The Bible, the Talmud, and the New Testament. Elijah Zvi Soloveitchik

she had other children; but this we know for certain: that after the birth of Yeshua, Yosef lived with Miriam as everyone who is married does, for this is what the writing says: “He did not know her until after she had given birth to a son, her firstborn.” This means that after she gave birth, he knew her.

      1 The Greek reads geneseos.

      2 Interestingly, in the entire Tanakh, the phrase “children of the prophets” appears only with regard to Elisha in 2 Kings 2:4 and 6. See Rashi on 2 Kings 4:1, “All instances of ‘children of the prophets’ in the Torah mean disciples [talmidei] of the prophets.”.

      3 The interchange of “children” or “generations” and disciples appears in Rashi’s comment to Numbers 3: 1. These are the generations of Aaron and Moses on the day God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai. Rashi notes that the Torah mentions only Nadab and Abihu, who are the progeny of Aaron, and does not address the progeny of Moses. Rashi comments: “The verse mentions only the sons of Aaron. They are called ‘the generations of Moses’ because Moses taught them Torah. This verse teaches us that anyone who teaches his friend [ḥavero] Torah, it is as if he had given birth to him.”

      4 See also Genesis 2:4, These are the generations of heaven and earth, where this also alludes to birth. In terms of birth literally, see Genesis 25:19 and Ruth 4:18, And these are the generations of Pereṣ, Pereṣ gave birth to Ḥezron, etc. Since this refers to the messianic lineage, it may have influenced Mattai’s use of the term.

      5 This could be referring to the famous passage at the beginning of Sefer Yeṣirah 1:1, “in three books, sefer, sofer, ve-sippur.”

      6 On the midrashic rendering of Abraham as the first one who abandons idols for the one God and its implications regarding the history of Israelite religion, see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, “Laws of Idolatry,” 1:3. Portraying Jesus as Abraham may be, for Soloveitchik, a surreptitious attack on the ostensible “idolization” of Jesus in some forms of Christianity after the Council of Nicaea. Jesus was, in Soloveitchik’s reading, an iconoclast in the spiritual line of Abraham, even though he is from the biological line of David. The link between Abraham and Jesus is something that we see more explicitly in the epistles of Paul.

      7 If that is the case, then the Davidic line includes proselytes on both sides: Boaz being the progeny of Rahab, of Canaanite origin; and Ruth, of Moabite origin. Moreover, some ancient sources suggest that Tamar was a proselyte as well (see The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Matthew 1:3, p. 3), while others say that Tamar was from the family of Shem. See Genesis Rabbah 85:10.

      8 Judah thought that Tamar committed merely prostitution, but according to the Torah (which was given later), there is another restriction: If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely die (Leviticus 20:12). It is clear in this narrative that Judah did not know at the time of this occurrence that it was Tamar, his daughter-in-law. Moreover, it seems that Soloveitchik gets this wrong. Even if prostitution was an abomination before the Torah, the penalty would not be death by burning. Rashi suggests that she was from a priestly family and thus her sexual promiscuity (zenut) was punishable by death (of course, this assumes that the laws of the Torah were operative even before Sinai). Naḥmanides disagrees by stating that even if she was of priestly lineage, the penalty for her zenut in this case would still not be death. Rather, Naḥmanides suggests that Judah was a royal guardian in the land, and, in this case, Tamar’s zenut was not judged like all the others. Rather, he judged her ex cathedra and convicted her of desecrating his father’s name. It was not a case of judgment according to the law. He then cites cases in certain areas of Spain in his time when a woman convicted of cheating on her husband would be handed over to her husband, who would punish her as he wished.

      9 Joshua 6:25 and Ruth Rabbah 1:1.

      10 Therefore, the sword shall never depart from your house because you spurned me by taking the wife of Uriah the Hittite and making her your wife.

