This is my second and closing article on Simone’s series On Reading the Talmud. For backstory see my first entry, Simone’s Series on How to Read the Talmud: Regarding Jewish Diversity. There I established Simone’s modus operandi as continually misreading what I said, fabricating things to complain about, and compiling dizzying word-walls of pedantic irrelevancy. Note the continuation of trend here.

The Context

Simone’s first entry in their series (On How or Read, and How Not to Read, the Babylonian Talmud from a Historical-Critical Perspective (I)) does not say anything relevant to my argument. It’s just a detailed discourse on the many technicalities of Talmudic history which doesn’t affect anything I said in On the Historicity of Jesus. The most that Simone comes to complaining about is that maybe some parts of the Talmud are later than the 6th century (as I said “dating as it does from the fourth to sixth century,” Historicity, p. 73), but since nothing relevant to what I discuss can be argued to be (because “possibly” is not “probably”), nor would it matter (it’s still many centuries late either way), this is a moot point; and hence another fabricated complaint. It is not necessary to get into these irrelevant details in my book; so it is irrational to complain they are not there. Since this has nothing to do with anything, we can move on.

Simone’s second entry (On How to Read, and How Not to Read, the Babylonian Talmud from a Historical-Critical Perspective (II)) begins with a strange confusion. They start by describing my study’s theory “that Jesus was originally conceived of as an angelic being, and only later concretized into the human, terrestrial figure we have in the gospels.” Then they complain that “it is strange that the late-Antique Bavli,” i.e., the Talmud, “is considered evidence for his claims.” But I never use the Talmud as evidence of this claim. I only cite the Talmud for other claims:

1. The only relevant one is my documenting what the Talmud reported to be later Christian beliefs about Jesus (corroborated by Epiphanius) and its polemic against that (Historicity, pp. 281–89), but that still has nothing to do with the specific question of Jesus being a pre-existent archangel, and only relates to that alternative history’s existence (not to its content being early, which plays no role in my use of this evidence).
2. Besides that I only cite the Talmud for background facts that by themselves don’t affect the probability that Jesus existed at all. Principally: “Element 5: Even before Christianity arose, some Jews expected one of their messiahs heralding the end times would actually be killed, rather than be immediately victorious,” where I only use the Talmud as part of an extended argument that appeals to a whole body of converging evidence and scholarship, not “just” the Talmud (Historicity, pp. 73–81, 614).
3. And then to document various side points that also have no direct effect on the probability Jesus existed: Jewish attitudes towards Greek knowledge (p. 167n30), the structure of heaven (pp. 179–80), legends about Alexander the Great and the Second Temple (p. 449), a debate about resurrection in Ezekiel (p. 326n70), Levitical practice (p. 404n40), Rabbinic angelology (rev. ed. 576n85) and demonology (580n90), and the expected name of the messiah’s father (454n134), all of which either in contexts where this is just one item of evidence in a larger pool of converging evidence, or as a proof of concept rather than as evidence of early belief, or as a mere possibility rather than a probability.

Simone mostly only complains about item 2 on this list, starting with some strange notions about how historians work.

Simone is inexplicably perplexed why later sources, when combined with other sources and internal evidence, can be used to support conclusions about earlier periods. It is a basic principle of historical method that the first extant reference to a thing will not usually be its first existence. Almost all ancient history relies on this principle. For example, our most reliable source for Alexander the Great is the historian Arrian, who wrote five hundred years after the fact (see my discussion of this point in Historicity, p. 22). And we do not simply rely on Arrian. We triangulate conclusions using Arrian and earlier sources and other evidence. Simone seems to be confusing the fact that one cannot assume a later attestation evinces earlier facts with the fact that we nevertheless can (and routinely do) use later attestations as part of a broader argument for a conclusion about earlier facts. Thus one has to address the argument, not simply say “the source is late, therefore irrelevant.” That’s incompetent.

Simone makes a similarly strange argument from geography, complaining that a source composed hundreds of miles away in a different country cannot inform affairs in Palestine. Simone did not think that through. Because by that logic, all our sources on Jesus were written hundreds of miles away in a different country and even a different language than dominated Palestine; therefore we have no sources for Jesus; therefore we have no evidence Jesus existed; therefore we should conclude Jesus did not exist—because there is no evidence of it. Think of how ruthlessly you would mock anyone who argued that. Well, Simone argues it—only with a different topic than Jesus; but the application doesn’t matter. The whole methodological principle is false. Yes, you do have to argue for the applicability of any given item of external evidence; and yes, there can be arguments against doing that which appeal to facts like these; but there is no blanket principle in history that you must always exclude such evidence. Whether you should or not still must be argued, and from a basis of evidence (not conjecture).

