JBcollector
Kraken
- Joined
- Jun 8, 2022
- Posts
- 13,498
- Reputation
- 12,778
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: this_feature_currently_requires_accessing_site_using_safari
Sanhedrin 43a[77] relates the trial and execution of a sorcerer named Jesus (Yeshu in Hebrew) and his five disciples. The sorcerer is stoned and hanged on the Eve of Passover.[78]
Sanhedrin 107[79] tells of a Jesus ("Yeshu") "offended his teacher by paying too much attention to the inn-keeper's wife. Jesus wished to be forgiven, but [his rabbi] was too slow to forgive him, and Jesus in despair went away and put up a brick [idol] and worshipped it."[80]
In Gittin 56b and 57a,[81] a story is told in which Onkelos summons up the spirit of a Yeshu who sought to harm Israel. He describes his punishment in the afterlife as boiling in excrement.[82][83]
What is your punishment [in the other world]? He replied: What I decreed for myself. Every day my ashes are collected and sentence is passed on me and I am burnt and my ashes are scattered over the seven seas. He then went and raised Balaam by incantations. He asked him: Who is in repute in the other world? He replied: Israel. What then, he said, about joining them? He replied: Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.1 He then asked: What is your punishment? He replied: With boiling hot semen.2 He then went and raised by incantations the sinners of Israel.3 He asked them: Who is in repute in the other world? They replied: Israel. What about joining them? They replied: Seek their welfare, seek not their harm. Whoever touches them touches the apple of his eye. He said: What is your punishment? They replied: With boiling hot excrement, since a Master has said: Whoever mocks at the words of the Sages is punished with boiling hot excrement. Observe the difference between the sinners of Israel and the prophets of the other nations who worship idols. It has been taught: Note from this incident how serious a thing it is to put a man to shame, for God espoused the cause of Bar Kamza and destroyed His House and burnt His Temple.
Modern critical scholars debate whether Yeshu does or does not refer to the historical Jesus, a view seen in several 20th-century encyclopedia articles including The Jewish Encyclopedia,[43] Joseph Dan in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (1972, 1997).[44] and the Encyclopedia Hebraica (Israel). R. Travers Herford (1903, pp. 37–38) based his work on the understanding that the term refers to Jesus, and it was also the understanding of Joseph Klausner.[4] They agree that the accounts offer little independent or accurate historical evidence about Jesus.[4] Herford argues that writers of the Talmud and Tosefta had only vague knowledge of Jesus and embellished the accounts to discredit him while disregarding chronology. Klausner distinguishes between core material in the accounts which he argues are not about Jesus and the references to "Yeshu" which he sees as additions spuriously associating the accounts with Jesus. Recent scholars in the same vein include Peter Schäfer,[23] Steven Bayme, and Dr. David C. Kraemer.
It is clear, therefore, that the Jewish legends deny the resurrection of Jesus; the halakic assertion that Balaam (i.e., the prototype of Jesus) had no part in the future life must also be especially noted (Sanh. x. 2). It is further said: "The pupils of the recreant Balaam inherit hell" (Abot v. 19). Jesus is accordingly, in the following curious Talmudic legend, thought to sojourn in hell. A certain Onḳelos b. Ḳaloniḳos, son of Titus' sister, desired to embrace Judaism, and called up from hell by magic first Titus, then Balaam, and finally Jesus, who are here taken together as the worst enemies of Judaism. He asked Jesus: "Who is esteemed in that world?" Jesus said: "Israel." "Shall one join them?" Jesus said to him: "Further their well-being; do nothing to their detriment; whoever touches them touches even the apple of His eye." Onḳelos then asked the nature of his punishment, and was told that it was the degrading fate of those who mock the wise (Giṭ. 56b-57a). This most revolting passage was applied in the Middle Ages to another Jesus (e.g., by R. Jeḥiel, in the Paris disputation; "Wikkuaḥ," p. 4, Thorn, 1873). A parallel to the story is found in the statement of the "Toledot" that when Judas found he could not touch Jesus in any way in theaerial battle, he defiled him. This feature naturally especially angered Christians (see Wagenseil, "Tela Ignea Satanæ," p. 77). According to a passage in the Zohar (Steinschneider, "Polemische Litteratur," p. 362) the same degrading fate is meted out to both Jesus and Mohammed.
Legends regarding Jesus are found in Mohammedan folk-lore. Although the innocence of Mary is most emphatically asserted, there are such striking parallels to Jewish legends that this material must certainly have been taken from Judaism into the Koran. In that work, also, it is stated that Jesus formed birds out of clay and endowed them with life (sura iii. 43); both the Koran and Jalal al-Din (in Maracci, "Refutatio Alcorani," fol. 114b, Patavii, 1698) refer to the peculiar clothing worn by the disciples of Jesus; and in Ibn Said (Maracci, l.c. fol. 113b) is found the statement that the body of Jesus was dragged with ropes through the streets.
Mother and father
Tombstone of Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera, a soldier who has been claimed to be the "Pantera" named by Talmud.
