizing categories are completely out of place here); rather, it posits that the whole idea of Jesus’ Davidic descent, his claim to be the Messiah, and ultimately his claim to be the son of God, are based on fraud. His mother, his alleged father (insofar as he helped covering up the truth), his real father, and not least Jesus himself (the would-be magician) are all impostors that deceived the Jewish people and deserve to be unmasked, exposed to ridicule, and thereby neutralized. Most striking, this counter–New Testament in a nutshell has been preserved in rabbinic sources only in the Babylonian Talmud,43 and there almost in passing.
I conclude this chapter with yet another story from the Babylonian Talmud (again, only in the Bavli) that can be read as a parody of Jesus’ birth from a virgin. It is part of a long disputation between “the” notorious Roman emperor and R. Yehoshua b. Hananya,44 in the course of which R. Yehoshua travels to Athens to meet the Greek Sages. R. Yehoshua and the Athenians engage in a long discussion that aims at finding out who is cleverer, the Greek Sages or the rabbi. Asked to tell them some fiction stories (milei di-bedi'ei), he comes up with the following tale:
"There was this mule which gave birth, and [round its neck] was hanging a document upon which was written, “there is a claim against my father’s house of one hundred thousand Zuz.” They [the Athenian Sages] asked him: “Can a mule give birth”? He [R. Yehoshua] answered them: “This is one of these fiction stories”. [Again, the Athenian Sages asked:] “When salt becomes unsavory, wherewith is it salted”? He replied: “With the afterbirth of a mule.”— “And is there an afterbirth of a mule”?—“And can salt become unsavory”?45
These brief stories center around the well-known fact that mules, the offspring of a cross between a male donkey and a female horse, almost always are sterile. Both play with a double element of surprise: in the first case the allegation that a mule not only can give birth to a cub, but that a particular cub was even born with a debt document bound around its neck; and in the second case that salt not only can become unsavory, but that it can regain its flavor with the afterbirth of a mule. This, of course, has nothing to do with Jesus. But why the strange idea of a sterile mule giving birth, coupled with the not-less-strange idea of unsavory salt, that is, presumably salt that lost its taste? One could argue that what we have here are remnants of some kind of an early “scientific” discourse about the sterility of mules, and this is probably the easiest answer. But still, the connection of the miraculous offspring of a sterile mule with the salt regaining its taste by the afterbirth of a mule is suspicious. With regard to the unsavory—most likely insipid—salt one immediately thinks of Jesus’ famous dictum in the Sermon on the Mount:
"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled underfoot."46
Jesus addresses here his disciples as the salt of the earth, more precisely as the new salt of the earth because there is some other salt that has lost its saltiness and hence it taste. This other salt, with no taste anymore, can easily be understood as the people of the old covenant which is “no longer good for anything,” “thrown out,” and “trampled under foot.” If we take this saying of Jesus as the foil against which our Bavli story was construed, the brief tale turns into a pungent parody of the New Testament Jesus’ Family 23 claim of Jesus’ followers as the new salt of the earth: these Christians, it argues, maintain that the salt of the old covenant has become insipid, and hence useless, and that its taste was restored by the people of the new covenant—through the afterbirth of a mule! But we all know that there is no such thing as the afterbirth of a mule because the mule does not give birth, as much as we know that salt does not lose its taste.
On this background, the miraculous offspring of the mule in the first story (and the afterbirth in the second one) gets an even more significant meaning. It can well be understood as a parody of Jesus’ miraculous birth from a virgin: an offspring from a virgin is as likely as an offspring from a mule.47 The Christians’ claim of Jesus’ birth from a virgin and without a father belongs to the category of fiction stories, fairy tales just for fun. Moreover, this is the punch line of the second story: Jesus’ followers, who claim to be the new salt of the earth, are nothing but the after-birth of that imagined offspring of the mule, a fiction of a fiction. Read this way, our two little Bavli stories become indeed much more than an amusing exchange between the rabbis and the Greek Sages; rather, they offer another biting ridicule of one of the cornerstones of Christian theology.
Notes
1. b Shab 104b; b Sanh 67a.
2. Lit. “who scratches (a mark) on his flesh/incised his flesh (ha-mesaret'al bes´aro).”
3. Tattooing one’s body is generally forbidden, even when it is not on a Sabbath. Hence, the Talmud isn’t talking about permanent tattoos but rather about whether or not tattooing constitutes a violation of the Sabbath.
4. t Shab 11:15.
5. This is the version in b Shab 104b; y Shab 12:4/3, fol. 13d: “But did not Ben Stada bring forth witchcraft from Egypt precisely through this (namely through scratching or inscribing letter-like signs on skin)?” Hence, the Yerushalmi does not speak just about tattoos on the skin of one’s body but about all kinds of skin.
