Who was Shimon Kepha? Was he Christianity’s first pope – or a Jewish sage?
Who was Shimon Kepha? Was he a Jew who abandoned his faith and founded Christianity as an independent religion, or was he the student of the Chachamim, the Sages, who sacrificed his spiritual wellbeing for the sake of his people, like Yael or Queen Esther?
The starting point of our search in clarifying the history of Shimon Kepha, also known as Shimon HaKalphus,1 is a passage in the Talmud about “oso ha’ish, that man,” the Nazarene. This passage was censored and does not appear in most extant versions of the Talmud.
The Talmud relates that oso ha’ish was a student of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Parchiah. He was driven away by his rebbe as a result of an incident in an inn, when he expressed himself coarsely about the matron of the inn. Later, the banished student wanted to apologize, but caught Rabbi Yehoshua precisely at the moment he was reciting Kriyas Shema. Rabbi Yehoshua signaled for him to wait, but the student (known in the Talmud as Yeshu) thought he was driving him away again and was refusing to accept his teshuvah, repentance. He abandoned Judaism as a result of this mistakenly perceived humiliation (Sota 47a).
“On erev Pesach, Yeshu the Notzri (Nazarene) was hanged. Forty days before he was hanged, a proclamation was made that whoever could bring cause for leniency in his case should step forward, or he would be stoned (and hanged) for witchcraft, and enticing Jews to idol worship. No merit was found, and they hanged him on erev Pesach” (Sanhedrin 43a).
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