IV. The Talmud
The Talmud (i. e. the Teaching) consists of two parts, the Mischna and the Gemara.
The Mischna (i. e. δευτέρωσις, Second Law, or Recapitulation) is a collection of religious ordinances, interpretations of Old Testament passages, especially of Mosaic rules, which have been given by various illustrious Rabbis from the date of the founding of the second Temple, therefore from about B.C. 400 to the year A.D. 200. These interpretations, which were either written or orally handed down, were collected in the year A.D. 219 by the Rabbi Jehuda the Holy, at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, into a book to which he gave the name of Mischna, the Recapitulation of the Law. At that time the Jewish Sanhedrim and the Patriarch resided at Tiberias. After the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Sanhedrim, which consisted of seventy-one persons, assembled at Jamnia, the ancient Philistine city of Jabne; but on the insurrection of the Jews under Barcochab, A.D. 135, it took up its quarters at Tiberias. There the Sanhedrim met under a hereditary Patriarch of the family of Gamaliel, who bore the title of Nasi, Chief, till A.D. 420, when the last member of the house of Gamaliel died, and the Patriarchate and Sanhedrim departed from Tiberias.
The Mischna is made up of six Orders (Sedarim), which together contain sixty-three Tractates. The first Order or Seder is called Iesaïm, and treats of agriculture. The second, Moed, treats of festivals. The third, Naschim, deals with the rights of women. The fourth, Nezikim, or Jechnoth, treats of cases of law. The fifth, Kodaschim, of holy things. The sixth, Taharoth, of impurity and purifications.
The Orders of Kodaschim and Taharoth are incomplete. The Jerusalem Talmud consists of only the first four, and the tract Nidda, which belongs to the Order Taharoth.
Now it is deserving of remark, that many of the Rabbis whose sayings are recorded in the Mischna lived in the time of our Lord, or shortly after, and yet that not the smallest reference is made to the teaching of Jesus, nor even any allusion to him personally. Although the Mischna was drawn up beside the Sea of Galilee, at Tiberias, near where Jesus lived and wrought miracles and taught, neither he nor his followers are mentioned once throughout the Mischna.
There must be a reason why the Mischna, as well as Josephus and Justus of Tiberias, is silent respecting Jesus of Nazareth. The reason I have already given. The followers of Jesus were regarded as belonging to the sect of the Essenes. Our Lord's teaching made no great impression on the Jews of his time. It was so radically unlike the pedantry and puerilities of their Rabbis, that they did not acknowledge him as a teacher of the Law. He had preached Essene disengagement from the world, conquest of passion. Only when Essene enthusiasm was thought to threaten the powerful families which held possession of and abused the pontifical office, had the high-priest and his party taken alarm, and obtained the condemnation and death of Jesus. Their alarm died away, the political situation altered, the new Essenianism ceased to be suspected, and Nazarene Christianity took its place among the parties of Judaism, attracting little notice and exciting no active hostility.
The Mischna was drawn up at the beginning of the third century, when Christianity was spreading rapidly through the Roman empire, and had excited the Roman emperors to fierce persecution of those who professed it. Yet Jehuda the Holy says not a word about Christ or Christianity.
He and those whose sayings he quotes had no suspicion that this religion, which was gaining ground every day among the Gentiles, had sprung from the teaching of a Jew. Christianity ruffled not the surface of Jewdom. The harmless Nazarenes were few, and were as strict observers of the Law as the straitest Pharisees.
And if Christianity was thus a matter of indifference to the Jews, no wonder that every recollection of Jesus of Nazareth, every tradition of his birth, his teaching, his death, had died away, so that, even at the close of the second century, Origen could charge his Jew opponent with knowing nothing of Jesus save what he had learned from the Gospels.
The Mischna became in turn the subject of commentary and interpretation by the Rabbis. The explanations of famous Rabbis, who taught on the Mischna, were collected, and called Gemara (the Complement), because with it the collection of rabbinical expositions of the Law was completed.
There are two editions of the Gemara, one made in Palestine and called the Jerusalem Gemara, the other made at Babylon.
