That's nice.
Jewish Rabbinical literature deals with stories of the birth of Yeshua.
Those who opposed the Good News (the gospel) sought to prove that Yeshua was not born of a virgin. Rabbis in the second century worked to discredit the story of the birth of Yeshua as false so the rest of the story of Yeshua would be questioned, thereby ending Christianity. The birth of Yeshua is the point of Archimedes for the Rabbis, the pivotal point that, if undermined, destroys the whole gospel. The Rabbis had more than one story of Yeshu’s (in Rabbinical language) birth.
There are three stories related to the birth of Yeshua in the Talmudic literature. The first one is that his mother, Miriam, was a hairdresser. The second one is that his mother was Stada, the wife of Pappos, son of Yehuda. The third story is that Yeshua was the son of a Roman soldier named Pandera. All three of these stories are found in the Babylonian Talmud.
In one story, Jesus lived in the days of Rabbi Jehoshua ben Perachyah, and he was one of Rabbi Jehoshua ben Perachyah’s favored disciples. In another story in the Talmud, Jesus was a child (toddler) in the time of Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Maier. For context, here is the chronology of these Rabbis:
Rabbi Jehoshua ben Perachyah was Nasi of the Sanhedrin and lived in the years 134–104 B.C.
Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Maier, and Rabbi Eliezer lived at the beginning of the 2nd century A.D. Rabbi Akiva died in the year 135 A.D. and was executed by the Romans. How could Jesus be a disciple of Rabbi Jehoshua ben Perachyah and a toddler in the days of Rabbi Akiva at the same time?
We have the very same problem with the mother of Jesus. Assuming that the mother of Jesus was the wife of Pappos ben Yehuda, this man also lived in the second century A.D.
Examine the following:
Tosaphoth Shabbath 104 b:
We read that Jesus lived in the days of Rab Bibi and "Mirjam,” the women’s hairdresser. It was another (Mirjam), or the angel of death was also relating to Rab Bibi a story that happened a long, long time before. This medieval commentary on the Talmud sees these problems and concludes that the story of Jesus’s birth in the Rabbinical literature can’t be true because it is not possible that one person will have so many different mothers and fathers that lived hundreds of years apart. We see that negative anti-Christian propaganda is understood by the medieval Rabbis as impossible to the truth.
Here is a Rabbinical text about Jesus (Yeshu) from the early second century CE:
Examine the following:
BARAITHA
This text is significant because it shows how confused these attempts at defaming Yeshua’s birth story are. The Rabbis invented these lies. Rabbi Akiva lied in the story and was also praised by the other two Rabbis for deceiving and trapping the woman in the market of Zippori. When you look at all these stories supposedly about Jesus of Nazareth and see to what length the Rabbis of the 2nd century CE had to go to fight the early disciples of Yeshua, you can understand the Rabbis were under great pressure to fight and defame Yeshua and His disciples. It was an attempt to stop the growth of the early Christian movement inside Judaism.
As difficult as it is to believe the birth story of Yeshua with a virgin mother and God as His father, it is easier to accept and believe that than it is to ignore biblical truth and accept that one child has three different mothers and several different fathers. The Biblical pattern of our forefathers found in Genesis tells us that our forefathers Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph were born from mothers who were not able to give birth naturally. God had to intervene and open their wombs before they were able to give birth to Isaac, Jacob, Esau, and Joseph. The most dramatic case of birth was the creation of Adam from a lump of clay that God breathed life into, without a mother or an earthly father. A God who can create Adam from a lump of clay has no problem sowing a seed in a virgin’s womb.
The three stories of the birth of Yeshua fall apart in the face of logic and therefore are historically confusing to what the Talmudic Rabbis said (Yeshua was already seated on the right hand of the Heavenly Father a long time!) These made-up stories are all the Rabbis had at their disposal in order to keep their people away from the Roman and Byzantine churches.
The great Medieval Rabbi Rashi, one of the great Bible and Talmud commentators, realized that one person cannot have three different sets of parents who lived in different periods of time and that these stories about the birth of Yeshua in the Talmud are fake, written for the purpose of propaganda. Rabbis like Rabbi Jacob Emdin, a chief Rabbi of Germany, understood this, showed deep appreciation for Yeshua, and encouraged religious Jews to not only respect but also look at Yeshua with a different attitude than traditional European Christians did.
The rabbis who lived in Europe in the 13th and 14th centuries CE realized that the Talmudic stories about the birth of Yeshua didn’t hold water. Their determination that these stories were wrong shows integrity and fear of God, and possibly fear of Christians being angry with their Jewish neighbors for teaching such derogatory stories about Jesus.
Jewish people and orthodox Rabbis of modernity write and publish derogatory material against Yeshua and call him a bastard, all based on these false stories. The beginning of Nazi persecution of the Jewish population of Germany was in part because of these Talmudic passages about Jesus. Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, occurred on the night of November 9–10, 1938. This night witnessed the burning of books, especially Rabbinical literature, and the burning of synagogues throughout Germany. Nothing justifies such behavior as burning books and synagogues.
Read this article by Joseph Shulam to learn about the mentions of Yeshua in Jewish literature, contradictions in talmudic accounts and much more.
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