Jesus in the Talmud

Jesus’ Family 23Athenian Sages] asked him: “Can a mule give birth”? He [R. Yehoshua]answered them: “This is one of these fiction stories”.[Again, the Athenian Sages asked:] “When salt becomes unsavory,wherewith is it salted”? He replied: “With the afterbirth of a mule.”—“And is there an afterbirth of a mule”?—“And can salt becomeunsavory”? 45These brief stories center around the well-known fact that mules, the offspringof a cross between a male donkey and a female horse, almost alwaysare sterile. Both play with a double element of surprise: in the firstcase the allegation that a mule not only can give birth to a cub, but that aparticular cub was even born with a debt document bound around itsneck; and in the second case that salt not only can become unsavory, butthat it can regain its flavor with the afterbirth of a mule. This, of course,has nothing to do with Jesus. But why the strange idea of a sterile mulegiving birth, coupled with the not-less-strange idea of unsavory salt, that is,presumably salt that lost its taste? One could argue that what we havehere are remnants of some kind of an early “scientific” discourse aboutthe sterility of mules, and this is probably the easiest answer. But still, theconnection of the miraculous offspring of a sterile mule with the salt regainingits taste by the afterbirth of a mule is suspicious. With regard tothe unsavory—most likely insipid—salt one immediately thinks of Jesus’famous dictum in the Sermon on the Mount:You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how canits saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but isthrown out and trampled underfoot. 46Jesus addresses here his disciples as the salt of the earth, more precisely asthe new salt of the earth because there is some other salt that has lost itssaltiness and hence it taste. This other salt, with no taste anymore, caneasily be understood as the people of the old covenant which is “nolonger good for anything,” “thrown out,” and “trampled under foot.” If wetake this saying of Jesus as the foil against which our Bavli story was construed,the brief tale turns into a pungent parody of the New Testament