Yalqut Shamouni : Debunk­ing the Mis­at­tri­bu­tion of ​“Tole­doth Yeshu” to Yochanan Ben Zakkai

An arti­cle post­ed on a Chris­t­ian web­site enti­tled Jesus in the Rab­binic Tra­di­tions is a good exam­ple of the lev­el to which reli­gious stud­ies has sunk in recent years, as car­ried out on the Inter­net. The author, one Sam Shamoun, who presents him­self as one who has the knowl­edge to instruct us in his cho­sen sub­ject, is found to be incred­i­bly igno­rant of the most basic under­stand­ing con­cern­ing his sup­posed area of exper­tise. Mr Shamoun is also fond of using the most vul­gar lan­guage when address­ing Mus­lims. I shall try not to return the favor, but can­not guar­an­tee per­fect success.

Today’s new brand of ​“Inter­net schol­ar­ship” would seem to demand very lit­tle inde­pen­dent think­ing from researchers. There exists online a seem­ing embar­rass­ment of rich­es in all areas of study. At the click of a mouse, we are all ​“author­i­ties” on the sub­ject of our choice. This leads to a dan­ger­ous phe­nom­e­non — the easy accep­tance of any­thing we down­load, with lit­tle or no check­ing of sources. Many assume that those who pub­lish mate­r­i­al on the Inter­net must know what they are talk­ing about, and are mas­ters of their mate­r­i­al, espe­cial­ly when that mate­r­i­al sup­ports the con­clu­sions these ​“researchers” cherish.

But this is a per­ilous method of con­duct­ing a search for truth, espe­cial­ly when sources include the Tal­mud and oth­er Jew­ish tra­di­tions. I have seen sources false­ly invent­ed out­right, while the author depends on his read­ers’ igno­rance of such arcane sub­ject mat­ter. Yet some go even fur­ther — they invent books (the ​“Archko Vol­ume” is an extreme exam­ple), or add to books pas­sages that cove­nient­ly con­tain state­ments or attes­ta­tions which are oth­er­wise defi­cient in known sources (the utter­ly impos­si­ble addi­tion to Jose­phus is a his­tor­i­cal exam­ple), or fake their authorship.

It is not my pur­pose here to refute the Tal­mud Jesus^(P) sto­ries — they are actu­al­ly there, though usu­al­ly giv­en far too much his­tor­i­cal cre­dence. If these ​“com­men­ta­tors” tru­ly knew the Tal­mud, they would also know that it is not to be used as a col­lec­tion of his­tor­i­cal facts ; the idea that any­one would con­sid­er that the Tal­mud sto­ries about Jesus^(P) are based on eye-wit­ness or first-hand accounts, or even the New Tes­ta­ment, is ludi­crous. Pas­sages which refute the New Tes­ta­ment accounts are glid­ed over with­out com­ment, such as the 40-day peri­od between Jesus’^(P) arrest and exe­cu­tion and the fact that Jesus^(P) is stoned to death and only hung after he has died.¹

How could the Tal­mud declare ​“Mary Megad­dala” the moth­er of Jesus^(P)2 if the rab­bis had even the New Tes­ta­ment before them ? Are we to adjust our knowl­edge of Mary to include her occu­pa­tion as a woman?s hair­dress­er on the word of the Tal­mud ?³ The Jew­ish tra­di­tions were, before they were set into writ­ing, oral tra­di­tions, and as any stu­dent of midrash and hag­ga­da knows, sub­ject to great flights of fan­cy. The gross anachro­nisms in many of the tales in the Tal­mud bring them even fur­ther from first-hand history.

Mr. Shamoun also employs sources whose dates he obe­di­ent­ly pass­es on to us via the Chris­t­ian authors he cites. Mr. Shamoun him­self notes the reli­gion of the authors, thus bla­tant­ly act­ing against the best rule for sound schol­ar­ship : ​“Nev­er learn from the ene­mies of your sub­ject”. Open-mind­ed Chris­t­ian schol­ars are one thing, but ​“Bible-Thumpers” are anoth­er ! His sources are all sec­ond and third-hand, and are obvi­ous­ly unchecked by him­self. Mr. Shamoun seems to have a deep aver­sion to track­ing down the orig­i­nal doc­u­ments and texts he freely and uncrit­i­cal­ly cites.