So much for generalities. Now to particulars…

Element 5: That Some Pre-Christian Jews Already Did or Could Easily Have Believed in a Dying-Messiah

Simone quote-mines this section of my book to create a false picture of what it actually argues. And as you might expect, the material they leave out destroys their entire thesis:

• “Some Jews expected one of their messiahs heralding the end times would actually be killed” (Historicity, p. 73). This is already established by Daniel 9. The Talmud is not even needed to prove it a fact. Simone never mentions this. I bring the Talmud in only as additional evidence.
• “Such a concept was therefore not a Christian novelty wholly against the grain of Jewish thinking, but already exactly what some Jews were thinking—or could easily have thought” (Ibid., emphasis added). Note the element (the thing I am saying is beyond reasonable dispute) is not that there were Jews already preaching a dead messiah, but that this was not against the grain of Jewish thinking; and that even if you are not convinced by the evidence I present that there were already some Jews expecting a dying messiah in the first century, that same evidence is more than enough to establish that some easily could have. In other words, I am arguing for plausibility, not just factuality. Exactly as I conclude:

I believe this amounts to ample evidence that at least some pre-Christian Jews were expecting a dying messiah to presage the end of the world; and even should anyone reject that conclusion, it still cannot be denied that the hypothesis (that some pre-Christian Jews were expecting a dying messiah to presage the end of the world) is at least plausible enough to take seriously, given all that same evidence. Its prior probability simply cannot be established as low, and from the evidence here surveyed, it looks more likely to be high.

Historicity, pp. 80–81

Simone omits all of this from their analysis, creating the false impression that I was arguing something else. But they do correctly quote (though seem to miss the point of) my statement as to the relevance of the Talmudic evidence, which is just one piece of a cumulative argument that relies on multiple sources and facts: “the Talmud provides us with a proof of concept at the very least (and actual confirmation at the very most)” (Historicity, p. 73, emphasis added). Proof of concept means: even if the ideas in the Talmud are late and not early, they prove mainstream Jewish intellectuals were more than willing to invent or accept such ideas, without even controversy, and therefore the Talmud refutes “scholars so intent on denying” that they could do that (p. 73).

Simone ignores this and assumes I only used the Talmud to argue for this belief being extant in the first century. I do not. I make an argument for it supporting that conclusion, but not by itself: I establish that pre-first-century sources also support it (particularly Daniel 9: p. 76; and evidence in the Dead Sea Scrolls: pp. 76–79), lending reciprocal support to the conclusion that the Talmud is preserving first century beliefs. But I nevertheless conclude with an inclusive disjunct: either this is probable or it is plausible. So for my element to be established, only the latter need be proved. Could any Jews have thought the same or similar things in the first century that we find in the Talmud? Yes. That’s Element 5.

Thus Simone fabricates another complaint here, rhetorically asking “If this kind of material was anathema, why was it recorded and preserved…?” Which simply repeats the very thing I myself was arguing: that the Talmud proves the belief that this was anathema is false. That is literally Element 5 in a nutshell. So Simone has actually agreed with my argument, and then represented that agreement as a complaint about my argument. If you are confused, you should be. But let me try to make sense of what just happened. Simone mistakenly thinks that because I argue the Talmudic references to accepting dying-messiah concepts contain no polemical or apologetical elements, that therefore I believe there should be such polemical or apologetical elements. To the contrary, my point is that there isn’t; and therefore, we cannot argue there should be. That is literally my argument! The Talmud proves how easy it was for Jews to come to these conclusions; therefore we cannot claim Christians cannot have done the same (a conclusion which does not affect the historicity of Jesus, since this can be as true of a historical one).

Not only does Simone have no intelligible complaint about this, they actually agree with it.

So What Are We Complaining About?

That concludes Simone’s second entry. They still haven’t produced any argument against anything I actually said. Maybe we’ll finally get to something in Part 3, How and How Not To Read The Talmud (III): BT Sanh. 93b. This begins with a tedious and irrelevant introductory analysis of the Talmudic context of b.Sanh. 93b, which may be interesting to some, but as it doesn’t matter to anything here, I’ll skip to where Simone gets to anything relevant, which is a false statement right out of the gate: that my “first of the cited passages is Sanh 93b.” But that is, crucially, my second cited passage. The distinction matters, as you shall see, because Simone confuses what I cited this for, and their complaints launch entirely from that confusion.

What I wrote was:

[T]he Talmud provides us with a proof of concept at the very least (and actual confirmation at the very most). It explicitly says the suffering servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah (and that this messiah will endure great suffering before his death).

