Marian Devotion and the Jewish Gospel (Toledot Yeshu) in Eighteenth Century Amsterdam

From Firenze University Press Journal: CROMOHS

Evi Michels, University of Tuebingen

Yiddish Manuscripts of Toledot Yeshuin the Netherlands

While cataloguing Yiddish manuscripts from the Netherlands I noted the peculiarity of the Toledot Yeshutradition and decided to consider the manuscripts of this Jewish life of Jesus in a distinct chapter.1Whereas the origins of this polemical narrative remain debated, its enduring popularity throughout the centuries is truly astonishing. The story of Jesus was constantly retold, with slight changes updating the general narrative and adapting it to new historical situations. The Yiddish texts from the Netherlands are all handwritten and were compiled from Hebrew texts. But the compilers also felt free to supplement their sources and alter and fit them to their current situation. So far, little attention has been given to the Yiddish versions of Toledot Yeshu. In an earlier study examining the oldest extant Toledot Yeshu manuscript from the Netherlands, produced in 1711, I sought to show a connection between the declining messianic movement generated by the seventeenth-century Jewish ‘messiah’ Sabbatai Zvi and this retelling of the life of Jesus. In the same volume, Claudia Rosenzweig published a transcription of this manuscript, along with a translation and critical apparatus, making it available for further research. In another study, Rosenzweig also examined another early Yiddish manuscript of Toledot Yeshu, now held in the Russian State Library in Moscow.

In an article published in 2011, Michael Stanislawski offered some preliminary remarks on a very long Yiddish version of the narrative, preserved in the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York (JTS 2211), but which we can now confirm is also of Dutch origin.5Furthermore, the text analysed by Stanislawski is also very similar to the one found in another Yiddish manuscript now held in the Ets Haimlibrary in Amsterdam (EH 47 A 21). We are thus to assume that both manuscripts were produced using the same (Hebrew?) Vorlageor originated from a very close context.

In what follows, I will focus on these two particular manuscripts, JTS 2211and EH 47 A 21, addressingtheir dependence on each other by looking at the chapters concerned with Mary. Indeed, both manuscripts divide the story into chapters concerned with Yeshu(Jesus) and chapters concerned with Maryem(Mary), perhaps so thateach chapter could be read aloud on specific days. What is striking in these manuscripts and distinguishes them from other versions of Toledot Yeshuis indeed their emphasis on the figure of Mary. Both manuscripts either expand the episodes of the narrative dealing with Mary or include new ones.6In particular, they include a story about Mary’s death and burial which does not appear in any other known version of the narrative. Where could the authors of this text have obtained this story, and why did they think it important to tell it in Amsterdam in the mid-eighteenth century? Why was it added to the narrative, and what was its function in this specific context? Before I address these questions in more detail, a few general remarks on the genre and history of Toledot Yeshuare in order.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/cromohs-13821

Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/cromohs/article/view/13821