38
CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD
mentators on the Talmud try to prove that another
Jesus is referred to, who is described in various
passages as having
been contemporary with R.
Jehoshua ben Perahjah, about a century
B
.c. These
passages will be dealt with hereafter.' But when it is
said, as in the passage referred to above (T. dull, ii.
28), and elsewhere, that certain persons professed to be
able to heal the sick in the name of 11 Jeshu ben
Pandira," it is impossible to doubt that the reference is
to Jesus of Nazareth.
Various conjectures have been made in explana-
tion of the epithets Ben Stada and Ben Pandira. In
regard to the first, the explanation of the Gemara
that Stada is a contraction of S'tifth du is certainly
not the original one, for it is given as a common
phrase in use in Pumbeditha, a Babylonian town
where there was a famous Rabbinical College. But
the epithet Ben Stada in reference to Jesus was well
known in Palestine, and that too at a much earlier
date than the time of R. Hisda. 't'his is shown by
the remark of R. Eliezer, who lived at the end of the
f i rst century and on into the second. The derivation
from S'tiith dpi would be possible in Palestine no less
than in Babylonia ; but it does not seem to have been
suggested in the former country, and can indeed hardly
be considered as anything more than a mere guess at
the meaning of a word whose original significance was
no longer known.2 It is impossible to say whether
Stada originally denoted the mother or the father of
Jesus ; we can only be sure that it implied some con-
tempt or mockery. I attach no value to the sug-
See below, p. 54, No. S.
See below, p. 345, for a possible explanation of the name B. Stada.
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