Jesus in the Talmud

166 Notes to Chapter 556. y AZ 2:2/7, fol. 40d; y Shab 14:4/8, fol. 14d; QohR 10:5. I follow y AZand refer to the important variants in the notes.57. y Shab: “a man” (bar nash).58. The name of Jesus is deleted in the Leiden manuscript and added againby the second glossator; QohR: “he went and brought one of those from the sonof Pandera to relieve his choking.” Neusner, in his Yerushalmi translation, againomits Jesus.59. The successful healing is not explicitly mentioned in QohR but presupposed.60. Read (with y Shab) millat instead of le-millat. QohR: “such and suchverses” or “one verse after another.”61. y Shab: “it would have been better for him. ...”62. QohR: “better that he had been buried and you had not quoted this verseover him.”63. Richard Kalmin (commenting on my manuscript; but see also his “Christiansand Heretics,” p. 162) draws my attention to an even more devastating reading:the “error committed by a ruler” is not the error resulting from the heretic’smagic (the healing) but rather the grandfather’s error. R. Yehoshua’s rash andfurious statement “How much (better) would it have been for him if he haddied” came true, although he did not (fully) intend this terrible result. Hence,the heretic’s magic did work, but the grandfather undid (or rather outdid) it! Accordingto this interpretation R. Yehoshua b. Levi was not one bit better than R.Ishmael in the Eleazar b. Dama story.64. Maier, Jesus von Nazareth, p. 195.65. Or, if the shegaga refers to R. Yehoshua’s ultimately granted wish that thegrandson is better off dying: the rabbi’s wish can even undo powerful, yet unauthorized,magic.66. We may even see here another allusion to and inversion of a New Testamentnarrative. When Peter acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus respondswith his famous statement: “And I tell you, you are Peter (Petros), and on thisrock (petra) I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevailagainst it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever youbind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will beloosed in heaven” (Mt. 16:18f.; see also Mt. 23:14, where the scribes and Phariseesare accused of locking people out of the kingdom of heaven). Binding andloosing are not only technical terms referring to the rabbinic authority of forbid-