Introduction
Toledot Yeshu (TY) is a satirical and polemical narrative composed by Jews and first attested in a brief Aramaic composition describing the trial and execution of Jesus. This narrative appears to be a product of Babylonian Jewish circles, and it was likely created at some time prior to the rise of Islam, or perhaps even during the early years of the Islamic expansion.Footnote 1 At some point during the transmission of the work, this brief and often legalistic narrative was expanded by the addition of an account of Jesus’s birth, as well as additional sections relating to the history of the development of Christianity.Footnote 2 The early form of TY has been named the “Pilate” narrative and the expanded form that begins with Jesus’s birth is known as the “Helene” version; these names were chosen on the basis of the ruler presiding over Jesus’s trial in each.Footnote 3
The development of TY in Judeo-Arabic was likely part of the broader Jewish linguistic transformation that followed the Islamic conquests. During the eighth and ninth centuries, if not earlier, Jewish communities in many parts of the Near East and North Africa underwent a gradual but steady process of Arabicization. By the tenth century, Jewish intellectual life in Judeo-Arabic was active and demonstrates constant contact with surrounding scholarship. The developing TY narrative, while it is a popular-level text, is likely a result of the same transformation.
That is, while Judeo-Arabic versions of TY are first attested in the eleventh century, it is quite likely that the narrative circulated in that language even earlier.Footnote 4 Interreligious debates and polemical literature are well attested in Arabic as early as the ninth century, and Jews participated in this interreligious dialogue. Polemics against Christianity are relatively numerous in this early period. The ninth-century Jewish author Dāwūd ibn Marwān al-Muqammaṣ, who had converted to Christianity for a period of time, authored two polemical works against Christianity with aggressive tones, one on a popular level as a set of questions (al-Radd ʿalā al-Naṣārā min Ṭarīq al-Qiyās, “Logical Refutation of Christianity”), and one with a more scholarly historical approach (Kitāb al-Ḍarāʾah, “The Book of Urging on to Attack”).Footnote 5 It appears that this was also the period in which another popular-level and aggressive anti-Christian polemic, Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al-Usquf, “The Disputation of the Priest,” was composed.Footnote 6 The similarly popular-level TY, then, would have satisfied the tastes of readers interested in these types of works. Further support for the possibility that Judeo-Arabic versions of TY were in existence in the Near East during this early period is provided by the existence of poetic material composed as early as the tenth century in Egypt, which includes narrative themes that likely originate in the Helene version of TY.Footnote 7
TY is well attested in Judeo-Arabic in genizah material, that is, in European and American manuscript collections deriving from the Ben ‘Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo, as well as in the collections of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg. Both versions of the story, the “Pilate” and the “Helene” versions, coexisted in relatively equal numbers in Judeo-Arabic until the thirteenth century, following which the longer narrative beginning with Jesus’s birth gained greater popularity. The greater popularity of the Helene version seems to have relatively quickly led to the near-complete disappearance of the original trial-execution narrative.Footnote 8
The earliest renditions of the Helene narrative of TY are preserved in Judeo-Arabic; indeed, the story had a continuous existence in Arabic-speaking lands beginning at least as early as the eleventh century and lasting well into the modern period. All known Hebrew manuscripts of the Helene version of TY in Hebrew likely postdate the seventeenth century, and for this reason the Judeo-Arabic manuscript versions, dating between the eleventh and the sixteenth century, are a crucial witness to the development and circulation of the narrative.Footnote 9 The importance of the Judeo-Arabic versions also lies in the evidence they provide regarding the longevity of TY: given the narrative’s origins in Aramaic in the Near East, TY seems to have had a continuous and unbroken existence in this region—albeit an existence whose development is not fully clear.
In the following, I present for the first time the birth and early life of Jesus (henceforth, Yeshu) as preserved in a Judeo-Arabic version of TY. I will focus on a relatively lengthy manuscript held in the collections of the Russian National Library in two separate but consecutive shelfmarks, RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1345 and RNL Evr.-Arab. I:3005 (henceforth, R3005).Footnote 10 This manuscript is the most complete copy of Judeo-Arabic TY that I have found and likely dates to the fourteenth century. In my discussion, I will also make brief reference to a number of earlier Judeo-Arabic manuscripts that I have identified in other collections and which also preserve sections of the birth narrative.
The Judeo-Arabic text of R3005 makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the TY narrative; particularly, to recent discussions regarding when the birth narrative was added.Footnote 11 The existence of this lengthy Judeo-Arabic manuscript, and the other earlier fragments, makes it clear that this plot element formed part of the Helene narrative of TY earlier than has been previously suggested. Second, examination of these renditions of Yeshu’s birth narrative demonstrates the intertwined nature of the Judeo-Arabic and the Hebrew renditions and can provide information relevant to the question of how TY moved between East and West. This section of this version of TY in Judeo-Arabic contains significant parallels with the Hebrew TY version known as Italian A, and I will discuss these parallels and their significance for the evolution of the TY narrative. Third, I will discuss the continuity of the textual tradition of this Judeo-Arabic version in later manuscripts originating in the Near East. I will conclude with an examination of the unique introduction found in this Judeo-Arabic textual tradition, a literary tour de force employing contemporaneous Arabic style together with a well-known rabbinic dictum. This introduction reflects its Islamicate milieu, yet at the same time cleverly positions TY in Jewish literary and even ritual tradition.
