Medieval Jewish Legends On Matters Connected With Christianity
Few thing's are quite so fascinating as the endeavor to imagine what impression any given matter, quite familiar to us under present circumstances, would produce upon our mind were our education, or our experiences, or even our nature different from what they actually happen to have been. Without following this reflection into any one of the many strange subjects naturally occurring to the mind, the question, What was the idea of Christianity formed by the rank and file of the Jewish religion during the Middle Ages? should not seem strange, and ought to supply us with very much curious information.
Even at the present time the Jews may be said to possess very little exact knowledge concerning the religion of Christ; but during the Middle Ages the very strictness of their own laws with regard to that religion made it almost impossible for them to arrive at any thing at all approaching the truth. The New Testament was a closed book to them. The Gospels, or, as they were called by the Rabbins, the "Revelation of wickedness," were placed under a bann, and the mere reading of the books of the Minims, as the Christians were named, was regarded as a heinous sin.
The peculiar circumstances attaching to the history of the Jewish people made it, nevertheless, impossible for their mind to remain long without some kind of an idea of what the Faith of Christ called upon its members both to believe and practise. They dwelt in Christian countries, and although a portion of the town in which they resided was allotted to them so that their intercourse with the rest of the citizens might not be of a general nature, still, intercourse there must have been, and, as we know, so far as business was concerned, actually was. From the very fact of living in the midst of Christians, from visiting them and being, in turn, the recipients of their calls, it is difficult to suppose that some idea, howsoever indistinct, was not formed in the mind of the "stranger in the gate" as to the religious practice and belief of the Minim. Moreover, they could not help seeing; and, in the Middle Ages the Christian Faith met the eye far more than it does, even in Catholic countries, at the present time. Sacred representations, pious plays, out-of-door preaching, the Sunday procession around the exterior of the Church, and, in large towns, where particularly the Jews had settled down, processions through the streets at the principal feasts, were features of Christianity which forced themselves on to the perception as well of the unsympathetic as of the sympathetic. It would have been contrary to human nature had not the aliens talked among themselves concerning the things which their eyes had seen and their ears heard, and, at the same time, sought to find and to give a reason for them. Any reason complimentary to the Faith of Christ, which they certainly did not love, must not be looked for. They either started with the assumption that no good reason could exist, as Christianity was opposed to Judaism and Judaism to them was the only true religion and at all pleasing to God; or, in case they merely wondered and approached the Chazzan of their Synagogue for explanations, their questions would be answered by abuse poured on everything Christian, or, by what is far worse than abuse, a tissue of falsehoods woven on what, to the Jew, might seem a very plausible substratum of truth.
The Jewish legends of the Middle Ages may, therefore, be ascribed to the endeavor of the Semitic mind to answer the enquiries forced upon it by Christian scenes of every-day occurrence, or to the explanations which the Rabbins felt it wise, under the circumstances, to give their compatriots, influenced, more or less, by what they saw and heard of the "Worshipers of the Stars," as Christians were sometimes called.
The principal document in which these strange ideas of Christianity, formed by the Jewish mind, are to be met with, is the Toldoth Jeshua. The nature of this pamphlet, for in size it can be described by no more dignified name, can be best seen from a notice inserted in one of the Hebrew MSS. by the person who had undertaken the task of copying it for the German Jews living probably in Poland, banished from their adopted country:
The following portion, handed down from father to son, may be consigned to writing only and not printed. A man of ripe understanding will, therefore, read it, but, in these days, he will hold his peace. For the times are evil, and a man should be silent on this subject because of the banishment from which we are all suffering. Moreover, far be it from any one to read this aloud in public, or before little maidens, or, particularly, before Christians who understand German.
We are, however, concerned merely with that part of the Toldoth which may properly be called legendary as distinct from those portions of it which, equally legendary and, historically, equally false, contain in themselves something of a highly blasphemous and offensive nature. In the legends of St. Paolo, of Simeon Kepha, of the Finding of the Cross, there is much that will at once strike the Christian reader as curious and amusing, at the same time as, in every line of them, he is able to see how far removed they are from the truth of things; but there is hardly anything to be met with in them, if anything at all, which will shock or offend.
St. Paul is made responsible for the Christian feasts, the celebration of which the mediaeval Jew witnessed year-by-year being carried out with so much solemnity; but St. Paul's conversion is, curiously enough, ascribed to the entreaty of the Jews themselves. The disciples of Jesus, so the legend informs us, subjected their compatriots to the hardships of a bitter persecution. They, moreover, brought about the greatest division, discord, and unfriendliness among neighbors, because, while following our Lord, they still professed themselves to be members of the religion of Israel. The Jews, therefore, determined to rid themselves of the disturbers of their domestic peace.
