The earliest western evidence for the Toledot Yeshu (The life story of Jesus), the famous counter-narrative to the Gospels’ portrayal of Jesus, occurs in the works of two ecclesiastics of Lyons, Agobard (bishop 816–40) and his successor Amulo (bishop 841–52).Footnote 1 Amulo was scandalised by the claim in the Toledot that Jesus’ real father was named Pandera and that his mother was, consequently, an adulteress. The origin of the narrative is presumably the late first or early second century, and the first surviving evidence for the story appears in the mouth of the Jew of Celsus (second century) as reported by Origen.Footnote 2 Amulo's use of ‘adulterata’ for Jesus’ mother, as portrayed in the Toledot, may imply sexual violence, but most probably simply indicates that her pudicitia was defiled by Pandera. A linguistic argument supports this conclusion: the nearly universal usage of the passive of adultero in classical and Christian Latin refers to adultery and not forcible rape. To establish the validity of the argument an extensive analysis of adultero is necessary. This article also explores the relationship between rape and adultery in classical and Christian antiquity. Narratives such as the one about Jesus’ mother may have played a role in the conversion to Judaism of the palace deacon Bodo. There is evidence that Bodo himself engaged in polemic against the incarnation that included derisive references to the body of Jesus’ mother. Such polemic also appears in Jewish anti-Christian texts of the early Middle Ages.
Amulo, in his Liber de perfidia Iudaeorum [Book on the faithlessness of the Jews], composed in two stages between the summer of 845 and February 846, describes the denial of the resurrection of Jesus in the Toledot tradition and continues:
Sed isti nec tantis ac talibus blasphemiis contenti in tam profundam infelicitatis voraginem devoluti sunt, ut persuasum sit eis et studiose apud eos observetur, quod nulla eorum oratio apud Deum possit esse accepta, nisi in ea Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum maledicant, confitentes eum esse impium et filium impii, id est, nescio cuius ethnici, quem nominant Pandera, a quo dicunt matrem Domini adulteratam, et inde eum, in quem nos credimus, natum.
(But not content with so many and such blasphemies, they have fallen into so deep a chasm of wretchedness that they have been persuaded, and the custom is carefully observed among them, that no prayer of theirs to God can be accepted, unless in it they curse our lord Jesus Christ, confessing him to be impious and the son of an impious individual, that is, of some pagan or other, whom they call Pandera, by whom they say the mother of the lord was defiled by adultery [‘adulterated’], and from that origin [they say that] he in whom we believe was born.)Footnote 3
Natalie E. Latteri argues that the passive ‘adulteratam’ implies that his mother was defiled – that is, raped.Footnote 4 William Horbury – holding a more nuanced view – does not believe that ‘adulteratam’ signifies forcible rape, but rather that the term puts the blame implicitly on Pandera. He suggests that Amulo may be aware of a Toledot Yeshu tradition in which Mary was a blameless victim of Pandera's deception – an act which one can describe as ‘adultery due to deception’ and ‘rape by deception’.Footnote 5 Consequently, three views are possible: the term ‘adulteratam’ implies forcible rape, willing adultery or adultery due to deception.
