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I. FOREWORD.

WHEN some five and a half centuries before the Christian era the Buddha arose in ancient Aryavarta to substitute actuality for tradition, to break down the barriers of convention, and throw open the Way of Righteousness to all, irrespective of race or birth, we are told that He set aside the ancestral scriptures of His race and times, and preached a Gospel of self-reliance and a freedom from bibliolatry that will ever keep His memory green among the independent thinkers of the world. 

When the Christ arose in Judaea, once more to break down the barriers of exclusiveness, and preach the Way to the 'Amme ha-aretz, the rejected of the ceremonialists and legal purists, we are told that He extended the aegis of His great authority over the ancient writings of His fellow-countrymen, and cited the Torah as the very Law of God Himself. 

We are assured by Traditionalists that the Incarnation of Deity Itself, the very Giver of that Law, explicitly attested the genuineness of the Five Books; He, with His inerrant wisdom, asserted that Moses wrote them, just as it was believed by the people of His day.

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Whereas, if there be anything certain in the whole field of Biblical research, it is that this cannot be the whole truth of the matter. 

It has been said in excuse that the Christ did not come on earth to teach His disciples the "higher criticism." This may well be so, and yet it is a fact of profound significance that, as we shall see in the course of the present enquiry, even in His day this very Torah, and much more the Prophets and Sacred Writings, were called into serious question by many. 

If, however, the Christ actually used the words ascribed to Him in this matter, it is difficult to understand why a plan so different in thus respect was adopted in the West from the apparently far more drastic attempt that was made so many years before in the East. It may, however, have been found that the effect of a so abrupt departure from tradition had not proved so successful as had been anticipated, for the Brahman, instead of giving of his best, and allowing himself to become the channel of a great spiritual outpouring for the benefit of the world, quickly resumed his ancient position of exclusiveness and spiritual isolation. 

So in the case of the Jew, who was, as it were, a like channel ready to hand for the West, whereby the new spiritual forces could most efficaciously be liberated, it may have been thought that if the traditional prejudices of that "chosen" and "peculiar" people were more gently treated perhaps greater results would follow.  But even so the separative forces in human nature were too strong, and the Jew, like the Brahman, fell back; into a more rigid exclusiveness than ever. But thee Wisdom behind Her Servants doubtless knew that this 

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would be, and reserved both Brahman and Jew for some future opportunity of greater promise, while She temporarily utilized them, in spite of themselves, and in spite of the mistakes of their Buddhist and Christian brethren; for all of us, Brahmans and Buddhists, Hebrews and Christians, are of like passions, and struggling in the bonds of our self-limitations and ignorance; we are all children of one Mother, our common human nature, and of one Father, the divine source of our being.

 
It may have been that in the first place the great Teacher of the West made His appeal to the "Brahmans" of Jewry, and only when He found that no impression could be made upon their rigid adherence to rules and customs, did he go to the people. There are many Sayings strongly opposed to Legalism, as understood by subsequent Rabbinical orthodoxy, and, as we shall see, there were many mystic circles in the early days, even on what was considered "the ground of Judaism," which not only rejected the authority of the Prophets and Sacred Writings, but even called into question the Torah proper in much of its contents. Moreover, we find that Jesus was, among other things, called by the adherents of orthodox Rabbinism a "Samaritan," a name which connoted "heresy" in general for the strict Jew, but which, as we shall see, seems to the student of history sometimes to stand merely for one who held less exclusive views. 

However all this may be, and whatever was attempted or hoped for at the beginning, the outcome was that until about the end of the first century the Christians regarded the documents of the Palestinian canon as their only Holy Scripture, and when they began to add 

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to this their own sacred writings, they still clung to the "Books" of Jewry, and regarded them with the same enthusiastic reverence as the Rabbis themselves. The good of it was that a strong link of East with West was thus forged; the evil, that the authority of this library of heterogeneous legends and myths, histories and ordinances, the literature of a peculiar people, and the record of their special evolution, was taken indiscriminately as being of equal weight with the more liberal and, so to speak, universalizing views of the new movement. Moreover, every moment of the evolution of the idea of God in Jewry was taken as a full revelation, and the crude and revengeful Yahweh of a semi-barbarous stage equated with the evolved Yahweh of the mystic and humanitarian. 

For good or ill Christianity has to this day been bound up with this record of ancient Judaism. The Ancestors of the Jew have become for the Christian the glorified Patriarchs of humanity, who beyond all other men walked with God. The Biblical history of the Jew is regarded as the making straight in the desert of human immorality and paganism of a highway for the Lord of the Christians. Jesus, who is worshipped by the Christians as God, so much so that the cult of the Father has from the second century been relegated to an entirely subordinate position—Jeschu ha-Notzri was a Jew.

 
On the other hand we have to-day before us in the Jews the strange and profoundly interesting phenomenon of a nation without a country, scattered throughout the world, planted in the midst of every Christian nation, and yet strenuously rejecting the faith which 

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Christendom holds to be the saving grace of humanity. Even as the Brahmanists were the means of sending forth Buddhism into the world, and then, by building up round themselves a stronger wall of separation than ever, cut themselves off from the new endeavour, so were the Jews the means of launching Christianity into the world, and then, by hedging themselves round with an impermeable legal fence, shut themselves entirely from the new movement. In both cases the ancient blood-tie and the idea of a religion for a nation triumphed over time and every other modifying force. 

What, then, can be of profounder interest than to learn what the Jews have said concerning Jesus and Christianity? And yet how few Christians today know anything of this subject; how few have the remotest conception of the traditions of Jewry concerning the founder of their faith! For so many centuries have they regarded Jesus as God, and everything concerning Him, as set apart in the history of the world, as unique and miraculous, that to find Him treated of as a simple man, and that too as one who misled the children of His people, appears to the believer as the rankest blasphemy. Least of all can such a mind realize even faintly that the claims of the Church on behalf of Jesus have ever been thought, and are still thought, by the followers of the Torah to be equally the extreme of blasphemy, most solemnly condemned by the first and foremost of the commandments which the pious Jew must perforce believe came straight from God Himself. 

Astonishing, therefore, as it appears, though Jew and Christian use the same Scripture in common, with regard to their fundamental beliefs they stand over 

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against each other in widest opposition; and the man who sincerely loves his fellows, who feels his kinship with man as man, irrespective of creed, caste, or race, stands aghast at the contradictions revealed by the warring elements in our common human nature, and is dismayed at the infinite opposition of the powers he sees displayed in his brethren and feels potential in himself. 

But, thank God, to-day we are in the early years of the twentieth century, when a deeper sense of human kinship is dawning on the world, when the general idea of God is so evolved that we dare no longer clothe Him in the tawdry rags of human passions, or create Him in the image of our ignorance, as has been mostly the case for so many sorrowful centuries. We are at last beginning to learn that God is at least as highly developed as a wise and just mortal; we refuse to ascribe to Deity a fanaticism and jealousy, an inhumanity and mercilessness, of which we should be heartily ashamed in ourselves. There are many to-day who would think themselves traitors to their humanity, much more to the divinity latent within them, were they to make distinctions between Jew or Christian, Brahman or Buddhist, or between all or any of these and the Confucian, or Mohammedan, or Zoroastrian. They are all our brethren, children of a common parent, these say. Let the dead past bury its dead, and let us follow the true humanity hidden in the hearts of all. 

But how to do this so long as records exist? How to do this while we each glory in the heredity of our bodies, and imagine that it is the spiritual ancestry of 

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our souls? What is it that makes a man cling to the story of his "fathers," fight for it, and identify himself with all its natural imperfections and limitations? Are not these rather, at any rate on the ground of religion, in some fashion the "parents" we are to think little of, to "hate," as one of the "dark sayings" ascribed to the Christ has it? 

Why should a Jew of to-day, why should a Christian of the early years of the twentieth century, identify himself with the hates of years gone by? What have we to do with the bitter controversies of Church Fathers and Talmudic Rabbis; what have we to do with the fierce inhumanity of mediaeval inquisitors, or the retorts of the hate of persecuted Jewry? Why can we not at last forgive and forget in the light of the new humanism which education and mutual intercourse is shedding on the world?

 
Wise indeed are the words: "He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" And yet in theology all the trouble is about this God whom we have not seen. Theology, which ought to be a help and a comfort, becomes the greatest scourge of humanity, for in theology we do not say this or that is true because the present facts of nature and human consciousness testify to its truth, but this is true because many years ago God declared it was so—a thing we can never know on the plane of our present humanity, and a declaration which, as history proves, has led to the bitterest strife and discord in the past, and which is still to-day a serious obstacle to all progress in religion. 

When, then, we take pen in hand to review part of 

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the history of this great strife between Christian and Jew in days gone by, we do so because we have greater faith in present-day humanity than in the inhumanity of the past.. Let us agree to seek an explanation, to confer together, to sink our pride in our own opinion, and discover why we are enemies, one of another, in things theological, while we are friends perchance in things scientific and philosophic. 

But this book is not intended for the man whose "Christianity" is greater than his humanity, nor for him whose "Judaism" is stronger than his love of humankind; it is not meant for the theologian who loves his preconceptions more than truth, or for the fanatic who thinks he is the only chosen of God. It is a book for men and women who have experience of life and human nature, who have the courage to face things as they are; who know that on the one hand the Churches of to-day, no matter how they strive carefully to disguise the fact, are confronted by the gravest possible difficulties as to doctrine, while many of the clergy, owing to a total lack of wise guidance by those in authority, are becoming a law unto themselves, or, because of the terrorism of ecclesiastical laymen, are forced to be hypocrites in the pulpit; and, on the other hand, that Judaism cannot continue in its traditional mould without doing the utmost violence to its intelligence. 

Traditional theology, traditional history, traditional views in general are being questioned on all hands, and there is an. ever-growing conviction that the consciousness and conscience of a Church, whether that Church be the Congregation of Christendom or the Dispersion of 

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Israel, evolve from century to century; that religion is not an exception to the law which is seen to be operative in every department of nature and human activity; and that, therefore, it is incumbent upon all who have the best interests of religion at heart "to maintain the right and duty of [any] Church to restate her belief from time to time, as required by the progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit," as one of the objects of the Churchmen's Union declares. 

To-day, in thinking and progressive Christendom, we have before us the spectacle of the mind and heart of the earnest seeker after truth torn and lacerated by the contradictions and manifest absurdities of much in the tradition of the Faith. The only relief from this most painful state of affairs is to be found in the courageous recognition, that in the early days the marvelous mysteries of the inner life and the inner nature of man were objectivized and historicized by those who either did not understand their true spiritual import, or who deliberately used this method for the instruction of the many who were unable to grasp in their proper terms the spiritual verities of man in his perfectioning. To this we will return at the end of our present enquiry and endeavour to show how even Jew and Christian can learn to understand and respect each other even on the ground of religion. 

And, indeed, the time is very opportune, for some of the preliminary conditions for a better understanding are being prepared. To-day there is being given to the world for the first time what purports to be "a faithful record of the multifarious activity" of the Jewish people. The Israelite has been a mystery to the 

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Christian, a mystery to humanity, from generation to generation; he has lived in our midst, and we have not known him, nay, we have been content to believe anything of him, while he for the most part has been inarticulate as to himself, his hopes, and his fears. The Jewish Encyclopaedia [1] is to remedy this evil, for it sets before itself the endeavour "to give, in systematized, comprehensive, and yet succinct form, a full and accurate account of the history and literature, the social and intellectual life of the Jewish people, of their ethical and religious views, their customs, rites, and traditions in all ages and in all lands." 

Such a work is an undertaking of the most profound interest and importance, and we look forward to its publication with the liveliest anticipation, asking ourselves the questions: What will the Jew in this comprehensive Encyclopaedia have to tell us of Christianity? How will he treat the traditions of his fathers concerning Jesus? To-day we can no longer burn or torture him or confiscate his goods.[2] His account of himself, moreover, is to be given by the best intelligence in him. What, then, will he say concerning Jesus and the long centuries of bitter strife between the Christians and his own people? 

From the three volumes which have so far appeared it is not possible to answer this question; but that it is the question of all questions in Jewish affairs that demands a wise answer, will be seen from our present 

[1] Three of its twelve volumes only have so far appeared. (New York: Funk & Wagnalls; 1901, in progress.) 
[2] Though the East of Europe is not yet quite powerless in this respect. 

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enquiry. To ignore it, or merely to confine it to vague generalities, is of no advantage to the world. 

As the New Testament was added to the Old Covenant Bible by the Church Fathers, and formed the basis of their exegesis, so was the Talmud added to the Torah by the Rabbis, and formed the special study of later Jewry. The Talmud covers the whole period of the early Christian centuries. What has the Talmud to say of Christianity? For as the editors of the Encyclopaedia well say: 

"The Talmud is a world of its own, awaiting the attention of the modern reader. In its encyclopaedic compass it comprises all the variety of thought and opinions, of doctrine and science, accumulated by the Jewish people in the course of more than seven centuries, and formulated for the most part by their teachers. Full of the loftiest spiritual truths and of fantastic imagery, of close and learned legal disquisitions and of extravagant exegesis, of earnest doctrine and of minute casuistry, of accurate knowledge and of popular conceptions, it invites the world of to-day to a closer acquaintance with its voluminous contents." 

To-day it is becoming a canon of historical research that the study of ancient history can hardly ever reward us by the attainment of incontrovertible fact; it can at best only tell us what the opinions of certain writers were about the facts of which we are in search. Many years of study of Christian origins have convinced some of us that it is impossible to be absolutely certain historically of any objective fact relating to the life of Jesus as handed on by tradition. We can only say that this or that seems more likely to have occurred; 

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and here again our preference, if we trace it deep enough, will be found to depend entirely on subjective considerations. Canonical Christianity gradually evolved the mind-bewildering dogma that Jesus was in deed and truth very God of very God, unique and miraculous in every possible respect; and the Church for some seventeen or eighteen centuries has boldly thrown down this challenge to the intellect and experience of humanity. Strong in the strength of her faith in miracle she has triumphed in her theology, and imposed it on the West even until the present day; but at last she has herself developed an intellect which can no longer fully believe in this. A new spirit is at work in her children, who are busily trying to convince their mother that she has been mistaken in many things, and has often misunderstood the wisdom of the Master. 

It is because of this stupendous claim on behalf of a claim which has perhaps astonished none more than Himself, that the Church has brought upon herself a scrutiny into the history of her origins that it is totally unable to bear. Every single assertion about her great Teacher is scrutinized with a minuteness that is not demanded in the case of any other historical problem, and the lay student who follows the researches of specialists meets with so many contradictions in the analysis of the traditional data, and is brought face to face with so many warring opinions, that he is in despair of arriving at any patent historic certainty on any single point in the Evangelical record. Nevertheless he is confronted by the unavoidable fact that a great religion came to birth; and, if he be not an out and out five-sense rationalist, his

 
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only relief lies in the belief that the secret of this birth must have been hidden in a psychic womb, and the real history of the movement must therefore be sought in some great drama that was enacted in the unseen world. 

But the interest in the problem is by no means lessened because of the historical uncertainty; on the contrary it is a thousand-fold increased. The subject can never be made solely a matter of dry historical research; it will always be involved in the most profoundly instructive psychological phenomena, and that too not only in the study of the minds of the ancient writers, but also in the appreciation of the preconceptions of their modern critics. Hence it is that any book dealing with the question of Christian origins is before all others a human document from which, no matter what view a man may take, there is always something to be learned of our complex human nature. 

And with regard to our present enquiry, what can be of greater interest than to observe how that from the same facts, whatever those facts may have been, on the one hand, under the expansive influence of love, wonder, credulity, and intense religious enthusiasm, there was evolved the story of God Himself uniquely incarnate in man; while on the other, from feelings of annoyance, of surprise, and disbelief, and, later, of hate, bred of an equal enthusiasm for religion, there was built up the story of a deceiver of Israel? Here we see evolved, generation by generation, and side by side, absolutely contradictory representations purporting to be the accounts of the doings and sayings of one and the same person.

