early medieval
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NOTE |
The name Sefer Toledot Yeshu is given to a collection of Jewish manuscripts providing a satirical account of the life of Christ. The manuscript circulated widely in the Middle Ages but its exact date of composition is unknown. Hints in the writings of St. Agobard (c. 779-840 CE), the Carolingian archbishop of Lyon famous for his critical essays attacking the royal family, Jews, and superstition, suggest a version was in circulation by the ninth century, but the best-known examples are from the eleventh century or later. Due to its blasphemous nature to Christians, the text was not translated in full into English until the twentieth century. The 1874 excerpts and discussion below by the scholar Sabine Baring-Gould from his book The Lost and Hostile Gospels are the largest sections of the Wagenseil (1681) and Huldreich (1705) versions available in the public domain. While Baring-Gould was an accomplished scholar, his commentary contains the anti-Semitic biases of the time, including the belief that the Jews held collective guilt for the death of Christ. He also purposely omitted the sections most offensive to Christian sensibility. I have followed his discussion with the complete 1903 translation of G. S. Meade, which gives the Strasbourg Manuscript version in full (well, as full as the sexual and religious sensibilities of the time would allow), as well as two early medieval notices of the Toledot constituting the first evidence of its existence in the literary record.
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THE LOST AND HOSTILE GOSPELS
Sabine Baring-Gould
V. The Counter-Gospels.
In the thirteenth century it became known among the Christians that the Jews were in possession of an anti-evangel. It was kept secret, lest the sight of it should excite tumults, spoliation and massacre. But of the fact of its existence Christians were made aware by the account of converts.
There are, in reality, two such anti-evangels, each called Toldoth Jeschu, not recensions of an earlier text, but independent collections of the stories circulating among the Jews relative to the life of our Lord.
The name of Jesus, which in Hebrew is Joshua or Jehoshua (the Lord will sanctify) is in both contracted into Jeschu by the rejection of an Ain, ישו for ישוע.
The Rabbi Elias, in his Tischbi, under the word Jeschu, says, “Because the Jews will not acknowledge him to be the Saviour, they do not call him Jeschua, but reject the Ain and call him Jeschu.” And the Rabbi Abraham Perizol, in his book Maggers Abraham, c. 59, says, “His name was Jeschua; but as Rabbi Moses, the son of Majemoun of blessed memory, has written it, and as we find it throughout the Talmud, it is written Jeschu. They have carefully left out the Ain, because he was not able to save himself.”
The Talmud in the Tract. Sanhedrim says, “It is not lawful to name the name of a false God.” On this account the Jews, rejecting the mission of our Saviour, refused to pronounce his name without mutilating it. By omitting the Ain, the Cabbalists were able to give a significance to the name. In its curtailed form it is composed of the letters Jod, Schin, Vau, which are taken to stand for ימח שמו וזכרונו jimmach schemo vezichrono, “His name and remembrance shall be extinguished.” This is the reason given by the Toledoth Jeschu.
Who were the authors of the books called Toledoth Jeschu, the two counter-Gospels, is not known.
Justin Martyr, who died A.D. 163, speaks of the blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus; but that they contained traditions of the life of the Saviour can hardly be believed in presence of the silence of Josephus and Justus, and the ignorance of the Jew of Celsus. Origen says in his answer, that “though innumerable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, none had dared to charge him with any intemperance whatever.” He speaks confidently, with full assurance. If he had ever met with such a calumny, he would not have denied its existence, he would have set himself to work to refute it. Had such calumnious writings existed, Origen would have been sure to know of them. We may therefore be quite satisfied that none such existed in his time, the middle of the third century.
The Toledoth Jeschu comes before us with a flourish of trumpets from Voltaire. “Le Toledos Jeschu,” says he, “est le plus ancien écrit Juif, qui nous ait été transmis contre notre religion. C'est une vie de Jesus Christ, toute contraire à nos Saints Evangiles: elle parait être du premier siècle, et même écrite avant les evangiles.” A fair specimen of reckless judgment on a matter of importance, without having taken the trouble to examine the grounds on which it was made! Luther knew more of it than did Voltaire, and put it in a very different place:--
There are, in reality, two such anti-evangels, each called Toldoth Jeschu, not recensions of an earlier text, but independent collections of the stories circulating among the Jews relative to the life of our Lord.
The name of Jesus, which in Hebrew is Joshua or Jehoshua (the Lord will sanctify) is in both contracted into Jeschu by the rejection of an Ain, ישו for ישוע.
The Rabbi Elias, in his Tischbi, under the word Jeschu, says, “Because the Jews will not acknowledge him to be the Saviour, they do not call him Jeschua, but reject the Ain and call him Jeschu.” And the Rabbi Abraham Perizol, in his book Maggers Abraham, c. 59, says, “His name was Jeschua; but as Rabbi Moses, the son of Majemoun of blessed memory, has written it, and as we find it throughout the Talmud, it is written Jeschu. They have carefully left out the Ain, because he was not able to save himself.”
The Talmud in the Tract. Sanhedrim says, “It is not lawful to name the name of a false God.” On this account the Jews, rejecting the mission of our Saviour, refused to pronounce his name without mutilating it. By omitting the Ain, the Cabbalists were able to give a significance to the name. In its curtailed form it is composed of the letters Jod, Schin, Vau, which are taken to stand for ימח שמו וזכרונו jimmach schemo vezichrono, “His name and remembrance shall be extinguished.” This is the reason given by the Toledoth Jeschu.
Who were the authors of the books called Toledoth Jeschu, the two counter-Gospels, is not known.
Justin Martyr, who died A.D. 163, speaks of the blasphemous writings of the Jews about Jesus; but that they contained traditions of the life of the Saviour can hardly be believed in presence of the silence of Josephus and Justus, and the ignorance of the Jew of Celsus. Origen says in his answer, that “though innumerable lies and calumnies had been forged against the venerable Jesus, none had dared to charge him with any intemperance whatever.” He speaks confidently, with full assurance. If he had ever met with such a calumny, he would not have denied its existence, he would have set himself to work to refute it. Had such calumnious writings existed, Origen would have been sure to know of them. We may therefore be quite satisfied that none such existed in his time, the middle of the third century.
The Toledoth Jeschu comes before us with a flourish of trumpets from Voltaire. “Le Toledos Jeschu,” says he, “est le plus ancien écrit Juif, qui nous ait été transmis contre notre religion. C'est une vie de Jesus Christ, toute contraire à nos Saints Evangiles: elle parait être du premier siècle, et même écrite avant les evangiles.” A fair specimen of reckless judgment on a matter of importance, without having taken the trouble to examine the grounds on which it was made! Luther knew more of it than did Voltaire, and put it in a very different place:--
“The proud evil spirit carries on all sorts of mockery in this book. First he mocks God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and His Son Jesus Christ, as you may see for yourself, if you believe as a Christian that Christ is the Son of God. Next he mocks us, all Christendom, in that we believe in such a Son of God. Thirdly, he mocks his own fellow Jews, telling them such disgraceful, foolish, senseless affairs, as of brazen dogs and cabbage-stalks and such like, enough to make all dogs bark themselves to death, if they could understand it, at such a pack of idiotic, blustering, raging, nonsensical fools. Is not that a masterpiece of mockery which can thus mock all three at once? The fourth mockery is this, that whoever wrote it has made a fool of himself, as we, thank God, may see any day.”
Luther knew the book, and, translated it, or rather condensed it, in his “Schem Hamphoras.”
There are two versions of the Toledoth Jeschu, differing widely from one another. The first was published by Wagenseil, of Altdorf, in 1681. The second by Huldrich at Leyden in 1705. Neither can boast of an antiquity greater than, at the outside, the twelfth century. It is difficult to say with certainty which is the earlier of the two. Probably both came into use about the same time; the second certainly in Germany, for it speaks of Worms in the German empire.
According to the first, Jeschu (Jesus) was born in the year of the world 4671 (B.C. 910), in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (B.C. 106-79)! He was the son of Joseph Pandira and Mary, a widow's daughter, the sister of Jehoshua, who was affianced to Jochanan, disciple of Simeon Ben Schetah; and Jeschu became the pupil of the Rabbi Elchanan. Mary is of the tribe of Juda.
According to the second, Jeschu was born in the reign of Herod the Proselyte, and was the son of Mary, daughter of Calpus, and sister of Simeon, son of Calpus, by Joseph Pandira, who carried her off from her husband, Papus, son of Jehuda. Jeschu was brought up by Joshua, son of Perachia, in the days of the illustrious Rabbi Akiba! Mary is of the tribe of Benjamin.
The anachronisms of both accounts are so gross as to prove that they were drawn up at a very late date, and by Jews singularly ignorant of the chronology of their history.
In the first, Mary is affianced to Jochanan, disciple of Simeon Ben Schetah. Now Schimon or Simeon, son of Scheta, is a well-known character. He is said to have strangled eighty witches in one day, and to have been the companion of Jehudu Ben Tabai. He flourished B.C. 70.
In the second life we hear of Mary being the sister of Simeon Ben Kalpus (Chelptu). He also is a well-known Rabbi, of whom many miracles are related. He lived in the time of the Emperor Antoninus, before whom he stood as a disciple, when an old man (circ. A.D. 160).
In this also the Rabbi Akiba is introduced. Akiba died A.D. 135. Also the Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Levi. Now this Rabbi's date can also be fixed with tolerable accuracy. He was the teacher of the Rabbi Jochanan, who compiled the Jerusalem Talmud. His date is A.D. 220.
We have thus, in the two lives of Jeschu, the following personages introduced as contemporaries:
There are two versions of the Toledoth Jeschu, differing widely from one another. The first was published by Wagenseil, of Altdorf, in 1681. The second by Huldrich at Leyden in 1705. Neither can boast of an antiquity greater than, at the outside, the twelfth century. It is difficult to say with certainty which is the earlier of the two. Probably both came into use about the same time; the second certainly in Germany, for it speaks of Worms in the German empire.
According to the first, Jeschu (Jesus) was born in the year of the world 4671 (B.C. 910), in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (B.C. 106-79)! He was the son of Joseph Pandira and Mary, a widow's daughter, the sister of Jehoshua, who was affianced to Jochanan, disciple of Simeon Ben Schetah; and Jeschu became the pupil of the Rabbi Elchanan. Mary is of the tribe of Juda.
According to the second, Jeschu was born in the reign of Herod the Proselyte, and was the son of Mary, daughter of Calpus, and sister of Simeon, son of Calpus, by Joseph Pandira, who carried her off from her husband, Papus, son of Jehuda. Jeschu was brought up by Joshua, son of Perachia, in the days of the illustrious Rabbi Akiba! Mary is of the tribe of Benjamin.
The anachronisms of both accounts are so gross as to prove that they were drawn up at a very late date, and by Jews singularly ignorant of the chronology of their history.
In the first, Mary is affianced to Jochanan, disciple of Simeon Ben Schetah. Now Schimon or Simeon, son of Scheta, is a well-known character. He is said to have strangled eighty witches in one day, and to have been the companion of Jehudu Ben Tabai. He flourished B.C. 70.
In the second life we hear of Mary being the sister of Simeon Ben Kalpus (Chelptu). He also is a well-known Rabbi, of whom many miracles are related. He lived in the time of the Emperor Antoninus, before whom he stood as a disciple, when an old man (circ. A.D. 160).
In this also the Rabbi Akiba is introduced. Akiba died A.D. 135. Also the Rabbi Jehoshua Ben Levi. Now this Rabbi's date can also be fixed with tolerable accuracy. He was the teacher of the Rabbi Jochanan, who compiled the Jerusalem Talmud. His date is A.D. 220.
We have thus, in the two lives of Jeschu, the following personages introduced as contemporaries:
I. |
II. |
Jeschu born (date given), B.C. 910. Alexander Jannaeus, B.C. 106-79. R. Simeon Ben Schetach, B.C. 70. |
Herod the Great, B.C. 70-4. R. Jehoshua Ben Perachia, c. B.C. 90. R. Akiba, A.D. 135. R. Papus Ben Jehuda, c. A.D. 140. R. Jehoshua Ben Levi, c. A.D. 220. |
The second Toledoth Jeschu closes with, “These are the words of Jochanan Ben Zaccai;” but it is not clear whether it is intended that the book should be included in “The words of Jochanan,” or whether the reference is only to a brief sentence preceding this statement, “Therefore have they no part or lot in Israel. The Lord bless his people Israel with peace.” Jochanan Ben Zaccai was a priest and ruler of Israel for forty years, from A.D. 30 or 33 to A.D. 70 or 73. He died at Jamnia, near Jerusalem (Jabne of the Philistines), and was buried at Tiberias.
Nor are these anachronisms the only proofs of the ignorance of the composers of the two anti-evangels. In the first, on the death of King Alexander Jannaeus, the government falls into the hands of his wife Helena, who is represented as being “also called Oleina, and was the mother of King Mumbasius, afterwards called Hyrcanus, who was killed by his servant Herod.”
The wife of Alexander Jannaeus was Alexandra, not Helena; she reigned from B.C. 79 to B.C. 71. She was the mother of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus; but was quite distinct from Oleina, mother of Mumbasius, and Mumbasius was a very different person from Hyrcanus. Oleina was a queen of Adiabene in Assyria.
The first Life refers to the Talmud: “This is the same Mary who dressed and curled women's hair, mentioned several times in the Talmud.”
Both give absurd anecdotes to account for monks wearing shaven crowns; both reasons are different.
In the first Life, the Christian festivals of the Ascension “forty days after Jeschu was stoned,” that of Christmas, and the Circumcision “eight days after,” are spoken of as institutions of the Christian Church.
In the VIIIth Book of the Apostolical Constitutions, the festivals of the Nativity and the Ascension are spoken of, consequently they must have been kept holy from a very early age. But it was not so with the feast of the Circumcision.
The 1st of January was a great day among the heathen. In the Homilies of the Fathers down to the eighth century, the 1st of January is called the “Feast of Satan and Hell,” and the faithful are cautioned against observing it. All participation in the festivities of that day was forbidden by the Council “in Trullo,” in A.D. 692, and again in the Council of Rome, A.D. 744.
Pope Gelasius (A.D. 496) forbade all observance of the day, according to Baronius, in the hope of rooting out every remembrance of the pagan ceremonies which were connected with it. In ancient Sacramentaries is a mass on this day, “de prohibendo ab idolis.” Nevertheless, traces of the celebration of the Circumcision of Christ occur in the fourth century; for Zeno, Bishop of Verona (d. A.D. 380), preached a sermon on it. In the ancient Mozarabic Kalendar, in the Martyrology wrongly attributed to St. Jerome, and in the Gelasian Sacramentary, the Circumcision is indicated on January 1. But though noted in the Kalendars, the day was, for the reason of its being observed as a heathen festival, not treated by the Church as a festival till very late. Litanies and penitential offices were appointed for it.
The notice in the Toledoth Jeschu, therefore, points to a time when the feast was observed with outward demonstration of joy, and the sanction of the Church accorded to other festivities.
The Toledoth Jeschu adopts the fable of the Sanhedrim and King having sent out an account of the trial of Jesus to the synagogues throughout the world to obtain from them an expression of opinion. The synagogue of Worms remonstrated against the execution of Christ. “The people of Girmajesa (Germany) and all the neighbouring country round Girmajesa which is now called Wormajesa (Worms), and which lies in the realm of the Emperor, and the little council in the town of Wormajesa, answered the King (Herod) and said, Let Jesus go, and slay him not! Let him live till he falls and perishes of his own accord.”
The synagogues of several cities in the Middle Ages did in fact, produce apocryphal letters which they pretended had been written by their forefathers remonstrating with the Jewish Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, and requesting that Jesus might be spared. An epistle was produced by the Jews of Ulm in A.D. 1348, another by the Jews of Ratisbon about the same date, from the council at Jerusalem to their synagogues. The Jews of Toledo pretended to possess similar letters in the reign of Alfonso the Valiant, A.D. 1072. These letters probably served to protect them from feeling the full stress of persecution which oppressed the Jews elsewhere.
The most astonishing ignorance of Gospel accounts of Christ and the apostles is observable in both anti-evangels. Matthias and Matthew are the same, so are John the Baptist and John the Apostle, whilst Thaddaeus is said to be “also called Paul,” and Simon Peter is confounded with Simon Magus.
These are instances of the confusion of times and persons into which these counter-Gospels have fallen, and they are sufficient to establish their late and worthless character.
The two anti-Gospels are clearly not two editions of an earlier text. The only common foundation on which both were constructed was the mention of Jeschu, son of Panthera, in the Talmud. Add to this such distorted versions of Gospel stories as circulated among the Jews in the Middle Ages, and we have the constituents of both counter-Gospels. Both exhibit a profound ignorance of the sacred text, but a certain acquaintance with prominent incidents in the narrative of the Evangelists, not derived directly from the Gospels, but, as I believe, from miracle-plays and pictorial and sculptured representations such as would meet the eye of a mediaeval Jew at every turn.
We have not to cast about far for a reason which shall account for the production of these anti-evangels.
The persecution to which the Jews were subjected in the Middle Ages from the bigotry of the rabble or the cupidity of princes, fanned their dislike for Christianity into a flame of intense mortal abhorrence of the Founder of that religion whose votaries were their deadliest foes. The Toledoth Jeschu is the utterance of this deep-seated hatred,—the voice of an oppressed people execrating him who had sprung from the holy race, and whose blood was weighing on their heads.
And it is not improbable that the Gospel record of the patient, loving life of Jesus may have exerted an influence on the young who ventured, with the daring curiosity of youth, to explore those peaceful pages. What answer had the Rabbis to make to those of their own religion who were questioning and wavering? They had no counter-record to oppose to the Gospels, no tradition wherewith to contest the history written by the Evangelists. The notices in the Talmud were scanty, incomplete. It was open to dispute whether these notices really related to Christ Jesus.
Under such circumstances, a book which professed to give a true account of Jesus was certain to be hailed and accepted without too close a scrutiny as to its authenticity; much as in the twelfth century Joseph Ben Gorion's “Jewish War” was assumed to be authentic.
The Toledoth Jeschu or “Birth of Jesus” boldly identified the Jesus of the Gospels with the Jeschu of the Talmud, and attempted to harmonize the Rabbinic and the Christian stories.
There is a certain likeness between the two counter-Gospels, but this arises solely from each author being actuated by the same motives as the other, and from both deriving from common sources,—the Talmud and Jewish misrepresentations of Gospel events.
But if there be a likeness, there is sufficient dissimilarity to make it evident that the two authors wrote independently, and had no common written text to amplify and adorn.
Nor are these anachronisms the only proofs of the ignorance of the composers of the two anti-evangels. In the first, on the death of King Alexander Jannaeus, the government falls into the hands of his wife Helena, who is represented as being “also called Oleina, and was the mother of King Mumbasius, afterwards called Hyrcanus, who was killed by his servant Herod.”
The wife of Alexander Jannaeus was Alexandra, not Helena; she reigned from B.C. 79 to B.C. 71. She was the mother of Hyrcanus and Aristobulus; but was quite distinct from Oleina, mother of Mumbasius, and Mumbasius was a very different person from Hyrcanus. Oleina was a queen of Adiabene in Assyria.
The first Life refers to the Talmud: “This is the same Mary who dressed and curled women's hair, mentioned several times in the Talmud.”
Both give absurd anecdotes to account for monks wearing shaven crowns; both reasons are different.
