ynquirer

Some details in the case were interesting, other were not. Yeshu’s height was as interesting as his being either stoned or hung alive, surely?

It “kills� my theory only from the standpoint of an easy reading. By the way, do you know what textual criticism, from Griesbach to Ehrman, says about easy, naïve readings like yours?

Do you need emotional support? I don’t.

Very clever, indeed, but wrong. A lawyer is not necessarily someone with a Law degree, yet someone who understands legal problems – which is not, obviously, your case.

I used the term “Great Sanhedrin� as and analogue of Maimonides’ “Great Israel,� which included both Palestine and the Diaspora. Now, the “Great Sanhedrin� after 135 CE consists of both the Palestinian and the Babylonian Sanhedrins. This was ensured through continuous cross-breeding by the writers' travelling from one place to the other.

Thank you. I see the quality of the debate you’re prepared to maintain.

Such remarks as this only reveal a lack of sound argument. Let me say: You consistently turn a blind eye upon what you don’t want to see.

This is stupid, to say the least. Everyone can go read in B. Sanh. 43a that, in spite of the herald’s summoning whoever could speak in Yeshu’s favour, nothing was brought to the effect.

Oh, I feel so sorry. What a serious shortcoming! You’re true. The Talmud does not say that Yeshu and Jesus were connected with the royalty. It simply says that Yeshu was connected with something that can be translated as either “the royalty� or “the government.� You say it is “the government,� I say it is sounder to translate it as “the royalty.�

Is this one of your best critiques? I’m sure you can do it better.

You here flog a straw man, as usual. I assert that the trial of Yeshu was reconstructed in the Talmud from either oral tradition or schematic records – never detailed ones, for otherwise the writers would have been staunch liars, which I don’t think they were.

Do you want to examine me? No! Yes?

Julian

[MOD]
This has been a good discussion, so far.

Please keep it civil and refrain from personal insults and sniping.
[/MOD]

Apikorus

This question is unwittingly telling, as you've named only New Testament scholars. As I've suspected all along, your vantage point is that of a Christian, eager to find evidence in the Talmud for details regarding the life of Jesus. You've apparently no broad familiarity with the rabbinic literature, its modes of discourse, modern theories of its composition and transmission histories, etc. This is why you refer to Griesbach (!) and Ehrman when you should be reading Neusner, Kraemer, Ginzburg, Lieberman, Weiss-Halivni, Goldenberg, et al. - scholars you've apparently never heard of.

What is naive is to assume, as you do, that B. Sanh. 43a is the result of rabbinic tradition dating back to the first century CE. As Neusner has cautioned, we can't be sure that this passage represents anything other than the understanding of its final redactor. (Were the rabbinic literature less homogenized, this might not be the case.)

LOL! <edit> you make up terms as you go along. And now you fabricate post hoc a ludicrous excuse for your misuse of standard terminology, compounding your blunder. The term "Great Sanhedrin" (= Heb. sanhedrin gedolah) is of course defined in pereq 1 of Mishnah Sanhedrin, and is absolutely standard in scholarship.

This is yet another argument from silence.

Here's something that real scholars do when they come across a term the interpretation of which is uncertain. They look for other appearances of the same term in the same document or literature to help contextualize it. In the case of karov lemalkhut (= "near to kingship"), we have B. Bava Qamma 83a :

But was Greek wisdom proscribed? ... It may, however, be said that the family of R. Gamaliel was an exception, as they had associations with the government, as indeed taught: 'He who trims the front of his hair in Roman fashion is acting in the ways of the Amorites.' Abtolmus b. Reuben however was permitted to cut his hair in the Gentile fashion as he was in close contact with the government. So also the members of the family of Rabban Gamaliel were permitted to discuss Greek wisdom on account of their having had associations with the government.

The construction karov lemalkhut appears three times in this gemara, and in each case clearly indicates closeness with the ruling authorities, and accordingly is translated as "having associations with the government." (Gamaliel was a patriarch and would have had to deal with Roman authorities on a regular basis.)

ynquirer

I’ve done so because New Testament scholars laid down the foundations of textual criticism as a modern science. I presume that textual criticism, as a discipline, must abide by the same rules regardless of the religion or particular ideology involved. And I mentioned Griesbach because he was the very first, wasn’t he?