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The philosophic mind can thus derive much food for reflexion by a comparison of the Christian and Jewish traditions concerning Jesus, and his studies will lead him to understand how that a thing which may be perfectly true psychically or spiritually, and of great help to the religious life, can, when taken out of its proper sphere, and aggressively asserted as a purely physical and historical fact, be turned into a subject of grossest material controversy. Thus it may be that we shall be able to estimate, at their just values, some things which cannot but appear extremely shocking to conventional religious minds, and be able to understand how what was regarded by the one side as a saving truth, could be regarded by the other as a mischievous error; how what was declared by the Christians to be the highest honour, could be regarded by the Jew as a proof of dishonour; how what was believed in by the former as the historic facts of a unique divine revelation, could be treated disparagingly, or with mockery and even humour, by those who held to the tradition of what they believed to have been equally a unique revelation of the Divine.

 
But it is not the doctrinal quarrels which chiefly interest us in studying these traditions of Jewry. What, in our opinion, is of far greater interest is that the Jewish traditions, in spite of some gross contradictions, in the main assign a date to Jesus which widely differs from that of Christian tradition. The main object of this enquiry is to state this problem, to show that in moderate probability for many centuries this was the Jewish tradition as to the date of Jesus, not to attack or defend it. Moreover, we have taken up this subject 

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not only on general grounds of interest, but also for a special reason. 

For this problem, though not as yet even heard of by the general public, is, nevertheless, of great interest to many students of Theosophy, and, therefore, it seems to press, not for solution—for of that there are no immediate hopes—but for a more satisfactory definition than has been as yet accorded to it. 

The problem, then, we are about to attempt more clearly to define is not a metaphysical riddle, not a spiritual enigma, not some moral puzzle (though all of these factors may be made to inhere in it), but a problem of physical fact, well within the middle distance of what is called the historic period. It is none the less on this account of immense importance and interest generally, and especially to thoughtful students of "origins," for it raises no less a question than that of an error in the date of the life of the Founder of Christianity; and that, too, not by the comparatively narrow margin of some seven or eight years (as many have already argued on the sole basis of generally accepted traditional data), but by no less a difference than the (in such a connection) enormous time-gulf of a full century. Briefly, the problem may be popularly summed up in the startling and apparently ludicrous question: Did Jesus live 100 B.C.? 

Now, had all such questioning been confined to a small circle of first-hand investigators of the hidden side of things, or, if we may say so, of the noumena of things historic underlying the blurred records of phenomena handed down to us by tradition, there would be no immediate necessity for the present enquiry; 

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but of late years very positive statements on this matter, based on such methods of research, have been printed and circulated among those interested in such questions; and what, in the opinion of the writer, makes the matter even more pressing, is that these statements are being readily accepted by ever-growing numbers. Now, it goes without saying, that the majority of those who have accepted such statements have done so either for subjective reasons satisfactory to themselves, or from some inner feeling or impression which they have not been at pains to analyse. The state of affairs, then, seems clearly to demand, that as they have heard a little of the matter, they should now hear more, and that the question should be taken out of the primitive crudeness of a choice between two sets of mutually contradictory assertions, and advanced a stage into the subtler regions of critical research. As far as the vast majority of the general public who may chance to stumble on the amazing question which heads our enquiry, is concerned, it is only to be expected that they will answer it offhand not only with an angry No, but with the further reflection that the very formulating of such a query betokens the vagaries of a seriously disordered mind; indeed, at the outset of our investigations we were also ourselves decidedly of the opinion that no mind trained in historic research, even the most cautious, would hesitate for a moment to sum up the probabilities of the accessible evidence as pointing to a distinct negative. But when all is said and done, we find ourselves in a position of doubt between, on the one hand, the seeming impossibility of impugning the genuineness of the Pilate date, and on the other, an

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uncomfortable feeling that the nature of the inconsistencies of the Hebrew tradition rather strengthens than diminishes the possibility that there may be something after all in what appears to be its most insistent factor—namely, that Jesus lived in the days of Jannai.

 
It is not, then, with any hopes of definitely solving the problem that these pages are written, but rather with the object of pointing out the difficulties which have to be surmounted by an unprejudiced historian, before on the one hand he can rule such a question entirely out of court, or on the other can permit himself to give even a qualified recognition to such a revolutionary proposition in the domain of Christian origins; and further, of trying to indicate by an object lesson what appears to me to be the sane attitude of mind with regard to similar problems, which those of us who have had some experience of the possibilities of so-called occult research, but who have not the ability to study such matters at first-hand, should endeavour to hold. 

In what is set forth in this essay, then, I hope most honestly to endeavour to treat the matter without prejudice, save for this general prepossession, that I consider it saner for the only normally endowed individual to hold the mind in suspense over all categorical statements which savour in any way of the nature of "revelation," by whomsoever made, than to believe either on the one hand without investigation, or on the other in despair of arriving at any real bed-rock of facts in the unsubstantial material commonly believed in as history, and thus in either case to crystallise one's mind anew into some "historic" form, on lines of 

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evidence concerning the nature of which we are as yet almost entirely ignorant. 

And, first of all, let me further set forth very briefly some of the considerations which render it impossible for me to assume either a decidedly negative, or even a purely agnostic, attitude with regard to possibilities of research other than those open to normal ability and industry; for if a man would honestly endeavour, in any fashion really satisfactory to himself, to interpret the observed phenomena of life, he is compelled by a necessity greater than himself to take into consideration all the facts of at least his personal experience, no matter how sceptical he may be as to the validity of the experiences of others, or how critical he may be concerning his own. On the other hand, I most freely admit that those who have not had experiences similar to my own, are quite justified in assuming an agnostic attitude with regard to my declarations, but I doubt that it can be considered the nature of a truly scientific mind to deny a priori the possibility of my experience, or merely contemptuously to dismiss the matter without any attempt at investigation. 

It has been my good fortune—for so I regard it—to know a number of people who have their subtler senses, to a greater or less degree, more fully developed than is normally the case, and also to be intimate with a few whose power of response to extra-normal ranges of impression, vibration, or stimulation (or whatever may be the more correct term) may be said to be, as far as my experience goes, highly developed. These latter are my personal friends, whom I have known for many years, and with whom I have been most closely associated. 

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From long knowledge of their characters, often under very trying circumstances, I have no reason to believe they are trying to deceive me, and every reason to believe in their good faith. They certainly would have nothing to gain by practising, if it were possible, any concerted imposition upon me, and everything to lose. For, on the one hand, my devotion to the studies I pursue, and the work upon which I am engaged, is entirely independent of individuals and their pronouncements, and, on the other, my feeling of responsibility to humanity in general is such, that I should not have the slightest hesitation in openly proclaiming a fraud, were I to discover any attempt at it, especially in matters which I hold to be more than ordinarily sacred for all who profess to be lovers of truth and labourers for our common welfare. Nor again is there any question here of their trying to influence some prospective "follower," either of themselves, or of some particular sect, for we are more or less contemporaries in similar studies, and one of our common ideals is the desirability of breaking down the boundary walls of sectarianism. 

Now, this handful of friends of mine who are endowed in this special fashion are unanimous in declaring that "Jeschu," the historical Jesus, lived a century before the traditional date. They, one and all, claim that, if they turn their attention to the matter, they can see the events of those far-off days passing before their mind's eye, or, rather, that for the time being they seem to be in the midst of them, even as we ordinarily observe events in actual life. They state that not only do their individual researches as to this date work out 

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to one and the same result, but that also when several of them have worked together, checking one another, the result has been still the same. 

Familiar as I am with the hypotheses of "collective hallucination," "honest self-deception," and "subjectivism" of all kinds, I have been unable to satisfy myself that any one of these, or any combination of them, will satisfactorily explain the matter. For instance, even granting that certain of the Jewish Jesus stories may have been previously known to some of my colleagues, and that it might be reasonably supposed that this curious tradition had so fascinated their imagination as to become the determining factor in what might be called their subjective dramatising faculty—there are two considerations which, in my opinion, based on my own knowledge and experience, considerably weaken the strength of this sceptical and otherwise apparently reasonable supposition. 

First, the general consideration that my friends differ widely from each other in temperament; they are mostly of different nationalities, and all vary considerably in their objective knowledge of Christian origins, and in their special views of external Christianity. Moreover—though they all sincerely endeavour to be impartial on so important a matter, seeing that it touches the life of a Master for whom they have in a very real sense the deepest reverence—while some of them do not happen to be special followers of this particular Teacher, others, on the contrary, are specially attracted by this Way, and might, therefore, be naturally expected to counteract in the interest of received tradition any tendency to apparent extrava-

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gance, which was not justified by repeated subjective experiences of such a nature as to outweigh their objective training and natural preconceptions. 

Second, the very special consideration, that I have had the opportunity on many occasions of testing the accuracy of some of my colleagues with regard to statements either of a similar nature or of a more personal character. And lest my evidence on this point should be too hastily put out of court by some impatient reader, let me briefly refer to the nature of such verification. 

But before doing so, it would be as well to have it understood that the method of investigation to which I am referring does not bring into consideration any question of trance, either self-induced, or mesmerically or hypnotically effected. As far as I can judge, my colleagues are to all outward seeming in quite their normal state. They go through no outward ceremonies, or internal ones for that matter, nor even any outward preparation but that of assuming a comfortable position; moreover, they not only describe, as each normally has the power of description, what is passing before their inner vision in precisely the same fashion as one would describe some objective scene, but they are frequently as surprised as their auditors that the scenes or events they are attempting to explain are not at all as they expected to see them, and remark on them as critically, and frequently as sceptically, as those who cannot "see" for themselves, but whose knowledge of the subject from objective study may be greater than theirs. 

Now, although it is true that in the majority of 

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cases I have not been able to check their statements, and doubt whether it will ever be possible to do so owing to the lack of objective material, nevertheless, in a number of instances, few when compared with the mass of statements made, but numerous enough in themselves, I have been able to do so. It can, of course, be argued, as has been done in somewhat similar cases, that all of this is merely the bringing into subjective objectivity the imaginative dramatisation of facts which have been normally heard or read, or even momentarily glanced at, and which have sunk beneath the threshold of consciousness, either of that of the seers themselves or of one or other of their auditors, or even some permutation or combination of these. But such an explanation, seems somewhat feeble to one who, like myself, has taken down laboriously dictated passages from MSS., described, for instance, as written in archaic Greek uncials—MSS., the contents of which, as far as I am aware, are not known to exist—passages laboriously dictated letter by letter, by a friend whose knowledge of the language extended hardly beyond the alphabet. Occasionally gaps had to be left for certain forms of letters, with which not only my colleague, but also myself, were previously entirely unacquainted; these gaps had to be filled up afterwards, when the matter was transcribed and broken up into words and sentences, which turned out to be in good construable Greek, the original or copy of which, I am as sure as I can be of anything, neither my colleague nor myself had ever seen physically. Moreover, I have had dates and information given by these methods which I could only verify 

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afterwards by long and patient research, and which, I am convinced, no one but a widely read scholar of classical antiquity could have come across. 

This briefly is the nature of some of the facts of my personal experience in this connection, and while others who have not had such experience may permissibly put it aside, I am unable to do so; and not only am I unable to do so personally, but I further consider it more honest to my readers to admit them to my privacy in this respect, in order that they may be in a better position to estimate the strength or weakness of my preconceptions or prejudices in the treatment of the exceedingly interesting problem which we are about to consider.

 
It will thus be seen at the outset that I am unable, a priori to refuse any validity to these so-called occult methods of research; the ghost of my repeated experience rises up before me and refuses to be laid by an impatient "pshaw." But it by no means follows that, because in some instances I have been enabled to verify the truth of my colleagues' statements, I am therefore justified in accepting the remainder on trust. Of their good faith I have no question, but of the nature of the modus of their "seeing" I am in almost complete ignorance. That it is of a more subtle nature than ordinary sight, or memory, or even imagination, I am very well assured; but that there should be entrusted to an apparently favoured few, and that, too, comparatively suddenly, a means of inerrant knowledge which seemingly reduces the results of the unwearied toil of the most laborious scholars and historians to the most beggarly proportions, I am not prepared at present to 

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accept. It would rather seem more scientific to suppose that, in exact proportion to the startling degree of accuracy that may at times be attained by these subtle methods of research, the errors that may arise can be equally appalling. 

And, indeed, this is borne out not only by the perusal of the little studied, but enormous, literature on such subjects, both of antiquity and of the present day, but also by the repeated declarations of those of my colleagues themselves who have endeavoured to fit themselves for a truly scientific use of such faculties. They all declare that their great aim is to eliminate as far as possible the personal factor; for if, so to say, the glass of their mind-stuff, through which they have to see, is not most accurately polished and adjusted, the things seen are all blurred, or distorted into the most fantastic shapes. This "glass" is in itself of a most subtle nature, most plastic and protean; it changes with every desire, with every hope and fear, with every prejudice and prepossession, with every love and hate. 

Such factors, then, are not unthought of by my colleagues; rather are they most carefully considered. But this being so, it is plain that it is very difficult to discover a sure criterion of accuracy in such subtle research, even for the practised seer, or seeress, who is willing to submit himself to the strictest discipline; while for those of us who have not developed these distinct inner senses, but who desire eventually to arrive at some certain criterion of truth, and who further believe that this is a thing beyond all sensation, we must be content to develop our critical faculties on 

25

the material accessible to us, and do all we can with it before we abandon the subject to "revelation." 

Nor is this latter attitude of mind opposed to the best interests of religion; for, if we are in any way right in our belief, we hold that the workman is only expected to work with his own tools. To use in an expanded sense a phrase of the "Gita," there should be no "confusion of castes"; or to employ the language of one of the Gospel parables, a man should lay out the "talent" entrusted to him to the best advantage, and if he do this, no more for the moment, we may believe, is expected of him. We have all, each in our own way, to labour for the common good; but a workman whose trade is that of objective historical research is rarely trusted with the tools of seership as well, while the seer presumably is not expected to devote his life to historical criticism. Doubtless there may be some who are entrusted with two or more talents of different natures, but so far we have not as yet in our own times come across the desirable blend of a competent seer and a historical critic.

 
We must, then, each of us in his own way, work together for righteousness; hoping that if in the present we employ our single talents rightly, and prove ourselves profitable servants, we may in the future become masters of two or even more "cities," and thus (to adapt the wording of a famous agraphon) having proved ourselves trustworthy in the "lesser," be accorded the opportunity of showing ourselves faithful in the "greater (mysteries)." 

Having, then, prefaced our enquiry by these brief remarks on the nature of the methods of research em- 

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ployed by those whose statements have lately brought this question into prominence in certain circles, we proceed to enumerate the various deposits of objective material which have to be surveyed and analysed, before a mind accustomed to historical study and the weighing of evidence can feel in a position to estimate even approximately the comparative values of the various traditions. 

We have, then, in the first place to consider the Christian tradition that Jesus was born in the reign of Herod, and was put to death under Pontius Pilate, and further, to glance at the material from Pagan sources claimed to substantiate this tradition; in the second to acquaint ourselves with the Talmud Jeschu stories which purport to preserve traditions of the life and date of Jeschu totally at variance on almost every point with the Christian account; further to investigate the Toldoth Jeschu or mediaeval Jewish Jesus legends; and lastly to consider some very curious passages in the writings of the Church Father Epiphanius of Salamis. 

That there are many better equipped and more competent than myself to discuss these difficult subjects, no one is more keenly aware than I am. But seeing that there are no books on the subject readily accessible to the general reader, I may be excused for coming forward, not with the pretension of discovering any facts previously unknown to specialists, but with the very modest ambition of attempting some new combinations of some of the best-known of such facts, while generally indicating some of the outlines of the question for those who cannot find the information for themselves, and of pointing to a few of the difficulties which con- 

27

front a student of the labours of these specialists, in the hope that some greater mind may at no distant date be induced to throw further light on the matter. 

Finally, seeing that in the treatment of the Jewish Jeschu stories many things exceedingly distasteful to lovers of Jesus will have to be referred to, and that generally, in the whole enquiry, many points involved in the most violent controversy will have to be considered, let me say that I would most gladly have avoided them if it were possible. But a greater necessity than personal likes or dislikes compels the setting forth of the whole matter as it is found. We are told that the truth alone shall make us free; and the love of it compels us sometimes to deal with most distasteful matters. Few things can be more unpleasing than to be even the indirect means of giving pain to the sincere lovers of a great Teacher, but the necessities of the enquiry into the question: Did Jesus live 100 B.C.?—primarily involves a discussion of the Jewish Jeschu stories, and it is therefore impossible to omit them.