      11 This last line, “and accept truth from anyone who speaks it,” is taken from Maimonides’ Eight Chapters, a commentary to the Mishnah and introduction to Pirkei Avot: “Hear the truth from whoever tells it.” It appears that Soloveitchik is trying to deflect all Jewish criticisms of Jesus’ genealogy by suggesting that the Jewish tradition often creates genealogies that counter its own laws and standards. The critique, or praise, of Jesus should be limited to his message and not be an investigation of the messenger. As Maimonides suggests in his Eight Chapters, the messenger is not relevant.

      12 As explained at great length in BT Ketubot, chap. 1: during the period between the engagement and the wedding—usually lasting up to a year—the couple has the status of semi-marriage, such that if the woman were with another man during that time, she is considered an adulteress, according to halakhah. To solve this problem, nowadays the betrothal and the marriage both happen simultaneously under the wedding canopy. “Engagements” today do not have halakhic import and are considered more gestures of intent. The Talmud explains that the reason for the time of separation in rabbinic times is to give the groom time to build a house and the bride’s family time to raise the money for the wedding and her wedding gown. Soloveitchik may be interpreting that the phrase “before he came to her” could mean that Joseph had sexual relations with Miriam between betrothal and marriage. Even if this were so, it would not constitute a major transgression in rabbinic law, and a child from that union would have no legal stigma in the community.

      13 The debate about the virgin birth is a central part of medieval Chriatin polemics against Christianity and not really an inner-Christian debate. It is, in some way, rooted in the Greek rendition of the Hebrew term ‘almah (“maiden”) in Isaiah 7:14 and six other times: Genesis 24:43, Exodus 2:8, Psalm 68:26, Proverbs 30:19, and Song of Songs 1:3 and 6:8. The Greek (Septuagint) translation parthenos can be rendered as “virgin.” Another less-known source can be found in Targum Jonathan to Genesis 38:26, the verse where Judah acknowledges that Tamar’s child is his. This is connected, as we saw earlier, to the Davidic messianic lineage. The verse reads: “And Yehudah recognized them and said, “[Tamar] is more right than I [Judah].” The Hebrew term is sidkah mimeni (she is more right than I). Targum Jonathan reads it differently: “She is more right from me.” The Targum writes: “Judah recognized them and said, ‘she is right.’ ‘From me’—a divine voice [barat qala] fell from heaven [and said]—‘from me’ [da’min kadamei].” While this does not exactly make a case for virgin birth, it certainly is suggestive with regard to where the term “from me” (mimeni) comes from. Cf. BT Soṭah 10b for a similar reading.

      14 “Send her away” implies divorce. See M Nedarim 11:12. As to the two thoughts among Christians regarding the virgin birth, Soloveitchik is likely referring to the nineteenth-century quest that sought to find the historical Jesus as opposed to the divine Christ. While he did not begin this search, David Friedrich Strauss’s The Life of Jesus (1835–1836) was an influential study that, among other things, openly denied the myth of the virgin birth and sought to situate Jesus very much in his Jewish context. The classic collection of these studies can be found in Albert Schweitzer, The Quest for the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1961). This trajectory has continued among both Christian and Jewish scholars to the present. For examples of Jews who wrote on the Jewish Jesus in English, see Joseph Klausner, Jesus of Nazareth: His Life, Times, and Teaching, trans. H. Danby (New York: Macmillan, 1925); Morris Goldstein, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition (New York: Macmillan, 1950); Samuel Sandmel, We Jews and Jesus (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965); Geza Vermes, Jesus in His Jewish Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003); David Flusser and R. Steven Nolty, The Sage from Galilee: Rediscovering Jesus’ Genius (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007); Shalom Ben-Chorin, Brother Jesus: The Nazarene Through Jewish Eyes, trans. J. S. Klein and M. Reinhart (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2012); S. Heschel, Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus; Amy-Jill Levine, The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2007); Paula Fredriksen, Jesus of Nazareth: King