Christ the Troll

The only Patheos author worth the read is repondering (2) Zechariah 9-14. This pseudonymous prophet had floated an antimessiah: a redeeming figure who would behave opposite from how most Jews thought Christ should behave. Burton Mack would call this template a Cynical one.

Philip Jenkins was summarising Robert Graves; Jenkins has offered little to supplement that summary, almost four years on. Let's do it for him! Today I'd ponder "Jesus in the Talmud". Of course the rabbis returned Jesu's coin againt "pharisees", with interest. But there are rabbis and there are rabbis.

I propose that our Lord Incarnate's scandalous behaviour over there is of a piece with a Zechariahvic messiah. For instance: Sanhedrin 107b relates of two Jesu's, ben Peraḥya and his student. Ben Peraḥya, a Shammai before Shammai, used to teach (per Wiki) one who sins and causes the masses to sin is not given the opportunity to repent. The elder inevitably loses confidence with his pupil and gives him silent-treatment. Then in his own fit of pique, the student sets up a brick to pay it homage. Upon being confronted, this Jesu throws the words of his teacher back at him; nothing left to lose, you see.

The school of Hillel sides with the younger Jesu, "on points" if you will. The teacher was at fault for being so strict he caused, in reaction, an idolatrous schism (from the Jews' perspective).

Did the Talmudic event literally happen? The timing is off: this very narrative introduces Jesu ben Peraḥya has having fled Hyrcanus 93 BC, coming back maybe a decade later. All this, many years Before the Christ (of the canon Gospels).

But maybe, in some now-lost original, the aggressive rabbi was not Ben Peraḥya. Where's the story noted prior to Talmud? The timing allows our Jesu to have his sojourn in Egypt which Matthew discusses. And exonerates Herod, or at least chooses a different villain (although was Herod better or worse than Hyrcanus?).

Maybe the story had first been murmured about Jesu bar Maryam and some nameless Shammaist. The rabbis who took the story back up again used this as "proof" that Jesu - Christ - was an idolater. Which he wasn't.

I must however ask what Christian gospel or literature of any sort would include this story. That's another post for another evening.