If a Jew­ish text men­tions that Jesus^(P) was sup­posed to be, or claimed to be God, that infor­ma­tion was cer­tain­ly obtained by Jews via Chris­tians and Chris­t­ian tra­di­tions and dog­ma, which had had cen­turies to devel­op, and not direct­ly through any his­tor­i­cal events, nor as we have seen, even from the New Tes­ta­ment, which Jews would cer­tain­ly not waste their time study­ing, unless arm­ing them­selves for polem­i­cal dis­putes. There is absolute­ly no reli­able inde­pen­dent his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to be found con­cern­ing Jesus in Jew­ish tra­di­tion, as it is all late mate­r­i­al, set down long after the Chris­tians them­selves had already decid­ed to make Jesus^(P) into their God.

Many Chris­t­ian apol­o­gists, for exam­ple, like to take the ref­er­ence to Jesus^(P) in Tac­i­tus as inde­pen­dent proof of his exis­tence, when in fact, with its late date, it mere­ly sup­plies proof that Chris­tians exist­ed, along with their beliefs and dog­ma, which were hard­ly a secret — not that I am deny­ing Jesus^(P) existence !

For exam­ple, Mr. Shamoun writes :

The sec­tions of this pas­sage refer­ring to Jesus^(P) cer­tain­ly read like late accre­tions to the Bal­aam material.

Note that Mr. Shamoun (or his source for the source?) believes that this Bal­aam sto­ry was told in the year 160 by Rab­bi Eleazar ha-Kap­par, as men­tioned in Yalqut Shim’oni, and ​“accord­ing to Midrash Yelamme­de­nu”, what­ev­er ​“accord­ing to” is sup­posed to mean. Yalqut Shim’oni dates from the 13th cen­tu­ry, though as its name ​“yalqut” (glean­ing, or selec­tion) indi­cates, is a col­lec­tion of ear­li­er midrashim.

As for the Midrash Yelamme­de­nu (com­plet­ed 8th?-9th ? c.), I checked my own copy (Ams­ter­dam, 1733) and find only the men­tion (and not ascribed to Eleazar ha-Kap­par) that the Blessed Holy One caused Bal­aam’s voice to go from one end of the world to the oth­er so that the Gen­tile Nations would hear, con­nect­ing this with a verse in Proverbs (27:14) which states that if a per­son bless­es his friends with a loud voice ear­ly in the morn­ing, it will be count­ed as a curse upon him­self. There is no men­tion of or allu­sion to Jesus^(P) in Midrash Yelamme­de­nu. The pas­sage in the Yalqut seems to be a late medieval expan­sion on Yelammedenu.

I would wel­come con­flict­ing evi­dence. Unlike Mr. Shamoun, I wel­come cor­rec­tions, as I find that I may learn that way ! Per­haps Mr. Shamoun (that is, the book he copied) meant ​“based on” Yelammedenu.

Indi­vid­ual hag­gadot may exist in many forms and lines of trans­mis­sion. Whether the attri­bu­tion to Eleazar ha-Kap­par in the Yalqut is cor­rect or not I could not say. Eleazar ha-Kap­par is record­ed to have referred to Bal­aam, in anoth­er con­text, in the Avoth d’Rab­bi Nathan (XXIX:4). Maybe the ascrip­tion of the present sto­ry is by asso­ci­a­tion. Who knows ?

Just because a cer­tain Rab­bi is men­tioned, he did not nec­es­sar­i­ly play a role of any sort. If we took the men­tion of the rab­bis of the Jew­ish Jesus sto­ries lit­er­al­ly, Jesus^(P) would end up liv­ing any­where from the sec­ond cen­tu­ry BCE to the third cen­tu­ry CE !