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III.—EARLIEST EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TO THE RECEIVED DATE.

IN our last chapter we dealt with the date of Jesus according to the accepted canonical sources, and endeavoured to track out the main strength of the tradition preserved by the synoptic writers. The result of this investigation was that the probabilities seemed to be strongly in favour of our possessing a historical fact in the statement that Jesus was a contemporary of Pilate. We now turn to a consideration of the earliest external evidence. 

It has always been an unfailing source of astonishment to the historical investigator of Christian beginnings, that there is not one single word from the pen of any Pagan writer of the first century of our era, which can in any fashion be referred to the marvellous story recounted by the Gospel writers. The very existence of Jesus seems unknown. 

It can hardly be that there were once notices, but that they were subsequently suppressed by Christian copyists because of their hostile or even scandalous nature, for inimical notices of a later date have been preserved. The reason for this silence is doubtless to be discovered in the fact that Christianity was con-

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founded with Judaism, no distinction being made between them in the minds of non-Jewish writers. Converts to Christianity were held to be proselytes to Judaism, and it was a matter of no importance to a Roman what particular sect of Jewry a convert might join. Such a question as what particular phase of Messianism the Judaei might be agitated about never occurred to him; circumcision or uncircumcision had no interest for him. He had a vague idea that the Judaei were a turbulent folk politically dangerous to the state, that they had a strange superstition and were haters of the human race, and there he left it. 

As, then, we can find nothing about the Christians in Pagan writers of the first century, we turn to our earliest notices of the second century as found in the writings of Pliny the Younger, Suetonius and Tacitus.

All three were men who held imperial offices, were well known at court, and presumably had access to the archives of the empire. All three were distinguished writers and historians, and probably all three were personal friends. We know for a fact from his letters that Pliny and Tacitus were intimate friends, and also that Pliny and Suetonius were friendly correspondents. Pliny was born 61 A.D., his greatest literary activity was in the reign of Trajan, but as to whether or no he survived his imperial master (d. 117) we have no information. Tacitus was of the same age as Pliny and survived Trajan, but the exact date of his death is unknown. Suetonius was some ten years younger, being born about 70-71 A.D.; he was private secretary to Hadrian (emp. 117-138 A.D.), but the year of his death also is unknown. 

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If we, then, first turn to the famous letter of Pliny to Trajan and to Trajan's reply ("Letters," x. 96, 97), we shall find much to interest us concerning the Christians of distant Pontus and Bithynia who came up for trial before Pliny as Propraetor, but nothing in either Pliny's report or in the presumed rescript of the Emperor that will give us the smallest clue to the date of Jesus. But even had we found in this correspondence direct or indirect confirmation of the traditional date, we should still have had to consider the arguments of those who have contended either that both pieces are forgeries or that interpolations have been made in the original text.[1] If, however, we have a genuine letter of Pliny before us, and I am inclined to think it largely genuine, it is with very great probability to be assigned to the year 112 A.D.;[2] but as the question of the date and genuineness of this correspondence does not immediately concern us (for in it we can find nothing to help our present investigation), we pass to the statements of Suetonius. 

There are two short sentences in Suetonius' “Lives of the Twelve Caesars “ (from Julius Ceesar to Domitian —i.e., to 96 A.D.), both of which appear to refer to the Christians. In his Life of Claudius (emp. 41-54 A.D.) Suetonius tells us (ch. xxv.), that the Emperor banished the Jews, or certain Jews, from Rome because of the 

[1] On the literature see Platner's (S. B.) “Bibliography of the Younger Pliny “(Western Reserve University, Ohio; 1895); also Wilde (C. G. I.), S.J., “De C. Plinii Caecilii Secundi et Imp. Traiani Epp. mutuis Disputatio" (Leyden; 1889), who, while maintaining their genuineness, gives a summary of contrary opinions.

 
[2] See Mommsen (T.), “Hermes “(1869), iii. 53. 

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persistent disturbances which arose among them “impulsore Chresto" 

For long fierce controversy has raged round these two words, which we may translate by the phrase “at the instigation of Chrestus“ (lit., “Chrestus being the impulsor"). 

It is contended on strong philological grounds that this must refer to a living person.[1] It has thus been supposed by some to refer simply to a Jew called Chrestus who was then living at Rome; but this seems to me to be a very unsatisfactory explanation. For we know that “Chrestus “is still sometimes found in MSS. where we should expect “Christus"; we know further that Tertullian (" Apol.," iii.), at the beginning of the third century, accuses the Romans of so mispronouncing the name of Christ, and from Lactantius ("Institt.," iv. 7), a century later, that it was still a common custom"- 

It is not necessary here to enquire whether this confusion of Christus and Chrestus was really only an ignorant mistake on the part of non-Christians, or whether there may not be some further explanation of the phenomenon;[2] an outsider like Suetonius would anyhow not be likely to know the difference, and so we may very well in this passage take Chrestus for Christus. 

[1] See Smilda (H.), "C. Suetonii Tranquilli Vita Divi Claudii" (Groningen; 1896), p. 124, n.; also Schiller (H.), “Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit" (Gotha; 1883), i. 447, n. 6. 

[2] The most ancient dated Christian inscription (Oct. 1, 318 A.D.) runs "The Lord and Saviour Jesus the Good"—Chrestos, not Christos. This was the legend over the door of a Marcionite Church, and the Marcionites were Anti-Jewish Gnostics, and did not confound their Chrestos with the Jewish Christos (Messiah). 

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But even so we are confronted with the difficulty that according to the received tradition the Christian Christ was never at Rome, and did not survive to the reign of Claudius. 

Moreover, if it be argued that Suetonius does not employ the phrase “impulsore Chresto“ literally, but intended it to carry a metaphorical meaning, even so we have to remember that Christos does not necessarily refer to Jesus. Christos is simply the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, the “anointed," and at this period there were many claiming to be this ''anointed." The reference may then be simply to a Messianic riot of some sort among the Jews.[1]

When, then, we come across the term “Christiani“ in pagan writers referring to disturbances of the first century, we are not to assume offhand that those thus designated must necessarily have been followers of Jesus of Nazareth; they may on the contrary have been simply Jewish Messianists, and most probably of the Zealot type. And this may be argued to be the case when Suetonius, in the second of his famous sentences, in his Life of Nero (emp. 54-68), tells us (c. xvi.) that certain “Christiani “were severely punished or put to the torture; these he characterises as “a class of people who believed in a new and noxious superstition." This might apply to Messianists, for the Romans had been compelled to deal with many disturbances of this nature in Palestine in the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius and Nero, and doubtless tumults of a similar character had arisen among the Jews of the Dispersion as well. 

[1] See Schiller (H.), “Geschichte des römischen Kaiserreichs unter der Begierung des Nero “(Berlin; 1872), p. 434. 

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But we cannot be sure that this is the meaning of Suetonius, even if the question were not rendered far more complicated by what is found in Tacitus on the subject. Least of all can we dispose of the difficulty by assuming that the two sentences in Suetonius are interpolations by a Christian hand, for it is almost impossible to believe that any Christian could have used such phraseology. 

We, therefore, finally turn to the famous passage in Tacitus ("Ann.," xv. 44), where we find it clearly stated that the Christians were so called from a certain Christus who in the reign of Tiberius was put to death under Pontius Pilate. This statement occurs in a brief but graphic account of the horrible cruelties which these Christiani are said to have suffered under Nero. It was in connection with the Great Fire at Rome in 64 A.D. Tacitus will have it that it was commonly believed at the time that the conflagration had been started by the express orders of the Emperor himself. To divert the public mind and remove this imputation, Nero had singled out the Christiani to play the part of scapegoat, seeing that they were held in general detestation for their evil practices. They were accused, put to the torture, condemned and done to death with refinements of cruelty. 
From the time of Gibbon, however, it has been strongly questioned whether at that date Christians were numerous enough at Rome to have been so singled out, and it has been accordingly maintained that the fury of the populace had been vented simply on the Jews in general, seeing that the fire had broken out in their quarter; in short, that Tacitus is in error and has 

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transferred the popular detestation of the Christians in his own day to the times of Nero. 

In this connection we have to recall the short sentence in Suetonius which apparently refers to the same event when we read Tacitus, but which seems to have nothing to do with it when we read Suetonius. We can further speculate as to whether Suetonius may have derived his information from Tacitus, or Tacitus may have embellished the statement of Suetonius.[1] But surely if Suetonius had had the passage of Tacitus before him, and had believed in his great contemporary's view of the matter, he would have made more use of his graphic details? It seems far more probable that Suetonius is reproducing the dry bones of some brief official record, while Tacitus, in working out a character sketch of Nero from insufficient data, and with a strong prejudice against him. has collected together unrelated events, and painted them in with the gaudiest colours of a vivid imagination excited by some tragic stories he had heard concerning the Christians of a later time and of his own day.[2]

But it is not so much the persecution of Christiani 

[1] Schmiedel (art. “Christian, Name of," “Enc. Bib.") gives the date of the passage in Tacitus as 116-117, and of those in Suetonius as 120 A.D., but this is unproved. 

[2] See Bruno Bauer, "Christus und die Caesaren: Der Ursprung des Christenthums aus dem römischen Griechenthum" (Berlin; 1879; 2nd ed.). That in general Tacitus is a historical romancist who has too long fascinated schoolmasters and their pupils by the beauty of his style, and not a sober historian, is an accepted judgment among competent historical scholars. See especially Tarver (J. C.), "Tiberius the Tyrant” (London; 1902); Tarver gives a totally different estimate of Tiberius from the caricature of Tacitus, to whom the good fame of an anti-senatorial emperor was of far less importance than the neat turning of a phrase. 

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under Nero that concerns us, as the explicit statement that the Christiani whom Tacitus has in mind, were the followers of that Christus who was put to death under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius. If this statement is from the pen of Tacitus, and if it was based on information derived from Roman records, there is nothing more to be said. The positive answer to our question has been found, and the accepted date of Jesus stands firm. 

The famous sentence runs as follows: “Auctor nominis ejus Christus Tiberio imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat." 

Let us first of all assume its genuineness, that is that we have before us a sentence written by Tacitus himself. Even so, it is very difficult to persuade oneself that the statement is derived from some official Roman record. On the contrary it has all the appearance of being part of a Christian formula. Surely in an official record we should not have the name of Pilate introduced with no further qualification than simply that of Procurator. Procurator of what? “In the reign of Tiberius under Pilate the Governor" would mean something definite to a Christian, for he would know that the whole story of Christus had to do with Judaea, but to a Roman the phrase would convey nothing of a very precise nature. Later on in the Tacitean narrative it is true we are told the Christian sect arose in Judaea, but on the other hand we must remember that it is just this sudden “Pilate the Governor" which meets us in our investigation of the synoptic tradition, as we showed in our last chapter. It might then (if the sentence is genuine) be of interest to determine the date of writing of this 

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part of the “Annals," but this is impossible to do with any exactitude. It seems, however, probable that it was written subsequently to 117 A.D., a date when the Pilate formula was indubitably firmly established among Christian circles. 

It is also to be noticed that Tacitus seems to know nothing of the name of Jesus; and it is exceedingly improbable that in any official record the proper name of the person would be omitted, and a name used which officials familiar with Palestinian affairs must have known to be a general title which was at that time being claimed by many. Moreover, Jesus was not, according to the canonical tradition, accused of being a claimant to Messiahship, a matter which did not concern the Roman magistrates, but with the political offence of claiming to be King of the Jews. It is then far more probable that Tacitus derived his information from hearsay, and imagined that Christus was the actual and only name of the founder of the Christian sect. 

But all these considerations depend upon the assumption that we have a genuine sentence of Tacitus before us. Now it has been often pointed out that “Tiberio imperitante" is entirely opposed to all Tacitean usage. It cannot be paralleled elsewhere in his vocabulary, and moreover is contrary to regular use. The early Emperors were still regarded solely as heads of the Republic, and as such were called Principes; we should, therefore, expect “Principe Tiberio," or some such combination. Philological arguments, however, as a rule, are seldom very convincing; but it is not very easy to dispose of the present one offhand. The sentence

 
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moreover, has a strong appearance of being inserted in the rest of the narrative. Many, therefore, consider it an interpolation, and some even are of opinion that the whole of the chapter is a fabrication. As Hochart says: “This chapter contains almost as many inexplicable difficulties as it does words."[1]

But this laborious scholar represents the extreme left wing of Tacitean criticism, and valuable as is his work in bringing out the difficulties which have to be surmounted before we can be positive that the whole chapter under discussion—(much more then the sentence which specially interests us)—is not, as he contends,[2] an interpolation, his authority is somewhat weakened by his subsequent lengthy researches,[3] in which he courageously revived the whole question of the authenticity of the famous MS., purporting to contain the last six books of the "Annals" and the first five of the “Histories“ of Tacitus, which was first brought to light about 1429 by Poggio Bracciolini and Niccoli—the sole MS. from which all copies have since been made. Hochart maintains that in the very learned humanist Poggio himself we have a Pseudo-Tacitus, and that in these books of the “Histories “and “Annals “we are therefore face to face with an elaborate pseudepigraph. 

[1] “Annales de la Faculté des Lettres de Bordeaux," 1884, No. 2. 

[2] Hochart (P.), “Études au Sujet de la Persécution des Chrétiens sous Néron" (Paris; 1885). For arguments in favour of its genuineness see Arnold (0. F.), "Die neronische Christenverfolgung" (Leipzig; 1888). 

[3] “De 1'Authenticité des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite“ (Paris; 1890), p. 320; and “Nouvelles Considérations au Sujet des Annales et des Histoires de Tacite" (Paris; 1894), p. 293. 

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On the whole, however, I am inclined to think that the strain of supporting this conclusion is too great for even the most robust scepticism (though it may be that stranger things have happened in literature). In any case it does not affect the main point of our argument —namely, that, admitting the genuineness of the chapter and even of the sentence which specially concerns our enquiry, we cannot be sure that we have in it a confirmation of the canonical tradition of the Pilate date from an independent source. 

We have, then, passed in review our earliest notices in the works of Pagan writers of the second century, and may next turn our attention to that Jewish writer of the first century who above all others might be expected to supply us with the certainty of which we are in search. 

Joseph ben Mattatiah, the priest, or, to use the name he adopted in honour of the Flavian House, Flavius Josephus, was born 37-38 A.D. and survived till at least 100 A.D. His father Matthias was a member of one of the high priestly families, was learned in the Law and held in high repute in Jerusalem. Matthias was thus a contemporary of Pilate, and should therefore have been an eye-witness of those wonderful events in Jerusalem which the Gospel narratives so graphically depict in connection with the death of Jesus; he might even have been expected to have taken part in them; at the very least he could not have failed to have heard of them if they actually occurred in the way in which they are described. 

Josephus, if we can accept his own account of himself, was from his earliest years trained in the Law and had 

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an insatiable love of religious learning. When he was but fourteen years old, he tells us, the high priests and doctors used to come to ask him questions on difficult points of the Torah and its traditions. This may of course refer simply to his wonderful memory, in the exercise of which for the most part such learning consisted; but over and beyond this, we are told, he was most eagerly anxious to know and practise the inner side of religion[1] and busily enquired into the tenets of all the sects of Jewry. For three years he retired to the desert, apparently to some Essene-like community, and submitted himself to its vigorous discipline. In 64 A.D., at the age of twenty-six, we find him at Rome, interested in obtaining the freedom of some friends of his, priests who even in prison refused all Gentile fare and managed to support themselves on the ascetic diet of figs and nuts. 

During the Jewish War Josephus was given the important command of Galilee, and displays an intimate knowledge of the country in which, according to the Gospel tradition, was the chief scene of the ministry of Jesus. As a self-surrendered prisoner in the hands of the Romans he played a very important part in the hastening of the end of the war, and was subsequently held in high estimation by the rulers of the Empire and devoted himself to writing a history of his people and an account of the war. Many additional reasons could be adduced, but enough has already been said to show why Josephus, who might be called the “historian of the Messianic age," is just the very writer who might be expected to tell us something decisive about the Christians and their origins. Nor can the detestation 

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of the Jews for the memory of the “traitor," which makes them still regard every line of his writings about those days with exaggerated suspicion, in any way lessen the authority of Josephus in this respect; for the complaint of Christians against him is not that he misrepresents them or their beginnings, but that he absolutely ignores their existence.