Historicity, p. 73.

Notice I say “the Talmud” says this (not a specific passage) and I list two separate things (and the following sentence will add a third, and all three are the referent of the first sentence): (1) “the suffering servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah” and (2) “that this messiah will endure great suffering before his death.” Notice the order. Now compare it to the order of sources in my appended note: “b. Sanhedrin 98b and 93b.” A competent historian knows how to read footnotes. If two claims are made, and two sources are cited in sequence like this, competent historians know that the first citation is for the first listed claim, and the second citation is for the second listed claim (I dare say even amateurs know this).

So, I first cited 98b (not 93b), and therefore that is my citation for my first claim: that “the suffering servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah” (a sentence Simone completely bungles the grammar of, but we’ll get to that later, since Simone chose to discuss these passages out of order). Then I cited 93b. So what was I citing 93b for? “That this messiah will endure great suffering before his death.” I do not cite it as attesting any reference to Isaiah 53 or the messiah’s death: I cite it solely to attest the belief that the messiah would endure great suffering. Simone never presents any argument against any of these things—the things I actually said. The latter passage does plainly say this (“the Messiah” will face “afflictions like millstones,” i.e. greatly suffer). And Simone does not disagree. They instead confused this as my citation for the first claim (the connection to Isaiah 53 and its predicting the messiah’s death). So everything they proceed to argue against that—a thing I never said—is a complete waste of everyone’s time.

Simone also gets confused discussing a subsequent passage that identifies Bar Kochba as a false messiah. The passage I cited says the messiah must meet certain conditions: the one I was interested in—great suffering—and then the supernatural power to smell lies. The very next passage then digresses to point out that Bar Kochba failed to meet the latter condition (he could not smell lies), and therefore was a false messiah (as the Talmud consistently classifies him: see Richard Marks in The Image of Bar Kokhba in Traditional Jewish Literature: False Messiah and National Hero (Penn State University Press 1993)). There is nothing here about suffering indicating a false messiah; to the contrary, the text is saying suffering is a requirement of a true messiah, one that Bar Kochba might have met (although the Talmud doesn’t link this concept to him at all) but since he failed the second requirement (he lacked the required smell-power), he was deemed a false messiah. Which therefore confirms it was assumed without argument by all the compilers of the Talmud and all its citable authorities that any real messiah would endure great suffering. Exactly as I said.

Okay. Then What About Isaiah 53?

That concludes Simone’s third entry. As we can see, it was built entirely on confusions that once corrected remove it from any relevance to anything I said in Historicity. Maybe we’ll find a relevant argument in their fourth entry, On How and How Not to Read The Talmud (IV) Sanh. 97a-98b. Here Simone complains that although b.Sanh. 98b does indeed acknowledge that the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53 is the messiah, it doesn’t mention the specific part about his death (which it wouldn’t; because the discussion that mentions this is about his name, not his fate). Which is, as usual, a fabricated complaint. Because I never said it does. My exact words are that it “says the suffering servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah.” I did not write that it “says the suffering servant in Isaiah 53 dies.” Simone is bad at parsing English grammar. The Servant in Is. 53 dies. That is an indisputable fact about that passage (we’ll get to that shortly); the only thing in dispute is whether that passage was ever understood to be talking about the messiah, not whether it describes someone who suffers and dies. So I do not need to cite Talmudic support for that fact; Isaiah 53 itself proves it.

Simone may suffer ineptitude at not just grammar but also logical reasoning here. The Talmud says that that passage (and therefore that Suffering Servant it describes) is about the messiah. That is all I said. And Simone agrees. By transitive logic this entails that the authors of the Talmud accepted without blush or controversy or need of justification or explanation that the Suffering Servant who dies in Isaiah 53 is the messiah. They do not have to say this explicitly. By telling us they believe that passage is about the messiah, they are telling us they believe the Suffering Servant is the messiah, which logically entails they believed the messiah dies, because that’s what the Suffering Servant does there. Q.E.D.

Since I actually chose my words carefully to represent this (I did not say the Talmud says the messiah dies; I said the Talmud says the dying figure in Isaiah is the messiah), Simone has no legitimate complaint here. So all Simone’s tedious wingeing about Sanhedrin 98b not explicitly citing the verse predicting his death is completely irrelevant to anything I said, and thus, again, a complete waste of everyone’s time. It’s only worse that in the very next sentence I note that the Talmud does acknowledge the messiah will die, elsewhere (in b.Sukkah 52a-b), thus corroborating and confirming the point. Simone treats that separately (as we’ll see). But since it is literally the very next sentence after the one Simone has fabricated a complaint about, their complaining about it is especially bizarre. “How dare you not cite a passage of the Talmud explicitly confirming the messiah’s death except when you did in the very next sentence” is not exactly an astute criticism.