In the first Life, the Christian festivals of the Ascension “forty days after Jeschu was stoned,” that of Christmas, and the Circumcision “eight days after,” are spoken of as institutions of the Christian Church.
In the VIIIth Book of the Apostolical Constitutions, the festivals of the Nativity and the Ascension are spoken of, consequently they must have been kept holy from a very early age. But it was not so with the feast of the Circumcision.
The 1st of January was a great day among the heathen. In the Homilies of the Fathers down to the eighth century, the 1st of January is called the “Feast of Satan and Hell,” and the faithful are cautioned against observing it. All participation in the festivities of that day was forbidden by the Council “in Trullo,” in A.D. 692, and again in the Council of Rome, A.D. 744.
Pope Gelasius (A.D. 496) forbade all observance of the day, according to Baronius, in the hope of rooting out every remembrance of the pagan ceremonies which were connected with it. In ancient Sacramentaries is a mass on this day, “de prohibendo ab idolis.” Nevertheless, traces of the celebration of the Circumcision of Christ occur in the fourth century; for Zeno, Bishop of Verona (d. A.D. 380), preached a sermon on it. In the ancient Mozarabic Kalendar, in the Martyrology wrongly attributed to St. Jerome, and in the Gelasian Sacramentary, the Circumcision is indicated on January 1. But though noted in the Kalendars, the day was, for the reason of its being observed as a heathen festival, not treated by the Church as a festival till very late. Litanies and penitential offices were appointed for it.
The notice in the Toledoth Jeschu, therefore, points to a time when the feast was observed with outward demonstration of joy, and the sanction of the Church accorded to other festivities.
The Toledoth Jeschu adopts the fable of the Sanhedrim and King having sent out an account of the trial of Jesus to the synagogues throughout the world to obtain from them an expression of opinion. The synagogue of Worms remonstrated against the execution of Christ. “The people of Girmajesa (Germany) and all the neighbouring country round Girmajesa which is now called Wormajesa (Worms), and which lies in the realm of the Emperor, and the little council in the town of Wormajesa, answered the King (Herod) and said, Let Jesus go, and slay him not! Let him live till he falls and perishes of his own accord.”
The synagogues of several cities in the Middle Ages did in fact, produce apocryphal letters which they pretended had been written by their forefathers remonstrating with the Jewish Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, and requesting that Jesus might be spared. An epistle was produced by the Jews of Ulm in A.D. 1348, another by the Jews of Ratisbon about the same date, from the council at Jerusalem to their synagogues. The Jews of Toledo pretended to possess similar letters in the reign of Alfonso the Valiant, A.D. 1072. These letters probably served to protect them from feeling the full stress of persecution which oppressed the Jews elsewhere.
The most astonishing ignorance of Gospel accounts of Christ and the apostles is observable in both anti-evangels. Matthias and Matthew are the same, so are John the Baptist and John the Apostle, whilst Thaddaeus is said to be “also called Paul,” and Simon Peter is confounded with Simon Magus.
These are instances of the confusion of times and persons into which these counter-Gospels have fallen, and they are sufficient to establish their late and worthless character.
The two anti-Gospels are clearly not two editions of an earlier text. The only common foundation on which both were constructed was the mention of Jeschu, son of Panthera, in the Talmud. Add to this such distorted versions of Gospel stories as circulated among the Jews in the Middle Ages, and we have the constituents of both counter-Gospels. Both exhibit a profound ignorance of the sacred text, but a certain acquaintance with prominent incidents in the narrative of the Evangelists, not derived directly from the Gospels, but, as I believe, from miracle-plays and pictorial and sculptured representations such as would meet the eye of a mediaeval Jew at every turn.
We have not to cast about far for a reason which shall account for the production of these anti-evangels.
The persecution to which the Jews were subjected in the Middle Ages from the bigotry of the rabble or the cupidity of princes, fanned their dislike for Christianity into a flame of intense mortal abhorrence of the Founder of that religion whose votaries were their deadliest foes. The Toledoth Jeschu is the utterance of this deep-seated hatred,—the voice of an oppressed people execrating him who had sprung from the holy race, and whose blood was weighing on their heads.
And it is not improbable that the Gospel record of the patient, loving life of Jesus may have exerted an influence on the young who ventured, with the daring curiosity of youth, to explore those peaceful pages. What answer had the Rabbis to make to those of their own religion who were questioning and wavering? They had no counter-record to oppose to the Gospels, no tradition wherewith to contest the history written by the Evangelists. The notices in the Talmud were scanty, incomplete. It was open to dispute whether these notices really related to Christ Jesus.
Under such circumstances, a book which professed to give a true account of Jesus was certain to be hailed and accepted without too close a scrutiny as to its authenticity; much as in the twelfth century Joseph Ben Gorion's “Jewish War” was assumed to be authentic.
The Toledoth Jeschu or “Birth of Jesus” boldly identified the Jesus of the Gospels with the Jeschu of the Talmud, and attempted to harmonize the Rabbinic and the Christian stories.
There is a certain likeness between the two counter-Gospels, but this arises solely from each author being actuated by the same motives as the other, and from both deriving from common sources,—the Talmud and Jewish misrepresentations of Gospel events.
But if there be a likeness, there is sufficient dissimilarity to make it evident that the two authors wrote independently, and had no common written text to amplify and adorn.
VI. The First Toledoth Jeschu.
We will take first the Wagenseil edition of the Toledoth Jeschu, and give an outline of the story, only suppressing the most offensive particulars, and commenting on the narrative as we proceed. Wagenseil's Toledoth Jeschu begins as follows:
“In the year of the world 4671, in the days of King Jannaeus, a great misfortune befel Israel. There arose at that time a scape-grace, a wastrel and worthless fellow, of the fallen race of Judah, named Joseph Pandira. He was a well-built man, strong and handsome, but he spent his time in robbery and violence. His dwelling was at Bethlehem, in Juda. And there lived near him a widow with her daughter, whose name was Mirjam; and this is the same Mirjam who dressed and curled women's hair, who is mentioned several times in the Talmud.”
It is remarkable that the author begins with the very phrase found in Josephus. He calls the appearance of our Lord “a great misfortune which befel Israel.” Josephus, after the passage which has been intruded into his text relative to the miracles and death of Christ, says, “About this time another great misfortune set the Jews in commotion;” from which it appears as if Josephus regarded the preaching of Christ as a great misfortune. That he made no such reference has been already shown.
The author also places the birth of Jesus, in accordance with the Talmud, in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, who reigned from B.C. 106 to B.C. 79. He reckons from the creation of the world, and gives the year as 4671 (B.C. 910). This manner of reckoning was only introduced among the Jews in the fourth century after Christ, and did not become common till the twelfth century.
The Wagenseil Toledoth goes on to say that the widow engaged Mirjam to an amiable, God-fearing youth, named Jochanan (John), a disciple of the Rabbi Simeon, son of Shetach (fl. B.C. 70); but he went away to Babylon, and she became the mother of Jeschu by Joseph Pandira. The child was named Joshua, after his uncle, and was given to the Rabbi Elchanan to be instructed in the Law.
One day Jeschu, when a boy, passed before the Rabbi Simeon Ben Shetach and other members of the Sanhedrim without uncovering his head and bowing his knee. The elders were indignant. Three hundred trumpets were blown, and Jeschu was excommunicated and cast out of the Temple. Then he went away to Galilee, and spent there several years.
The author also places the birth of Jesus, in accordance with the Talmud, in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus, who reigned from B.C. 106 to B.C. 79. He reckons from the creation of the world, and gives the year as 4671 (B.C. 910). This manner of reckoning was only introduced among the Jews in the fourth century after Christ, and did not become common till the twelfth century.
The Wagenseil Toledoth goes on to say that the widow engaged Mirjam to an amiable, God-fearing youth, named Jochanan (John), a disciple of the Rabbi Simeon, son of Shetach (fl. B.C. 70); but he went away to Babylon, and she became the mother of Jeschu by Joseph Pandira. The child was named Joshua, after his uncle, and was given to the Rabbi Elchanan to be instructed in the Law.
One day Jeschu, when a boy, passed before the Rabbi Simeon Ben Shetach and other members of the Sanhedrim without uncovering his head and bowing his knee. The elders were indignant. Three hundred trumpets were blown, and Jeschu was excommunicated and cast out of the Temple. Then he went away to Galilee, and spent there several years.
“Now at this time the unutterable Name of God was engraved in the Temple on the corner-stone. For when King David dug the foundations, he found there a stone in the ground on which the Name of God was engraved, and he took it and placed it in the Holy of Holies.
“But as the wise men feared lest some inquisitive youth should learn this Name, and be able thereby to destroy the world, which God avert! they made, by magic, two brazen lions, which they set before the entrance to the Holy of Holies, one on the right, the other on the left.
“Now if any one were to go within, and learn the holy Name, then the lions would begin to roar as he came out, so that, out of alarm and bewilderment, he would lose his presence of mind and forget the Name.
“And Jeschu left Upper Galilee, and came secretly to Jerusalem, and went into the Temple and learned there the holy writing; and after he had written the incommunicable Name on parchment, he uttered it, with intent that he might feel no pain, and then he cut into his flesh, and hid the parchment with its inscription therein. Then he uttered the Name once more, and made so that his flesh healed up again.
“And when he went out at the door, the lions roared, and he forgot the Name. Therefore he hasted outside the town, cut into his flesh, took the writing out, and when he had sufficiently studied the signs he retained the Name in his memory.”
It is scarcely necessary here to point out the amazing ignorance of the author of the Toledoth Jeschu in making David the builder of the Temple, and in placing the images of lions at the entrance to the Holy of Holies. The story is introduced because Jeschu, son of Stada, in the Talmud is said to have made marks on his skin. But the author knew his Talmud very imperfectly. The Babylonian Gemara says, “Did not the son of Stada mark the magical arts on his skin, and bring them with him out of Egypt?” The story in the Talmud which accounted for the power of Jeschu to work miracles was quite different from that in the Toledoth Jeschu. In the Talmud he has power by bringing out of Egypt, secretly cut on his skin, the magic arts there privately taught; in the Toledoth he acquires his power by learning the incommunicable Name and hiding it under his flesh.
However, the author says, “He could not have penetrated into the Holy of Holies without the aid of magic; for how would the holy priests and followers of Aaron have suffered him to enter there? This must certainly have been done by the aid of magic.” But the author gives no account of how Jeschu learned magic. That we ascertain from the Huldrich text, where we are told that Jeschu spent many years in Egypt, the head-quarters of those who practised magic.
Having acquired this knowledge, Jeschu went into Galilee and proclaimed himself to have been the creator of the world, and born of a virgin, according to the prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14). As a sign of the truth of his mission, he said:
However, the author says, “He could not have penetrated into the Holy of Holies without the aid of magic; for how would the holy priests and followers of Aaron have suffered him to enter there? This must certainly have been done by the aid of magic.” But the author gives no account of how Jeschu learned magic. That we ascertain from the Huldrich text, where we are told that Jeschu spent many years in Egypt, the head-quarters of those who practised magic.
Having acquired this knowledge, Jeschu went into Galilee and proclaimed himself to have been the creator of the world, and born of a virgin, according to the prophecy of Isaiah (vii. 14). As a sign of the truth of his mission, he said:
“Bring me here a dead man, and I will restore him to life. Then all the people hasted and dug into a grave, but found nothing in it but bones.
“Now when they told him that they had found only bones, he said, Bring them hither to me.
“So when they had brought them, he placed the bones together, and surrounded them with skin and flesh and muscles, so that the dead man stood up alive on his feet.
“And when the people saw this, they wondered greatly; and he said, Do ye marvel at this that I have done? Bring hither a leper, and I will heal him.
“So when they had placed a leper before him, he gave him health in like manner, by means of the incommunicable Name. And all the people that saw this fell down before him, prayed to him and said, Truly thou art the Son of God!
“But after five days the report of what had been done came to Jerusalem, to the holy city, and all was related that Jeschu had wrought in Galilee. Then all the people rejoiced greatly; but the elders, the pious men, and the company of the wise men, wept bitterly. And the great and the little Sanhedrim mourned, and at length agreed that they would send a deputation to him.
“For they thought that, perhaps, with God's help, they might overpower him, and bring him to judgment, and condemn him to death.
“Therefore they sent unto him Ananias and Achasias, the noblest men of the little council; and when they had come to him, they bowed themselves before him reverently, in order to deceive him as to their purpose. And he, thinking that they believed in him, received them with smiling countenance, and placed them in his assembly of profligates.
“They said unto him, The most pious and illustrious among the citizens of Jerusalem sent us unto thee, to hear if it shall please thee to go to them; for they have heard say that thou art the Son of God.
“Then answered Jeschu and said, They have heard aright. I will do all that they desire, but only on condition that both the great and lesser Sanhedrim and all who have despised my origin shall come forth to meet me, and shall honour and receive me as servants of their Lord, when I come to them.
“Thereupon the messengers returned to Jerusalem and related all that they had heard.
“Then answered the elders and the righteous men, We will do all that he desires. Therefore these men went again to Jeschu, and told him that it should be even as he had said.
“And Jeschu said, I will go forthwith on my way! And it came to pass, when he had come as far as Nob, nigh unto Jerusalem, that he said to his followers, Have ye here a good and comely ass?
“They answered him that there was one even at hand. Therefore he said, Bring him hither to me.
“And a stately ass was brought unto him, and he sat upon it, and rode into Jerusalem. And as Jeschu entered into the city, all the people went forth to meet him. Then he cried, saying, Of me did the prophet Zacharias testify, Behold thy King cometh unto thee, righteous and a Saviour, poor, and riding on an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass!
“Now when they heard this, all wept bitterly and rent their clothes. And the most righteous hastened to the Queen. She was the Queen Helena, wife of King Jannaeus, and she reigned after her husband's death. She was also called Oleina, and had a son, King Mumbasus, otherwise called Hyrcanus, who was slain by his servant Herod.
“And they said to her, He stirreth up the people; therefore is he guilty of the heaviest penalty. Give unto us full power, and we will take him by subtlety.
“Then the Queen said, Call him hither before me, and I will hear his accusation. But she thought to save him out of their hands because he was related to her. But when the elders saw her purpose, they said to her, Think not to do this, Lady and Queen! and show him favour and good; for by his witchcraft he deceives the people. And they related to her how he had obtained the incommunicable Name....
“Then the Queen answered, In this will I consent unto you; bring him hither that I may hear what he saith, and see with my eyes what he doth; for the whole world speaks of the countless miracles that he has wrought.
“And the wise men answered, This will we do as thou hast said. So they sent and summoned Jeschu, and he came and stood before the Queen.”
In the sight of Queen Helena, Jeschu then healed a leper and raised a dead man to life.
“Then Jeschu said, Of me did Isaiah prophesy: The lame shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
“So the Queen turned to the wise men and said, How say ye that this man is a magician? Have I not seen with my eyes the wonders he has wrought as being the Son of God?
“But the wise men answered and said, Let it not come into the heart of the Queen to say so; for of a truth he is a wizard.
“Then the Queen said, Away with you, and bring no such accusations again before me!
“Therefore the wise men went forth with sad hearts, and one turned to another and said, Let us use subtlety, that we may get him into our hands. And one said to another, If it seems right unto you, let one of us learn the Name, as he did, and work miracles, and perchance thus we shall secure him. And this counsel pleased the elders, and they said, He who will learn the Name and secure the Fatherless One shall receive a double reward in the future life.
“And thereupon one of the elders stood up, whose name was Judas, and spake unto them, saying, Are ye agreed to take upon you the blame of such an action, if I speak the incommunicable Name? for if so, I will learn it, and it may happen that God in His mercy may bring the Fatherless One into my power.
“Then all cried out with one voice, The guilt be on us; but do thou make the effort and succeed.
“Thereupon he went into the Holiest Place, and did what Jeschu had done. And after that he went through the city and raised a cry, Where are those who have proclaimed abroad that the Fatherless is the Son of God? Cannot I, who am mere flesh and blood, do all that Jeschu has done?
“And when this came to the ears of the Queen, Judas was brought before her, and all the elders assembled and followed him. Then the Queen summoned Jeschu, and said to him, Show us what thou hast done last. And he began to work miracles before all the people.
“Thereat Judas spake to the Queen and to all the people, saying, Let nothing that has been wrought by the Fatherless make you wonder, for were he to set his nest between the stars, yet would I pluck him down from thence!
“Then said Judas, Moses our teacher said:
“If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
“Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
“Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
“But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
“And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
“But the Fatherless One answered, Did not Isaias prophesy of me? And my father David, did he not speak of me? The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Desire of me, and I will give thee the heathen for thine inheritance and the uttermost part of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron, and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel. And in like manner he speaks in another place, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies my footstool! And now, behold! I will ascend to my Heavenly Father, and will sit me down at His right hand. Ye shall see it with your eyes, but thou, Judas, shalt not prevail!
“And when Jeschu had spoken the incommunicable Name, there came a wind and raised him between heaven and earth. Thereupon Judas spake the same Name, and the wind raised him also between heaven and earth. And they flew, both of them, around in the regions of the air; and all who saw it marvelled.
“Judas then spake again the Name, and seized Jeschu, and thought to cast him to the earth. But Jeschu also spake the Name, and sought to cast Judas down, and they strove one with the other.”
Finally Judas prevails, and casts Jeschu to the ground, and the elders seize him, his power leaves him, and he is subjected to the tauntings of his captors. Then sentence of death was spoken against him.
“But when Jeschu found his power gone, he cried and said, Of me did my father David speak, For thy sake are we killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.
“Now when the disciples of Jeschu saw this, and all the multitude of sinners who had followed him, they fought against the elders and wise men of Jerusalem, and gave Jeschu opportunity to escape out of the city.
“And he hasted to Jordan; and when he had washed therein his power returned, and with the Name he again wrought his former miracles.
“Thereafter he went and took two millstones, and made them swim on the water; and he seated himself thereon, and caught fishes to feed the multitudes that followed him.”
Before going any further, it is advisable to make a few remarks on what has been given of this curious story.
The Queen Helena is probably the mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in A.D. 326 to see the holy sites, and, according to an early legend, discovered the three crosses on Calvary. There are several incidents in the apocryphal story which bear a resemblance to the incidents in the Toledoth Jeschu.
The Empress Helena favours the Christians against the Jews. Where three crosses are found, a person suffering from “a grievous and incurable disease” is applied to the crosses, and recovers on touching the true one. Then the same experiment is tried with a dead body, with the same success. According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, a Jew named Judas was brought before the Empress, and ordered to point out where the cross was buried. Judas resisted, but was starved in a well till he revealed the secret. The resemblance between the stories consists in the names of Helena and Judas, and the miracles of healing a leper, and raising a dead man to life.
According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, Judas was the grandson of Zacharias, and nephew of St. Stephen the protomartyr.
It is remarkable that Jeschu should be made to quote two passages in the Psalms as prophecies of himself, both of which are used in this manner in the New Testament: Ps. ii. 7, in Acts xiii. 33, and again Heb. i. 5, and v. 5; and Ps. cx. 1, in St. Matthew xxii. 44, and the corresponding passages in St. Mark and St. Luke; also in Acts ii. 34, in 1 Cor. xv. 25, and Heb. i. 13.
The scene of the struggle in the air is taken from the contest of St. Peter with Simon Magus, and reminds one of the contest in the Arabian Nights between the Queen of Beauty and the Jin in the story of the Second Calender.
