Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures McDowell, Naiweld, Ezra (eds) Diversity and Rabbinisation Jewish Texts and Societies Between 400 and 1,000 CE Diversity and Rabbinization Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld, and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (eds) Jewish Texts and Societies Between 400 and 1,000 CE This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communi� es EDITED BY GAVIN MCDOWELL, RON NAIWELD, from Late An� quity to the Early Middle Age and the growing infl uence of the rabbis within these communi� es during the same period. Drawing on available textual AND DANIEL STÖKL BEN EZRA and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, wri� en by leading experts in their fi elds, span a signifi cant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received suffi cient a� en� on in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The fi rst focuses on the vantage point of the Diversity and Rabbinization synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respec� vely, the Near East and Europe; the fi nal part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of ”rabbiniza� on” as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinizati on is a welcome contribu� on to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspec� ves on cri� cal ques� ons and allows us to rethink the tension between mul� plicity and unity in Judaism during the fi rst millennium CE. This is the author-approved edi� on of this Open Access � tle. As with all Open Book publica� ons, this en� re book is available to read for free on the publisher’s website. Printed and digital edi� ons, together with supplementary digital material, can also be found at www.openbookpublishers.com Cover image: Zodiac mo� f and fi gure of Helios on the mosaic fl oor of the fourth-century Hammat Tiberias synagogue. Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias (Jerusalem: Israel Explora� on Society, 1983), plates 10/11. Courtesy of the Israel Explora� on Society. © All rights reserved. Cover design: Anna Ga� . book 8 ebooke and OA edi� ons also available OPEN ACCESS OBP https://www.openbookpublishers.com © 2021 Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra. Copyright of individual chapters is maintained by the chapters’ authors. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information: Gavin McDowell, Ron Naiweld and Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (eds), Diversity and Rabbinization Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE. Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures 8. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2021, https://doi.org/10.11647/ OBP.0219 Copyright and permissions for the reuse of many of the images included in this publication differ from the above. Copyright and permissions information for images is provided separately in the List of Illustrations. In order to access detailed and updated information on the license, please visit, https:// doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0209#copyright Further details about CC BY licenses are available at, https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/ All external links were active at the time of publication unless otherwise stated and have been archived via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at https://archive.org/web Updated digital material and resources associated with this volume are available at https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0219#resources Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher. L’École Pratique des Hautes Études has kindly contributed to the publication of this volume. ISBN Paperback: 9781783749935 ISBN Hardback: 9781783749942 Semitic Languages and Cultures 8. ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783749959 ISSN (print): 2632-6906 ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783749966 ISSN (digital): 2632-6914 ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783749973 ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783749980 DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0219 Cover image: Zodiac motif and figure of Helios on the mosaic floor of the fourth-century Hammat Tiberias synagogue. Moshe Dothan, Hammath Tiberias (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1983), plates 10/11. Courtesy of the Israel Exploration Society. © All rights reserved. Cover design: Anna Gatti 12. WHO IS THE TARGET OF TOLEDOT YESHU? Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL) In his groundbreaking study Verus Israel, Marcel Simon was the first to recognize the historical value of John Chrysostom’s polemical homilies Adversus Iudaeos for study of the phenomenon of Judaizing Christians.1 He, followed by others, such as Robert Wilken, showed that Chrysostom’s primary target (much more than the Jews) was undecided pagans hovering between Judaism and Christianity and, even more, members of his own Christian flock who blurred the boundaries by attending ceremonies or taking oaths in synagogues—those whom John Gager called “dangerous ones in between.”2 Among the Jewish compositions written between 400 and 1000 CE, the period relevant for this conference, is also the polemical treatise Toledot Yeshu.3 The following lines are an 1 Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire AD 135–425, trans. by H. McKeating (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996). 