Nothing else Simone says in this entry is relevant to anything I actually said in Historicity. For example, they present reasons to worry that maybe this line does not reflect earlier belief; but that that could be the case is not in doubt. That’s why I present an argument for it being early. Hence I say, after presenting three Talmudic passages that triangulate to the same conclusion (not just this one), “Modern scholars are too quick to dismiss this text as late (dating as it does from the fourth to sixth century),” which is, by the way, the very same thing Simone says as if to “correct” me (yet in fact I already said it so there was no need of their pointing it out). I then conclude that sentence by saying that “the doctrine it describes is unlikely to be” late (Historicity, p. 73), and then I proceed to present that argument (that the conclusion it must be a late development is not probable). And that is simply a summary of the argument presented by Hengel and Boyarin. Let me emphasize that again: what follows is not “my” argument; it is the argument of two peer-reviewed experts with far greater qualifications than Simone’s, whom I duly cited (both directly, “see the discussion of the pre-Christian interpretation of Isaiah 53 in Martin Hengel,” Historicity, 77–78n38; and indirectly by breadcrumb, p. 73n29, citing Boyarin, who also cites and quotes Hengel).

Simone never mentions nor answers this argument. Which also happens to be an argument to a conclusion agreed to by literally dozens of other experts in the Talmud and the Scrolls (see The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah). Simone, like an apologist, never mentions any of these (besides Boyarin and Hengel), and pretends that because “some” scholars say otherwise (as I, Hengel, and Boyarin all admit), that therefore one can choose that minority of scholars over what is in fact the majority of scholars discussing this issue (who all agree with me, not Simone). Nor does Simone ever cite anyone refuting Hengel or Boyarin specifically—just scholars repeating the dogma they refuted.

Which is exactly backwards. This is the opposite of how real scholarship operates: old views get replaced by new views. If you want to rescue the old views from this corrosive effect, you need to be able to cite robust rebuttals to the critiques that overthrew it. Simone does not appear able to find any (and no, there is no “robust rebuttal” in Collins or anywhere else). Simone instead just makes up an argument only to a possibility, not a probability (that this one identification of Isaiah 53 as messianic “might” be a later development, which we all already said). But it’s a possibility that has already been swamped by the peer-reviewed case to the contrary probability made numerous times already by several scholars (including in my book, which is a peer-reviewed monograph; Simone is a grad student writing an unreviewed blog—you will not find Simone’s argument anywhere in any of the other peer-reviewed literature about the early history of this tradition in the Talmud, but you will find mine).

Methodologically, it seems Simone struggles with modal logic (the logic of possibility). When we say it is probable or at least possible that late Rabbis didn’t steal a suffering and dying messiah son of Joseph from Christians, it is no rebuttal to say “yeah, but they might have.” We already just admitted they might have. The argument is not “they couldn’t have.” The argument is “the preponderance of evidence suggests they didn’t; and even if you don’t agree with that, you must agree that that same evidence establishes they might not have—that it is plausible to hypothesize that they didn’t.” This cannot be rebutted by restating the contrary possibility we already acknowledged. Simone doesn’t even offer any evidence for it being probable that these ideas were stolen from Christians. They certainly never offer any evidence against it being possible that these ideas predated Christianity. And when we triangulate the Talmudic evidence with the evidence in Daniel 9 (which Simone never mentions) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (which Simone handwaves off but never discusses), it seems hard to even argue that’s improbable.

Since Simone never actually describes or even engages with my argument here, nothing they have written on it is even capable of rebutting it.

Okay. Then What about the Sukkah?

Simone gets around to that third passage in their fifth entry, On How and How Not to Read The Talmud (V) Suk. 52a-b. This again begins with an irrelevant word-wall of impertinent background material, until eventually we get to anything resembling a criticism. Then Simone starts by complaining that this passage does not cite Isaiah 53. Since I never said it did, this is another fabricated complaint. I said it cites Zechariah 12. Which Simone admits. Okay. Moving on.

Next Simone complains that this refers to the Josephite not Davidic messiah who dies. Since that is what I myself said (Historicity, pp 73 and 75, incl. n. 33), this is another fabricated complaint. Boyarin has arguments against Simone on this point (J.Gosp., 165–66n19, in ref. to his discussion of the Sukkah passage, pp. 136–37), but I take no side in that debate. In Historicity I present Simone’s sequence of development (where it is always the Messiah ben Joseph who dies); and Boyarin’s alternative would not change my point (if that fate had ever once been assigned to the Messiah ben David instead, their roles having later been swapped, as Boyarin argues, that would have no impact on my argument). Simone has nothing else to complain about here—other than, again, possibiliter fallacies regarding how late this idea “might” be, without yet answering any of our arguments that that is unlikely.

