He started on his journey and on the way he happened to stop at a certain inn, where he was received with much honour and distinction. He said, "The lady innkeeper is quite pretty." His student, Jesus of Nazareth, responded, "No, rabbi! Her eyes are too elongated." Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah rounded on his student: "Wicked man! So that's what you are doing all the time [checking out the women]!" He summoned four hundred shofars and excommunicated him. Jesus came before him several times begging his teacher to accept him back again [into the fold], but he paid him no attention. Once it so happened that [when Jesus came to make his plea] Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah was engaged in reciting the Shema. It was his intention this time to accept the student's penitence and made a sign with his hand [that he should not be disturbed at prayer]. Jesus misinterpreted the sign for another rejection. He went and erected for himself a stone pillar and started worshipping it. Now Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah [alarmed] said, "Repent [of this idolatry]!" He retorted, "Did you not teach me that anyone who not only sins but also causes others to sin is doomed never to reach repentance?"
Jesus practiced wizardry and incited other Jews to engage in idolatry.
15:
Not surprisingly, this account was edited out of the medieval manuscripts by church censorship which, in Europe, was imposed on all books published by and for Jews. However, it has been restored from unadulterated sources in modern Israeli editions of the Talmud, such as that of Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz.
16:
Obviously, the story must be a complete fiction, because if there is one figure in world history whose dates are known – more or less – it must be Jesus of Nazareth. And here we have him being described as a student of Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah nearly 140 years before the time of his death (around the year 30 CE). The Tosafists, living in Christian Europe in the high Middle Ages, knew perfectly well that here was an historical impossibility here. They suggested that perhaps there were two people called Jesus of Nazareth! The proposed solution seems as improbable as the problem it was supposed to resolve.
17:
Last week I had an exchange of e-mails with a colleague who had been confronted by an orthodox person who insisted that the historical information given by our classical sources is to be accepted even when modern scholarship would have it otherwise. I wonder how such a person would explain how the historical Jesus of Nazareth could have been a student of Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah.
To be continued.
In Avot032 I wrote:
Jewish tradition remembers him by his Jewish name, Yonatan, which is invariably rendered in its familiar form: Yannai.
Amnon Ronel writes:
"Familiar" form? For such a tyrannical monster? Maybe 'Yannai' is a hellenization of Yonatan.
I respond:
The name is definitely not Greek. In Hebrew, Yannai is to Yonatan what Johnny is to Jonathan in English. Perhaps the form was a manner of abuse or ridicule among the sages. Certainly, in Hebrew, Yannai refers to himself as King Jonathan and not as King Johnny.
Amnon also asks about the cryptic message that Shim'on ben-Shataĥ sent to Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah:From Jerusalem the holy city to her sister, Egyptian Alexandria: "My husband is staying with you and I am desperately lonely."
Who is the husband? Yannai?
I respond:
No, Yehoshu'a ben-Peraĥyah is here depicted as the husband of Jerusalem: i.e. he rightly belongs by his "wife's" side.
