Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach III

Its been a few weeks but here is the third point of R. Lichtenstein in his rebuttal of Toldot Yeshu:

3) Furthermore its related that Yeshua when he was a youth passed before the Sanhedrin with his head uncovered and one of the Sanhedrin said “he is a bastard”, and the second said “he is a bastard and a ben ha-niddah” (son of a woman that conceived during her menstrual period) etc.

Here we will see explained what was taken from the story in masechet kallah and was related to Yeshua, and even as a child I have heard from great Rabbi’s when in tractate kallah they hinted to that man etc.

And this is the manner of speaking there:

Once the old men were sitting at the gate and there passed before them two babies, one with his head covered and one with an uncovered head, regarding that one with the uncovered head said Rabbi Eliezer that it was a bastard and Rabbi Yehoshua said a ben ha-niddah and Rabbi Akiva said [it was] a bastard and a ben ha-niddah etc. (Woe! How many bastards were there in Israel at that time [if all] that walk with uncovered heads [are considered to be bastards]!!)

And its related there that Rabbi Akiva went and asked the mother of the baby: “of what nature do you confess your son” [to be, whereupon she replied] “when I was in the bridal chamber I was [in the state of] niddah, and my husband was separated from me and my husband’s best-man came on me and it was from him that I have this son and he is a mamzer and a ben ha-niddah etc.

And now my dear reader [judge] between what is before you, that the baby in the days of Rabbi Akiva can [not] be Yeshua HaNotzri as he lived way before the destruction of the Second Temple, and Rabbi Eliezer spoke with Jacob of Kfar Sakanya his disciple like it is related in the Talmud, as will be shown below, and this foolish sinner mixes up words without knowledge of anything, and the one who wrote a book named “תם ומועד” felt this lie and let go of this story.

The translation wasnt very hard this time, or so it seemed to me. I only had problems with that last paragraph, especially והכותב ספר תם ומועד הרגיש בשקר הזה והשמיט הספור הזה, I searched quite a bit what תם ומועד could mean but didnt manage to find something that would fit the sentence. But perhaps one of you has the missing key and can make this sentence work

I found it amusing to read R. Lichtenstein saying:

Woe! How many bastards were there in Israel at that time [if all] that walk with uncovered heads [are considered to be bastards]!!

And it makes me wonder about his internal struggles as while he may have felt free enough to utter such a remark, I doubt whether he felt the same freedom when it came to the halacha that was developed by these very same Sages.

But then he may just have had a different attitude to aggadah as opposed to halacha, which is not uncommon (see e.g. Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Torah for several places where he rejects the aggadah for what seems to him to be the plain meaning).

Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach II

In a previous post I related my plan to translate Rabbi Lichtenstein’s work titled Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach. So far I translated his first point and here is the second, with translation and notes below. As I pointed out before Im an amateur in Hebrew translation, thus it is probable that it contains mistakes, so if you come across them plz leave a [kind] comment

2. Furthermore it is written that Miriam, mother of Yeshua, was a daughter of a widow and when she grew up the maid was betrothed to one fellow named Yochanan etc. And Joseph Pandera came on her in one night deceitfully and said to her that he was Yochanan etc. And after this Yochanan ran away because of the shame in all this and he was called by the name of Yochanan the Babylonian etc. But in the Mishna and the Talmud there is no hint anywhere of Yochanan the Babylonian, and we find no name like this anywhere. But man is made to give ear¹ to this in order to deceive the masses² when they hear this from the many Christians who mention the name Yochanan³ (“Johan der Täufer” [in Germany] or in Russia and Moldavia “Johan Baptizot”⁴, for Baptismo in Greek is ‘immersion’ as is known). And they [author of TY] did not know who he [Yochanan] was or what he did, and made up that he [Yochanan] was the bridegroom of Miriam, and did not know that Yochanan the immerser was born in the same year with Yeshua (Luke 1:36). And likewise its explained also in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, XVIII: 5, 2⁵ that it was in the days of Herod the second who was called Antipas⁶ and he killed him because he [Yochanan] reproved him for taking his brother Philip’s wife etc. And he [Josephus] said there in the commentary [that] he is Yochanan that baptized etc. And thus is related in Mark (6:17-37) see there.

This one was quite hard as you can see to translate. But I think the general idea is captured:

TY claims that Miriam, while betrothed to Yochanan the Babylonian, was raped by Joseph Pandera. The problem Rabbi Lichtenstein points out is that there is no mention anywhere in the Mishna or Talmud’s of this Yochanan the Babylonian. As such R. Lichtenstein thinks they made up the name Yochanan because Yochanan is of course a well-known figure in the NT and many Christians (and perhaps Jews) would be familiar with this name. In doing this the credibility of the story would increase, but the truth is that the whole story is invalidated as Yochanan and Yeshua were born in the same year!

