APPENDIX II (see page 85)
Jeschu ben Pandira
In this
lecture Rudolf Steiner insists that it is not wise to
ignore the Talmud when investigating the history of
Christian origins and later he mentions the fact that it
contains references to Jeschu ben Pandira. This
literature is vast and not easy of access: the
non-specialist who wishes to read the relative passages,
which are few, will find the most complete collection, in
English translation, in R. Travers Hertford's
Christianity in Talmud and Midrash. A very
informative article by the same author on ‘Christ
in Jewish Literature’ appears in Hastings
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (Vol. II: Appendix).
The Jewish Encyclopaedia (Vol. VII) should also be
consulted.
The
question of whether the Jesus referred to in the
Rabbinical corpus is the historical Jesus of the New
Testament arose, as Rudolf Steiner says in Lecture Five,
as early as the second century and remains to this day a
subject of controversy. In the light thrown by these
lectures on the figure of Jeschu hen Pandira and his
mission it is interesting to study aspects of the
prolonged confusion that has hitherto surrounded his
name. G. R. S. Mead assembled in his book Did Jesus
Live 100 B.C.? a valuable collection of references
drawn from many different sources and marked by his own
wide erudition. The sub-title of the work is: ‘An
enquiry into the Talmud Jesus stories, the Toldoth
Jeschu, and some curious statements of Epiphanius —
being a study of Christian origins.’
The
Toldoth Jeschu (Generations of Jesus) was a
scurrilous little pamphlet, inimical to Christianity. It
purported to tell the story of the birth, life and death
of Jesus of Nazareth and drew its material from Talmudic
sources but embellished it with further accretions.
Transcribed in very early times, it circulated covertly
in various versions throughout the Middle Ages and even
into the present age. It appears to have been used to
bolster the faith of the more uneducated Jews in the face
of persecution by Christians. There was necessity to
strengthen belief in the Davidic descent of the expected
Messiah, and partly for this reason the alleged
illegitimate birth of Jeschu ben Pandira was given great
prominence. (There were many versions of this story; one,
which describes ben Pandira — or Panthera —
as the son of a soldier, was repudiated by Origen in his
Contra Celsum and another, which asserts that
the father was a Roman legionary, appears in Thomas
Hardy's poem ‘Panthera’.)
The
persistence of the confusion and the vigour of the
controversy as it was carried on in later times is well
illustrated in O. S. Rankin's learned book Jewish
Religious Polemic. The difference of opinion that
existed between Talmudists themselves, especially in the
13th century, and the uses to which the Talmud references
were put in polemic and debate by both Jews and
Christians alike to further their own cause, are curious
phenomena. Those who wish to study this aspect in detail
will find in this book, in English translation, the text
of the famous debate that took place in 1263 between the
Jew, Rabbi Moses ben Nachmann, and the Dominican, Fra
Paulo, in the presence of King Jayme I and his nobles in
Barcelona. It is introduced by Professor Rankin in an
explanatory chapter of great value to the reader not only
in following the issues at stake in the immediate debate
but in showing in a wider context the importance of the
Talmudic references in Judaeo-Christian discussion. The
text of the debate is Nachmann's own account of what took
place and he precedes it by a passage concerning the five
disciples of Jeschu ben Pandira.
The
discrepancies between the stories of the Talmud Jesus and
the Jesus of the Christian Confession are sufficiently
wide to make any attempt to identify the two figures a
somewhat tortuous business. Two outstanding differences
are the number of the disciples and the chronology. It is
said that Jeschu ben Pandira was a pupil of Rabbi ben
Parahiah, who is assumed to have been his uncle, and who
fled with him to Egypt during the persecutions of
Alexander Jannaeus. It has been suggested from time to
time that there were two individuals of the same name,
one who lived during the reign of this king and the other
a century or so later. This proposition was strongly
supported by Rabbi Jechiel of Paris in a debate held
there in 124o. He laid stress on the tradition that the
man of whom the Talmud speaks was a contemporary of Rabbi
ben Parahiah and after pointing out that it was quite
possible that the name of the two individuals was the
same — Jesus, or Jeschu, was not an uncommon name
— he added, ‘just as there are many boys in
France called Louis, who are not on that account kings of
France’.
Whatever
the obloquy attaching to the earlier Jesus in external
records he emerges as a figure of undoubted consequence
who cannot be neglected in the search for clearer
knowledge of Christian origins.
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