PS on Jesus and the Talmud
http://constantinbrunner.info/sbise/1/200503150938.htm
that link is to a page historian giving an amazing reference to Jesus in the Talmud that I have not heard before. This was brought to my attention by a guy on a message boardl.
From the secular Café. Here is post--No Robots is his name:
Super. If that is true think Jesus' sense of humor there.
that link is to a page historian giving an amazing reference to Jesus in the Talmud that I have not heard before. This was brought to my attention by a guy on a message boardl.
From the secular Café. Here is post--No Robots is his name:
Our Rabbis taught: When R. Eliezer was arrested because of Minuth they brought him up to the tribune to be judged. Said the governor to him, 'How can a sage man like you occupy himself with those idle things?' He replied, 'I acknowledge the Judge as right.' The governor thought that he referred to him — though he really referred to his Father in Heaven — and said, 'Because thou hast acknowledged me as right, I pardon; thou art acquitted.' When he came home, his disciples called on him to console him, but he would accept no consolation. Said R. Akiba to him, 'Master, wilt thou permit me to say one thing of what thou hast taught me?' He replied, 'Say it.' 'Master,' said he, 'perhaps some of the teaching of the Minim had been transmitted to thee and thou didst approve of it and because of that thou wast arrested?' He exclaimed: 'Akiba thou hast reminded me.' I was once walking in the upper-market of Sepphoris when I came across one of the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene Jacob of Kefar-Sekaniah by name, who said to me: It is written in your Torah, Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot … into the house of the Lord thy God. May such money be applied to the erection of a retiring place for the High Priest? To which I made no reply. Said he to me: Thus was I taught by Jesus the Nazarene, For of the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return. They came from a place of filth, let them go to a place of filth. Those words pleased me very much, and that is why I was arrested for apostacy; for thereby I transgressed the scriptural words, Remove thy way far from her — which refers to minuth — and come not nigh to the door of her house, — which refers to the ruling power.—Abodah Zarah, folio 16b-17aAnd here is Constantin Brunner's comment on this passage from his essay against the Christ myth theory:
The passage in Avodah zavah 16a deserves special attention: it is the most remarkable reference to Jeshua in the talmudic tractates, ascribing to him as it does a certain spiritual significance. It speaks of him as one who taught; things learned from him had come down, through his disciple Jacob of the village of Zechania, to Eliezer b. Hyrcanus, who adopted this tradition. In fact, Rabbi Eliezer b. Hyrcanus was one of the most distinguished Tannaim, the brother-in-law of the Patriarch Gamaliel II.; he was also called Eliezer the Great. And so this Rabbi Eliezer, who lived in the first Christian century, speaks of an opinion of Christ which had come down to him from a disciple of Christ (and some identified this Jacob with Christ's brother). This seems to me to be an important fact, particularly as it touches Christ's historical reality, and I find it astonishing that the critics have thus far paid no attention to it. Moreover, it is more than probable that important, really important sayings of Christ (not under his own name, of course) are contained in Talmud and Midrash. There are plenty of sayings and parables of great clarity, beauty and dignity which could have come from his mouth.For those having difficulty understanding all this, a famous rabbi was called to account for repeating an opinion of Jesus of Nazareth that a whore's donation to the temple should be used for the priests' toilets, from filth to filth.
Super. If that is true think Jesus' sense of humor there.
Comments
As an admitted non-expert on all this, my first impression is that the cited passage, if authentic, strongly supports historicity. What Jesus is reported to have said, and how the rabbis are reported to have responded to it, is just the sort of thing we would expect if Jesus was the man the Gospels describe. And the implicit sanction against acknowledging Jesus would help explain why more about him is not found in the rabbinical writings generally.
Under the circumstances it looks quite genuine as a lost logion; although likely enough taken out of context.
Of course it helps bolster the point, which isn't in dispute anyway, that the ancient enemies of Jesus didn't regard Jesus as a fictional character, although they thought people had invented fictions about Jesus (and sometimes didn't mind inventing their own fictions in opposition.) The non-Christian Jewish opponents would have seemed the first and most likely to accuse Christians of following (and worshiping!) a man who had never even existed.
I recall Edersheim (himself a late 19th century rabbinic convert) being of the opinion that a number of rabbis in the Talmudic tradition were passing on teaching from Jesus quietly, either by being secretly disciples or perhaps not knowing where the material came from, or perhaps knowing but not particularly caring. But he didn't think it was possible to do more than suspect such things existed. (He knew about this logion, btw, but I don't recall him reporting it in detail -- but he's one of the people I heard about it from, I'm pretty sure.)
His appendix on a prevalent strand of late-antiquity Jewish tradition about Simon Peter is amazing: essentially it's an apologetic legend to explain why Peter was STILL SO HIGHLY HONORED AMONG SYNAGOGUES!! -- and this is 4th century material or later.
I may do a post on it later. It's one hundred percent insane, but fascinating.
JRP
I agree on the style, less on the substance. I felt chastened a bit by Joe's comment, and that may partly explain why I suspect that Jesus never uttered the words attributed to him in this instance. It just seems on its face a little too far out of character. But maybe also the saying is genuine, or mostly genuine, and the words were stripped from some other context, as JRP suggested.
JRP