Ben Stada, Ben Pandira, and the Confusion of the Talmud

In our study Yeshua in the Talmud we noted, in passing, that the rabbinic writings contain some strange and hostile stories about Yeshua's birth and parentage. Here we examine some of these aspects more deeply — the figures called Ben Stada and Ben Pandira — across the two passages where they appear, and we ask a pointed question: do these texts really tell us anything about Yeshua at all? The answer, as even leading Jewish scholars concede, turns out to be surprising.

In several studies we spoke about Talmudic passages that dealt with traditions which developed in later Judaism about Yeshua, and about his place and his role. We must repeat the idea that the only authority for the Church and for believers is the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation — is the word of God. Everything else, whether it be the Church Fathers or the rabbis who lived in more or less the same period as the Church Fathers, can be used as a supplement, an aid to understanding a historical background; but none of them are authoritative. Only the Word of God is authoritative, and only the Word of God can be held to be truth.

However, we should be aware of the fact that the Jewish literature of the Byzantine period does speak of Yeshua. The Jews could not totally ignore Yeshua — even though the majority of the Jewish leadership held that Yeshua never existed, and would have ignored him if they could, they couldn't. He was part of the Roman world of the period. Especially in the Byzantine period, Yeshua was an evident influence on everything that happened in the history of their day. So the Talmud does address the various issues about Yeshua; it deals with his birth, with his death, with his teaching. It is important for us to see what the Talmud does with these teachings of the early Church, and how it relates to them — not because we believe this is truth, but because inside these things there may be small smidgens of truth that can help us understand the development of the relationship between Jews and Christians, both in that period and today.

Why This Study Is Worth Our While

What benefit can we have from looking at these things? First of all, the general knowledge of the Jewish world — of the first century AD, the first century BC, and on to the formative years of Western Christianity — is valuable in itself, because it gives us the background of where the Church developed, how it developed, and the conditions in which it developed.

The second thing it can give us, especially as Jewish believers, is a better grasp of the hatred that developed between Judaism and Christianity, and a better sense of how to resolve some of these problems between Jews and Christians, and how to bridge the gaps in order to relate to one another with the Gospel.

The third point of significance is that many questions have been asked by Orthodox Jews about Yeshua, and we should know where they are coming from — why they relate to Yeshua the way they do. We will never know it unless we understand the source, and the source is these Talmudic passages that deal with Yeshua and with the Messiah.

The next point is that we can learn from the Talmudic passages things that will help us give answers, and witness as Jews to Jews of our faith in Yeshua HaMashiach.

And the fifth and last point is that this study can strengthen our own faith, when we see the simplicity, the truthfulness, and the coherence that exist in the New Testament and do not exist in the Talmudic discussions relating to Yeshua.

Two Passages, Two Different Contexts

We are going to look at the passage from two parallel sources. One is taken from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Shabbat, p. 104b; the other from tractate Sanhedrin, p. 67a. The first thing we notice is the background of these passages — the contexts in which they appear.

The passage in Shabbat comes from the Mishnah that deals with what is and is not allowed in relationship to writing on the Sabbath. The Mishnah deals with the question: is it allowed to write on the Sabbath, and what does it mean to write — with a pen, with a feather, with a chisel, on papyrus, on leather, on stone, on the sand, on the leaves of trees? What constitutes writing, especially in relationship to the Sabbath? Inside this Mishnah a question arises: is it allowed for a person to write on his own flesh? Whether with his fingernail or with another instrument — does it constitute writing that would defile or desecrate the Sabbath? This is what the Gemara says about these things.

The whole discussion starts from R. Eliezer's statement that he who scratches a mark on his flesh is liable for breaking the Sabbath. He brings as an example a man named Ben Stada, who brought witchcraft from Egypt by scratches. He is trying to prove by this that writing on the flesh is a form of communicating with a written word. Writing has to be defined as communication: if it doesn't communicate, if it doesn't carry a message, it cannot be considered writing. If you walk in the street and marks are made by mud or rain — is that writing? No. If you itch and scratch your flesh — is that writing? No, and it is not forbidden on the Sabbath.

R. Eliezer brings this story of Ben Stada, who was in Egypt and, according to the tradition, brought out of Egypt the secret name of God, so that he could use this divine name to perform magic. The rabbis, on the other hand, say: no, scratching on your flesh is not breaking the Sabbath. And then they dismiss the whole idea of Ben Stada, saying that he was a fool, and you cannot learn from a fool and derive a halachic ruling.