Now they chose out from among them a certain wise man whose name was Elias, and they said unto him, We have unanimously decreed that you should save us; for you are aware of all the evils which have overtaken us from the times of Jesus until now, and of how we are allowed the enjoyment of no peace by his wicked disciples. The whole of Israel have, therefore, decreed that thou seek a means for our salvation. Thou must needs deal deceitfully with them, so as to lead them out from the midst of Israel, and thus, consequently, thou must be of them by word of mouth, though not in heart. We will take upon ourselves the punishment for this thing, receiving, as our own, thine iniquity in the sight of God. Go now, therefore, into the Holy Place and learn the name Jehovah, just as Jesus did, in order to obtain the power of doing whatever miracles you may think fit, that, thereby, they may believe in thee. Thus was he desired to do; and thus he did.
The allusion to our B. Lord, to the learning of the Holy Name of Jehovah, and to the power of working any, even the most extraordinary and absurd, miracles by means of it, is connected with another part of the Toldoth where the difficulty of obtaining the Divine Name is mentioned, and the dangers which might ensue to the whole world, in case it were obtained, are described.
In the Holy Place there was a stone called Shathjah, the interpretation of which is the Lord (Jah) placed (Shath) it; and this was the stone over which Jacob of old poured oil. Now, upon it are written the letters of the name Jehovah, and whosoever is able to learn them receives the power of doing whatever he may desire. As the Wise Men feared that the youths of Israel might learn them, and so bring confusion into the world, they took measures to prevent their being learned. From the two iron columns at the gate where the fire was wont to burn, brazen dogs were suspended, so that, were any person to enter with the purpose of learning those letters, the dogs would bark at him as he went out, and so distract him that the letters would go clean out from his mind.
Elias, or, as he is afterwards called in the legend, Paul, proceeds to the Holy Place, the difficulty of learning the Divine Name being, according to the writers of the Toldoth, overcome by a very simple experiment. Entering into the Sanctuary, he not only learns the wonderful letters but inscribes them on a piece of parchment. For safety's sake he deposits the parchment in his own flesh, making an incision and then covering in the wound with the skin, the whole process being rendered painless owing to the divine efficacy of the Name. The dogs barked. The remembrance of the letters were, as had been foreseen, obliterated. But it was obviously an easy thing on reaching home for Paul to open the wound he had made, and in the quietness of his own house commit to memory the all-powerful word.
No difficulty now lies in the way of the person, whom the legend has put before its readers as a pretended Christian, to prevent him from leading away the followers of Christ so that they may cease from being regarded as Jews. Paul assembles together the Christians, claims to be an Apostle of Jesus, delivers His strict command that His people are to have no part with the nation that had put Him to death, and boldly challenges them to bring the dead, the leper, or the lame, that by the miracles he will work on these, there may be incontestable proof of the truth of his claims and of his words. He raises the dead and he cures the leper and the lame.
The conclusion of this wonderful meeting saw the solemn substitution of the Christian festivals in the place of the Jewish:
Jesus saith unto you, Whosoever belongeth to my Community shall profane the Sabbath, for already hath the Lord held it in abhorrence, and in its place he shall observe the First Day, for on that day did the Lord give light to the world. And as the Israelites keep the day of the Passover, so they (the Christians) shall make unto themselves a feast of the Resurrection, because He rose from the grave on that day. For the feast of Weeks they shall observe the Ascension, because on that day He ascended up into Heaven. For the New Year (Jewish) they shall keep the Finding of the Cross; for the Great Fast they shall substitute the feast of the Circumcision; for the Chanuka (feast of the Dedication of the Temple) they shall observe the New Year or Calends.
It is easy enough to see here that the words of the pseudo St. Paul have been composed for him by Jews whose knowledge of Christian festivities was supplied them only by the scenes witnessed by their eyes. The New Year's hilarity, for instance, called the Calends, had absolutely nothing to do with the Christian religion, the great teachers of which, on the contrary, were always endeavoring to suppress it, with how little success is evident from many of the customs in England, today, connected with Yuletide.
Yet another command of the imaginary St. Paul is worth recording partly for its quaintness and partly as further testimony of the impression, which the externals of the Christian religion made upon the mind of the Jewish beholder.
Again, Jesus orders you to make a figure like Himself, and that you shall place it upon two pieces of wood made in the form of a cross, this figure being in the center of it. Moreover, you shall make this figure having the wounds upon it, which they inflicted on Him, the blood, as it were, going out from Him; having, too, the nails with which they fixed Him, in His arms (sic) and His feet. This shall be for a memorial of what was done to Jesus.