To under­line this point, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the quote from Yalqut Shim’oni, the Shamoun arti­cle has :

Here we have essen­tial­ly the same com­men­tary on Num­bers 23:19, fea­tur­ing strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar word­ing, attrib­uted to two dif­fer­ent Rab­bis — Eliez­er ha-Kap­par in Yalqut Shim’oni, and Abahu (late 3rd-ear­ly 4th c.) in the much ear­li­er (late 4th c.) Tal­mud Yerushal­mi. One is tempt­ed to assign pri­or­i­ty to R. Abahu, who was known for his dis­pu­ta­tions with Chris­tians, explain­ing the lat­er Eliez­er ha-Kap­par ascrip­tion by his men­tion of Bal­aam in the Avoth d’Rab­bi Nathan — yet anoth­er exam­ple of the dan­gers inher­ent in approach­ing Tal­mud and Midrash as reli­able his­tor­i­cal texts.

In fact, Bal­aam is men­tioned else­where in Yelamme­de­nu⁴ as fly­ing through the air with the King of Mid­i­an, and being caused to fall by the Name of God which was dis­played on the fore­head of the High Priest, a sto­ry which has a con­nec­tion with the Tole­doth Yeschu, as well as to the pseu­do-Clemen­tines, with ref­er­ence to Peter and Simon Magus.

There­fore, the ear­li­est source for this Bal­aam sto­ry would seem to be the 13th cen­tu­ry, and is based on the teach­ings of Chris­tian­i­ty, not any his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of Jesus^(P) per se. I am quite pre­pared to be cor­rect­ed in this, but it would take, of course, some research, which we are all, appar­ent­ly, not equal­ly pre­pared to perform.

It is well known that Jesus^(P) could nev­er have claimed to be Very God, as Jews are monothe­ists. There­fore, recourse to the New or Old Tes­ta­ments would be fruit­less, neces­si­tat­ing a per­ver­sion of plain mean­ing to sup­port such a con­clu­sion. How handy it would be if we could ​“dis­cov­er” anoth­er book, writ­ten by a con­tem­po­rary of Jesus^(P), where­in the author could doc­u­ment such a claim by Jesus^(P) first-hand ! Such mate­r­i­al would be eager­ly swal­lowed, with no thought of inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion as to the verac­i­ty of the state­ment, nor of even the exis­tence of the won­der­ful­ly use­ful book. Such is the ​“new schol­ar­ship”, which appeals to lazy minds which do not desire to be trou­bled with orig­i­nal research. ​“Why both­er?”, our schol­ar imag­ines, ​“Some­one else has already done the research, and he is so much smarter than I am. Why, he even wrote a book on the subject!”

Mr. Shamoun’s arti­cle is mere­ly a glean­ing of notices by oth­ers, a ver­i­ta­ble ​“YALQUT SHAMOUNI“⁵ But the brave new Inter­net schol­ars for­get that when one cites or quotes any­thing in an arti­cle of his own com­pi­la­tion, his name is there­by attached to it, and he is to be held respon­si­ble for the mate­r­i­al he has quot­ed. This is why dis­pas­sion­ate schol­ars, men of intel­li­gence, check their sources. An author who relies on oth­ers for con­fir­ma­tion is mere­ly play­ing ​“the schol­ar­ship game”, with no con­cern for truth, just as long as his own cher­ished opin­ions may be seen in black and white.

This is pre­cise­ly the trap into which Mr. Shamoun has stum­bled. In ​“his” arti­cle on Rab­binic views of Jesus^(P), he quotes a book pur­port­ed­ly writ­ten by the 1st cen­tu­ry Judaean Rab­bi Yochanan ben Zakkai, a fig­ure of mon­u­men­tal impor­tance in Judaism, the man who escaped (as tra­di­tion has it) the Roman siege of Jerusalem in a cof­fin, to estab­lish the Rab­bini­cal Acad­e­my at Yavneh, respon­si­ble for the col­la­tion of laws lead­ing to the Mish­na, as well as for the sur­vival of Judaism fol­low­ing the Destruc­tion of the Temple.

