 There's been over the past century a tremendous interest throughout the world in trying to uncover the historical Jesus, who really was Jesus. And for most of the past 2,000 years, the conventional wisdom has been that Jesus was a renegade Jew who broke away from Judaism and started another religion. That has always been the conventional wisdom. He's one of our boys that went bad, went rogue, and Christianity was his invention. He was the founder of Christianity, and that was really the genesis of the break. That was the genesis of the break of the great divide between Judaism and Christianity. However, over the past century, this viewpoint has been reevaluated, and many, many scholars today believe that this may not be the entire story. The story may be much more complex than I just described. It seems that there are many reasons to at least entertain the possibility that Jesus was a Torah-observen Jew, and that his circle that developed around him were traditional Jews who never broke from Judaism. Now why might we say that? This can be a lecture in itself, but I'll just share a number of points. We see, first of all, in the Christian scriptures themselves, a lot of conflicting or seemingly conflicting information. There does seem to be enough there to lead someone to believe that maybe Jesus did totally rebel against the Judaism of his time. On the other hand, we find statements like this. In the book of Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, Think not that I've come to do away with the law, with the Torah, or the prophets. I've not come to destroy but to fulfill, for I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not one iota of the Torah will pass away till all be fulfilled. Whoever therefore shall break one of the least of the commandments and teach men to do so, he will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever shall do them, he do the commandments and teach them, he will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. Now if indeed the Christian scriptures are a breakaway movement from Judaism, they'd have no reason for inserting this kind of speech into the mouth of Jesus. Scholars generally take the view that anything that goes against the trend, anything that seems to be out of what you would expect, probably has, is probably most likely historically accurate, historically reliable. In Matthew chapter 19, a young man comes to Jesus and says, Good Master, what thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? What must I do to have eternal life? And Jesus says to him, Why do you call me good? There is none good but one, and that is God. And if you want to enter into life, keep the midst vote, keep the commandments. We see that throughout the rest of the gospels and into the book of Acts, the followers of Jesus continue to observe the Torah, they observe the Sabbath. We see that after his death, they continue going to the temple in Jerusalem and participating in the temple rituals. We know that James, the brother of Jesus, was a very Torah observant Jew who led the movement for 30 years after Jesus was crucified. There's a letter of James that appears, an epistle of James that appears in the Christian scriptures called, of all things, the epistle of James, which actually has a very, very strong emphasis on the importance of following the Torah. In the book of Acts, which is basically the story of the Jesus movement in the years following his death, the first dispute that arises in the church is what do we do with all the gentiles that are coming into the movement? Jesus only preached to Jews. Jesus sent out his apostles and said, Do not go to the cities of the Samaritans or to the cities of the gentiles. I've only come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So the movement was very Jew-centered. There weren't non-Jews that were congregating around the movement of Jesus. It's only after his death that the disciples begin slowly to spread the word elsewhere and not really even that much. It was only Paul that ends up going outside of Israel and preaching to gentiles. But Paul ends up reaching many gentiles. And now the question is, what do we do with these people? What is our relationship to them? Do they have to convert to Judaism, get circumcised, observe all the commandments in order to be part of the Jesus movement? If you can imagine today that someone, we have a beautiful Hasidic synagogue up the street, the Bub of Congregation, wonderful Hasidim, Bub of Her Hasidim, and imagine someone that's not Jewish comes in and says, I want to become a Bub of Her Chusted. They're going to say, that's wonderful, but first convert to Judaism. Right? You want to become a part of the Jewish community, but convert to Judaism, become part of the community at large. So there were people who were saying, well, if you want to become part of our group, part of this Jesus movement, which was part of the Jewish community, convert to Judaism, become a full Jew, and then you can become part of our little group following Jesus. And that was one point of view in the 15th chapter of the Book of Acts for gentiles who want to join, convert. And others said, no, we don't have to make them convert. Judaism never required that non-Jews have to convert to Judaism in order to have a full relationship with God. Maybe they only have to observe the Noahide laws. And so in the 15th chapter of Acts, James, who again was the leader of the movement, resolves the dispute, and he says they don't have to fully convert. So you see from this dispute, you see from this argument that the people in Jerusalem who were discussing the Gentiles, of course, they were Torah observant. If the Jews that were discussing what's going to be with the Gentiles were not themselves Torah observant, why would anyone think that, and maybe we should make the Gentiles observe the Torah? So it's clear from the Christian Bible that the movement that sprang up around Jesus, they were Torah observant Jews. And what happens is there's this mysterious fellow who never met Jesus named Paul of Tarsus, and he is preaching all over the place about Jesus outside of Israel. And rumors start to spread about this fellow, Paul. And when Paul comes to Jerusalem to visit, they confront him. And they say in the book