The putting forth from land on a millstone on the occasion of the miraculous draught of fishes is probably a perversion of the incident of Jesus entering into the boat of Peter—the stone—before the miracle was performed, according to St. Luke, v. 1-8. In the Toledoth Jeschu there are two millstones which our Lord sets afloat, and he mounts one, and then the fishes are caught; in St. Luke's Gospel there are two boats.
“He saw two ships standing by the lake.... And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.”
It was standing on the swimming-stone, according to the Huldrich version, that Jeschu preached to the people, and declared to them his divine mission.
The story goes on. The Sanhedrim, fearing to allow Jeschu to remain at liberty, send Judas after him to Jordan. Judas pronounces a great incantation, which obliges the Angel of Sleep to seal the eyes of Jeschu and his disciples. Then, whilst they sleep, he comes and cuts from the arm of Jeschu a scrap of parchment on which the Name of Jehovah is written, and which was concealed under the flesh. Jeschu awakes, and a spirit appears to him and vexes him sore. Then he feels that his power is gone, and he announces to his disciples that his hour is come when he must be taken by his enemies.
The disciples, amongst whom is Judas, who unobserved, has mingled with them, are sorely grieved; but Jeschu encourages them, and bids them believe in him, and they will obtain thrones in heaven. Then he goes with them to the Paschal Feast, in hopes of again being able to penetrate into the Holy of Holies, and reading again the incommunicable Name, and of thus recovering his power. But Judas forewarns the elders, and as Jeschu enters the Temple he is attacked by armed men. The Jewish servants do not know Jeschu from his disciples. Accordingly Judas flings himself down before him, and thus indicates whom they are to take. Some of the disciples offer resistance, but are speedily overcome, and take to flight to the mountains, where they are caught and executed.
The Queen Helena is probably the mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in A.D. 326 to see the holy sites, and, according to an early legend, discovered the three crosses on Calvary. There are several incidents in the apocryphal story which bear a resemblance to the incidents in the Toledoth Jeschu.
The Empress Helena favours the Christians against the Jews. Where three crosses are found, a person suffering from “a grievous and incurable disease” is applied to the crosses, and recovers on touching the true one. Then the same experiment is tried with a dead body, with the same success. According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, a Jew named Judas was brought before the Empress, and ordered to point out where the cross was buried. Judas resisted, but was starved in a well till he revealed the secret. The resemblance between the stories consists in the names of Helena and Judas, and the miracles of healing a leper, and raising a dead man to life.
According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, Judas was the grandson of Zacharias, and nephew of St. Stephen the protomartyr.
It is remarkable that Jeschu should be made to quote two passages in the Psalms as prophecies of himself, both of which are used in this manner in the New Testament: Ps. ii. 7, in Acts xiii. 33, and again Heb. i. 5, and v. 5; and Ps. cx. 1, in St. Matthew xxii. 44, and the corresponding passages in St. Mark and St. Luke; also in Acts ii. 34, in 1 Cor. xv. 25, and Heb. i. 13.
The scene of the struggle in the air is taken from the contest of St. Peter with Simon Magus, and reminds one of the contest in the Arabian Nights between the Queen of Beauty and the Jin in the story of the Second Calender.
The putting forth from land on a millstone on the occasion of the miraculous draught of fishes is probably a perversion of the incident of Jesus entering into the boat of Peter—the stone—before the miracle was performed, according to St. Luke, v. 1-8. In the Toledoth Jeschu there are two millstones which our Lord sets afloat, and he mounts one, and then the fishes are caught; in St. Luke's Gospel there are two boats.
“He saw two ships standing by the lake.... And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.”
It was standing on the swimming-stone, according to the Huldrich version, that Jeschu preached to the people, and declared to them his divine mission.
The story goes on. The Sanhedrim, fearing to allow Jeschu to remain at liberty, send Judas after him to Jordan. Judas pronounces a great incantation, which obliges the Angel of Sleep to seal the eyes of Jeschu and his disciples. Then, whilst they sleep, he comes and cuts from the arm of Jeschu a scrap of parchment on which the Name of Jehovah is written, and which was concealed under the flesh. Jeschu awakes, and a spirit appears to him and vexes him sore. Then he feels that his power is gone, and he announces to his disciples that his hour is come when he must be taken by his enemies.
The disciples, amongst whom is Judas, who unobserved, has mingled with them, are sorely grieved; but Jeschu encourages them, and bids them believe in him, and they will obtain thrones in heaven. Then he goes with them to the Paschal Feast, in hopes of again being able to penetrate into the Holy of Holies, and reading again the incommunicable Name, and of thus recovering his power. But Judas forewarns the elders, and as Jeschu enters the Temple he is attacked by armed men. The Jewish servants do not know Jeschu from his disciples. Accordingly Judas flings himself down before him, and thus indicates whom they are to take. Some of the disciples offer resistance, but are speedily overcome, and take to flight to the mountains, where they are caught and executed.
“But the elders of Jerusalem led Jeschu in chains into the city, and bound him to a marble pillar, and scourged him, and said, Where are now all the miracles thou hast wrought? And they plaited a crown of thorns and set it on his head. Then the Fatherless was in anguish through thirst, and he cried, saying, Give me water to drink! So they gave him acid vinegar; and after he had drunk thereof he cried, Of me did my father David prophesy, They gave me gall to eat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. But they answered, If thou wert God, why didst thou not know it was vinegar before tasting of it? Now thou art at the brink of the grave, and changest not. But Jeschu wept and said, My God, my God! why hast thou forsaken me? And the elders said, If thou be God, save thyself from our hands. But Jeschu answered, saying, My blood is shed for the redemption of the world, for Isaiah prophesied of me, He was wounded for our transgression and bruised for our iniquities; our chastisement lies upon him that we may have peace, and by his wounds we are healed. Then they led Jeschu forth before the greater and the lesser Sanhedrim, and he was sentenced to be stoned, and then to be hung on a tree. And it was the eve of the Passover and of the Sabbath. And they led him forth to the place where the punishment of stoning was wont to be executed, and they stoned him there till he was dead. And after that, the wise men hung him on the tree; but no tree would bear him; each brake and yielded. And when even was come the wise men said, We may not, on account of the Fatherless, break the letter of the law (which forbids that one who is hung should remain all night on the tree). Though he may have set at naught the law, yet will not we. Therefore they buried the Fatherless in the place where he was stoned. And when, midnight was come, the disciples came and seated themselves on the grave, and wept and lamented him. Now when Judas saw this, he took the body away and buried it in his garden under a brook. He diverted the water of the brook elsewhere; but when the body was laid in its bed, he brought its waters back again into their former channel.
“Now on the morrow, when the disciples had assembled and had seated themselves weeping, Judas came to them and said, Why weep you? Seek him who was buried. And they dug and sought, and found him not, and all the company cried, He is not in the grave; he is risen and ascended into heaven, for, when he was yet alive, he said, He would raise him up, Selah!”
When the Queen heard that the elders had slain Jeschu and had buried him, and that he was risen again, she ordered them within three days to produce the body or forfeit their lives. In sore alarm, the elders seek the body, but cannot find it. They therefore proclaim a fast.
“Now there was amongst them an elder whose name was Tanchuma; and he went forth in sore distress, and wandered in the fields, and he saw Judas sitting in his garden eating. Then Tanchuma drew near to him, and said to him, What doest thou, Judas, that thou eatest meat, when all the Jews fast and are in grievous distress?
“Then Judas was astonished, and asked the occasion of the fast. And the Rabbi Tanchuma answered him, Jeschu the Fatherless is the occasion, for he was hung up and buried on the spot where he was stoned; but now is he taken away, and we know not where he is gone. And his worthless disciples cry out that he is ascended into heaven. Now the Queen has condemned us Israelites to death unless we find him.
“Judas asked, And if the Fatherless One were found, would it be the salvation of Israel? The Rabbi Tanchuma answered that it would be even so.
“Then spake Judas, Come, and I will show you the man whom ye seek; for it was I who took the Fatherless from his grave. For I feared lest his disciples should steal him away, and I have hidden him in my garden and led a water-brook over the place.
“Then the Rabbi Tanchuma hasted to the elders of Israel, and told them all. And they came together, and drew him forth, attached to the tail of a horse, and brought him before the Queen, and said, See! this is the man who, they say, has ascended into heaven!
“Now when the Queen saw this, she was filled with shame, and answered not a word.
“Now it fell out, that in dragging the body to the place, the hair was torn off the head; and this is the reason why monks shave their heads. It is done in remembrance of what befel Jeschu.
“And after this, in consequence thereof, there grew to be strife between the Nazarenes and the Jews, so that they parted asunder; and when a Nazarene saw a Jew he slew him. And from day to day the distress grew greater, during thirty years. And the Nazarenes assembled in thousands and tens of thousands, and hindered the Israelites from going up to the festivals at Jerusalem. And then there was great distress, such as when the golden calf was set up, so that they knew not what to do.
“And the belief of the opposition grew more and more, and spread on all sides. Also twelve godless runagates separated and traversed the twelve realms, and everywhere in the assemblies of the people uttered false prophecies.
“Also many Israelites adhered to them, and these were men of high renown, and they strengthened the faith in Jeschu. And because they gave themselves out to be messengers of him who was hung, a great number followed them from among the Israelites.
“Now when the wise men saw the desperate condition of affairs, one said to another, Woe is unto us! for we have deserved it through our sins. And they sat in great distress, and wept, and looked up to heaven and prayed.
“And when they had ended their prayer, there rose up a very aged man of the elders, by name Simon Cephas, who understood prophecy, and he said to the others, Hearken to me, my brethren! and if ye will consent unto my advice, I will separate these wicked ones from the company of the Israelites, that they may have neither part nor lot with Israel. But the sin do ye take upon you.
“Then answered they all and said, The sin be on us; declare unto us thy counsel, and fulfil thy purpose.
“Therefore Simon, son of Cephas, went into the Holiest Place and wrote the incommunicable Name, and cut into his flesh and hid the parchment therein. And when he came forth out of the Temple he took forth the writing, and when he had learned the Name he betook himself to the chief city of the Nazarenes, and he cried there with a loud voice, Let all who believe in Jeschu come unto me, for I am sent by him to you!
“Then there came to him multitudes as the sand on the sea-shore, and they said to him, Show us a sign that thou art sent! And he said, What sign? They answered him, Even the signs that Jeschu wrought when he was alive.”
Accordingly he heals a leper and restores a dead man to life. And when the people saw this, they submitted to him, as one sent to them by Jeschu.
Then said Simon Cephas to them, Yea, verily, Jeschu did send me to you, and now swear unto me that ye will obey me in all things that I command you.
“And they swore to him, We will do all things that thou commandest.
“Then Simon Cephas said, Ye know that he who hung on the tree was an enemy to the Israelites and the Law, because of the prophecy of Isaiah, Your new moons and festivals my soul hateth. And that he had no pleasure in the Israelites, according to the saying of Hosea, Ye are not my people. Now, although it is in his power to blot them in the twinkling of an eye from off the face of the earth, yet will he not root them out, but will keep them ever in the midst of you as a witness to his stoning and hanging on the tree. He endured these pains and the punishment of death, to redeem your souls from hell. And now he warns and commands you to do no harm to any Jew. Yea, even should a Jew say to a Nazarene, Go with me a mile, he shall go with him twain; or should a Nazarene be smitten by a Jew on one cheek, let him turn to him the other also, that the Jews may enjoy in this world their good things, for in the world to come they must suffer their punishment in hell. If ye do these things, then shall ye merit to sit with them (i.e. the apostles) on their thrones.
“And this also doth he require of you, that ye do not celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but that ye keep holy the day on which he died. And in place of the Feast of Pentecost, that ye keep the fortieth day after his stoning, on which he went up into heaven. And in place of the Feast of Tabernacles, that ye keep the day of his Nativity, and eight days after that ye shall celebrate his Circumcision.”
The Christians promised to do as Cephas commanded them, but they desired him to reside in the midst of them in their great city.
To this he consented. “I will dwell with you,” said he, “if ye will promise to permit me to abstain from all food, and to eat only the bread of poverty and drink the water of affliction. Ye must also build me a tower in the midst of the city, wherein I may spend the rest of my days.”
This was done. The tower was built and called “Peter,” and in this Cephas dwelt till his death six years after. “In truth, he served the God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and composed many beautiful hymns, which he dispersed among the Jews, that they might serve as a perpetual memorial of him; and he divided all his hymns among the Rabbis of Israel.”
On his death he was buried in the tower.
After his death, a man named Elias assumed the place of messenger of Jeschu, and he declared that Simon Cephas had deceived the Christians, and that he, Elias, was an apostle of Jeschu, rather than Cephas, and that the Christians should follow him. The Christians asked for a sign.
Elias said “What sign do ye ask?” Then a stone fell from the tower Peter, and smote him that he died. “Thus,” concludes this first version of the Toledoth Jeschu, “may all Thine enemies perish, O Lord; but may those that love Thee be as the sun when it shineth in its strength!”
Thus ends this wonderful composition, which carries its own condemnation with it.
The two captures and sentences of Jeschu are apparently two forms of Jewish legend concerning Christ's death, which the anonymous writer has clumsily combined.
The scene in Gethsemane is laid on the other side of Jordan. It is manifestly imitated from the Gospels, but not directly, probably from some mediaeval sculptured representation of the Agony in the Garden, common outside every large church. In place of an angel appearing to comfort Christ, an evil spirit vexes him. The kiss of Judas is transformed into a genuflexion or prostration before him, and takes place, not in the Garden but in the Temple. The resistance of the disciples is mentioned. Jeschu is bound to a marble pillar and scourged. Of this the Gospels say nothing; but the pillar is an invariable feature in artistic representations of the scourging. Two of the sayings on the Cross are correctly given. In agreement with the account in the Talmud, Jeschu is stoned, and then, to identify the son of Panthera with the son of Mary, is hung on a tree. The tree breaks, and he falls to the ground. The visitor to Oberammergau Passion Play will remember the scene of Judas hanging himself, and the tree snapping. The Toledoth Jeschu does not say that Jeschu was crucified, but that he was hung. The suicide of Judas was identified with the death of Jesus. If the author of the anti-evangel saw the scene of the breaking bough in a miracle-play, he would perhaps naturally transfer it to Christ.
The women seated late at night by the sepulchre, or coming early with spices, a feature in miracle-plays of the Passion, are transformed into the disciples weeping above the grave. The angel who addresses them, in the Toledoth Jeschu, becomes Judas.
In miracle-plays, Claudia Procula, the wife of Pilate, assumes a prominence she does not occupy in the Gospels; she may have originated the idea in the mind of the author of Wagenseil's Toledoth, of the Queen Helena. That he confounded the Queen of King Jannaeus with the mother of Constantine is not wonderful. The latter was the only historical princess who showed sympathy with the Christians at Jerusalem, and of whose existence the anonymous author was aware, probably through the popular mediaeval romance of Helena, “La belle Helène.” He therefore fell without a struggle into the gross anachronism of making the Empress Helena the wife of Jannaeus, and contemporary with Christ.
In the Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil, Simon Peter is represented as a Jew ruling the Christians in favour of the Jews. The Papacy must have been fully organized when this anti-evangel was written, and the Jews must have felt the protection accorded them by the Popes against their persecutors. St. Gregory the Great wrote letters, in 591 and 598, in behalf of the Jews who were maltreated in Italy and Sicily. Alexander II., in 1068, wrote a letter to the Bishops of Gaul exhorting them to protect the Jews against the violence of the Crusaders, who massacred them on their way to the East. He gave as his reason for their protection the very one put into Simon Cephas' mouth in the Toledoth Jeschu, that God had preserved them and scattered them in all countries as witnesses to the truth of the Gospel. In the cruel confiscation of their goods, and expulsion from France by Philip Augustus, and the simultaneous persecution they underwent in England, Innocent III. took their side, and insisted, in 1199, on their being protected from violence. Gregory IX. defended them when maltreated in Spain and in France by the Crusaders in 1236, on their appeal to him for protection. In 1246, the Jews of Germany appealed to the Pope, Innocent IV., against the ecclesiastical and secular princes who pillaged them on false charges. Innocent wrote, in 1247, ordering those who had wronged them to indemnify them for their losses.
In 1417, the Jews of Constance came to meet Martin V., as their protector, on his coronation, with hymns and torches, and presented him with the Pentateuch, which he had the discourtesy to refuse, saying that they might have the Law, but they did not understand it.
The claim made in the Toledoth Jeschu that the Papacy was a government in the interest of the Jews against the violence of the Christians, points to the thirteenth century as the date of the composition of this book, a century when the Jews suffered more from Christian brutality than at any other period, when their exasperation against everything Christian was wrought to its highest pitch, and when they found the Chair of Peter their only protection against extermination by the disciples of Christ.
Some dim reference may be made to the anti-pope of Jewish blood, Peter Leonis, who took the name of Anacletus II., and who survives in modern Jewish legend as the Pope Elchanan. Anacletus II. (A.D. 1130-1138) maintained his authority in Rome against Innocent II., and from his refuge in the tower of St. Angelo, defied the Emperor Lothair, who had marched to Rome to install Innocent. Anacletus was accused of showing favour to the Jews, whose blood he inherited—his father was a Jewish usurer. When Christians shrank from robbing the churches of their silver and golden ornaments, required by Anacletus to pay his mercenaries and bribe the venal Romans, he is said to have entrusted the odious task to the Jews.
Jewish legend has converted the Jewish anti-pope into the son of the Rabbi Simeon Ben Isaac, of Mainz, who died A.D. 1096. According to the story, the child Elchanan was stolen from his father and mother by a Christian nurse, was taken charge of by monks, grew up to be ordained priest, and finally was elected Pope.
As a child he had been wont to play chess with his father, and had learned from him a favourite move whereby to check-mate his adversary.
The Jews of Germany suffered from oppression, and appointed the Rabbi Simeon to bear their complaints to the Pope. The old Jew went to Rome and was introduced to the presence of the Holy Father. Elchanan recognized him at once, and sent forth all his attendants, then proposed a game of chess with the Rabbi. When the Pope played the favourite move of the old Jew, Simeon Ben Isaac sprang up, smote his brow, and cried out, “I thought none knew this move save I and my long-lost child.” “I am that child,” answered the Pope, and he flung himself into the arms of the aged Jew.
That the Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu was written in the eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth century appears probable from the fact stated, that it was in these centuries that the Jews were more subjected to persecution, spoliation and massacre than in any other; and the Toledoth Jeschu is the cry of rage of a tortured people,—a curse hurled at the Founder of that religion which oppressed them.
In the eleventh century the Jews in the great Rhine cities were massacred by the ferocious hosts of Crusaders under Ernico, Count of Leiningen, and the priests Folkmar and Goteschalk. At the voice of their leaders (A.D. 1096), the furious multitude of red-crossed pilgrims spread through the cities of the Rhine and the Moselle, massacring pitilessly all the Jews that they met with in their passage. In their despair, a great number preferred being their own destroyers to awaiting certain death at the hands of their enemies. Several shut themselves up in their houses, and perished amidst flames their own hands had kindled; some attached heavy stones to their garments, and precipitated themselves and their treasures into the Rhine or Moselle. Mothers stifled their children at the breast, saying that they preferred sending them to the bosom of Abraham to seeing them torn away to be nurtured in a religion which bred tigers.