Mr. Shamoun (or rather, his all-know­ing source) says :

Note how thrilled Mr. Shamoun is with this book sup­pos­ed­ly writ­ten by Yochanan ben Zakkai, as he pro­ceeds to asso­ciate it and oth­er pastes with no few­er than sev­en New Tes­ta­ment pas­sages ! Yes, the ​“ben Zakkai” book is clear­ly a bonan­za for him

Too bad it does not exist. Well, it does, but it is cer­tain­ly not the work of Yochanan ben Zakkai !

Now, I am quite sure Mr. Shamoun does not intend to deceive us here, though I could not say the same for Mr. Qayrawani with any cer­ti­tude. In the case of Mr. Shamoun, he stepped into what he thought was a pleas­ant lake for a wade, and prompt­ly got sucked away over his head. He pre­sumed to dis­cuss Judaism. He should not do that. Any­one who could for a frac­tion of a sec­ond imag­ine that Yochanan ben Zakkai wrote a book called ​“Biog­ra­phy of Jesus the Nazarene” clear­ly has no con­cept of the can­vas of Jew­ish his­to­ry or its lead­ing char­ac­ters, and has no busi­ness fraud­u­lent­ly imply­ing otherwise.

But please allow me to solve the mystery :

The book referred to is the late medieval ​“Tole­doth Yeschu ha-Notzri” in the recen­sion pub­lished by Johann Jacob Huldrich (Lei­den, 1705). This is the sec­ond pub­li­ca­tion of the Tole­doth Yeschu, after the Wagen­seil edi­tion (Alt­dorf, 1681), and is a dif­fer­ent recension.

In the Huldrich recen­sion, Jesus claims to be God and the Son of God, and it is declared, as Jesus is led to his pun­ish­ment, ​“So may all thine ene­mies per­ish, O Lord!”

The var­i­ous recen­sions of the Tole­doth Yeschu are a ​“mix-and-match” of ingre­di­ents. The most com­plete study of all the motifs can be found in the work of Gunter Schlicht­ing⁶. This is the best study since the ground-break­ing work of Samuel Krauss.

To actu­al­ly ascribe author­ship of the Tole­doth Yeschu to a man like Yochanan ben Zakkai is noth­ing short of a trav­es­ty. Oh yes, the Huldrich recen­sion of Tole­doth Yeschu is a won­der­ful source book for the life of Jesus^(P), writ­ten by the peo­ple who should know best, the Jews, who were first-hand wit­ness­es. Would you like to hear a few more excerpts from the Huldrich recen­sion ? No problem !

Here are a few para­phras­es and summations :

In the reign of ​“King Herod the Pros­e­lyte”[mean­ing Herod the Great, who was not a pros­e­lyte, died 4 BCE], the beau­ti­ful Miri­am was betrothed to Rab­bi Pap­pos ben Yehu­da [died ca. 150 CE], who kept Mary locked up in a house, but she escaped through a win­dow and ran away to Beth­le­hem with her excit­ing boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks, Joseph Pan­dera. We all know what hap­pened next. Then…

Yeschu grew up and went to school at the acad­e­my of Joshua ben Per­achia (ear­ly 1st c. BCE). One day, Rab­bi Eliez­er ben Hyr­canos [d. 2nd c.CE], Rab­bi Aki­va [d. 135 CE] and Rab­bi Joshua ben Levi [d. 220 CE] over­heard Yeschu talk­ing. They went togeth­er to the school of Joshuah ben Per­achia and there cut off Jesus’ hair in a cir­cle (medieval monk style). Jesus, ashamed, went back to Mary his moth­er and bit her breast, as in 2 Alpha­bet of Ben Sira, where Ben Sira is born with the pow­er of speech, and when pre­sent­ed with his moth­er’s milk says ​“I don’t want that. Give me meat!!!” and pro­ceeds to bite his moth­er’s breast. [Trans­la­tion of 2 Alph Ben Sira is my own]

King Herod wrote [more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry after his death] let­ters to many towns, includ­ing Worms, in Ger­many[!] ask­ing for advice con­cern­ing what to do with Yeschu, etc…

How about it, Mr. Shamoun.…any New Tes­ta­ment par­al­lels spring to mind yet ?