In the final section of this essay, I present the text of the narrative of Yeshu’s birth and early life history as it is preserved in R3005. As noted, this manuscript, likely dating to the fourteenth century, was preserved in two separate but consecutive shelfmarks in the collections of the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg and is one of some two dozen fragments of the Helene TY narrative that I have located in that and other genizah collections.Footnote 12 These two shelfmarks, RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1345 and RNL Evr.-Arab. I:3005, contain lengthy sections of the Helene narrative of TY and preserve many of the plot elements that are attested in later Hebrew versions. A large section from the middle of R3005 is missing; this lacuna extends from the section on Yeshu’s stealing the ineffable name of God up to the section that includes his burial. R3005 takes up after this lacuna with the final section of Yeshu’s burial and the later history of Christianity. The manuscript is missing what is likely to be one page at the end of the composition, so any concluding formulas or invectives against Christianity that might have been found in a colophon have been lost. In the discussion that follows, I will refer to plot elements of the TY narrative as they have been labeled in the Meerson-Schäfer volumes.Footnote 13
Early Judeo-Arabic Attestation of the Birth Narrative
R3005, along with two other distinct Judeo-Arabic fragments, provides singularly important evidence demonstrating the existence of the TY birth narrative, as well as a number of characteristic linguistic usages associated with it, significantly earlier than has been previously claimed.
The question of the development of the TY birth narrative has been debated in current scholarship. In studies introducing their recent and valuable text edition of more than one hundred Hebrew and Aramaic versions of TY, Michael Meerson and Peter Schäfer assert that the birth narrative was a relatively late addition to TY—definitely postdating the fourteenth century:
First, taking into account that Jesus’ miraculous conception by the Holy Spirit and his virgin birth drew criticism since the earliest days of Christianity, one must wonder why it took so long for Toledot Yeshu to rewrite this part of Jesus’ biography. Even if we date the first version of a coherent Toledot Yeshu narrative at the 9th century (which is presumably too late), it still took about 500 years for the birth narrative to appear.Footnote 14
Meerson and Schäfer posit there that the original TY narrative was composed in Babylonia and that in this location “far away from the centers of Jewish-Christian controversy,” the narrative was able to circulate for a surprisingly long period of time without a rewritten birth narrative.Footnote 15 Daniel Stökl-Ben Ezra has challenged this assertion of a late origin for the birth narrative and argues for the antiquity of this section of the narrative, along with the entire Helene recension, dating certain segments of the latter as early as the period of late antiquity, prior to the Muslim conquests of the Near East.Footnote 16
Another chronological issue that has been debated regarding the TY literature relates to the association of the epithet “bastard, son of the menstruant” with Yeshu; this epithet features prominently in pejorative medieval Jewish descriptions of Jesus and is also known from the Hebrew TY literature. The question of when this usage first appeared in TY narratives has been debated, with some scholars citing TY as the origin of this epithet, and dating it early, and others suggesting that the epithet appears in TY literature quite late, having originated in other works.Footnote 17
Judeo-Arabic versions of TY preserved in genizah collections contribute important evidence on both questions—the emergence of the birth narrative and its emblematic usage of Yeshu’s epithet. The manuscript that I edit here, R3005, likely dates to the fourteenth century, and in this way already presents a challenge to the assertion of Meerson and Schäfer cited above. Yet the birth narrative can be traced significantly earlier in Judeo-Arabic. At least two early Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, MS JTSA ENA 32.5 and MS Cambridge University Library T-S NS 298.57, contain sections of the birth narrative of TY in classical Judeo-Arabic orthography, including the Hebrew epithet “bastard, son of the menstruant.”Footnote 18 These two manuscripts can be dated on the basis of paleography and orthography to around the twelfth century, thus demonstrating that the Helene narrative of TY, including the birth story, existed at least this early in the Near East and in Judeo-Arabic. The existence of these two twelfth-century manuscripts containing the birth narrative, as well as a number of eleventh-century manuscripts containing other sections of the work, strongly suggests that these Judeo-Arabic versions of TY were circulating in the Near East even earlier, especially in light of the flourishing tenth-century context of composition in Judeo-Arabic that I have described above. Evidence from other works also supports the early dating of the TY birth narrative: the poetic material from late tenth-century Egypt noted above specifically incorporates themes from the TY birth narrative, including the “bastard, son of the menstruant” epithet.Footnote 19
The variety evident among these Judeo-Arabic attestations also supports a relatively early dating of the appearance of the birth narrative. The two early manuscripts containing sections of the birth narrative present very different formulations.Footnote 20 Not only are these two early manuscripts distinct from each other, but they both demonstrate contrasts to the wording and even the structure of the narrative found in the later manuscript presented here. That is to say, by the time that R3005 was copied, there were at least three different versions of the TY narrative of Yeshu’s early life in circulation. Not only was the TY birth narrative clearly already in existence by the twelfth century, but also the fact that it existed in a variety of forms attests to its health and vigor.