of Acts chapter 21, Paul, they're informed about you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, meaning not to observe the laws of Moses, saying that they should not circumcise their children nor observe the customs. So this was a problem, a problem that the Jewish followers of Jesus living in Jerusalem had with Paul. And this conflict between the Jewish followers of Jesus and Paul persisted even into the second generation where the Ebonites and the Nazarenes, they believed that Paul was in apostate because he was not Torah observant. But clearly, the people that had this problem with Paul, they were Torah observant. By the second century, almost all the followers of Jesus were de facto the Gentile converts to Paul's non-Torah version of Christianity. But there persisted small groups, small remnants of Jews, of the original followers of Jesus, who I mentioned were called the Ebonites or Nazarenes. And the church fathers in the second century, like Justin Marder and Iranius, testify that these groups of Jews were Torah observant, did not believe that Jesus was God, etc. Now in the 18th century, one of the great Talmudists of all time, Abayakov Emdin, writing in 1757, maintained the view that Jesus never sought to abolish the Torah or its observance. So there is clearly this stream of thought that at least in the past century has become almost the conventional wisdom, almost. The problem we're going to have today is to consider whether the Talmudic material can shed any additional light on this question. Does the Talmud reveal anything about Jesus that might clarify whether or not he was on our team or not on our team? Whether he was loyal to the Torah or was someone rebellious against it? As we're going to see, this is a very, very difficult matter to determine. It's not so simple. It's not like we can just look up this in the Talmud so easily. One major problem is that our Talmud and virtually all our literature was very heavily censored by the church. So it's not so simple to pick up a Talmud and know what the Talmud might have originally said. Everything was very, very heavily censored. I have a book here called Resrono Tashas, which is actually a very tiny version. It usually comes in a much larger version. But it contains a large number of the passages that were pulled out, that were edited out, censored from the Talmud. And this kind of work can help us recover maybe what the original data actually said. Often the people that were instigating the censorship of our Talmud were apostate Jews, Jews that had converted to Christianity. And they were convinced that the Talmud contained passages that were critical and insulting to Jesus. At times, what the church did was to engage in burning the Talmud, not just one or two copies. For example, in 1242, 24 cartloads of handwritten Talmudic volumes were burnt in the main square of Paris. In 1553, all the volumes of the Talmud in Italy were seized and burned. So we have a difficult time in some ways of recovering what the original material said. One major question we're going to try to entertain is whether any passages in the Talmud actually speak about Jesus. And it's a big question mark. It was actually quite a common name at the time. Today we don't find many people named Jesus in our synagogues. I don't remember the last time they called up someone to the Torah and his name was Jesus. But at the time in the first century, it was quite a common name. In the works of the first century Jewish historian Josephus, he mentions 20 different men with the name Jesus. Even in the New Testament, there's someone else named Jesus, not just the Jesus of Nazareth. We find this in the book of Colossians in the fourth chapter, verse 11. There's someone else named Jesus. So it's not as if there's one person that has that name and that would be it. It's interesting that in 1240, King Louis IX of France ordered four of the leading rabbis at that time to engage in a religious disputation with the Jewish apostate named Nicholas Donan. One of the more critical issues that they debated was regarding alleged Talmudic blasphemies against the Christian savior. That was one of the major complaints that Nicholas Donan had against these four rabbis and against the Talmud. He pointed to passages in the Talmud that seemed to speak about someone named Jesus. Rabbi Achille of Paris insisted that these passages were not speaking about Jesus of Nazareth. They were not speaking about your Jesus. They were not speaking about the Jesus of Christianity. And he famously quipped, not every Louis is king of France. Now scholars have tried to restore the original texts of the Talmud before they were censored. And we'll try to examine some of the most critical of these texts today. There are a number of passages in the Talmud that speak about someone named Yeshu. Yeshu. And it's not entirely clear what Yeshu is. Was it a name that was used back then? Did people have a name Yeshu? It's not so clear. Maybe Yeshu is a nickname for someone who might have been called Yeshua. A short form of Yeshua. Yeshua is a biblical name which is found in the books of Ezra and Nechemia. And there are many people who believe that Jesus, his Hebrew name would have been Yeshua. Which is a short form of the name Yehoshua. So we have Yehoshua, which you all know about. He was the successor to Moses. Yeshua might have been sort of a shortened form of Yehoshua. And Yeshu might be either a short form of Yeshua, a nickname of Yeshua, or possibly a derisive way of saying Yeshua. Some people say that Yeshu might be an acronym for Yemach, Shemoh, and Zichro. May his name and his memory be erased. So it's not 100% clear what this term means altogether. When the Talmud uses the term Yeshu, is it an innocent term, is it a derisive term? We don't know 100%. The first passage I want to look at with you is from tractate Sanhedrin. Sanhedrin deals with the way the Jewish court was to function. And the Mishnah teaches the following. Mishnah is the basic corpus of Jewish law. It says, if a person is sentenced to death, a public announcement is made saying that so and so was sentenced to death for such and such a crime, and so and so are the witnesses. If anyone has some exonerating information, let them come forward and let the