John Kesler

Maybe you are thinking of this post, which is part of this thread.

mountainman

Do you have the time and inclination Earl to post a summary of your chronology and overall take on the Toledoth Yeshu?




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Duvduv

Speaking of which, I still have my own doubts as to whether the Toldoth Yeshu versions were even written by a Jew in the first placeat all.

steve_bnk

Not necessarily rumors.

In Buddhism the teachings were oral until the Pali Cannon.

Sheshbazzar

OK. Ill rephrase my statement to be more inclusive.

Oral traditions are the legends, stories, songs, and poetry of dubious veracity that are recited from generation to generation.

steve_bnk

Sorry, but why dubious?

I read about a native culture where each generation learns the complete genealogy of the group. Oral traditions may contain myths and superstitions.

How does writing infer un-dubious?

The Christian misperceptions of atheism, science, and evolution are legion in print. Conspiracy theories abound.

After the Indian Ocean tsunami I watched an interview of a native on a small island.

In his culture there is a creation myth. Periodically god sends a flood to cleanse and recreate the 'world'. Part of the story was a warning that if you are on the shore and water starts to draw back from the shore, run for high ground. Cultural oral tradition based in physical reality mixed over time with a myth.

When I was a kid in the 50s a white cultural myth was George Custer as an American hero. He was far from it.

John Wayne became the iconic portrayer of a mythical white western heroic cowboy.

Etc.

Myths today abound.

EarlDoherty

A selection of quotes from that thread:

(Posted from my book: Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel’s “The Case For Christ”)

I responded:

It should be obvious why this is a very unlikely 'out'. No one else outside of Matthew witnesses to such a Jewish spin. My remarks apply as I said in Challenging the Verdict. If that final sentence in the Guards scene witnessed to an actual 'spin' by the Jews, if it was “ammunition already being used” in the time of Matthew, it would be popping up all over the place in Christian apologetics against it—long before Tertullian, who himself was undoubtedly simply drawing on Matthew. Not even the Jewish Talmud (which began to be set down in writing shortly after Tertullian) preserves such a 'spin'. Ben's "middle ground" is to be rejected as unsupported by any reliably corroborative evidence….

Consequently, it is a valid deduction, in regard to Matthew, that “if the scene is nonhistorical, then that line is a fabrication”. (For which Matthew is to be particularly faulted. It is one thing to provide a sequence in the Gospel which, if not identifiably midrashic, still serves a purpose in an allegorical story. It is another for the evangelist to intrude himself with an editorial comment and give the reader an obvious lie!)

So why did Matthew include the guard at the tomb if there was no such spin in the real world? Well, in one way it is "apologetics". Within Matthew's storyline. In enlarging on Mark's 'novel', Matthew decided that this idea (the accusation that the disciples stole the body) would be something that would occur to the reader, just as it occurred to him, and he decided to include a reproof against it by having the guards bribed to use such an excuse. For that, he needed to place the guards there in the first place, something no one else did. (Again, minus the "lie", it's a nice touch for a fictional account.)

(Posting #101 also contains a very lengthy defense of my position against Ben’s objections, too long to quote here.)

Ben remained unconvinced. But then I supplied the clincher (post#119):

And there is a further point to be made. Mt. 28:15 says: “And this story has been widely spread among the Jews to this very day.” What story? What is this “stolen body” story according to Matthew’s own words? It is what the elders bribed the guards to say if the fact of the missing body came to light:

“His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.”

That latter phrase implies that Matthew does in fact have in mind the actual account of the posted guards when he uses the phrase “this story was widely spread,” and not just the bare fact that “the disciples stole the body.” But the guards story itself has been rejected as likely fiction. If he did not, then his text is certainly misleading, rendering it virtually useless as an indication of anything. And the story is further rendered ludicrous by any idea that the Roman guards could be bribed to say that “we were asleep.” What good is a bribe when to admit such a thing to Pilate would have led to their execution? The priests’ assurances that they will smooth things over with Pilate and “see that you do not suffer” is a piece of Matthean naivete, though it may show that he recognized the problem with his story. (It also speaks to the naivete of every Christian who ever held that the guards sequence was factual.)

To which Ben responded (#121):

(See also my next posting, about the Toledoth, which includes the guards at the tomb issue.)

