dro joponozo mot on controbos stondon of dor stros

't Is maar net de vraag of er wel iets nieuws is onder de zon of dat we meestal oude oerverhalen blijven herkauwen met nieuwe jasjes aan en ietwat andere hoedjes, petjes & hoofddoekjes om ons bolle hoofd?!

Onze voorgeschiedenis is nu eenmaal bekend aan het worden om er iets van te leren: al 't nieuwe komt voort uit 't oude & er is niets nieuws dat geen wortels heeft in wat zich al miljoenen jaren lang afspeelt ...

So there is also direct evidence from within the tradition of the Babylonian Talmud itself that our Papos was understood as a Christian. Could this represent a dim memory of the apostolic father, Papias, who certainly lived and was apparently martyred at about the right time? Interestingly enough, Papias's writings
do
"show contact with Rabbinic exegesis!"

So there is temptation here. This notion has been anticipated by
several others, although maybe they did not see that the Talmud hints that Papos was a Christian, which
would have strenghthened their case considerably? My own best guess {DB} that this is about the same order of likelihood as that the Trypho in Justin is Rabbi Tarphon. The following quite fantastic controversy will bring this out:
"One who inscribes on his flesh [is punishable by death]":
We have been taught, Rabby Eli'ezer said to the sages,

"But the son of Satda brought the magic books of Egypt by inscribing them into his flesh!"

In contradiction to the Mishna that indicates that writing on the body is a capital crime according to the Torah, Rabby Eli'ezer cites an authority who actually engaged in this practice. For him, obviously, this authority is a definitive one, but his fellows disagree:
They said to him:
"But he was a fool, and we do not bring proof from fools!"

As we shall see immediately, the authority whom Rabbi Eli'ezer cited was none other than Yeshu of Natseret, who is occasionally styled in rabbinic literature
"the pious fool!"

The Talmud however does not understand
why he is referred to here as the son of Satda:
The son of Satda?? He was the son of Pandira! Rav Hisda said:
The husband was Satda; the paramour was Pandira!

The Talmud
refers to the Jewish slander tradition,
known at least as early as Celsus, that Yeshu
was the bastard son of a Roman soldier named Panthera. However, the Talmud has a strikingly different tradition as to the identity of the cuckolded husband of Mary:
But the husband was Papos the son of Yehuda!
Rather, his mother was Satda. But his mother was Mary Magdalene!

The usual Syriac
& Aramaic term for Mary Magdalene was
Miryam the plaiter of women's hair, a sort of pun or folk etymology of "Magdalene!"

This "error" in the tradition is not necessarily evudence for lack of contact between the producers of this narrative and living Christian usage because by the fifth century, popular Christian traditions also were confounding the two Marys, as we can learn from Karen King?!

Rather,
as they say in Pumbeditha, This one strayed
{satat da}
from her husband!

"Let us return, however, to the words put into the mouth of the Jew, where
the mother of Jesus
is described as having been
turned out by the carpenter who was betrothed to her, as she had been convicted of adultary and had a child by a certain soldier named Panthera!"

We learn much from this remarkable passage.
"Ben Stara is Ben Pantera!"


First of all,
once more we find Rabbi Eli'ezer represented
as citing Torah for authoritatice halakhic purposes
in the name of
"Jesus."

Most important
for our immediate purpose,
however, is that a late Babylonian tradition
associates Papos the son of Yehuda with Christianity,
to the extent that he was actually a member
of the Holy Family.

This is clearly a late tradition.
Earlier rabbinic texts have Papos
as a somewhat extreme, perhaps deviant
("Gnostic?"
rabbinic figure. His association with Christianity and indeed with the Holy Family has been variously explained. One typical, if not very convincing attempt: a narrative which seems ruptured precisely at the point of Papos's arrest ~ if he was opposed to Rabbi Akiva's provocation of the Romans and presumably discreet about his own religious practices, then why was he arrested [at all]!? The gap in the story may reflect the historical shift in the tradition about him from deviant Rabbi to Christian heretic, which the
"Holy Family"
story reflects?! In the earlier version, he was perhaps a conservative, somewhat pro-Roman figure opposed to this new-fangled invention of martyrdom. In the later, he is a sectarian martyr who has to
"confess"
to Rabbi Akiva that the latter's martyrdom
is worthier than his own!

An early report
that says
"Gnostics"
keep their views secretive and don't believe in martyrdom:
it would be foolhardy to see in this any but the most tenuous of similarities, but, insofar as the seeking of martyrdom through public confession is indeed a religious innovation, it is not surptising to us that the religious conservatives, whether Christian or Jewish sectarians, would be
in opposition to it? It was Yeshua's
'apparent' desire for 'death',
as described in the Gospels, that granted him the title
"The Pious Fool"
in rabbinic texts,
a title reflected in our
talmudic passage.

It is fascinating
that the evident fact that this
is a late Babylonian traditon indicated to an earlier generation of scholars
that it has "no historical value!"
Ben Stara is Ben Pantera,
for us,
this is precisely its
historical value:
"Papos"
is apparently a short form of
"Josephus,"
as argued by some
'a pun just
for fun'
as in
"Carica~
turnamen,"
"Burlesquoni,"
"Georgio Walker
Bubble U. Douche,",
"Osama Bin Laden" from CIA
to Al Qaida & a
"Barack Obama"
in Pyjamas:
to make
an opponent ridiculous,
to ridicule your
'enemy'
by playing
with all kinds
of words and associations,
very strange translations &
'impossible'
allegations as we did
for many
ages
...