2 Robert Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); John Gager, ‘Jews, Christians and the Dangerous Ones in Between’, in Interpretation in Religion, ed. by Shlomo Biderman and Ben Ami Scharfstein (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 249–57. 3 For a recent edition of most of the Hebrew and Aramaic witnesses, along with a very useful introduction, see Toledot Yeshu: The Life Story of Jesus, ed. by Peter Schäfer and Michael Meerson, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014). Among the most important classical studies are © Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, CC BY 4.0 https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0219.12 360 Diversity and Rabbinization attempt to read Toledot Yeshu in a manner similar to the way Marcel Simon and Robert Wilken understood Chrysostom, in order to learn more about a group that has lost its voice. In its briefest version (the ‘Pilate recension’ in Riccardo Di Segni’s nomenclature), Toledot Yeshu gives a counter-narrative of Jesus’s miracles and his expiatory, vicarious death and resurrection as told in the Gospels: Jesus is depicted as an impostor who is executed and whose corpse is hidden and found again. The other recensions add a birth narrative (where Jesus’s father is a villainous neighbour who rapes Mary during the period of her monthly impurity) and explain Jesus’s miracles as deriving from the power of the Ineffable Name, which was stolen from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Most manuscripts also include a sort of ‘Anti-Acts of the Apostles’, with stories about Peter, Paul, and Nestorius.4 In the first tradition, the rabbis send out an agent, Elijah, alias Paul, to separate Jewish Christians from Judaism by introducing new festivals and ethical standards and abolishing kashrut and circumcision. This is followed by the Nestorius episode, where the heresiarch converts some Persian Christians back to pre- Pauline Christianity by reintroducing circumcision.5 Finally, Simon Kephas turns out to be a famous rabbi and paytan who agrees to become a crypto-Christian, but lives alone in a tower while continuing to compose important piyyutim for the Jewish liturgy.6 Samuel Krauss, Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1902; reprint Hildesheim: Olms, 1977, 2006); William Horbury, ‘A Critical Examination of the Toledoth Yeshu’ (PhD diss., Cambridge, 1970); Riccardo Di Segni, Il vangelo del ghetto (Rome: Newton Compton, 1985). 4 Daniel Stökl Ben Ezra, ‘On Some Early Traditions in Toledot Yeshu’, in Toledot Yeshu in Context: Jewish-Christian Polemics in Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History, ed. by Daniel Barbu and Yaacob Deutsch (TSAJ 182, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020), 43–58. 5 Stephen Gerö, ‘The Nestorius Legend in the Toledot Yeshu’, Oriens Christianus 59 (1975): 108–20. 6 John Gager, ‘Simon Peter, Founder of Christianity or Saviour of Israel?’, in Toledot Yeshu (“The Life Story of Jesus”) Revisited, ed. by Peter Schäfer, 12. Who is the Target of Toledot Yeshu? 361 The redaction history of the Toledot is highly complex. We can discern three main recensions and many subdivisions among the principal recensions. Di Segni identifies three: Pilate, Helena, and Herod, named after the ruler of Judaea given in the text. Peter Schäfer and Michael Meerson have modified his model slightly. Only the Pilate recension (Meerson-Schäfer Recension I) is materially attested for the first millennium. The earliest manuscripts in Aramaic from the Cairo Genizah are dated approximately to the tenth century. Two recent linguistic analyses have dated the Aramaic dialect to around 500 CE.7 The earliest external attestations of Recension I are by Agobard and Amulo, bishops of early ninth-century Lyon, on the opposite corner of the Mediterranean. In their recent edition of the Hebrew and Aramaic versions, Meerson and Schäfer conclude that this was the only recension extant in the first millennium. Many other scholars, however, would disagree on this dating, which takes the absence of evidence as evidence of absence.8 In many cases, Jewish compositions of the first millennium are attested only in manuscripts from the first centuries of the second. Many of the largely neglected Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts are in fact very ancient and indicate that the Helena recension is about as old as the Pilate recension.9 The birth narrative is attested as Michael Meerson, and Yaacov Deutsch (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 221–45.