Toledot Yeshu in Context
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Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism Texte und Studien zum Antiken Judentum Edited by Maren Niehoff (Jerusalem) Annette Y. Reed (New York, NY) Seth Schwartz (New York, NY) Moulie Vidas (Princeton, NJ) 182 Toledot Yeshu in Context The Jewish “Life of Jesus” in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History Edited by Daniel Barbu and Yaacov Deutsch Mohr Siebeck Daniel Barbu, born 1981, is a Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Paris-Sciences-et-Lettres Research University, Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes (UMR 8584). orcid.org/0000-0003-2137-4186 Yaacov Deutsch, born 1966, is the head of the History Department at David Yellin College and also teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. orcid.org/0000-0003-1403-102X ISBN 978-3-16-159300-0 / eISBN 978-3-16-159301-7 DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-159301-7 ISSN 0721-8753 / eISSN 2568-9525 (Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism) Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 by Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by copyright law) without the publisher’s written permission. This applies particularly to repro- ductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems. The book was typeset by Martin Fischer in Tübingen, printed by Gulde Druck in Tübingen on non-aging paper and bound by Buchbinderei Spinner in Ottersweier. Printed in Germany. Acknowledgments Many essays included in this volume were originally presented in the frame- work of an international conference at the University of Bern in the summer of 2015, with the generous support of the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Swiss Society for Jewish Studies, the Swiss Society for the Study of Religion, the Municipality of Bern, the Johanna Dürmüller-Bol Foundation as well as the Adolf und Mary Mil Foundation. We warmly thank Prof. René Bloch, Chair of the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Bern, for making this con- ference possible, as well as the Tencer Family Fund in Basel, which supported the broader research project of which this conference was part. Further thanks are due to Dr. Eva Tyrell, Markus Isch, and Marco Messina for their help in or- ganizing this conference. We also thank our colleagues and friends who have reviewed the texts submitted for this volume, Ilana Brown for her thorough copy editing of the manuscript, Dr. Aaron Kachuck, who kindly read the proofs of the volume, and the publishers at Mohr Siebeck who encouraged us to turn this into an original collection of essays. This publication received support from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (UMR 8584 Laboratoire d’études sur les monothéismes). Daniel Barbu Yaacov Deutsch Table of Contents Acknowledgments ............................................ V DANIEL BARBU and YAACOV DEUTSCH Introduction: Reading Toledot Yeshu in Context ..................... 1 WILLIAM HORBURY Titles and Origins of Toledot Yeshu .............................. 13 DANIEL STÖKL BEN EZRA On Some Early Traditions in Toledot Yeshu and the Antiquity of the “Helena” Recension ..................................... 43 GAVIN MCDOWELL The Alternative Chronology: Dating the Events of the Wagenseil Version of Toledot Yeshu ............................................. 59 GIDEON BOHAK Jesus the Magician in the “Pilate” Recension of Toledot Yeshu ......... 81 SARIT KATTAN GRIBETZ The Mothers in the Manuscripts: Gender, Motherhood, and Power in Toledot Yeshu .................................... 99 ALEXANDRA CUFFEL Toledot Yeshu in the Context of Polemic and Sīra Literature in the Middle East from the Fatimid to the Mamluk Era .............. 131 JONATAN M. BENARROCH “A Real Spark of Sama’el”: Kabbalistic Reading(s) of Toledot Yeshu . 169 DANIEL BARBU and YANN DAHHAOUI The Secret Booklet from Germany: Circulation and Transmission of Toledot Yeshu at the Borders of the Empire ...................... 187 STEPHEN BURNETT Martin Luther, Toledot Yeshu, and “the Rabbis” ..................... 219 VIII Table of Contents EVI MICHELS Yiddish Toledot Yeshu Manuscripts from the Netherlands ............. 231 CLAUDIA ROSENZWEIG The “History of the Life of Jesus” in a Yiddish Manuscript from the Eighteenth Century (Ms. Jerusalem, NLI, Heb. 8° 5622) ...... 263 YONATAN MOSS “I Am Not Writing an Apology”: Samuel Krauss’s Das Leben Jesu in Context ....................... 317 List of Contributors ........................................... 341 Index of Citations ............................................ 343 Index of Toledot Yeshu manuscripts .............................. 348 Index of Themes, Names, and Places ............................. 