Now I cer­tain­ly do not expect Mr. Shamoun to thank me for sav­ing him from any fur­ther embar­rass­ment at attribut­ing the Tole­doth Yeschu to Rab­bi Yochanan ben Zakkai ! In fact, he will prob­a­bly let it remain on his web­site as it stands.

No, Mr. Shamoun will nev­er admit his error. Per­haps he will be hap­py with attack­ing me per­son­al­ly, for hold­ing pseu­do-schol­ars with vul­gar tongues in con­tempt, and will offer oth­er per­son­al com­ments. I recent­ly wrote to him under my giv­en fam­i­ly name, as I often do in var­i­ous cir­cum­stances, depend­ing on the sub­ject mat­ter. He has sure­ly already made the con­nec­tion. I come from a Jew­ish fam­i­ly, and have been a Mus­lim for 34 years, alham­dulil­lah. This ​“cultural/​religious” bond affords me a unique per­spec­tive, and I am grate­ful for it.

It will be instruc­tive to observe his response, if any, to this state­ment I have just made. In any case, Allah is my only guide.

Or per­haps I do not give him enough cred­it. Maybe he tru­ly repents of his shod­dy meth­ods. If he wish­es to repent, I will be hap­py to pro­vide assistance.

Mr. Shamoun, place your hands on your tele­vi­sion screen and repeat after me :

“I am a sin­ner. I tru­ly repent of my poor meth­ods of so-called ​“research”, allow­ing oth­ers to do the work I should have done myself, while nev­er check­ing their sources. With con­trite heart I place my life and soul in the hands of the Lord of Knowl­edge, and ask Him to find me a good ency­clo­pe­dia, or at least a library card, so I may nev­er again make a fool of myself by uncrit­i­cal­ly fol­low­ing any author who calls him­self a Chris­t­ian. Amen!”

How­ev­er, just in case, let me offer some words of advice :

1. Nev­er fear cor­rec­tion, even if it comes from some­one you instinc­tive­ly detest with a pur­ple pas­sion, because you will always gain from more knowledge.
2. Always check sources when you are deal­ing with a sub­ject about which you know absolute­ly nothing.

3. Get rid of that ben Zakkai ref­er­ence right now, it’s for your own good ! On the oth­er hand, allow­ing it to remain will serve as a sign­post and a warn­ing to all read­ers : ​“I know nothing!”.

And Allah knows best !

1. b. San­hedrin 43a[↩]
2. Tosaphoth Chagi­ga 4b ; Tosaphoth Shab­bath 104b[↩]
3. Pro­fes­sor Shamoun has the mean­ing­less word ​“Tosah” for Tosaphoth, but what dif­fer­ence does that make for him ? He sure­ly does not know the dif­fer­ence between the Tosaphoth, which are 13th cen­tu­ry French gloss­es on the Gemara (most­ly record­ed in the Tal­mud by Eliezar of Touques) and the Toseph­ta, tan­naitic addi­tions to the Mish­na.[↩]
4. Par­shat Roshei ha-Mat­tot[↩]
5. We might observe here that one mean­ing of ​“leqet” is, fit­ting­ly, ​“the poor man’s share of the crop”![↩]
6. Gunter Schlicht­ing, Ein Jud­is­ch­er Leben Jesu. Die ver­shol­lene Toledot-Jesu-Fassung“Tam u‑Mu’ad”, Tub­in­gen : JCB Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1982 (Hebrew text with Ger­man notes).[↩]