Some of the ecclesiastics behaved with Christian humanity. The Bishops of Worms and Spires ran some risk in saving as many as they could of this defenceless people. The Archbishop of Treves, less generous, gave refuge to such only as would consent to receive baptism, and coldly consigned the rest to the knives and halters of the Christian fanatics. The Archbishop of Mainz was more than suspected of participation in the plunder of his Jewish subjects. The Emperor took on himself the protection and redress of the wrongs endured by the Jews, and it was apparently at this time that the Jews were formally taken under feudal protection by the Emperor. They became his men, owing to him special allegiance, and with full right therefore to his protection.
The Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil was composed by a German Jew; that is apparent from its mention of the letter of the synagogue of Worms to the Sanhedrim. Had it been written in the eleventh century, it would not have represented the Pope as the refuge of the persecuted Jews, for it was the Emperor who redressed their wrongs.
But it was in the thirteenth century that the Popes stood forth as the special protectors of the Jews. On May 1, 1291, the Jewish bankers throughout France were seized and imprisoned by order of Philip the Fair, and forced to pay enormous mulcts. Some died under torture, most yielded, and then fled the inhospitable realm. Five years after, in one day, all the Jews in France were taken, their property confiscated to the Crown, the race expelled the realm.
In 1320, the Jews of the South of France, notwithstanding persecution and expulsion, were again in numbers and perilous prosperity. On them burst the fury of the Pastoureaux. Five hundred took refuge in the royal castle of Verdun on the Garonne. The royal officers refused to defend them. The shepherds set fire to the lower stories of a lofty tower; the Jews slew each other, having thrown their children to the mercy of their assailants. Everywhere, even in the great cities, Auch, Toulouse, Castel Sarrazen, the Jews were left to be remorselessly massacred and their property pillaged. The Pope himself might have seen the smoke of the fires that consumed them darkening the horizon from the walls of Avignon. But John XXII., cold, arrogant, rapacious, stood by unmoved. He launched his excommunication, not against the murderers of the inoffensive Jews, but against all who presumed to take the Cross without warrant of the Holy See. Even that same year he published violent bulls against the poor persecuted Hebrews, and commanded the Bishops to destroy their Talmud, the source of their detestable blasphemies; but he bade those who should submit to baptism to be protected from pillage and massacre.
The Toledoth Jeschu, therefore, cannot have been written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Jews had such experience of the indifference of a Pope to their wrongs. We are consequently forced to look to the thirteenth century as its date. And the thirteenth century will provide us with instances of persecution of the Jews in Germany, and Popes exerting themselves to protect them.
In 1236, the Jews were the subject of an outburst of popular fury throughout Europe, but especially in Spain, where a fearful carnage took place. In France, the Crusaders of Guienne, Poitou, Anjou and Brittany killed them, without sparing the women and children. Women with child were ripped up. The unfortunate Jews were thrown down, and trodden under the feet of horses. Their houses were ransacked, their books burned, their treasures carried off. Those who refused baptism were tortured or killed. The unhappy people sent to Rome, and implored the Pope to extend his protection to them. Gregory IX. wrote at once to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishops of Saintes, Angoulême and Poictiers, forbidding constraint to be exercised on the Jews to force them to receive baptism; and a letter to the King entreating him to exert his authority to repress the fury of the Crusaders against the Jews.
In 1240, the Jews were expelled from Brittany by the Duke John, at the request of the Bishops of Brittany.
In 1246, the persecution reached its height in Germany. Bishops and nobles vied with each other in despoiling and harassing the unfortunate Hebrews. They were charged with killing Christian children and devouring their hearts at their Passover. Whenever a dead body was found, the Jews were accused of the murder. Hosts were dabbled in blood, and thrown down at their doors, and the ignorant mob rose against such profanation of the sacred mysteries. They were stripped of their goods, thrown into prison, starved, racked, condemned to the stake or to the gallows. From the German towns miserable trains of yellow-girdled and capped exiles issued, seeking some more hospitable homes. If they left behind them their wealth, they carried with them their industry.
A deputation of German Rabbis visited the Pope, Innocent IV., at Lyons, and laid the complaints of the Jews before him. Innocent at once took up their cause. He wrote to all the bishops of Germany, on July 5th, 1247, ordering them to favour the Jews, and insist on the redress of the wrongs to which they had been subjected, whether at the hands of ecclesiastics or nobles. A similar letter was then forwarded by him to all the bishops of France.
At this period it was in vain for the Jews to appeal to the Emperor. Frederick II. was excommunicated, and Germany in revolt, fanned by the Pope, against him. A new Emperor had been proposed at a meeting at Budweis to the electors of Austria, Bohemia and Bavaria, but the proposition had been rejected. Henry of Thuringia, however, set up by Innocent, and supported by the ecclesiastical princes of Germany, had been crowned at Hochem. A crusade was preached against the Emperor Frederick; Henry of Thuringia was defeated and died. The indefatigable Innocent, clinging to the cherished policy of the Papal See to ruin the unity of Germany by stirring up intestine strife, found another candidate in William of Holland. He was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, October 3, 1247. From this time till his death, four years after, the cause of Frederick declined. Frederick was mostly engaged in wars in Italy, and had not leisure, if he had the power, to attend to and right the wrongs of his Jewish vassals.
It was at this period that I think we may conclude the Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil was written.
Another consideration tends to confirm this view. The Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu speaks of Elias rising up after the death of Simon Cephas, and denouncing him as having led the Christians away.
Was there any Elias at the close of the thirteenth century who did thus preach against the Pope? There was. Elias of Cortona, second General of the Franciscan Order, the leader of a strong reactionary party opposed to the Spirituals or Caesarians, those who maintained the rule in all its rigour, had been deposed, then carried back into the Generalship by a recoil of the party wave, then appealed against to the Pope, deposed once more, and finally excommunicated. Elias joined the Emperor Frederick, the deadly foe of Innocent IV., and, sheltered under his wing, denounced the venality, the avarice, the extortion of the Papacy. As a close attendant on the German Emperor, his adviser, as one who encouraged him in his opposition to a Pope who protected the Jews, the German Jews must have heard of him. But the stone of excommunication firing at him struck him down, and he died in 1253, making a death-bed reconciliation with Rome.
But though it is thus possible to give an historical explanation of the curious circumstance that the Toledoth Jeschu ranges the Pope among the friends of Judaism and the enemies of Christianity, and provide for the identification of Elias with the fallen General of the Minorites,—the story points perhaps to a dim recollection of Simon Peter being at the head of the Judaizing Church at Jerusalem and Rome, which made common cause with the Jews, and of Paul, here designated Elias, in opposition to him.
To this he consented. “I will dwell with you,” said he, “if ye will promise to permit me to abstain from all food, and to eat only the bread of poverty and drink the water of affliction. Ye must also build me a tower in the midst of the city, wherein I may spend the rest of my days.”
This was done. The tower was built and called “Peter,” and in this Cephas dwelt till his death six years after. “In truth, he served the God of our fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and composed many beautiful hymns, which he dispersed among the Jews, that they might serve as a perpetual memorial of him; and he divided all his hymns among the Rabbis of Israel.”
On his death he was buried in the tower.
After his death, a man named Elias assumed the place of messenger of Jeschu, and he declared that Simon Cephas had deceived the Christians, and that he, Elias, was an apostle of Jeschu, rather than Cephas, and that the Christians should follow him. The Christians asked for a sign.
Elias said “What sign do ye ask?” Then a stone fell from the tower Peter, and smote him that he died. “Thus,” concludes this first version of the Toledoth Jeschu, “may all Thine enemies perish, O Lord; but may those that love Thee be as the sun when it shineth in its strength!”
Thus ends this wonderful composition, which carries its own condemnation with it.
The two captures and sentences of Jeschu are apparently two forms of Jewish legend concerning Christ's death, which the anonymous writer has clumsily combined.
The scene in Gethsemane is laid on the other side of Jordan. It is manifestly imitated from the Gospels, but not directly, probably from some mediaeval sculptured representation of the Agony in the Garden, common outside every large church. In place of an angel appearing to comfort Christ, an evil spirit vexes him. The kiss of Judas is transformed into a genuflexion or prostration before him, and takes place, not in the Garden but in the Temple. The resistance of the disciples is mentioned. Jeschu is bound to a marble pillar and scourged. Of this the Gospels say nothing; but the pillar is an invariable feature in artistic representations of the scourging. Two of the sayings on the Cross are correctly given. In agreement with the account in the Talmud, Jeschu is stoned, and then, to identify the son of Panthera with the son of Mary, is hung on a tree. The tree breaks, and he falls to the ground. The visitor to Oberammergau Passion Play will remember the scene of Judas hanging himself, and the tree snapping. The Toledoth Jeschu does not say that Jeschu was crucified, but that he was hung. The suicide of Judas was identified with the death of Jesus. If the author of the anti-evangel saw the scene of the breaking bough in a miracle-play, he would perhaps naturally transfer it to Christ.
The women seated late at night by the sepulchre, or coming early with spices, a feature in miracle-plays of the Passion, are transformed into the disciples weeping above the grave. The angel who addresses them, in the Toledoth Jeschu, becomes Judas.
In miracle-plays, Claudia Procula, the wife of Pilate, assumes a prominence she does not occupy in the Gospels; she may have originated the idea in the mind of the author of Wagenseil's Toledoth, of the Queen Helena. That he confounded the Queen of King Jannaeus with the mother of Constantine is not wonderful. The latter was the only historical princess who showed sympathy with the Christians at Jerusalem, and of whose existence the anonymous author was aware, probably through the popular mediaeval romance of Helena, “La belle Helène.” He therefore fell without a struggle into the gross anachronism of making the Empress Helena the wife of Jannaeus, and contemporary with Christ.
In the Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil, Simon Peter is represented as a Jew ruling the Christians in favour of the Jews. The Papacy must have been fully organized when this anti-evangel was written, and the Jews must have felt the protection accorded them by the Popes against their persecutors. St. Gregory the Great wrote letters, in 591 and 598, in behalf of the Jews who were maltreated in Italy and Sicily. Alexander II., in 1068, wrote a letter to the Bishops of Gaul exhorting them to protect the Jews against the violence of the Crusaders, who massacred them on their way to the East. He gave as his reason for their protection the very one put into Simon Cephas' mouth in the Toledoth Jeschu, that God had preserved them and scattered them in all countries as witnesses to the truth of the Gospel. In the cruel confiscation of their goods, and expulsion from France by Philip Augustus, and the simultaneous persecution they underwent in England, Innocent III. took their side, and insisted, in 1199, on their being protected from violence. Gregory IX. defended them when maltreated in Spain and in France by the Crusaders in 1236, on their appeal to him for protection. In 1246, the Jews of Germany appealed to the Pope, Innocent IV., against the ecclesiastical and secular princes who pillaged them on false charges. Innocent wrote, in 1247, ordering those who had wronged them to indemnify them for their losses.
In 1417, the Jews of Constance came to meet Martin V., as their protector, on his coronation, with hymns and torches, and presented him with the Pentateuch, which he had the discourtesy to refuse, saying that they might have the Law, but they did not understand it.
The claim made in the Toledoth Jeschu that the Papacy was a government in the interest of the Jews against the violence of the Christians, points to the thirteenth century as the date of the composition of this book, a century when the Jews suffered more from Christian brutality than at any other period, when their exasperation against everything Christian was wrought to its highest pitch, and when they found the Chair of Peter their only protection against extermination by the disciples of Christ.
Some dim reference may be made to the anti-pope of Jewish blood, Peter Leonis, who took the name of Anacletus II., and who survives in modern Jewish legend as the Pope Elchanan. Anacletus II. (A.D. 1130-1138) maintained his authority in Rome against Innocent II., and from his refuge in the tower of St. Angelo, defied the Emperor Lothair, who had marched to Rome to install Innocent. Anacletus was accused of showing favour to the Jews, whose blood he inherited—his father was a Jewish usurer. When Christians shrank from robbing the churches of their silver and golden ornaments, required by Anacletus to pay his mercenaries and bribe the venal Romans, he is said to have entrusted the odious task to the Jews.
Jewish legend has converted the Jewish anti-pope into the son of the Rabbi Simeon Ben Isaac, of Mainz, who died A.D. 1096. According to the story, the child Elchanan was stolen from his father and mother by a Christian nurse, was taken charge of by monks, grew up to be ordained priest, and finally was elected Pope.
As a child he had been wont to play chess with his father, and had learned from him a favourite move whereby to check-mate his adversary.
The Jews of Germany suffered from oppression, and appointed the Rabbi Simeon to bear their complaints to the Pope. The old Jew went to Rome and was introduced to the presence of the Holy Father. Elchanan recognized him at once, and sent forth all his attendants, then proposed a game of chess with the Rabbi. When the Pope played the favourite move of the old Jew, Simeon Ben Isaac sprang up, smote his brow, and cried out, “I thought none knew this move save I and my long-lost child.” “I am that child,” answered the Pope, and he flung himself into the arms of the aged Jew.
That the Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu was written in the eleventh, twelfth or thirteenth century appears probable from the fact stated, that it was in these centuries that the Jews were more subjected to persecution, spoliation and massacre than in any other; and the Toledoth Jeschu is the cry of rage of a tortured people,—a curse hurled at the Founder of that religion which oppressed them.
In the eleventh century the Jews in the great Rhine cities were massacred by the ferocious hosts of Crusaders under Ernico, Count of Leiningen, and the priests Folkmar and Goteschalk. At the voice of their leaders (A.D. 1096), the furious multitude of red-crossed pilgrims spread through the cities of the Rhine and the Moselle, massacring pitilessly all the Jews that they met with in their passage. In their despair, a great number preferred being their own destroyers to awaiting certain death at the hands of their enemies. Several shut themselves up in their houses, and perished amidst flames their own hands had kindled; some attached heavy stones to their garments, and precipitated themselves and their treasures into the Rhine or Moselle. Mothers stifled their children at the breast, saying that they preferred sending them to the bosom of Abraham to seeing them torn away to be nurtured in a religion which bred tigers.
Some of the ecclesiastics behaved with Christian humanity. The Bishops of Worms and Spires ran some risk in saving as many as they could of this defenceless people. The Archbishop of Treves, less generous, gave refuge to such only as would consent to receive baptism, and coldly consigned the rest to the knives and halters of the Christian fanatics. The Archbishop of Mainz was more than suspected of participation in the plunder of his Jewish subjects. The Emperor took on himself the protection and redress of the wrongs endured by the Jews, and it was apparently at this time that the Jews were formally taken under feudal protection by the Emperor. They became his men, owing to him special allegiance, and with full right therefore to his protection.
The Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil was composed by a German Jew; that is apparent from its mention of the letter of the synagogue of Worms to the Sanhedrim. Had it been written in the eleventh century, it would not have represented the Pope as the refuge of the persecuted Jews, for it was the Emperor who redressed their wrongs.
But it was in the thirteenth century that the Popes stood forth as the special protectors of the Jews. On May 1, 1291, the Jewish bankers throughout France were seized and imprisoned by order of Philip the Fair, and forced to pay enormous mulcts. Some died under torture, most yielded, and then fled the inhospitable realm. Five years after, in one day, all the Jews in France were taken, their property confiscated to the Crown, the race expelled the realm.
In 1320, the Jews of the South of France, notwithstanding persecution and expulsion, were again in numbers and perilous prosperity. On them burst the fury of the Pastoureaux. Five hundred took refuge in the royal castle of Verdun on the Garonne. The royal officers refused to defend them. The shepherds set fire to the lower stories of a lofty tower; the Jews slew each other, having thrown their children to the mercy of their assailants. Everywhere, even in the great cities, Auch, Toulouse, Castel Sarrazen, the Jews were left to be remorselessly massacred and their property pillaged. The Pope himself might have seen the smoke of the fires that consumed them darkening the horizon from the walls of Avignon. But John XXII., cold, arrogant, rapacious, stood by unmoved. He launched his excommunication, not against the murderers of the inoffensive Jews, but against all who presumed to take the Cross without warrant of the Holy See. Even that same year he published violent bulls against the poor persecuted Hebrews, and commanded the Bishops to destroy their Talmud, the source of their detestable blasphemies; but he bade those who should submit to baptism to be protected from pillage and massacre.
The Toledoth Jeschu, therefore, cannot have been written at the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Jews had such experience of the indifference of a Pope to their wrongs. We are consequently forced to look to the thirteenth century as its date. And the thirteenth century will provide us with instances of persecution of the Jews in Germany, and Popes exerting themselves to protect them.
In 1236, the Jews were the subject of an outburst of popular fury throughout Europe, but especially in Spain, where a fearful carnage took place. In France, the Crusaders of Guienne, Poitou, Anjou and Brittany killed them, without sparing the women and children. Women with child were ripped up. The unfortunate Jews were thrown down, and trodden under the feet of horses. Their houses were ransacked, their books burned, their treasures carried off. Those who refused baptism were tortured or killed. The unhappy people sent to Rome, and implored the Pope to extend his protection to them. Gregory IX. wrote at once to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the Bishops of Saintes, Angoulême and Poictiers, forbidding constraint to be exercised on the Jews to force them to receive baptism; and a letter to the King entreating him to exert his authority to repress the fury of the Crusaders against the Jews.
In 1240, the Jews were expelled from Brittany by the Duke John, at the request of the Bishops of Brittany.
In 1246, the persecution reached its height in Germany. Bishops and nobles vied with each other in despoiling and harassing the unfortunate Hebrews. They were charged with killing Christian children and devouring their hearts at their Passover. Whenever a dead body was found, the Jews were accused of the murder. Hosts were dabbled in blood, and thrown down at their doors, and the ignorant mob rose against such profanation of the sacred mysteries. They were stripped of their goods, thrown into prison, starved, racked, condemned to the stake or to the gallows. From the German towns miserable trains of yellow-girdled and capped exiles issued, seeking some more hospitable homes. If they left behind them their wealth, they carried with them their industry.
A deputation of German Rabbis visited the Pope, Innocent IV., at Lyons, and laid the complaints of the Jews before him. Innocent at once took up their cause. He wrote to all the bishops of Germany, on July 5th, 1247, ordering them to favour the Jews, and insist on the redress of the wrongs to which they had been subjected, whether at the hands of ecclesiastics or nobles. A similar letter was then forwarded by him to all the bishops of France.
At this period it was in vain for the Jews to appeal to the Emperor. Frederick II. was excommunicated, and Germany in revolt, fanned by the Pope, against him. A new Emperor had been proposed at a meeting at Budweis to the electors of Austria, Bohemia and Bavaria, but the proposition had been rejected. Henry of Thuringia, however, set up by Innocent, and supported by the ecclesiastical princes of Germany, had been crowned at Hochem. A crusade was preached against the Emperor Frederick; Henry of Thuringia was defeated and died. The indefatigable Innocent, clinging to the cherished policy of the Papal See to ruin the unity of Germany by stirring up intestine strife, found another candidate in William of Holland. He was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, October 3, 1247. From this time till his death, four years after, the cause of Frederick declined. Frederick was mostly engaged in wars in Italy, and had not leisure, if he had the power, to attend to and right the wrongs of his Jewish vassals.
It was at this period that I think we may conclude the Toledoth Jeschu of Wagenseil was written.
Another consideration tends to confirm this view. The Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu speaks of Elias rising up after the death of Simon Cephas, and denouncing him as having led the Christians away.
