traNSLatioN aND coNqueSt • 207“render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that
which is God’s.”^80In his gloss on this phrase, Moyal contends that Jews are instructed to
obey the government under which they live, regardless of whether it
is their own “Israelite government” or that of another, even a govern-
ment of “occupation” (iḥtilāl). perhaps with contemporary christian
accusations of Jewish political disloyalty in mind (whether concern-
ing european governments or that of the ottoman empire), Moyal is
careful to relate this rabbinic dictum to yet another New testament
statement of Jesus, this time a famous line from the synoptic Gospels.
Moyal suggests not only that Judaism and Christianity espouse a simi-
lar position concerning obedience to governments, but also that Jesus’s
view corresponded with the view articulated by rabbi hanina. From
the standpoint of rhetoric, if not logic, a stronger defense against Chris-
tian accusations could hardly be imagined.
although he seeks to link Jesus’s New testament teachings to the
talmud, Moyal is at pains to argue against the contention that Jesus
himself is discussed (and, more relevantly, denigrated) in the talmud.^81
Moyal has occasion to address this matter in his remarks on Pirkei avot
1:6. this mishnah records a saying of Joshua ben perahiah, who is
identified by one of Moyal’s main sources, David ha- Nagid’s Judeo-
arabic commentary, as the teacher of Jesus (ustedh yeshuaʿ). Moyal
writes:
among his students was a man who was called Jesus the Naza-
rene (yasūʿ an- nāṣirī), but he was not Jesus the son of Miriam, the
one who proclaimed Christianity. this correspondence of names
has caused confusion among some historians who conflated the
two. . . . We allude to this error here briefly and perhaps we will
return to the details later on, when we discuss the trial of Christ
[maḥkamat al- masīḥ].^82Moyal insists that, in the early rabbinic period, there were two men
named Jesus, both from Nazareth. thus when one encounters a talmu-
dic story concerning a figure named “Jesus the Nazarene,” one must
not presume that this story concerns “the one who proclaimed Christi-
anity.”^83 the alluring possibility of an extended discussion of “the trial
(^80) ibid., 122. See Matthew 22:21, Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25.
(^81) For a recent scholarly work on the subject, see Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud.
(^82) Mūyāl, at- Talmūd, 70– 71.
(^83) this apologetic strategy of denying the identity of the talmud’s Jesus and Chris-
tianity’s Jesus is known from— and perhaps informed by— the positions of the Jewish
disputant (Yehiel of paris) in the so- called paris Disputation of 1240. See Maccoby, ed.,