court know. That was the law, that was the teaching of the Talmud. Now right after this, there's a part that was censored. And here is the part that was censored out. It is taught, on the eve of Passover they hung Yeshu. A herald went forth, a crier went forth for 40 days beforehand, declaring that Yeshu is going to be stoned for practicing witchcraft and for enticing and leading Israel astray. Anyone who knows something to clear him should come forth and exonerate him. But no one had anything exonerating for him and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Ulus said, would one think that they should look for exonerating evidence for him? Why should you try and find exonerating evidence for him? And God said in Deuteronomy chapter 13 verse 9, show no pity or compassion and do not shield him. I mean, in Torah it seems to say you can try to find some exonerating information for most crimes, but not for the crime of leading Jews astray to idolatry. So Ulus said, why would you want to find exonerating information for him, for Yeshu? And the Talmud says Yeshu was different. He was different because he was close to the government. He was Korovlamalchus. He had protexia. He had schlep. He knew people. So maybe we don't want to get on the bad side of the government. We'll try to maybe take it easy on this Yeshu. That's the passage in the Talmud. Now when it says that he was guilty of witchcraft, when it says this Yeshu was guilty of witchcraft, could it be that maybe this is alluding to the alleged miracles that Jesus did? We have many stories in the Christian scriptures that Jesus did many miracles. And maybe the Talmud is asserting that maybe these were done through witchcraft. Maybe that's some way of connecting this Yeshu and this story to Jesus of Nazareth. And then it says that he was leading Israel astray. Leading Israel astray. What does that mean? What happened in the Gospels to indicate that Jesus was leading people astray? Did Jesus claim to be God? Did Jesus ask people to worship him? So it's not clear what it means when it would say that Yeshu was leading people astray. Now it says in this passage of the Talmud that he was executed on the eve of Passover. Now the question is when was Jesus executed? Again, if we're using the Gospels, we're using the Christian scriptures, it's not so simple when Jesus was executed. There's a major dispute among the writers of the Gospels. So the idea that Jesus was executed on the eve of Passover would correspond to the Gospel of John, who says that Jesus was executed on Erev Pesach right before Passover. However, the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, probably more historically reliable because they're written earlier. John is the latest of the Gospels. So the three synoptic Gospels have the last supper that Jesus is presiding over is on the eve of Passover and they have Jesus being executed on Passover itself. So it's not so simple when the Talmud here says that this Yeshu was killed on the eve of Passover. Is it so easy to tie that in to Jesus of Nazareth? Furthermore, we know that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified by the Romans. He was not stoned by the Sanhedrin. There's also reason to believe that by the time of Jesus, Jewish courts may not have been carrying out capital punishments any longer. Now, the New Testament does not speak about Jesus having any particular ties to the government that would have made his life easier. As a matter of fact, in the Christian scriptures, Jesus is executed for sedition by the Romans. The charge on the cross when he was crucified said Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. He was being killed by the Romans not because he did anything that was offensive to Judaism. The Romans didn't care about Judaism. The Romans were very sensitive to anyone that might have been fomenting rebellion and questioning their authority. So if Jesus was claiming to be the king of the Jews, he was rejecting Roman rule. The Romans would execute people like that in a heartbeat. So for this passage of the Talmud to say, Yeshua was close to the government, that is very difficult to square with what we know about Jesus in the Christian scriptures. And we'll see that the biggest problem with this source is that there is a huge difficulty with chronology, with the dating of Yeshua, which we'll be seeing in an upcoming source. So again, we just saw a passage in this piece from Sanhedrin, 43A, where there superficially seems to be some way of connecting the passage to Jesus superficially. And yet there are many, many difficulties with connecting this passage with Jesus of the New Testament. The next passage I wanted to look at with you appears in two places in the Talmud, in Sanhedrin 107B and Sota 47A. This is a very famous passage. The rabbis taught one should always push away with the left hand, but draw close with the right hand. That's a very, very important rule of how to discipline people. You want to push them away with the left hand with the weaker hand, and you want to draw them closer with the right hand with the stronger hand, meaning that you want to be careful with the way you discipline people. You don't want to push people away with both hands. You have to play sort of a good cop, bad cop, and the good cop should be the stronger hand. So the Talmud says you should always push away with the left hand, but draw close with the right hand, not like Elisha who pushed away Gechazi with both hands. There's a story in 2 Kings 5 where Elisha, who heals Naaman the leper, doesn't want to receive any gifts. And later on in the story, Gechazi goes and receives some gifts from Naaman, and Elisha is very upset, and he basically curses Gechazi and his family. The Talmud takes this as pushing him away with both hands. And the Talmud says that's not the way to treat people. It doesn't really help. It's not effective. It doesn't advance anyone's case. And then this is the statement of the Talmud as we have it. But then the censored text, the part that was censored out, reads as follows. So it gives the example. You should always push away with the left hand, draw close with the right hand, and it says don't do it. The example that you shouldn't follow is Elisha who pushed away Gechazi with both hands. And