Relations With The Emperor
In Palestinian sources Joshua answers various questions of the emperor: how God created the world (Gen. R. x.), concerning the angels (ib. lxxviii., beginning; Lam. R. iii. 21), as to the resurrection of the body (Gen. R. xxviii.; Eccl. R. xii. 5), and with reference to the Decalogue (Pesiḳ. R. 21). In the Babylonian Talmud three conversations are related, which resemble that on the Decalogue, in that Joshua silences the emperor's mockery of the Jewish conception of God by proving to him God's incomparable greatness and majesty (Ḥul. 59b, 60a). Joshua also rebukes the emperor's daughter when she mocks at the God of the Jews (ib. 60a); in another place she is made to repent for having mocked Joshua's appearance (Ta'an. on Ned. 50b). The emperor's question concerning the odor of Sabbath food is a mocking one (Shab. 119a). Once Joshua told the emperor that he would dream of the Parthians (Ber. 56a). At another time he excused his own non-appearance at a meeting by cleverly describing the infirmities of his old age (Shab. 152a). In one conversation, preserved by a later authority (Adolf Jellinek, B. H. v. 132), Joshua defended the justice of God, which was doubted by the emperor. Once a dispute in pantomime took place in the emperor's palace between Joshua and a Judæo-Christian ("Min"), in which Joshua maintained that God's protective hand was still stretched over Israel (Hagigah 5b). In another conversation Joshua defended the honor of Israel against a heretic, who had attacked it, by quoting from Micah vii. 4 (Er. 101a).
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