Some Talmudic sources include passages which identify a "son of Pandera" (ben Pandera in Hebrew), and some scholars conclude that these are references to the messiah of Christianity.[102] Medieval Hebrew midrashic literature contain the "Episode of Jesus" (known also as Maaseh Yeshu), in which Jesus is described as being the son of Joseph, the son of Pandera (see: Episode of Jesus). The account portrays Jesus as an impostor.
The Talmud, and other talmudic texts, contain several references to the "son of Pandera". A few of the references explicitly name Jesus ("Yeshu") as the "son of Pandera": these explicit connections are found in the Tosefta, the Qohelet Rabbah, and the Jerusalem Talmud, but not in the Babylonian Talmud.[103] The explicit connections found in the Jerusalem Talmud are debated because the name "Jesus" ("Yeshu") is found only in a marginal gloss in some manuscripts, but other scholars conclude that it was in the original versions of the Jerusalem Talmud.[104]
The texts include several spellings for the father's name (Pandera, Panthera, Pandira, Pantiri, or Pantera) and some scholars conclude that these are all references to the same individual,[105] but other scholars suggest that they may be unrelated references.[106] In some of the texts, the father produced a son with a woman named Mary. Several of the texts indicate that the mother was not married to Pandera, and was committing adultery and – by implication – Jesus was a bastard child.[105] Some of the texts indicate that Mary's husband's name was Stada.
Some Talmudic sources include passages which identify a "son of Stada" or "son of Stara" (ben Stada or ben Stara in Hebrew), and some scholars conclude that these are references to the messiah of Christianity.[107]
Bart Ehrman, and separately Mark Allan Powell, state that the Talmud references are quite late (hundreds of years) and give no historically reliable information about the teachings or actions of Jesus during his life. Ehrman clarifies that the name "Son of Panthera" (Roman who allegedly was the seducer of Mary) was a tradition, as scholars have long recognized, that represented an attack on the Christian view, that he was the son of a virgin. In Greek, the term for virgin is parthenos, which is similar to panthera, implying that "son of panthera" is a pun on "son of a virgin".[55][56] The name "ben Stada", used for the same figure, is explained by Peter Schäfer as a reference to his mother's supposed adultery:
His mother's true name was Miriam, and "Stada" is an epithet which derives from the Hebrew/Aramaic root sat.ah/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."[57]
The commonly accepted view by both Greek and Christian and Jewish scholars states that Mary, at the age of twelve, had been raped by a young Roman soldier named Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. He was born in 22 B.C.E. in Sidon, Phoenicia (Lebanon), became a Roman citizen and served as a Roman soldier stationed in Nazareth.
At some time he saw the young Jewish girl Miriam (Mary) walking through the fields and he raped her. There is some dispute whether it was a forced rape or a consensual sexual act since young Mary was attracted to the Roman soldier.
Jewish usage in the Middle Ages
Main articles: Toledot Yeshu and Jesus in the Talmud
The story that Jesus was the son of a man named Pantera is referred to in the Talmud, in which Jesus is widely understood to be the figure referred to as "Ben Stada":
Peter Schäfer explains this passage as a commentary designed to clarify the multiple names used to refer to Jesus, concluding with the explanation that he was the son of his mother's lover "Pantera", but was known as "son of Stada", because this name was given to his mother, being "an epithet which derives from the Hebrew/Aramaic root sat.ah/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."[11] A few of the references explicitly name Jesus ("Yeshu") as the "son of Pandera": these explicit connections are found in the Tosefta, the Qohelet Rabbah, and the Jerusalem Talmud, but not in the Babylonian Talmud.[11]It is taught that Rabbi Eliezer said to the Wise, "Did not Ben Stada bring spells from Egypt in a cut in his flesh?" They said to him, "He was a fool, and they do not bring evidence from a fool." Ben Stada is Ben Pantera. Rabbi Hisda said, "The husband was Stada, the lover was Pantera." The husband was "actually" Pappos ben Judah, the mother was Stada. The mother was Miriam "Mary" the dresser of women's hair. As we say in Pumbeditha, "She has been false to "satath da" her husband." (b. Shabbat 104b)[10]
The book Toledot Yeshu, which dates to the Middle Ages and appeared in Aramaic as well as Hebrew as an anti-Christian satirical chronicle of Jesus, also refers to the name Pantera, or Pandera.[12][13][14] The book accuses Jesus of illegitimate birth as the son of Pandera, and of heretical and at times violent activities along with his followers during his ministry.[12][14]
Throughout the centuries, both Christian and Jewish scholars have generally only paid minor attention to the Toledot Yeshu. Robert E. Van Voorst states that the literary origins of Toledot Yeshu cannot be traced with any certainty, and given that it is unlikely to go before the 4th century, it is far too late to include authentic remembrances of Jesus.[10] The nature of the Toledot Yeshu as a parody of the Christian gospels is manifested by the claim that the Apostle Peter pretended to be Christian so he could separate them from the Jews and its portrayal of Judas Iscariot as a hero who posed as a disciple of Jesus in order to stop the Christians.[15][16]
Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans state that the Toledot Yeshu consists primarily of fictitious anti-Christian stories based on the ongoing friction with the Jews, and that it offers no value to historical research on Jesus.[12] The Blackwell Companion to Jesus states that the Toledot Yeshu has no historical facts as such, and was perhaps created as a tool for warding off conversions to Christianity.[17]