then the censored text says, and not like Yehoshua, Benprachya, who pushed away Yehoshu with both hands. So here we have again another story about this character named Yehoshu, where it seems his teacher, Yehoshu Benprachya, is pushing him away with both hands. Now before we continue, I want to just fill in some of the historical background to this story. In the second century BCE, John Herkenes was the king of Judea. He made a banquet to celebrate one of his victories, and we know that some of the Pharisee rabbis offended him. So he was persuaded by some of the Sadducee leaders to kill all of the Pharisees. Some of them, like Yehoshua Benprachya and his student Yehoshu, fled to Alexandria, Egypt. So before he could kill all the Pharisees, some of them got out of dodge. And we know historically that Yehoshua Benprachya and his student Yehoshu ran to Alexandria. Shimon Ben Shetach, another one of the Pharisee leaders, was hidden in Jerusalem. He didn't have to flee. He was hidden in Jerusalem by a sister, his sister who happened to be the king's daughter-in-law. John Herkenes dies in 91 BCE, and his son Alexander Yanai becomes king. Alexander Yanai's wife convinces him to appoint Shimon Ben Shetach to head the Sadducee-filled Sanhedrin. And he begins to slowly bring other Pharisees back onto the Supreme Court onto the Sanhedrin. By the year 80 BCE, it was safe for the Pharisees in hiding to return. So Shimon Ben Shetach sent a note to his teacher, was Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya, encouraging him to return from Egypt. That's the background of the story. So now the Talmud continues again the censored part of the Talmud. What was with Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya? The Talmud wants to know because the Talmud criticized him. Talmud said, you shouldn't do what he did when he pushed away Yehoshu with both hands. So the Talmud now asks, what was the story of Yehoshu Benprachya? So it says that when John Herkenes, the king, called the rabbis, Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya and Yehoshu fled to Alexandria of Egypt. When there was peace again, Shimon Ben Shetach sent to him to have him return from Egypt. Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya left Egypt and arrived at a particular inn. And they showed him great respect. He said, how beautiful is this inn? This is a beautiful inn. But the word for inn is Aksanya. Aksanya doesn't only mean inn, it could also mean innkeeper. So Yehoshu Benprachya is saying, what a wonderful inn this is. A wonderful inn. This is a beautiful inn. And Yehoshu said, but Rabbi, she has narrow eyes. He didn't think that his teacher was referring to the inn. He thought that Yehoshu Benprachya was saying, oh what a beautiful innkeeper. She's gorgeous. And Yehoshu says, what do you mean she's gorgeous? She's a little bit of a rise. So Yehoshua Benprachya says to him, wicked one. This is how you engage yourself. Meaning, you thought that I was referring to how this innkeeper looks. What is on your mind? What are you thinking about? This little exchange, Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya, very upset. What kind of a student are you? You've got your mind where it doesn't belong. So Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya sent out 400 trumpets and excommunicated him. Yehoshu came before Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya many times and said, accept me. I'm sorry. I'm repentant. Please take me back. But Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya paid him no attention. Basically again, with both hands pushes him away. One day Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya was saying, Shema. He was reciting the Shema Yisrael. We know that you're not allowed to interrupt yourself when you're saying Shema Yisrael. And Yehoshu came before him. By this time he was going to accept Yehoshu. He had already decided in his mind that if Yehoshu comes back to apologize and to repent one more time, I'll accept him. So he was trying to signal to Yehoshu with his hand. He was saying something like this. I mean, I can't speak. He was going like this with his hand. And Yehoshu thought that Yehoshua Benprachya was repelling him. He thought that again he was throwing him out. So Yehoshu went, hung a brick and bowed down to it and worshiped it. Yehoshu said to Rabbi Yehoshua Benprachya, you taught me that anyone who sins and causes other to sins is not given the opportunity to repent. And the Master said, Yehoshu, the notes-ry, in some editions they attached the word notes-ry here. Jesus was called Jesus Nazarene. So the Gomorrah here ends. This piece that was censored out ends by saying, Yehoshu, the notes-ry, practiced magic and deceived and led Israel astray. Now I must again emphasize that that amundation of Yehoshu-han notes-ry is not in most manuscripts. Most manuscripts simply have Yehoshu. However, it seems pretty clear from this story that there is some similarity to the Yehoshu that we just heard about before, who was executed on the eve of Passover for leading Jews astray. First of all, the crime seems very similar. Witchcraft, leading Jews astray, idolatry. But a problem here is this. The details of this story don't really correspond to what we know about Jesus from the Christian Scriptures. That Jesus worshiped some kind of a rock? Where did that come from? Now again, some rabbis take the point of view. Listen carefully. Some rabbis take the point of view that, yes, the true story of Jesus is in our Talmud, not in the Christian Bible. Meaning that when you have a problem of reconciling the Christian version of who Jesus was with the Jewish versions, some rabbis take the point of view, yeah, the Talmud gets it right, and the Christian Scriptures, it's not accurate. So the fact that there's no story in the Gospels of Jesus taking a rock and bowing down to it and serving it and worshiping it, who cares, they would say. That's what he was all about. That's what he was all about. But the main problem with this story, which again will affect the story we read at the beginning today, of Yeshua, same character, is that Yeshua, in this story that we just read, the student of Yeshua of Imprachia, is living decades and decades and decades before Jesus