It is true that we have that famous passage in his “Antiquities “(xviii. iii. 3) which amply and doctrinally confirms the Gospel tradition; but how a so transparent forgery could have escaped detection in even the most uncritical age is a marvel. For many years it has been abandoned by all schools of criticism, even the most conservative, and we have only to turn to any modern translation or text to find it definitely characterised as an interpolation or enclosed in brackets.[1] It is not only that we are confronted with upwards of a dozen most potent arguments against its authenticity, but that we have also the explicit statement of Origen in the third century that Josephus (with whose works he was acquainted, and whom he is quoting to prove the historic existence of John the Baptist) had no belief whatever in Jesus being the Christ,[2] whereas the spurious passage states categorically that he was the Christ. Nevertheless, there are still a few daring scholars who, while admitting that it is heavily interpolated, en- 

[1] See, for instance, F. Kaulen's German translation, “Flavius Josephus' jüdische Alterthümer “(Koln; 1892, 3rd ed.), p. 620, n.; and B. Niese's critical text, “Flavii Josephi Opera" (Berlin; 1890), iv. pp. 151,152. The most recent French translation, edited by T. Reinach, “OEuvres complètes de Flavius Josèphe “'(Paris; 1900), has so far given us only five books of the “Antiquities." 

[2] Origen," Contra Celsum," i, 47. 

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deavour to save some fragments of the passage,[1] and even one stalwart apologist who maintains its complete genuineness.[2] 

But if there be anything certain in the whole field of criticism, it is that this passage was never written by Josephus. And this being so, the reference (in “Antiqq.," xx. ix. 1) to a certain Jacobus, “the brother of Jesus called Christ," constitutes the only reference to Jesus in the voluminous writings of Josephus which Origen could discover; but unfortunately the statement of Origen casts grave doubts upon the words “brother of Jesus called Christ," for he twice[3] declares that Josephus describes the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple as a divine retribution for the murder of this James—a most highly improbable opinion to father upon Josephus, and no trace of which is to be found either in the passage in which the phrase we are considering now stands, or in the rest of Josephus' works. It is therefore exceedingly probable that this epithet was taken from Origen and incorporated into the text of Josephus by later scribes. These being the only references that can be adduced in the voluminous writings of the Jewish historian, it follows that Josephus knows nothing of “the Christ," though he knows much of various “Christs." 

Though the argument from silence must in all cases be received with the greatest caution, it cannot fail 

[1] See Müller (G. A.), “Christus bei Josephus Flavius “(Innsbruck; 1895, 2nd ed.); and Reinach (T.), "Rev. Étud. Juives," xxxv. 1-18. 

[2] Bole (F.), “Flavius Josephus uber Christus und die Christen" (Brixen; 1896). 

[3] Origen, "Contra Celsum," i. 47, ii. 13. 

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deeply to impress us in the case of Joseph ben Mattatiah; for it is almost humanly impossible that, if the details of the Christian tradition and the affairs of the Christian world had been historically in the time of Josephus just what they are stated to have been in our canonical documents, the historian of that special age and country could have kept silence concerning them. If these things were just as they are said to have been, there is no convincing reason that we can assign for the silence of a man who, like Josephus, was in a most admirable position to know about them. 

Josephus had been trained in an Essene-like community and seems even to have gone to Rome in “Essene“ interests. He is just the man to tell us of those early Christian communities which were formed on models closely resembling those of the Pious and the Poor and the Naked. He goes to Rome just when Paul is also said to have been there, and no doubt was there, and just about the time when, if we are to believe Tacitus, the Christiani were singled out for public persecution and cruel martyrdom by Imperial tyranny; and yet he knows nothing of all this. With regard to the ministry and death of Jesus it might be said that all this had happened before Josephus was born, though surely it might be expected that his father would have told him of such stirring, nay overwhelming, events; still it is strange that with regard to the gruesome tragedy at Rome he apparently knows not even so much as of a community of Christians. 

Was, then, the story in those days other than we have it now? Were the origins of Christianity, as we have elsewhere suggested, hidden among the pledged 

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members of the mystic communities and ascetic orders, and only imperfectly known among their outer circles, which were also largely held to secrecy? Was it all of older date than we are accustomed to regard it? Who shall say with utter confidence? The silence of Josephus permits us to speculate, but gives us no answer to our questionings. It may be even that some items of what the Jewish writer tells us of other leaders of sects and claimants to Messiahship may have been conflated and transformed later on by our Gospel writers or their immediate predecessors, and so used to fill out the story of a life for which they had but little historic data. But this is a delicate and obscure subject of research which requires new treatment.[1] 

We thus see that, as far as our present enquiry is concerned, we can obtain no positive help from any Pagan or Jewish writer of the first century, or for that matter of the first quarter of the second. It remains to enquire whether from the fragments of extra-canonical gospels or the remains of Old-Christian traditions and from the apocrypha generally we can get any help. 

If the general learned opinion on this literature, or at any rate on all of it which in any way makes mention of the Herod or Pilate dates, holds good, namely, that it is later than our Gospels, then we have nothing to help us. 
But the recent brilliant study of Conrady[2] on the "Book “Book of James," commonly called the “Protevangelium" 

[1] See the attempt of Solomon (G.), “The Jesus of History and the Jesus of Tradition Identified" (London; 1880). 

[2] Conrady (L.), “Die Quelle der kanonischen Kindheitsgeschichte Jesus'" (Gottingen; 1900). 

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(the name given to it by Postel, who first brought it to light in the sixteenth century), the original of which is already admitted by some to reach back as far as the middle of the second century, opens up a question which, if answered in the affirmative, “would mean a complete revolution of our views on the canon and of the origins of Christianity."[1] Conrady believes that he has demonstrated that in some of their details of the history of the infancy our first and third evangelists borrow from a common source, and that this source is no other than our extant "Protevangelium." He would have it that this “Book of James" is of Egyptian origin. The author was not a Jewish Christian, but most probably an Egyptian and an Alexandrian. It is to be hoped that Conrady may follow up his excursion into this field of investigation by other researches of a similar nature; and since he has raised the presumption that we have in the “Protevangelium“ one of the “many" Gospel writings referred to in the introduction of the third Gospel, we may glance through the literature,[2] other than that of the distinct Pilate apocrypha, for a reference to Pilate. 

This we shall find only in the so-called "Gospel of Peter," a considerable fragment of which relating to the passion and death of Jesus was discovered in a tomb at Akhmim in 1885 and first published in 1892. Much has been written during the last ten years on this interesting 

[1] See Nieliol's review of Conrady's (book in "The Critical Review “(London), January, 1902. 

[2] See Preuschen (E.), “Antilegomena: Die Reste der ausser-kanoischen Evangelien und urchristlichen Ueberlieferungen ' (Giessen; 1901). 

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fragment, but the general opinion of scholars is that the writer shows a knowledge of all our four Gospels. If, however, the original of this fragment could be shown to be older than our Gospels (a most difficult undertaking), it would also rank among the "many." Although agreeing substantially with our Gospel accounts, it differs very considerably in its more abundant details from the simple narrative of the “common document," and is strongly Docetic, that is to say, represents Jesus as suffering only in appearance. Its Gnostic character, however, in this respect (for as I have shown elsewhere[1] the origin of Docetism does not depend on purely doctrinal considerations) does not, in my opinion, necessarily point to a late date, though its elaboration of detail seems to argue a later development of tradition as compared with the simplicity of the narrative of the "common document." On the other hand it may be that the "common document" had already begun the process of "selection." 

Finally in this connection we may have to pay more attention to the so-called "Gospel of Nicodemus “or "Acts of Pilate," the first thirteen chapters of which describe the trial of Jesus before Pilate, the condemnation, crucifixion and resurrection, substantially in agreement with our canonical Gospels, but containing many other details not found elsewhere. Though the present form of these Acts is not earlier than the fourth century, the question of there being what the Germans call a Grundschrift of a comparatively very early date underlying them has recently been raised by Rendel Harris in an exceed- 

[1] "Fragments of a Faith Forgotten" (London; 1900), p. 427

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ingly interesting monograph,[1] in which he pleads for a new investigation of the subject, on the ground that he has detected traces of a Homeric Gospel under the Greek text of our "Acta," that is to say a Gospel story patched together out of verses of the great Homeric literature. Among many other points of interest, he thinks he has shown that in the passage where Joseph begs the body of Jesus from Pilate, "that Pilate has been turned into Achilles, that Joseph is the good old Priam, begging the body of Hector, and that the whole story is based upon the dramatic passages of the twenty-fourth book of the Iliad"; and in favour of his hypothesis it must be said that we certainly know from the Sibylline literature that Jewish writers long prior to the first century of our era used Homeric verses for similar purposes. 

Professor Harris thus contends that such a Homeric Gospel may have existed prior to Justin Martyr (c, 150), and so this famous apologist, when in his “Dialogue with Trypho “(cc. 102, 103) he twice refers to certain "Acts of Pilate," may be saved from the now generally endorsed imputation that his wish solely was father - to his statement. Justin may have had this much ground for his assertion that there was in existence the Grundschrift of our "Acta," though of course these "Acta" were by no means the official Roman reports which he seems to have believed them to be. 

The subject is a fascinating one, but will not help us much in our present enquiry; for—granting the existence of the underlying document, and also its Homeric 

[1] Rendel Harris (J.), “The Homeric Centones and the Acts of Pilate" (London; 1898). 

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nature, thus accounting for its strange conflation of miracles and events (separately recorded in our canonical Gospels), by the necessity of the vague and general nature of the verse-tags which had to be employed by the Centonist—it argues a later date than our Gospels.[1]

It will thus be seen that our review of the earliest external evidence for the date of Jesus, even when we take into consideration the most unusual lines of research, leaves us with nothing so distinct as does the result of the analysis of the tradition of our canonical Gospels. The argument for the authenticity of the Pilate tradition centres round the obscure question of the date of the "common document." The earlier we can push this back the greater is the probability of the genuineness of the tradition. 

We will next turn our attention to the Talmud Jeschu stories, but before doing so it will be advisable to give the general reader some idea of the Talmud itself, and to append some further necessary preliminaries. 

[1] It is to be hoped, however, that the new edition of the “Acts of Pilate," which is being prepared by Dr. Ernst von Dobschütz for the great Berlin collection of early Church documents, will throw some new light on the subject.

V.—THE TALMUD IN HISTORY

"FROM Justinian, who, as early as 553 A.D., honoured it by a specia1 interdictory Novella, down to Clement VIII., and later—a space of over a thousand years— both the secular and the spiritual powers, kings and emperors, popes and anti-popes, vied with each other in hurling anathemas and bulls and edicts of wholesale confiscation and conflagration against this luckless book." 

So writes Immanuel Deutsch, and truly, in his graphic and romantic panegyric, which for the first time gave the English-reading public a reasonable account of the Talmud and its history.[1] 

Although it has been lately disputed [2] whether it is the Talmud --expressly to which Justinian referred in his edict “Concerning the Jews," of February 13, 553, it seems highly probable that Deutsch is correct. By this outrageous Novella the wretched Hebrews were 

[1] Deutsch (I.)., art. "What is the Talmud?"—in "The Quarterly Review” (London), Oct. 1867, pp. 417-464.

 
[2] Popper (W.), "The Censorship of Hebrew Books" (New York; 1899), p. 3. This is the best monograph which has so far appeared on the subject of Talmud persecutions and censorship. An excellent bibliography of the literature is given on pp. iv. and v. 

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permitted to use only a Greek or Latin translation of the Torah in their synagogues. They were strictly forbidden to read the Law in Hebrew, and, above all things, they were prohibited from using what is called the "second edition"  (secunda editio), which was evidently also written in Hebrew or Aramaic. This "second edition “can hardly mean anything else than the Mishna and its completions, for the Greek equivalent of mishna was de¢uterwsiV , generally taken by those imperfectly acquainted with Hebrew to signify some “second rank” or form of the Law, instead of "learning" in the secondary sense of "repetition." 

Such impolitic tyranny in those darkest days of narrowest ecclesiasticism, which had succeeded in closing every school of philosophy and learning in the Christian world, could not but make the Talmud all the more dear to the Jews. The more they were persecuted for their faith's sake, the more desperately they clung to the immediate cause of their martyrdom —that tradition in which no Christian had part or lot. The Talmud thus gradually became more precious to the Jew than even the Torah itself, which, by translation, had become the common property of the Gentiles, few of whom at this time in the West could read a word of the ancient Hebrew original. 

Thus ignorance bred fear and fostered hate, and already, by the eleventh century, we find the passions of a fierce fanaticism let loose against the luckless Hebrews, when the Crusaders, in their wild rush towards Constantinople, left behind them a path of desolation for the Dispersion of Israel in every land they traversed, marked out by blood and fire, by the 

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bodies of murdered little ones and smouldering piles of Hebrew rolls. It is said that, after this avalanche of ruthless destruction, in many towns scarce a single prayer-book remained for the use of a whole synagogue. There is another side to the romance of the Crusades, of which our school-books breathe no word; not infrequently they degenerated into pure Jew-hunts, where hecatombs of Hebrews paid ever anew the ancient debt of one slain Christ, whose ever-living heart, we may well believe, felt keener torture at the savagery of His self-styled followers than did even the bodies of the victims of their hate. 

But it was not till the thirteenth century, which witnessed the founding of the Mendicant Orders, and the establishment of that instrument of terror known as the Holy Inquisition, that we meet with what may be called the organised official destruction of Hebrew books, and the saddest part of the sad story is that in almost every instance it was a Jew who brought masters to a crisis, and procured the deliverance of the books of his race to the flames. 

The first official burning of Hebrew books took place in 1233, at Montpellier, where a Jew, a fanatical Antimaimonist, persuaded the Dominicans and Franciscans of the Inquisition, who knew nothing of this purely internal struggle between conservatism and liberalism in Jewry, to commit to the flames the works of the great Maimonides. 

In the same year, at Paris, no less than 12,000 volumes of the Talmud were burned. Converts gave information to those who could not read a single line of the great literature which they so madly longed to 

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extirpate, and eagerly pointed out the hiding places where the precious rolls of their former co-religionists were stored away. 

In 1236, Donin, of Rochelle, in France, a convert baptised under the name of Nicolas, laid thirty-five formal charges against the Talmud before Pope Gregory IX.[1]; the chief of which was that in many passages it used blasphemous language in speaking of Jesus and Mary. A few years later (May or June, 1239), Gregory issued a stringent decree to all rulers, temporal and spiritual, in France, England, Castile, Aragon and Portugal, commanding them to seize every copy of the Talmud upon which they could lay hands. Whereupon in France a formal trial was held before a commission consisting of two Bishops and a Dominican, not one of whom knew a single word of Hebrew, and the Talmud was incontinently condemned to the flames. The Jews, however, appealed against this cruel decree with such energy that the carrying out of the sentence was postponed, and a new trial ordered, at which Nicolas himself was the accuser, while four French Rabbis undertook the defence, led by R. Jehiel of Paris. 

"After seeking to invalidate most of the charges, the Rabbis turned to the most important point, and acknowledged that the Talmud, contained slighting references to a certain Jesus. But, by taking into account the dates mentioned in the Talmud, and other 

[1] He is said to have done so in revenge for having been excommunicated by the French Rabbis because of the doubts he had expressed concerning the validity of the Talmudic tradition. See art. "Apostasy and Apostates from Judaism" in the "Jewish Encyclopedia," on which I have drawn for some of the following details. 

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evidence furnished by the early Church Fathers themselves they attempted to show that another Jesus, who, had lived at some time earlier than Jesus of Nazareth was the subject of these notices."[l] 

It is hardly necessary to add, however, that the unfortunate Rabbis failed to convince the commission. The Talmud was again formally condemned. No less than twenty waggon-loads of MSS. were collected in Paris and on June 17, 1244, a huge auto-da-fé of some 17,000 or 18,000 volumes lit up a conflagration, the insatiable flames of which spread rapidly to every Jewish home throughout the Holy Roman Empire and devoured that treasure of tradition which the Rabbis held dearer than their lives. 