It is possible that ‘adulteratam’ means defiled (by forcible rape), but the passive voice of adultero for women is normal – and in nearly all contexts in classical and Christian literature the passive refers to a woman defiled by adultery. Consequently, nothing can be deduced about the rape of Jesus' mother. Voltaire follows classical usage in his succinct reading of the text's ‘blasphemies’: ‘bastard, impious one, son of Panthera’.Footnote 6 There is apparently only one example in extant Latin texts in which a male is ‘defiled by adultery’ (i.e., the passive voice of adultero used for a male), and in that case the male is married and is hypothetically penetrated by another man. Marcus Cato's words are: ‘In adulterio uxorem tuam si prehendisses, sine iudicio inpune necares; illa te, si adulterares sive tu adulterare‹re›, digito non auderet contingere, neque ius est’ (‘if you should have apprehended your wife in adultery, you may kill her with impunity without a trial; if you should commit adultery or be defiled by adultery, she may not dare to lay a finger on you, nor is it legal’).Footnote 7 Craig A. Williams comments that ‘The references must be, respectively, to those situations in which the husband is the insertive partner and to those in which he is the receptive partner, an interesting glimpse at the complex possibilities of extramarital affairs. But those possibilities existed only for the husband.’Footnote 8
The Oxford Latin dictionary defines the verb as ‘to commit adultery (with)’ or ‘defile by adultery’.Footnote 9 Friedrich Vollmer's analysis of the ‘proper’ sense of the word is more detailed: ‘commit adultery (of the man, rarely of the woman), passim with the accusative of the woman, rarely of the man’.Footnote 10 Rudolf Thurneysen's etymology for the verb is that it appears to derive from ‘ad’ (to) and ‘alter’ (other).Footnote 11 Similarly, Alfred Ernout and Alfred Meillet derive ‘adultero’ from ‘alter’: ‘“to alter, to corrupt” and then especially, “to corrupt a woman”, adulterare matronas, Suet. Aug. 67; and then in absolute use, “to commit adultery”, μοιχεύω (the subject usually being a man)’.Footnote 12
The analysis of Milena Z. Joksimović is similar:
The verb adulterare is used in classical literature (less often) absolutely or (more often) with a direct object in the accusative. When it refers to adultery and has the meaning ‘to seduce, to corrupt’, this verb appears in the active with the subject of the masculine and the object of the feminine; passive forms of this verb are often encountered with the woman as the subject.Footnote 13
A very rare instance, in which a woman is the subject of the active voice of the verb, occurs in a declamation of Calpurnius Flaccus (c. second century): ‘Soror erravit, insaniendum est; mater adulteravit, domo patria carendum est' (his sister went off course [in adultery], he was rendered insane [he killed her], his mother committed adultery [he didn't kill her], and he was deprived of his paternal home).’Footnote 14 Another such usage (with women as subject, active voice) is Osee iv.14 Vulgate: ‘super sponsas vestras cum adulteraverint’ (‘upon your wives when they will have committed adultery’). The third usage occurs in a text from late antiquity based on a treatise of Flavius Caper (second century): ‘adulterina adulterata, at adultera quae adulterat’ (‘adulterous, defiled by adultery, but adulteress, who commits adultery’). Note that adulterata is glossed simply as an adulterous woman (‘adulterina’), and there is no reference to sexual violence.Footnote 15 These three examples are exceedingly unusual.
A declamation of Pseudo Quintilian has the normal accusative with reference to a woman when the verb occurs in the passive voice: ‘rumor erat adulterari pauperis uxorem a divite, conscio viro’ (‘there was a rumour that a woman was defiled by adultery by a rich man, while her husband was an accessory’).Footnote 16 The orator also describes her as an adulteress (adultera).Footnote 17 There are other similar examples of the passive that refer to adulterous women, and in none of them is there any question of sexual violence.Footnote 18 The passive voice is also used, with the woman mentioned in the accusative case, in contexts in which a husband acts as a procurer and consents to the adulterous actions of his wife. Ulpian, in his treatise On adulterers, writes for example about the ‘lenocinium’ (pandering) of a husband:
Quaestum autem ex adulterio uxoris facere videtur, qui quid accepit, ut adulteretur uxor … quaestum enim de adulterio uxoris facere proprie ille existimandus est, qui aliquid accepit, ut uxorem pateretur adulterari meretricio quodam genere.
(A [husband] is seen as having made a profit out of his wife's adultery if he has accepted anything in return for her being defiled by adultery; … for a man is rightly to be regarded as having made a profit out of his wife's adultery if he has accepted anything in return for allowing his wife to be defiled by adultery in the manner of a whore.)Footnote 19
The jurist Scaevola also discussed the problem of husbands who prostituted their wives.Footnote 20 Such behaviour apparently continued well into late Christian antiquity, since Justinian's jurists included it in the Digesta. The use of the passive voice clearly does not indicate any sexual violence.
Classical writers clearly distinguished between rape (‘rapere’) and adultery (‘aduterare’).Footnote 21 Another expression for a raped woman is ‘per vim stupratam’. The anonymous author of De viris illustribus refers to the rape (189 bce) of the Galatian woman Plutarch names ‘Chiomara’:
inter captivos uxor regis Orgiagontis centurioni cuidam in custodiam data; a quo vi stuprata de iniuria tacuit et post impetrata redemptione marito adulterum interficiendum tradidit.