R3005 and other Judeo-Arabic manuscripts, then, provide important evidence regarding the existence of the birth narrative in TY literature significantly earlier than has been previously claimed. Furthermore, it seems quite likely that the origins of the Helene version of TY are to be sought in Judeo-Arabic. As I have described above, the Helene version of TY would have fit well in the literary and polemical atmosphere of other ninth-century Judeo-Arabic works, and manuscript attestation in the eleventh and twelfth centuries can be taken as an indication that the work had already been circulating for some time.
Beyond the specific question of the addition of the story’s infamous birth narrative, though, these Judeo-Arabic Helene manuscripts also contribute important information regarding broader questions related to TY in its circulation in other Jewish contexts. They call into question the categorization of versions of TY, and they bring to light a question that has hardly been asked, let alone answered: How was TY transmitted between communities, particularly between the Near East and Europe?
Toledot Yeshu between East and West
One very important recent contribution to the study of TY is the large-scale and comprehensive categorization of TY manuscripts in Aramaic and Hebrew. Building on the work of earlier scholars, beginning with Samuel Krauss, as well as valuable and pioneering categorization efforts, such as those of William Horbury and Riccardo di Segni, Meerson and Schäfer carried out a project in which they and their team classified more than one hundred Hebrew and Aramaic manuscripts and fragments of TY into distinct versions divided according to manuscript text as well as by geographical origin. This project resulted in two volumes and an internet text site, which has provided a crucial textual basis for further research.Footnote 21
With the addition of the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts to the panoply of voices within the TY literature, the value of this important work of categorization and divisions between versions now appears to be more circumscribed. This is because the textual tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic cannot be suitably described by the categorizations that have been established over the past fifty years for manuscripts of TY in Hebrew. The majority of the Judeo-Arabic renditions attested in manuscript fragments do not consistently align with any particular version of Hebrew TY. Instead, the texts demonstrate parallels or similarities, depending on plot element, with a variety of different Hebrew versions of TY. At times, these parallels are fleeting, and at other times they are extended. These inconsistent parallels suggest that current schemes of categorization are relevant only for the specific subset of Hebrew versions and cannot be extrapolated to the TY literature as a whole, including, most importantly, the work’s significant attestation in Judeo-Arabic and in Yiddish.
Yet the parallels that do exist between the Judeo-Arabic versions of TY and the Hebrew versions, despite their patchwork nature, also serve to emphasize a contrasting point. They provide important evidence that the Judeo-Arabic TY material is an integral part of a larger textual tradition that has not yet been fully comprehended, and they underscore the significance of the Judeo-Arabic manuscript tradition for understanding the development of the TY narrative.
This evidence comes to light upon the examination of R3005 in light of the Hebrew textual tradition of TY. In this particular case, relatively consistent parallels with one particular Hebrew version are apparent. Specifically, the Judeo-Arabic textual tradition preserved in it demonstrates numerous affinities with the Hebrew manuscript version known as Italian A. The similarity is evident on the microscopic level—chronological signposts in the composition, parallel narrative elements, and at times, parallel narrative formulations—as well as on the macroscopic level: a unique plot element that is found only in the Italian A traditions and in R3005 and Judeo-Arabic versions related to it. In what follows, I will present these textual connections, referring mainly to the sections that I have included in the appendix.
Both versions begin with chronological details locating the story in the time of “Tiberius Caesar” (Ṭabarinus Qaysar) and “Herod” (Horodus), and specifically situating the night of Yeshu’s conception “in the month of Nisan after the end of Pesaḥ.” Further narrative details of the birth story and events from Yeshu’s life have clear parallels with the Italian A tradition and are not shared with other Hebrew renditions. One example is the inclusion of two specific details following the section in which Miriam’s husband reports the incident to his rabbi (“Disclosure”): Yeshu is explicitly said to have been circumcised, and the rapist publicly brags about his act, while Miriam is explicitly stated to remain unknowing. These and other parallels between the Hebrew Italian A and the Judeo-Arabic of R3005 are not found in other Hebrew or Judeo-Arabic versions of the narrative.