6. The Ben Satra version of his name seems to be more original (at least here) since Satra is obviously a play on words with le-saret—“to scratch, incise.”
7. The parallel in b Sanh 67a is almost identical but put in a different context, namely the mesit, i.e., the person who seduces someone to idolatry (see below, ch. 6).
8. Interestingly enough, some manuscripts (Ms. Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 in Shab 104b and Mss. Yad ha-Rav Herzog 1 and Karlsruhe Reuchlin 2 in Sanh 67a) as well as printed editions (Soncino in Shab 104b and Barco in Sanh 67a) continuously call him/the husband/his mother “Stara” instead of “Stada.” The word stara can also be vocalized as sitra (lit. “side”), and sitra could be a play on words with seritah, the “scratches/tattoos” through which Ben Stada brought his witchcraft from Egypt. I do not want to suggest that “Sitra” could be an allusion to the kabbalistic notion of sitra ahra, the “other side” of evil, particularly in the Zohar. The Karlsruhe manuscript (13th century) might be too early for such a kabbalistic reading of the Jesus story.
9. ela hu ela immo in Ms. Munich is clearly a dittography; the other Mss. of Shab 104b read as follows: Ms. Oxford 23: “the husband was this Pappos ben Yehuda, and rather his mother was Stada and his father Pandera”; Ms. Vatican 108: “the husband [variant reading: the cohabiter] was Pappos ben Yehuda, (and) his mother was Stada [addition: (and) he is Jesus the Nazarene]”; Ms. Vatican 487: after the name “Ben Siteda” the following part is missing; printed edition Soncino: “the husband was Pappos ben Yehuda and his mother was Stada.” The Mss. of Sanh 67a: Ms. Munich 95: “the husband was Pappos ben Yehuda, but rather say: Stada was his mother”; Ms. Firenze II.1.8–9: “the husband was Pappos ben Yehuda, but rather say: his mother was Stada”; Ms. Karlsruhe (Reuchlin 2): “the husband/cohabiter was Pappos ben Yehuda, but rather say: his mother was Stada”; Ms. Yad ha-Rav Herzog 1: “the husband was Pappos ben Yehuda, but rather say: his mother was Stada.”
10. “Miriam” in most manuscripts and printed editions, but in Ms. Munich only in Sanh 67a.—Ms. Vatican 108 has the unique and strange addition: his mother was Miriam “and his father (? avoya/e ?) Prince/Nasi (? nas´i/nes´iya?).”
11. “Hair” (se
12. Or “Miriam who plaits women’s [hair]” (see Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Gaonic Periods, Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002, s.v. gedal # 2).—The whole phrase is vocalized in Ms. Yad ha-Rav Herzog.
13. The preceding ela in Ms. Munich 95 (only Shab 104b) is again a dittography.
14. “About her” only in Ms. Munich Shab 104b.
15. On the variations of the latter name, see below.
16. I understand the first sentence as a question and not as a statement that anticipates the result of the following clarification.
17. With the wonderful Hebrew play on words ba'al: bo'el.
18. The result that the name “ben Stada” would accordingly be a matronymic instead of the customary patronymic does not seem to bother the rabbis of Pumbeditha.
19. The only direct parallel is b Hag 4b, where a story is told about the angel of death who by mistake took Miriam “the children’s nurse” (megadla dardaqe) instead of the long-haired Miriam (megadla s´e'ar neshayya).
20. Lilith is the notorious demon who seduces men and endangers pregnant women.
21. roshah parua' = “bareheaded.”
22. It may even be that the Talmud conflates the two most important Mary's in the New Testament: Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary of Magdala (Magdalene), one of Jesus’ female followers. Furthermore, the “immoral woman” in Luke (7:36–50), who was later identified with Mary Magdalene (see below) and who dried Jesus’ feet with her hair, must have had very long hair.
23. This is made explicit in Ms. Oxford Opp. Add. fol. 23 (366): “the husband was this Pappos ben Yehuda, and rather his mother was Stada and his father Pandera.”
24. More precisely, during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180 C.E.); see John Granger Cook, The Interpretation of the Old Testament in Greco-Roman Paganism, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004, p. 55 with n. 1.
25. This “Jew” is an important link between the Gospel traditions, the Talmud, and the later Toledot Yeshu, and the traditions that he presents are clearly
older than the sixties and seventies of the second century C.E.
26. Origen, Contra Celsum I:28; translation according to Origen: Contra Celsum, trans., introd., and notes by Henry Chadwick, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953, pp. 28–31.
