Jesus in the Talmud

156 Notes to Chapter 39. See my The History of the Jews in the Greco-Roman World, London andNew York: Routledge, 2003, p. 75 (with references).10. m Avot, ch. 1.11. A possible motif for connecting him with Alexandria might be a halakhicstatement attributed to him, namely that wheat coming from Alexandria was impurebecause of the watering device used by the Alexandrians (t Makh 3:4). Onhis connection with magic, see below.12. y Hag 2:2/3 and 4, fol. 77d; y Sanh 6:9/1, fol. 23c.13. For an attempt to explain the message from Shimon b. Shetah toYehoshua b. Perahya/Yehuda b. Tabbai historically, see my article “ ‘FromJerusalem the Great to Alexandria the Small’: The Relationship between Palestineand Egypt in the Graeco-Roman Period,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi andGraeco-Roman Culture, vol. 1, ed. Peter Schäfer, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,1998, pp. 129–140.14. For the slightly different version in the Yerushalmi see ibid., pp. 130ff.15. The Aramaic word used here, akhsanya, can mean both “inn” and“innkeeper.”16. In the Yerushalmi version, the student’s thoughts are worsened by the factthat he makes the master an accomplice of his risqué remark.17. The master wanted him to wait because he could not interrupt theShema prayer.18. See Schäfer, “From Jerusalem the Great to Alexandria the Small,” p. 130,n. 11.19. This is what Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, constantly confuses.20. Richard Kalmin emphasizes the Bavli’s tendency to portray Jesus as arabbi (see “Christians and Heretics in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,”HTR 87, 1994, pp. 156f.). This is true, but the teacher-student relationship isalready present in the Yerushalmi version of our story (without, however, identifyingthe disciple with Jesus). The most “rabbinic” Jesus is the one in t Hul/QohR/bAZ (below ch. 4), but here, too, does the portrayal of Jesus as a Torah teacher belongto the Palestinian stratum of the story (QohR).21. Meticulously listed by Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, p. 123.22. Whatever the exact nature of this worship was (it may even be a literarymotif rather than a real custom). However, that brick worship is a distinctivelyBabylonian motif/custom becomes clear from the fact that the (originally Palestinian)discussion whether or not an egg that has been worshipped may subsequentlybe consumed by a Jew is expanded in the Bavli (AZ 46a) by a brick: if a