Healing in the Name of Yeshua: R. Eliezer ben Dama

The account of R. Eliezer ben Dama — the rabbi who was bitten by a snake and died rather than be healed in the name of Yeshua — appears briefly in our main study, Yeshua in the Talmud. Here we sit with that same story at length and follow where it leads: into the strange history of the name "Pandera," the rabbinic image of a "fence" around the Torah, the New Testament call to go "outside the camp," and the striking admission, preserved by the rabbis themselves, that there was power to heal in Yeshua's name. If you want the short version, it is over there; if you want to explore the story in depth, this article is for you.

The R. Eliezer we're talking about today is not the R. Eliezer ben Horkinus, the earlier rabbi, who was the pupil of Johanan ben Zakkai and a teacher of R. Akiba. This time it is about a later rabbi, R. Eliezer ben Dama — though their stories have some similarity. This account is not from the Babylonian Talmud, but from the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Shabbat, section D. Let's read the text in its entirety, and then try to analyze it.

This story appears again, in a different version, in the Babylonian Talmud; but let us try to understand and analyze the version from the Palestinian, or Jerusalem Talmud, as it is called today, which is a little earlier than the Babylonian. We have again a story of a healing, sometime toward the late second century. R. Eliezer was bitten by a serpent, and there comes a man named Jacob, from a Galilean village called K'phar Sama, and he proposes to heal R. Eliezer in the name of Yeshua. It says here "Yeshua Pandera."

Where the Name "Pandera" Comes From

The term Pandera is a bit complicated, but we will try to explain it a little for this study. It developed in Jewish tradition, mainly in the late second and third centuries, that Yeshua was the son of a Roman soldier — that his mother was indeed Miriam, but that his father was not the Holy Spirit, as the New Testament states, but a Roman soldier by the name of Pandera. This tradition continues over into the Byzantine period, in the fourth and fifth centuries, and there are many discussions of who the father of Yeshua was.

There are passages in the Talmud that report that the father of Yeshua was a man, Judah b. Pappos. Another passage reports that he is a person by the name of Ben Stada. And there is another passage that reports that his father was a Roman soldier by the name of Pandera. So in this passage, reported in the name of R. Eliezer b. Dama, the writer of the Jerusalem Talmud states that Jacob, who comes from the village of K'phar Sama in the Galilee, proposes to heal R. Eliezer from the snake bite in the name of Yeshua Pandera.

Now, where does the name Pandera originate? It is reported by Joseph Klausner, and also by other Jewish scholars who are experts on the Second Temple period, that what we really have here is a later warping of the Greek term Parthenos. Parthenos in Greek means virgin. The Parthenon in Athens is the house of Athena, the ethereal virgin, the goddess of Greece; her name was Athena, and her title was Parthene, which means virgin, and her house was called the Parthenon, and it stands until today. So when Jacob is described here as a disciple of Yeshua, the name of Yeshua is given as Pandera, because it became known — and his reputation in the Jewish world was, whether tongue-in-cheek or not, that he is the son of the virgin.

Slowly, as the Jewish community separated itself from the Greco-Roman world and leaned more and more toward Aramaic and toward the eastern, Babylonian culture, and as the centers of Jewish learning moved to Babylon, the Greek term Parthenos became Pandera, because some Greek letters cannot be pronounced in Hebrew or Aramaic. Later generations supposed that Pandera was a Roman soldier, because Pandera is like the word "pander" in modern English.

A Reputation for Healing in Yeshua's Name

So we have this report of the Talmud about a man named Jacob, from a village in the Galilee, sometime in the second century, coming to propose to R. Eliezer b. Dama, who had been bitten by a serpent, a healing in the name of Yeshua. This in itself is a very interesting historical note, because we have here a famous rabbi in the Galilee, and a Jew named Jacob who was a disciple of Yeshua. And this Rabbi Eliezer holds the opinion that there is power of healing in the name of Yeshua. The fact that they entertain the possibility that R. Eliezer could be healed in the name of Yeshua means that the Jewish believers in Yeshua had a reputation in the Jewish community of the Galilee — that there is healing power in the name of Yeshua. And that is in the second century.