With the condemnation of the Talmud all the rest of Hebrew literature was practically involved. Thus in 1263 we find another convert, baptised under the name of Paul Christian (Pablo Christiani or Fra Paolo, of Montpellier), inducing the Pope, Clement IV, to issue an order that all Hebrew MSS. of every kind in Aragon should be collected for examination, and if they were found to contain any passages obnoxious to Christians, they should be destroyed or strictly expurgated, while in 1266, also at Barcelona, we meet with a commission assembled for the same purpose.

In England, however, the Talmud was apparently not burnt, for a simpler means of suppressing it was found in the wholesale expulsion of the Jews, a method

[1] Popper, op. cit. p.10. But this apology can be as little sustained as can the evasion of Wülfer, Lippmann and Isaac Abarbanel, that the Jesus of the Talmud and the Jesus of the Toldoth were different persons. See Kraus, “Das Leben Jesu” (Berlin; 1902), pp. 8, 9, 273, n. 4. 

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resorted to in other countries as well. Nevertheless, we find Honorius IV., in 1286, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury, warning him against that “damnable book," and strictly admonishing him that he should allow no one to read it (meaning doubtless that no Jew should be permitted to read it, for the Christians, in consequence of their ignorance of Hebrew, could not) —for in the Pope's opinion “all evils flow from it," a phrase which suggests that the influence of the Talmud teachings and traditions was not confined to Jewry. 

In the midst of all this hurly-burly of anathema one Pope alone, Clement V., showed some signs of common-sense. Before condemning the Talmud on sight, Clement desired to know something about it, and in 1307 proposed that chairs should be founded for the study of Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic in the Universities of Paris, Salamanca, Bologna and Oxford. But this liberal proposal came to nothing, and though we are told that somewhat of a lull succeeded to the most acute stage of Talmud persecution from 1232 to 1322, it was owing probably to the great secrecy to which the Jews were compelled to resort in multiplying and transmitting the remnants of their literature from generation to generation, rather than to any greater toleration on the part of the authorities.

In Spain, indeed, things were still at fever heat, where Solomon Levi of Burgos, who was formerly a Rabbi and pillar of Jewish orthodoxy familiar with the great Talmudists of the age, but who became a Christian under the name of Paul de Santa Maria, and quickly rose to the position of Archbishop of Carthagena, devoted his great talent and learning to overthrow 

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Judaism. His disciple, Joshua ben Joseph ibn Vives of Lorca, who also became a Christian under the name of Geronimo de Santa Fé, accused the Talmud of teaching blasphemy and of every hostility against the Christians, after he had unsuccessfully conducted a debate concerning the Messianity of Jesus for no less than twenty-two months with some of the learned Rabbis of Aragon (1413-1414). He is known to the Jews as "The Blasphemer." 
Even the prayer-books of the Hebrews could not escape. Already in 1336 Abner of Burgos (Alfonso Burgensis), a Talmudic scholar, philosopher and physician, who is said to have turned Christian, “to become a sacristan of a wealthy church of Valladolid," wrote bitter attacks against his former co-religionists, declaring that one of their daily prayers, “Birkat ha-Minim," was directed against the Christians; whereupon Alfonso XI. issued an edict forbidding them to recite this prayer. 

We find subsequently that even the simplest Hebrew prayers could not escape the subtle refinements of accusation brought against them by inquisitorial informers. Thus we learn that in Germany a certain Pessach, who on conversion took the name of Peter in 1399, declared that the Jewish prayer-books [1] secretly contained attacks on Christianity. The following is a curious instance of this rage of accusation. 

In one of the most famous and apparently the most innocent prayers of the nation ("'Alenu"), which extols the omnipotence of God on earth, there is a passage which 

[1] Dalman gives the original text of sixteen subsequently expurgated prayers from the Liturgy of the Synagogue, 

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runs: “He hath not made our portion like theirs nor our lot like that of all their multitudes. For they worship and bow down before idols and vanities." The words “and vanities“ stand in unpointed Hebrew W R K; by one of the well-known methods of kabalistic computation the sum of these number-letters = 316, precisely the same as the sum of the letters J Sh U or Jeschu, the Talmudic form of Jesus! 

Pessach would thus have it that even the most innocent-looking prayers of Jewry contained attacks on Christianity, and it is in truth marvellous that in the face of such bitter and relentless persecution a scrap of Jewish writing remained. Indeed, had it not been for the inexhaustible sources of replenishment in the East, and the wonderful memory of the Rabbis, the triumph of the Destroyer would have been complete and the Talmud wiped from off the face of the earth by the Inquisition. 

With the age of the Renaissance, however, and the enormous impetus given to liberal studies by the invention of printing,[1] some respite was given to the long-suffering Talmud, but by no means as yet was liberty assured; for though the unfortunate Jews had no longer to fear the wholesale destruction of their books in all countries, they were still subjected to the galling tyranny of the official censor. 

Indeed, even in this age of comparative enlightenment the bitterest foes of the Talmud still lived in hopes of reviving the old campaign of extermination with all its terrors, and it is sad to record that the history of nearly 

[1] The first Hebrew book printed was probably a commentary of Rashi on the Torah (February 17th, 1475). 

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all the troubles of the second stage of persecution is still almost entirely “a history of apostates." [l] 

Not to speak of the bitter enmity of Victor von Karhen,[2] a German Jew who became a Dominican in the early part of the sixteenth century, the most notorious name is that of Joseph (baptised as Johann) Pfefferkorn of Moravia, a name despised above all others by the Jews even in the present day.[3] Pfefferkorn also joined the Dominicans, and in 1507 published his first attack in a fierce tract, “Der Judenspiegel," an onslaught which was intended to culminate in one fatal blow to Judaism, namely the confiscation of all Talmudic writings. And indeed Pfefferkorn at first succeeded beyond all expectation, for the immediate result of his agitation was to induce the Emperor Maximilian to revive the time-honoured decree of confiscation, which was eagerly carried out under Pfefferkorn's supervision, who knew only too well where he could lay hands on the precious books of his former co-religionists. But this time, as Deutsch says, “a conflagration of a very different kind ensued." Reuchlin, the distinguished Humanist, the most famous Hebraist and Hellenist of the time, was appointed to sit on the commission. His enlightened mind refused to condemn the Talmud without a most searching enquiry. He accordingly set himself to work in his painstaking fashion to make himself 

[1] Popper, op. cit., p. 22.

 
[2] So Deutsch; but Karben in “Jewish Encyclopaedia." 

[3] The “Jewish Encyclopaedia “(art. sup, cit.) says that he was “a butcher by trade, a man of little learning and of immoral conduct, convicted of burglary and condemned to imprisonment, but released upon payment of a fine." 

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master of its voluminous contents. The Talmud had at last found an impartial mind among its judges; nay, it had found a courageous defender, for in October 1510, Reuchlin issued his famous answer to Pfefferkorn's onslaught, and boldly declared himself in favour of the book. 

Hereupon ensued a fierce battle, in which the massed hosts of official theology and obscurantism were marshalled against the courageous champion of enlightened toleration and elementary justice. Europe was flooded with pamphlets, and faculty vied with faculty in angry condemnation of Reuchlin. Without exception, every university was against him. Indeed the faculty of Mainz, among other egregious notions, put forward the ludicrous proposition, that as the Hebrew Bible did not agree with the Vulgate (Jerome's Latin translation), the Hebrew must manifestly have been falsified in many places by the malevolence of the Jews, and, in particular, the wording of the "original references" to Jesus in the Old Testament had been deliberately altered. 

Had Reuchlin stood absolutely alone he would have been overwhelmed by the first onrush of his countless foes; but to their lasting credit there rallied to his banner a chosen band of enlightened and courageous friends, the Humanists, who, though they were clubbed "Talmutphili," declared themselves to be the “Knights of the Holy Ghost," and the “Hosts of Pallas Athene," fighting for the credit of Christianity and not for the Talmud as Talmud. 

At first the Pope, Leo X., favoured Reuchlin, but the outcry was so fierce that he finally weakened, and in 1516 sought a way out of the hurly-burly by promulgat- 

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ing a Bull that in future no book should issue from the press without previous submission to the official censor. The germ of the “Index Expurgatorius"—"Index Librorum Prohibitorum"—had been conceived.[1] 

But before this instrument of emasculation and prohibition could be brought into play, the first complete edition of the Talmud had escaped the censor, and had already been printed at Venice in 1520, at the very time when the knell of much in the old order of things was being sounded in Germany, and Luther was burning the Pope's bull at Wittenberg. 

This much, at least, was won by the courage of Reuchlin and those who rallied round him—the Talmud had escaped the fire. Not only so, but many began to study the treasures of Jewish literature for themselves, and in Italy there ensued the greatest industry in printing Hebrew books; indeed, some writers have called this the “Golden Age “of the Talmud. It was a time when the greatest minds among the Humanists were drinking deeply of “Jewish philosophy," the age of revived Kabalism and mystic culture. 

But it was not to be expected that the fierce spirit of persecution would quietly yield to the gentler influences at work, and be content with censorship alone; nay, these humanising tendencies exasperated it to such a pitch, that in 1550 Cardinal Caraffa, the Inquisitor-General, and—in this connection, one need hardly add —a Dominican, almost succeeded in lighting up the Talmud fires again throughout the land. He procured a Bull from the Pope repealing all previous permission 

[1] From that day onwards the Talmud has always been on the Index, and is still on the Index of Leo XIII. 

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to study the Talmud, and bursting forth with fury at the head of his minions, seized every copy he could find in Rome and committed it to the flames. 

In Italy also Sixtus of Sienna, a converted Jew, supported by Pope Paul IV., incited the mob to burn every copy of the Talmud upon which they could lay hands. In Cremona, Vittorio Eliano, also a convert, testified against the Talmud, and 10,000 to 12,000 Hebrew books were burned in 1559. His brother Solotiron Romano also procured the burning of many thousands of Hebrew rolls. In the same year every Hebrew book in the city of Prague was confiscated. 

But, fortunately, this was the expiring flicker of the life of the Destroyer in that form, and in the future we hear of no more burnings. The Talmud was hereafter committed to the tender mercies of an ignorant censorship, and therewith of a deliberate self-censorship, whereby every sentence which might by any means be thought to refer to Christianity was omitted by the Jews themselves, so that their books might escape the sad disfigurement of slap-dash obliteration. There was much expurgation by ignorant heads and careless hands, till gradually lists of passages were drawn up, mostly by converts, to guide the unlearned officials, and finally, in 1578, the "licensed" Basle edition of the Talmud was issued—in conformity with the censorship and the decisions of the egregious Council of Trent—on which nearly every subsequent edition of the book has been based. Not only so, but we find the Rabbis themselves forming their own censorship committees [l] to prevent 

[1] In 1631 the Jews held a synod at Petrikau, in Poland, and decided to leave out all such passages for fear of the 
[footnote continued on page 98]
Christians. Nevertheless, we find that the Amsterdam edition of the Talmud (1644-1648) was not bowdlerised.

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any book being printed by their co-religionists which might bring down the wrath of the authorities upon their long-suffering communities. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries thus witnessed the circulation of an emasculated and defaced Hebrew literature, from which not only was the root of offence to Christian susceptibilities cut out, but much that was entirely innocent of any offence whatever.[1] The nature of this ridiculous and hysterical susceptibility to find offence in the simplest words and phrases may be seen from Deutsch's humorous word-picture. 

“In the Basle edition of 1578—. . . which has remained the standard edition almost ever since—that amazing creature, the Censor, stepped in. In his anxiety to protect the ' Faith' from all and every danger —for the Talmud was supposed to hide bitter things against Christianity under the most innocent words and phrases—this official did very wonderful things. When he, for example, found some ancient Roman in the book swearing by the Capitol or by Jupiter 'of Rome,' his mind instantly misgave him. Surely this Roman must be a Christian, the Capitol the Vatican, Jupiter the Pope. And forthwith he struck out Rome and substituted any other place he could think of. A favourite spot seems to have been Persia, sometimes it was Aram and Babel. So that this worthy Roman may be found unto this day swearing by the Capitol of Persia or by the Jupiter of Aram and Babel. But wherever the word 'Gentile' occurred, the Censor was seized with the 

[1] See Popper, op. cit., chh. viii.-xii. 

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most frantic terrors. A 'Gentile' could not possibly be aught but Christian; whether he lived in India or in Athens, in Rome or in Canaan; whether he was a good Gentile—and there are many such in the Talmud— or a wicked one. Instantly he christened him, and christened him as fancy moved him, an 'Egyptian,' an 'Aramaean,' an 'Amalekite,' an 'Arab,' a 'Negro '; sometimes a whole 'people.' We are speaking strictly to the letter. All this is extant in our best editions." 

"Deutsch himself was a Jew converted to Christianity when he wrote his famous article in 1867, yet how marvellously does he differ from his predecessors of the Middle Ages, who led the onslaught on the Talmud, and expressly singled out the subsequently expurgated passages for the main strength of their attack! Deutsch passes them by with scarcely a notice, and seems never to have realised that they were the main cause of all the trouble, and we have the new and pleasant spectacle of a converted Jew penning the most brilliant defence of the Talmud which has ever been written outside the circles of orthodox Jewry." 

So I wrote when this chapter appeared as an article in "The Theosophical Review" (Oct. 1902); I had then no doubt on the subject, because of the frequent use of the words “our Lord” throughout this famous defence. What, then, was my surprise to find that an old friend of Deutsch's denied absolutely that he was a convert, and asserted that the editor of the “Quarterly," much to Deutsch's annoyance, had deliberately changed “Jesus” into “our Lord’ throughout the article. The “Jewish Chronicle" (Nov. 21, 1902) also pointed out that I was mistaken in describing Deutsch as a convert to

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Christianity. Whereupon I wrote to the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Hermann Adler, who courteously replied as follows: “I was very intimate with the late Immanuel Deutsch, and can state unhesitatingly that he was deeply annoyed that in the first edition of the ' Quarterly Review ' Jesus was spoken of as 'our Lord.' This was changed in the subsequent seven or eight editions of that number of the 'Quarterly.' It so appears, however, in the republication of the article in the 'Literary Remains of the late Immanuel Deutsch' (Murray; 1874)." 

The self-constituted censor, therefore, had not ceased his activity even in 1867; it is a matter of profound interest to notice how morality in theology hangs behind morality in ordinary affairs, even in our own day.

But to the student of history and the watcher of the fates of nations, the proceedings of the ignorant Talmud censor are of profound interest. It would almost seem as though, by a curious turning of the karmic wheel, the very methods used deliberately by the Jews themselves in the far-off days of Talmud genesis had come back to vex the Jewish soul against its will. How often in those days of bitter religio-political strife had they not substituted Babylon or Edom for Rome, and hidden their real thought and feeling under glyph and imagery! And now what they had done willingly, and so vexed the soul of history, was being done to them unwillingly by the hands of the dull censor. "Who knows what a thorough study of the Talmud from, this point of view may not yet reveal of hidden history? For, as Deutsch says, and in its wider sense it remains true until the present day: 

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"We have sought far and near for some special book on the subject, which we might make the theme of our observations—a book that should not merely be a garbled translation of a certain twelfth century ' Introduction,' interspersed with vituperations and supplemented with blunders, but which from the platform of modern culture should pronounce impartially upon a production which, if for no other reason, claims respect through age—a book that would lead us through the stupendous labyrinths of fact, and thought, and fancy, of which the Talmud consists, that would rejoice even, in hieroglyphical fairy-lore, in abstruse propositions and syllogisms, that could forgive wild bursts of passion, and not judge harshly and hastily of things, the real meaning of which may have had to be hidden under the fool's cap and bells." 

We have italicised the words which point to a most important element in the Talmud, especially in connection with our present enquiry, an element of concealment, the secrets of which even a text in which all the expurgated passages have been replaced, and the whole critically restored to its original purity, would in nowise reveal to the pure objectivist. This element will doubtless for many a day to come make the Talmud in many passages as puzzling a study as those strange books of alchemy to which Reuchlin so aptly compared it. But in spite of its great difficulty, it cannot but be that with a deeper study of this element, and perhaps some day with the help of those methods of a scientific subjectivism to which we referred in our Introduction, some clear light may at no distant date be thrown, even on some of those passages which the 

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hate and fear of centuries have singled out as referring to Jesus in the Talmud. 

