Jesus in the Talmud

116 Chapter 9cross, allegedly and timely discovered by the Queen herself, which servedas the main attraction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.The rise of Christianity in Palestine does not mean that the Jews weredeprived of all their rights and under the constant threat of persecution;such a bleak picture 69 certainly does not do justice to the neverthelessflourishing religious and cultural Jewish life, predominantly in theGalilee after the Bar Kokhba revolt. But there can be no doubt, either,that the religious and political freedom of the Jews was more and morelimited by a growing anti-Jewish legislation and that the Jews graduallybecame a minority against the increasingly aggressive majority of theChristians in Palestine. That such a climate was not propitious for an unbiaseddebate between Jews and Christians, let alone for a Jewish critiqueof the hero of the Christian faith, can hardly come as a surprise.If we compare the situation of the Jews and the Christians in Palestinewith the conditions under which both lived in Babylonia, we get a differentpicture. Under the dynasty of the Sasanians, which in the third centuryC.E. replaced the Parthian Arsacids, the Zoroastrian religion with its strongantagonism between good and evil and its fire worship became the unitingreligious force in the vast and multiethnic Persian Empire. Whether or notZoroastrianism can be described as a state religion, as some scholars suggest,70 there can be no doubt that it was closely related to the claim topower of the Sasanian kings, who promoted it and used it mainly for theirpolitical purposes. 71 They gave the magians (magi), the priests of theZoroastrian religion, almost unlimited power (when they saw fit politically),and from this higher point of view of national policy it did not make muchof a difference to which deviant religion a victim of the magians’ religiouszeal belonged. A graphic example of this Zoroastrian fervor against anyother religion can be found in the famous inscription put up by Katir, oneof the most powerful magians during the reign of Bahram II (276–293):And for the love of Ohrmazd 72 and the gods, and for the sake of hisown soul, he [Bahram II] raised my [Katir’s] rank and my titles inthe empire. . . . And in all the provinces, in every part of the empire,the acts of worshipping Ohrmazd and the gods were enhanced.And the Zoroastrian religion and the Magi were greatly honored in