Jesus in the Talmud

118 Chapter 9The people of God have received prosperity, and success awaits theman who has been the instrument of that prosperity [Constantine];but disaster threatens the army which has been gathered together bythe efforts of a wicked and proud man puffed up with vanity [Shapur].... The [Roman] Empire will not be conquered, for the herowhose name is Jesus is coming with his power, and his armor will upholdthe whole army of the Empire. 79Such expectations certainly did not escape the attention of Shapur, 80 allthe more so as Constantius, Constantine’s son and successor in the East,continued to interfere in Armenia in favor of the pro-Christian party.When Shapur, in 338, unsuccessfully besieged the border city of Nisibis,he finally took action against his Christian subjects and started the firstand prolonged persecution (of about forty years) of the Christians in theSasanian Empire. We are well informed about this persecution by a largecollection of texts in Syriac, dating from the time of Shapur II and calledthe Acts of the Martyrs. 81 They are of varying historical value but on thewhole give a vivid picture of the situation. 82One of the most prominent texts, the martyrdom of Mar Simon, theKatholikos of the Oriental Church, sets the tone and displays the inextricablemixture of political and religious issues involved. When Shapurpromulgated an edict imposing on his Christian subjects double taxes,Simon refused to obey and got caught, according to the Acts of the Martyrs,in a long debate with the king and his dignitaries that finally resultedin his martyrdom. Simon’s refusal was duly recorded by the Persian officialsand reported to the king, who, reacting with anger and fury, exclaimed:“Simon wants to make his followers and his people rebelagainst my kingdom and convert them into servants of Caesar (kaisar),their coreligionist. Therefore he does not obey my order!” 83 The “Caesar,”of course, is the Christian emperor Constantius, and what is at stakehere, at the very beginning of the controversy, is not so much a religiousdispute (although, to be sure, this was to follow soon) but rather the loyaltyof his Christian subjects to the king. Unlike the Jews, who had everyreason to distrust the Christian emperor (because of his rule in Palestine)and to be loyal to their Sasanian king, the Christians aroused the suspicionof treason.