he Christians with such precautions that this book
was for a long while unfindable, is quoted for the first time by
Raymond Martin of the Order of the Preaching Brothers towards the end
of the thirteenth century.... This book was evidently written by a Rabbi
initiated into the mysteries of the Cabala."[83] Whether then the
Toledot Yeshu had existed for many centuries before it was first brought
to light or whether it was a collection of Jewish traditions woven into
a coherent narrative by a thirteenth-century Rabbi, the ideas it
contains can be traced back at least as far as the second century of the
Christian era. Origen, who in the middle of the third century wrote his
reply to the attack of Celsus on Christianity, refers to a scandalous
story closely resembling the Toledot Yeshu, which Celsus, who lived
towards the end of the second century, had quoted on the authority of a
Jew.[84] It is evident, therefore, that the legend it contains had long
been current in Jewish circles, but the book itself did not come into
the hands of Christians until it was translated into Latin by Raymond
Martin. Later on Luther summarized it in German under the name of _Schem
Hamphorasch_; Wagenseil in 1681 and Huldrich in 1705 published Latin
translations.[85] It is also to be found in French in Gustave Brunei's
_Evangiles Apocryphes_.

However repugnant it is to transcribe any portion of this blasphemous
work, its main outline must be given here in order to trace the
subsequent course of the anti-Christian secret tradition in which, as we
shall see, it has been perpetuated up to our own day. Briefly, then, the
Toledot Yeshu relates with the most indecent details that Miriam, a
hairdresser of Bethlehem,[86] affianced to a young man named Jochanan,
was seduced by a libertine, Joseph Panther or Pandira, and gave birth to
a son whom she named Johosuah or Jeschu. According to the Talmudic
authors of the Sota and the Sanhedrim, Jeschu was taken during his
boyhood to Egypt, where he was initiated into the secret doctrines of
the priests, and on his return to Palestine gave himself up to the
practice of magic.[87] The Toledot Yeshu, however, goes on to say that
on reaching manhood Jeschu learnt the secret of his illegitimacy, on
account of which he was driven out of the Synagogue and took refuge for
a time in Galilee. Now, there was in the Temple a stone on which was
engraved the Tetragrammaton or Schem Hamphorasch, that is to say, the
Ineffable