Whether or not the present praiseworthy attempt, as set forth in the pages of the “Jewish Encyclopaedia," at last to supply the thinking public with a reliable account of the Talmud in its multifarious aspects, will cover the whole ground and boldly face the most difficult of all its problems without fear or prejudice, remains to be seen. Unknown as this ancient controversy is to the English-speaking world, it is not unknown on the Continent even in our own day. Indeed, in Russia and Austria it still enters into the deplorable Anti-semitic question. Thus we find a Professor of Theology and Lecturer in Hebrew of the Imperial Roman Catholic Academy[1] at St. Petersburg, in a recent work, [2] raising the whole question again, not in the interests of science and history, but in the interests of theology and Anti-semitic propaganda. In it he brings forward a number of the Jesus passages in the Talmud, and in his concluding words introduces us to a thoroughly mediaeval state of affairs. He tells us that all who had heard of the publication of his book told him with one voice that he would be put away by the Jews. Some tried to dissuade him by reminding him of the fate of Professor Chiarini, who died suddenly when he determined on undertaking a translation of the Talmud; others spoke of the monk Didacus of Vilna, a Jewish convert, who was killed, and of others who were persecuted in 

[1] This seems a contradiction in terms, but so it stands on Deckert's title-page (op. sub. cit.). 

[2] Pranaitis (I. B.), “Christianus in Talmude Judaeorum, sive Rabbinicae Doctrinae de Christianis Secreta" (St. Petersburg; 1892). No copy of this is in the British Museum. 

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various ways because they disclosed the secrets of the Jewish religion; not only himself but his relatives would be exposed to danger. But, continues this theological Bombastes, after evoking the phantasms of his own imagination, no consideration for his own personal safety will deter him from his task, and from rushing into the fray between Semites and Anti-semites, who both think they are fighting for the truth; whereas he at last really knows what is the truth of the whole matter. He is willing to bear all, even to offer his life for the cause. 

This is, of course, pure childishness, but it shows the ingrained mediaevalism of the theological nature. If Pranaitis' thesis had remained in its original Latin, it might have soon sunk into oblivion, but it was immediately translated into German by Dr. Joseph Deckert of Vienna,[1] who more than doubled its length by adding notes and comments, crammed with citations from the most recent Anti-semitic literature and the reports of ritual murder trials.[2] Deckert especially singled out for animadversion a book by a Jewish controversialist Dr. Lippe,[3] and we move in a hurly-burly so utterly foreign to the temper of the twentieth century in its dealings with every other subject, that we are almost inclined to think that Odium Theologicum is the last enemy which humanity will ever slay. 

[1] “Das Christenthum im Talmud der Juden oder die Geheimnisse der rabbinischen Lehre über die Christen “(Vienna; 1894). 

[2] See art., “Blood Accusation," in “Jewish Encyclopedia." 

[3] Lippe (K.), “Das Evangelium Matthaei vor dem Forum der Bibel und des Talmud” (Jassy; 1889). This also is not in the British Museum; it is a curious work, with, among other things, no less than six pages of misprints in it, and many more not noticed by the author.

VII -THE EARLIEST EXTERNAL EVIDENCE TO THE TALMUD JESUS STORIES.

CHRISTIAN tradition will have it that already as early as 30 A.D. the followers of Jesus were most utterly persecuted by the Jewish authorities. On the other hand, we know that Christians and Jews were undistinguished by the Roman authority until the closing years of the first century, and that, too, not only in Palestine but also among the Dispersion a consideration which in the opinion of some critics tends somewhat to weaken the strength of the traditional line of demarcation which is regarded as having been drawn between Jewish and Gentile Christians in the Diaspora by Pauline propaganda. Moreover, we are further assured by Talmud scholars that according to Jewish tradition Jews and Jewish Christians were not distinctly separated out till the reign of Trajan (98-117 A.D.), or even still later in Hadrian’s time (117-138 A.D.).

It is impossible to reconcile these contradictory data; for though we may almost entirely eliminate the negative evidence of classical writers by the persuasion that the official Roman was ignorant or careless of the rights of the matter, and contemptuously lumped 

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Jew and Christian together as of the same family as far as their superstitio was concerned, the Christian and Jewish traditions appear to be in straitest contradiction, even though we suppose that the Palestinian Rabbis who first evolved the Talmud paid attention only to the state of affairs in the land of Israel proper and were not concerned with the Dispersion. It may indeed be that in the beginning the Rabbis paid no attention to Gentile Christians of any grade in Palestine, but regarded them as Heathen, and the vast majority of them as 'Amme ha-aretz, entirely outside the pale of Jewry and its privileges; it may be that they were only concerned with born Jews who were abandoning the externals of the Law and introducing into Jewry what the Rabbis considered to be polytheistic views which set at naught the rigid monotheistic commandments of the Torah. But even so, if the testimony of Paul as to himself is genuine, there was the bitterest persecution many years before the Talmud indirectly admits it. 

Now in spite of the brilliant critical ability of van Manen and his school, I am still inclined to regard the majority of the Pauline letters as largely genuine, and therefore as being our earliest historical witnesses to Christianity. From these we learn that already upwards of a generation before the fall of Jerusalem, which immensely intensified the propaganda of more liberal and spiritual views throughout the nation, there was bitter persecution on the part of the Jewish authorities against heresy, and that among the victims of this persecution were the followers of Jesus. We do not have to deduce this from enigmatical sentences or 

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confused traditions, but on the contrary we have before us what purports to be not only the testimony of an eye-witness, but the confession of one who had taken a leading part in the persecution. In his Letter to the Galatians (i. 13) Paul declares that before his conversion he was engaged in persecuting and "wasting" the "Church of God." If this declaration of the great propagandist is a statement of fact, and not a rhetorical embellishment, or a generous exaggeration in contrition for previous harshness (begotten of zeal for the "tradition of the fathers") towards those with whom he was now the co-believer, it is in straitest contradiction with the opinion of those Talmudic scholars who assert that Jews and Jewish Christians continued together in comparative harmony till the reign of Trajan. 

The graphic details of this persecution as given in the Acts, and its far-reaching character, as suggested by the furnishing of Paul by the authorities with letters against the heretics even among the Dispersion at Damascus, may presumably be set down as a later Haggadic expansion, or the ascription of circumstances of a later date to Pauline times.[1] But whatever was the exact nature of the “havoc “in the time of Paul, at the time of the redaction of the Acts (130-150 A.D.) it was still a lively remembrance that there had been much persecution at the hands of the Jews, that is to say most probably from the Mishnaic Rabbis and their adherents —a fact confirmed by the Talmud, which in a number of passages allows us to conclude that during the first 

[1] Otherwise we have to account for the existence of a "Church" at Damascus at a date when, according to canonical tradition, the first Church at Jerusalem had hardly been formed. 

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thirty-five years of the second century the great Akiba himself, who was so zealous for the Law, and the virtual founder of the Talmud method, was the most strenuous and implacable opponent of Christianity. And if there was persecution, there must have previously been controversy, and controversy of the most embittered nature, and if bitter dispute then presumably scandal and slander. 
We are certain then that the strife was at fever heat in the first quarter of the second century, just prior to the compilation of our four canonical Gospels; the "common document" (as we saw in a previous chapter) shows further that it was in manifestation some half century prior to the redaction of these documents, say somewhere about 75 A.D., while if we can accept the testimony of the Letter to the Galatians as that of a genuine declaration by Paul himself, we must push back the beginnings of the struggle another half century or so.[1] 

[1] In this connection it would be interesting to determine the exact date of Paul's conversion, but this is impossible to do with any precision. The various authorities give it as anywhere between 28-36 A.D., the 28 limit making it almost coterminous with the earliest possible date of the crucifixion according to the canonical date. This early date, however, allows no time for anything but a sudden and unorganised outbreak of official fury directed against the followers of Jesus immediately after his execution (according to canonical tradition), and such a sudden outbreak seems out of keeping with the extended "persecuting" and "wasting" of the "Church of God" referred to by Paul. But was the "Church" of tradition as imagined by the scribe of the Acts (viii. 3) the same as the "Church of God" in Paul's living memory? Did the latter then possess the identical story related a century later in the canonical Gospels? And if so, why does Paul seem to he almost entirely ignorant of this story in spite of lengthy acquaintance with that "Church" while wasting it, and in spite of subsequent conversion? 

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Seeing, then, that few reject this testimony, as far as most of us are concerned there is nothing a priori to prevent the genesis of the original forms of some of these Talmud stories going back even to some 30 years A.D., while for others we can at best only push their origin back stage by stage with the evolution of Christian dogma—that is to say with the externalizing and historicizing of the mystic teachings of the inner tradition. As Christian popular propaganda gradually departed from the sober paths of prosaic history and simple ethical instruction, owing to the externalizing of the exalted and romantic experiences of the mystics and the bringing of the "mysteries" to earth by historicizing them, so did the Rabbinical opponents of this new movement confront its extravagance with the remorseless logic of material fact. 

For instance, the Christ (said, the mystics) was born of a "virgin"[l]; the unwitting believer in Jesus as the historical Messiah in the exclusive Jewish sense, and in his being the Son of God, nay God Himself, in course of time asserted that Mary was that virgin; whereupon Rabbinical logic, which in this, case was simple and common logic, met this extravagance by the natural retort that, seeing that his paternity was unacknowledged, Jesus was therefore illegitimate, a bastard (mamzer). 
Round this point there naturally raged the fiercest controversy, or rather it was met with the most contemptuous retorts, which must have broken out the 

[1] The spiritual birth, by which a man becomes "twice-born"— the simple mystic fact that so puzzled the Rabbi Nicodemus, according to the writer of the fourth Gospel. 

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instant the virginity of Mary as a physical fact was publicly mooted by the simple believers of the general Christian body. This particular dogma, however, must have been a comparatively late development in the evolution of popular Christianity, for the "common document" knows nothing of it, the writers of the second and fourth Gospels tacitly reject it, while some of the earliest readings of our Gospels distinctly assert that Joseph was the natural father of Jesus.[1] For the mamzer element in the Talmud stories, therefore, we have, in my opinion, no need to go back further than the first quarter of the second century or so as the earliest terminus a quo. 

For most of the other main elements, however, we have no means of fixing a date limit by the criticism of canonical documents; all we can say is that as early as 30 A.D. even, circumstances were such as to lead us to expect the circulation of stories of a hostile nature. 

From the persecution in the time of Paul till the Justin redaction of the Acts a full century elapses, from which we have preserved no witnesses that will help us concerning anything but the mamzer element. And even when, following immediately on the period of the Acts redaction, we come to the testimony of Justin Martyr,[2] in the middle of the second century, 

[1] For the latest study of this subject see F. C. Conybeare's article, "Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospels," in "The Hibbert Journal" (London; 1902), I. i. 96-113; and also J. R. Wilkinson's criticism in the succeeding issue (Jan. 1903). 

[2] The dates of Justin's genuine writings are variously conjectured, but the general opinion is that they may be placed 145-150 A.D. 

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we have to be content with generalities, though fortunately (in this connection) such generalities as put it entirely out of doubt that a state of affairs had long existed such as presupposes the existence and wide circulation of similar stories to those found in then Talmud. 

From the general testimony of Justin, no matter how we may discount it by his demonstrable blundering in some points of detail, we are certain that the separation between Jews and Christians had for years been made absolute, and if we can trust the repeated statements of this enthusiastic apologist, we must believe that the stages of the separation had been throughout marked by a bitterness and persecution of a quite mediaeval character. 

In his first "Apology" Justin seeks to rebut the objection that the one whom the Christians call "the Messiah" was simply a man born of human parents, and that his wonder-workings were done by magical means—the main contention of the Talmud Rabbis; this he does by appeal to prophecy (c. xxx.). Developing his arguments Justin naively admits that the Christians base themselves on the Septuagint Greek translation[1] of the Hebrew sacred writings; nevertheless he accuses the Jews of not understanding their own books, and is surprised that his co-believers are considered as foes and enemies by the Jews because of their interpretation of Hebrew prophecy—a point, 

[1] In. connection with the origin of which Justin commits a ludicrous blunder, when he makes Herod a contemporary of Ptolemy, the founder of the Alexandrian Library—an anachronism of 250 years! 

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we may remark, in which modern scientific criticism practically sympathises with the Rabbis. Nay, so bitter were the Jews against them, that whenever they had had the power they had not only punished the Christians but also put them to death—a charge he repeats in several passages;[1] declaring that in his own day the Jews were only deterred from doing so by the Roman authorities.[2] For instance, in the recent revolt Against the Romans led by Bar Kochba (132-135 A.D.), Justin declares that this popular Messiah specially singled out the Christians for torture if they refused to deny that Jesus was the Messiah and utter blasphemies against him (c. xxxi.). It is to be noted, however, that Eusebius and others[3] state that Bar Kochba punished the Christians (that is to say, Jewish Christians resident in Palestine) for political reasons, because they refused to join their fellow countrymen against the Romans, and not on theological grounds. If, nevertheless, in spite of this conflict of testimony, we are still to believe Justin, it is of interest to remember that R. Akiba, the founder of the Talmudic method, and the Rabbi who is represented in the Talmud as the greatest opponent of Christianity, threw all his great influence on the side of Bar Kochba, acknowledged him as the true Messiah and paid the penalty of his enthusiastic championship with his life. From Justin's "Dialogue with Tryphon" we derive still further information, the interest of which would 

[1] See "Dial. c. Tryph.," xvi., cx., cxxxiii. 

[2] Ibid., xvi. 

[3] Eusebius, "Chron.," and Orosius, "Hist.," vii. 13; cf. note to Otto's "Justini Opera" (Jena; 1847), i. 79. 

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be greatly increased for our present research if the identification of Justin's Tryphon with the R. Tarphon of the Talmud, the contemporary of Akiba, could be maintained.[1] 

In addition to the general declaration that the Jews hate the Christians (c. xxxv.)—a state of affairs summed up in "The Letter to Diognetus" (c. v.), which some still attribute to Justin, in the words "the Jews make war against the Christians as against a foreign nation" —we have some important details given us which, according to the fancy and taste of the reader, can either be set down as embellishments begotten of odium theologicum, or be taken as throwing historic light on the state of affairs and temper of the times which originated the Talmud Jesus stories. 

Thus in ch. cxvii, speaking of Jesus as the "Son of God," and addressing the Jew Tryphon, Justin adds, "whose name the high priests and teachers of your people have caused to be profaned and blasphemed throughout the earth." If this accusation was true in Justin's time, it can only refer to the spreading far and wide of inimical stories about Jesus; at that time stories of this kind were spread everywhere throughout the Roman empire, and the source of them was attributed by the Christians to the Jewish priestly aristocracy and especially to the Rabbinical doctors, in other words the Mishnaic Talmudists of those days and earlier. 

Moreover Justin twice (cc. xvii. and cviii.) categorically asserts that after the "resurrection" the Jews sent out a specially elected body of men, some sort of

[1] But see Strack's "Einleitung in den Talmud "(3rd ed.), p. 80. 

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official commission apparently, "throughout the world," to proclaim that a godless and lawless sect had arisen from one Jesus, a Galilean impostor, whose followers asserted that he had risen from the dead, whereas the fact of the matter was that he had been put to death by crucifixion and that subsequently his body had been stolen from the grave by his disciples (c. cviii.). 

The genesis of this extensive commission may with great probability be ascribed to the imaginative rhetoric of Justin playing on the germ provided by the floating tradition, that Paul was furnished with letters of repression against the heretics when he set forth for Damascus, as stated by the compiler of the Acts. A commission to disprove the dogma of the physical resurrection would not have been necessary until that dogma had gained a firm root in popular belief, and this we hold was a late development (the vulgar historicising of a mystic fact) though somewhat earlier than the dogma of the immaculate conception; but even so it would appear to be a somewhat absurd proceeding to send out a commission to deal with this point only. 

There may be, however, some greater substratum of truth in Justin's repeated assertions (cc. xvi., xcvi. and cxxxiii.) that it was the custom of the Jews publicly to curse those who believed in "the Christ" in their synagogues; and to this he adds that not only were the Jews forbidden by their Rabbis to have any dealings of any kind with Christians (c. cxii.), but that they were distinctly taught by the Pharisee Rabbis and the leaders of their synagogues to revile and make fun of Jesus after prayer (c. cxxxvii.). 