Only at the end of the legend does the peculiarly Apostolic and Christian name of the Rabbi Elias appear. In the Strasbourg MS. of the Toldoth he is called Paulus and in the Vindobona he is made to call himself St. Paulo. "And they enquired of him his name, and he answered St. Paulo." Up till the time of his death St. Paulo lived among the Christians, "those wicked men," careful, however, to dwell in a house apart so that he might not " be defiled by their food and drink."
When St. Paul, that great follower of Christ whose Christianity was of the most uncompromising kind, and who moreover opposed Judaism with every argument which his keen mind could produce and with every effort which his untiring disposition could make — when he can be represented in a Jewish legend as no real Christian at all, it is not very difficult to see what will happen to St. Peter should his name appear in the pages of the same legendary lore. And St. Peter does appear there. First, we are informed that there happened to be at this time very great trouble in the ranks of the Christians because of a certain individual of their number, called Nestorius. The name is all too familiar to the readers of Church History; but it is somewhat difficult to understand why Nestorius should be regarded with an unfriendly eye by the writers of the Toldoth. Their objection to the heresiarch appears to have been owing to the fact that he had contradicted the teachings of St. Paolo, one contradiction being that, whereas St. Paolo had said that Jesus was the Son of God, Nestorius asserted that He was only a man. This, the Toldoth assures us, caused the greatest confusion, a confusion, which was brought to a conclusion, seemingly, only by the false conversion of Simeon Kepha, "called by the Christians St. Pietro." Needless to say, St. Paolo, Nestorius, and Simeon Kepha are all represented as living about the same time.
At that time, [says the Vindobona Toldoth, after its narration of the strange history of Nestorius] at that time there was in Israel a certain man called Simeon Kepha, the reason for the name (Kepha) being that he used to sit on a stone on which the prophet Ezechiel was accustomed to prophesy on the banks of the river Chobar. He was the head of the Singers. Now the (divine) Voice issued from the stone unto him to such an extent that he possessed wisdom in a very high degree, so that they (the Christians) envied Israel the possession of him. Now, when Rabbi Simeon became aware of their envy, on the Feast of Tabernacles he proceeded to the Mount of Olives, where, on the day of the great Hosanna the Christians commenced to dispute with him; but so great was his wisdom, and to such an extent did he triumph over them in argument, that they had no power to return an answer. They trembled before him. Seeing, therefore, how vast his knowledge was, they took counsel together and said, Let us not leave so wise a man as this among the Jews, but let us take him away from them, otherwise in a short time he will destroy our religion. Apprehending him, they said to him, We know that among the Jews there is no other so wise as thou art. We know, moreover, that thou canst add to (the Law) and diminish (its obligations): thou canst dispense from or confirm. Now, may the Lord give unto thee in the presence of Jesus the grace to legislate for our religion. These others are Jews; but when we witnessed thy great deeds, we said, This man is fitted to set our Faith on a firm basis; so that then we shall multiply every day more and more, while the Jews will gradually come to an end. For it surely cannot be right that a person such as thou art should belong to them. Come, therefore, with us, teach us ordinances and statutes that are good, and make us to inherit the world to come. We will place thee as the head over all the rest, and no one shall be allowed to say to thee. What doest thou?
To this extraordinary proposal Simeon is said to have replied that he thanked them for their kind works, but that he had no desire to forsake the religion to which he belonged. The Christians then added threats. They should put him to death. They should, moreover, put every Jew to death. Not one of them should be spared. And, finding that these threats made no impression, they proceeded to put the latter portion of them into execution, until, with their affairs in a complete state of desperation, the Jews approach Rabbi Simeon Kepha and implore him to do for them what he had refused to do for the Christians. They themselves would take the sin of it all upon their souls. It is recorded that the Wise Man consented to join the Christians with these words upon his lips: "It is better that Simeon and a hundred like him should perish rather than one soul in Israel should be lost." A second meeting with the Christians is arranged.
