Avoiding Christianity

Avoda Zara (16b)   Our Rabbis taught: When R. Eliezer was arrested because of Minuth they brought him up to the tribune to be judged. Said the governor to him, ‘How can a sage man like you occupy himself with those idle things?’ He replied, ‘I acknowledge the Judge as right.’ The governor thought that he referred to him — though he really referred to his Father in Heaven — and said, ‘Because thou hast acknowledged me as right, I pardon; thou art acquitted.’ When he came home, his disciples called on him to console him, but he would accept no consolation. Said R. Akiba to him, ‘Master, wilt thou permit me to say one thing of what thou hast taught me?’ He replied, ‘Say it.’ ‘Master,’ said he, ‘perhaps some of the teaching of the Minim had been transmitted to thee and thou didst approve of it and because of that thou wast arrested?’ He exclaimed: ‘Akiba thou hast reminded me.’ I was once walking in the upper-market of Sepphoris when I came across one of the disciples of Jesus the Nazarene Jacob of Kefar-Sekaniah by name, who said to me: It is written in your Torah, Thou shalt not bring the hire of a harlot . . . into the house of the Lord thy God. May such money be applied to the erection of a retiring place for the High Priest? To which I made no reply. Said he to me: Thus was I taught by Jesus the Nazarene, For of the hire of a harlot hath she gathered them and unto the hire of a harlot shall they return.’ they came from a place of filth, let them go to a place of filth. Those words pleased me very much, and that is why I was arrested for apostacy; for thereby I transgressed the scriptural words, Remove thy way far from her — which refers to minuth — and come not nigh to the door of her house, — which refers to the ruling power.