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In fact Justin will have it that all the preconceived evil opinion which the general public cherished against the Christians was originated by the Jews (c. xvii.), whom he accuses of deliberately stating that Jesus himself had taught all those impious, unspeakable and detestable crimes with which the Christians were charged (c. cviii.) — an accusation which in no case can be substantiated by the Talmud passages, and which we may presumably set down to Justin's rhetoric. 

But whether or not Justin can be believed in all his details, and no matter how we may soften down his statements, there still remains strong enough evidence to show that in his day the bitterest hostility existed between Jews and Christians, or at any rate between official Judaism and that type of Christianity for which Justin stood. Since Justin attributes all the scandalous stories about Christians,[1] and all the scoffing at the 

[1] In connection with which it is of mournful interest to note that Origen ("C. Cels.," vi. 27) says that when "Christianism" first began to be taught, the Jews spread about reports that the Christians, presumably in their secret rites, sacrificed a child and ate its flesh, and that their meetings were scenes of indiscriminate immorality; that even in his own day (c. 250 A.D.) such charges were still believed against them, and they were shunned by some on this account. The curious vitality of this slander is remarkable, for not only did the general Christians of those days charge the "heretics" of the Christian name, to whose assemblies they could not gain access, with precisely the same crime of ceremonial murder, but even up to our own days in Anti-semitic Eastern Europe it is still the favourite vulgar charge against the Jews — a strange turning of the wheel of fate! Even as I correct these proofs, I read in The Times (May 2) the horrible account of the murder of some sixty or seventy Jews and Jewesses, and the serious injury of some five hundred more, with "several cases of rape too horrible for detailed description," by the fanatical "Christian" populace of Kishineff, in Bessarabia, who were roused 

[footnote continued on page 127]

to fury by the report of a supposed "ritual murder" by the Jews of Dubossari, and this in spite of the publication of absolute testimony to the falsity of the charge. 

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most cherished beliefs of Justin and the popular Christianity of his day, to the Rabbis, it is evident that what the Jews said was the very antipodes of what Justin believed, and that, as may be seen from the retort of the stealing of the body, the greatest miracles and dogmas of popular Christianity were met on the side of the Rabbis by the simplest retorts of vulgar reason. 

The evidence of Justin, therefore, taken as a whole, leaves us with a very strong impression, nay, for all but irreconcilables, produces an absolute conviction, that in his time, taking our dates at a minimum, stories similar to, and even more hostile than, the Talmud stories were in widest circulation; while Justin himself will have it that they were in circulation from the very beginning of things Christian. So far, however, we have come across nothing but generalities; we have failed to find anything of a definite nature which we can identify with some distinct detail of the Talmud stories. 

To do this we must mount some quarter of a century, and turn to the fragments of Celsus preserved to us in the polemic of Origen, who wrote his refutation of Celsus's attack on the Christians somewhere towards the middle of the third century. Origen in his preface (§ 4) tells us that Celsus himself was long since dead, and later on he adds more precisely (i. 8) that Celsus lived about Hadrian's time (emp. 117-138 A.D.), and later. The most learned of the Church Fathers, however, seems to have blundered in this respect, and 

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though there is still dispute as to the exact date, modern criticism, basing itself on data supplied by the passages cited by Origen from Celsus's "True Word," is generally of opinion that Celsus survived till as late as 175 A.D. In any case Origen wrote a full seventy-five years after Celsus had withdrawn from the controversy, and though we may place the writing of the statements of Celsus as late as 175 A.D., we have also to allow for the possibility, if not the probability, that the memory of this sturdy opponent of Christianity may have reached back some quarter or even half century earlier. 
Celsus in his treatise rhetorically throws many of his arguments into the form of a dispute between a Jew and Jesus (Pref. 6, and i. 28). This Jew declares that the extraordinary things Jesus seems to have done were effected by magical means (i. 6), and Origen later on (iii. 1) says that this was the general accusation brought against the miracle-workings by all Jews who were not Christians. This is one of the main elements of the Talmud stories. 

From a quotation from Celsus (i. 26) we further learn that the Jews asserted that "a very few years" had elapsed since the dogma of Jesus "being the "Son of God"  had been promulgated by the Christians, presumably referring to the dogma of the "virgin birth." 

Developing his argument, the Jew goes on to say (i. 28) that the dogma of the "virgin birth" was an invention, the facts of the case being: "that Jesus had come from a village in Judaea, and was the son of a poor Jewess who gained her living by the work of her own hands; that his mother had been turned out of doors by her husband, who was a carpenter by trade, on being 

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convicted of adultery; that being thus driven away by her husband, and wandering about in disgrace, she gave birth to Jesus, a bastard; that Jesus on account of his poverty (had to work for his living and) was hired out to go to Egypt[1]; that while there he acquired certain (magical) powers which Egyptians pride themselves on possessing; that he returned home highly elated at possessing these powers, and on the strength of them gave himself out to be a god."[2] 

In this passage from Celsus we have precisely the main outline of the Talmud Jesus stories, and therefore an exact external proof that in his day at any rate (whenever that was, whether 150-175 or even 125-175) stories precisely similar to the Talmud stories were the stock-in-trade Jewish objections to Christian dogmatic tradition. 

And if more precise proof is still demanded, we have only to turn over a few pages of Origen's voluminous refutation to the passage (i. 32), where the Church Father again refers to the quotation from the Jew of Celsus given above, and adds the important detail from Celsus that the paramour of the mother of Jesus was a soldier called Panthera, a name which he also repeats later on (i. 69), in a sentence, by the by, which has in both places been erased from the oldest Vatican MS., 

[1] Can this possibly be based on some vulgar version of a well-known Gnostic myth of those days? Jesus went down as a servant or slave into Egypt; that is to say, the Christ or divine soul descends as a servant into the Egypt of the body. It is a common element in the early mystic traditions that the Christ took on the form of a servant in his descent through the spheres, and in many traditions Egypt is the symbol of the body, which is separated by the "Red Sea" and the "Desert" from the "Promised Land." 

[2] The last two paragraphs are again quoted by Origen (i. 38). 

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and bodily omitted from three codices in this country and from others.[1] Now this is precisely the name given in some of the Talmud stories; in them Jesus is called Jeschu ben Pandera (or Pandira), or Ben Pandera simply. 

But before we leave Origen it may be useful to note one or two scraps of information which he has let fall in the controversy, and which are of importance for us in our present investigation. Referring to the historicised mystery of the descent of the Dove at the Baptism, Celsus puts the argument into the mouth of his Jew (i. 48), that there is no testimony for this except the word of one of those who met with the same punishment as Jesus. To this Origen replies that it is a great blunder on Celsus's part to put such an argument into the mouth of a Jew, for "the Jews do not connect John with Jesus, nor the punishment of John with that of Jesus." Now in the first place it is to be observed that Celsus says nothing about any "John," and in the second that Origen gives us clearly to understand that the Jews denied that John the Baptist, who was a well-known historical character, had anything to do with Jesus. This is an important piece of evidence for those who believe that the Baptist element, which does not appear in the "common document," was a later development. Can it be that Celsus had in mind some early form of the Baptism story, in which some other than John the Baptist played a part? 

Elsewhere Celsus, in speaking of the betrayal of Jesus, does not ascribe it to Judas, but to "many dis-

[1] See notes on both passages by Lommatzsch in his "Origenis contra Celsum" (Berlin; 1845). 

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ciples "(ii. 11), a curious statement if Celsus is repeating what he has heard or read, and is not merely guilty of gross error or of wilful exaggeration.

 
But indeed Celsus categorically accuses the Christians (ii. 27) of changing their gospel story in many ways in order the better to answer the objections of their opponents; his accusation is that some of them, "as it were in a drunken state producing self-induced visions,[1] remodel their gospel from its first written form in a threefold, fourfold and manifold fashion, and reform it so that they may be able to refute the objections brought against it." 

This may be taken to mean either that the Christians were engaged in doing so in Celsus's day, or that such redacting was habitual. If, however, we are to regard the "threefold" and "fourfold" of Celsus as referring to our three and four canonical gospels, and his "manifold" as referring to the "many" of our "Lukan" introduction, it is difficult to imagine that this was going on in Celsus's time unless his memory went back some fifty years or so. It is, therefore, more simple to regard the statement as meaning that the external 

[1] Lit., "coming to appear to themselves"—eiV to efestanai autoiV. This very puzzling sentence is translated by F. Crombie ("The Works of Origen," Edinburgh, 1872, in "The Ante-Nicene Christian Library") as "lay violent hands upon themselves," which does not seem to be very appropriate in this connection. But efestanai is the usual word used of dreams and visions, and I have therefore ventured on the above translation. Celsus probably meant to suggest that these Christian writers were the victims of their own hallucinations; those who understand the importance of the vision-factor in the evolution of Christian dogma and "history" will thank Origen for preserving this expression of his opponent, though they may put a construction on the words that neither Celsus nor Origen would have agreed with.

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gospel story had been continually altered and reformulated to meet objections—in brief, that the latest forms of it were the product of a literary evolution in which mystic experiences played a prominent part. 

We thus see that the testimony of Celsus, an entirely outside witness, not only strongly endorses the general testimony of Justin, but also adds convincing details which conclusively prove that the Jewish Jesus stories of his day were precisely of the same nature as those we find in the Talmud, and though we cannot conjecture with any certainty what may have been the precise date of any particular story, we are justified in rejecting the contention of those who declare that the Talmud stories are all of a very late date, say the fourth century or so, and in claiming that there is nothing to prevent most of them going back to the middle of the second century, even on the most conservative estimate, while some of them may go back far earlier. 

Advancing another generation we come to the testimony of Tertullian, which is exceedingly important not only with regard to the Talmud Jesus stories, but also in respect of a far more obscure line of tradition preserved in the mediaeval "Toldoth Jeschu," or "Story of Jesus," as we shall see in the second part of our enquiry. Writing somewhere about 197-198 A.D., in his "De Spetaculis" (c. xxx.), in a highly rhetorical peroration in which he depicts the glorious spectacle of the second coming, as he imagines it—(when he shall see all the Heathen opponents of the Christians, philosophers and poets, actors and wrestlers in the Games, tossing on the billows of hell-fire)—the hot- 

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tempered Bishop of Carthage bursts out that, perhaps, however, after all he will not have time to gaze upon the tortures of the Heathen, but that all his attention will be turned on the Jews who raged against the Lord. Then will he say unto them: "This is your carpenter's son, your harlot's son; your Sabbath-breaker, your Samaritan, your demon-possessed! This is He whom ye bought from Judas; this He who was struck with reed and fists, dishonoured with spittle, and given a draught of gall and vinegar! This is He whom His disciples have stolen secretly, that it may be said He has risen, or the gardener abstracted that his lettuces might not be damaged by the crowds of visitors!"[1] 

All these elements appear in order in the "Toldoth," and the carpenter's son and the harlot's son appear in the Talmud stories. We have thus exhausted our external evidence till the date of the final redaction of the Mishna, 200-207 A.D., beyond which it is of no advantage to go.[2] 

Enough has already been said for our purpose, which was the very simple one of disposing of the flimsy and superficial argument that the Talmud Jesus stories

 
[1] See also Jerome, "Ad Heliodorum" (Tom. IV., P. II., p. 12, ed. Bened.), and compare Theodoret, "H. S.," iii. 11, as cited in Oehler's "Tertulliani que supersunt Omnia" (Leipzig; 1853), i. 62, n. 

[2] See, however, Richard von der Alm (i.e., Friederich Wilhelm Ghillany), "Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schrifsteller der vier ersten Jahrhunderte über Jesus und die ersten Christen: Eine Zuschrift an die gebildeten Deutschen zur weiteren Orientirung in der Frage über die Gottheit Jesu "(Leipzig; 1864), a continuation of his "Theologische Briefe an die Gebildeten der deutschen Nation" (3 vols., Leipzig; 1863). 

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must have been entirely the invention of late Babylonian Rabbis, and that Mishnaic times were utterly ignorant of them, as being too close to the supposed actual facts, which unthinking apologists further presume must have been known to all the Jews of Palestine. We now pass to a consideration of the stories themselves.

IX.—THE TALMUD MARY STORIES.

IT is in vain to seek for any historical element in the Talmud Mary stories, for they revolve entirely round the accusation of her unfaithfulness to her husband, and, therefore, in my opinion, owe their origin to, and cannot possibly be of earlier date than, the promulgation of the popular Christian dogma of the physical virginity of the mother of Jesus. 'When this miraculous dogma was first mooted is exceedingly difficult to decide. We believe, however, that even at the time of the compilation of the canonical Gospels Joseph was still held to he the natural father of Jesus; as we have seen above, and from this we deduce that even in the reign of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) the dogma of the miraculous birth was not yet "catholicised."' 

But how far back can we push the first circulation of this startling belief? For instantly it was publicly mooted even by a restricted number of the faithful, it was bound not only to have attracted the widest notice among the Jews, but also to have called forth the most contemptuous retorts from those who not only hated the Pagan idea of heroes born of the congress of divine and mortal parents as a Heathen superstition and an idolatrous belief, but who were especially jealous of the 

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legitimacy of their line of descent as preserved in the public records of their families. In this connection there is a passage in the Talmud which deserves our careful attention. It is interesting in other respects, but chiefly because it is found in the Mishna (iv. 3), and therefore puts entirely out of court the contention of those who assert that what is generally regarded as the oldest and most authoritative deposit of the Talmud contains no reference whatever to Jesus; and not only is it found in the Mishna, but it purports to base itself on a still older source, and that too a written one. This remarkable passage runs as follows: 

"Simeon ben Azzai has said: I found in Jerusalem a book of genealogies; therein was written: That so and so is a bastard son of a married woman."[1] 

This Simeon ben Azzai nourished somewhat earlier than Akiba, and may therefore be placed at the end of the first and the beginning of the second century. He was one of the famous four who, according to Talmudic tradition, "entered Paradise"; that is to say, he was one of the most famous mystics of Israel. He was a Chassid, most probably an Essene, and remained a celibate and rigid ascetic till the day of his death. We might, therefore, expect him to be specially fitted to give us some information as to Jesus, and yet what he is recorded to have said is the very opposite of our expectation.

Ben Azzai, we are to believe, declared that he had found a book of genealogies at Jerusalem—presumably then before the destruction of the city in 70 A.D. This book of genealogies can be taken to mean nothing else 

[1] "Jebamoth," 49a. 

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than an official record; nevertheless we are told that it contained the proof of Jeschu's bastardy, for "so and so” is one of the well-known substitutes for Jesus and Jesus alone in the Talmud, as has been proved and admitted on either side. 
If we are right in ascribing the genesis of the Mamzer element of the Jesus stories to doctrinal controversy, we can only conclude that the categorical statement we are considering was originally either a deliberate invention, or the confident assertion in the heat of controversy of some imperfect memory that was only too eagerly believed to refer to Jesus. The Jewish apologist on the contrary can argue that this ancient tradition fully justified his forefathers of later generations for their belief in the bastardy of Jeschu as a historic fact authenticated by the records; while if he be an out-and-out rationalist he may even go so far as to claim that the "virgin birth "doctrine was invented in answer to this record, and that there has been no historicising of a mystic fact, as we have supposed, seeing that there are no mystic "facts," but only the baseless imaginings of unbalanced enthusiasm. 

This we cannot believe, and therefore conclude that the earliest Jewish Mary legends came to birth somewhere towards the close of the first century. 

It is exceedingly difficult to classify these Mamzer legends or to treat them in any satisfactory chronological fashion, but it is remarkable that in them there seem to be two deposits of tradition characterised by different names for Jeschu—Ben Stada and Ben Pandera, names which have given rise to the wildest philological speculation, but of which the current mean- 

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ing was evidently simply "son of the harlot," whatever may have been their line of descent.[1] Ben Stada occurs exclusively in the Talmud, where it is the most frequent designation of Jeschu, though Ben Pandera is also found; Ben Pandera is found in the Toldoth Jeschu, and as we have seen in the Church Fathers, while Ben Stada is never met with in these sources. 

The Ben Stada stories are mostly characterised by anachronisms which are as startling as those of the Ben Perachiah date, but which are its exact antipodes. They are further generally characterised by either distinct references to Lud, or by the bringing in of the names of the most famous Rabbis of this famous school of Talmud study. I would suggest, therefore, that these legends might be conveniently called the Lud stories.