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

Pete, for me to create a new summary of several pages in my book would be too time-consuming. However, in surveying the thread in my previous posting, I came across this posting which may help fill your request. It’s also pertinent to the discussion about the “guards at the tomb” scene in that previous post:

[In answer to Ben] Now, as to the Toledoth Yeshu. Your facile appeal to this writing shows that you don’t know as much about it as you should, if anything. First of all, it is far from clear exactly what the earliest version contained, how far back it goes, and who were the authors. In fact, it cannot even be spoken of as “a” book, since it is more a tradition of Jewish satirical response to Christianity with extremely obscure roots. As an organized work, all manuscripts come from the medieval period and were actually first published by Christians (leading to the contention that Christians had written it to foment hatred of the Jews). While the latter is very unlikely, only certain elements and themes that later became the complete Toledoth can be traced earlier, with much variation and uncertainty. Some of those themes can be found alluded to in Christian writers of the 2nd and later centuries, but nothing that could identify an actual “book” in ‘print’ and circulation, or even a source in an ur-collection common to the Toledoth. In the surviving manuscripts incorporating these traditions (and they run into the scores) there are great numbers of variants, including basic things like the circumstances of Jesus’ death and what happened to his body afterwards. There is no way to trace any of these elements back beyond the later Talmudic period, let alone say with any confidence that “the disciples stole Jesus’ body” was something in circulation in a circulating Toledoth during the 2nd or 3rd centuries. And since any identifiable storyline is so late, and since the work became a deliberate parody of the Gospels, we are quite justified in regarding any stolen body theme in what became the full Toledoth as something derived from Matthew.

But in any case, the whole argument is unfounded. For the Toledoth in any of its versions does not present us with a scenario of “the body of Jesus disappeared but this is to be explained by the fact that the disciples stole the body,” thus providing no support whatever to Matthew's supposed contention. I will quote that passage (chapter 7, verse 4 to 23) in the version given by Robert Price in his “The Pre-Nicene New Testament”, mostly drawing from Wagenseil’s text of 1681. It is closely harmonious with one of the versions quoted by Frank Zindler in his “The Jesus the Jews Never Knew” (which contains a very thorough study of the Toledoth, drawing on the modern experts on the subject, such as William Horbury).

Quote:
Then the radicals came before Helena, the queen, and said, “They have killed the messiah, who displayed many wonders in his lifetime. And now, after killing him, they buried him. But he is not in his grave! Already he has ascended into heaven, as it is written, ‘For he shall welcome me. Selah.’ He prophesied the same of himself.”

She summoned the sages and demanded, “What have you done with him?” They replied to her, “We have executed him, for that was the sentence passed on him.”

She asked them, “After you executed him, then what did you do with him?” They reply to her, “We have buried him.”

At once they mounted a search for him in the grave but they did not find him. She asked them, “If you buried him in this grave, where is he now?” At this the sages were perplexed and had no answer for her. In fact, a certain man had removed him from his grave and brought him into his garden, and he had divided the stream flowing into his garden and buried him in a pit he dug in the sand. Then he had restored the waters to their proper channel over the new grave. But unaware of this, the queen said, “If you cannot show me Jesus, I will deprive you of both freedom and escape.”

They reply to her, “Grant us enough time.” And after she had granted them three days, all Israel was mourning with fasting and prayer. And the radicals saw their opportunity and raised a ruckus, saying, “You have killed the Lord’s anointed!” And all Israel was in great distress, fearing the outbreak of persecution.

Then one went forth, an elder named Rabbi Tanchuma, and he was walking in a field, weeping. The caretaker of the garden saw him and asked him, “Why do you weep?” He told him the story, then said it was “because of that wicked one who is not to be found, and lo, the time granted us by the queen is already up and we are all weeping and fasting.”

So when he heard this report, that all Israel was mourning and that the wicked were claiming “he has ascended into heaven,” then the caretaker said, “This is a day for Israel to rejoice and be glad, then; for as it happens, I stole him away because of the insurgents, to prevent their absconding with the body, for then we should never hear the end of it.”

At once they went to Jerusalem and told them the good news. And all Israel followed the caretaker of the garden. Then they tied the corpse by the ankles to a horse’s tail and dragged him through the streets of Jersualem until they brought him to the queen. And they said, “Behold that fellow who ascended to heaven!” And they departed from her courts rejoicing while she mocked the radicals and praised the sages.

The first thing that is obvious here is that the “caretaker of the garden” is almost certainly derived from the Gospel of John and has nothing to do with disciples stealing the body. The allusion to this gardener moving the body because he feared the latter might happen is an obvious echo of the Matthew idea, which has also been—tangentially—incorporated into the creation of this scene in the Toledoth. The point to be stressed here, however (and it is my main point, which you have not addressed), is that if Matthew were to be relied on and we were to really believe, or put some credence into, the idea that the Jews were really circulating as early as the first century such an accusation that the disciples stole the body, then that would be the dominant, if not exclusive theme we would find in the Jewish literature, and not only in the Toledoth; yet it is not to be found at all. That is a legitimate use of the argument from silence, based on very strong deductive reasoning.