(The wife of king Orgiagons was given into custody among the captives to a certain centurion; having been violated by him by force, she was silent about the outrage, and afterwards, when the ransom had been obtained, she handed him over to her husband for execution as an adulterer.)Footnote 22
The anonymous author charges the centurion with rape and adultery and easily distinguishes the two. The story of the centurion's rape was repeated in various forms in antiquity. In Florus’ version Chiomara herself takes vengeance on the centurion: ‘nam Orgiacontis regis uxor a centurione stuprum passa memorabili exemplo custodiam evasit revolsumque adulteri hostis caput ad maritum reportavit’ (‘for the wife of king Orgiacons who had suffered violation by a centurion evaded custody by a memorable deed and after tearing off the head of the enemy adulterer carried it back to her husband’).Footnote 23 Florus charges the centurion with rape and adultery. Chiomara also has the rapist centurion's head cut off in the accounts of Livy and Valerius Maximus.Footnote 24
A constitution of Justinian of 14 November 528 specifies the death penalty for rapists, including rapists of married women. The text indicates the relationship between rape and adultery in such a case:
Quae multo magis contra eos obtinere sancimus, qui nuptas mulieres ausi sunt rapere, quia duplici crimine tenentur tam adulterii quam rapinae et oportet acerbius adulterii crimen ex hac adiectione puniri.
(We decree that these provisions shall, above all, be applicable to those who have dared to rape married women, because they are convicted for a double crime, that is to say, for adultery as well as rape; and it is necessary for the crime of adultery to be punished with greater severity on account of the other offence being added to it.)Footnote 25
The same constitution provides that the property of a rapist be transferred to ‘the ownership of raped freeborn women’ (‘ad dominium raptarum mulierum liberarum’) and that the rapist be executed.Footnote 26 Patristic writers clearly distinguish adultery from rape, as do the legal texts.Footnote 27
The sole uses of adulterata in any texts that clearly occur in the context of (forcible) rape are the discussions of Augustine and Orosius of Lucretia, her rape by Tarquin and subsequent suicide.Footnote 28 Augustine's intention, in the first book of his De civitate dei, is to defend the pudicitia of Christian women (and men) who were raped during the sack of Rome by Alaric and to argue against the option of suicide.Footnote 29 He is most concerned with whether Lucretia experienced sexual pleasure during the rape and even consented to it:
quid si enim (quod ipsa tantummodo nosse poterat) quamvis iuveni violenter inruenti etiam sua libidine inlecta consensit idque in se puniens ita doluit, ut morte putaret expiandum? … Sed ita haec causa ex utroque latere coartatur, ut, si extenuatur homicidium, adulterium confirmetur; si purgatur adulterium, homicidium cumuletur; nec omnino invenitur exitus, ubi dicitur: ‘si adulterata, cur laudata; si pudica, cur occisa’?