The Jerusalem Gemara was compiled about A.D. 390, under the direction of the Patriarch of Tiberias. But there was a second Jewish Patriarchate at Babylon, which lasted till A.D. 1038, whereas that of Tiberias was extinguished, as has been already said, in A.D. 420.
Among the Babylonish Jews, under the direction of their Patriarch, an independent school of commentators on the Mischna had arisen. Their opinions were collected about the year A.D. 500, and compose the Babylonish Gemara. This latter Gemara is held by modern Jews in higher esteem than the Jerusalem Gemara.
The Mischna, which is the same to both Gemaras, together with one of the commentaries and glosses, called Mekilta and Massektoth, form either the Jerusalem or the Babylonish Talmud.
All the Jewish historians who speak of the compilation of the Gemara of Babylon, are almost unanimous on three points: that the Rabbi Ashi was the first to begin the compilation, but that death interrupted him before its completion; that he had for his assistant another doctor, the Rabbi Avina; and that a certain Rabbi Jose finished the work seventy-three years after the death of Rabbi Ashi. Rabbi Ashi is believed to have died A.D. 427, consequently the Babylonish Talmud was completed in A.D. 500.
St. Jerome (d. 420) was certainly acquainted with the Mischna, for he mentions it by name.81
St. Ephraem (d. 378) says:
“The Jews have had four sorts of traditions which they call Repetitions (δευτερώσεις). The first bear the name of Moses the Prophet; they attribute the second to a doctor named Akiba or Bar Akiba. The third pass for being those of a certain Andan or Annan, whom they call also Judas; and they maintain that the sons of Assamonaeus were the authors of the fourth. It is from these four sources that all those doctrines among them are derived, which, however futile they may be, by them are esteemed as the most profound science, and of which they speak with ostentation.”82
From this it appears that St. Ephraem was acquainted not only with the Mischna, but with the Gemara, then in process of formation.
Both the Jerusalem and the Babylonish Gemara, in their interpretations of the Mischna, mention Jesus and the apostles, or, at all events, have been supposed to do so. At the time when both Gemaras were drawn up, Christianity was the ruling religion in the Roman empire, and the Rabbis could hardly ignore any longer the Founder of the new religion. But their statements concerning Jesus are untrustworthy, because so late. Had they occurred in the Mischna, they might have deserved attention.
But before we consider the passages containing allusions to Jesus, it will be well to quote a very singular anecdote in the Jerusalem Gemara:83
“It happened that the cow of a Jew who was ploughing the ground began to low. An Arab (or a traveller) who was passing, and who understood the language of beasts, on hearing this lowing said to the labourer, ‘Son of a Jew! son of a Jew! loose thine ox and set it free from the plough, for the Temple is fallen.’ But as the ox lowed a second time, he said, ‘Son of a Jew! son of a Jew! yoke thy ox, join her to the plough, for the Messiah is born.’ ‘What is his name?’asked the Jew. ‘כובהס, the Consoler,’ replied the Arab. ‘And what is the name of his father?’ asked the Jew. ‘Hezekiah,’ answered the Arab. ‘And whence comes he?’ ‘From the royal palace of Bethlehem Juda.’ Then the Jew sold his ox and his plough, and becoming a seller of children's clothes went to Bethlehem, where he found the mother of the Consoler afflicted, because that, on the day he was born, the Temple had been destroyed. But the other women, to console her, said that her son, who had caused the ruin of the Temple, would speedily rebuild it. Some days after, she owned to the seller of children's clothes that the Consoler had been ravished from her, and that she knew not what had become of him. Rabbi Bun observes thereupon that there was no need to learn from an Arab that the Messiah would appear at the moment of the fall of the Temple, as the prophet Isaiah had predicted this very thing in the two verses, x. 34 and xi. 1, on the ruin of the Temple, and the cessation of the daily sacrifice, which took place at the siege by the Romans, or by the impious kingdom.”
This is a very curious story, and its appearance in the Talmud is somewhat difficult to understand.
We must now pass on to those passages which have been supposed to refer to our Lord.
