Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus in the Talmud 119And this is precisely how the Acts of Simon continues. The Jews, it argues,are not only aware of the Christians’ disloyalty to the king, they effectivelytake advantage of it and blacken the Christians’ name beforeShapur. Using the full arsenal of Christian anti-Jewish stereotypes (theJews have always been against the Christians, they killed the prophets,crucified Jesus, stoned the apostles, and are thirsty for the Christians’blood), it claims that the Jews slander Simon as follows: when Shapur, theking of kings, sends long and wise missives to the Christian emperor(kaisar), together with resplendent gifts, they are received dismissively;but when Simon sends him a puny letter, the emperor immediately getsup to his feet, welcomes the letter with both hands and grants Simon’s requests.“Moreover,” the Acts continue, “you [Shapur] do not have a statesecret that he [Simon] does not immediately write down and communicateto the Caesar!” 84 So that’s what it is all about: even if they did not instigatethe Sasanians’ persecution of the Christians, the Jews, the perennialenemies of Jesus and his followers, actively supported it. 85If we look at the more concrete religious issues brought up in the Actsof the Martyrs, we find a number of themes that are frequently emphasized.First and foremost is the refusal of the Christians to worship thesun and the fire, the most holy objects of the Zoroastrian cult. 86 The earliestmartyrdom described in the Acts, the martyrdom of the bishopShapur and his coreligionists, 87 opens with the accusation of the magiansthat they cannot practice their religion because of the Nazarenes, who“despise the fire, revile the sun and do not honor the water.” 88 Other accusationsare that the Christians refuse to eat blood (i.e., ritually slaughteredmeat), bury their dead in the earth, and often refuse to marry butinstead proclaim the ideal of virginity. 89 Much as these Christian customshave been abhorrent to the Zoroastrians, most of them must havefound the approval of the Jews; in other words, with regard to many ofthe Zoroastrian religious sensibilities, there cannot have been much of adifference between Christians and Jews (and Katir was therefore right toput both on an equal footing). The conspicuous exception is the ideal ofvirginity, which appears in almost all of the martyrdoms of women. 90This is clearly something of which the Jews did not approve of, either,and which immediately reminds us of the Bavli’s attack on the New Testament’sbirth narrative (Jesus born from a virgin). We do not know