contained in the Gospels, Canonical and Apocryphal.
Origen's answer to Celsus is composed of eight Books. In the first Book a Jew speaks, who is introduced by Celsus as addressing Jesus himself; in the second Book this Jew addresses those of his fellow-countrymen who have embraced Christianity; in the other six Books Celsus speaks for himself. Origen extracts only short passages from the work of Celsus, and then labours to demolish the force of the argument of the opponent of Christianity as best he can.
The arguments of Celsus and the counter-arguments of Origen do not concern us here. All we have to deal with are those traditions or slanders detailed to Celsus by the Jews, which he reproduces. That Celsus was in communication with Jews when he wrote the two first Books is obvious, and the only circumstances he relates which concern the life of our Lord he derived from his Jewish informants. “The Jew (whom Celsus introduces) addresses Jesus, and finds much fault. In the first place, he charges him with having falsely proclaimed himself to be the Son of a Virgin; afterwards, he says that Jesus was born in a poor Jewish village, and that his mother was a poor woman of the country, who supported herself with spinning and needlework; that she was cast off by her betrothed, a carpenter; and that after she was thus rejected by her husband, she wandered about in disgrace and misery till she secretly gave birth to Jesus. Jesus himself was obliged from poverty and necessity to go down as servant into Egypt, where, he learnt some of the secret sciences which are in high honour among the Egyptians; and he placed such confidence in these sciences, that on his return to his native land he gave himself out to be a God.”
Origen adds: “The carpenter, as the Jew of Celsus declares, who was betrothed to Mary, put the mother of Jesus from him, because she had broken faith with him, in favour of a soldier named Panthera!”
Again: “Celsus relates from the Gospel of Matthew the flight of Christ into Egypt; but he denies all that is marvellous and supernatural in it, especially that an angel should have appeared to Joseph and ordered him to escape. Instead of seeking whether the departure of Jesus from Judaea and his residence in Egypt had not some spiritual meaning, he has made up a fable concerning it. He admits, indeed, that Jesus may have wrought the miracles which attracted such a multitude of people to him, and induced them to follow him as the Messiah; but he pretends that these miracles were wrought, not by virtue of his divine power, but of his magical knowledge. Jesus, says he, had a bad education; later he went into Egypt and passed into service there, and there learnt some wonderful arts. When he came back to his fatherland, on account of these arts, he gave himself out to be a God.”77
“The Jew brought forward by Celsus goes on to say, ‘I could relate many things more concerning Jesus, all which are true, but which have quite a different character from what his disciples relate touching him; but, I will not now bring these forward.’ And what are these facts,” answers Origen, “which are not in agreement with the narratives of the Evangelists, and which the Jew refrains from mentioning? Unquestionably, he is using only a rhetorical expression; he pretends that he has in his store abundance of munitions of war to discharge against Jesus and his doctrine, but in fact he knows nothing which can deceive the hearer with the appearance of truth, except those particulars which he has culled from the the Gospels themselves.”78
This is most important evidence of the utter ignorance of the Jews in the second century of all that related to the history of our Lord. Justus and Josephus had been silent. There was no written narrative to which the Jew might turn for information; his traditions were silent. The fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews had broken the thread of their recollections.
It is very necessary to bear this in mind, in order to appreciate the utter worthlessness of the stories told of our Saviour in the Talmud and the Toledoth Jeschu. An attempt has been made to bolster up these late fables, and show that they are deserving of a certain amount of confidence.79
But it is clear that the religious movement which our Lord originated in Palestine attracted much less attention at the time than has been usually supposed. The Sanhedrim at first regarded his teaching with the contempt with which, in after times, Leo X. heard of the preaching of Luther. “It is a schoolman's proposition,” said the Pope. “A new rabbinical tradition,” the elders probably said. Only when their interests and fears were alarmed, did they interfere to procure the condemnation of Christ. And then they thought no more of their victim and his history than they did later of the history of James, the Lord's brother. The preaching and death of Jesus led to no tumultuous outbreak against the Roman government, and therefore excited little interest. The position of Christ as the God-man was not forced on them by the Nazarenes. The Jews noticed the virtues of these men, but ignored their peculiar tenets, till traditions were lost; and when the majesty of Christ, incarnate God, shone out on the world which turned to acknowledge him, they found that they had preserved no records, no recollections of the events in the history of Jesus. That he was said by Christians to have been born of a Virgin, driven into Egypt by King Herod – that he wrought miracles, gathered disciples, died on the cross and rose again – they heard from the Christians; and these facts they made use of to pervert them into fantastic fables, to colour them with malignant inventions. The only trace of independent tradition is in the mention made of Panthera by the Jew produced by Celsus.
It is perhaps worthy of remark that St. Epiphanius, who wrote against heresies at the end of the fourth century, gives the genealogy of Jesus thus:80
Jacob, called Panther, married to ?
Offspring:
Mary, married to Joseph
Offspring:
Jesus
Cleophas
It shows that in the fourth century the Jewish stories of Panthera had made such an impression on the Christians, that his name was forced into the pedigree of Jesus.
Had any of the stories found in the Toledoth Jeschu existed in the second century, we should certainly have found them in the book of Celsus.
Origen taunts the Jew with knowing nothing of Christ but what he had found out from the Gospels. He would not have uttered that taunt had any anti-Christian apocryphal biographies of Christ existed in his day. The Talmud, indeed, has the tale of Christ having studied magic in Egypt. Whence this legend, as well as that of Panthera, came, we shall see presently.
IV. The Talmud
The Talmud (i. e. the Teaching) consists of two parts, the Mischna and the Gemara.
The Mischna (i. e. δευτέρωσις, Second Law, or Recapitulation) is a collection of religious ordinances, interpretations of Old Testament passages, especially of Mosaic rules, which have been given by various illustrious Rabbis from the date of the founding of the second Temple, therefore from about B.C. 400 to the year A.D. 200. These interpretations, which were either written or orally handed down, were collected in the year A.D. 219 by the Rabbi Jehuda the Holy, at Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, into a book to which he gave the name of Mischna, the Recapitulation of the Law. At that time the Jewish Sanhedrim and the Patriarch resided at Tiberias. After the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Sanhedrim, which consisted of seventy-one persons, assembled at Jamnia, the ancient Philistine city of Jabne; but on the insurrection of the Jews under Barcochab, A.D. 135, it took up its quarters at Tiberias. There the Sanhedrim met under a hereditary Patriarch of the family of Gamaliel, who bore the title of Nasi, Chief, till A.D. 420, when the last member of the house of Gamaliel died, and the Patriarchate and Sanhedrim departed from Tiberias.
The Mischna is made up of six Orders (Sedarim), which together contain sixty-three Tractates. The first Order
Contra Cels. lib. i.
Amongst others, Clemens: Jesus von Nazareth, Stuttgart, 1850; Von der Alme: Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller, Leipzig, 1864.
Adv. Haer. lib. iii; Haer. lxviii. 7.