The appearance of “Judas” instead of the gardener in a different version cannot be supported as early, much less original. In fact, it looks like a later doctoring, as the context fits best the Johannine garden/gardener scheme. Turning the gardener into Judas makes very little sense.

In any case, look at the scene. The body has not disappeared, it has simply been moved and then recovered, to be dragged around the streets of the city in public view. This is hardly in keeping with Matthew’s contention that the Jews came up with the story that “the disciples stole the body”, an admission on their part that the body remained missing. Your appeal to the Toledoth, no matter what its date, hardly supports Matthew’s contention, since it doesn’t even remotely agree with it. Your statement that, in regard to the Jews not being likely to admit by default that the tomb was empty, “they did exactly this in the Toledoth” is completely wrong and indicates that you do not know this work at all.

Your backtracking (with others here supporting you) that, well, Matthew may only be attesting to a counter-tradition that existed among Jews in his area, is simply a fallback position, the battle being lost on the wider field. You have no more evidence, or reason, to trust Matthew on this score, than on the larger score (other than your desire to rescue Matthew from being a complete liar, although I see him as simply a fiction writer). It amounts to nothing more than an unfounded rationalization. The point is, there is zero corroborating evidence for either the larger or smaller scale claim. (Besides, Matthew says that “this story has became widely spread among the Jews to this day,” which certainly sounds like a lot more than a local apologetic.)

And that was the essence of my contention. Everything else you argue around (including whether I “should” have addressed Matthew in my statement), is simply smoke. The exercise should not be whether you or anyone else can come up with some kind of feasible ‘out’, no matter how remote or unsupported by evidence….

And:

In the Toledoth, the tomb is only temporarily empty, a brief element of the storyline. Surely you can understand that a Jewish spin, as allegedly referred to in Matthew, that the tomb was empty because the disciples stole the body, is hardly going to be based on such a temporary situation. The Matthew scenario is that the Jews, over time, accepted that the tomb was permanently empty and came up with the rationale that “the disciples stole the body” to explain this. If they had a tradition like the Toledoth, this is the very negation of an “admission by default that the tomb was (permanently) empty.” It is simply not the same thing. The “disappearing” body has to be a permanently disappearing body, otherwise the Matthean ‘explanation’ would have no application. Turning it around, the temporary disappearance of the body in the Toledoth would bear no relation to the Mathean scenario.

The essential element of the story has to be that the body has disappeared. Permanently. That is, the essential element of your alleged Jewish spin—and the spin that Matthew in the concluding line of the pericope is supposedly alluding to—has to be that the body had disappeared for good, and this was the Jews’ counter-explanation for that Christian claim. This is the whole point to Matthew’s guards insertion; it can serve only to explain a permanent disappearance of the body. Therefore, the Jewish spin has to contain the admission that the body had disappeared for good. (There is no such admission in the Toledoth story, and thus it cannot make consistent sense in the context of Matthew’s scenario and his final statement.) This is precisely what I said the Jews were not liable to do: make such an admission that the body had disappeared for good. You said the Toledoth does just that. I pointed out that it does not; it’s only a temporary disappearance and since the body is immediately recovered, there is no need for the Toledoth scenario to come up with any such spin as “the disciples stole the body”—which in any case it does not, as I’ve pointed out. It’s the gardener who moved the body, with no intent at deception. The substitution of Judas for the gardener is an obvious bad fit with the context, and does not represent an original or hardly even an early version.

The Toledoth story cannot support your contention about Matthew’s guards insertion, because if the former were circulating before Matthew wrote, then Matthew’s guards rejoinder would have to be different. It would have to deal with the Jewish spin that the body only temporarily disappears and was recovered. Matthew’s story is not designed to do this; it gives no sign of such a Jewish rejoinder. Therefore, the Toledoth has to postdate Matthew. At best it’s a new spin. But it can do nothing to support the last line of Matthew’s scene being based on reality.

In fact, the Toledoth spin is undoubtedly a counter to the Matthean story. Price regards the Toledoth as likely a satire developing out of Jewish reactions to the Gospels, Matthew chiefly, making use of the latter in that satire, though as we’ve seen, John has a recognizable input as well in the ‘gardener’ aspect of the post-death events.

Earl Doherty

aa5874

George Custer and John Wayne are not myths. Myths do NOT abound today except perhaps Myth Jesus and Myth Moroni.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne

Duvduv

Although it would appear unlikely, there do seem to be contextual reasons to consider the possibility that the Toledoth storyline (aside from variations) not written by Jews at all, but according to the suggestion made by Earl, that it was written by gentiles to foment hatred against the Jews, although it may simply have been a way of delegitimizing Judaism further since the gospels ("Crucify him!") should have done the job already, i.e. that the Jews had crucified the Son of God.