40
CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD
Jesus. I cannot satisfy myself that any of the suggested
explanations solve the problem ; and being unable to
propose any other, I leave the two names Ben Stada
and Ben Pandira as
relics of ancient Jewish mockery
against Jesus, the clue to whose meaning is now lost.
Pappos ben Jehudah, whom the Gemara alleges
to have been the husband of the mother of Jesus,
is the name of a man who lived a century after
Jesus, and who is said to have been so suspicious
of his wife that he locked her into the house
whenever he went out
(b. Gitt.
90a).
He was
contemporary with, and a friend of, R. Aqiba ; and
one of the two conflicting opinions concerning the
epoch of Jesus places him also in the time of Aqiba.
Probably this mistaken opinion, together with the
tradition that Pappos ben Jehudah was jealous of his
wife, account for the mixing up of his name with the
story of the parentage of Jesus.
The name Miriam (of which Mary is the equiva-
lent) is the only one which tradition correctly pre-
served. And the curious remark that she was a
dresser of women's hair conceals another reminiscence
of the Gospel story. For the words in the Talmud
are ` Miriam m'gaddela nashaia.' The second word
is plainly based upon the name ` Magdala I ; and
though, of course, Mary Magdalene was not the
mother of Jesus, her name might easily be confused
with that of the other Mary.
The passage in the Gemara which we are examin-
ing shows plainly enough that only a very dim and
confused notion existed as to the parentage of Jesus
in the time when the tradition was recorded. It
rests, however, on some knowledge possessed at one
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