of Christianity. Jesus of Christianity basically lives about 30 years and is executed around the year 30 of the Common Era. Yeshua of Imprachia is living about 100 years before the Common Era. So there's a tremendous difficulty reconciling the story of Yeshua of Imprachia and Yeshua with the Jesus of Christianity. Now I want to return to the story we began with today, which was from again Sanhedrin 43A, because the Talmud there continues the story. After talking about how Yeshua was executed on the eve of Passover, the Talmud says the following. And sort of listen carefully because this is a very strange piece of Talmud. It is taught, Yeshua had five disciples, Matai, Nikai, Netser, Buni and Toda. And here's what happens in this story. It tells about what happened when they were brought to trial. They brought Matai before the judges. And he said to them, will Matai be killed? He said, am I going to be executed? Because it's written, he quotes a verse from the book of Psalms chapter 42 verse 2, The word Matai in Hebrew means when. Matai shall I come and appear before God. It doesn't sound like I'm going to die. My name is Matai. It talks about appearing before God. That's a good thing. But the Sanhedrin said to him, yes, Matai will be killed, as it is written in Psalm 41 verse 5. Matai shall he die and his name perish. Matai shall he die, some evil person and his name perish. So we see that, yes, Matai will die and perish. They then brought Nikai. He said to them, will Nikai be killed? Because he says it's written in Exodus chapter 23 verse 7. The Innocent, the word Nakhi in Hebrew means clean, pure. His name is Nikai. It sounds like Nakhi. Because the Innocent, Nakhi and the righteous, you shall not slay. You shall not slay the Nakhi. I mean it, my name is Nakhi. They said to him, yes, Nikai will be killed, as it is written in Psalm 10 verse 8. In secret places, he slays the Innocent, the Nakhi. They brought Netser. He said to them, will Netser be killed? Meaning, am I going to be killed? It's written in Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1. A branch, a Netser, will spring up from his roots. By the way, that's a passage about the Messiah. But they said to him, yes, Netser will be killed, as it is written in Isaiah chapter 14 verse 19. You are cast forth out of your grave like an abominable branch, like an abominable Netser. They then brought Booni. Booni sounds like the word Ben, son. And he said to them, will Booni be killed? Because it's written in Exodus chapter 4 verse 22. My son, Bene, my firstborn is Israel. Can't kill Israel. But they said to him, yes, Booni will be killed, as it is written in Exodus chapter 4 verse 23. Behold, I will slay your son, Binkha, your firstborn. That's God speaking about Pharaoh's firstborn son. And then they finally brought Toda. And he said to them, will Toda be killed? It's written in Psalm 100 verse 1. A psalm for thanksgiving, Mismorla Toda. They said to him, yes, Toda will be killed, as it is written in Psalm 50 verse 23. Whoever sacrifices thanksgiving, honors me. Whoever sacrifices the Toda, honors me. This is obviously a very, very strange passage of the Talmud. First of all, if these are the followers of Yehshu who was killed on the eve of Passover for witchcraft and leading Jews astray to idolatry, it's hard to reconcile this with the Christian scriptures because Yehshu didn't have five disciples. He had 12 disciples. And none of these names has any connection to the disciples of Jesus except for possibly Matai. Sounds like Matthew possibly. Again, we saw in the previous passage that Yehshu lived about 100 years before Jesus of Nazareth. So the timing here again doesn't work out with these five disciples. And one more thing. Think about this. Does this sound like a real court proceeding to you? Does this sound like a real courtroom that that's how defendants and the judges argue back and forth with these plays on words based upon passages in the Bible? It's possible, I would say, it's possible that this is not really a historical event that they're recounting. I don't think any courtroom would sound like that. But this story that's told may be more of a polemical story. And they're saying that, you know what? This is what should happen to the followers of Yehshu. Meaning if there was a Yehshu who practiced witchcraft and led Jews astray, his five followers were probably just like him. They should be killed too. And they present this fanciful story of how they argue back and forth in the Sanhedrin. But it doesn't seem like this is really what kind of interaction would take place in the Sanhedrin. Those are some of the stories in the Talmud about, again, a character named Yehshu who seems to live decades and decades and decades before Jesus of Nazareth. But then there is someone else in the Talmud that many people suspect might be a reference to the Jesus of Christianity. We find a passage in Tractate Shabbat 104b. It also appears in Sanhedrin 67a. And here's the passage. And this is a headspinner. It's taught. Rabbi Eliezer told the sages, did not Ben Stada bring witchcraft with him from Egypt in a cut that was on his skin? And they said to him, he was a fool and you cannot bring proof from a fool. This is a passage in the Talmud that's discussing the laws of Shabbat and what is considered to be writing? What is considered to be writing? Is it considered writing if you mark your flesh, if you make markings in your flesh? So here they have a passage about Ben Stada who brought back something with marking on his flesh and they said that doesn't really, you can't bring that as a proof or anything. He's not a credible person to bring as a witness to this case, so to speak. But then the Talmud goes on. They say that this Ben Stada is really someone named Ben Pandira. This Ben Stada is really a personality known as Ben Pandira. Who is Ben Pandira? Hold on to your hats. Revchistus said, the husband was Stada, but the lover was someone named Pandira. The husband was Stada, but that wasn't the father, right? Because the Talmud called this person Ben Stada, the son of Stada. So the Talmud is saying here, well Stada was the husband of the woman that gave birth, but he wasn't the father of the child, because the lover of the woman was named Pandira. And that's