Then the Talmud continues with a section that was taken out by the censors — in some editions of the Talmud you won't find it, but in the more modern editions they have restored to the text what the medieval censors removed. The text asks: You are talking about Ben Stada? Surely he was the son of Pandira, not the son of Stada. Then the Talmud says: the father was not Pandira, he was Pappos b. Judah, and his wife must have been Stada. But then they say: how can you say the wife was Stada, when we know the wife was Miriam the hairdresser — in Hebrew, Magdala, Mary Magdalene in the Hebrew text — she is the mother. Then the Talmud jumps to a very late period, sometime in the fifth century, in the academy of Pumbeditha, and says: no, Stada has nothing to do with the name of the mother; it is an adjective describing that she was unfaithful to her husband, because the word satha in Hebrew is a woman who was deviant, unfaithful to her husband. So they said in Pumbeditha: satath da de-baala — "she was unfaithful to her husband." They made a play on words between "Stada" and satath da de-baala, and by this they resolve the issue, and the Talmud stops the discussion.

So, in tractate Shabbat, the whole discussion is whether it is allowed to scratch on the flesh on the Sabbath, and they bring the case of Stada as a proof that scratching on your flesh on the Sabbath is forbidden, because it constitutes writing — and obviously this man Stada had brought some witchcraft formula from Egypt by scratching it on his flesh.

The Same Story in Sanhedrin

Now we are very fortunate. We have the same Baraita — the same early rabbinical discussion — preserved not only in tractate Shabbat, but also in tractate Sanhedrin, p. 67. The context in Sanhedrin does not deal at all with a ruling on the Sabbath. It deals with the issue of how to execute different people for different crimes. The discussion arrives at how to execute the one who is a mesit — an enticer, a seducer, who seduces the minds of other people and entices them to worship idols. Within this context they bring an ancient Baraita that tells us about an execution that took place in the city of Lydda, modern Lod, where the airport is. The Talmud says that they put Ben Stada in the city of Lydda inside a room that was lit by a candle, and the witnesses sat in another room, in the dark. In other words, they could look into the room that was lit, but the people in the lit room could not see into the dark room to recognize who the witnesses were.

That is how they executed this man Ben Stada, in the city of Lod, by stoning — after witnesses heard him say that we should leave God and worship idols, or abandon the Torah, or whatever other heresy, enticement, or spiritual seduction this man was preaching. The Talmud continues with the following statement.

Two Contexts, One Confusion

Now we have two stories, almost word for word alike, in two different tractates of the Talmud, dealing with completely different subjects. One is about the Sabbath and whether it is allowed to write on it. The other is about how a seducer should be executed, and it brings the case of Ben Stada, executed in Lod on the eve of Passover. Traditionally — and this is already the case within the Talmudic period itself — Ben Stada was identified with Yeshua. If you talk with Orthodox Jews, they will bring this story about Ben Stada to show how Yeshua was executed. Obviously, once the Talmud reports that Miriam Magdala is his mother, it is already associating the story of Yeshua from the New Testament with this Talmudic tradition about Ben Stada.

There are some points of contact. One is that both Yeshua and Ben Stada were executed on the eve of Passover. The second is that there seems to be some confusion over who the father of this person was. There is a book by Travers Herford called Christianity in Talmud and Midrash, in which Herford states that Ben Stada is identified with Yeshua of Nazareth. However, he suggests that this Ben Stada is a historical person by the name of Theudas, who is mentioned in Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews (book 20, chapter 8, section 6), who claimed to be a prophet, and led his followers toward the Mount of Olives, where he was routed by the Procurator Felix — and who in later times may have been confused with Yeshua ha-Notzri, Yeshua of Nazareth. This hypothesis, however, involves disregarding the Talmudic data, for Pappos b. Judah lived a century after Yeshua; he was a friend of R. Akiba and in fact witnessed R. Akiba's execution in 135 AD. So all these figures are meshed together in this story, and the Talmud is stretching, bending over backwards to identify these people with Yeshua — and they don't fit the picture at all.

What the Jewish Scholars Themselves Say

It is interesting how Jewish writers — not Christian writers — scholars, have dealt with this issue. For example, Adin Steinsaltz, one of the formative Orthodox Jewish scholars of our day, in the margin of this page, both in Shabbat and in Sanhedrin, has to say that although our rabbis identified this Ben Stada and Ben Pandira with Yeshua of Nazareth, this is not logical and not reasonable. Because if the rabbis wanted to talk about Yeshua of Nazareth, they knew his name — he is mentioned a number of times in the Talmud and in other Jewish literature. So there would be absolutely no reason to use names like Ben Stada and Ben Pandira to identify Yeshua. For example, in tractate Sanhedrin p. 43 it says plainly: "They hung Yeshua of Nazareth on the eve of Passover." There it says Yeshu ha-Notzri; they know his name, they don't have to guess — so why play these games of Ben Stada and Ben Pandira? So Adin Steinsaltz states that it is very likely this is not talking about Yeshua at all, even though the tradition, already in Talmudic times, is that it is talking about Yeshua.

A very famous and wonderful scholar from the early part of the twentieth century, Joseph Klausner, in his famous book Jesus of Nazareth, deals at the very beginning with the sources of our knowledge about Yeshua, and he states very clearly that these passages dealing with Ben Stada and Ben Pandira are totally unhistorical and contribute nothing — of no value as far as our understanding of the historical Yeshua is concerned; they add nothing.