In their sixth entry, On How and How Not to Read The Talmud (VI), Simone doesn’t even address anything I said at all, and nothing there is relevant to anything I said in Historicity.

So that leaves us at their seventh entry, On How and How Not to Read The Talmud (VII), where Simone claims they proved,

[T]he idea that there is any singular messianic ideology that involves conflation of the elements of a) a final redemptive eschatological messiah who b) suffers and dies, only to c) rise again is present in any of these passages, or simply one step away from them can be put to rest.

Which is not an idea anywhere voiced in my book. If this is what Simone thinks they have been arguing against for tens of thousands of words up to now, we can wonder at why they bothered. I am not aware of anyone Simone could have been arguing against with this, much less me.

• I never say there is any “singular” messianic ideology (anywhere, much less in the Talmud). Indeed, even the three Talmudic passages I triangulate to a commonplace idea of a dying messiah requires no inference of a singular model. All three could reflect different dying messiah traditions or concepts. That would be moot. Because all I am establishing is the ubiquity of the idea of a dying messiah (or just its plausibility, remember). If Simone wants to argue there are three entirely different dying-messiah ideologies in the Talmud, that would only support my argument the more, as it entails an even greater diversity and popularity of the idea.
• I never say the dying messiah was regarded as the “final redemptive eschatological messiah.” To the contrary, I explicitly say that that may well be the Christian innovation on the pre-Christian dying-messiah models they adapted (see Historicity, p. 75: “It is far more likely that Christians united two figures already imagined in earlier Jewish apocalyptic thought than that rabbinical Jews took a novel messiah from the heretical sect of Christianity and elaborately split it into two messiahs”; and pp. 60–61: for a messiah’s apocalyptic role “I specify only ‘play a part’, not necessarily bring to fruition” and hence “I do not assume there must be only one messiah of that kind” in anyone’s system of thought).
• I do not discuss in element 5 any belief in this messiah’s “resurrection.” We should not doubt it, of course (there is no possible way apocalyptic Jews thought a dying messiah would not be resurrected, as all saints are; and I cite later texts explicitly saying this, as expected: p. 75), so I do not know why Simone would suggest it can be doubted. But since I never argued for this being in the Talmud, that’s moot. For example, perhaps Simone thinks I said the Talmud refers to a messiah who dies and resurrects before the end of the world; but I never do—so, why do we care that it doesn’t?

That leaves just one thing I argued was in the Talmud: the idea of a suffering and dying messiah. That’s in the Talmud three times, in a passage proving it was taken for granted that Isaiah 53 is about the messiah (and Isaiah 53 is about a dying hero); in a passage explicitly saying one of the eschatological messiahs will indeed die (indeed, the one called a son of Joseph); and in a passage that acknowledges as one of the fundamental characteristics of the messiah that he will endure great suffering. Simone has not challenged any of this. They agree all three passages say all three things as here explained. Which is all I said.

Simone wants to push back against a common position among experts that this triangulating evidence in the Talmud coordinates with other and earlier evidence to indicate that these ideas all stem from a common tradition dating back at least to pre-Christian times (as reflected in Daniel 9, possibly our earliest riff on Isaiah 53). But they have no peer-reviewed argument to that end. Whereas I do. And I can cite quite a few now in support of that—and already cited two: Hengel and Boyarin. Simone never addresses their specific arguments to this conclusion. For example, when Simone critiques Boyarin at all, it’s on other points, never his actual argument for concluding earlier traditions are attested in the Talmud; and Simone never critiques Hengel, much less anyone else we can now cite (see The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah).

What we get instead is…

Simone Fails Reading Competency

Simone tries instead to argue that Boyarin did not argue what I said, by creatively interpreting some quote-mined sentences from his book. Oh dear. This isn’t going to go well.

Simone’s failure to competently read Daniel Boyarin can be demonstrated by simply quoting from the very book they are talking about (emphasis mine):

[There is a] generally held view [that] the theology of the suffering of the Messiah was an after-the-fact apologetic response to explain the suffering and ignominy Jesus suffered…and that Isaiah 53 was distorted by the Christians [to suit this]…

This commonplace view has to be rejected completely. The notion of the humiliated and suffering Messiah was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent, and it remains current among Jews well into the future following that—indeed, well into the early modern period.

Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels, p. 132

Note what Boyarin is saying here: the Christian use of the dying Servant of Isaiah 53 as describing the messiah was not new in Judaism at the time (that idea “has to be rejected completely”); to the contrary, that understanding “was not at all alien within Judaism before Jesus’ advent.” This is unmistakably clear. And no, you cannot argue that Isaiah 53 does not describe a dying messiah—unless you adopt the absurd exegesis that it means the Servant will be buried alive and rescued before suffocating; which, needless to say, is a ridiculous reading that Boyarin does not adopt. He well knows and agrees the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is a figure who most assuredly dies. Indeed, in a footnote here, Boyarin cites (as I did) Hengel’s study documenting this as an early reading of Isaiah 53, and concludes Hengel is right: we cannot have “absolute certainty” of this, yet a lot of converging independent evidence supports it, including evidence in the Talmud—and so we should concur that it’s likely: indeed, as Boyarin puts it, Hengel is “spot on.”

It is before all that that Boyarin says (again my emphasis):

Let me make clear I am not claiming that Jesus and his followers contributed nothing new to the story of a suffering and dying messiah.

…

I am claiming that even this innovation, if indeed they innovated, was entirely within the spirit and hermeneutical method of ancient Judaism, and not a scandalous departure from it.

Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels, p. 124

In other words, Boyarin is saying “the story of a suffering and dying messiah” predates Christianity, but that he is not saying the Christians didn’t add any new things to that pre-existing idea. Simone mistakes this for saying the Christians did invent the idea; but that is exactly the opposite of what Boyarin is saying (as one could tell if they would read the whole book and not just quote mine it for sentences to misread). Boyarin is talking about how Christians may have modified the motif. He allows that they might not have done even that (“if indeed they innovated”); but he is not claiming they didn’t. And thus any spin they added to this pre-Christian concept of a dying messiah was not “a scandalous departure” from Jewish thinking at the time. So clearly Boyarin does not mean the whole concept of a dying messiah here. He means Christian innovations upon it. The general idea was already there for them to pick up and adapt. That is a principal thesis of Boyarin’s book.

Even if you were unsure about this, you could do something Simone forgot to do: check to see what Boyarin himself has said he meant. Which you can do: in The Jewish Roots of Divine Christology | Discussion with Dr. Daniel Boyarin with host Nahoa Life, Boyarin argues against the host’s suggestion that the concept of a dying messiah didn’t predate Christianity. Thus, Boyarin did not mean the mere heuristic that Christians used to invent the idea predated Christianity. He most definitely meant the concept itself did, exactly as he says in his book. Rather, the heuristic he refers to is how they would have molded and applied it to their own sectarian beliefs.

Thus, for example, when Boyarin agrees with Hengel, he makes clear he agrees with the idea that the later evidence in the Talmud still adds triangulating evidence of this being the case even in the time of Jesus. As Hengel argued, in what Boyarin quoted and said was “spot on”: as a hypothesis (the idea that reading the dying servant in Isaiah 53 as about the messiah was already a known exegesis by the early first century), this would best explain why it appears in such early material in the Talmud several times, in such disparate contexts, and so readily, without controversy or question, demonstrating everyone already knew and assumed it to be the case. It wasn’t some startling new suggestion, and didn’t even require defense or explanation. Even with respect to the first century evidence of the Isaiah Targum that they also both reference (see my own discussion, Historicity, p. 74n32), Boyarin corrects Hengel only on the mode of that evidence: it evinces a need to respond to this interpretation of Isaiah 53, and thus demonstrates that that reading of Isaiah did indeed exist to respond to.

We can add to all this the converging evidence of Daniel 9 and how that, itself, is an exegesis of Isaiah 53 that explicitly describes a Christ who will unjustly die shortly before the end of the world, which many scholars have pointed out supports the very position Boyarin and Hengel have reached (examples are cited in The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah). The intertextual relationship between Daniel 9 and Isaiah 53 is even a mainstream conclusion (see Matthias Henze, “The Use of Scripture in the Book of Daniel,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism). And countless experts agree we can add to this, diverse evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls (examples are cited in The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah). In fact, to date, literally dozens of Talmudic and Scroll experts now agree that Boyarin is right: ideas of a dying messiah (especially as taken from Isaiah 53 or Daniel 9 or both) probably predated Christianity. And even if those ideas didn’t predate Christianity, all this same evidence unmistakably proves it was thoroughly in line with Jewish thought at the time, and not an unthinkable or radical departure from it. It is therefore plausible. Exactly as my element states.

Simone has offered no evidence against this.