In the Babylonish Gemara84 it is related that when King Alexander Jannaeus persecuted the Rabbis, the Rabbi Jehoshua, son of Parachias, fled with his disciple Jesus to Alexandria in Egypt, and there both received instruction in Egyptian magic. On their way back to Judaea, both were hospitably lodged by a woman. Next day, as Jehoshua and his disciple were continuing their journey, the master praised the hospitality of their hostess, whereupon his disciple remarked that she was not only a hospitable but a comely woman.
Now as it was forbidden to Rabbis to look with admiration on female beauty, the Rabbi Jehoshua was so angry with his disciple, that he pronounced on him excommunication and a curse. Jesus after this separated from his master, and gave himself up wholly to the study of magic.
The name Jesus is Jehoshua Graecised. Both master and pupil in this legend bore the same name, but that of the pupil is in the Talmud abbreviated into Jeschu.
This story is introduced in the Gemara to illustrate the obligation incumbent on a Rabbi to keep custody over his eyes. It bears no signs of having been forced in so as to give expression to antipathy against Jeschu.
That this Jeschu is our blessed Lord is by no means evident. On the contrary, the balance of probability is that the pupil of Jehoshua Ben Perachia was an entirely different person.
This Jehoshua, son of Perachia, is a known historical personage. He was one of the Sanhedrim in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. He began to teach as Rabbi in the year of the world 3606, or B.C. 154. Alexander Jannaeus, son of Hyrcanus, was king of the Jews in B.C. 106. The Pharisees could not endure that the royal and high-priestly functions should be united in the same person; they therefore broke out in revolt. The civil war caused the death of some 50,000, according to Josephus. When Alexander had suppressed the revolt, he led 800 prisoners to the fortress of Bethome, and crucified them before the eyes of his concubines at a grand banquet he gave.
The Pharisees, and those of the Sanhedrim who had not fallen into his hands, sought safety in flight. It was then probably that Jehoshua, son of Perachia, went down into Egypt and was accompanied by Jeschu.
Jehoshua was buried at Chittin, but the exact date of his death is not known.85
Alexander Jannaeus died B.C. 79, after a reign of twenty-seven years, whilst besieging the castle of Ragaba on the further side of Jordan.
It will be seen at once that the date of the Talmudic Jeschu is something like a century earlier than that of the Jesus of the Gospels.
Moreover, it cannot be said that Jewish tradition asserts their identity. On the contrary, learned Jewish writers have emphatically denied that the Jeschu of the Talmud is the Jesus of the Gospels.
In the “Disputation” of the Rabbi Jechiels with Nicolas, a convert, occurs this statement. “This (which is related of Jesus and the Rabbi Joshua, son of Perachia) contains no reference to him whom Christians honour as a God;” and then he points out that the impossibility of reconciling the dates is enough to prove that the disciple of Joshua Ben Perachia was a person altogether distinct from the Founder of Christianity.
The Rabbi Lippmann86 gives the same denial, and shows that Jesus of the Gospels was a contemporary of Hillel, whereas the Jeschu of the anecdote lived from two to three generations earlier.
The Rabbi Salman Zevi entered into the question with great care in a pamphlet, and produced ten reasons for concluding that the Jeschu of the Talmud was not the Jesus, son of Mary, of the Evangelists.87
We can see now how it was that the Jew of Celsus brought against our Lord the charge of having learned magic in Egypt. He had heard in the Rabbinic schools the anecdote of Jeschu, pupil of Jehoshua, son of Perachia, – an anecdote which could scarcely fail to be narrated to all pupils. He at once concluded that this Jeschu was the Jesus of the Christians, without troubling himself with the chronology.
In the Mischna, Tract. Sabbath, fol. 104, it is forbidden to make marks upon the skin. The Babylonish Gemara observes on this passage: “Did not the son of Stada mark the magical arts on his skin, and bring them with him out of Egypt?” This son of Stada is Jeschu, as will presently appear.
In the Mischna of Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 43, it is ordered that he who shall be condemned to death by stoning shall be led to the place of execution with a herald going before him, who shall proclaim the name of the offender, and shall summon those who have anything to say in mitigation of the sentence to speak before the sentence is put in execution.
