Before going any further, it is advisable to make a few remarks on what has been given of this curious story.
The Queen Helena is probably the mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in A.D. 326 to see the holy sites, and, according to an early legend, discovered the three crosses on Calvary. There are several incidents in the apocryphal story which bear a resemblance to the incidents in the Toledoth Jeschu.
The Empress Helena favours the Christians against the Jews. Where three crosses are found, a person suffering from “a grievous and incurable disease” is applied to the crosses, and recovers on touching the true one. Then the same experiment is tried with a dead body, with the same success.[111] According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, a Jew named Judas was brought before the Empress, and ordered to point out where the [pg 085] cross was buried. Judas resisted, but was starved in a well till he revealed the secret. The resemblance between the stories consists in the names of Helena and Judas, and the miracles of healing a leper, and raising a dead man to life.
According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, Judas was the grandson of Zacharias, and nephew of St. Stephen the protomartyr.[112]
It is remarkable that Jeschu should be made to quote two passages in the Psalms as prophecies of himself, both of which are used in this manner in the New Testament: Ps. ii. 7, in Acts xiii. 33, and again Heb. i. 5, and v. 5; and Ps. cx. 1, in St. Matthew xxii. 44, and the corresponding passages in St. Mark and St. Luke; also in Acts ii. 34, in 1 Cor. xv. 25, and Heb. i. 13.
The scene of the struggle in the air is taken from the contest of St. Peter with Simon Magus, and reminds one of the contest in the Arabian Nights between the Queen of Beauty and the Jin in the story of the Second Calender.
The putting forth from land on a millstone on the occasion of the miraculous draught of fishes is probably a perversion of the incident of Jesus entering into the boat of Peter—the stone—before the miracle was performed, according to St. Luke, v. 1-8. In the Toledoth Jeschu there are two millstones which our Lord sets afloat, and he mounts one, and then the fishes are caught; in St. Luke's Gospel there are two boats.
“He saw two ships standing by the lake.... And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people out of the ship. Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.”
It was standing on the swimming-stone, according to the Huldrich version, that Jeschu preached to the people, and declared to them his divine mission.
The story goes on. The Sanhedrim, fearing to allow Jeschu to remain at liberty, send Judas after him to Jordan. Judas pronounces a great incantation, which obliges the Angel of Sleep to seal the eyes of Jeschu and his disciples. Then, whilst they sleep, he comes and cuts from the arm of Jeschu a scrap of parchment on which the Name of Jehovah is written, and which was concealed under the flesh. Jeschu awakes, and a spirit appears to him and vexes him sore. Then he feels that his power is gone, and he announces to his disciples that his hour is come when he must be taken by his enemies.