Many specific numbers that play a role in the plot of TY, as well as their specific literary context, are identical in the Italian A versions and in R3005 and contrast to numbers included in other Hebrew versions. For example, after Yeshu’s execution, the queen gives a “five day time limit” for the Jews to find his body in both Italian A and R3005; other Hebrew versions note a variety of other periods of time.Footnote 22 Another example relates to the time period that passes between Yeshu’s conception and the arrogant behavior that leads to the public revealing of the truth about his birth. These “thirty years” are explicitly mentioned in Italian A and R3005, in contrast to other Hebrew versions, and in both versions this mention is found at the beginning of the section “Heresies of Yeshu.” This time period, of course, echoes the age at which Jesus began his ministry according to the New Testament (Lk 3:23) and may be implicit in other Hebrew versions as well, but the explicit mention of the passing of time and the parallel location are unique to these two renditions.
Within this section of narrative describing Yeshu’s birth and early life, there appear certain textual segments unique to Italian A and R3005. One of these is a segment that bridges between the enumeration of Yeshu’s “Heresies” and the scene called “Truth Revealed,” in which the sages summon Miriam for questioning. Most versions move directly from the first plot element to the next, and indeed, this is the way the plot is structured. Yeshu’s impertinent behavior in “Heresies” is the indicator that leads the rabbis to question his background by summoning his mother, in “Truth Revealed.” Yet despite this already-existing and organic connection in most versions of TY, both Italian A and R3005 add a relatively lengthy section that recapitulates the events of the story up to that point, emphasizing the Jewish re-rendering of Yeshu’s birth and the major polemical point of the narrative. In most of the Italian A manuscripts, the section appears as follows:Footnote 23
When the sages heard what the bastard said, all the sages immediately arose and gathered together and spoke about the rebellion and the rumors and the heresies that the bastard said. And they all agreed and said, “We are obligated to scrutinize and to investigate regarding him, who is his father and who is his mother and what is his family and what are his deeds, ‘clarifying fully’ (Deut. 27:8) in order to discover the truth.” And this deed was revealed among all of the people and they said, “Thus we heard about his mother, that she whored against her husband, and the bastard, this villain, is the son of Yoḥanan the adulterer. And because of the shame, her husband fled, and has entirely disappeared.”
Surprisingly, in the Italian versions of TY, the name of the husband and the adulterer are transposed from what is found in all other TY versions. The hero becomes Yosef, and the villain becomes Yoḥanan. This surprising transposition of hero and villain in variant versions of a narrative, while not common, is attested in folktale traditions.Footnote 24 With the exception of this transposition, this section is presented quite similarly in the Judeo-Arabic of R3005.
When the students heard those words and the heresy that he explicitly uttered, they went and told the sages, and the sages asked about him and found out that he was a bastard and the son of a menstruant from the villain Yosef who came to his mother at night when she was in the niddah Footnote 25 period, and that the Righteous One fled and left her an ‘agunah Footnote 26 because he found out what had happened and went to Baghdad.
The additional transition material added to Italian A and R3005 is unnecessary to the plot; much of it is a repetition of what is already known to the audience. Not only that, it interferes with plot development, in that it presents material that is meant to surface later: if the sages already know that Yeshu is “a bastard and the son of a menstruant,” then why do they need to summon his mother and ask her questions in the next section? Yet despite these plot-related inconsistencies, the addition of this section provides a major advantage. It is a highly useful polemical addition, in that it provides yet another iteration of one of the basic claims of the narrative, the subversion of the Christian account of Jesus’s birth.
These sections of the Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic versions are not related via translation. The two renditions are formulated differently and do not demonstrate word-for-word parallels. Nonetheless, the major units of content are identical, as is the clever use of dialogue between two groups: in Italian A, the sages and “the people”; and in R3005, the students and the sages and, implicitly, the people, who are likely present. Given that this additional segment appears only in Italian A and R3005, it is an important further indicator of a connection between these two renditions.
A final significant link between these two textual traditions is a section that appears toward the end of the Helene version of TY, following Yeshu’s execution and burial. This is the “Finding of the True Cross,” a legend that developed in Jerusalem around the fourth century and which is attested in three major versions and in a wide variety of Near Eastern and Christian languages. One of the notable features of the Judeo-Arabic TY version preserved in R3005 is the inclusion of a subversive rendition of this legend in its “Judas Cyriacus” version. This narrative unit is not preserved in R3005 itself; rather, it is found in the relatively late manuscript RNL Evr.-Arab. II:919, a member of the same Judeo-Arabic textual tradition of TY, as I will discuss below.Footnote 27 In the Hebrew versions of TY, the “True Cross” account appears only in the Italian A tradition. The inclusion of this story in their TY renditions, then, adds further evidence to the interdependence of R3005 and the textual tradition of Italian A.Footnote 28
Chronological and textual details and phrasing, then, as well as narrative units both short and long, demonstrate the connection between R3005 and the Italian A versions. This connection emphasizes that the Judeo-Arabic versions of TY are not an isolated branch of the TY narrative but rather an integral part of the development of its textual tradition. Moreover, given the close relationship between these particular Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic versions of TY, we can use a comparison of the textual tradition that they share to identify and trace textual issues.