27. Ibid. I:32. See also Eusebius, Eclogae propheticae III:10 (Eusebii Pamphili Episcopi Caesariensis Eclogae Propheticae, ed. Thomas Gaisford, Oxford
1842, p. 11): the Jews argue maliciously that Jesus “was fathered from a panther (ek panthe¯ros).”
28. Only Ms. Vatican 108 identifies the child as “Jesus the Nazarene” (see above, n. 9).
29. t Hul 2:22 (y Shab 14:4, fol. 14d; y AZ 2:2, fol. 40d); t Hul 2:24; see below, pp. 42, n. 9, 54.
30. Hence it does not come as a surprise that Ernst Haeckel in his notorious Welträthsel uses Jesus’ non-Jewish father as “proof ” that he was not “purely” Jewish but partly descended from the “superior Aryan race” (Ernst Haeckel, Die Welträthsel. Gemeinverständliche Studien über Monistische Philosophie, Bonn: Emil Strauß, 9th ed., 1899, p. 379).
31. Another almost contemporary author, the Christian theologian Tertullian (second and early third century C.E.), calls Jesus the son of a carpenter and a prostitute (quaestuaria: De Spectaculis, 30); see above, p. 112.
32. Adolf Deissmann, “Der Name Panthera,” in Orientalische Studien Th. Nöldeke zum Siebzigsten Geburtstag, vol. 2, Gießen: A. Töpelmann, 1906, pp. 871–875; idem, Licht vom Osten, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), 4th ed.,
1923, p. 57.
33. Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, pp. 243, 264ff.
34. As Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, p. 265, seems to suggest.
35. A tradition that obviously starts with the Egyptian magicians contending with Moses (Ex. 7–12). On ancient Egyptian magic, see Jan Assmann, “Magic and Theology in Ancient Egypt,” in Envisioning Magic: A Princeton Seminar and Symposium, ed. Peter Schäfer and Hans G. Kippenberg, Leiden—New York— Köln: Brill, 1997, pp. 1–18. The epitome of syncretistic, Greco-Egyptian magic are the magical papyri from Egypt; see Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986, and his introduction, pp. xlivff. On the Talmud’s assessment of Egyptian magic see b Qid 49b: “Ten kabs [measure of capacity] of witchcraft (keshafim) descended to the world: nine were taken by Egypt and one by the rest of the world.”
36. See Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978, especially pp. 21–44.
37. See below, ch. 5.
38. In Mk. 6:3, Jesus is called a carpenter.
39. In Greek ton andra (lit. “the man”), which in this context can only mean “the husband.”
40. The evangelist Mark, who does not report about Jesus’ birth, mentions just in passing that he has brothers and sisters, in other words, belongs to a completely “normal” family (Mk. 6:3).
41. Who is again anachronistically called “her husband” (1:19).
42. Martin Hengel reminds me that Matthew puts the emphasis very much on Joseph, unlike Luke with his emphasis on Mary. If we accept the dating of Matthew about fifteen–twenty years later than Luke, namely between 90 and 100 C.E. (see Hans-Jürgen Becker, Auf der Kathedra des Mose. Rabbinischtheologisches Denken und antirabbinische Polemik in Matthäus 23,1–12, Berlin: Institut Kirche und Judentum, 1990, p. 30 with n. 155), we might find in Matthew’s account of the story of Jesus’ birth a response to Jewish reproaches with regard to the doubtful origins of Jesus. 43. Apart, of course, from the Toledot Yeshu, which does not belong to the established canon of rabbinic Judaism.
44. R. Yehoshua b. Hananya is famous for these dialogues, and the emperor very often is Hadrian; see Moshe David Herr, “The Historical Significance of the Dialogues between Jewish Sages and Roman Dignitaries,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22, 1971, pp. 123–150 (which is still useful, despite its rather positivistic tendency).
45. b Bekh 8b.
46. Mt. 5:13.
47. This has been suggested already by Moritz Güdemann, Religionsgeschichtliche Studien, Leipzig: Oskar Leiner, 1876, pp. 89ff., 136ff.; and Paul Billerbeck, “Altjüdische Religionsgespräche,” Nathanael 25, 1909, pp. 13–30, 33–50, 66–80 (p. 68); see also Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, vol. 1: Das Evangelium nach Matthäus, Munich: Beck, 1922, p. 236. Maier even did not consider the stories worthy of being included in his Jesus von Nazareth. However, he does discuss them briefly in its sequel, Jüdische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Christentum in der Antike, pp. 116–118 (of course, to reject any connection with the New Testament, let alone with Jesus).
Written by Peter Schäfer in "Jesus In The Talmud", Princeton University Press, USA, 2007, chapter 1 excerpts pp.15-24. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comments...