352 Introduction: Reading Toledot Yeshu in Context DANIEL BARBU and YAACOV DEUTSCH The Jewish Life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu) provides one of the most extraordinary accounts of the beginnings of Christianity. The work presents Jesus as a child born of adulterous intercourse, a charlatan, and a false prophet who performed would-be miracles with his magical skills (either using the Ineffable Name of God or “magical books” imported from Egypt). He was rightfully captured and executed at the request of the rabbis. After his disciples declared him resurrected, his body was unearthed and dragged through the streets, while his followers were either forced into exile or massacred. Christianity itself appears in this as- tounding narrative as a religion invented by Jewish sages to separate the Jews from the furious heretics who continue to claim Jesus as their messiah and god. The story understandably aroused the ire of anti-Jewish polemicists, delighted anti-clerical propagandists, and was viewed by Jewish scholars as a subject of embarrassment. In the eighteenth century, Voltaire claimed that Toledot Yeshu, however “extravagant,” was perhaps as ancient as the gospels, adding that it surely also preserved some form of historical truth.1 Such a provocative claim was of course essentially an attack on the Church and Christian tradition, which Voltaire accused of having deformed the original message of Jesus, a “Galilean Socrates” posthumously made into a god. Yet it also reflected a well-established tradition among Christian scholars for whom this shocking account of Jesus’s life and prodigies could indeed be viewed as a testimony to the “truth” of the gospels, even if the latter had been corrupted by the “lies” and “blasphemies” of the reluctant Jews.2 1 Cf. Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke, in Voltaire, Œuvres de 1766–1767 (ed. Jacqueline Marchand, Roland Mortier, John Renwick; Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation and Taylor Institution, 1987), 213–14 (chap. XI), and Daniel Barbu, “Voltaire and the Toledoth Yeshu,” in Infancy Gospels: Stories and Identities (ed. Claire Clivaz, Andreas Dettwiler, Luc Devillers and Enrico Norelli; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 617–27. 2 On the Christian reception of Toledot Yeshu, see Yaacov Deutsch, “Toledot Yeshu” in Chris- tian Eyes: Reception and Response to “Toledot Yeshu” in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (MA Thesis, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1997) [in Hebrew]; idem, “The Second Life of the Life of Jesus: Christian Reception of Toledot Yeshu,” in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited: A Princeton Conference (ed. Peter Schäfer, Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 283–95. See also William Horbury, “Petrus Galatinus and Jean Thenaud on the Talmud and the Toledot Yeshu,” in Jewish Books and Their Readers: Aspects of the Intellectual Life of Christians and Jews in Early Modern Europe (ed. 2 Daniel Barbu and Yaacov Deutsch Obviously Voltaire was wrong, and no scholar today would seriously con- sider his claim that Toledot Yeshu is as old as (and perhaps more reliable than) the gospels: the work has little if anything to tell us about the “historical” Jesus and the origins of Christianity. Building on both Jewish and Christian traditions and motifs (either canonical or apocryphal), the narrative can be seen as a parody or satire of the gospels, if not a “counter-history” of Christianity. But as such, we may ask, is it not also a true narrative? Where is the truth in such a story? Is a “counter-history” less true than the original story? The question of truth was indeed central to Amos Funkenstein’s definition of the counter-historical genre.3 “Counter-histories,” wrote Funkenstein, “form a specific genre of history” in which the adversaries’ most trusted sources are turned against them, their memory and history are appropriated and replaced with a new, supposedly more trustworthy narrative. Of course, Funkenstein’s discussion of counter-histories, which Toledot Yeshu served to illustrate, had a very different and more immediate aim, namely a critique of both Holocaust re- visionism and the Zionist refusal to acknowledge any form of Palestinian iden- tity.4 In Funkenstein’s perspective, counter-histories implied the possibility of actually erasing the other’s memory. Such narratives thus primarily appeared as a discursive expression of power. The Christian construction of Christianity as the “true Israel” in antiquity, for instance, was for him another and no less vivid expression of “counter-history.” This has led David Biale to nuance Funkenstein’s description of Toledot Yeshu as “counter-history.”5 Biale underlined that counter-histories have very different meanings and implications when expressing the voice