Simone does go on to throw shade on other scholars, for example insulting David Mitchell, whose resulting book has been endorsed by renowned experts in the field, including Robert Gordon, Alan Avery-Peck, Mart-Jan Paul, Michael Heiser, and even Lester Grabbe, among others (see The Idea That Some Jews Were Already Expecting a Dying Messiah). I think I’ll follow their opinion over an unpublished grad student/blogger with a demonstrably poor track record. And Simone tries to cite other scholars (like John Collins) against me, but does not seem aware (or to care?) that positions like Collins’s are precisely what the likes of I and Boyarin (and many others, Ibid.) are arguing against. If Simone could produce any argument in Collins we have not already rebutted, that would be useful. But I doubt they could do that. Because I checked. There isn’t anything new there.

Simone also confuses what Boyarin was talking about in a lengthy note Simone quotes, and thus burns tons of words on a massive mistake, generating again a digression completely irrelevant to my work. Boyarin is there criticizing a specific developmental hypothesis regarding which messiah dies (“ben Joseph” or “ben David”) that in fact Simone had argued for against me (irrelevantly as I already noted, since I don’t take sides in that debate)—but here Simone does not realize Boyarin is arguing against Simone’s position. Somehow they overlooked the fact that on this point that Boyarin is disputing, Mitchell and Simone are arguing the same thing! This is hilarious. But it illustrates that Simone is bad at reading, and doesn’t even know what Mitchell argues with respect to what I am talking about (which is not about whether later traditions switched which messiah dies, whether the “Messiah ben Joseph” or the “Messiah ben David”).

Simone, therefore, cannot be qualified to critique Mitchell’s book. It does not even appear that they have read it. And in any event, Simone presents no argument against Mitchell’s arguments to my conclusion (which are many, drawing in numerous texts), so there is nothing for me to respond to—other than, amusingly, to notice that Simone endorses Boyarin’s argument against the very thing Mitchell and Simone agree on! Of course, Mitchell actually addresses Boyarin’s critique (reasonably well) in his subsequent book, and Simone seems unaware of this, and certainly unprepared for it. In any event, as that debate is irrelevant to Historicity, we can move on.

More of the Same

In Simone’s eighth and final entry, On How and How Not to Read The Talmud (VIII), there really isn’t anything I should have to bother replying to. Simone will claim I said things without quoting me or even identifying where I said them (to check the context by), so that is a waste of time. You’ve seen ample evidence that Simone often does not read what I say correctly, and fabricates things to complain about; so unsourced claims about me, to launch dubious complaints from, isn’t worth our time. And where Simone does quote me, it isn’t to any point they actually complain about—like quoting me as saying a bunch of things not in the quote. In every case, just ignore Simone and read what I actually said, in its actual context (if Simone even identifies where that is). When you do, nothing Simone says, you will find, is even pertinent. I won’t have made the claims Simone complains about; you’ll find I will have said something meaningfully different, and often uncontroversial.

As just one example (because to go through them all would be tedious beyond the price of it): Simone accuses me of implying Talmudic Rabbis were “ignorant” and “substantially cognitively deficient” because they encountered a version of Christianity setting Jesus in a different century and place, and replaced his killers (from crucifying Romans to a stoning by the Sanhedrin). I never even imply this. I said quite the opposite: that they cannot have been “ignorant” and “substantially cognitively deficient,” and therefore they must have actually encountered some Christians saying this (Historicity, pp. 281–89). And we find corroboration for this in Epiphanius, who connects exactly the same redating of Jesus with the very Torah-observant Christian sect, the Nazorians, whom the Rabbis discuss—two rather impossible coincidences by any other explanation. (I shouldn’t have to say, but Simone seems to have mistaken me for saying these Rabbis were unfamiliar with traditional Christian chronology; I never said that. By critiquing the Alexandrine chronology, treating it as the “true” one, they were already refuting Christians adopting the Roman chronology.)

Meanwhile, everything Simone says about Epiphanius here is too ridiculous to require comment. There is no other way to read “the rulers in succession from Judah came to an end with Christ’s arrival” such that “after his birth in Bethlehem of Judaea the order” of priest-kings “ended and was altered in the time of Alexander” (Epiphanius, Panarion 29.3.3) than as saying Alexander (Jannaeus) came after Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem, ergo Jesus was born circa the 70s B.C. Epiphanius did not believe this (in the same discourse he says he believes it ended in the time of Herod instead), so his digression on it in his discussion of the Nazorians is clearly an analysis of why they believed it (and on this point a more recent study concurs: see Andrew Jordan, Jesus the Nazarene: The Talmud and the Founder of Christianity, esp. pp. 3 and 125).