(What if – but she herself alone could know – she was seduced by her own lust and, though the youth violently attacked her, consented, and in punishing that act of hers was so remorseful that death seemed to be due expiation? … But then the case is reduced to a dilemma: if the murder is less heinous, then let the adultery be confirmed: if the adultery is extenuated, the charge of murder is aggravated; and there is no escape from the dilemma, when you say: ‘If she was defiled by adultery, why has she been praised; if she was chaste, why was she slain?’)Footnote 30
Corinne J. Saunders comments that ‘Augustine is certain that in suicide Lucretia has committed the worst of crimes, murder, and that her innocence is therefore called into question.’Footnote 31 The context, not the use of adulterata, is what alerts the reader that this is a case of rape. Augustine's use of the antonym ‘pudica’ indicates the primary sense of ‘adultero’ (‘cause to be impudica’ – i.e., cause to be sexually impure/unchaste, to corrupt).Footnote 32 Orosius’ use of adulterata in his brief account of Lucretia is the one case in which it clearly refers to rape, but again the context is what makes this clear and not the word alone: ‘Tarquinii Superbi regnum occisi soceri scelere adsumptum, habita in cives crudelitate detentum, flagitio adulteratae Lucretiae amissum’ (‘Tarquinius Superbus obtained the kingdom through the criminal murder of his father-in-law, held onto it through his cruelty towards its citizens, and lost it because of the crime of his defilement of Lucretia by adultery’).Footnote 33 A. T. Fear translates ‘flagitio adulteratae’ as ‘through the shameful rape’ – which loses the sense of Tarquin's violation of Lucretia's marriage. Orosius’ choice to use ‘adulterata’ only without a word expressly indicating sexual violence may signify that he suspected Lucretia of ‘experiencing some form of sexual stimulation’ during the rape – following the suggestion of Augustine.Footnote 34
The passive voice, ‘adulteratam’, in Amulo is normal Latin usage, and does not force the conclusion upon the reader that Jesus’ mother was raped (i.e. during a forced adultery), although it is possible that such was Amulo's meaning. Based on normal usage of ‘adulterata’, it is likelier that Amulo's story resembles that of the text in Bavli Sanhedrin in which Jesus’ mother's lover was named Pandera and that he was aware of Pandera in the Pilate Toledot tradition.Footnote 35 William Horbury notes that Amulo's tradition characterised Pandera as an ethnicus, a description which is not in the Talmudic tradition but is in that of the Toledot Yeshu.Footnote 36 This is the version (if the interpretation of adulterata is correct) that occurs in a recension of the Toledot Yeshu, which does not include the story of Yeshu's birth (and the rape of his mother).Footnote 37 To my knowledge there are no accusations that Jesus’ mother was raped in the texts of the apocryphal New Testament or other ancient Christian literature. Joseph, in the Protoevangelium of James, when he finds out that Mary is six months pregnant, does however wonder who seduced her:
(13:1) ‘‹Who seduced the virgin away from me› and defiled her? Has the story of Adam been repeated in me? For just as … the serpent came and found Eve alone and deceived her and defiled her, so it has also happened to me.’ And Joseph arose from his sackcloth and called her and said, ‘Woman who has been cared for by God, why did you do this? You forgot the lord your God. Why did you humiliate yourself?’Footnote 38
Joseph's attack on Mary indicates that he did not believe she was raped, but that she had been a willing participant in the seduction.
The linguistic usage of ‘adulterata’ almost certainly indicates that Amulo did not envision a case of rape – in the normal sense of the word ‘rape’. Horbury's view that the word may refer to the tradition in the Toledot literature in which Pandera deceived Jesus’ mother is certainly an option. Some manuscripts of that tradition recount a tale in which Pandera deceived Mary into thinking he was her husband.Footnote 39 In particular, fragmentary Judeo-Arabic manuscripts contain a version in which Jesus' mother, without her knowledge, was defiled by adultery. An old manuscript from the Taylor Schechter collection, for example, exculpates Miriam (Mary): ‘and this Miriam is not guilty at all, because she did not know that he was not her husband at that time’.Footnote 40 Miriam Goldstein describes this as ‘rape’ – although the violence of this form of rape is less visible since it is rape by deception.Footnote 41 This Judeo-Arabic version of Jesus’ birth (the so-called Helene tradition) dates to the ninth century according to Goldstein.Footnote 42 Of course, the ultimate origin of the Helene tradition may be far earlier. Rape by deception is a category that is gradually making its way into modern jurisprudence.Footnote 43
The preponderance of evidence is that one should interpret adulterata in Amulo either as a reference to the defilement by (willing) adultery of Jesus' mother or as a reference to the unwilling defilement of his mother by adultery due to the deception of Pandera. It is doubtful that the word refers to a violent incident of rape. The passive form of the verb is simply good classical Latin grammar that a writer uses when referring to a woman.