On this the Babylonish Gemara remarks, “There exists a tradition: On the rest-day before the Sabbath they crucified Jeschu. For forty days did the herald go before him and proclaim aloud, He is to be stoned to death because he has practised evil, and has led the Israelites astray, and provoked them to schism. Let any one who can bring evidence of his innocence come forward and speak! But as nothing was produced which could establish his innocence, he was crucified on the rest-day of the Passah (i. e. the day before the Passover).”
The Mischna of Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 67, treats of the command in Deut. xiii. 6-11, that any Hebrew who should introduce the worship of other gods should be stoned with stones. On this the Gemara of Babylon relates that, in the city of Lydda, Jeschu was heard through a partition endeavouring to persuade a Jew to worship idols; whereupon he was brought forth and crucified on the eve of the Passover. “None of those who are condemned to death by the Law are spied upon except only those (seducers of the people). How are they dealt with? They light a candle in an inner chamber, and place spies in an outer room, who may watch and listen to him (the accused). But he does not see them. Then he whom the accused had formerly endeavoured to seduce says to him, ‘Repeat, I pray you, what you told me before in private.’ Then, should he do so, the other will say further, ‘But how shall we leave our God in heaven and serve idols?’ Now should the accused be converted and repent at this saying, it is well; but if he goes on to say, That is our affair, and so and so ought we to do, then the spies must lead him off to the house of judgment and stone him. This is what was done to the son of Stada at Lud, and they hung him up on the eve of the Passover.”88 And the Tract. Sanhedrim says, “It is related that on the eve of the Sabbath they crucified Jeschu, a herald going before him,” as has been already quoted; and then follows the comment: “Ula said, Will you not judge him to have been the son of destruction, because he is a seducer of the people? For the Merciful says (Deut. xiii. 8), Thou shalt not spare him, neither shalt thou conceal him. But I, Jesus, am heir to the kingdom. Therefore (the herald) went forth proclaiming that he was to be stoned because he had done an evil thing, and had seduced the people, and led them into schism. And (Jeschu) went forth to be stoned with stones because he had done an evil thing, and had seduced the people and led them into schism.”
The Babylonish Gemara to the Mischna of Tract. Sabbath gives the following perplexing account of the parents of Jeschu:89 “They stoned the son of Stada in Lud (Lydda), and crucified him on the eve of the Passover. This Stada's son was Pandira's son. Rabbi Chasda said Stada's husband was Pandira's master, namely Paphos, son of Jehuda. But how was Stada his mother? His (i. e. Pandira's) mother was a woman's hair-dresser. As they say in Pombeditha (the Babylonish school by the Euphrates), this one went astray (S'tath-da) from her husband.”
The Gloss or Paraphrase on this is: “Stada's son was not the son of Paphos, son of Jehuda; No. As Rabbi Chasda observed, Paphos had a servant named Pandira. Well, what has that to do with it? Tell us how it came to pass that this son was born to Stada. Well, it was on this wise. Miriam, the mother of Pandira, used to dress Stada's hair, and … Stada became a mother by Pandira, son of Miriam. As they say in Pombeditha, Stada by name and Stada by nature.”90
The obscurity of the passage arises from various causes. R. Chasda is a punster, and plays on the double meaning of “Baal” for “husband” and “master.” There is also ambiguity in the pronoun “his;” it is difficult to say to whom it always refers. The Paraphrase is late, and is a conjectural explanation of an obscure passage.
It is clear that the Jeschu of the Talmud was the son of one Stada and Pandira. But the name Pandira having the appearance of being a woman's name,91 this led to additional confusion, for some said that Pandira was his mother's name.
The late Gloss does not associate Stada with the blessed Virgin. It gives the name of Miriam or Mary to be the mother of Pandira, the father of Jeschu. The Jew of Celsus says that the mother of Jesus was a poor needlewoman, who also span for her livelihood. He probably recalled what was said of Miriam, the mother of Panthera, and grandmother of Jeschu, and applied it to St. Mary the Virgin, misled by the obscurity of the saying of Chasda, which was orally repeated in the Rabbinic schools.