Variant Versions of the Same Textual Tradition
Close comparison and analysis of the texts of these two related renditions of TY can shed light on the development of the version that they share. One example is an instance in which the earlier Judeo-Arabic manuscript presents a confusing rendition, which can be identified and understood upon comparison with the Hebrew Italian A version, preserved in a later manuscript.
This phenomenon occurs in the concluding section of the birth narrative, where Yeshu’s questionable conception comes to light. In this section, the sages call for Miriam and ask her a number of questions in an attempt to ascertain if, as they suspect, her son’s inappropriate behavior is indeed an indication of a problematic pedigree. This motif of the impertinent disciple is an ancient one that seems to have been found first—albeit relating to an anonymous figure—in the tractates Kallah and Kallah Rabbati, attributed to the eighth century.Footnote 29 This characterization of Jesus is a significant element in TY. Simply put, a student with the heady and apparently sage-paralyzing combination of cleverness and disrespect that Yeshu demonstrates can be none other than a bastard.
The following conversation is the Judeo-Arabic version preserved in R3005.
ןמו (!) הראמ (!) ואו תנב יתנא אהל ולאקו והמוא ארו ו'תעב םימכחלאו אלא ךל'ד דעב ם'ת ימסא םהל תלאק ךמסא שיא אהל ולאקפ סאע ךלמה דווד תייר'ד ןמ אנא םהל תלאקפ ינוכת ‘ץרא יפ ינע ביאג והו הנס ןי'תאל'ת ידאו ןנחוי והמסא םהל תלאקפ ךזו'ג םסא אמו םירמ
ותיאר םל אנאו דאדגוב
Then after that, the sages sent for his mother and said to her, “Are you a virgin or a married woman, and who are you?” She said to them, “I am of the seed of King David, peace be upon him.” And they said to her, “What is your name?” She said to them, “My name is Miriam.” “And what is your husband’s name?” She said to them, “His name is Yoḥanan, and lo, thirty years he has been gone in the region of Baghdad, and I have not seen him.”
In this version, the rabbis ask four questions, divided into three interchanges. Of these, the first is somewhat incongruous: The sages ask Miriam first whether she is married—literally, “Are you a girl or a woman,” meaning by this whether she is single or married.Footnote 30 They add a vague “who are you?” to this question. Miriam’s response does not provide an exact answer to the question: she states that she is “of the seed of King David,” and she does not respond regarding her marital status.
A close reading of the Italian A version reveals a list of questions that is strikingly similar to those found in R3005, but with a number of important differences.Footnote 31
דוד תחפשממ הרמא איהו תא ימ תב הל ולאשיו םהינפל האבו ומא דעב םימכחה לכ וחלש זא אוה ןאו אירדנאפ ןב ףסוי והז הרמא ךילעב אוה ימו םירמ רמאתו ךמש המ הל ולאשיו ךלמה
הנה דע ויתיאר אלו ינממ דרפנש הנש םישלש ומכ אוה הרמא
Then all the sages sent for his mother, and she came before them, and they asked her, “Whose daughter are you?” And she said, “From the family of King David.” And they asked her, “What is your name?” And she said, “Miriam.” “And who is your husband?” She said, “He is Joseph b. Panderia.”Footnote 32 “And where is he?” She said, “Some thirty years ago he left me, and I have not seen him since then.”
As in R3005, the rabbis ask first about Miriam’s descent, then about her name, and then about her husband’s name. The majority of the Italian manuscripts include a fourth question, as appears above: the sages ask pointedly for the current location of Miriam’s husband. The Judeo-Arabic rendition is slightly different and includes only three questions, omitting the “where is he?” found in Italian A. The outcome of the questioning, however, is the same, for in R3005, Miriam responds to the third question by stating her husband’s name as well as volunteering information as to his whereabouts. It is notable that one Italian A manuscript, London Brit. Lib. Or. 10457 (f. 3v), also combines the third and fourth questions into a single unit in this way. Overall, this set of three or four similar questions is unique to the textual tradition of R3005 and the Italian A manuscripts, and the interchange between Miriam and the rabbis appears in quite different form in other Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic versions.Footnote 33
Awareness of the similar Hebrew formulation in the Italian A manuscripts highlights the incongruity in the Judeo-Arabic version between the first question and its answer and may even aid in reconstructing the textual development of this dialogue. In the Italian A version, the sages’ first question is “Whose daughter are you?”; in this case, the answer, “I am of the seed/family of King David,” follows quite logically. The Judeo-Arabic version preserves the answer regarding the family of King David, but presents a question that is no longer open-ended and instead offers a choice between one of two possibilities: “Are you a virgin or a married woman, and who are you?” Perhaps the original question in Judeo-Arabic was “Whose daughter are you?”—as appears in the Hebrew—and at a certain point, bint, “daughter,” was reinterpreted as “single woman,” and the question was reformulated to add a second option, “married woman.” Once the first question had been changed, it was necessary to add an additional and secondary question in Judeo-Arabic (“And who are you?”) in order to somehow accord with the required answer “of the family of King David.”