Finally, in Simone’s “add on,” On Reading the Talmud: A 21st C. Non-Eschatological Coda, Simone rambles a lot, and it is difficult to even locate a criticism to respond to, other than strange remarks in endnotes like claiming it is “anachronistic” to read the Greek word sperma as “sperm.” Um. No. That is and was its literal meaning in Greek (Liddell & Scott, “II. of animals, seed, semen”). In fact our medical books use that word today because they took it from the Greek medical literature on human and animal sperm (from Aristotle’s On Generation of Animals to Galen’s On Semen, lit. Peri Spermatos). The word also encompassed seeds (of plants), and uninseminated eggs (ova), but only because they did not scientifically distinguish those terminologically; but since Jesus wasn’t a plant and David wasn’t a woman, that hardly matters to anything. So nothing Simone says on this point is either competent or relevant.

I leave that as an example of trend. Because again, to go through them all would be tedious beyond the price of it. The same is true of weirdly rambling “notes” on Simone’s index page. I do not argue Jesus was derived from Inanna, for example. That is a ridiculous misreading of anything I did say. Contrary to Simone’s bizarre questioning, I did explain why the pronoun “they” in the Ascension of Isaiah only has one antecedent: the demons of the firmament. I did not even use the Ascension of Isaiah as significant evidence against the historicity of Jesus (in Chapter 8 its measured weight is so small as to have almost no effect), yet Simone seems inordinately obsessed with that. I do not “ignore the scholarly consensus on textual history and provenance” anywhere, but in fact follow the consensus in almost every case, and in the rare few cases I don’t (like with 1 Clement, which I date earlier), I explain why—and Simone never addresses that anyway (they never, for example, argue for 1 Clement having a later date, or explain why that would matter). And so on.

These examples suffice to illustrate that Simone is no longer worth the time of replying to. They either don’t know what they are talking about, or write massive word-walls on irrelevancies, inventing things to complain about that don’t match what I’ve even said.

Conclusion

Simone never finds a single instance of my actually misreading or misusing the Talmud or the expert scholarship on it. All their complaints get wrong what I said, or complain about things I never said. When it comes to what I actually did say, Simone agrees with everything I say the Talmud does in fact say.

Simone only disagrees with the conclusion that this evidence when conjoined with other evidence triangulates to the conclusion that the traditions the Talmud evinces derive from ideas already circulating before Christianity picked them up and adapted them to their own purpose—or that they easily could have (and therefore proposing they did, as a hypothesis, is plausible). But Simone fails to address even our probabilistic argument (that this likely was the case); and certainly never addresses the fall-back plausibility argument. In other words, Simone never argues this to be improbable or even implausible. They only argue for its negation to be possible; but that’s a possibiliter fallacy (possibly does not get you to probably; whereas our probability already acknowledges the contrary possibility in the converse probability).

So Simone never addresses any of our arguments to either conclusion—not even our arguments from the Talmud (see Historicity, pp. 73–75), but certainly not our combined argument from evidence external to the Talmud (pp. 76–81), and not at all for our argument to plausibility. As Hengel concludes (and as Boyarin says is spot on):

The expectation of an eschatological suffering savior figure connected with Isaiah 53 cannot therefore be proven to exist with absolute certainty and in a clearly outlined form in pre-Christian Judaism. Nevertheless, a lot of indices that must be taken seriously in texts of very different provenance suggest that these types of expectations could also have existed at the margins, next to many others. This would then explain how a suffering or dying Messiah surfaces in various forms with the Tannaim of the second century C.E., and why Isaiah 53 is clearly interpreted messianically in the Targum and rabbinic texts.

The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources (2004), p. 140.

This is the argument that Simone never responds to. And yet Boyarin argues the case is even stronger than this. And I strengthen it even further with additional evidence. For example, the fact that Daniel 9 literally and explicitly says a Messiah will die before the end of the world (thereby heralding that end): Simone neither mentions this, nor rebuts it. Yet even the apocalyptic timetable of the Qumran scroll 11Q13 includes it. Simone doesn’t actually describe the arguments of Hengel or Boyarin to rebut them, either—even though my argument literally is theirs, combined with additional arguments from the evidence in Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which also have wide expert support, as do Boyarin and Hengel (I document over thirty peer-reviewed experts agreeing with us in The Idea That Dying-and-Rising Gods Were Already Fashionable).

What Hengel, Boyarin, and I are saying is literally a mainstream position in the field now.

Given Simone’s continuous propensity to get wrong what I said, invent things I didn’t say, and fabricate things to complain about that don’t exist in my book, while ignoring all our actual arguments to the one conclusion Simone actually wants to get rid of, I doubt I will be responding to Simone in any future articles. These two entries will suffice to explain why that will be a waste of time.