The mere idea that there is a particular criticism of Jewish texts, which might be free from the hermeneutical rules of textual criticism as a universal discipline, seems as odd to me as the claim that there were a Jewish physics, a Jewish medical science and the like.

Will you be as kind as to mention which passages in any of these authors specifically say that the easy reading is to be preferred to the difficult one?

No, it isn’t. The hypothesis that there are some elements in that pericope, by no means all of them, that can be traced back to the first century CE is a conclusion of my exercise of textual criticism, not an assumption supporting it.

To my best understanding, what I have actually done is exacting what the writer knew from what he figured out under the constrain of what he might never say. Everything is in the writer’s mind. If this is not what Neusner says in a paragraph repeatedly quoted in this thread, please tell what it is.

Touché. However, this does not harm my argument.

I acquiesce to the procedure you propose. Yet, three times in the same gemara in all likelihood amounts to a single writer. You need a few more instances, presumably written by different writers, to have a convincing argument. That is pretty standard inductive reasoning, isn’t it? While you look for other instances, I’ll abide by the extreme diversity of styles and modes of discourse in the Talmud, which entails different meanings for different words, and still prefer “kingship� to “the government.�

ynquirer

I never said I’m an expert in rabbinical Hebrew. This notwithstanding, my translation is this:

Speaking of things intranscendent gets you ready for the grave. Why do you repeat it so many times?

De te fabula narratur.

Apikorus

This is an unprovable hypothesis. The earliest documented Jewish response to Christian claims is from Celsus, and this supports the notion that the ben Pandera material in the Talmud has an early provenance. The earliest rabbinic source to mention Jesus is T. Chullin 2:22-24, which refers to Yeshu ben Pandera, and associates him with aberrant teaching (minut).

The story of Jesus' stoning and hanging in B. Sanh. 43a is not found in the Tosefta. We have no reliable way to assess the provenance of this material. It might reflect ancient traditions, or it might reflect a late Stammatic response to contemporary Christian claims.

I'd like to add another point here. I think your interpretation is "too clever by half." The plain sense of the gemara is that extra time was provided for the herald to announce Yeshu's impending execution because of Yeshu's association with the government. This must be the primary reading. You are advocating a clever secondary reading whereby the lack of response on behalf of Yeshu indicates the intent of his disciples (Matai et al.) to abandon him in his hour of need. Though this need not displace the primary reading, there is nothing in the gemara itself to recommend it. It seems to me that you are reading this with the New Testament in mind. The Babylonian rabbis, however, almost certainly were not writing with a NT on their table. They responded to the most basic Christian traditions about Jesus: his divine parentage (rabbis say his father was Pandera), his prophetic status (rabbis say he was an mesit = "enticer to idolatry"), his miraculous deeds (rabbis say he was a magician), his attracting disciples (rabbis say his disciples were punished), his authority over the rabbis (rabbis say Jesus was executed by warrant of the Sanhedrin), etc. The tradition of Jesus' abandonment by his disciples was not central, and would not require any response. Indeed, it is hardly clear that the rabbis even knew about it. So I think if one adopts a more realistic sociohistorical context for the Talmud, your interpretation must be rejected as fanciful.

Oy! Did you look up the individual words in a dictionary? The plain meaning is: "You understand nothing at all. Why do you write so much?"

Apikorus

Not a problem. See B. Sotah 49b for another instance. Meanwhile, do you have any evidence at all for your reading? On what is your "reasoning" based? Induction from the empty set?

noah

While Apikorus is doing an admirable job of rebutting ynquirer's nonsense, let's review why Sanhedrin 43a is not proof of the historical JC.

1) The text says Yeshu, not Jesus.

2) Even if Yeshu and Jesus were identical words the name was common not by any stretch unique.

3) Despite ynquire's contortions and distortions JC was crucified, not hanged. The dictionary does make a distinction between the two words.

4) JC was not stoned

5) The NT makes no mention of a herald going forth 40 days before the execution.