Was there any Elias at the close of the thirteenth century who did thus preach against the Pope? There was. Elias of Cortona, second General of the Franciscan Order, the leader of a strong reactionary party opposed to the Spirituals or Caesarians, those who maintained the rule in all its rigour, had been deposed, then carried back into the Generalship by a recoil of the party wave, then appealed against to the Pope, deposed once more, and finally excommunicated. Elias joined the Emperor Frederick, the deadly foe of Innocent IV., and, sheltered under his wing, denounced the venality, the avarice, the extortion of the Papacy. As a close attendant on the German Emperor, his adviser, as one who encouraged him in his opposition to a Pope who protected the Jews, the German Jews must have heard of him. But the stone of excommunication firing at him struck him down, and he died in 1253, making a death-bed reconciliation with Rome.
But though it is thus possible to give an historical explanation of the curious circumstance that the Toledoth Jeschu ranges the Pope among the friends of Judaism and the enemies of Christianity, and provide for the identification of Elias with the fallen General of the Minorites,—the story points perhaps to a dim recollection of Simon Peter being at the head of the Judaizing Church at Jerusalem and Rome, which made common cause with the Jews, and of Paul, here designated Elias, in opposition to him.
VII. The Second Toledoth Jeschu.
We will now analyze and give extracts from the second anti-evangel of the Jews, the Toledoth Jeschu of Huldrich.
It begins thus: “In the reign of King Herod the Proselyte, there lived a man named Papus Ben Jehuda. To him was betrothed Mirjam, daughter of Kalphus; and her brother's name was Simeon. He was a Rabbi, the son of Kalphus. This Mirjam, before her betrothal, was a hair-dresser to women.... She was surpassing beautiful in form. She was of the tribe of Benjamin.”
On account of her extraordinary beauty, she was kept locked up in a house; but she escaped through a window, and fled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem with Joseph Pandira, of Nazareth.
As has been already said, Papus Ben Jehuda was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiba, and died about A.D. 140. In the Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu, Mirjam is betrothed to a Jochanan. In the latter, Mary lives at Bethlehem; in the Toledoth of Huldrich, she resides at Jerusalem.
Many years after, the place of the retreat of Mirjam and Joseph Pandira having been made known to Herod, he sent to Bethlehem orders for their arrest, and for the massacre of the children; but Joseph, who had been forewarned by a kinsman in the court of Herod, fled in time with his wife and children into Egypt.
After many years a famine broke out in Egypt, and Joseph and Mirjam, with their son Jeschu and his brethren, returned to Canaan and settled at Nazareth.
It begins thus: “In the reign of King Herod the Proselyte, there lived a man named Papus Ben Jehuda. To him was betrothed Mirjam, daughter of Kalphus; and her brother's name was Simeon. He was a Rabbi, the son of Kalphus. This Mirjam, before her betrothal, was a hair-dresser to women.... She was surpassing beautiful in form. She was of the tribe of Benjamin.”
On account of her extraordinary beauty, she was kept locked up in a house; but she escaped through a window, and fled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem with Joseph Pandira, of Nazareth.
As has been already said, Papus Ben Jehuda was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiba, and died about A.D. 140. In the Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu, Mirjam is betrothed to a Jochanan. In the latter, Mary lives at Bethlehem; in the Toledoth of Huldrich, she resides at Jerusalem.
Many years after, the place of the retreat of Mirjam and Joseph Pandira having been made known to Herod, he sent to Bethlehem orders for their arrest, and for the massacre of the children; but Joseph, who had been forewarned by a kinsman in the court of Herod, fled in time with his wife and children into Egypt.
After many years a famine broke out in Egypt, and Joseph and Mirjam, with their son Jeschu and his brethren, returned to Canaan and settled at Nazareth.
“And Jeschu grew up, and went to Jerusalem to acquire knowledge, in the school of Joshua, the son of Perachia (B.C. 90); and he made there great advance, so that he learned the mystery of the chariot and the holy Name.
“One day it fell out that Jeschu was playing ball with the sons of the priests, near the chamber Gasith, on the hill of the Temple. Then by accident the ball fell into the Fish-valley. And Jeschu was very grieved, and in his anger he plucked the hat from off his head, and cast it on the ground and burst into lamentations. Thereupon the boys warned him to put his hat on again, for it was not comely to be with uncovered head. Jeschu answered, Verily, Moses gave you not this law; it is but an addition of the lawyers, and therefore need not be observed.
“Now there sat there, Rabbi Eliezer and Joshua Ben Levi (A.D. 220), and the Rabbi Akiba (A.D. 135) hard by, in the school, and they heard the words that Jeschu had spoken.
“Then said the Rabbi Eliezer, That boy is certainly a Mamser. But Rabbi Joshua, son of Levi, said, He is a Ben-hannidda. And the Rabbi Akiba said also, He is a Ben-hannidda. Therefore the Rabbi Akiba went forth out of the school, and asked Jeschu in what city he was born. Jeschu answered, I am of Nazareth; my father's name is Mezaria, and my mother's name is Karchat.
“Then the Rabbis Akiba, Eliezer and Joshua went into the school of the Rabbi Joshua, son of Perachia, and seized Jeschu by the hair and cut it off in a circle, and washed his head with the water Boleth, so that the hair might not grow again.”
Ashamed at this humiliation, according to the Toledoth Jeschu of Huldrich, the boy returned to Nazareth, where he wounded his mother's breast.
Probably the author of this counter-Gospel saw one of those common artistic representations of the Mater Dolorosa with a sword piercing her soul, and invented the story of Jesus wounding his mother's breast to account for it.
When Jeschu was grown up, there assembled about him many disciples, whose names were Simon and Matthias, Elikus, Mardochai and Thoda, whose names Jeschu changed.
Probably the author of this counter-Gospel saw one of those common artistic representations of the Mater Dolorosa with a sword piercing her soul, and invented the story of Jesus wounding his mother's breast to account for it.
When Jeschu was grown up, there assembled about him many disciples, whose names were Simon and Matthias, Elikus, Mardochai and Thoda, whose names Jeschu changed.
“He called Simon Peter, after the word Petrus, which in Hebrew signifies the First. And Matthias he called Matthew; and Elikus he called Luke, because he sent him forth among the heathen; and Mardochai he named Mark, because he said, Vain men come to me; and Thoda he named Pahul (Paul), because he bore witness of him.
“Another worthless fellow also joined them, named Jochanan, and he changed his name to Jahannus on account of the miracles Jeschu wrought through him by means of the incommunicable Name. This Jahannus advised that all the men who were together should have their heads washed with the water Boleth, that the hair might not grow on them, and all the world might know that they were Nazarenes.
“But the affair was known to the elders and to the King. Then he sent his messengers to take Jeschu and his disciples, and to bring them to Jerusalem. But out of fear of the people, they gave timely warning to Jeschu that the King sought to take and kill him and his companions. Therefore they fled into the desert of Ai (Capernaum?). And when the servants of the King came and found them not, with the exception of Jahannus they took him and led him before the King. And the King ordered that Jahannus should be executed with the sword. The servants of the King therefore went at his command and slew Jahannus, and hung up his head at the gate of Jerusalem.
“About this time Jeschu assembled the inhabitants of Jerusalem about him, and wrought many miracles. He laid a millstone on the sea, and sailed about on it, and cried, I am God, the Son of God, born of my mother by the power of the Holy Ghost, and I sprang from her virginal brow.
“And he wrought many miracles, so that all the inhabitants of Ai believed in him, and his miracles he wrought by means of the incommunicable Name.
“Then Jeschu ordered the law to be done away with, for it is said in the Psalm, It is time for thee, Lord, to lay too thine hand, for they have destroyed thy law. Now, said he, is the right time come to tear up the law, for the thousandth generation has come since David said, He hath promised to keep his word to a thousand generations (Ps. cviii. 8).
“Therefore they arose and desecrated the Sabbath.
“When now the elders and wise men heard of what was done, they came to the King and consulted him and his council. Then answered Judas, son of Zachar, I am the first of the King's princes; I will go myself and see if it be true what is said, that this man blasphemeth.
“Therefore Judas went and put on other clothes like the men of Ai, and spake to Jeschu and said, I also will learn your doctrine. Then Jeschu had his head shaved in a ring and washed with the water Boleth.
“After that they went into the wilderness, for they feared the King lest he should take them if they tarried at Ai. And they lost their way; and in the wilderness they lighted on a shepherd who lay on the ground. Then Jeschu asked him the right way, and how far it was to shelter. The shepherd answered, The way lies straight before you; and he pointed it out with his foot.
“They went a little further, and they found a shepherd maiden, and Jeschu asked her which way they must go. Then the maiden led them to a stone which served as a sign-post. And Peter said to Jeschu, Bless this maiden who has led us hither! And he blessed her, and wished for her that she might become the wife of the shepherd they had met on the road.
“Then said Peter, Wherefore didst thou so bless the maiden? He answered, The man is slow, but she is lively. If he were left without her activity, it would fare ill with him. For I am a God of mercy, and make marriages as is best for man.”
This is a German story. There are many such of Jesus and St. Peter to be found in all collections of German household tales. They go together on a journey, and various adventures befal them, and the Lord orders things very differently from what Peter expects. To this follows another story, familiar to English school-boys. The apostles come with their Master to an inn, and ask for food. The innkeeper has a goose, and it is decided that he shall have the goose who dreams the best dream that night. When all are asleep, Judas gets up, plucks, roasts and eats the goose. Next morning they tell their dreams. Judas says, “Mine was the best of all, for I dreamt that in the night I ate the goose; and, lo! the goose is gone this morning. I think the dream must have been a reality.” Among English school-boys, the story is told of an Englishman, and Scotchman, and an Irishman. The latter, of course, takes the place of Judas.
Some equally ridiculous stories follow, inserted for the purpose of making our blessed Lord and his apostles contemptible, but not taken, like the two just mentioned, from German folk-lore.
Some equally ridiculous stories follow, inserted for the purpose of making our blessed Lord and his apostles contemptible, but not taken, like the two just mentioned, from German folk-lore.
“After that Judas went to Jerusalem, but Jeschu and Peter tarried awaiting him (at Laish), for they trusted him. Now when Judas was come to Jerusalem, he related to the King and the elders the words and deeds of Jeschu, and how, through the power of the incommunicable Name, he had wrought such wonders that the people of Ai believed in him, and how that he had taken to wife the daughter of Karkamus, chief ruler of Ai.
“Then the King and the elders asked counsel of Judas how they might take Jeschu and his disciples. Judas answered, Persuade Jagar Ben Purah, their host, to mix the water of forgetfulness with their wine. We will come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles; and then do ye take him and his disciples. For Jager Purah is the brother of the Gerathite Karkamus; but I will persuade Jeschu that Jager Purah is the brother of Karkamus of Ai, and he will believe my words, and they will all come up to the Feast of Tabernacles. Now when they shall have drunk of that wine, then will Jeschu forget the incommunicable Name, and so will be unable to deliver himself out of your hands, so that ye can capture him and hold him fast.
“Then answered the King and the elders, Thy counsel is good; go in peace, and we will appoint a fast. Therefore Judas went his way on the third of the month Tisri (October), and the great assembly in Jerusalem fasted a great fast, and prayed God to deliver Jeschu and his followers into their hands. And they undertook for themselves and for their successors a fast to be hold annually on the third of the month Tisri, for ever.
“When Judas had returned to Jeschu, he related to him, I have been attentive to hear what is spoken in Jerusalem, and none so much as wag their tongues against thee. Yea! when the King took Jahannus to slay him, his disciples came in force and rescued him. And Jahannus said to me, Go say to Jesus, our Lord, that he come with his disciples, and we will protect him; and see! the host, Jager Purah, is brother of Karkamus, ruler of Ai, and an uncle of thy betrothed.
“Now when Jeschu heard the words of Judas, he believed them; for the inhabitants of Jerusalem and their neighbours fasted incessantly during the six days between the feast of the New Year and the Day of Atonement,—yea, even on the Sabbath Day did some of them fast. And when those men who were not in the secret asked wherefore they fasted at this unusual time, when it was not customary to fast save on the Day of Atonement, the elders answered them, This is done because the King of the Gentiles has sent and threatened us with war.
“But Jeschu and his disciples dressed themselves in the costume of the men of Ai, that they might not be recognized in Jerusalem; and in the fast, on the Day of Atonement, Jeschu came with his disciples to Jerusalem, and entered into the house of Purah, and said, Of me it is written, Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with me. For now am I come from Edom to the house of Purah, and of thee, Purah, was it written, Jegar Sahadutha! For thou shalt be to us a hill of witness and assured protection. But I have come here to Jerusalem to abolish the festivals and the holy seasons and the appointed holy days. And he that believeth in me shall have his portion in eternal life. I will give forth a new law in Jerusalem, for of me was it written, Out of Zion shall the law go forth, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And their sins and unrighteousness will I atone for with my blood. But after I am dead I will arise to life again; for it is written, I kill and make alive; I bring down to hell, and raise up therefrom again.
“But Judas betook himself secretly to the King, and told him how that Jeschu and his disciples were in the house of Purah. Therefore the King sent young priests into the house of Purah, who said unto Jeschu, We are ignorant men, and believe in thee and thy word; but do this, we pray thee, work a miracle before our eyes.
“Then Jeschu wrought before them wonders by means of the incommunicable Name.
“And on the great Day of Atonement he and his disciples ate and drank, and fasted not; and they drank of the wine wherewith was mingled the Water of Forgetfulness, and then betook themselves to rest.
“And when midnight was now come, behold! servants of the King surrounded the house, and to them Purah opened the door. And the servants broke into the room where Jeschu and his disciples were, and they cast them into chains.
“Then Jeschu directed his mind to the incommunicable Name; but he could not recall it, for all had vanished from his recollection.
“And the servants of the King led Jeschu and his disciples to the prison of the blasphemers. And in the morning they told the King that Jeschu and his disciples were taken and cast into prison. Then he ordered that they should be detained till the Feast of Tabernacles.
“And on that feast all the people of the Lord came together to the feast, as Moses had commanded them. Then the King ordered that Jeschu's disciples should be stoned outside the city; and all the Israelites looked on, and heaped stones on the disciples. And all Israel broke forth into hymns of praise to the God of Israel, that these men of Belial had thus fallen into their hands.
“But Jeschu was kept still in prison, for the King would not slay him till the men of Ai had seen that his words were naught, and what sort of a prophet he was proved to be.
“Also he wrote letters throughout the land to the councils of the synagogues to learn from them after what manner Jeschu should be put to death, and summoning all to assemble at Jerusalem on the next feast of the Passover to execute Jeschu, as it is written, Whosoever blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.
“But the people of Girmajesa (Germany) and all that country round, what is at this day called Wormajesa (Worms) in the land of the Emperor, and the little council in the town of Wormajesa, answered the King in this wise, Let Jesus go, and slay him not! Let him live till he die and perish.
“But when the feast of the Passover drew nigh, it was heralded through all the land of Judaea, that any one who had aught to say in favour, and for the exculpation, of Jeschu, should declare it before the King. But all the people with one consent declared that Jeschu must die.
“Therefore, on the eve of the Passover, Jeschu was brought out of the prison, and they cried before him, So may all thine enemies perish, O Lord! And they hanged him on a tree outside of Jerusalem, as the King and elders of Jerusalem had commanded.
“And all Israel looked on and praised and glorified God.
“Now when even was come, Judas took down the body of Jeschu from the tree and laid it in his garden in a conduit.
“But when the people of Ai heard that Jeschu had been hung, they became enemies to Israel. And the people of Ai attacked the Israelites, and slew of them two thousand men. And the Israelites could not go to the feasts because of the men of Ai. Therefore the King proclaimed war against Ai; but he could not overcome it, for mightily grew the multitude of those who believed in Jeschu, even under the eyes of the King in Jerusalem.
“And some of these went to Ai, and declared that on the third day after Jeschu had been hung, fire had fallen from heaven, which had surrounded Jeschu, and he had arisen alive, and gone up into heaven.
“And the people of Ai believed what was said, and swore to avenge on the children of Israel the crime they had committed in hanging Jeschu. Now when Judas saw that the people of Ai threatened great things, he wrote a letter unto them, saying, There is no peace to the ungodly, saith the Lord; therefore do the people take counsel together, and the Gentiles imagine a vain thing. Come to Jerusalem and see your false prophet! For, lo! he is dead and buried in a conduit.
“Now when they heard this, the men of Ai went to Jerusalem and saw Jeschu lying where had been said. But, nevertheless, when they returned to Ai, they said that all Judas had written was false. For, lo! said they, when we came to Jerusalem we found that all believed in Jeschu, and had risen and had expelled the King out of the city because he believed not; and many of the elders have they slain. Then the men of Ai believed these words of the messengers, and they proclaimed war against Israel.
“Now when the King and the elders saw that the men of Ai were about to encamp against them, and that the numbers of these worthless men grow—they were the brethren and kinsmen of Jeschu—they took counsel what they should do in such sore straits as they were in.
“And Judas said, Lo! Jeschu has an uncle Simon, son of Kalpus, who is now alive, and he is an honourable old man. Give him the incommunicable Name, and let him work wonders in Ai, and tell the people that he does them in the name of Jesus. And they will believe Simon, because he is the uncle of Jeschu. But Simon must make them believe that Jeschu committed to him all power to teach them not to ill-treat the Israelites, and he has reserved them for his own vengeance.
“This counsel pleased the King and the elders, and they went to Simon and told him the matter.
“Then went Simon, when he had learned the Name, and drew nigh to Ai, and he raised a cloud and thunder and lightning. And he seated himself on the cloud, and as the thunder rolled he cried, Ye men of Ai, gather yourselves together at the tower of Ai, and there will I give you commandments from Jeschu.
“But when the people of Ai heard this voice, they were sore afraid, and they assembled on all sides about the tower. And lo! Simon was borne thither on the cloud; and he stepped upon the tower. And the men of Ai fell on their faces before him. Then Simon said, I am Simon Ben Kalpus, uncle of Jeschu. Jeschu came and sent me unto you to teach you his law, for Jesus is the Son of God. And lo! I will give you the law of Jesus, which is a new commandment.
“Then he wrought before them signs and wonders, and he said to the people of Ai, Swear to me to obey all that I tell you. And they swore to him. Then said Simon, Go to your own homes. And all the people of Ai returned to their dwellings.
“Now Simon sat on the tower, and wrote the commandments even as the King and elders had decided. And he changed the Alphabet, and gave the letters new names, as secretly to protest that all he taught written in those letters was lies. And this was the Alphabet he wrote: A, Be, Ce, De, E, Ef, Cha, I, Ka, El, Em, En, O, Pe, Ku, Er, Es, Te, U, Ix, Ejed, Zet.
“And this is the interpretation: My father is Esau, who was a huntsman, and was weary; and lo! his sons believed in Jesus, who lives, as God.
“And Simon composed for the deception of the people of Ai lying books, and he called them ‘Avonkelajon’ (Evangelium), which, being interpreted, is the End of Ungodliness. [But they thought he said, ‘Eben gillajon,’ which means Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He also wrote books in the names of the disciples of Jeschu, and especially in that of Johannes, and said that Jeschu had given him these.