This man Jacob is brought and proposes to heal R. Eliezer. The disciple of R. Eliezer, R. Ishmael, comes and says: 'Don't let him do it; don't let this Jacob heal you in the name of Yeshua.' And R. Eliezer's words here in the Talmud are: 'I will bring you a proof that he has the right to heal me.' We don't know what that proof was; but for R. Eliezer b. Dama, as for R. Eliezer b. Horkinus, both of them in the second century had some degree of relationship with Jews who believed in Yeshua, who came and went in front of them, and who had in fact developed a reputation that there could be healing in the name of Yeshua. It is undeniable that R. Eliezer thinks not only that there can be healing in the name of Yeshua, but also that he can bring proof that it is permitted — that Jacob has a right to heal him in the name of Yeshua.

This is a very interesting historical note, because today, after two thousand years of Christianity, we all cope with the problem of how to be Jews and to believe in Yeshua at the same time, and not to have a bad relationship with the Orthodox religious Jewish establishment. Here we see that it is possible — that it was possible even in the second century — for Jews to have some respect for the disciples of Yeshua within the community.

The Fence of the Sages

R. Ishmael, of course, is here playing a role very similar to R. Akiba's in a different story. He wants to prevent R. Eliezer b. Dama from receiving a healing in the name of Yeshua. So, according to him, R. Eliezer was fortunate to have died before he was healed. The words of R. Ishmael were:

In other words, because the text doesn't quite fit the occasion, they have to reinterpret it and say that it is not referring to the bite that he had in the past, but to the future — that the snake will not bite him in the life to come.

This is an interesting phenomenon. You have the time up to R. Eliezer b. Dama, and then you have the time from his disciple R. Ishmael onward, after which there is enmity between the Jewish establishment and the Jewish disciples of Yeshua. More than enmity. The term that R. Ishmael uses here says that R. Eliezer was blessed to have died, that he went in peace and did not break through the fence of the sages. This term is very important for us today, because it describes how the rabbis in the late second century would have looked at the believers. They regarded them as those who had broken through the fence. That Judaism has a fence around it, nobody would argue; that this is a fence the rabbis put up; and that the believer in Yeshua has broken through the fence. They have gone outside the camp.

Outside the Camp

This imagery is already hinted at in the New Testament itself. In Hebrews chapter 13, from verse 12, we read:

The imagery here is expressed in very few words, but it is very clear, and it is associated with a number of aspects of the Law of Moses. In the first place, as you see, they are teaching that Yeshua was crucified outside the gate, and the call is, 'Let us also go outside the gate, outside the camp, in his reproach.' The original imagery is taken from two distinct biblical pictures that deal with atonement. The first is the scapegoat, which was taken outside the camp, outside the city gate, and sent into the wilderness to take away the sins of Israel. The second, which also deals with purity and atonement, is the red heifer. The red heifer was offered outside the gate, and the ashes of the red heifer were taken to a place of purification outside the gate, outside the fence, outside the camp. (I am using these different terms because different translations render it differently.) So the two major occasions for atonement in biblical history took place outside the camp. The writer of the book of Hebrews is inviting his readers to be willing to go outside the camp, to the place of atonement — not only for their own sake, but for the sake of Israel as well, because that is where the atonement is made: outside the camp.

R. Ishmael, in this case, when he praises R. Eliezer for dying before he could be healed in the name of Yeshua, is saying: 'You are fortunate that you died, that you left this world and did not break through the fence of the sages. You did not go outside the camp.' That is the imagery that the late-second-century rabbinical writers had of the Jewish believers. They did not say, 'They are not Jews'; they said, 'They have gone outside the camp, beyond the fence.'

Now, it is interesting that it says "the fence of the sages," meaning the fence that the rabbis built. The Torah is considered to be in need of fences, and the rabbis themselves testify that their task is 'laasot siag la-Torah' in Hebrew — to build a fence around the Torah. So of course that fence is a man-made fence; it is not a divinely given fence, even though the rabbis claim that it is part of the oral law, the oral tradition. Yet basically this is a fence that even the rabbis themselves, in a few of their more candid moments, admit was something that developed through history — that developed through the circumstances in which Judaism found itself — and was not revealed, like the word of God, which is revealed by the Holy Spirit. They claim that it is something that develops and is constantly developing, as a result of their belief that God gave them the authority to build these fences to protect the Torah.