6) JC had no connenction with the government. ynquirer tried this argument to make it seem that he was:
Round peg meet square hole.
There is a well known phrase, "dina d'malchusa dina", i.e. the law of the land is the law. (i.e. its a mandate that Jews must be law abiding citizens in addition to their loyalty to Torah law.) Literraly, it means the law of the government is the law. So, what would these people say it means? Only "royal edits" are law thus any other law is non binding?

It is clear, especially for anyone familiar with Talmudic and Mishnaic phasiology, that the Hebrew "Malchus" or Aramaic "Malchusa" is used widely to refer to "government" in general not just "royalty" (primarily because originaly governments were monarchies).

In addition, the phrase of Ulla says "Karov L'Malchus" "close to Malchus". If it wanted to say that he was descended from royalty it would use different phrases, not the word "close". Thus, it is clear that it means "someone who has close connections to government".


7) JC was not charged with sorcery or leading Israel astray. He was, in fact, charged with blasphemy, claiming to be the Son of God, and assuming the role of King of the Jews.

8)The Synoptic Gospels have Jesus being executed on Passover itself and not the eve of Passover.

9) Yeshu lived at least a century before Jesus.

10) From The Truth about Talmud: Yeshu was executed by a Jewish court and not by the Romans. During Yeshu's time, the reign of Alexander Janneus, the Jewish courts had the power to execute but had to be careful because the courts were ruled by the Pharisees while the king was a Sadducee. It seems clear why the courts would not want to unneccesarily upset the monarch by executing a friend of his. During the Roman occupation of Jesus' time, there is no indication that the Jewish courts had the right to execute criminals.

11) Yeshu is a Hebrew acronym for "May his name and memory be blotted out", Yeshua is a sneaky attempt to translate the Sanhedrins' tag for a person who can be accounted for historically, into someone who name means something like "Savior". "Jsus of Nazareth" is the actual name given in the footnotes and other writings that they hoped would be eradicate. Somehow the pagans kept track and won that battle.
Of his crimes the one that crossed him from the list of moshiach hopefuls the most, is one that Xtians turn into another word yet again. The crime the xtians note as Usury-which is a tax crime-is not the same word given by Jewish scholars. The actual Hebrew word is Aleph, Shin, Resh. Asur, which is the Hebrew word for "forbidden". Which is sodomy, which is actually put in an account in the gospel of Thomas.
It is one of Americas' sins-of course it is-which so enraged Bin Laden. He included it in his odd list of justifications for 9/11. Of course the US misconstrued it as a wacky mans hatred for paying high credit card tax. Usury. Which is even weirder.......
I have a Rabbinical source for this.
The word is Asur-forbidden.

12) ynquirer has yet to quote a Judaic source in support of his twisted logic and arguments. Christian apologetics is not a source.

13) Please note also that ynquirer has ducked almost every point I have made in this thread and in this thread

Apikorus

Noah is presenting the traditional (i.e. religious) Jewish position, which defends the Talmud by denying that Jesus is ever mentioned therein. A fuller version of this argument is nicely articulated by Rabbi Gil Student (noah also linked to R. Student's web pages). The details recapitulate the defense of Rabbi Yechiel at the Paris Disputation of 1240. (Earlier in this thread I had wrongly attributed these points to Nachmanides in the Barcelona Disputation of 1263.) In Judaism on Trial, Hyam Maccoby writes,

Rabbi Yechiel's defence to these charges [by his accuser, Nicolas Donin] was that the above Talmudic passages [T. Chullin 2:22-24, B. Sanh. 107b, B. Sanh. 43a, B. Gitt. 56b] refer not to the Christian Jesus, but to some other Jesus. When the judges expressed incredulity at this, Yechiel made his famous remark, 'Not every Louis is King of France.' Yechiel, in this line of argument, relied on the fact that Jesus was a not uncommon name...and also, more convincingly, that the references to Jesus in the Talmud do not tally chronologically with the Jesus of Christianity. The Jesus who was the pupil of Joshua ben Perahia lived long before the Christian Jesus, in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (126 - 76 BCE). As for (Jesus) ben Stada or Ben Pandira, he lived long after the Christian Jesus, in the time of Pappos ben Judah (about 130 CE). Moreover, as Rabbi Yechiel pointed out, Ben Stada was executed at Lydda, not Jerusalem.

