BEN STADA WAS HE CONFUSED WITH JESUS OR JESUS CONFUSED WITH HIM?

 

Stada means gone astray or adulterous. 

 

The Talmud appears to confuse Jesus with Ben Stada who it designates as the son of Pandira. This character was a sorcerer from Egypt and he had cuts in his skin for magical purposes. It is thought that Ben Stada was around after the time Jesus supposedly lived.  But it does not mean we should ignore what the Talmud says about Jesus.  There must have been stories about Jesus that got wrapped up in the Ben Stada material.
 
The Talmud says the mother of Jesus was Mary or Miriam who was a hairdresser.  He Walked Among Us suggests that the Talmud is confused for it mixed up Mary Magdalene with Mary the Mother of Jesus for Magdalene is a similar word to hairdresser which was M’gadd’la. But there is no support for this idea at all. And the Jews would have loved to have accused Jesus of sleeping with Magdalene for they were very close and so they would not have confused the two Marys unless the gospellers made the Magdalene up after the tradition about the mother of Jesus was written down.

 

In those days Jewish barbers and hairdressers gave out remedies as well and did basic healthcare.  Even in Victorian London, barbers knew a bit about anatomy and did minor surgeries.  Make no mistake, a woman or girl dealing in healthcare was making and selling abortion philters.  For all we know, she might have aborted her baby and feigned pregnancy.  If so then it is no wonder she was up to travelling to Bethlehem if the gospels are to be believed while being heavily pregnant.  And Matthew says babies were targeted so did she take somebody's baby in the crisis and raise him as her own?

 

Ben Stada means the Stada offspring.  We don't know exactly who the Stada was.  Maybe it was the husband who the New Testament says was Joseph.  If Joseph had a spouse to be who was pregnant that would have shocked the community.  Despite young girls being forced to wed and breed too early she was earlier than average for she never had her full marriage yet.  If he took the credit for the pregnancy or let people assume he was the father that would only happen if he was a known paedophile or profligate.

 

 Maybe the Stada was her lover, the actual father Pandira?

 

If Mary was the Stada she was being called immoral and adulteress.

 

It is possible that the Stada is an attack on all three for it is a nickname anyway.  All three are Stada. There is nothing wrong with the husband being called Stada and her being called that in a different sense though the book says there is (ibid page 61). Stada was perhaps the nickname of Mary and maybe they called the husband Stada to avoid calling him Joseph. The husband of Mary’s proper name was Pappas Ben Yehuda who the book says lived too late and who was alive in the 130s AD but there were lots of Pappas Ben Yehudas.
 
The book quotes a rabbi saying that Ben Stada was not Jesus but that is only to be expected when Ben Stada was never proved to be Jesus to everybody’s satisfaction.  And Trypho shows that some Jews thought there was no Jesus anyway so the rabbi saying that is not too surprising.  And it is wholly unfair to cite the evidence of a man who did not say why he believed Jesus was not Ben Stada. Through the centuries, scholars have taken Ben Stada to refer to Jesus. And Ben Stada had a wound through which he brought sorcery so was he Jesus having survived the cross? Jesus was believed by many to have achieved miracle or sorcery power through the wounds of the cross.
 
Ben Stada was described as mad as was Jesus.  Even his own mother thought he was mad and according to the earliest gospel was saying it in public.
 
If there is confusion it may be a clear testimony that the Jesus it means was such a nebulous person that nobody could be sure of anything about him. Perhaps even his existence was uncertain.
 
I would suggest that the Talmud could be saying that Ben Stada was Jesus playing a different role after Jesus’ “demise” or that Ben Stada was suspected of being this resurrected Jesus person. The activities of Ben Stada would certainly make him need to masquerade as a man who did not exist. He could have been claiming to be a resurrected man though the man never lived. The Talmud is saying that Jesus did not miraculously rise again at all but did appear after his alleged death but as an ordinary madman.
 
Ben Stada would have been a Zealot and had a following of Zealots.  Ben Stada is thought to have been the Egyptian in Josephus (page 60, He Walked Among Us) and in the book of Acts who was guilty of insurrection.  This could be a muddled memory of Jesus who suspected of zealotry for he was executed with the fanfare that Roman soldiers loved to unleash and make a deterrent for the hated zealots with.

 

Jesus being called Ben Stada would be like him being called a son of a bitch.  It is meant to be totally disparaging.
 

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