“But with special purpose he composed the Book of Johannes (the Apocalypse), for the men of Ai thought it contained mysteries, whereas it contained pure invention. For instance, he wrote in the Book of Johannes that Johannes saw a beast with seven heads and seven horns and seven crowns, and the name of the beast was blasphemy, and the number of the beast 666. Now the seven heads mean the seven letters which compose in Hebrew the words, ‘Jeschu of Nazareth.’ And in like manner the number 666 is that which is the sum of the letters composing this name. In like way did Simon compose all the books to deceive the people, as the King and the elders had bidden him.
“And on the sixth day of the third month Simon sat on the cloud, and the people of Ai were gathered together before him to the tower, and he gave them the book Avonkelajon, and said to them, When ye have children born to you, ye must sprinkle them with water, in token that Jeschu was washed with the water Boleth, and ye must observe all the commandments that are written in the book Avonkelajon. And ye must wage no war against the people of Israel, for Jeschu has reserved them to avenge himself on them himself.
“Now when the people of Ai heard these words, they answered that they would keep them. And Simon returned on his cloud to Jerusalem. And all the people thought he had gone up in a cloud to heaven to bring destruction on the Israelites.
“Not long after this, King Herod died, and was succeeded by his son in the kingdom of Israel. But when he had obtained the throne, he heard that the people of Ai had made images in honour of Jesus and Mary, and he wrote letters to Ai and ordered their destruction; otherwise he would make war against them.
“Then the people of Ai sent asking help of the Emperor against the King of Israel. But the Emperor would not assist them and war against Israel. Therefore, when the people of Ai saw that there was no help, they burned the images and bound themselves before the sons of Israel.
“And about this time Mirjam, the mother of Jeschu, died. Then the King ordered that she should be buried at the foot of the tree on which Jeschu had hung; and there he also had the brothers and sisters of Jeschu hung up. And they were hung, and a memorial stone was set up on the spot.
“But the worthless men, their kinsmen, came and destroyed the memorial stone, and set up another in its stead, on which they wrote the words, ‘Lo! this is a ladder set upon the earth, whose head reaches to heaven, and the angels of God ascend and descend upon it, and the mother rejoices here in her children, Allelujah!’
“Now when the King heard this, he destroyed the memorial they had erected, and killed a hundred of the kindred of Jeschu.
“Then went Simon, son of Kalpus, to the King and said, Suffer me, and I will draw away these people from Jerusalem. And the King said, Be it so; go, and the Lord be with thee! Therefore Simon went secretly to these worthless men, and said to them, Let us go together to Ai, and there shall ye see wonders which I will work. And some went to Ai, but others seated themselves beside Simon on his cloud, and left Jerusalem with him. And on the way Simon cast down those who sat on the cloud with him upon the earth, so that they died.
“And when Simon returned to Jerusalem, he told the King what he had done, and the King rejoiced greatly. And Simon left not the court of the King till his death. And when he died, all the Jews observed the day as a fast, and it was the 9th of the month Teboth (January).
“But those who had gone to Ai at the word of Simon believed that Simon and those with him had gone up together into heaven on the cloud.
“And when men saw what Simon had taught the people of Ai in the name of Jesus, they followed them also, and they took them the daughters of Ai to wife, and sent letters into the furthest islands with the book Avonkelajon, and undertook for themselves, and for their descendants, to hold to all the words of the book Avonkelajon.
“Therefore they abolished the Law, and chose the first day of the week as the Sabbath, for that was the birthday of Jesus, and they ordained many other customs and bad feasts. Therefore have they no part and lot in Israel. They are accursed in this world, and accursed in the world to come. But the Lord bless his people Israel with peace.
“These are the words of the Rabbi Jochanan, son of Saccai, in Jerusalem.”
That this second version of the “Life of Jeschu” is later than the first one, I think there can be little doubt. It is more full of absurdities than the first, it adopts German household tales, and exhibits an ignorance of history even more astounding than in the first Life. The preachers of the “Evangelium” marry wives, and there is a burning of images of St. Mary and our Lord. These are perhaps indications of its having been composed after the Reformation.
Luther did not know anything of the Life published later by Huldrich. The only Toledoth Jeschu he was acquainted with was that afterwards published by Wagenseil.
Luther did not know anything of the Life published later by Huldrich. The only Toledoth Jeschu he was acquainted with was that afterwards published by Wagenseil.
THE STRASBOURG MANUSCRIPT
G. R. S. Meade
But before we go any further we must present our readers with some one of the numerous recensions of the Toldoth, so that they may form some idea of the general nature of the material. As the Wagenseil and Huldreich versions are fairly well known, at any rate to scholars and the curious, we will take the recension preserved in the Strassburg MS., which is of special interest not only because it is probably the Hebrew original underlying the type of text preserved in Bischoff’s Yiddish Toldoth, but also because it preserves many Aramaic traces, and so connects itself with the earliest forms of the Toldoth literature, and finally because part of it is identical with Martini’s thirteenth century text.
XIV—A JEWISH LIFE OF JESUS.
THE beginning of the birth of Jeschu. His mother was Miriam [a daughter] of Israel. She had a betrothed of the royal race of the House of David, whose name was Jochanan. He was learned in the law and feared heaven greatly. Near the door of her house, just opposite, dwelt a handsome [fellow]; Joseph ben Pandera cast his eye upon her.
It was at night, on the eve of the Sabbath, when drunken he crossed over to her door and entered in to her. But she thought in her heart that it was her betrothed Jochanan; she hid her face and was ashamed. ... He embraced her; but she said to him: Touch me not, for I am in my separation. He took no heed thereat, nor regarded her words, but persisted. She conceived by him. . . .
At midnight came her betrothed Rabbi Jochanan. She said to him: What meaneth this? Never hath it been thy custom, since thou wast betrothed to me, twice in a night to come to me.
He answered her and said: It is but once I come to thee this night.
She said to him: Thou earnest to me, and I said to thee I was in my separation, yet heeded’st thou not, but did’st thy will and wentest forth. When he heard this, forthwith he perceived that Joseph ben Pandera had cast an eye upon her and done the deed. He left her; in the morning he arose and went to Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach.
He said to him: Know then what hath befallen me this night with my betrothed. I went in to her after the manner of men . . .; before I touched her she said: Thou hast already this night come once to me, and I said to thee I was in my separation, and thou gavest no ear to me, [didst] thy will and wentest forth. When I heard such words from her, I left her and [went forth]. Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach said to him: Who came into thy mind?
He answered: Ben Pandera, for he dwelleth near her house and is a libertine.
He said to him: I understand that thou hast no witness for this thing, therefore keep silence; I counsel thee, if he have come once, then can he not fail to come a second time; act wisely; at that time set witnesses against him.
Some time after the rumour went abroad that Miriam was with child. Then said her betrothed Jochanan: She is not with child by me; shall I abide here and hear my shame every day from the people?
He arose and went to Babylon. After some [time she bore] a son, and they called his name Joshua after his mother’s brother; but when his corrupt birth was made public they called him Jeschu.
2. His mother gave him to a teacher, so that he might become wise in the Halacha, and learned in the Torah and the Talmud. Now it was the custom of the teachers of the law that no disciple and no boy should, pass on his way by them without his head being covered and his eyes cast to the ground, from reverence of the pupils towards their teachers.
One day that rogue passed by, and all the wise were seated together at the door of the synagogue—that is, they call the school-house synagogue; that rogue then passed by the Rabbis, head on high and with uncovered pate, saluting no one, nay, rather, in shameless fashion slowing irreverence to his teacher.
After he had passed by them, one of them began and said: He is a bastard (mamzer). The second began and said: He is a bastard and son of a woman in her separation (mamzer ten ha-niddah).
Another day the Rabbis stopped in tractate Nezikin; then began that one to speak Halachoth before them.
Thereupon one of them began and said to him: Hast thou this not learned: He who giveth forth a Halacha in the presence of his teacher, is guilty of death?
That one answered and said to the wise ones: Who is the teacher and who the disciple? "Who of the twain is wiser, Moses or Jethro? Was it not Moses, father of the prophets and head of the wise? And the Torah, moreover, beareth witness of him: And from henceforth there ariseth no prophet in Israel like unto Moses. Withal Jethro was an alien, . . . yet taught he Moses worldly wisdom, as it is written: Set thou over them rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds. But if ye say that Jethro is greater than Moses, then would there be an end to the greatness of Moses.
When the wise heard this, they said: As he is so very shameless, let us enquire after him. They sent to his mother, [saying] thus: Tell us, pray, who is the father of this boy?
She answered and said: . . ., but they say of him, that he is a bastard and son of a woman in her separation.
Then began Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach: To-day is it thirty years since Rabbi Jochanan her betrothed came to me; at that time he said to me: That and that hath befallen me.
He related all that is told above, . . . how Rabbi Simeon answered Rabbi Jochanan, and how when she was with child, he [R. J.] for great shame went to Babylon and did not return; but this Miriam gave birth to this Jeschu, and no death penalty awaits her, for she hath not done this of her own will, for Joseph ben Pandera laid in wait for her . . . the whole day.
When she heard from Rabbi Simeon that no death penalty awaited her, she also began and said: Thus was the story; and she confessed. But when it went abroad concerning Jeschu, that he was called a bastard and son of a woman in her separation, he went away and fled to Jerusalem.
3. Now the rule of all Israel was in the hand of a woman who was called Helene. And there was in the sanctuary a foundation-stone—and this is its interpretation: God founded it and this is the stone on which Jacob poured oil—and on it were written the letters of the Shem, and whosoever learned it, could do whatsoever he would. But as the wise feared that the disciples of Israel might learn them and therewith destroy the world, they took measures that no one should do so.
Brazen dogs were bound to two iron pillars at the entrance of the place of burnt offerings, and whosoever entered in and learned these letters—as soon as he went forth again, the dogs bayed at him; if he then looked at them, the letters vanished from his memory.
This Jeschu came, learned them, wrote them on parchment, cut into his hip and laid the parchment with the letters therein—so that the cutting of his flesh did not hurt him—then he restored the skin to its place. When he went forth the brazen dogs bayed at him, and the letters vanished from his memory. He went home, cut open his flesh with his knife, took out the writing, learned the letters, went and gathered together three hundred and ten of the young men of Israel.
4. He said to them: Behold then these who say of me and works I am a bastard and son of a woman in her separation; they desire power for themselves and seek to exercise lordship in Israel. But see ye, all the prophets prophesied concerning the Messiah of God, and I am the Messiah. Isaiah prophesied concerning me: Behold the virgin shall conceive, bear a son, and he shall be called Emanuel. Moreover, my forefather David prophesied concerning me and spake: The Eternal [Y. H. V. H.] said to me: Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee. He begat me without male congress with my mother; yet they call me a bastard! He further prophesied: Why do the heathen rage, etc., the kings in the country rise up, etc., against His anointed. I am the Messiah, and they, so to rise up against me, are children of whores, for so it is written in the Scripture: For they are the children of whores.
The young men answered him: If thou art the Messiah, show unto us a sign. He answered them: What sign do ye require that I should do for you?
Forthwith they brought unto him a lame man, who had never yet stood upon his feet. He pronounced over him the letters, and he stood upon his feet. In the same hour they all made obeisance to him and said: This is the Messiah.
He gave them another sign. They brought to him a leper; he pronounced over him the letters, and he was healed. There joined themselves to him apostates from the children of his people.
When the wise saw that so very many believed on him, they seized him and brought him before Queen Helene, in whose hand the land of Israel was. They said to her: This man uses sorcery and seduces the world.
Jeschu answered to her as follows: Already of old the prophets prophesied concerning me: And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Isai (Jesse) and I am he. Of him saith the Scripture: Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.
She said to them: Is this truly in your law, what he saith?
They answered: It is in our law; but it hath not been said concerning him, for it is said therein: And that prophet [etc.], put the evil away from the midst of thee. But the Messiah for whom we hope, with him are [other] signs, and it is said of him: He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth. With this bastard these signs are not present.
Jesus said: Lady, I am he, and I raise the dead.
In the same hour the queen was affrightened and said: That is a great sign.
Apostates still joined themselves to him, were with him, and there arose a great schism in Israel.
5. Jeschu went to Upper Galilee. The wise assembled together, went before the queen and said to her: Lady, he practiseth sorcery and leadeth men astray therewith.
Therefore sent she forth horsemen concerning him, and they came upon him as he was seducing the people of Upper Galilee and saying to them: I am the Son of God, who hath been promised in your law. The horsemen rose up to take him away, but the people of Upper Galilee suffered it not and began to fight.
Jeschu said unto them: Fight not, have trust in the power of my Father in heaven.
The people of Galilee made birds out of clay; he uttered the letters of the Shem, and the birds flew away. At the same hour they fell down before him.
He said to them: Bring unto me a millstone. They rolled it to the sea-shore; he spake the letters, set it upon the surface of the sea, sat himself thereon, as one sits in a boat, went and floated on the water.
They who had been sent, saw it and wondered; and Jeschu said to the horsemen: Go to your lady, tell her what ye have seen! Thereupon the wind raised him from the water and carried him onto the dry land.
The horsemen came and told the queen all these things; the queen was affrighted, was greatly amazed, sent and gathered together the elders of Israel and spake unto them: Ye say he is a sorcerer, nevertheless every day he doeth great wonders.
They answered her: Surely his tricks should not trouble thee! Send messengers, that they may bring him hither, and his shame shall be made plain.
At the same hour she sent messengers, and his wicked company also joined itself onto him, and they came with him before the queen.
Then the wise men of Israel took a man by name Juda Ischariota, brought him into the Holy of Holies, where he learned the letters of the Shem, which were engraved on the foundation-stone, wrote them on a small [piece of] parchment, cut open his hip, spake the Shem, so that it did not hurt, as Jeschu had done before.
As soon as Jeschu with his company had returned to the queen, and she sent for the wise men, Jeschu began and spake: For dogs encompassed me. And concerning me he [David] said: Tremble not before them.
As soon as the wise men entered and Juda Ischariota with them, they brought forward their pleas against him, until he said to the queen: Of me it hath been said: I will ascend to heaven. Further it is written: If He take me, Sela! He raised his hands like unto the wings of an eagle and flew, and the people were amazed because of him: How is he able to fly twixt heaven and earth!
Then spake the wise men of Israel to Juda Ischariota: Do thou also utter the letters and ascend after him. Forthwith he did so, flew in the air, and the people marvelled: How can they fly like eagles!
Ischariota acted cleverly, flew in the air, but neither could overpower the other, so as to make him fall by means of the Shem, because the Shem was equally with both of them. When Juda perceived this he had recourse to a low trick; he befouled Jeschu, so that he was made unclean and fell to the earth, and with him also Juda.
It is because of this that they wail on their night, and because of the thing which Juda did to him.
At the same hour they seized him and said to Helene: Let him be put to death! . . . Let him tell us who smote him. So they covered his head with a garment and smote him with a pomegranate staff. As he did not know, it was clear that the Shem had abandoned him, and he was now fast taken in their hands.
He began and spake to his companions before the queen: Of me it was said: Who will rise up for me against the evil doers? But of them he said: The proud waters. And of them he said: Stronger than rocks make they their countenance.
When the queen heard this she reproved the apostates, and said to the wise men of Israel: He is in your hand.
6. They departed from the queen and brought him to the synagogue of Tiberias and bound him to the pillars of the ark. Then there gathered together the band of simpletons and dupes, who believed on his words and desired to deliver him out of the hand of the elders; but they could not do so, and there arose great fighting between them.
When he saw that he had no power to escape, he said: Give me some water. They gave him vinegar in a copper vessel. He began and spake with a loud voice: Of me David prophesied and said: When I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.
On his head they set a crown of thorns. The apostates lamented sore, and there was fighting between them, brother with brother, father with son; but the wise men brought the apostates low.
He began and spake: Of me he prophesied and said: My back I gave to the smiters, etc. Further of these the Scripture saith: Draw hither, sons of the sorceress. And of me hath been said: But we held him, etc. And of me he said: The Messiah shall be cut off and he is not.
When the apostates heard this, they began to stone them with stones, and there was great hatred among them.
Then were the elders afraid, and the apostates bore of him off from them, and his three hundred and ten disciples brought him to the city of Antioch, where he sojourned till the rest-day of Passover. Now in that year Passover fell on the Sabbath, and he and his sons [sic] came to Jerusalem, on the rest-day of Passover, that is on the Friday, he riding on an ass and saying to his disciples: Of me it was said: Rejoice greatly, Daughter of Zion, etc.
In the same hour they all cried aloud, bowed themselves before him, and he with his three hundred and ten disciples went into the sanctuary.
Then came one of them, who was called Gaisa [that is, Gardener], and said to the wise men: Do you want the rogue? They said: Where is he to be found? He answered: He is in the sanctuary,—that is to say, in the school-house. They said to him: Show him unto us. He answered them: We, his three hundred and ten disciples, have already sworn by the commandments, that we will not say of him who he is; but if ye come in the morning, give me the greeting, and I will go and make an obeisance before him, and before whom I make obeisance, he is the rogue. And they did so.
The disciples of Jeschu gathered together, went and gave their fellows the greeting, for they were come from all places to pray on the Mount of Olives on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Then the wise men went into the sanctuary, where those were who had come from Antioch, and there was also the rogue among them. Thereupon Gaisa entered with them, left the rest of the company, made an obeisance before the rogue Jeschu.
Whereupon the wise men saw it, arose against him and seized him.
7. They said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Mathai. They said to him: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered them: When (mathai) shall I come and see the face of God? They said to him: When (mathai) shall he die and his name perish?
Further they said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Naki. They said to him: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered: with pure (naki) hands and a clean heart. They said to him: He remaineth not unpunished.
Further they said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Boni. They said: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered: My first-born son (beni) is Israel. They said: Of thee it was said: Behold, I will slay thy first-born son.
Further they said: What is thy name? He answered: Netzer. They said: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered them: A branch (netzr) shall spring up out of his roots. They said to him: Thou art cast forth from thy sepulchre, like an abominable branch (netzer). And thus still more, as he gave himself many names.
Forthwith they seized him, and his disciples could not deliver him. When he saw himself brought to death he began and spake:
Verily hath David prophesied of me and said: For Thy sake are we smitten every day. And of you said Isaiah: Your hands are full of blood. And of you said the prophet before God: They slew Thy prophets with the sword.
The apostates began to lament and could not deliver him. At the same hour was he put to death. And it was on Friday on the rest-day of Passover and of the Sabbath, When they would hang him on a tree (Holz), it brake, for there was with him the Shem.
But when the simpletons saw that the trees brake under him, they supposed that this was because of his great godliness, until they brought him a cabbage-stalk. For while h« was yet alive he knew the custom of the Israelites, that they would hang him, he knew his death, the manner of his being put to death, and that they would hang him on a tree. At that time he brought it to pass by means of the Shem, that no tree should bear him; but over the cabbage-stalk he did not utter the pronounced name, for it is not tree but green-stuff, and so [in special years there are] in Jerusalem cabbages with more than a hundred pounds [of seed] unto this day.
When they had let him hang until the time of afternoon prayer, they took him down from the tree, for so it is written: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, etc. They buried him ... on Sunday, and the apostates of his people wept over his grave.
8. Some of the young men of Israel passed by them. They spake to them in the Aramaic tongue: Why do the foolish ones sit by the grave? Let us look! The foolish ones said in their heart, that they [the young men] would see him in the grave, but they found him not.