It is clear, then, that these two renditions of the interchange between the rabbi(s) and Miriam are based on the same textual tradition. This tradition is represented in a variant form in the earlier Judeo-Arabic manuscript version of R3005. The exact mechanics of the transfer are not clear: It is not possible to say whether the Judeo-Arabic formulation of R3005 in this instance is the result of the confusion of an earlier Judeo-Arabic source or perhaps of a Hebrew source, such as that preserved in Italian A. Nor are there obvious signs that the Hebrew version of Italian A has a Judeo-Arabic precursor. Comparison between the two renditions, though, results in a better understanding of the development of the text. Given the apparently lengthy evolution of numerous TY texts over a long period of time—and, I would add, a wide geographical expanse—further comparison of Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew versions of TY is an important and desirable undertaking.Footnote 34
The textual tradition that I have explored above represents one branch of the Judeo-Arabic tradition, which is relatively well attested. This is clear from the existence of a number of other manuscript representatives as well, which circulated in the Near East in later centuries. I turn next to the description of this manuscript family.
A Manuscript Family
R3005 had an afterlife in the Judeo-Arabic tradition of TY, and it is the earliest representative of a particular version of the narrative that is preserved in at least four later manuscript copies.
The first is a manuscript preserved in the collections of the Russian National Library, RNL Evr.-Arab. II:919 (henceforth, R919). This manuscript contains four continuous folios and is written in semicursive Eastern script that likely dates to the sixteenth century. R919 follows the text of R3005 relatively closely, where the fragments overlap. Following this section of overlap, R919 provides a significant contribution to the manuscript tradition of TY in Judeo-Arabic, because it contains a lengthy section of the narrative beyond what is preserved in the earlier manuscript. It contains sections from the end of TY, well after Yeshu’s execution, including the final separation between the Jews and Yeshu’s followers, and is also the only witness in Judeo-Arabic preserving much of an account of the “True Cross,” which is, as I have discussed above, an important link with the Hebrew tradition of Italian A.
The second manuscript is preserved in a single folio, RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1343. This folio preserves the beginning of the narrative: the preface, which is unique to this TY version and will be discussed below, and the beginning of the birth narrative. Its scribe was likely completing a missing first folio of another manuscript because the writing on the second page is spaced successively wider and wider till the bottom of the page. The script is one that is associated with Karaite circles and, given its conservative nature, can only be dated quite broadly, between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. The text in the fragment varies slightly from that preserved in RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1345 and R3005.
A third group of fragments derives from one manuscript; these are RNL Evr.-Arab. II:2550, RNL Evr.-Arab. I:3014, and RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1036. These fragments contain one folio, one folio, and six folios, respectively. They are written in a semicursive Eastern script that likely dates to the sixteenth century. They contain a nearly continuous section of the narrative, beginning with the section titled “Arrest,” continuing through Yeshu’s “Execution and Burial,” and including the anti-Acts plot elements known as the “First Separation” and the “Final Separation.”Footnote 35 These late manuscripts contain a version that is strikingly close to that of R3005, and they may have been copied directly from it.
The fourth of the TY copies that continues the R3005 textual tradition is preserved in three folios contained in two different manuscript shelfmarks; they appear to have been copied in the sixteenth or seventeenth century.Footnote 36 British Library MS Or. 10435 (also known as Gaster 1328) is a compilation that includes TY in Judeo-Arabic together with a number of other biblically themed aggadot in Judeo-Arabic. TY is preserved in one folio (f. 18) that begins in the middle of the introduction and ends after a few lines of the birth narrative. This folio finds a direct continuation in folio 4 of a second shelfmark: JTSA MS ENA 1726 (also known as NY JTS 2455), which takes up the birth narrative until the description of Yeshu as a clever but disrespectful young student. A second noncontinuous folio of TY from this shelfmark (f. 5) includes part of the plot segment where Yeshu steals the ineffable name of God. These two folios were bound together with three pages of another anti-Christian polemical work in Hebrew, Nestor hakkomer (“The Polemic of Nestor the Priest”).Footnote 37
The manuscript family preserved in R3005 and these later fragments contains a unique element unattested in any other TY versions in any other language, to the best of my knowledge: a lengthy introductory section, with marked literary and cultural interest.
Arabic Preface and Rabbinic Homily
This Judeo-Arabic version of TY opens with a relatively lengthy preface, which combines a typical Arabic prefatory form with a rabbinic literary motif that enables a creative transition into the well-known beginning of the narrative. As I will show, this rabbinic motif was likely carefully chosen due to its particular literary context, which resonates with important themes present in TY.