The Jerusalem Gemara to Tract. Sabbath says: “The sister's son of Rabbi Jose swallowed poison, or something deadly. There came to him a man and conjured him in the name of Jeschu, son of Pandeira, and he was healed or made easy. But when he went forth it was said to him, How hast thou healed him? He answered, by using such and such words. Then he (R. Jose) said to him, It had been better for him to have died than to have heard this name. And so it was with him (i. e. the boy died).”
In another place:92 “Eleasar, the son of Damah, was bitten by a serpent. There came to him James, a man of the town of Sechania, to cure him in the name of Jeschu, son of Pandeira; but the Rabbi Ismael would not suffer it, but said, It is not permitted to thee, son of Damah. But he (James) said, Suffer me, and I will bring an argument against thee which is lawful. But he would not suffer him.”
The Gemara to Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 43, mentions five disciples of Jeschu Ben-Stada, namely, Matthai, Nakai, Netzer, Boni and Thoda. It says: —
Jeschu had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer and Boni, and also Thoda. They brought Matthai (to the tribunal) to pronounce sentence of death against him. He said, Shall Matthai suffer when it is written (Ps. xlii. 3), מתי When shall I come to appear before the presence of God? They replied, Shall not Matthai die when it is written, מתי When shall he die and his name perish? They produced Nakai. He said, Shall Nakai נקאי die? Is it not written, The innocent ונקי slay thou not? (Exod. xxiii. 7). They answered him, Shall not Nakai die when it is written, In the secret places does he murder the innocent? (Ps. x. 8). When they brought forth Netzer, he said unto them, Shall Netzer נצר be slain? Is it not written (Isa. xi. 1), A branch ונצר shall grow out of his roots? They replied, Shall not Netzer die because it is written (Isa. xiv. 19), Thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch? They brought forth Boni בוני. He said, Shall Boni die the death when it is written (Ex. iv. 22), בני My son, my firstborn, is Israel? They replied, Shall not Boni die the death when it is written (Ex. v. 23), So I will slay thy son, thy firstborn son? They led out Thoda תודה. He said, Shall Thoda die when it is written (Ps. c. 1), A psalm לתודה of thanksgiving? They replied, Shall not Thoda die when it is written (Ps. 1. 23), “He that sacrificeth praise, he honoureth me?”
This is all that the Gemara tells us about Jeschu, son of Stada or Pandira. It behoves us now to consider whether he can have been the same person as our Lord.
That there really lived such a person as Jeschu Ben-Pandira, and that he was a disciple of the Rabbi Jehoshua Ben-Perachia, I see no reason to doubt.
That he escaped from Alexander Jannaeus with his master into Egypt, and there studied magical arts; that he returned after awhile to Judaea, and practised his necromantic arts in his own country, is also not improbable. Somewhat later the Jews were famous, or infamous, throughout the Roman world as conjurors and exorcists. Egypt was the head-quarters of magical studies.
That Jeschu, son of Pandira, was stoned to death, in accordance with the Law, for having practised magic, is also probable. The passages quoted are unanimous in stating that he was stoned for this offence. The Law decreed this as the death sorcerers were to undergo.
In the Talmud, Jeschu is first stoned and then crucified. The object of this double punishment being attributed to him is obvious. The Rabbis of the Gemara period had begun – like the Jew of Celsus – to confuse Jesus son of Mary with Jeschu the sorcerer. Their tradition told of a Jeschu who was stoned; Christian tradition, of a Jesus who was crucified. They combined the punishments and fused the persons into one. But this was done very clumsily. It is possible that more than one Jehoshua has contributed to form the story of Jeschu in the Talmud. For his mother Stada is said to have been married to Paphos, son of Jehuda. Now Paphos Ben-Jehuda is a Rabbi whose name recurs several times in the Talmud as an associate of the illustrious Rabbi Akiba, who lived after the destruction of Jerusalem, and had his school at Bene-Barah. To him the first composition of the Mischna arrangements is ascribed. As a follower of the pseudo-Messiah Barcochab, in the war of Trajan and Hadrian, he sealed a life of enthusiasm with a martyr's death, A.D. 135, at the capture of Bether. When the Jews were dispersed and forbidden to assemble, Akiba collected the Jews and continued instructing them in the Law. Paphus remonstrated with him on the risk. Akiba answered by a parable. “A fox once went to the river side, and saw the fish flying in all directions. What do you fear? asked the fox. The nets spread by the sons of men, answered the fish. Ah, my friends, said the fox, come on shore by me, and so you will escape the nets that drag the water.” A few days after, Akiba was in prison, and Paphus also. Paphus said, “Blessed art thou, Rabbi Akiba, because thou art imprisoned for the words of the Law, and woe is me who am imprisoned for matters of no importance.”93
We naturally wonder how it is that Stada, the mother of Jeschu, who was born about B.C. 120, should be represented as the wife of Paphus, son of Jehuda, who died about A.D. 150, two centuries and a half later.