Thereupon the foolish ones sent to Queen Helene, saying: He whom they put to death was a Messiah, and very many wonders did he show while living, but now after his death they buried him, but he is not in the grave, for he is already ascended to heaven, and it is written: For He taketh me, Sela! Thus did he prophesy concerning himself.
She sent to the wise men and said: What have ye done with him? They answered her: We have put him to death, for that was the judgment concerning him.
She said to them: If ye have already put him to death, what have ye done then? They answered her: We have buried him. Forthwith they sought him in the grave and found him not.
Thereupon she said to them: In this grave ye buried him; where is he therefore?
Then were the wise men affrightened and wist not what to answer her, for a certain one had taken him from the grave, borne him to his garden, and stopped the water which flowed into his garden; then digged he in the sand and buried him, and let the water flow again over his grave.
The queen said: If ye show me not Jeschu, I will give you no peace and no escape. They answered her: Give us an appointed time and terms.
When she had granted them an appointed time, all Israel remained lamenting in fasting and prayer, and the apostates found occasion to say: Ye have slain God’s anointed!
And all Israel was in great anguish, and the wise men and all the land of Israel hurried from place to place because of the great fear.
Then went forth an elder from them, whose name was Rabbi Tanchuma; he went forth lamenting in a garden in the fields.
When the owner of the garden saw him, he said to him: Wherefore lamentest thou? He answered: For this and this; because of that rogue who is not to be found; and lo, already is it the appointed time which the queen granted, and we are all in lamentation and fasting.
As soon as he heard his words, that all Israel is as them who mourn, and that the rogues say: He is gone up into heaven, the owner of the garden said: To-day shall joy and gladness reign in Israel, for I have stolen him away because of the apostates, so that they should not take him and have the opportunity for all time.
Forthwith they went to Jerusalem, told them the good tidings, and all the Israelites followed the owner of the garden, bound cords to his [Jeschu’s] feet, and dragged him round in the streets of Jerusalem, till they brought him to the queen and said: There is he who is ascended to heaven!
They departed from her in joy, and she mocked the apostates and praised the wise men.
9. His disciples fled and scattered themselves in the kingdom; three of them [went] to Mount Ararat, three of them to Armenia, three to Rome, the others to other places, and misled the peoples, but everywhere where they took refuge, God sent his judgment upon them, and they were slain.
But many among the apostates of our people went astray after him; there was strife between them and the Israelites, . . . confusion of prayers and much loss of money.
Everywhere where the apostates caught sight of the Israelites they said to the Israelites: Ye have slain God’s anointed! But the Israelites answered them: Ye are children of death, because ye have believed on a false prophet!
Nevertheless they went not forth from the community of Israel, and there was strife and contention among them, so that Israel had no peace.
When the wise men of Israel saw this they said: [It is now] thirty years since that rogue was put to death, [and] till now we have no peace with these misguided ones, and this hath befallen us because of the number of our sins, for it is written: They have moved me to wrath with their not-God[l]; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities, etc.;—that is the Christians, who are not [? naught]; with a base people will I provoke them; —that is, the Ishmaelites.
The wise said: How long shall the apostates profane Sabbath . . . and feasts, and slay one another? Let us rather seek for a wise man who may take these erring ones out of the community of Israel. It is now thirty years that we have admonished them, but they have not returned to God, because they have taken it into their heads that Jeschu is the Messiah, and so may they go to destruction and peace be with us.
10. The wise men agreed on a man whose name was Elijahu, and he was very learned in the Scripture, and they said to him: . . . We have agreed, that we will pray for thee, that thou shalt be counted as a good Israelite in the other world. Go, and do good for Israel, and remove the apostates from us, that they may go to destruction!
Elijahu went to the Sanhedrin at Tiberias, to Antioch, and made proclamation throughout the whole land of Israel: Whoso believeth on Jeschu, let him join himself to me! Then said he to them: I am the messenger (apostle) of Jeschu, who sent me to you, and I will show you a marvel, as Jeschu did.
They brought unto him a leper, and he laid his hand upon him, so that he was healed. They brought unto him a lame man, he uttered the Shem, laid his hand on him, and he was healed and stood upon his feet.
Forthwith they fell down before him and said: Truly thou art the messenger of Jeschu, for thou hast shown us marvels as he did.
He said to them: Jeschu sendeth you his greeting and saith: I am with my Father in heaven at His right hand, until He shall take vengeance on the Jews, as David said: Sit thou on my right hand, etc.
At the same hour they all lamented and added foolishness to their foolishness.
Elijahu said to them: Jeschu saith to you: Whosoever will be with me in the other world, let him remove himself from the community of Israel and join himself not to them; for my Father in heaven hath already rejected them and from henceforth requireth not their service, for so said He through Isaiah: Your new-moons and feasts my soul hateth, etc.
But Jeschu saith to you: Whosoever will follow me, let him profane the Sabbath, for God hateth it, but instead of it He keepeth the Sunday, for on it God gave light to His world. And for Passover which the Israelites solemnize, keep yet it on the Feast of the Resurrection, for he is risen from his grave; for the Feast of Weeks, Ascension, for on it he is ascended to heaven; for New Year, Finding of the Cross; for the Great Fast Day [Day of Atonement], the Feast of the Circumcision: for Chanuka [the Feast of Lights], Calendar [New Year].
The foreskin is naught, circumcision is naught; whosoever will circumcise himself, let him be circumcised; whosoever will not circumcise himself, let him be not circumcised. Moreover, whatsoever God created in the world, from the smallest gnat to the mightiest elephant, pour forth its blood upon the ground and eat it, for so it is written: As the green grass have I given you all. If one of them compel you to go a mile, go with him twain; if a Jew smite you on the left side turn to him the right also; if a Jew revile you, endure it and return it not again, as Jeschu endured it; in meekness he showed himself, therewith he showed you also meekness as he practised it, that ye might endure all that any should do to you. At the last judgment Jeschu will punish them, but do ye have hope according to your meekness, for so it is written: Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, etc. Until he separated then from Israel
But Elijahu who gave them these laws, the not-good ones, did it for the welfare of Israel, and the Christians call him Paul. After he had introduced these laws and commandments, the erring ones separated the selves from Israel, and the strife ceased.
11. A long time after the Persian power arose; then a Christian departed from them, made a mock of them, just as the heretics had laughed at the wise men [of Israel].
He said to them: Paul was in error in his scripture when he said to you: Circumcise yourselves not—for Jeschu was circumcised. Further hath Jeschu said:
I am not come to destroy even one jot from the law of Moses, but to fulfil all his words. And that is your shame, which Paul laid upon you, when he said: Circumcise yourselves not.
But Nestorius said to them: Circumcise yourselves, for Jeschu was circumcised.
Further said Nestorius: Ye heretics! Ye say Jeschu is God, though he was born of a woman. Only the Holy Spirit rested on him as on the prophets.
Nestorius who began to argue with the Christians, persuaded their women; he said to them: I will enact that no Christian take two wives.
But as Nestorius became detestable in their eyes, there arose a strife between them, in so much that no Christian would pray to the abomination of Nestorius, or the followers of Nestorius to the abomination of the Christians.
Then Nestorius went to Babylon to another place, the name of which was Chazaza, and all fled before him, because Nestorius was a violent man.
The women said to him: What requirest thou of us? He answered them: I require only that ye receive from me the bread-and-wine offering.
Now it was the custom of the woman of Chazaza, that they carried large keys in their hands.
He gave one of them the offering; she cast it to the ground. Whereupon the women cast the keys in their hands upon him; smote him, so that he died, and there was for long strife between them.
12. Now the chief of the Sanhedrin, his name was Shimeon Kepha—and why was he called Kepha? Because he stood on the stone on which Ezekiel had prophesied at the river Kebar, and on that stone it was that Shimeon heard a voice from heaven. When the Christians heard that Shimeon Kepha was one of those who heard a voice from heaven, and that stores of wisdom were in him, they envied the Israelites, that so great a man was found in Israel, . . . God brought it into Shimeon’s mind to go to Jerusalem ... on the Feast of Tabernacles. And there were gathered together all the bishops and the great ancient of the Christians. They came to Shimeon Kepha to the Mount of Olives on the day of the great Feast of Willow-twigs. When they saw his wisdom, that [there was] not one in Israel like unto him, ... to turn him to the religion of the Christians, and they constrained him, saying: If thou dost not profess our religion, we will put thee to death, and not leave even one remaining in Israel to go into the sanctuary.
When the Israelites perceived this, they besought him: Humour them, act according to thy wisdom; so shall neither sin nor guilt be on thee.
Thereupon when he perceived the hard fate for Israel, he betook himself to the Christians, and said to them: On this condition do I become a convert to your religion, that ye put no Jew to death, that ye smite him not and suffer him to go in and out in the sanctuary.
The ancient and the Christians accepted his words and all these his conditions. He made a condition with them, that they would build him a lofty tower; he would go into it, would eat no flesh, nor aught save bread and water, letting down a box by a cord, for them to supply him with only bread and water, and he would remain in the tower until his death.
All this he did with respect to God, that he might not be stained and sullied by them, and that he might not mix with them; but to the Christians he spake in their sense as though he would mourn for Jeschu, and eat no flesh or aught else, but bread and water only.
They built him a tower, and he dwelt therein; he sullied himself not with eating, and prayed not to the Cross.
Afterwards he composed in the tower Keroboth, Jotzroth and Zulthoth in his name, like Eliezer ben Kalir. He sent and gathered together the elders of Israel, and handed over to their care all that he had found in his mind, and charged them that they should teach it to the leaders in prayer and use it for prayers, so that they might make mention of him for good.
They, moreover, sent it to Babylon to Rabbi Nathan, the Prince of the Exile, and they showed it to the heads of the schools, to the Sanhedrin, and they said: It is good, and they taught it to the leaders in prayer of all Israel, and they used it for prayers. Whosoever would mention the name of Shimeon in his chanting did so. May his memory endure to the life of the other world. But God in his mercy . . . him as a good defender. Amen! Sela!
It was at night, on the eve of the Sabbath, when drunken he crossed over to her door and entered in to her. But she thought in her heart that it was her betrothed Jochanan; she hid her face and was ashamed. ... He embraced her; but she said to him: Touch me not, for I am in my separation. He took no heed thereat, nor regarded her words, but persisted. She conceived by him. . . .
At midnight came her betrothed Rabbi Jochanan. She said to him: What meaneth this? Never hath it been thy custom, since thou wast betrothed to me, twice in a night to come to me.
He answered her and said: It is but once I come to thee this night.
She said to him: Thou earnest to me, and I said to thee I was in my separation, yet heeded’st thou not, but did’st thy will and wentest forth. When he heard this, forthwith he perceived that Joseph ben Pandera had cast an eye upon her and done the deed. He left her; in the morning he arose and went to Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach.
He said to him: Know then what hath befallen me this night with my betrothed. I went in to her after the manner of men . . .; before I touched her she said: Thou hast already this night come once to me, and I said to thee I was in my separation, and thou gavest no ear to me, [didst] thy will and wentest forth. When I heard such words from her, I left her and [went forth]. Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach said to him: Who came into thy mind?
He answered: Ben Pandera, for he dwelleth near her house and is a libertine.
He said to him: I understand that thou hast no witness for this thing, therefore keep silence; I counsel thee, if he have come once, then can he not fail to come a second time; act wisely; at that time set witnesses against him.
Some time after the rumour went abroad that Miriam was with child. Then said her betrothed Jochanan: She is not with child by me; shall I abide here and hear my shame every day from the people?
He arose and went to Babylon. After some [time she bore] a son, and they called his name Joshua after his mother’s brother; but when his corrupt birth was made public they called him Jeschu.
2. His mother gave him to a teacher, so that he might become wise in the Halacha, and learned in the Torah and the Talmud. Now it was the custom of the teachers of the law that no disciple and no boy should, pass on his way by them without his head being covered and his eyes cast to the ground, from reverence of the pupils towards their teachers.
One day that rogue passed by, and all the wise were seated together at the door of the synagogue—that is, they call the school-house synagogue; that rogue then passed by the Rabbis, head on high and with uncovered pate, saluting no one, nay, rather, in shameless fashion slowing irreverence to his teacher.
After he had passed by them, one of them began and said: He is a bastard (mamzer). The second began and said: He is a bastard and son of a woman in her separation (mamzer ten ha-niddah).
Another day the Rabbis stopped in tractate Nezikin; then began that one to speak Halachoth before them.
Thereupon one of them began and said to him: Hast thou this not learned: He who giveth forth a Halacha in the presence of his teacher, is guilty of death?
That one answered and said to the wise ones: Who is the teacher and who the disciple? "Who of the twain is wiser, Moses or Jethro? Was it not Moses, father of the prophets and head of the wise? And the Torah, moreover, beareth witness of him: And from henceforth there ariseth no prophet in Israel like unto Moses. Withal Jethro was an alien, . . . yet taught he Moses worldly wisdom, as it is written: Set thou over them rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds. But if ye say that Jethro is greater than Moses, then would there be an end to the greatness of Moses.
When the wise heard this, they said: As he is so very shameless, let us enquire after him. They sent to his mother, [saying] thus: Tell us, pray, who is the father of this boy?
She answered and said: . . ., but they say of him, that he is a bastard and son of a woman in her separation.
Then began Rabbi Simeon ben Shetach: To-day is it thirty years since Rabbi Jochanan her betrothed came to me; at that time he said to me: That and that hath befallen me.
He related all that is told above, . . . how Rabbi Simeon answered Rabbi Jochanan, and how when she was with child, he [R. J.] for great shame went to Babylon and did not return; but this Miriam gave birth to this Jeschu, and no death penalty awaits her, for she hath not done this of her own will, for Joseph ben Pandera laid in wait for her . . . the whole day.
When she heard from Rabbi Simeon that no death penalty awaited her, she also began and said: Thus was the story; and she confessed. But when it went abroad concerning Jeschu, that he was called a bastard and son of a woman in her separation, he went away and fled to Jerusalem.
3. Now the rule of all Israel was in the hand of a woman who was called Helene. And there was in the sanctuary a foundation-stone—and this is its interpretation: God founded it and this is the stone on which Jacob poured oil—and on it were written the letters of the Shem, and whosoever learned it, could do whatsoever he would. But as the wise feared that the disciples of Israel might learn them and therewith destroy the world, they took measures that no one should do so.
Brazen dogs were bound to two iron pillars at the entrance of the place of burnt offerings, and whosoever entered in and learned these letters—as soon as he went forth again, the dogs bayed at him; if he then looked at them, the letters vanished from his memory.
This Jeschu came, learned them, wrote them on parchment, cut into his hip and laid the parchment with the letters therein—so that the cutting of his flesh did not hurt him—then he restored the skin to its place. When he went forth the brazen dogs bayed at him, and the letters vanished from his memory. He went home, cut open his flesh with his knife, took out the writing, learned the letters, went and gathered together three hundred and ten of the young men of Israel.
4. He said to them: Behold then these who say of me and works I am a bastard and son of a woman in her separation; they desire power for themselves and seek to exercise lordship in Israel. But see ye, all the prophets prophesied concerning the Messiah of God, and I am the Messiah. Isaiah prophesied concerning me: Behold the virgin shall conceive, bear a son, and he shall be called Emanuel. Moreover, my forefather David prophesied concerning me and spake: The Eternal [Y. H. V. H.] said to me: Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee. He begat me without male congress with my mother; yet they call me a bastard! He further prophesied: Why do the heathen rage, etc., the kings in the country rise up, etc., against His anointed. I am the Messiah, and they, so to rise up against me, are children of whores, for so it is written in the Scripture: For they are the children of whores.
The young men answered him: If thou art the Messiah, show unto us a sign. He answered them: What sign do ye require that I should do for you?
Forthwith they brought unto him a lame man, who had never yet stood upon his feet. He pronounced over him the letters, and he stood upon his feet. In the same hour they all made obeisance to him and said: This is the Messiah.
He gave them another sign. They brought to him a leper; he pronounced over him the letters, and he was healed. There joined themselves to him apostates from the children of his people.
When the wise saw that so very many believed on him, they seized him and brought him before Queen Helene, in whose hand the land of Israel was. They said to her: This man uses sorcery and seduces the world.
Jeschu answered to her as follows: Already of old the prophets prophesied concerning me: And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Isai (Jesse) and I am he. Of him saith the Scripture: Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.
She said to them: Is this truly in your law, what he saith?
They answered: It is in our law; but it hath not been said concerning him, for it is said therein: And that prophet [etc.], put the evil away from the midst of thee. But the Messiah for whom we hope, with him are [other] signs, and it is said of him: He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth. With this bastard these signs are not present.
Jesus said: Lady, I am he, and I raise the dead.
In the same hour the queen was affrightened and said: That is a great sign.
Apostates still joined themselves to him, were with him, and there arose a great schism in Israel.
5. Jeschu went to Upper Galilee. The wise assembled together, went before the queen and said to her: Lady, he practiseth sorcery and leadeth men astray therewith.
Therefore sent she forth horsemen concerning him, and they came upon him as he was seducing the people of Upper Galilee and saying to them: I am the Son of God, who hath been promised in your law. The horsemen rose up to take him away, but the people of Upper Galilee suffered it not and began to fight.
Jeschu said unto them: Fight not, have trust in the power of my Father in heaven.
The people of Galilee made birds out of clay; he uttered the letters of the Shem, and the birds flew away. At the same hour they fell down before him.
He said to them: Bring unto me a millstone. They rolled it to the sea-shore; he spake the letters, set it upon the surface of the sea, sat himself thereon, as one sits in a boat, went and floated on the water.
They who had been sent, saw it and wondered; and Jeschu said to the horsemen: Go to your lady, tell her what ye have seen! Thereupon the wind raised him from the water and carried him onto the dry land.
The horsemen came and told the queen all these things; the queen was affrighted, was greatly amazed, sent and gathered together the elders of Israel and spake unto them: Ye say he is a sorcerer, nevertheless every day he doeth great wonders.
They answered her: Surely his tricks should not trouble thee! Send messengers, that they may bring him hither, and his shame shall be made plain.
At the same hour she sent messengers, and his wicked company also joined itself onto him, and they came with him before the queen.
Then the wise men of Israel took a man by name Juda Ischariota, brought him into the Holy of Holies, where he learned the letters of the Shem, which were engraved on the foundation-stone, wrote them on a small [piece of] parchment, cut open his hip, spake the Shem, so that it did not hurt, as Jeschu had done before.
As soon as Jeschu with his company had returned to the queen, and she sent for the wise men, Jeschu began and spake: For dogs encompassed me. And concerning me he [David] said: Tremble not before them.
As soon as the wise men entered and Juda Ischariota with them, they brought forward their pleas against him, until he said to the queen: Of me it hath been said: I will ascend to heaven. Further it is written: If He take me, Sela! He raised his hands like unto the wings of an eagle and flew, and the people were amazed because of him: How is he able to fly twixt heaven and earth!
Then spake the wise men of Israel to Juda Ischariota: Do thou also utter the letters and ascend after him. Forthwith he did so, flew in the air, and the people marvelled: How can they fly like eagles!
Ischariota acted cleverly, flew in the air, but neither could overpower the other, so as to make him fall by means of the Shem, because the Shem was equally with both of them. When Juda perceived this he had recourse to a low trick; he befouled Jeschu, so that he was made unclean and fell to the earth, and with him also Juda.
It is because of this that they wail on their night, and because of the thing which Juda did to him.