This introductory material is found in two manuscripts that exhibit some degree of variation between them.Footnote 38 The following is the introduction according to RNL Evr.-Arab. II:1345, which is, as noted above, the first page of the manuscript that finds its continuation in RNL Evr.-Arab. I:3005:
Praised be God, the God of Israel, creator of the heavens and the earth in his power and greatness [who] destroyed the blaspheming tyrants and caused the beloved righteous to multiply. Master of masters, motivator of the heavenly forces, emancipator of captives, mover of clouds, ruler of rulers, the all-powerful and the staunch, the clear truth, crusher of the polytheists, humbler of the blasphemers, destroyer of the oppressors, annihilator of the wicked and protector of those close to him and the righteous, who saved the children of Israel from the Pharaohs, who are the Christian infidel people, and who gave them the cursed Jesus the Nazarene, and who caused them to follow him in severe blasphemy [due to] his great ignorance, and caused their leaders to perish by means of cursed counsel and caused them to worship wood and idols, and God, the blessed and exalted, caused him to perish within a short time because of his blasphemy and overstepping of bounds. And Israel suffered great difficulties on his account and they tried to return him [to the correct path], but they could not, because in our sources, every place where it is written vayehi indicates great difficulties, as it is said, “In the time (vayehi biymey) of Tiberius Caesar [and] his minister Herod …”
This introduction is a creative and even humorous combination of two distinct literary forms originating in different cultures and periods. The introduction is unexpected to a reader familiar only with the Hebrew versions of TY, which rarely contain any introductory material at all. When they do contain such material, it is quite brief. The Strasbourg manuscript, MS BNU 3974 (Héb. 48), which opens with the words “The beginning of the creation of Yeshu,” is the only Hebrew version that contains prefatory material that is longer than a few words and that is at all general; a number of Hebrew versions begin with chronological descriptions that serve to situate the story in its context.Footnote 39 The generalized preface form found in this Judeo-Arabic version, then, is likely unique in the TY literature. However, this prefatory form is not unique in the least in the Arabic-speaking milieu, where the use of introductions in a particular form was standard and expected from at least the end of the ninth century.Footnote 40
This Judeo-Arabic preface begins with the ḥamdala, or initial section of praise, which was the standard opening section for the classical Arabic preface. The ḥamdala praises God, usually via the opening phrase al-ḥamdu li-llāhi, “Praise to God,” a formula employed by adherents of all religions in the Islamicate milieu. In this Judeo-Arabic version, the opening phrase is a variant phrasing also well attested in prefaces, invoking the concept of blessing, “Blessed be God …,” and continuing with the type of description typical of Arabic prefaces.Footnote 41 The introduction praises God generally for his subduing of blasphemers and oppressors and for favoring the faithful, Israel, as his beloved people over all others. This blessing and description use typical style in employing saj‘, Arabic rhyming prose, a pre-Islamic form that reached a high point of popularity in the tenth century CE (third century AH), becoming a required style for nearly all forms of prose literature.Footnote 42
As is often the case in Arabic prefaces, this praise of God in the ḥamdala proves to relate directly to the subject of the composition that follows, in this case, the overcoming of a threat to the Jewish people. Following the general praise regarding God’s subduing of the mighty and the oppressive, the introduction turns to specifically anti-Christian polemical themes, citing the salvation of Israel from the particular danger of the “Pharaohs, who are the Christian people.” The preface explains that God saved Israel from Christian oppression by providing the Christians with the questionable leadership of Jesus, Yešua‘ hannoṣeri, who led them astray and thus away from the Jewish people. The preface adds a number of details regarding Jesus’s actions as leader, likely anticipating the beginning of the parodical narrative focused on his life.
This preface, then, is in many ways a typical product of its Arabic-speaking surroundings. Yet, while the preface exhibits forms customary in Arabic, these forms soon give way to an identifiably rabbinic literary motif. This motif is employed in the transition from the conclusion of the preface to the beginning of the narrative. This transition is carried out via an allusion to a well-known rabbinic statement found in b. Meg. 10b. There, the rabbis cite the first verse of the book of Esther, “Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus,” and comment:
R. Levi, or some say R. Jonathan, said: The following remark is a tradition handed down to us from the Men of the Great Assembly: wherever in the Scripture we find the term vayehi, it indicates [the approach of] trouble. Thus, “Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus” (Esth. 1:1)—there was Haman. “And it came to pass in the days when the Judges judged” (Ruth 1:1)—there was a famine.
The Talmud then relays a litany of examples, citing verse after verse beginning with vayehi along with the calamity that follows each one, including the story of the flood, the Tower of Babel, and more. In including this rabbinic statement in the preface, then, its composer explicitly links the TY narrative to this list of scriptural episodes. TY, of course, does not begin with vayehi, and it seems unlikely that this connection was made on the basis of literary evidence or on the basis of some Hebrew version available to an Arabic-speaking narrator or scribe. None of the known versions of TY, including those closest in phrasing to this beginning—the Italian A versions—actually begin with the Hebrew phrase that is supposedly quoted in this preface. Rather, the connection is thematic: This introduction establishes TY as another narrative in the biblical genre of suffering and deliverance as found in the book of Esther and a host of other biblical narratives. Positing such bold and creative connections between scriptural and nonscriptural sources would not have been foreign to Jewish audiences in the Near East, who, following the eleventh century, would have been familiar with a similar approach in the work of R. Nissim b. Jacob ibn Shāhīn, a rewriting of Talmudic narratives in the Arabic genre of “relief after adversity,” and a medieval bestseller East and West.Footnote 43 Moreover, emphasizing this thematic connection of adversity and salvation might even have suggested to its audience the aptness of the TY narrative to this regional Islamicate genre itself.