I say nice second round for R. Lichtenstein

Notes:

1. The text is hard to read, does it say און or אזן and perhaps meaning אוזן? As in ear? To listen? To give ear to?

2. Hard to read, does it say ההמון?

3. This whole sentence is very wooden and hard to grasp. I think the point Lichtenstein is trying to make is that the author of TY just took the name Yochanan as it was a name that was mentioned by many Christians, in order to deceive the masses in thinking that there was any stock to this work.

4. Again hard to read, possibly its איוואן but is that how they pronounce it in Russia and Moldavia? It could be that the two vavs are actually a damaged ה and still be read Johan, at any rate its of relatively minor importance.

5. This must be what the Rabbi is referring to but if I translate it as I read the Hebrew it would say: the fifth book, verse 125

6. The document is really hard to read at this point and I cant make anything of this! מטרדכוס doesn’t add up to any name for Herod… but if the rest is grammatically correct and it says: “Herod the second who was called etc.”, it must be Antipas, right?

Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach I

In a previous post I related my plan to translate Rabbi Lichtenstein’s work titled Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach. The following post is his first point, with translation and notes below. As Im obviously an amateur in Hebrew translation, it is probable that it contains mistakes, so if you come across them plz leave a [kind] comment

1. In the book Toldot Yeshua printed in Amsterdam it is being told, that Yeshua was born in the year 3671 (90 B.C) in the days of Jannai the King, and in the days of Yehoshua ben Perachiah like it is related in the Talmud etc. [But] Behold the matter among the publishers and Roman writers contradicts¹ (and until today the Christians count from the time of his birth like now 1883) that he was born in the days of Augustus Emperor of Rome and Herod the Great, King of the Jews. And the Sages of Israel were already aware² of this too in the book Yochsin and Tzemach David. And in the book Toldot Yeshua printed in Leiden (1705) the publishers already sensed the lie in this and therefore changed it and wrote that he was born in the days of Herod. And if so all the related collapses [as it is] from a liar; the abovementioned³ [stories] with [the story about the] the queen of Alexandria that in the beginning of her days she argued [with] Yeshua his arguments⁴ and [that he] flew in the air and she believed him etc. And 70 below 10 signs more in this⁵.

Notes:

1. יכחיש דבר מפורסם בין סופרי הרומיים Does the matter contradict between the publishers and Roman writers? Or does what they relate contradict with what follows after the brackets; that he was born in the days etc.

2. העירו is translated by ‘awake’, ‘rouse’ but closer might be הערה which means ‘laid bare’, ‘uncover’. I’d say in this sentence it makes most sense to say they were already aware of it or perhaps attentive to.

3. הנ”ל could be an acronym for הנזכר למעלה, הנזכר לעֵיל, הנראֶה לו,הנראֶה לי, which respectively means: visible to me, visible to him, the aforementioned, the above-mentioned. In my opinion above-mentioned or aforementioned fits better with the sentence following it about the queen of Alexandria.

4. המלכה אלכסנדרה שבימיה החל ישוע לטעון טענותיו Literally לטעון means ‘to argue’ and טענותיו ‘his arguments’, which in this case would be Yeshua’s arguments? But I cant fit ‘to argue’ in the present sentence. She argued seem more logical….Puzzling!

5. וע’ להלן אות י’ עוד בזה Does ע’ refer to 70 or something else? And how about the י?

Toldot Yeshua HaMashiach

Since I have holidays until the start of the new year I have plenty of time to read and blog, hence my active blogging the last days. Its quite nice to be able to read all day, although Im beginning to worry whether Ill have glasses in a couple of years:)

Besides reading and blogging, I have been spending quite some time on translating stuff from Hebrew to English and while doing so got the idea to try and translate a work by the late Rabbi Yechiel Tzvi Lichtenstein z”l.

For those of you who arent familiar with him, he was an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, born in 1831 in Romania, who after his 20s started secretly studying the NT. It is related that he was amazed by its parallels to Rabbinic literature and overtime he came to believe that Yeshua was the promised Messiah.

He has written quite a lot but I would like to try to translate his rebuttal of the work called Toldot Yeshu. For those of you who arent aware of Toldot Yeshu; its a work that is dated around the 6th century and was created with the purpose of showing Yeshua to be a heretic and seducer of Israel.

There are various versions but the only one I could find in English can be accessed overhere and the only Hebrew overhere. (If you know where to find more versions plz let me know)

Anyways, Rabbi Lichtenstein took on the task of countering this work and does this in about 14 points. The first point I tried to translate and the result will appear in the next post.