At the same hour they seized him and said to Helene: Let him be put to death! . . . Let him tell us who smote him. So they covered his head with a garment and smote him with a pomegranate staff. As he did not know, it was clear that the Shem had abandoned him, and he was now fast taken in their hands.
He began and spake to his companions before the queen: Of me it was said: Who will rise up for me against the evil doers? But of them he said: The proud waters. And of them he said: Stronger than rocks make they their countenance.
When the queen heard this she reproved the apostates, and said to the wise men of Israel: He is in your hand.
6. They departed from the queen and brought him to the synagogue of Tiberias and bound him to the pillars of the ark. Then there gathered together the band of simpletons and dupes, who believed on his words and desired to deliver him out of the hand of the elders; but they could not do so, and there arose great fighting between them.
When he saw that he had no power to escape, he said: Give me some water. They gave him vinegar in a copper vessel. He began and spake with a loud voice: Of me David prophesied and said: When I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.
On his head they set a crown of thorns. The apostates lamented sore, and there was fighting between them, brother with brother, father with son; but the wise men brought the apostates low.
He began and spake: Of me he prophesied and said: My back I gave to the smiters, etc. Further of these the Scripture saith: Draw hither, sons of the sorceress. And of me hath been said: But we held him, etc. And of me he said: The Messiah shall be cut off and he is not.
When the apostates heard this, they began to stone them with stones, and there was great hatred among them.
Then were the elders afraid, and the apostates bore of him off from them, and his three hundred and ten disciples brought him to the city of Antioch, where he sojourned till the rest-day of Passover. Now in that year Passover fell on the Sabbath, and he and his sons [sic] came to Jerusalem, on the rest-day of Passover, that is on the Friday, he riding on an ass and saying to his disciples: Of me it was said: Rejoice greatly, Daughter of Zion, etc.
In the same hour they all cried aloud, bowed themselves before him, and he with his three hundred and ten disciples went into the sanctuary.
Then came one of them, who was called Gaisa [that is, Gardener], and said to the wise men: Do you want the rogue? They said: Where is he to be found? He answered: He is in the sanctuary,—that is to say, in the school-house. They said to him: Show him unto us. He answered them: We, his three hundred and ten disciples, have already sworn by the commandments, that we will not say of him who he is; but if ye come in the morning, give me the greeting, and I will go and make an obeisance before him, and before whom I make obeisance, he is the rogue. And they did so.
The disciples of Jeschu gathered together, went and gave their fellows the greeting, for they were come from all places to pray on the Mount of Olives on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Then the wise men went into the sanctuary, where those were who had come from Antioch, and there was also the rogue among them. Thereupon Gaisa entered with them, left the rest of the company, made an obeisance before the rogue Jeschu.
Whereupon the wise men saw it, arose against him and seized him.
7. They said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Mathai. They said to him: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered them: When (mathai) shall I come and see the face of God? They said to him: When (mathai) shall he die and his name perish?
Further they said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Naki. They said to him: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered: with pure (naki) hands and a clean heart. They said to him: He remaineth not unpunished.
Further they said to him: What is thy name? He answered: Boni. They said: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered: My first-born son (beni) is Israel. They said: Of thee it was said: Behold, I will slay thy first-born son.
Further they said: What is thy name? He answered: Netzer. They said: Whence hast thou a proof from the Scripture? He answered them: A branch (netzr) shall spring up out of his roots. They said to him: Thou art cast forth from thy sepulchre, like an abominable branch (netzer). And thus still more, as he gave himself many names.
Forthwith they seized him, and his disciples could not deliver him. When he saw himself brought to death he began and spake:
Verily hath David prophesied of me and said: For Thy sake are we smitten every day. And of you said Isaiah: Your hands are full of blood. And of you said the prophet before God: They slew Thy prophets with the sword.
The apostates began to lament and could not deliver him. At the same hour was he put to death. And it was on Friday on the rest-day of Passover and of the Sabbath, When they would hang him on a tree (Holz), it brake, for there was with him the Shem.
But when the simpletons saw that the trees brake under him, they supposed that this was because of his great godliness, until they brought him a cabbage-stalk. For while h« was yet alive he knew the custom of the Israelites, that they would hang him, he knew his death, the manner of his being put to death, and that they would hang him on a tree. At that time he brought it to pass by means of the Shem, that no tree should bear him; but over the cabbage-stalk he did not utter the pronounced name, for it is not tree but green-stuff, and so [in special years there are] in Jerusalem cabbages with more than a hundred pounds [of seed] unto this day.
When they had let him hang until the time of afternoon prayer, they took him down from the tree, for so it is written: His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, etc. They buried him ... on Sunday, and the apostates of his people wept over his grave.
8. Some of the young men of Israel passed by them. They spake to them in the Aramaic tongue: Why do the foolish ones sit by the grave? Let us look! The foolish ones said in their heart, that they [the young men] would see him in the grave, but they found him not.
Thereupon the foolish ones sent to Queen Helene, saying: He whom they put to death was a Messiah, and very many wonders did he show while living, but now after his death they buried him, but he is not in the grave, for he is already ascended to heaven, and it is written: For He taketh me, Sela! Thus did he prophesy concerning himself.
She sent to the wise men and said: What have ye done with him? They answered her: We have put him to death, for that was the judgment concerning him.
She said to them: If ye have already put him to death, what have ye done then? They answered her: We have buried him. Forthwith they sought him in the grave and found him not.
Thereupon she said to them: In this grave ye buried him; where is he therefore?
Then were the wise men affrightened and wist not what to answer her, for a certain one had taken him from the grave, borne him to his garden, and stopped the water which flowed into his garden; then digged he in the sand and buried him, and let the water flow again over his grave.
The queen said: If ye show me not Jeschu, I will give you no peace and no escape. They answered her: Give us an appointed time and terms.
When she had granted them an appointed time, all Israel remained lamenting in fasting and prayer, and the apostates found occasion to say: Ye have slain God’s anointed!
And all Israel was in great anguish, and the wise men and all the land of Israel hurried from place to place because of the great fear.
Then went forth an elder from them, whose name was Rabbi Tanchuma; he went forth lamenting in a garden in the fields.
When the owner of the garden saw him, he said to him: Wherefore lamentest thou? He answered: For this and this; because of that rogue who is not to be found; and lo, already is it the appointed time which the queen granted, and we are all in lamentation and fasting.
As soon as he heard his words, that all Israel is as them who mourn, and that the rogues say: He is gone up into heaven, the owner of the garden said: To-day shall joy and gladness reign in Israel, for I have stolen him away because of the apostates, so that they should not take him and have the opportunity for all time.
Forthwith they went to Jerusalem, told them the good tidings, and all the Israelites followed the owner of the garden, bound cords to his [Jeschu’s] feet, and dragged him round in the streets of Jerusalem, till they brought him to the queen and said: There is he who is ascended to heaven!
They departed from her in joy, and she mocked the apostates and praised the wise men.
9. His disciples fled and scattered themselves in the kingdom; three of them [went] to Mount Ararat, three of them to Armenia, three to Rome, the others to other places, and misled the peoples, but everywhere where they took refuge, God sent his judgment upon them, and they were slain.
But many among the apostates of our people went astray after him; there was strife between them and the Israelites, . . . confusion of prayers and much loss of money.
Everywhere where the apostates caught sight of the Israelites they said to the Israelites: Ye have slain God’s anointed! But the Israelites answered them: Ye are children of death, because ye have believed on a false prophet!
Nevertheless they went not forth from the community of Israel, and there was strife and contention among them, so that Israel had no peace.
When the wise men of Israel saw this they said: [It is now] thirty years since that rogue was put to death, [and] till now we have no peace with these misguided ones, and this hath befallen us because of the number of our sins, for it is written: They have moved me to wrath with their not-God[l]; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities, etc.;—that is the Christians, who are not [? naught]; with a base people will I provoke them; —that is, the Ishmaelites.
The wise said: How long shall the apostates profane Sabbath . . . and feasts, and slay one another? Let us rather seek for a wise man who may take these erring ones out of the community of Israel. It is now thirty years that we have admonished them, but they have not returned to God, because they have taken it into their heads that Jeschu is the Messiah, and so may they go to destruction and peace be with us.
10. The wise men agreed on a man whose name was Elijahu, and he was very learned in the Scripture, and they said to him: . . . We have agreed, that we will pray for thee, that thou shalt be counted as a good Israelite in the other world. Go, and do good for Israel, and remove the apostates from us, that they may go to destruction!
Elijahu went to the Sanhedrin at Tiberias, to Antioch, and made proclamation throughout the whole land of Israel: Whoso believeth on Jeschu, let him join himself to me! Then said he to them: I am the messenger (apostle) of Jeschu, who sent me to you, and I will show you a marvel, as Jeschu did.
They brought unto him a leper, and he laid his hand upon him, so that he was healed. They brought unto him a lame man, he uttered the Shem, laid his hand on him, and he was healed and stood upon his feet.
Forthwith they fell down before him and said: Truly thou art the messenger of Jeschu, for thou hast shown us marvels as he did.
He said to them: Jeschu sendeth you his greeting and saith: I am with my Father in heaven at His right hand, until He shall take vengeance on the Jews, as David said: Sit thou on my right hand, etc.
At the same hour they all lamented and added foolishness to their foolishness.
Elijahu said to them: Jeschu saith to you: Whosoever will be with me in the other world, let him remove himself from the community of Israel and join himself not to them; for my Father in heaven hath already rejected them and from henceforth requireth not their service, for so said He through Isaiah: Your new-moons and feasts my soul hateth, etc.
But Jeschu saith to you: Whosoever will follow me, let him profane the Sabbath, for God hateth it, but instead of it He keepeth the Sunday, for on it God gave light to His world. And for Passover which the Israelites solemnize, keep yet it on the Feast of the Resurrection, for he is risen from his grave; for the Feast of Weeks, Ascension, for on it he is ascended to heaven; for New Year, Finding of the Cross; for the Great Fast Day [Day of Atonement], the Feast of the Circumcision: for Chanuka [the Feast of Lights], Calendar [New Year].
The foreskin is naught, circumcision is naught; whosoever will circumcise himself, let him be circumcised; whosoever will not circumcise himself, let him be not circumcised. Moreover, whatsoever God created in the world, from the smallest gnat to the mightiest elephant, pour forth its blood upon the ground and eat it, for so it is written: As the green grass have I given you all. If one of them compel you to go a mile, go with him twain; if a Jew smite you on the left side turn to him the right also; if a Jew revile you, endure it and return it not again, as Jeschu endured it; in meekness he showed himself, therewith he showed you also meekness as he practised it, that ye might endure all that any should do to you. At the last judgment Jeschu will punish them, but do ye have hope according to your meekness, for so it is written: Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, etc. Until he separated then from Israel
But Elijahu who gave them these laws, the not-good ones, did it for the welfare of Israel, and the Christians call him Paul. After he had introduced these laws and commandments, the erring ones separated the selves from Israel, and the strife ceased.
11. A long time after the Persian power arose; then a Christian departed from them, made a mock of them, just as the heretics had laughed at the wise men [of Israel].
He said to them: Paul was in error in his scripture when he said to you: Circumcise yourselves not—for Jeschu was circumcised. Further hath Jeschu said:
I am not come to destroy even one jot from the law of Moses, but to fulfil all his words. And that is your shame, which Paul laid upon you, when he said: Circumcise yourselves not.
But Nestorius said to them: Circumcise yourselves, for Jeschu was circumcised.
Further said Nestorius: Ye heretics! Ye say Jeschu is God, though he was born of a woman. Only the Holy Spirit rested on him as on the prophets.
Nestorius who began to argue with the Christians, persuaded their women; he said to them: I will enact that no Christian take two wives.
But as Nestorius became detestable in their eyes, there arose a strife between them, in so much that no Christian would pray to the abomination of Nestorius, or the followers of Nestorius to the abomination of the Christians.
Then Nestorius went to Babylon to another place, the name of which was Chazaza, and all fled before him, because Nestorius was a violent man.
The women said to him: What requirest thou of us? He answered them: I require only that ye receive from me the bread-and-wine offering.
Now it was the custom of the woman of Chazaza, that they carried large keys in their hands.
He gave one of them the offering; she cast it to the ground. Whereupon the women cast the keys in their hands upon him; smote him, so that he died, and there was for long strife between them.
12. Now the chief of the Sanhedrin, his name was Shimeon Kepha—and why was he called Kepha? Because he stood on the stone on which Ezekiel had prophesied at the river Kebar, and on that stone it was that Shimeon heard a voice from heaven. When the Christians heard that Shimeon Kepha was one of those who heard a voice from heaven, and that stores of wisdom were in him, they envied the Israelites, that so great a man was found in Israel, . . . God brought it into Shimeon’s mind to go to Jerusalem ... on the Feast of Tabernacles. And there were gathered together all the bishops and the great ancient of the Christians. They came to Shimeon Kepha to the Mount of Olives on the day of the great Feast of Willow-twigs. When they saw his wisdom, that [there was] not one in Israel like unto him, ... to turn him to the religion of the Christians, and they constrained him, saying: If thou dost not profess our religion, we will put thee to death, and not leave even one remaining in Israel to go into the sanctuary.
When the Israelites perceived this, they besought him: Humour them, act according to thy wisdom; so shall neither sin nor guilt be on thee.
Thereupon when he perceived the hard fate for Israel, he betook himself to the Christians, and said to them: On this condition do I become a convert to your religion, that ye put no Jew to death, that ye smite him not and suffer him to go in and out in the sanctuary.
The ancient and the Christians accepted his words and all these his conditions. He made a condition with them, that they would build him a lofty tower; he would go into it, would eat no flesh, nor aught save bread and water, letting down a box by a cord, for them to supply him with only bread and water, and he would remain in the tower until his death.
All this he did with respect to God, that he might not be stained and sullied by them, and that he might not mix with them; but to the Christians he spake in their sense as though he would mourn for Jeschu, and eat no flesh or aught else, but bread and water only.
They built him a tower, and he dwelt therein; he sullied himself not with eating, and prayed not to the Cross.
Afterwards he composed in the tower Keroboth, Jotzroth and Zulthoth in his name, like Eliezer ben Kalir. He sent and gathered together the elders of Israel, and handed over to their care all that he had found in his mind, and charged them that they should teach it to the leaders in prayer and use it for prayers, so that they might make mention of him for good.
They, moreover, sent it to Babylon to Rabbi Nathan, the Prince of the Exile, and they showed it to the heads of the schools, to the Sanhedrin, and they said: It is good, and they taught it to the leaders in prayer of all Israel, and they used it for prayers. Whosoever would mention the name of Shimeon in his chanting did so. May his memory endure to the life of the other world. But God in his mercy . . . him as a good defender. Amen! Sela!
The First Notices of the Toledot from the Ninth Century
G. R. S. Mead
In his "De Judaicis Superstitionibus," Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, writing somewhere about 820-830 A.D., makes the following highly interesting statement:
For in the teachings of their elders they (the Jews) read: That Jesus was a youth held in esteem among them, who had for his teacher John the Baptist; that he had very many disciples, to one of whom he gave the name Cephas, that is Petra (Rock), because of the hardness and dullness of his understanding; that when the people were waiting for him on the feast-day, some of the youths of his company ran to meet him, crying unto him out of honour and respect, 'Hosanna, son of David'; that at last having been accused on many lying charges, he was cast into prison by the decree of Tiberius, because he had made his (T.'s) daughter (to whom he had promised the birth of a male child without [contact with] a man) conceive of a stone; that for this cause also he was hanged on a stake as an abominable sorcerer; whereon being smitten on the head with a rock and in this way slain, he was buried by a canal, and handed over to a certain Jew to guard; by night, however, he was carried away by a sudden overflowing of the canal, and though he was sought for twelve moons by the order of Pilate, he could never be found; that then Pilate made the following legal proclamation unto them: It is manifest, said he, that he has risen, as he promised, he who for envy was put to death by you, and neither in the grave nor in any other place is he found; for this cause, therefore, I decree that ye worship him; and he who will not do so, let him know that his lot will be in hell (in inferno).
Now all these things their elders have so garbled, and they themselves read them over and over again with such foolish stubbornness, that by such fictions the whole truth of the virtue and passion of Christ is made void, as though worship should not be shown Him as truly God, but is paid Him only because of the law of Pilate.
The above is manifestly a very rough report of some recension; it is impossible to say whether the Bishop of Lyons, who knew no Hebrew or Aramaic, has reported quite correctly what he had heard of the Jews, who in his day had flocked to Lyons in great numbers, and of whom he was a strenuous and bitter opponent, writing no less than four treatises against them. As we shall see later on, however, he could not have been very far out as to some of the main features of his report. The most important point is that Agobard twice tells us that the Jews "read" such stories; Toldoth Jeschu had, therefore, been committed to writing at least prior to the early years of the ninth century. So much is certain; how much earlier than this they existed in written form we have so far no means of deciding.
Almost about the same date, moreover, we find Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, acquainted with a totally different form of Toldoth. In his book, "Contra Judaeos," written about 847 A.D. (K. 7), he tells us:
Almost about the same date, moreover, we find Hrabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, acquainted with a totally different form of Toldoth. In his book, "Contra Judaeos," written about 847 A.D. (K. 7), he tells us:
"They (the Jews) blaspheme because we believe on him whom the Law of God saith was hanged on a tree and cursed by God, . . . and [they declare] that on the protest and by direction of his teacher Joshua (i.e., J. ben Perachiah), he was taken down from the tree, and cast into a grave in a garden full of cabbages, so that their land should not be made impure . . .; they call him in their own tongue Ussum Hamizri, which means in Latin, Dissipator Aegyptius (the Egyptian Destroyer). . . . And they say that after he had been taken down from the tree, he was again taken out of the grave by their forebears, and was dragged by a rope through the whole city, and thus cast . . ., confessing that he was a godless one, and the son of a godless [fellow], that is of some Gentile or other whom they call Pandera, by whom they say the mother of the Lord was seduced, and thence he whom we believe on, born."
As to the original from which this passage is taken, Bullet tells us that it was first printed at Dijon by the learned Father Pierre François Chifflet, of the Company of Jesus. It was attributed by him to Raban Maur, Archbishop of Mainz, who was subsequently identified by a number of scholars with Amolon, who succeeded Agobard in the see of Lyons.
If this identification is correct, as Agobard died in 840, we must suppose that Hrabanus wrote his treatise at Lyons. But the type of Toldoth quoted differs so entirely from that of Agobard, that it is taken by Krauss to represent a German form as distinguished from Agobard's recension, which he calls "romanische." In any case the name of the Archbishop argues that he probably had some acquaintance with Hebrew, and therefore that perhaps he is drawing from a written source; it is, however, very evident that he is at best summarizing very roughly.
If this identification is correct, as Agobard died in 840, we must suppose that Hrabanus wrote his treatise at Lyons. But the type of Toldoth quoted differs so entirely from that of Agobard, that it is taken by Krauss to represent a German form as distinguished from Agobard's recension, which he calls "romanische." In any case the name of the Archbishop argues that he probably had some acquaintance with Hebrew, and therefore that perhaps he is drawing from a written source; it is, however, very evident that he is at best summarizing very roughly.
Sources: S. Baring-Gould, The Lost and Hostile Gospels (London: Williams and Norgate, 1874), 67-115; G. R. S. Mead, Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? (London: Theosophical Publishing Company, 1903), 257-280, 290-293.
