  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, ??? for ????. 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. Sanhedrim99 says, “It is not lawful to name the name of a false God.” On this account the Jews, rejecting the mission of our Saviour, [pg 068] 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;100 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.”101 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 Ànos Saints Evangiles: elle parait Être du premier siÈcle, et mÊme Écrite avant les evangiles.”102 [pg 069] “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.”103 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 [pg 070] 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. [pg 071]We have thus, in the two lives of Jeschu, the following personages introduced as contemporaries:
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 [pg 072] 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,104 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 Baronius105, 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 [pg 073] 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.106 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 [pg 074] 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 [pg 075] 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. |
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