Apikorus

I don't see why. The Talmudic account mentions neither Romans nor crucifixion. And of course there is no evidence at all that Yeshu was hung alive. Indeed, there is no provision for live hanging within Jewish law.

ynquirer

The whole structure of Yeshu’s case plus disciples’ case in B. Sanh. 43a quite strongly suggests that the case actually recorded in the gemara is not Yeshu’s but the disciples’. Likewise the common law the Jewish law seems to have been a precedent-based one, in contradistinction to the law in continental Europe, which is primarily based on statute. Judges always interpret the law. Yet, while in the common law and apparently the Jewish law judges rely on precedent – that is, the law as interpreted by previous judges – to interpret the law on the spot, continental law tends to issue a new statute whenever a problem of interpretation arises.

Well, Yeshu’s case is the precedent upon which the Sanhedrin adjudicated the cases against his five disciples. Of these, there were direct record of both the charges and the defense; in Yeshu’s there is record only of the charge, while the defendant’s arguments are missing. This I construe as implying that there was not direct record of Yeshu’s trial so that the basic details were reconstructed much later so as to have a precedent at hand when the disciples were tried. This would have been perfectly legal, provided that there was trustworthy memory of Yeshu’s case, especially the charge and the sentence.

The Sanhedrin, in reconstructing Yeshu’s case, quite naturally did it in accordance with the Jewish law. There must have been some doubts, however, as to whether he was hanged dead – after stoning – or alive; possibly, there was memory of the cry of dereliction as well. And this is the reason why the writing of the gemara is that cumbersome.

Apikorus

This argument strikes me as convoluted. The number and names of the disciples are wrong. (Aside from Matai and Todah, we have no firm connection of the actual names to disciples of Jesus.) There is no record of such a trial in the New Testament. This is hopeless.

The gemara mentions that Jesus was to be stoned, and that he was hung. This is in keeping with Jewish law as described in pereq 6 of the Mishnah. The fact that so many of the story elements disagree with the account of Jesus' death and that fate of his disciples in the NT gospels suggests that this is a late rabbinic response to a highly refracted understanding of Christian claims.

Once again, I assert that in all of rabbinic literature, there is not so much as a single independent historical datum bearing on the life of Jesus.

ynquirer

Do you mean that the disciples’ names – at least three of them – were invented as “a late rabbinic response to a highly refracted understanding of the Christian claims�?

From B. Sanh. 43a I quite clearly infer that the rabbinic writers accepted full historical responsibility for Jesus’ death. Do you mean that those writers accepted for the Sanhedrin a responsibility that wasn’t theirs?

Apikorus

Perhaps invented, perhaps garbled. Where do you suppose the tradition of five disciples comes from? "Accepting responsibility" carries the connotation of welcoming the consequences, and I very much doubt this is what the Talmudic authors had in mind. More likely, they were responding to the refracted image of Christian dogma they received in Babylonia.

The Talmudic accounts, which disagree with the New Testament in almost every detail, and which cannot even be temporally identified to have taken place during the time of Jesus, show that the rabbis had poor knowledge of and rather little interest in Christian claims.

ynquirer

Records kept by the Sanhedrin of cases tried before them.

So do I. Yet the point is whether they welcomed the consequences as known to them, which is clear they did.

And this carries the connotation that anything else was ancillary to the main apologetic purpose, which is something I wouldn’t endorse.

Exception to be made of a few dissenters, the bulk of the Jewish tradition can be shown to have taken for granted that Yeshu = Jesus the Nazarene.

If they had poor knowledge of and rather little interest in Christian claims, why did they feel a necessity to respond to the refracted image of those claims? It would have been much easier to ignore such claims, wouldn’t it?

mens_sana

But it is still common. Check any Creationist website, four out of any five quotations debunking evolution will have been altered or taken out of context in such a way as to change the original author's meaning. No wonder "rhetoric" has such a bad odor.

Apikorus

And the evidence for these records is what? This sounds like yet more wishful thinking. By the way, you do realize that the entire paragraph which describes the fate of Yeshu's five disciples is just a big play on words, don't you? E.g. the name Matai is associated with the phrase matai avo v'eira'eh p'nei elohim from Psalm 42:3b, etc. Do you think the Sanhedrin really adjudicated its cases according to wordplay on verses from the Tanakh?

Whatever this means.

Nachmanides certainly did not, although from a modern scholarly point of view, I accept the identification. My point, however, is that the strong divergence in the details between the New Testament and the Talmud suggests that one account is an outright fabrication or a late response to a hazily received tradition.

They felt it necessary to respond in order to portray Yeshu as a sorcerer, of course. This doesn't help at all with issues of historicity.

ynquirer

With all my respect for any blog, Creationist or whatever, it does not compare in due seriousness to a judicial body like the Sanhedrin. The main purpose of a supreme court – and one must not overlook that the Great Sanhedrin was the Jews’ supreme court – never is apologetic, although apology – or the legitimizing function – always takes a share in its actuation.

It sounds odd that you think the comparison to be feasible.

ynquirer

What is the evidence for Q? The basic assumption, as regard the Sanhedrin, is they were a body of professional judges, and professional judges as a rule keep records of cases tried before them. If an exception is to be contemplated in a particular case an ad hoc explanation of the absence should be offered. Such, for instance, that the judges of the Sanhedrin were not professional but amateurs, or that they were forbidden to keep such records for religious reasons, or the like.

No, the wordplay on verses from the Tanakh is not the ratio decidendi. The ratio decidendi quite clearly is the deployment of the case against Yeshu as a binding precedent. The verses from the Tanakh appear in a summary of the hearings. Thus, the verse from the Ps 42:6 is the argument of Mattai’s defense; it is replied by means of Ps 41:6, and so forth for the other defendants. This is equal to saying that quoting the scriptures was the main legal strategy of both the defense and the accusation.

Even if so, the Talmud is still a witness to the New Testament. Serious disagreements as between different sources do not necessarily render an event non historical.

Have Philo and Josephus on the crisis of standards, for instance. Shortly after the arriving of Pilate in Judea, there was a crisis provoked by an actuation of the new prefect, which the Jews disliked very much. Yet, Philo – writing a few years afterward – says that it was a couple of inscriptions (the names of Pilate and of Tiberius, the emperor) written down in a number of shields hanged from the palace in Jerusalem, while Josephus – writing almost half a century afterward – says that it was the image or even the bust of the emperor on top of the legionary standards introduced by the soldiers in Jerusalem. Philo says that the Jews chose four ambassadors, – Herod’s sons, – to meet Pilate (to no avail) and then sent a letter of complaint to Tiberius, who then instructed the prefect to remove the inscriptions. Josephus, instead, says nothing of either an embassy or a pair of letters and speaks of a mass demonstration in Cesarea during which the Jews allegedly offered their necks to the Roman soldiers so that Pilate himself, being impressed as he was, decided to remove the standards. Both accounts have scarcely anything in common. Probably Josephus used Philo as his source and freely emended everything he thought fit – a case quite similar to the Talmud emending the story of the New Testament. Still, modern scholarship deems the crisis to be historical, the main reason being that Josephus is witness to Philo: he probably knew by means of oral tradition that the crisis did happen.

In all likelihood, the authors of the Talmud knew by means of oral tradition of the condemnation of Jesus by the Sanhedrin as being likewise history.