why Ben Stada is called Ben Pandira. And then the Talmud says no. The husband's name was someone named Papas Ben Yehuda. The husband was named Papas Ben Yehuda and the mother was Stada. Now if your head is swimming, don't worry, you're in good company. I'll read it one more time. And then the Talmud says no. The mother was Miriam, the woman's hairdresser. The woman's hairdresser and was called Stada. As we say in Pumbadisa, she was turned away, Stada, from her husband. Now, point of information here is that woman's hairdresser is expressed with the terms of Magadla Nasaya. She was someone who groomed or grows, she grown the hair, she cut the grown hair of women. Now when you take this as Miriam, Magadla Nasaya, it sounds a little bit like Mary Magdalene. The sounding, the similarity is very, very clear. So let's go back and read this again. It's taught. Rabbi Eliezer told the sages, did not Ben Stada bring witchcraft with him from each in a cut that was on his skin. They said to him, he was a fool and you can't bring proof from a fool. And then the Talmud says, Ben Stada is Ben Pandira. Refreste said the husband was Stada, but the lover was Pandira. Meaning this child was not legitimate. No, the husband was Stada. And finally the Talmud says, no, the mother's name was Miriam, the woman's hairdresser, and she was called Stada. As we say in Pumbadisa, she turned away from her husband. Now let's analyze this story for a moment. Ben Stada, as he's sufficiently called, was Miriam the woman's hairdresser. Ben Stada, as he's sufficiently called, is someone who practiced witchcraft and spent time in Egypt that sounds a little bit like the Yeshu character. Yeshu had spent time in Egypt. Yeshu was accused of practicing witchcraft. This Ben Stada has a mother named Mary, or possibly Mary Magdalene, and was illegitimate. Now, we know from the Gospels that Jesus went down to Egypt. As a baby, he goes down to Egypt. He doesn't spend much time there. The question is, what happens to Jesus between his bar mitzvah about the age of 13 and the time he begins his ministry around the age of 30? There are many, many years in the life of Jesus that are not accounted for in the Christian scriptures at all. And many, many different legends have grown up about what happened to Jesus. Some people say he traveled out to India. Others say he went down to Egypt. There's a million stories about what took place during these missing years of Jesus. No one really knows. In any event, it sounds like you can have some surface similarities between this passage about Ben Stada and the Jesus of the Gospels. Because they accuse him of practicing witchcraft, which might be an accusation against the miracles he did. He spends time in Egypt. He has a mother named Mary, or Mary Magdalene. He was illegitimate. It sounds like it has some resonance with the Gospel stories. However, we know that Jesus' mother was not Mary Magdalene, for sure not. We know that Mary's husband was named Joseph, not Papa's Ben Yehuda. We know from other Talmudic sources, and this is very important here, we know from other Talmudic sources that Papa's Ben Yehuda lived about 100 years after the Jesus of Christianity. The previous personality we looked at, Yehshu, lived about 100 years before Jesus of Christianity. This Papa's Ben Yehuda lives about 100 years after the Jesus of Christianity. He was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva, and he was born after Jesus died, so he could not have been his father. This certainly could not have been the issue who lived 200 years earlier. So we at this point have, again, two possible people the Talmud discusses who may have some connection to Jesus of Nazareth. Two possibilities. Let's go through a few more sources. The Talmud has a fascinating discussion of what is described as a sting operation. You don't think we invented the sting operation. They had it a long time ago. So the Talmud in Sanhedrin 67a discusses how they used a sting operation to catch Ben Stata. To catch Ben Stata. It is taught, for all others liable to the death penalty, except for one who entices to idolatry, we do not hide witnesses. We do not play games with a sting operation. Except if someone is suspected of enticing to idolatry, we will hide witnesses. So how do they deal with the enticer? They light a lamp for him in the inner chamber. They place a lamp in the inner chamber of a house, in the inner room of a house. And they place witnesses in the outer chamber so that they can see and hear him while he cannot see or hear them. It's almost like what they have now in police headquarters, a soundproof room. They can look in, they can see through the one-way mirror. So he's in this inner room. And someone comes into the inner room. He's all by himself there. He doesn't think anyone's listening. And someone says to him, tell me again what you said to me in private. What did you say to me last week? And he says, well, how can we forsake our God in heaven and worship idolatry? That's what he spoke about. That's what we spoke about last week, that we're going to forsake our God in heaven and worship idolatry. So the Talmud says, if the person repents, good. But if he says, this is our obligation and what we must do, meaning yes, worshiping idolatry and forsaking God is what we must do, the witnesses who hear him outside bring him to the court and they stone him. So that's how the Talmud describes a sting operation. And then the Talmud continues, and so they did to Ben Stata in Lod and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Interesting. So in the previous piece that we studied, there was a whole description of this person named Ben Stata who was accused of witchcraft and coming from Egypt. And then we're told here that this is exactly how the court was able to convict him. They did a sting operation. They heard him discussing how they're going to worship idols and forsake the God of heaven. And so they basically took him out and they hung him after stoning him. And this was on the eve of Passover. Now let's recap. This again is someone who was executed on the eve of Passover for witchcraft and idolatry. It sounds a little bit like Yeshua. However, Jesus was crucified by Romans. He was not stoned by a Jewish court. Jesus was executed in