He said, therefore, that he would go over to them. When the Pope and the Bishop Julius1 came to him, he said to them, What want you with me? If your wish is to destroy the Jews, I will have no part with you; but if you desire to do that which St. Paulo, by the commission of Jesus, commanded (which commandments are true), take now upon yourselves the conditions, which he laid down and fulfil them. For he told you to leave off stoning the Jews and to allow them free access to their houses of prayer, which ought not to be forsaken as you would have them. But you should leave them alone with their synagogues so that, in this manner, they come, even they, to acknowledge Jesus. For if you act not so the Jews will say that you are persecutors; but (by leaving them in peace) your actions will not appear vain and false. Immediately they received the words of Rabbi Simeon, and even Pope Julius,1 together with them, said, Whatsoever thou shalt command and ordain for us, that we will do. Then was it made a law that every one of the Jews who wished to go over to their religion (the Hebrew word is abominations) might please himself about doing so. Furthermore, he said unto them: I command you, and I take it as an obligation upon myself that I will eat no flesh meat on a Friday, because on that day Jesus was put to death. Neither will I, on any day, drink wine, out of love for Jesus. I will, moreover, separate myself from every one, living in a house apart by myself, lest my eyes should wander, in obedience to the Scripture, which says, "refrain from the lying word." And, forasmuch as I have taken upon myself the strict obligation of keeping myself apart from every one, so that I may give unto you good statutes and ordinances, and reveal to you the mysteries of the world that you may both know and believe the truth, behold, I order you to build me a high tower, that I may dwell therein all the days of my life, to avoid your interrupting (Hebrew word, injuring) or disturbing me at my devotions and in the pursuit of wisdom. For I am not embracing the Faith in an evil manner, but I know that this is the true way; so, henceforth in the future force no man to come to your religion by punishments and by a (forcible) baptism, but let him come of his own good accord. For, when you bring the Jews to your religion by so doing, you lessen the dignity of that religion, and you lead them to think that it is not a good one. Wherefore, let every one that wishes to come to the Faith come of his own free will; although, even should he come of his own free will, do not then receive him until he has spent thirty days in the midst of pious persons; and should it be a child under the age of nine years receive him not, since a child cannot act with knowledge.
This [continues the legend] was the first of all the Popes the world has ever seen. But this he did with the greatest deception, not defiling himself with their meat and drink, nor bowing down before their images; but he dwelt in his tower alone, giving many decrees, which the Gentiles bound themselves solemnly to obey. And during the time he dwelt there he composed many great Pizmonim (prayers and sacred songs) for the use of the Jews, all of which are preserved in his name because of what he did on this occasion. And he wrote, "Be it known unto you, O House of Israel that believe in the Lord and in His perfect Law, that this is the true Law, and to us has the inheritance of it been promised. I, Simeon Kepha, for the sake of it, bear all this great and evil affliction, knowing well what is true and what is false. Take now these my poems which I have written, to the end that I and you may find mercy. For that which I did was done at your bidding and for your deliverance." Then they received the writing with a joyful heart and sent it to the head of the Captivity; and the poems they showed to the heads of their schools, and to the Sanhedrim, who all said how good and beautiful they were, and that they were fitted to be recited by the ministers of the Synagogues in their prayers; and even to this day, on every Sabbath it is the custom to say them. Now this Simeon Kepha is the same as these Christians call St. Pietro.
There is little need to say that this legend bears almost in its every line some proof or other of an origin much later than the days of St. Peter. The allusion to images, from which Simeon Kepha is supposed to have been anxious to keep aloof, savors of a date long posterior to the times of the Apostles. Although the Friday's abstinence is certainly of very ancient origin, no Christian writer of any weight would make St. Peter the author of it. And, again, the words Julius, Pope, Bishop, Paul and Peter, although presented to the reader in the solemn spelling of the Hebrew tongue, are, nevertheless, the Italian words, Giulio, Papa, Vescovo and even S. Paolo and San Pietro.
The legend of the Finding of the Cross, "is not the least curious of these strange freaks of literature. In it the Empress Helena is called the wife of Constantine; the reason given for the search after the Cross is the restoration to health of the Emperor, who was a leper; the Jewish Rabbi who pretends to find it becomes the Apostle St. Jude; and the dead person raised to life during the incident of the Finding becomes the Apostle St. Luke. The MS. itself seems to want a great deal of cohesion, and the writer appears once or twice to break off in the course of the tale, to begin again, or to repeat himself. The object he had in view in composing this extraordinary production was, perhaps, the explanation of the origin of the Christian custom of laying the Crucifix on the dead body, or, as will be seen, the origin of the Apostles themselves.
