4. On the dogma of Mar\-'s siulessness, see Immacu- late Co^XEPTION. On her worship, see IMariolatey. On the alleged transportation of her dwelling to Italy, see LoRETTO.
HI. Jewish Traditions. — These are of a very different nature from the light -liearted fairs- -tale -like stories which we have recnuntcd above. We should expect that the miraculous birth of our Lord would be an oc- casion of scoffing to the unbelieving Jews, and we find this to be the case. AVe have already a hint during our Lord's ministry of the Jewish calumnies as to his birth. " We {jijitic) be not born of fornication" (John
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viii, 41), seems to be an insinuation on the Jews' part tliat he was. To the Christian beUever the Jewish slander becomes in the present case only a confirmation of his faith. The most definite and outspoken of these slanders is that which is contained in the book called "VJi ri1?ir, or Toledoth Jesu. It was grasped at with avidity by Voltaire, and declared by him to be the most ancient Jewish -writing directed against Christiani- ty, and apparently of the first century. It'was written, he says, before the Gospels, and is altogether contrary to them {Lc'iire sui- les JiiiJ's). It is proved by Ammon {Bihllsch. Theologie, p. 263, Erlang. 1801) to be a compo- sition of the 13th century, and by Wagenseil {Tela iynea SataruK ; Confui. Lib): Toldos JescJiu, p. 12, Altorf, 1G81) to be irreconcilable with the earlier Jewish tales. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, otherwise called the Acts of Pilate, we find the Jews represented as charging our Lord with illegitimate birth (c. 2). The date of this Gospel is about the end of the third century. The ori- gin of the charge is referred with great probability by Thilo {Codex Apocr. p. 527, Lips. 1832) to the circular let- ters of the Jews mentioned by Grotius {ad Matt, xxvii, 63, ei ud Act. Apost. xxviii, 22; Op. ii, 278 and G66, Ba- sil. 1732), which were sent from Palestine to all the Jew- ish synagogues after the death of Christ, with the view of attacking " the lawless and atheistic sect which had taken its origin from the deceiver Jesus of Galilee" (Jus- tin, adr. Tryph.). The first time that we find it openly proclaimed is in an extract made by Origen from the work of Celsus, which he is refuting. Celsus introduces a Jew declaring that the mother of Jesus was repudiated by her husband for adultery {vnu tou yijfiavroc, TtKTO- vog Ti]v TtxvTjv oVTOQ, t'^suxySrai, tXtyx^tlaav mq //£- fioix(Vfiiv7]v, Contra Celsum, c. 28, Origenis Opera, xviii, 69, Berlin, 18i5 ; again, // tov lijtjov /x/;r;;p Kvovaa, i^uia^iirja inro rod /.ivrjcrrevaaf^tipov avTt'ii' rtKTOvoc, iXtyxSrtiija im noixeioi Kai rlicrovaa Into tivoq arpari- ibrov Ilai''ji)pa Tovvopa, ibid. 32). Stories to the same effect may be found in the Talmud — not in the Mishna, which dates from the 2d century, but in the Gemara, which is of the 5th or 6th {see' Tract. Sanhedrin, cap. vii, fol. 67, col. 1 ; Shahhuth, cap. xii, fol. 104, col. 2 ; and the Midrash Koheleth, cap. x, 5). Eabanus Maurus, in the 9th century, refers to the same story : " Jesum filium Ethnici cujusdam Pandera adulter!, more latronum pu- nitum esse.'' Lightfoot quotes the same story from the Talmudists {Exercit. at Matt, xxvii, 56), who, he says, often vilify j\Iary under the name of Satdah ; and he cites a storj^ in which she is called IMary the daughter of HeH, and is represented as hanging in torment among the damned, with the great bar of hell's gate hung at her ear (ibid, at Luke iii, 23). We then come to the Toledoth Jesu, in which these calumnies were intended to be summed up and harmonized. In the year 4671, the story runs, in the reign of king Jannicus, there was one Joseph Pandera who lived at Bethlehem. In the same village there was a widow who had a daugh- ter named Miriam, who was betrothed to a God-fearing man named Johanan. Now it came to pass that Joseph Pandera meeting with IMiriam when it was dark, de- ceived her into the belief that he was Johanan her hus- band. So after three montlis Johanan consulted rabbi Simeon Shetachides what he should do with Miriam, and the rabbi advised him to bring her before the great council. Hut Johanan was ashamed to do so, and in- stead lie U tY his home and went antl lived at Babylon ; and thtie Miriam brought forth a son, and gave him the name of .lehoshua. The rest of the work, which has no merit in a literary aspect or othenvise, contains an account of how this Jehoshua gained the art of working miracles by stcahng the knowledge of the unmentiona- ble name from the Temple ; iiow he was, defeated by the superior magical arts of one Juda; and how at last he was crucified, and his body hidden under a water- course. It is offensive to make use of sacred names in comiectiou with such tales; but in Wageiiseil's quaint
words we may recollect, " hrec nomina non attinere ad Servatorem Xostrum aut beatissimam illius matrem cce- terosque quos significare videntur, sed desiguari iis a Diabolo supposita Spectra, Larvas, Lemures, Lamias, Stryges, aut si quid turpius istis" {Liber Toldos Jtschu, in the Tela Iynea »S'«<f/M(F, p. 2, AJtorf, 1681). It is a curious thing that a Pandera or Panther has been in- troduced into the genealogy of our Lord by Epiphanius {Ha: res. Ixxviii), who makes him grandfather of Joseph, and by John of Damascus {De Fide orthodoxa, iv, 15), who makes him the father of Barpauther and grandfa- ther of Mary.