Asha'man

If you want to follow this path of thinking, then you should know that Jewish writings mention just such an extremist Jewish Rabbi named Jesus. However, he lived about 100 BCE, and was stoned to death (not crucified) around 78 BCE by a Jewish queen, not the Romans. Also, certain portions of the Gospel accounts of the crucifiction are more consistant with a stoning and hanging according to Jewish law, and seem highly unlikely if Roman law was being followed.

the_cave

Kind of an exaggeration...

The struggle for what?

Jehanne

See this:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1630galileo.html

And, this:

http://catholicintl.com/epologetics/...eocentrism.htm


See this:

http://www.carlsagan.com/revamp/carlsagan/baloney.html

Regards,

Don

tracer

There's an even simpler explanation.

For about 20 years after the death of Elvis Presley, bereaved fans reported sporadic "Elvis sightings" across the country.

What they were seeing, of course, were quick glimpses people who happened to look somewhat like Elvis Presley from a distance. To the True Believers, they were convinced they really were seeing Elvis and that he wasn't dead. Pretty soon, the rumors were flying, and Elvis became a mainstay of The Weekly World News.

If that had happened in an age before mass communications, and even before the invention of the printing press, it wouldn't take long for these rumors to achieve the status of "historical fact" by repetition.

Magdlyn

The Jews had a "queen" post the destruction of Jerusalem? Where did she live and what was her name? Sources please?

Toto

It's BCE, not CE. It's Queen Helene.

Did Jesus Live 100 BC? discusses it, or check out

Toledoth Yeshu

Magdlyn

Oh, sorry, I read that wrong.


Is Queen Helene (a Greek Jewish queen?) mentioned in one of the links you cite?

Lucretius

Going off the point slightly perhaps but recently I saw a news item here in the UK on the BBC that said it was the "anniversary of the day Elvis ALLEGEDLY died"
Now this is susposedly a respected broadcaster and I was just so amazed that they could be suggesting that there was any doubt about Elvis' death,so heres some possible evidence that even now such "non death" or "resurrection" stories can still exist ,a historian from the future only having this reference might infer that the belief in Elvis' death was not common

Notsri

This is kind of a complex issue, but to try and simplify it some: This Jesus from 100 BCE is mentioned only once in rabbinic literature, specifically in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 107b. At some point he was confused with the Jesus of Christianity. I'm not sure anyone knows why or how this happened, other than for the fact that they had the same name and both were deemed heretics; maybe there's nothing more to it than precisely that. Ultimately the Jewish medieval pseudo-gospel, the Toledot Yeshu, appropriated this error for itself, placing Jesus' life during the reign of King Jannaeus, ca. 100 BCE, yet drawing quite a bit from the NT as well. In any event I think most today would say that Jesus Christ is not to be confused with this Jesus from 100 BCE.


The Jewish queen ("Queen Helene") had a hand in Jesus' death only according to the Toledot Yeshu; and there Jesus is hanged, not stoned. You're probably thinking of the talmudic Ben Stada references, which do record his death by stoning, but do not (despite past confusion, once again) refer to Jesus. I would recommend Rabbi Morris Goldstein's book, Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, to you and anyone who's interested in researching this further. The only problem is that it's currently out-of-print, though you might be able to find a used copy at Alibris.com or Abebook.com.


Such as?

Asha'man

Yea, I’m aware that it’s complex. However, if you speculate that the Jesus of Nazareth in the Bible never existed the way the story was told, but still was prompted by a real person, then this earlier Jesus is a possible candidate for a that real person. It might be just a case of confusing two people with the same name, or it might not. Without some serious discoveries of ancient writings to set the record straight, the best we can have now is informed speculation.

The traditional Jewish punishment for blasphemy (and several other crimes) was death by stoning, followed by hanging the corpse from a tree as a warning. According to the law, the corpse must be taken down by sunset and buried, or it will become a curse upon the land. Since tradition and law required both stoning and hanging, I would expect that referring to one would easily cause both to be understood.

First, the Gospels have fragments of a real trial for Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Many of the details are inaccurate according to the law, but it sure looks like he was found guilty of blasphemy before a group of Jewish Priests. The trial before Pilate, on the other hand, is a travesty of logic and storytelling. Pilate’s actions follow neither the law of the land, his character as recorded by history, or even simple logic. He finds Jesus innocent of any crime against Rome, pronounces him innocent several times, and yet kills him apparently because of fear of an angry crowd. Clearly, the trial is an utter fiction, most likely composed with the goal of shifting the blame for Jesus’ death.

Given a crucifixion under Roman law, Jesus would be expected to live for days, and the corpse would have been left on the cross until it essentially rotted off. Under Jewish law, it was a corpse that was hanged, so being dead on the first day is expected, and it would have been buried by nightfall. The story had Jesus unexpectedly dead on the first day and buried by nightfall, both of which match Jewish tradition more than Roman. The idea that Pilate, the ruthless tyrant that we know him to be, gave permission for Jesus to be buried against tradition is simply absurd.

There are also several references to Jesus in the context of hanging on a tree, rather than nailed to a cross. (Acts 5:30, Acts 10:39, Acts 13:29, 1 Peter 2:24, Galatians 3:13) Some Christian apologetics assume that this is actually a euphemism for the crucifixion, but I see no reason to reject the literal meaning, given that hanging from a tree was actually part of Jewish capitol punishment. Note the first two passages listed above explicitly mention “slew and hanged on a tree.�

Weather or not Jesus existed, I’m certain the story went through several revisions and layers of editing. I strongly suspect that at least one of the early versions of this story looked very similar to the Jesus of 100 BCE, where a blasphemer was stoned and then hanged. How this story then merged with other ideas remains vague, but it makes far more sense than accepting the Gospels stories to be essentially true as written.