Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus in the Talmud 109telling us this? 48 Hiram is called a “man” and not a “son of man” (interestinglyenough, in Ez. 28:2 it is the prophet who is called “son of man”),and the Hiram interpretation therefore belongs to the first part of ourmidrash (man-god) and not to the second part referring to the “son ofman.” If we take the sophisticated structure of the midrash seriously, “Sonof Man” directly corresponds to “God”: a man who tells you that he isGod is a liar, and a man who tells you that he is the Son of Man will regretit. 49 Hence, R. Abbahu’s midrash is indeed much more than just a reflectionof the well-documented Hiram traditions. It is very likely that itgoes much further and does understand the “Son of Man” as a title referringto Jesus, as frequently attested to in the Gospels 50 (I therefore capitalizedit in my translation). This interpretation goes well with the fact thatR. Abbahu lived in Caesarea, the very center of Roman rule and PalestinianChristianity; some scholars even argue that he may well have been acquaintedwith the Church Father Origen (d. 253 C.E.) or at least with histeachings. 51Finally, the third and last part of the midrash. Here, the claim of goingup to heaven is not covered by the biblical verse Numbers 23:19 (theBible just confirms, without giving an example, that God always fulfillswhat he has promised). Again, one could argue that our midrash rejects(this time not Hiram’s but) Nebuchadnezzar’s hubris, of whom Isaiah says(Isa. 14:13f.): “For you have said in your heart: I will ascend to heaven, Iwill exalt my throne above the stars of God. ... I will ascend above theheights of the clouds and will be like the most High,” and who gets the deservedrebuff (Isa. 14:15): “Yet you shall be brought down to She>ol, to thesides of the pit.” 52 But this is only part of the answer. Within the sequenceGod—Son of Man—ascent to heaven, it makes much more sense to concludethat R. Abbahu uses a complex midrash tradition in order to apply itto Jesus and his movement: Jesus is a common human being, not God,not the Son of Man, and he certainly did not ascend to heaven to returnto his divine father.The other relevant midrash is also preserved in a Palestinian source,the homiletic midrash Pesiqta Rabbati. It is attributed to R. Hiyya barAbba, a Babylonian-born amora, again of the late third/early fourth century,who, however, spent most of his life in Palestine: 53