Steven Avery

Naah.. don't get exasperated.
With Noah, its a bit like the SuperBowl, with Shaun Alexander doing some "broken-field running".

If you can't go to the right, then try the left, or perhaps a reverse.

The Talmud and TY refers to someone else, not Jesus of the NT, but no, maybe it refers to that Jesus, but not the historical Jesus. And if it refers to the historical Jesus, then he was a magician and boiling oil and whatnot.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Amaleq13

The discussion of 1 Sam 13:1 has been split into its own thread here

noah

You see this is the problem Apikorus. You seem to think you are entitled to be right in this debate. You are not. You seem to think you can prove your point by repeating it endlessly. You can not. Mindless repitition of a point doesn not prove the point Apikorus. It detracts from it. The same goes for throwing terminolgy like the term "midrashic exapansion" around that you don't understand. You prove your point by adducing corresponding facts, data and detail which match your proof text(s) and substance of your arguments.
Yes the Talmud is not a credible historical source document. So why are you leaning on it so heavily to prove your historical assertion? This is like someone saying the man on the moon exists and using the story of Pinnochio to prove it saying the author of Pinochio was speaking in symbol and allegory.
Aaahhh! Some substance. You're actually referring to your proof text. Very good!
Couple problems here though, Appy.

1) Many people in this time and region could be said to have practiced magic. Prove it's JC they're talking about.

2) Many figures in this time and region had disciples. Prove they are referring to JC.

3) The Synoptic Gospels have Jesus being executed on Passover itself, not the eve of passover.

4) The name is not anomalous. Yeshu was quite common. So was Jesus.

5) The story is not about JC. It is about Yeshu who predates JC by about 150 yrs.

Ya , Ich kann desutsch. Kannst du? Ich wuerde mich freuen, wenn wir diese Frage auf deutsch besprechen koennten. Oder hast du "Verstehe" aus dem Woerterbuech?

God forbid we use our proof text to prove our assertion Apikorus. God forbid. This argument is false and somewhat misleading. When the Talmud talks about Abraham, you know exactly WHO it is referring to. It is referring to Abraham of the Torah. This is not the case with the character "Yeshu". All we know about the character is based on what the Talmud says. It does not make any external reference to anyone (like it does with Abraham).

LOL. Are you? After all aggadah is where the text is a jumping off point for homily just for the purpose of making a moral point.

Are you suggesting the Talmudic entry is nothing more than homily?

I had to ask around a bit before I could even find out what the term meant. In some Jewish quarters the term is not even acknowledged. Three Rabbis I asked had never heard of the term. One, Rabbi Loewnthal over at Ask Moses, had heard of the term. He said it was rarely, if ever used traditionally becuase it was so vague and could be misused to turn any Jewish text into a proof text for Christians.
More importantly, I discovered that any midrashic expansion involving Sanhedrin43a would have been noted in the commentaries. Is it Apikorus? Answer? No.
By the way none of the Rabbis I talked to, and I talked to a number of them, agreed with your interpretation of Sanhedrin 43a. Your comment please.

An example of a midrashic expansion would be in the Talmud we read that Amos the prophet makes a prophecy concerning the fall of the house of Yerovoam, and the king is informed of this.

That is recorded in Melachim.

The sages go on to say that Yerovoam had a conversation with one who brought the repost saying that the prophet was a rightous man, and that if he said it, it came from the Divine presence, and there was nothing to do. The sages go on to say that Yerovoam was rewarded for this.

The problem is that this second conversation isn't recorded anywhere. It is a Midrash used to explain why Yerovoam then was able to acquire lands and bring prosperity to his country, to say that because the prophet was not killed, and Yerovoam prospered, then a scenario must have taken place.

Of course, it is an "add in". But it was written to teach something. But we do not use this Midrash to prove that Yerovoam was a good king, because he wasn't.

There is another Midrash that speaks of a certain person (let's see if you can remember the name!) who entered the Yom Suf and it parted, and he became the leader of Yehudah.

Repeat a Midrash long enough and some people thing it is actually in Tanach. The story was to comment on something that took place later in the Torah. But we do not use Midrash to prove that this man deserved to become the head of Yehudah because of a story about what he supposedly did at the Yom Suf.

Midrash is an antire area of study, and, unfortunately, many people use it but very few people study it. And Christianity, BTW, is based on turning Midrash into prophecy, by twisting a phrase in the Tanach, which Midrashim often do, and turning it into something else, and then saying it was fulfilled!

However, unlike the Jewish Midrashim that are there to teach, their Midrashim are there to prove something.

And that's a big difference.


Additionally Apikorus. You have linked a number of times to Rabbi Gil's article about Sanhedrin 43a. Why does he make no mention of the term midrashic expansion? He knows more about Talmud than you ever will. Tell me what you know that he does not.