Jerusalem. He was not killed in Lod. Again, we saw before that the Synoptic Gospels say that Jesus was killed on Passover itself, not on the eve of Passover. And again, we have the same problem of dating Ben Stata with Jesus because he lives about 100 years later. Now again, what I tried to show you up until now were two different people. Apparently there's a Yeshua, there's a Ben Stata. Ben Stata had the name of Ben Pandira. So Ben Stata was also called Ben Pandira. And now we're going to find a fascinating source which seems to connect Yeshua with Ben Pandira. This is a Tissefta to Chulun, 223. It's also in the Yerushami Talmud, the Jerusalem Talmud. It says it once happened that Rabbi Eleazar Ben Dama was bitten by a snake. And Yaakov of the village of Shekania came to heal him in the name of Yeshua Ben Pandira. So now it's not Yeshua or Ben Pandira, it's someone named Yeshua Ben Pandira. But Rabbi Ishmael, his uncle, did not allow him. Rabbi Ishmael did not allow his nephew to be healed in the name of Yeshua Ben Pandira and the Talmud goes on to say that his nephew died. His nephew was not healed from the snake bite. So that throws a bit of a monkey wrench into everything we've studied so far. A bit of a summary. Some people postulate, some scholars when they look at this material, postulate that there were two Yeshua's in the Talmud. One who started a schismatic movement against Judaism, a breakaway movement, an idolatrous movement against Judaism around the year 100 BCE. And another one who was an idolater who was executed around the year 130 of the Common Era. The only similarities between these two different issues are the name of the father, who in both cases would have been Pandira, which was a common name back then by the way. The fact that they were both executed around the time of Passover and they had both had some connection to Egypt. But it seems at this point it's very difficult to connect these stories with the Jesus of Christianity. And indeed that is the approach that's taken by many of our sages. One of the reasons why Rabbi Yechiel of Paris said that the stories in the Talmud are not about Jesus of Nazareth, is because the stories in the Talmud just don't coincide chronologically. They're out of sequence, they're out of time sequence by 100 years in either direction. However, some say that it's difficult to imagine that all of these passages are just seemingly coincidental to the Jesus of Christianity. And there may be some connection. Even though the dates don't line up, even though the details of Jesus' story from the Gospels don't line up with these stories, there still may be some connection to Jesus of Nazareth. And these scholars propose that what the rabbis are doing here is really offering a response to Christianity. Not so much because they have accurate information about who Jesus was. The stories in the Talmud are written centuries after the Jesus of Christianity. That's when these stories appear in the Talmud. And by this time, the rabbis probably had very little information about who Jesus actually was. But what they see popping up around them is a very, very problematic religion that is an idolatrous religion, that is persecuting Jews, that's anti-Semitic, and that's a concern to the rabbis. So it's possible that they may be offering a response to Christianity by knocking the person who's considered to be the founder of Christianity. Although the truth might be that Jesus was not the founder of Christianity, but as some scholars refer to the foundling of Christianity. Christianity begins as a religion afterwards. But Jesus seems to get all the credit. I want to share with you a fascinating piece of Talmud that if you studied it in any version of our Talmuds today, you're not going to see any connection to Christianity. But if you have access to a Chesronot Hashas, it tells you that this is a story about Jesus and a follower, a disciple of Jesus. It's a fascinating story. What happens here? This is in Tractate Avoda Zorah, Tractate dealing with idolatry, idol worship, and it's page 16b going over to 17a. Here's the story. It says when Rabbi Eliezer was seized for heresy. Now it's not exactly clear what this means that he was seized for heresy. Some people say that he was merely offensive to the Roman government. Other people say that he was suspected of being a member of the Christian sect. It's not really clear exactly why he was arrested. But they brought him up to the court to be judged. And the Roman official in charge said to him, a wise man such as yourself should engage in these idol matters. Whatever he was doing wrong, the Roman official was saying, what is someone brilliant like you involved with such nonsense for? Rabbi Eliezer said to him in reply, the judge is trusted by me. That official thought that Rabbi Eliezer was speaking of him. Rabbi Eliezer thought that said the judge, the true judge is trusted by me. And the Roman judge thought that Rabbi Eliezer was speaking about him. But in fact, Rabbi Eliezer was speaking only regarding his father in heaven. The official then said to Rabbi Eliezer, since you have made me trusted by you, since you seem to regard me highly, I swear by an idol named Demus that you are acquitted. You can go free. When Rabbi Eliezer subsequently returned to his house, his students came in to console him. This was a traumatic experience. Here he was thrown into jail, accused of who knows what, and now he was miraculously released and his students came to console him. But he accepted upon himself no consolation. He couldn't be consoled. Until Rabbi Akiva eventually said to him, my teacher, permit me to say one thing from what you have taught me. Rabbi Eliezer said to him, say it, please. Rabbi Akiva said to Rabbi Eliezer, my teacher, perhaps some teaching of heresy came to your hand and it pleased you. Meaning maybe you heard some heretical teaching and it pleased you. You thought it was good teaching. And on account of that, you were seized. Rabbi Eliezer said to Rabbi Akiva, Akiva, you've just reminded me. Now that you mention it, maybe you're right. Once I was walking in the upper market of Sipori and I encountered a particular heretic and Yaakov of Kfar Shakhnya was his name. He said to me, and this is going to sound like a very