46
CHRISTIANITY IN TALMUD
me concerning the sheep.' ' What of saving
the shepherd from the lion'? He said, ' Ye
have only asked me concerning the shepherd.'
' What of a Mamzer, as to inheriting'? ' What
of his performing the levirate duty'? ' What
of his founding his house'? ' What of his
founding his sepulchre ' ? [They asked these
questions] not because they differed on them,
but because he never said anything which he
had not heard from his teacher from of old.
[See a somewhat similar series of questions,
T. Jeb. iii. 8, 4.]
Commentary.-This
passage is full of obscurities.
I record it here because of its reference to
' peldni,' ' a
certain person,' the same phrase which occurred in
the preceding extract. R. Eliezer was a very well-
known teacher at the end of the first century ; and
later on will be given a passage which describes how
he was once arrested on a charge of heresy, presum-
ably Christianity
(see below, p.
187).
The words
translated are a Baraitha (see above, p. 21), i.e. they
belong to a period contemporary with the Mishnah,
though they are not included in it. Moreover the
style of the language is that of the Mishnah, not that
of the Gemara. Further, a set of questions addressed
to the same R. Eliezer, and including some of those
translated above, is found in the Tosephta (T. Jeb. iii.
8,
4).
Among the questions given in Tosephta are
those about ' peloni,' and about the ' Mamzer.' It is
evident that the authors neither of the Gemara nor of
the Tosephta understood the full meaning of the
questions. The explanation is that the questions
were asked ' not because there was any difference of
 |  |  |