It is quite possible that this Paphus lost his wife, who eloped from him with one Pandira, and became mother of a son named Jehoshua. The name of Jehoshua or Jesus is common enough.
In Gittin, Paphus is again mentioned. “There is who finds a fly in his cup, and he takes it out, and will not drink of it. And this is what did Paphus Ben-Jehuda, who kept the door shut upon his wife, and nevertheless she ran away from him.”94
Mary, the plaiter of woman's hair, occurs in Chajigah. “Rabbi Bibai, when the angel of death at one time stood before him, said to his messenger, Go, and bring hither Mary, the women's hair-dresser. And the young man went,” &c.95
According to the Toledoth Jeschu, as we shall see presently, Mary's instructor is the Rabbi Simon Ben Schetach. She is visited and questioned by the Rabbi Akiba. This visitation by Akiba is given in the Talmudic tract, Calla,96 and thence the author of the Toledoth Jeschu drew it.
“As once the Elders sat at the gate, there passed two boys before them. One uncovered his head, the other did not. Then said the Rabbi Elieser, The latter is certainly a Mamser; but the Rabbi Jehoshua97 said, He is a Ben-hannidda. Akiba said, He is both a Mamser and a Ben-hannidda. They said to him, How canst thou oppose the opinion of thy companions? He answered, I will prove what I have said. Then he went to the boy's mother, who was sitting in the market selling fruit, and said to her, My daughter, if you will tell me the truth I will promise you eternal life. She said to him, Swear to me. And he swore with his lips, but in his heart he did not ratify the oath.” Then he learned what he desired to know, and came back to his companions and told them all.98
We have here corroborative evidence that this Stada and her son Jeschu lived at the time of Akiba and Paphus, that is, after the fall of Jerusalem, in the earlier part of the second century.
I think that probably the story grew up thus:
A certain Jehoshua, in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, went down into Egypt, and there learnt magic. He returned to Judaea, where he practised it, but was arrested at Lydda and executed by order of the Sanhedrim, by being stoned to death.
But who was this Jehoshua? Tradition was silent. However, there was a floating recollection of a Jehoshua born of one Stada, wife of Paphus, son of Jehuda, the companion of Akiba. The two Jehoshuas were confounded together. Thus stood the story when Origen wrote against Celsus in A.D. 176.
By A.D. 500 it had grown considerably. The Jew of Celsus had already fused Jesus of Nazareth with the other two Jehoshuas. This led to the Rabbis of the Gemara relating that Jehoshua was both stoned and crucified.
I do not say that this certainly is the origin of the story as it appears in the Talmud, but it bears on the face of it strong likelihood that it is. Jehoshua who went into Egypt could not have been stoned to death after the destruction of Jerusalem and the revolt of Barcochab, for then the Jews had not the power of life and death in their hands. The execution must have taken place long before; yet the Rabbis whose names appear in connection with the story – always excepting Jehoshua son of Perachia – all belong to the second century after Christ.
The solution I propose is simple, and it explains what otherwise would be inexplicable.
If it be a true solution, it proves that the Jews in A.D. 500, when the Babylonian Gemara was completed, had no traditions whatever concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
We shall see next how the confusion that originated in the Talmud grew into the monstrous romance of the Toledoth Jeschu, the Jewish counter-Gospel of the Middle Ages.