Amulo was concerned about what he perceived as the influence that Jews had on Christians.Footnote 44 He is relatively silent about the source of his knowledge about Judaism, although he does include this remark: ‘We have been informed by certain individuals, who from their error have come to Christianity.’Footnote 45 For Amulo the conversion of Bodo, the palace deacon (diaconus palatinus), to Judaism was a scandal – an individual who had been persuaded by the impious (Jews) to deny Christ.Footnote 46 The Annales Bertiniani give the most complete account of the conversion in 838 (along with that of his reputed nephew) during a journey on his way to Rome in which he had discussions with Jews. He then sold the Jews to some pagans and reached Saragossa by August 839. The chroniclers were duly impressed by the gravity of this event.Footnote 47 In 840 Bodo (who took the name ‘Eleazar’) engaged in a controversy with Álvaro of Córdoba. The modern editor, Juan Gil, comments: ‘The letters that were exchanged between the two would have been the only preserved controversy that was actually held in the Middle Ages by a Jew and a Christian, if a barbarian hand had not mutilated the folios containing Eleazar's reply.’Footnote 48 Eleazar questioned the physical possibility of the virgin birth but does not mention adultery in the surviving text: ‘How did flesh give birth to flesh, and virginity was not impaired/violated?’Footnote 49 Álvaro continues his attack on Eleazar:
And indeed, with a noxious mouth you speak many noxious things: for you pretend that (he was born) through virginal passageways and a polluted channel [i.e., the human body] (and) that he kissed with his own lips the genitals (of his mother); which you, satyr, displayed with a shameless countenance and with impudence, when you, detestable man, commended the receptacles of your mother and the internal cavities of her womb.Footnote 50
Evina Steinová comments that
It is impossible to link derisive remarks made by Eleazar about Jesus and Mary, especially as they survive only in Álvaro's words, with any known written variant of Toledot Yeshu, more so as it is now widely acknowledged that written accounts that are available to us today represent only a small portion of much wider oral-textual tradition.Footnote 51
Since an inquisitorial copyist has severely censored nearly all of Bodo-Eleazar's contributions to the debate, no firm conclusions are possible.Footnote 52
Eleazar's (Bodo's) vituperative argument against the incarnation as mediated through Álvaro is also similar to that which is found in early medieval Jewish anti-Christian polemic.Footnote 53 One of the earliest texts in that tradition that was apparently written in the ninth century, perhaps in Egypt, is a Judeo-Arabic composition entitled The account of the disputation of the priest (Qiṣṣat Mujādalat al-Usquf).Footnote 54 The author, reputed to be a priest who converted to Judaism, makes this objection: ‘You say: I have a God, who dwelt in the innards [of a woman], in the filth of menstrual blood and in the dark confinement of the womb [literally, “the narrowness of the abdomen and darkness”]'.Footnote 55 A Hebrew version of the text, the Book of Nestor the priest (Sefer Nestor Ha-Komer), existed prior to 1170, and its origin may be due to the Jews’ migration from ‘Muslim Spain to Christian countries in the wake of the Almohad persecutions of the twelfth century’ where they did not speak Arabic.Footnote 56 The presumably fictional Nestor (the converted priest) objects: ‘Heaven forbid that one says that God dwelt in the womb in the filth of the stomach, in the oppression of menstrual blood, and in gloom and darkness!’Footnote 57 The unknown authors of the Qiṣṣa and the subsequent Hebrew version do not accuse Mary of adultery. In a reference to the census of Augustus, Mary testifies that she is pregnant by Joseph, and the narrator concludes: ‘So Mary testifies that Joseph is her husband and that she is pregnant by him.’Footnote 58 The Hebrew version has the equivalent narrative.Footnote 59
Around 1170 Joseph Kimḥi composed his Book of the Covenant (Sefer Ha-Berit), a disputation between a Jew and a Christian.Footnote 60 Kimḥi had left Spain due to the Almohad persecutions and had ‘settled in Narbonne’.Footnote 61 After quoting Exodus xxxiii.30, the faithful (maʾamin) Jew poses this objection to the heretic (min):
How shall I believe that this great inaccessible Deus absconditus needlessly entered the womb of a woman, the filthy, foul bowels of a female, compelling the living God to be born of a woman, a child without knowledge or understanding, senseless, unable to distinguish between his right hand and his left, defecating and urinating, suckling his mother's breasts from hunger and thirst, crying when he is thirsty so that his mother will have compassion on him.Footnote 62
These texts are very close to Eleazar's objections to the incarnation, and they do not accuse Mary of adultery. It is, consequently, unknown whether Bodo knew any of the traditions of the Toledot recorded by Amulo, but if he did know such counter-narratives to the Gospels through his discussions with Jews, then perhaps they played some role in his conversion experience.Footnote 63