I do not say that this certainly is the origin of the story as it appears in the Talmud, but it bears on the [pg 066] face of it strong likelihood that it is. Jehoshua who went into Egypt could not have been stoned to death after the destruction of Jerusalem and the revolt of Barcochab, for then the Jews had not the power of life and death in their hands. The execution must have taken place long before; yet the Rabbis whose names appear in connection with the story—always excepting Jehoshua son of Perachia—all belong to the second century after Christ.
The solution I propose is simple, and it explains what otherwise would be inexplicable.
If it be a true solution, it proves that the Jews in A.D. 500, when the Babylonian Gemara was completed, had no traditions whatever concerning Jesus of Nazareth.
We shall see next how the confusion that originated in the Talmud grew into the monstrous romance of the Toledoth Jeschu, the Jewish counter-Gospel of the Middle Ages.
V. The Counter-Gospels.
In the thirteenth century it became known among the Christians that the Jews were in possession of an anti-evangel. It was kept secret, lest the sight of it should excite tumults, spoliation and massacre. But of the fact of its existence Christians were made aware by the account of converts.
There are, in reality, two such anti-evangels, each called Toldoth Jeschu, not recensions of an earlier text, but independent collections of the stories circulating among the Jews relative to the life of our Lord.
The name of Jesus, which in Hebrew is Joshua or Jehoshua (the Lord will sanctify) is in both contracted into Jeschu by the rejection of an Ain, ישו for ישוע.