Maccoby then adds,

Yechiel's argument, therefore, was sound as regards several of the alleged references to Jesus in the Talmud, but not in relation to all of them. There seems little doubt that the account of the execution of Jesus on the eve of Passover does refer to the Christian Jesus, especially as the designation 'Jesus of Nazareth' is used. (Actually, the designation 'of Nazareth' does not appear in recent editions of the Talmud, but is found in early MSS.) Yechiel's answer in relation to this passage is given in a confused form in the Hebrew narrative, but the gist of it seems to be that there may have been two Jesuses, both from Nazareth. This reply was received with even greater incredulity than his first formulation.

Maccoby also agrees that the passage from B. Gittin 56b "seems to refer to the Christian Jesus." But he emphasizes,

The surprising thing is that such anti-Christian polemic is so infrequent in the Talmud, amounting at most to half a dozen short passages out of many millions of words. When one compares this with the mountains of vituperations against Judaism by Christian authors of the Patristic period and later, one can only wonder at Jewish restraint. The Talmud, in fact, almost completely ignores Christianity.

Maccoby was a serious scholar and a brilliant writer, but his views on Christian origins were hyperskeptical, if not on the fringe, and he seemed to have a chip on his shoulder when it came to Christianity. By the same token he was perhaps too credulous of the rabbinic literature. So while Maccoby only finds "half a dozen short passages," R. Travers Herford, in Christianity in Talmud and Midrash cites 139 passages from the rabbinical literature (including the Mishnah, Tosefta, Sifre (both), Sifra, Mekhilta, Palestinian Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, and various collections of midrashim) which have some connection with Jesus and/or Christianity. (Not all directly bear on Jesus. In essence, Maccoby's remark regarding the paucity of interest in Jesus evinced by the Talmud is quite correct.)

Herford's book, first published in 1903, is an outstanding example of scholarship, and even if he does go above board from time to time, overall he shows good sense, and a strong and sympathetic appreciation of the rabbinic literature. His book remains the single best resource on the subject even today. Though Herford believed that the application of careful critical study could distinguish "with some degree of probability the historically true from the historically false," he was appropriately skeptical in many instances as well. Herford's introduction itself contains a fine description of the Talmud.

At any rate, I don't hold to the Jewish apologetic position that Jesus is not mentioned in the Talmud. We've survived the 13th century, and I don't find it shameful, embarrassing, or dangerous to admit that the Talmud denigrates Jesus. I think that Yeshu, ben Stada, ben Pandera, and other characters, both named and unnamed, are used in the Talmud to represent the Christian Jesus. However, as I have emphasized repeatedly, there are no reliable independent historical data to be gleaned therefrom. What we have in the Talmud, midrashim, etc. are rabbinic responses to Christian claims. The Babylonian rabbis' understanding of Christianity, from their vantage point in Sassanid Iran, was almost surely sketchy. As I explained earlier, they responded only to the most important Christian dogmas regarding Jesus. As for the Talmud, our problems with its own sketchy and/or inconsistent historical descriptions, with rabbis concocting stories (even, or perhaps especially, involving incidental details, which were precisely the kinds of stories which Herford felt were most reliable), with the high degree of homogenization and heavy redaction, all make it highly problematic as an historical source.

noah

Apikorus,

Your entire post is generalizations piled on top of generalizations. You have to narrow your argument down to explaining why all the elements in the Sanhedrin 43a account point away from JC and not to JC.

On another point, my post is not a religious defence or rebuttal. It is a textual rebuttal. Nothing in the text points to JC, something which ynquirer and you for that matter have failed to explain.

I do not think JC is not mentioned in the Talmud. As I have said, there is one place in the Talmud in which JC is boiling in a vat of excrement for his sins.
Is he mentioned elsewhere? Possibly. But there is no evidence that he is mentioned in Sanhedrin 43a.

How on earth could it be shameful or embarrassing to "admit" that the Talmud denigrates JC? If anything it is a proud piece of Jewish tradition.

One of the problems with trying to use the Talmud to prove the existence of the historical JC is that the Talmud is not an historical record. It was never intended to be a reliable historical document to be consulted to settle issues relating to Jewish history. It's homily. It's for teaching.