Where the New Testament saw the source of Jesus' power in his divine essence, the adversaries defined his power as black magic deriving from the forces of evil. "Jesus as sorcerer" was a prevalent and accepted motif amongst pagans and Jews at the inception of Christianity.
Toledot Yeshu, on the other hand, chooses a different path of surprising originality. It relates that the Foundation Stone upon which the world was established, which is hidden under the foundations of the Temple, is inscribed with the Ineffable Name. This Name is the most closely guarded secret of Judaism, an extremely powerful means by which someone can work miracles and harness the forces of nature. The Rabbis worried that the Ineffable Name might be stolen and become a devastating force in the wrong hands. Therefore, they devised a way to erase the memory of anyone seeking to memorize this secret of divine holiness, and to spirit it away to some location outside the holy precincts.
Jesus, upon being banished from Jewish society, decided to avenge himself. He entered the holy precincts, inscribed the Ineffable Name on parchment, made an incision in his thigh, stuck the parchment into the cut, closed the wound, and left, with no one the wiser. This way, even though he forgot the name that he had tried to memorize, upon returning home he removed the parchment from his flesh and thereby deceived the Sages of Israel. Now, with the Ineffable Name in hand he could use it to work the miracles that would be described in the New Testament, the ones that won him the admiration of the masses and inspired their belief that he was the messiah and Son of God.
Eli Yassif, The Jewish Jesus Story.
This foundational motif of
Toledot Yeshu, when placed in the proper context of the Tanakh and the other four Gospels, reveals an aspect of Yeshua's identity hidden so deeply beneath the parabolic nature of the Tanakh that even Yeshua's own parables require this fifth Gospel in order to be properly unraveled.
The fifth Gospel is uniquely important so far as understanding the relationship between Judaism and Christianity; it's quite literally the connecting link such that fear had begun to set in that this second stab at revealing the spirit of the fifth Gospel (
Toledo Yeshu) was slipping away before it has revealed itself.
On time, and on target, someone linked to an article about "
negative information" that was the missing link so far as freeing the information that needs to be freed about
Toledot Yeshu. In the link, the scientists came to realize that by looking too closely into a phenomenon you can actually generate "negative knowledge." And to that same point I've quoted Professor Susan Handelman saying something nearly identical in regards to Jewish exegesis.
She said Jews purposefully practice a "weak exegesis" that unlike Christianity, purposely forbids looking too deeply into the the interconnections of scriptural verses and concepts since any attempt to peer too deep into the revelation in the written word can inadvertently interject too much of ones own theories thereby allowing eisegetical forcefulness to create negative knowledge of the holy writ.
This eisegetical forcefulness is precisely the "erasure" noted in
Toledot Yeshu that makes uncovering the ineffable Name impossible. The generation of "
negative information" [link] makes peering deeply enough into the truth of creation, to spy the ineffable Name, impossible. The harder you try, the further you get from the truth of the matter since the very attempt to look deeper erases the memory of the ineffable Name the exegete is looking to find.
The whole concept of the ancient "decrees" (
chukkim), i.e., commands that must be obeyed without worrying about what they mean (why the decree to remove that particular flesh?) is an exemplification of what the scientists came to realize. If Jews look too deeply into the meaning of the prophesies in the Tanakh they could actually change the dynamics of the messianic arrival in a negative manner that holds the possibility of destroying the world:
This Name is the most closely guarded secret of Judaism, an extremely powerful means by which someone can work miracles and harness the forces of nature. The Rabbis worried that the Ineffable Name might be stolen and become a devastating force in the wrong hands.
Nevertheless, once Messiah has arrived, on time, and as God designed it, now his arrival must be used to retroactively go where no Jew had gone before, i.e., into the meaning of the
chukkim, the decrees.
But they don't do that. And for a strange reason. They're being true to the dictates of their marching orders not to delve too deeply into the things of Messiah thereby erasing the truths necessary for the eventual revelation of the ineffable Name, which will be spelled out by Messiah, and Messiah alone. Such that his arrival itself will answer what they're forbidden to look into.
Judaism is still practicing the pre-messianic marching orders (designed to make his arrival possible) after he has in fact arrived. They're so concerned, with scientific reason and rationale, that seeking the Name will hide it further from view, that they've not even realized that their obedience, their mitzvot, their blind faith, has faithfully given birth to the Seed of the Woman, who is the Shetiya Stone, that's the Rosetta Stone, through which every iota of the Tanakh can now be uncovered.
The manner in which
Toledot Yeshu lays these things out is so brilliant that it's proof-positive concerning its fitting place in the canon as the fifth Gospel.
John
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חכמה עצה דעת רוחויראתד׳וגבורהובינה
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