Secondly, how is Sanhedrin 43a proof of the histrical JC? Since when has a group of Rabbis discussing someone beeen proof of that person's existence?
Are you privvy to some esoteric proof literature (of JC's existence) the Rabbis possessed that we do not?

Thirdly is it your position based on your concept of midrashic expansion that every time someone is executed in the Talmud, it is the historical JC?

I asked Rabbi Daniel about this. He said:
Think about it Apikorus.

noah

I don't know waht your point is here Notsri. Goldstein is pretty clear. He states the characters written about in the Talmud are not Jesus. Doesn't get any clearer than that Notsri.

noah

Actually praxeus, it's right down the middle. I run north to south. I said that even if JC can be identified in one place in the Talmud, it does not mean he is everywhere or any where else in the Talmud. Pretty basic stuff praxeus. <edit>

What's the matter praxeus? <edit> Don't worry. I 'll complete it for you.
There is aplace in the Talmud where JC, Jesus, is boiling in a vat of excrement, not oil, as punishments for his sins.

By the way praxeus, you're fooling no one with your little Shalom at the end there. You're not Jewish. Jews don't believe in Jesus. None of their scriptures refer to Jesus.

Notsri

You initially said: Pp. 57-81 comprise the section entitled, "[Tannaitic] References Incorrectly Identified with Jesus." (On pp. 118-125 he addresses: "[Amoraic] References Incorrectly Identified with Jesus.")

You've overlooked several key sections:

pp. 22-56: "Authentic [Tannaitic] References"
pp. 82-93: "Indirect Allusions [in Tannaitic Literature]"
pp. 109-117: "Authentic [Amoraic] References"
pp. 126-136: "Indirect Allusions [in Amoraic Literature]"

(The text from b. Sanh. 43a, along with all the others mentioned above, is classed among his "authentic references.")

You do see the problem then, don't you?

Apikorus

Noah, please find me one instance of the name Yeshu in the Talmud outside of the ones I've already cited. If the name is as common as you say, this should be quite easy.

Can you prove this? How do we know it isn't a different Abraham? Perhaps Abraham was a common name! And if the details don't match up exactly, doesn't that prove that it couldn't have been the same Abraham?

And John's timeline is different than that in the synoptics. Do you suppose that means that John must have been writing about one of those other Jesuses?

In fact, most of the Talmudic material on Jesus is homiletic, warning of the dangers of Jews associating with Christians, etc.

The point about midrash is simply that the rabbis would invent material out of whole cloth to serve a purpose (often homiletic).

I'm sure R. Student is a nice fellow and a learned man, and indeed I respect his scholarship, but his approach to the Talmud (and the Tanakh) is severely restricted by his orthodoxy. As I said, his arguments are essentially straight out of the 12th century. Modern scholars, from Hyam Maccoby to Jeffrey Rubenstein to Shaye Cohen to the author of the Encyclopedia Judaica article I cited have a more realistic and objective approach, I find. They all agree that Jesus is referred to in the Talmud.

It isn't. No more than b. Menahot 29b is proof of the historical Moses.

No. But when the links are so strong, as I've shown (including Celsus, Tertullian, the Tosefta, the Bavli, all the way through to Toldot Yeshu), it's kind of hard to miss what is going on.

Be sure to ask Rabbi Daniel who wrote the Torah, whether Reuben lay with Bilhah, whether every Israelite birth during the Egyptian captivity was sextuplets, etc. I predict you will get some interesting answers.

Instead of asking Orthodox rabbis, why don't you read some modern scholars?

Steven Avery

Halacha is the standard in Judaism, not you, Noah. btw, when I agreed with you on Jews for Jesus, it was on the factual background of the folks, not the fraud view. Since they are most all born of Jewish mother and father, I don't want to leave the impression I agreed with that integrity accusation. I have a large distance from them on many fundamental issues, so I do not defend many of their orthodox Christian doctrines, which comes out in their ads as well, however I will defend them on integrity issues when appropriate. How you parleyed their few million in advertising and evangelism (a fair amount of money, to be sure, far more than Messianics and such) into hundreds of millions was quite a sleight of hand.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Api, did you get tired of pointing out to Noah is that your view is not that the Talmud proves a historical assertion of Jesus. Do you have 3-ignore rule or something ?

There is sort of a triangular pattern of argumentation going on here.
Or is it a moebius strip ?

Shalom,
Steven
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Apikorus

Steven, I find both these positions to be clearly wrong:

• The Christian Jesus is nowhere mentioned in the Talmud.
• The Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible is error-free.

I think a far more compelling case can be made for the first case than the second, but ultimately both are foolish. They reflect more on the religious stance of their supporters than anything else.