This preface, firmly grounded in its Near Eastern literary environment, also stands as further evidence of a broader Jewish communal tradition. As we have seen, the Judeo-Arabic preface expands the group of scriptural texts that are linked to the book of Esther in rabbinic writings, in order to include the extrabiblical and chronologically closer TY narrative. Significantly, in this way the preface gives explicit literary voice to an association that is implicit in the TY narrative itself, for, as has been recently noted, TY and the book of Esther share a number of salient parallels, even beyond the general motif of trouble and deliverance alluded to by the Judeo-Arabic preface. These include the element of threats by a ruler followed by communal fasts and periods of waiting and the facts that both can be read as parodical texts, that both begin with scenes centered on female figures and sexuality, and that both include, and in some cases end with, the execution of the enemy who has endangered the Jews.Footnote 44 When midrashim on Esther are included, further parallels come to light, as in the question of which tree on which to hang the wicked, a motif that is a notable and even perplexing plot element in TY and that also appears in midrashic sources on Esther.Footnote 45
Moreover, the link between TY and Esther is not limited to parallel literary motifs but is also performed in annual communal and ritual events. Jewish Purim rituals attested since late antiquity make pointed reference to Jesus via parody and satire much akin to the nature of TY itself. These included public readings of biting satires on Jesus, as well as the association of Jesus and Haman and the reenactments of an execution, whether by hanging or by crucifixion.Footnote 46 It seems, then, that in Jewish consciousness, the TY narrative could have been linked to the book of Esther, not only on the basis of literary parallels but also via lived ritual and experience. The expansion of the rabbinic homily in the Judeo-Arabic introduction to include TY as one of the calamity-to-salvation episodes likely resonated with both aspects.
The existence of this Judeo-Arabic preface to TY, then, reflects this ritual and theological context, and in this way contributes one more literary piece of evidence—a clever blend of contemporaneous Arabic literary culture with a traditional rabbinic dictum—to an already rich tapestry of connections linking Haman and Jesus and the book of Esther and Toledot Yeshu in its various forms.
Text and Translation
Examination of the well-attested tradition of Toledot Yeshu in the Near East, particularly in Judeo-Arabic, thus contributes significantly both to the growing understanding of the development of the TY narrative and to the understanding of unique aspects of its Near Eastern circulation. The introductory sections and birth narrative of TY in Judeo-Arabic provide early evidence of the existence of this plot element and are able to fix the origin of this plot element significantly earlier than has previously been thought. The Judeo-Arabic versions do not comprehensively parallel the known Hebrew versions of TY; indeed, they challenge the positing of neat categories for the TY literature as a whole. However, the version presented here is an important example that demonstrates an extended connection with a particular Hebrew TY tradition. Analysis of these two textual versions results in important specific conclusions about the development of TY, as well as broader implications for the circulation of the narrative between the Near East and Europe. Finally, the above analysis highlights a unique element of the Near Eastern TY, a creative and perceptive intertwining of contemporaneous literary devices with Jewish homiletical tradition. Continued examination of TY in Judeo-Arabic, then, has great potential to contribute to the nascent understanding of the development of the various TY versions and their circulation among Jewish communities near and far, as well as to the creation and function of uniquely adapted versions of the work among Arabic-speaking Jews.
I conclude with a transcription and translation of the section of the Judeo-Arabic text of the two manuscripts making up R3005, which underlies the majority of the discussion above. This section covers Yeshu’s birth and early life, up to and including the plot element “Heresies of Yeshu.” This text is composed in late Judeo-Arabic, and as such includes a significant degree of nonstandard orthography that is typical of this later period.Footnote 47 I have included minimal discussion of the linguistic features of the text, and I have generally refrained from marking the many nonstandard elements found in it with exclamation points, which would render the text close to unreadable. The characteristic linguistic and orthographic features of mid-to late Judeo-Arabic texts such as this one have been amply discussed in earlier linguistic analyses.Footnote 48 That said, I do mark letter interchanges, a scribal error that recurs frequently in this manuscript. I have added full diacritical notation, supplementing the partial notation included by the scribe. For the sake of clarity and disambiguation, I have employed diacritical notation that is based on Classical Arabic orthography, even though it may not fully reflect the contemporaneous pronunciation of the numerous dialectal forms found in the manuscript.
