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Christians. Thus in a manuscript copied around 1740, we read: “This booklet contains an orally transmitted tradition, from one person to another; it may be written, but not printed, due to our harsh exile. Beware of reading it before the youth, children, or lightheaded people and even more so before the uncircum- cised who understand German.”14 One copyist asks his reader to forgive him his many errors as he wrote “in great haste and in the utmost secrecy”.15 For most of its history, especially after Jews came under increasing pressure in medieval Christendom from the 13th century on, Toledot Yeshu circulated somewhat un- dercover, as part of the Jews’ “hidden transcript” – to borrow James C. Scott’s words – that is as “a discourse that takes place ‘offstage’, (in principle) beyond direct observation by powerholders”, a discourse transmitted behind closed doors and voicing a critique of the dominant culture.16 This hidden transcript, which Scott claimed was inherent to every situation of social and political subor- dination, is what enables minority cultures to cope with this subordination and assert their own identity and social space, all the while resisting and challenging the dominant discourse. The problem arises, however, when the hidden tran- script turns public. In 1429, a dozen Jews from the small town of Trévoux, on the border between France and Savoy, were interrogated after a copy of Tole- dot Yeshu was found in a Jewish home. Understandably, they all denied having any knowledge of the work except for the individual in whose house it had been found, who claimed that it had been copied a long time ago by a relative living far away and insisted that he had never shown it to anyone.17 Obviously no one wanted to be caught with this work, especially in a world in which Christian polemicists repeatedly accused Jews of conspiring against the church precisely by spreading secret “lies” and “blasphemies”.18 Even in the late 19th century, a Jewish publisher from New York could be thrown into jail under blasphemy charges for printing a Yiddish version of the work.19 14 Quoted from Deutsch 2011, 283. See further Krauss 1902, 10–11. The same warning appears in a num- ber of manuscripts, as noted in Barbu/Dahhaoui 2018, n. 24. 15 Cf. Neubauer 1886, 405 (N° 2172), quoted by Horbury 1970, 8, n5. 16 Scott 1990, here at 4–5. 17 Loeb 1883; Barbu/Dahhaoui 2018. 18 The “secret” character of Toledot Yeshu was thus noted already in the 15th century by the Viennese cleric Thomas Ebendorfer; cf. Callsen/Knapp/Nieser/Pryzbilski 2003, 137. In general, see Carlebach 1996. 19 The case had been brought into court by the notorious Anthony Comstock. The publisher, Meyer Chinski, was arrested on 30 June 1897, released on bail and eventually acquitted on 6 January 1898. See Record of Persons Arrested under the Auspices of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, vol. III, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, MSS34587; MMC-3288; Twenty Fourth Annual Report of the Society for the Suppression of Vice (New York, 18 January 1898), 22–23. I thank Amy Werbel for kindly sending me a copy of these documents. See also the Special Session court docket, 6 January 1898. A Yiddish account of the trial was published that year by Chinski’s lawyer, Solomon Rosenthal, under the title Victory [Nizzahon] in Special Session, with a full-fledged defence of the incriminated work, aiming to preserve Jews from the influence of Christian missionaries. The case, to which I intend to return in a Some Remarks on Toledot Yeshu | 33www.jrfm.eu 2019, 5/1