So it is implied of the Jewish believers here that they were outside the fence of the sages. They had somehow chosen to go out — according to the writer of the book of Hebrews, chosen to go out together with Yeshua, outside the gate of the city, so that they would find atonement and sanctification through the blood of Yeshua. They were willing to bear his reproach, according to Hebrews 13:13, outside the camp, outside the community of Israel. Today we are seeing the opposite phenomenon. The Jewish believers, and many Gentile believers, are seeking ways to return into the camp. In other words, they don't want to be outside the camp, but are seeking every possible way to return into it — to come inside, to be behind the fence on the inside and not on the outside. That is a phenomenon that could be wonderful, but it could also be dangerous, if we forget what our calling really is.

The Babylonian Version

The same story that appears in the Jerusalem Talmud appears also in the Babylonian Talmud, in the tractate Avodah Zarah p. 27b, but the wording there is a little different from the wording in the Jerusalem Talmud. This is how it is reported to us in the Babylonian Talmud.

What is revealed in this later edition that appears in the Babylonian Talmud? It is what ben Dama would have transgressed, had he been healed in the name of Yeshua. It was not the Torah, but "the words of his companions" — which are interpreted in the Jerusalem Talmud as the words of the sages. In other words, it had become a social problem to believe in Yeshua. The Jewish believers did not want to leave the Jewish community. They wanted to stay in the Jewish community; but it was the rabbis who pushed them out of it and rejected them. And this is an interesting insight into both of these passages in the Talmud: the rabbis did not say that healing in Yeshua's name had no power. Rather, they said, 'Don't allow them to be healed.' The Talmud in both stories reports that there was power of healing in the name of Yeshua, and in both stories R. Eliezer ben Dama seems to have a biblical proof for why it is permitted to use the name of Yeshua for healing. The easiest thing would have been for R. Ishmael to say, 'Oh, this is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, no results, no power.' But R. Ishmael does not say, 'There is no power in the name of Yeshua'; rather, he admits that there is power in the name of Yeshua, but that it is better not to use it, because it will defile the body, or tempt the soul.

Miracles That Did Not Cease

We have learned a lot of things here. First of all, we have learned that the disciples of Yeshua in the first century, and into the second and third centuries, still believed in the promises that the New Testament gives — the promises that his disciples would do miracles as he did, that they would have the power of the Holy Spirit to heal the sick. This is something that was lost in the tradition of Christianity. Only within the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement have we seen these things return to the forefront. Many Christians in some denominations have believed that with the closing of the canon of the New Testament all the miraculous works of God stopped. But here we have in the Talmud stories of healing in the name of Yeshua. Miracles had not ceased. Their power continued, enough that the enemies of the Gospel — the rabbinical Jews, especially in the second century, during the Bar Kochba revolt and later — could not deny the fact that there is power to heal in the name of Yeshua. The Jewish disciples of Yeshua in the second century could use this power even to heal unbelievers.

Today, when we see the Pentecostals, if someone doesn't get healed, they say that he did not have enough faith — that only believers supposedly get healed. But we are seeing here that the power of Yeshua, as in the New Testament, could heal unbelievers. The sons, the cousins, the nephews, and the rabbis themselves were the ones unquestionably healed in the name of Yeshua.

A Story Worth Sitting With

It is a small story, told in a handful of lines, and told by people who had no wish to flatter Yeshua or his followers. That is exactly what makes it worth sitting with. R. Ishmael would rather his nephew die than be healed in a name he could not bear — and yet, in blessing the dead man, he concedes the very thing he is fighting: that the name carried power. What was meant to close a door leaves one standing open. The believers of that generation had gone, as the writer of Hebrews put it, outside the camp; and the memory of them, preserved by those who opposed them, still bears a quiet witness across two thousand years.