Note 38 — Chapter V · THE JEWS IN SPAIN
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Tomás Tamayo de Vargas maintains that the Jews in Toledo at the time of the Crucifixion sent a letter of warning and disapproval to their brethren in Jerusalem. This letter—which it is alleged was translated into Castilian when Toledo fell into the hands of Alfonso VI—the historian quotes. Amador de los Rios, in his able and exhaustive history of the Jews in Spain, pronounces the document to have been manufactured to impose upon the credulity of the ignorant, since to any one acquainted with the growth and development of the Castilian language a glance is sufficient to prove its apocryphal character.
It is in this letter that the legend of the Jewish incursion into Spain after the fall of Babylon has its roots. It concludes with the following statement: “... You know that it is certain your temple must soon be destroyed, for which reason our forefathers, upon issuing from the Babylonian captivity, would not return to Jerusalem, but with Pyrrhus for their captain—sent by Cyrus, who gave them many riches taken from Babylon in the year 69 of the captivity—they came to Toledo and built here a great aljama.”