strange interchange, but this heretic said to Rabbi Eliezer, he said, it's written in your Torah, you shall not bring a harlot's hire as a sacrifice. Meaning that the Torah speaks about, let's say, a prostitute engages in her profession and with the money she earns she wants to purchase a sacrifice and bring it to the temple. So the Torah says that you shall not accept a harlot's hire. Now with regard to this verse, so when it comes to this verse the heretic said, what is the law concerning making from a harlot's hire a lavatory, a bathroom for the high priest? And Rabbi Eliezer said that I answered the heretic and I didn't have any, I said nothing. I didn't really have an answer to the heretic. The heretic then said to me, my master, and again in our versions of the Talmud today it just says my teacher. In the Kastronas Hashas it says it was Yehshu. It was Yehshu. My master has taught me thus, quoting from a verse in the book of Michah, that they were collected as a harlot's hire and they will revert to a harlot's hire, from which we derive, that they came from a place of filth, let them go to a place of filth. So basically what Yehshu taught his student and what the student was teaching Rabbi Eliezer is that the harlot's hire, the fee of the harlot can be used to build a bathroom in the temple for the high priest. And Rabbi Eliezer said that when I heard this the heretic's dictum pleased me. I thought it was a good teaching. I therefore assume that on account of this incident I was seized for purposes of being coerced into heresy and it was specifically because I transgressed that which is written in the Torah which says distance yourself from her and this is a reference to heresy and do not come near the door of her house. This is in reference to the authorities. And this is actually a fascinating piece of Talmud and what you seem to see from here is that there was a time in our history when our great sages would have a serious discussion with a student of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to be that way. I mean that it seems to be that when the incident first happened and Rabbi Eliezer is having this discussion with the person that he knows is a heretic he knows the person is part of this Jesus' movement. He doesn't run away from him. He doesn't say anything that you have to say is totally useless. I refuse to hear from you. He engages in a Torah discussion with him and he seems to accept as actually reasonable the teaching of Jesus. But what seems to happen in the story is this is obviously this interaction between him and this student of Jesus took place a while ago. This wasn't something that happened a week before he was arrested by the Romans. This is an old story and he seemed to have forgotten about it and Rabbi Akiva reminds him maybe that's the reason you were thrown into jail. But what you seem to see from this story is that back then when the story actually happened it wouldn't have been so crazy for a Jewish sage Rabbi Eliezer to have a discussion with a student of Jesus. But now maybe a decade or two decades later Rabbi Eliezer says, wow, I had a discussion with him because by this later time the Jesus' movement was considered to be more of a heretical movement. So what you may be able to see from these stories is the following and this is again a supposition. That Jesus begins his career as a normative Jew as a Torah-observing Jew that does not teach anything that goes against the Torah. And his students and followers were as likewise Torah-observing Jews and they were more or less accepted within the Jewish community. They may have been seen as weird people because again they thought that their teacher who was crucified was the Messiah, that he was dead. And they believed that this person who died is going to come back and he is going to somehow bring about the messianic age. They may have been seen as strange and as time went on they may have been seen as stranger and stranger especially because there's now a dramatic growth of non-Jews who are followers of Jesus who are worshiping him as God. And it could be that there's some confusion between who these followers of Jesus are. Are you Jewish followers of Jesus who did not worship him as God? Are you from the Gentile movements of Jesus? But there seems to be some coloring or clouding of the issue of who the followers of Jesus are with the growth of Paul's Gentile Jesus movement. Also what probably ends up happening over time is that there was a tendency among Jewish followers of Jesus among Jewish followers of Jesus to cut themselves off, slowly cut themselves off from rabbinic leadership especially after the destruction of the temple rejecting to some extent rabbinic authority and holding up the teachings of their teacher, Jesus as more important and more authoritative. Also what happens at this time is that the Gospels are being written and the Gospels have plenty of ammunition that is very much anti-Jewish and anti-Judaism. And so the rabbis slowly over time begin to look at this movement as more and more and more heretical and problematic. Over time what probably happens is that they begin to blame Jesus and hold him responsible for the aberrations of the movement that springs up and moves away from him as time goes on. And finally in the later sources written about two or three hundred years after Jesus they accuse him of being an idolater. So I would say that there are basically two ways that we can look at the material in the Talmud. One possible way of viewing this material is that it has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth. It's speaking about other people all together. Or we might say that this material in our Talmud may not be 100% accurate in terms of the precise dating and all of the details about the Jesus movement but really nearly it could be that the rabbis are trying to speak about what became a movement called Christianity. And somehow in critiquing Christianity they bring Jesus into it and they essentially are trying to attack this deviant aberrant movement which later was deviant and aberrant by attacking what they saw as the source of the movement in these stories which are not necessarily historical but were intended to attack what they considered to be the founder of Christianity.