Untangling the Names

Now I want to analyze this story a little. What do we have? We have a tradition about Ben Stada, who is stoned on the eve of Passover in the city of Lod. Ben Stada, according to Herford's suggestion, would be that Theudas, one of these Galilean false prophets who came to Jerusalem and was finally killed and executed, and who is mentioned in Acts chapter 21 verse 38. There are others who believe this is probably the same Theudas.

Now, who is Ben Pandira? Probably Ben Pandira is Yeshua. So what did Herford, Dalman, and Klausner all suggest? That the term Pandera is a twisting that happened in Babylon of the Greek name Parthenos, which means "virgin" in Greek. They heard "Parthenos" and twisted it into some kind of Aramaic transliteration, and it became Pandira. From there Pandira rolled into "Panther," which was a very common name for Roman soldiers, and from there it developed that the father of Yeshua, in Orthodox Jewish tradition, was a Roman soldier who took advantage of Miriam — and that she was too ashamed to tell her husband, and so told him she had become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. That is the Talmudic tradition behind this concoction in the Talmud.

The Talmud questions itself: why do you say Ben Stada, when we know that he is Ben Pandira, and that Pappos b. Judah was the husband? Where did they get this business of Pappos b. Judah? Pappos b. Judah was a known historical figure who appears in the Talmud in many places — in our sections, in tractate Gittin p. 90, and in many Midrashim — and the only thing in common between Pappos b. Judah and this story is that Pappos b. Judah had a wayward wife. He was a very jealous husband and locked her in her room because he didn't trust her, and in spite of this she still betrayed him and committed adultery; locking her up didn't help. So Pappos b. Judah was a famous man, a friend of R. Akiba and other rabbis of the early second century, and his wife was unfaithful. That is the only connection between Pappos b. Judah and this story. And so they accuse a Miriam — and they don't even know which Miriam — and say Miriam Magdala.

In other words, there is total confusion among the rabbis in Babylon who are writing the Talmud about who Yeshua is, who his father is, who his mother is. They have heard certain things, but they don't know exactly how they fit, and finally the only way they can make things fit, even loosely, is when someone in Pumbeditha, sometime in the fifth century, says: "Stada" has nothing to do with anyone's name — it is an adjective, meaning a woman who betrays her husband. If the rabbis had any real knowledge of who the father of Yeshua was, they would have produced it right here, in these two sections, because that is exactly what they are discussing. Instead, they are in total confusion, arguing among themselves about who the father and who the mother were.

What We Learn From the Confusion

What do we learn from this? We learn that they knew nothing about the father of Yeshua. There are three names — Stada, Pandira, and Pappos b. Judah — attributed as the father of Yeshua, three persons who lived in three different periods, in different parts of the country. Each has some loose connection to the story of Yeshua. One, because he was executed on the eve of Passover — but not in Jerusalem; it was in the city of Lod, according to the Talmudic sources, and his name was Stada, or Theudas; perhaps this was the false messiah of whom we read in Josephus and in Acts. Another is Ben Pandira: they heard that the believers, the Christians, spoke of the son of the virgin — huios Parthenou — and so they said Pandira was his father, when the word Parthenos was meant to describe his mother, not his father. Then they have this story about Pappos b. Judah, who had a wife he couldn't trust and who betrayed him despite his watching her and locking her away.

All these stories are meshed together, put together, and attempted to be attributed to Yeshua — but it doesn't work. And the Talmud is aware that it doesn't work, by its own argumentation. In fact R. Adin Steinsaltz, the modern Talmudic scholar putting out the Talmud in a fine English edition, himself says in the margin that it can't be Yeshua. Historically, chronologically, and logically, it can't be Yeshua.

So from these stories in the Talmud we draw a simple truth: they had no knowledge of who the father of Yeshua was. The only valid knowledge we have is the account in the book of Matthew in the New Testament — that an angel appeared to Miriam and told her she would conceive by the Holy Spirit, and she did. And Joseph, her husband, who had every right to put her away, chose to believe her, that she had been made to conceive by the Holy Spirit, and took this son, Yeshua, who was born in Bethlehem, as his own, and raised him as his own son. So when Yeshua returns after arguing with the rabbis and priests in the Temple, and his parents look for him and find him, Miriam says, "Your father and I have been looking for you" — speaking of Joseph. In other words, legally Joseph was the father of Yeshua. The story of the New Testament is the only coherent account of the birth of Yeshua, while the Talmud knows nothing, and is totally confused as to who the mother and father of Yeshua were. They only know that the mother of Yeshua was Mary — but the famous Mary they knew of was Mary Magdala, not Mary the mother of Yeshua, the wife of Joseph the carpenter.

Conclusion

So we can say that the Talmud dealt with this issue in a very unhistorical and confused way, gave no real answers at all, and completely mixed up the chronology. Where the rabbinic writings dissolve into a tangle of names that cannot be made to fit, the account we have in the Gospel stands clear and consistent — and we can trust it.