The following translation of the legend is made from the Vienna MS. of the Toldoth:
In the days of Constantine the Emperor and of his wife Helena — this Emperor was a leper in one-half of his body, and there was no physician able to cure him in the whole of Rome. The Strangers (Christians) seeing this said, O Queen Helena, if you desire that your husband should be cured, command the Jews to find the Cross on the wood of which Jesus was crucified, and, by means of it, it will come to pass that the king will be cured. At once the Queen sent to the Jews living in Rome and in other places, saying to them, Bring me the wood on which Jesus was hung, who came to fulfill the will of his Father, and whom you put to death, and in consequence of your iniquities (in that matter) your Temple has been destroyed. Now, when the Jews heard these things they were troubled and took counsel together, saying to the Queen, We know nothing of this matter in any way, for the thing took not place in our land; ask the Jews that live in Jerusalem, for they will tell you where the Cross is. So the Queen immediately sent to the Jews of Jerusalem and said to them, Give me the wood, for it was you that crucified Jesus with it; and, in case you find it not, I shall put you to death. The Jews answered her and said —
At this point the MS. appears to make a fresh start, and after a few words makes even a third attempt at commencing:
[There were] certain old men whom they began to afflict, so that they took counsel among themselves and chose out seven old men; and they began to afflict them, so that they chose out one who was older than the rest and wiser than any of them. And they said to her (i.e., the Queen), He will tell you the truth. So the Queen took him apart and said to him, Tell me the truth, for otherwise I shall put you to death and all thy people; but if you tell me the truth and show me the wood I will give you great riches. He answered her astutely, saying to her, I will deal with you even as you have said. What, then, does the old man do? He calls together other old men, and says to them, Unknown to any one, and with the greatest secrecy, take three very old pieces of wood indeed, and bury them in a certain place, covering them in such a manner that no one may perceive that the thing has been quite recently done. And so they did.
Now, the Queen had ordered that the aforesaid Juda should be cruelly used and sorely afflicted; but Rabbi Juda asked her to allow him a respite of three days to fast and pray to the Lord that He might reveal to him this secret, and, in case God did reveal it to mm, I will, he said to her, reveal it to you. Let me wait upon the Lord. For if thou art that Queen of whom my Fathers have spoken to me, know surely that for thy sake this secret shall be revealed. But I know not certainly whether thou art that one or another. And the Queen said, Go and do that which is right in thine eyes. Now this Rabbi knew the mystery of the Ineffable Name. After three days he came to her and saith to her, Come with me, for the place has been revealed where the crosses lie. So the Queen arose, with her maids, and her princesses, and her counsellors, and they followed the old man Rabbi Juda to the place where the pieces of wood had been buried. And Rabbi Juda said to them, Of a truth, art thou the Queen in whose time this secret is to be revealed? And she answered, It is the truth. Then said he, Come with me. And he went round muttering with his lips, and they all followed after him; and he stood still in a certain place and he said, Dig there. And they dug there. And they found the three pieces of wood. Then was the Queen much disturbed, and all her princes, and they said, How are we to know which one of the pieces of wood is that on which they crucified Jesus? So he began to mutter, and it seemed that he was making a very long prayer. Now, after a time they perceived, and they heard, that there was a certain dead man whose children (Hebrew, grandchildren) were weeping over him. So he (Juda) said to them, Bring him to me; and they brought him to him, and he touched him with one of the pieces of wood so that he (the dead man) commenced to tremble by the power of the Ineffable Name which he (Juda) mentioned over him. Then he touched him with the second piece of wood, and he trembled in the same manner; but when he did so with the third the dead man stood up, alive, upon his feet by the power of the Ineffable Name, and every one was astonished. Immediately he said, This is the cross on which they crucified Jesus; and from that time they made a custom of placing a crucifix over the dead.
The legend then proceeds to inform its readers that after this the followers of Christ afflicted the Jews all the more, using the miracle of the Finding of the Cross as an argument that their guilt in putting our Lord to death was established. The old method of appeasing them is resorted to. Rabbi Juda together with the man raised to life is content to become Christians so as to stop the persecution. He says:
I will give my soul for your sakes and we will make ourselves Apostles of Jesus, and we will make laws for them so that they hurt you not nor do ought that is evil to you. And the name of the dead man whom he raised to life was Elecumus.2 What, then, does Rabbi Juda, the old man, do, together with the one he had raised from the dead? They commence speaking with the unruly [Christians], who do with them just as they did with St. Paulo and St. Pietro. These, then, were what the Gentiles call Apostles.
John Freeland
Ely, England
Notes
1 The word in Hebrew would ordinarily stand for Shela or Shelo, but Krauss, a Jew, thinks that it is meant for Giulio, and certainly it can be provided with vowel points making it very near in pronunciation to Giulio.
2 In one of the MSS. of the Toldoth Elecumus or Elikum is given as one of the disciples of our Lord; and Krauss considers that the name stands for St. Luke.
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