Lost and Hostile Gospels. Baring-Gould Sabine
a Jew who was ploughing the ground began to low. An Arab (or a traveller) who was passing, and who understood the language of beasts, on hearing this lowing said to the labourer, ‘Son of a Jew! son of a Jew! loose thine ox and set it free from the plough, for the Temple is fallen.’ But as the ox lowed a second time, he said, ‘Son of a Jew! son of a Jew! yoke thy ox, join her to the plough, for the Messiah is born.’ ‘What is his name?’asked the Jew. ‘כובהס, the Consoler,’ replied the Arab. ‘And what is the name of his father?’ asked the Jew. ‘Hezekiah,’ answered the Arab. ‘And whence comes he?’ ‘From the royal palace of Bethlehem Juda.’ Then the Jew sold his ox and his plough, and becoming a seller of children's clothes went to Bethlehem, where he found the mother of the Consoler afflicted, because that, on the day he was born, the Temple had been destroyed. But the other women, to console her, said that her son, who had caused the ruin of the Temple, would speedily rebuild it. Some days after, she owned to the seller of children's clothes that the Consoler had been ravished from her, and that she knew not what had become of him. Rabbi Bun observes thereupon that there was no need to learn from an Arab that the Messiah would appear at the moment of the fall of the Temple, as the prophet Isaiah had predicted this very thing in the two verses, x. 34 and xi. 1, on the ruin of the Temple, and the cessation of the daily sacrifice, which took place at the siege by the Romans, or by the impious kingdom.”
This is a very curious story, and its appearance in the Talmud is somewhat difficult to understand.
We must now pass on to those passages which have been supposed to refer to our Lord.
In the Babylonish Gemara84 it is related that when King Alexander Jannaeus persecuted the Rabbis, the Rabbi Jehoshua, son of Parachias, fled with his disciple Jesus to Alexandria in Egypt, and there both received instruction in Egyptian magic. On their way back to Judaea, both were hospitably lodged by a woman. Next day, as Jehoshua and his disciple were continuing their journey, the master praised the hospitality of their hostess, whereupon his disciple remarked that she was not only a hospitable but a comely woman.
Now as it was forbidden to Rabbis to look with admiration on female beauty, the Rabbi Jehoshua was so angry with his disciple, that he pronounced on him excommunication and a curse. Jesus after this separated from his master, and gave himself up wholly to the study of magic.
The name Jesus is Jehoshua Graecised. Both master and pupil in this legend bore the same name, but that of the pupil is in the Talmud abbreviated into Jeschu.
This story is introduced in the Gemara to illustrate the obligation incumbent on a Rabbi to keep custody over his eyes. It bears no signs of having been forced in so as to give expression to antipathy against Jeschu.
That this Jeschu is our blessed Lord is by no means evident. On the contrary, the balance of probability is that the pupil of Jehoshua Ben Perachia was an entirely different person.
This Jehoshua, son of Perachia, is a known historical personage. He was one of the Sanhedrim in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. He began to teach as Rabbi in the year of the world 3606, or B.C. 154. Alexander Jannaeus, son of Hyrcanus, was king of the Jews in B.C. 106. The Pharisees could not endure that the royal and high-priestly functions should be united in the same person; they therefore broke out in revolt. The civil war caused the death of some 50,000, according to Josephus. When Alexander had suppressed the revolt, he led 800 prisoners to the fortress of Bethome, and crucified them before the eyes of his concubines at a grand banquet he gave.
The Pharisees, and those of the Sanhedrim who had not fallen into his hands, sought safety in flight. It was then probably that Jehoshua, son of Perachia, went down into Egypt and was accompanied by Jeschu.
Jehoshua was buried at Chittin, but the exact date of his death is not known.85
Alexander Jannaeus died B.C. 79, after a reign of twenty-seven years, whilst besieging the castle of Ragaba on the further side of Jordan.
It will be seen at once that the date of the Talmudic Jeschu is something like a century earlier than that of the Jesus of the Gospels.