 
[1] See Krauss (S.), "Das Leben Jesu nach jüdischen Quellen" (Berlin; 1902), p. 276, where full indications of the literature are appended. A probable speculation is that of Bleek in Nitzsch's article, "Ueber eine Reihe talmudischer und patristischer Täuschungen, welche sich an den missverstandenen Spottnamen Ben Pandera geknüpft," in "Theologische Studien und Kritiken" (Hamburg; 1840), pp. 115-120. Bleek supposes that Pandera is a caricature-name to mimic the Greek parqenoV (Parthenos), "Virgin." But there is also perhaps a connection with the Greek panqhr  (Panther), an animal that was regarded as the symbol of lasciviousness. Whether or not there may have been further some connection between this panther-idea and the Egyptian Pasht-cult, it is impossible to say. But Pasht or Bast, the "cat" or "panther" goddess, is supposed to have had rites resembling those of Aphrodite Pandemos, and the girls of her temple were therefore presumably prostitutes. The derivation of "bastard "is given as equivalent to the old French fils de bast, where bast means a "pack saddle." The "son of Bast" in Egypt would have been a like term of unequivocal meaning. Still we can hardly venture to connect these too bast’s, and so must leave the matter as a curious freak of coincidence. 

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The Mishna School at Lud (Lydda) is said to have been founded by E. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, the teacher of E. Akiba,[1] and it was doubtless the great reputation of Akiba as the most implacable foe of Christianity which, in course of time, connected the name of Mary with stories of Akiba which originally were perfectly innocent of any reference to the mother of Jesus. Thus, in later times, we find tradition bringing Akiba and Miriam together in personal conversation, we find it still later giving her one of Akiba's contemporaries as a husband, and finally we meet with a curious legend in which Miriam is made the contemporary of a Rabbi of the fourth century! 

But to consider these fantastic developments of Talmudic tradition in greater detail. The following is the famous academical discussion on the refinements of bastardy, which in course of time supplied the Ben Pandera legend with some of its most striking details, as we still find them in various forms of the Toldoth Jeschu. 

"A shameless person is, according to E. Eliezer, a bastard; according to E. Joshua, a son of a woman in her separation; according to E. Akiba, a bastard and son of a woman in her separation. Once there sat elders at the gate when two boys passed by; one had his head covered, the other bare. Of him who had his head uncovered, E. Eliezer said, 'A bastard!' 

[1] But when we are told that the famous Jewish proselyte, Queen Helena of Adiabene, passed fourteen years in Palestine (46-60 A.D.) in close communion with the doctors of the Hillel school at Jerusalem and Lud, there was presumably a school at Lud even prior to the time of Ben Hyrcanus. 

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R. Joshua said, 'A son of a woman in her separation !' R. Akiba said, 'A bastard and son of a woman in her separation !' They said to R. Akiba, 'How has thine heart impelled thee to the audacity of contradicting the words of thy colleagues?' He said to them, 'I am about to prove it.' Thereupon he went to the boy's mother, and found her sitting in the market and selling pulse. He said to her,' My daughter, if thou tellest me the thing which I ask thee, I will bring thee to eternal life.' She said to him, 'Swear it to me!' Thereupon E. Akiba took the oath with his lips, while he cancelled it in his heart. Then said he to her, 'Of what sort is this thy son?' She said to him, 'When I betook myself to the bridal chamber I was in my separation, and my husband stayed away from me. But my paranymph[1] came to me, and by him I have this son.' So the boy was discovered to be both a bastard and the son of a woman in her separation. Thereupon said they,' Great is R. Akiba, in that he has put to shame his teachers.' In the same hour they said, 'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, who has revealed His secret to R. Akiba ben Joseph,'"[2] 

Eliezer, Joshua and Akiba were contemporaries, but Akiba was by far their junior; for Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was Akiba's teacher, while Joshua ben Chanania was a disciple of Jochanan ben Zakkai, who died about 70 A.D.; Akiba was put to death in 135 A.D. The setting of the story, therefore, places us somewhere about the end of the first century. 

We may pass over the strange ascription of an act 

[1] That is, the bridegroom's best man. 

[2] "Kallah,” 18b.

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of heartless perjury to Akiba as the means whereby he extorted the confession from the boy's mother, and the far more curious addition at the end of the passage which blesses the God of Israel for revealing "His secret" after the use of such questionable means, with the remark that it would be interesting to know whether Talmud apologetics prefer to abandon the reputation of the Talmud or of its great authority Akiba in this instance, for here there is no third choice. 

What is most striking in the story is that neither the name of the boy nor that of his mother is given. Laible [l] supposes that the story originally contained the names of Jeschu and Miriam, but that the compiler of the Gemara struck them out, both because the mother is described as a pulse-seller, while elsewhere in the .Talmud she is called Miriam the women's hair-dresser, and also because of the startling anachronism of making Miriam and Akiba contemporaries. He holds that the story itself is of early origin, and was originally a Jesus story. 

To this we cannot agree, for if it had been originally intended, as a Jesus story its inventors could not possibly have been so foolish as to introduce Rabbis of the beginning of the second century among the dramatis persona;. This would have been really too inane even for the wildest controversialists at any date even remotely approaching the time when Jews and Jewish Christians were still in contact. 

The main intention of the story is evidently to enhance the reputation of R. Akiba, to display the 

[1] Laible-Streane, op. cit., p. 35. 

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depth of his penetration and his fine appreciation of the subtlest shades of bastardy, a subject of great importance in Rabbinical law. It was then presumably a tradition of the Lud school, and at first had no connection whatever with the Jeschu stories. In course of time, when the Mamzer retort to the virgin-birth dogma was popularised in legend and folk-tale, the details of this other famous story of bastardy were added to the originally vague Mamzer legends of Jeschu, and to this source we may conjecture, with high probability, is to be traced the origin of the coarse details of Miriam's unfaithfulness to her husband as found in the various forms of the Toldoth Jeschu. The link was simply the word "bastard"; the rich gain to the legend material finally entirely outweighed the inconvenience of the wild anachronism. 

The story is introduced by the commission of a shocking act of disrespect on the part of one of the boys, for according to Rabbinical law and custom, a teacher was to be treated as worthier of greater honour than all others, even than one's parents. To go uncovered in the presence of a teacher was thus thought to be an act of utter shamelessness; in the West, of course, the very opposite would be the case. Disrespect to the Rabbis as shown in this and other ways is one of the main burdens of accusation brought against Jesus in the Toldoth Jeschu. 

We are, then, justified in supposing that any folktale or legend of infidelity or bastardy stood a good chance of being gradually worked into the Mamzer patchwork. And indeed we find that this was actually the case. The following story is a good instance of this method of conflation. 

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"There is a tradition, Rabbi Meir used to say : Just as there are various kinds of taste as regards eating, so there are also various dispositions as regards women. There is a man into whose cup a fly falls and he casts it out, but all the same he does not drink it (the cup). Such was the manner of Paphos ben Jehudah, who used to lock the door upon his wife and go out. And there is another who, when a fly falls into his tumbler, throws it out and drinks it, and this is the way of men generally. When she is speaking with her brothers and relatives, he does not hinder her. But there is also the man, who, when a fly falls into a dish, sucks it (the fly) out and eats it (the dish). This is the manner of a bad man, who sees his wife going out bareheaded and spinning in the street and wearing clothes slit up on both sides and bathing together with men." [1] 

R. Meir was a pupil of Akiba and Paphos (or Pappos) ben Jehudah was Akiba's contemporary. It is not necessary to enter into a consideration of the details of Rabbinic metaphor with regard to the "various dispositions." All we learn from this passage directly with regard to Paphos ben Jehudah is that he locked up his wife; we are, however, led to conclude, indirectly, that she ultimately proved unfaithful to her tyrannical spouse. What, then, more simple than for a storyteller to connect this with the details of unfaithfulness found in his Jeschu repertoire. The erring wife was just like Miriam; before long she actually became Miriam, and finally Paphos ben Jehudah was confidently given as Miriam's husband ! So they had it in later times, had it, we may suppose, at Lud, that most uncritical of legend 

[1] "Gittin," 90a. 

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factories, and finally we find even so great a commentator as Rashi (b. 1105 A.D.) endorsing with all confidence this hopeless anachronism, when he says: "Paphos ben Jehudah was the husband of Miriam, the women's hairdresser. Whenever he went out of the house into the street, he locked the door upon her, that no one might be able to speak to her. And that is a course which became him not; for on this account there arose enmity between them, and she in wantonness broke her faith with her husband." 

But even eight or nine centuries before Rashi's time the Babylonian Rabbis had found the Ben Stada Lud developments a highly inconvenient overgrowth of the earlier Ben Perachiah date, as we shall see later on, and it is strange to find Rashi so ignorant of what they hid to say on the subject. 

Startling, however, as is the anachronism which we have been discussing, it is but a mild surprise compared with the colossal absurdity of the following legend, if we interpret it in the traditional fashion. 

"When Rab Joseph came to this verse (Prov. xiii. 23), 'But there is that is destroyed without judgment,' he wept. He said: Is there really someone who is going (away), when it is not his time? Certainly (for) so has it happened with Rab Bibi bar Abbai; the angel of death was found with him. The former said to his attendant, Go, bring me Miriam the women's hairdresser. He went and brought him Miriam the children's teacher. The angel of death said to him, I said Miriam the women's hair-dresser. The messenger said to him, Then I will bring her [the other] back. The angel of death said to him, Since thou 

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hast brought her, let her be reckoned (among the dead)." 

Rab Joseph bar Chia was born at Still, in Babylonia 259 AD; he was head of the famous Babylonian Rabbinical School at Pumbeditha. The only R. Bibi we know of flourished in the fourth century, and that this Bibi was believed to have been the seer of the death-bed vision is quite evidemt from the following note of the Tosaphoth on the passage: 

"'The angel of death was found with him, who related what had happened to him long ago, for this story as to Miriam the women's hair-dresser took place in the time of the second temple, for she was mother of that so and so [i.e., Jeschu], as is related in (treatise) Shabbath [104b]." 

It is by no means clear what the writer of the Tosaphoth meant precisely by " the time of the second temple” He probably, however, meant the time before the new and splendid edifice of Herod replaced the second temple proper, the meagre building that had become gradually overlooked by the gorgeous Greek palaces of the nobles of Herod's days. 

It must be remarked, however, that this explanation does great violence to the wording of the story as it is found in the Gemara. Can it be then that some other Bibi was originally referred to, and that the story was subsequently transferred by posterity to his far later but more famous namesake? 

That the simple words "bastard" and "adulteress”were strong enough indications of suitability for the match-makers of legend to unite in marriage stories 

[1] "Chagiga," 4b. 

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otherwise the strongest incompatibility of age and date, we have already seen; that the very common name of Miriam should further expand this family circle of cross-breeds is therefore quite to be expected.

 
And this will doubtless be held by most sufficiently to account for the transference to the address of Miriam the mother of Jeschu of the following two legends, but closer inspection warns us not too lightly to accept this explanation. In one of the tractates of the Palestinian Talmud we are given the story of a certain devout person who was privileged to see a vision of some of the punishments in hell. Among other sights. 

"He saw also Miriam, the daughter of Eli Betzalim, suspended, as B. Lazar ben Jose says, by the paps of her breasts. E. Jose ben Chanina says: The hinge of hell's gate was fastened in her ear. He said to them [? the angels of punishment], Why is this done to her? The answer was, Because she fasted and published the fact. Others said, Because she fasted one day, and counted two days (of feasting) as a set-off'. He asked them, How long shall she be so? They answered him, Until Simeon ben Shetach comes; then we shall take it out of her ear and put it into his ear."[l] 

As R. Jose ben Chanina was a contemporary of R. Akiba, E. Lazar ben Jose was presumably a Rabbi of an earlier date, but I can discover nothing about him. The main point of interest for us is the sentence, "until Simeon ben Shetach comes." This can only mean that at the time of the vision Simeon ben Shetach was not yet dead, and therefore this Miriam was at latest 

[1] "Pal. Chagiga," 77d.

 
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contemporary with him and therefore can very well be placed in the days of his older contemporary Joshua ben Perachiah. As to Eli Betzalim,[1] I can discover nothing about him. It is true that a certain Eli is given as the father of Joseph in the genealogy incorporated into the third Gospel, a genealogy which would be quite useless if at the time of its compilation Jesus had not been regarded as the natural son of Joseph, but in the very different genealogy prefixed to the first Gospel, and also purporting to give the descent of Joseph, a certain Jacob takes the place of Eli and the name Eli is not found. But even had the two genealogies agreed, we should not have been helped at all, for they are given as the genealogies of Joseph and not of Mary. 
It would also be of interest to know in what Simeon ben Shetach had offended, for he is otherwise known as the Rabbinic president of the golden age of Pharisaean prestige in the days of Queen Salome, as we have seen above. In any case the story is an ancient one, for already in the days of Rabbi Lazar and Rabbi Jose there were variants of it.

 
The phrase "hinge of hell's gate" is curious, and argues an Egyptian (or perhaps Chaldaean) setting; it may be compared with the "pivot of the gate of Amenti" of the Khamuas folk-tales, where they relate the punishment of "Dives in Hades." "It was commanded that he should be requited in Amenti, and he is that 

[1] Krauss ("Leben Jesu," p. 224) translates "Eli Betzalim" by "Zwiebelblatt" (Onion-leaf) and (p. 225) refers to this Miriam as M. Zwiebelblatt, but does not venture on any explanation. The onion, however, was a symbol of lasciviousness, and may, therefore, perhaps be taken as a synonym of harlot. 

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man whom thou didst see, in whose right eye the pivot (?) of the gate of Amenti was fixed, shutting and opening upon it, arid whose mouth was open in great lamentation."[1] 

Finally, in these Talmud Mary-legends we come to the thrice-repeated Miriam daughter of Bilga story, which runs as follows: 

"Bilga always receives his part on the south side on account of Mirian, daughter of Bilga, who turned apostate and went to marry a soldier belonging to the government of Javan,[2] and went and beat upon the roof of the altar. She said to him : 'Wolf, wolf, thou hast destroyed the property of the Israelites and didst not help them in the hour of their distress!'"[3] 

This Miriam of Bilga can hardly be supposed to mean the actual daughter of Bilga of I. Chron. xxiv. 14, the head of one of the priestly courses of the house of Aaron. It must mean simply that Miriam was the daughter of one of the priests of the Bilga course or line of descent, for in the days of Bilga himself we 

[1]Griffith (F. Ll.), "Stories of the High Priests of Memphis" (Oxford; 1900), p. 49. See also "The Gospels and the Gospel" (London; 1902), pp. 175-180, where I have pointed out the importance of this episode in the new-found demotic papyrus as a probable source of the Dives and Lazarus story. Was Lazar the name of the seer in. some Jewish variant of these popular Egyptian folk-tales? And has some alchemy of name-transmutation brought to birth the name Lazarus of the Dives story of the third Gospel writer? The speculation is a wild one, but not wilder than the transformations of legends with which folk-lorists are on all hands well acquainted. 

[2] That is, Greece (Ionia).

 
[3] "Pal. Sukka," 55d, also in substantially identical words, "Bab. Sukka," 56b, and in "Tosephta Sukka," iv. 28. 

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know of no attack on Jerusalem by the Greeks, as the story evidently suggests. 
In this case, however, it does not seem to be the Talmud or the Jews themselves who connect this story with Miriam, mother of Jeschu, but Dalman,[1] who leaves us to suppose that it is one of the censured passages of the Talmud. What ground, however, Dalman has for bringing this story into relation with the Mary-legends I cannot discover; he seems to depend on Laible,[2] who refers to Origen quoting Celsus as making his Jew declare that "Mary gave birth to Jesus by a certain soldier, Panthera." 

If, because of this, we are to take the above as a Mary story, it should be noticed that the "soldier "is of the" house of Greece," and therefore the date of the incident must be placed prior to the first Roman occupation of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 B.C.; so that in it, in any case, we find a confirmation of the Ben Perachiah date.

 
This brings us to the end of our Mary stories; our next chapter will deal with the remaining Talmud Ben Stada Jesus stories. 

[1] Dalman-Streane, op. cit., p. 20n. 

[2] Ibid., p. 19.