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The Gemara in Shabbos (116b) seems to have two quotes from the New Testament, but I'm not sure.

ברא וברתא כחדא ירתון - sons and daughters should inherit together

and

אנא לא למיפחת מן אורייתא דמשה אתיתי [ולא] לאוספי על אורייתא דמשה אתיתי - I am not coming to subtract or add to the Law of Moses

Does anyone know what source the Gemara is quoting?

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    It wouldn't surprise me if that's the source. Rashi calls the "philosopher" a מין (heretic), which often refers to the early Christians.
    – Scimonster
    Jul 12, 2015 at 11:20
  • It's also after a short Gemara (censored from our Gemaras, but brought in Chesronos hashas and Oz Vehadar) about the New Testament. But I'm curious what context it was said in the New Testament.
    – clum
    Jul 12, 2015 at 11:25
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    As the brackets in your quote indicate, some early versions of the gemara had "elah" instead of "vlo" saying "rather to add" and not "not to add" which would change the nature of the quote and possibly the source.
    – rosends
    Jul 12, 2015 at 12:16
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    See here with comments judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/60044/…
    – user6591
    Jul 12, 2015 at 12:49
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    It occurs to me that while the first quote may not actually be written in the NT, it may be a reference to how otoh ha'ish's "royal genealogy" (from David) was established - some hold that it was through his mother and not his step-father.
    – Harel13
    May 9, 2020 at 21:19

1 Answer 1

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The second quote is based on the Sermon of the Mount, from the Christian gospel book of Matthew (5:17). As to the first quote, the Soncino writes that "There is no passage in any known Gospel that a son and daughter inherit alike."

Modern religious (eg., Steinsaltz) and academic scholars understand the philosopher living near Imma Shalom, who is quoted in the story on Shabbat 116b, as being a Christian sectarian. Writing about the atmosphere of Christian and Jewish polemics in his work Birkat HaMinim: Jews and Christians in Conflict in the Ancient World, Yaakov Teppler presents another indication as to the religious identity of this individual from the text itself. On the philosopher's remark that "Since the day you were exiled from your land, the Torah of Moses was taken away and the avon gilyon was given in its place," Teppler comments:

The Gospel is presented in this source as avon gilyon. This is a scornful play on the Greek word for the gospel, evangelion [the derivation of the English word evangelical]. Avon means sin in Hebrew, so that avon gilyon would be the scripture of sinners, or a scripture which represents the way of a sin.

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    +1. I suspect that the corrupt "philosopher" judge in the story was basing the first quote on Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female..."
    – Fred
    Jul 12, 2015 at 19:01
  • @Fred what has that got to do with "sons and daughters should inherit together"!! If a person were to say of that galatians quote(misinterpreting that galatians quote, saying) that that galatians quote is a post modernist style "philosophy" in ancient times, then that'd be less stretched!. The Galatians quote is not talking about inheritance!
    – barlop
    Dec 9, 2020 at 5:09
  • @barlop The judge was interpreting verses to suit whoever was giving him bribes. It doesn't really matter what that verse means, so long as it can be construed as a pretext to mean that the law should broadly be applied equally to men and women, including in matters of inheritance. But anyway, it's merely a suspicion. I can't say for certain that was the judge's pretext.
    – Fred
    Dec 10, 2020 at 23:27

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