Moreover, it cannot be said that Jewish tradition asserts their identity. On the contrary, learned Jewish writers have emphatically denied that the Jeschu of the Talmud is the Jesus of the Gospels.
In the “Disputation” of the Rabbi Jechiels with Nicolas, a convert, occurs this statement. “This (which is related of Jesus and the Rabbi Joshua, son of Perachia) contains no reference to him whom Christians honour as a God;” and then he points out that the impossibility of reconciling the dates is enough to prove that the disciple of Joshua Ben Perachia was a person altogether distinct from the Founder of Christianity.
The Rabbi Lippmann86 gives the same denial, and shows that Jesus of the Gospels was a contemporary of Hillel, whereas the Jeschu of the anecdote lived from two to three generations earlier.
The Rabbi Salman Zevi entered into the question with great care in a pamphlet, and produced ten reasons for concluding that the Jeschu of the Talmud was not the Jesus, son of Mary, of the Evangelists.87
We can see now how it was that the Jew of Celsus brought against our Lord the charge of having learned magic in Egypt. He had heard in the Rabbinic schools the anecdote of Jeschu, pupil of Jehoshua, son of Perachia, – an anecdote which could scarcely fail to be narrated to all pupils. He at once concluded that this Jeschu was the Jesus of the Christians, without troubling himself with the chronology.
In the Mischna, Tract. Sabbath, fol. 104, it is forbidden to make marks upon the skin. The Babylonish Gemara observes on this passage: “Did not the son of Stada mark the magical arts on his skin, and bring them with him out of Egypt?” This son of Stada is Jeschu, as will presently appear.
In the Mischna of Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 43, it is ordered that he who shall be condemned to death by stoning shall be led to the place of execution with a herald going before him, who shall proclaim the name of the offender, and shall summon those who have anything to say in mitigation of the sentence to speak before the sentence is put in execution.
On this the Babylonish Gemara remarks, “There exists a tradition: On the rest-day before the Sabbath they crucified Jeschu. For forty days did the herald go before him and proclaim aloud, He is to be stoned to death because he has practised evil, and has led the Israelites astray, and provoked them to schism. Let any one who can bring evidence of his innocence come forward and speak! But as nothing was produced which could establish his innocence, he was crucified on the rest-day of the Passah (i. e. the day before the Passover).”
The Mischna of Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 67, treats of the command in Deut. xiii. 6-11, that any Hebrew who should introduce the worship of other gods should be stoned with stones. On this the Gemara of Babylon relates that, in the city of Lydda, Jeschu was heard through a partition endeavouring to persuade a Jew to worship idols; whereupon he was brought forth and crucified on the eve of the Passover. “None of those who are condemned to death by the Law are spied upon except only those (seducers of the people). How are they dealt with? They light a candle in an inner chamber, and place spies in an outer room, who may watch and listen to him (the accused). But he does not see them. Then he whom the accused had formerly endeavoured to seduce says to him, ‘Repeat, I pray you, what you told me before in private.’ Then, should he do so, the other will say further, ‘But how shall we leave our God in heaven and serve idols?’ Now should the accused be converted and repent at this saying, it is well; but if he goes on to say, That is our affair, and so and so ought we to do, then the spies must lead him off to the house of judgment and stone him. This is what was done to the son of Stada at Lud, and they hung him up on the eve of the Passover.”88 And the Tract. Sanhedrim says, “It is related that on the eve of the Sabbath they crucified Jeschu, a herald going before him,” as has been already quoted; and then follows the comment: “Ula said, Will you not judge him to have been the son of destruction, because he is a seducer of the people? For the Merciful says (Deut. xiii. 8), Thou shalt not spare him, neither shalt thou conceal him. But I, Jesus, am heir to the kingdom. Therefore (the herald) went forth proclaiming
Tract. Sanhedrim, fol. 107, and Sota, fol. 47.
Bartolocci: Bibliotheca Maxima Rabbinica, sub. nom.
Sepher Nizzachon, n. 337.
Eisenmenger: Neuentdecktes Judenthum, I. pp. 231-7. Königsberg, 1711.
Tract. Sabbath, fol. 67.