Duvduv

I don't see the problem about the word Be-.
It was against the wall not onto the top.
However you mix several different issues altogether and it's difficult to follow.

James The Least

The Epistle of Barnabas (ch. 12) has the following passage:

"In like manner He points to the cross of Christ in another prophet, who says, And when shall these things be accomplished? And the Lord says, When a tree shall be bent down, and again arise, and when blood shall flow out of wood. Here again you have an intimation concerning the cross, and Him who should be crucified."

Barnabas presents "blood flowing out of wood" as a passage from the OT, but I cannot locate the original.

semiopen

It's quite useful if you quote the passage(s).

I assume you are discussing 21:22

I intend to look this up but the sages seem to regard the word "and" as critical. Apparently, they read this to say that the guy is put to death, and then once he is dead he is then put on the wooden thing. That looks like a possible reading, but it seems to depend on how clear the punishment for a capital offense is.

The wood thing display looks optional -

If you hang him on the wood thingy -

Seems ok to leave the body hanging in Mississippi.

Capital_and_corporal_punishment_in_Judaism

This goes through the four Talmudic types of capital punishment and why one rather than another was imposed.

These are in order by severity.

ie, Stoning was for lesser offenses like touching an animal's wiener or violating the Sabbath.

Note the awkwardness of the stoning methodology despite references in the bible to pelting with stones.

Another interesting point in the wiki -

By an amazing coincidence this would be about the day before Yoshke met his fate. It was also a moot point if only the Romans could sentence people to death anyway.

Be all this as it may,

There is no conceivable way that the Baker was hanged after he was stoned.

and the same holds true for Haman.

It seems inarguable that the meaning of TLH is impaled (or something similarly nasty) when it applies to gentile punishments.

If we accept that the bible was substantially written in the second temple period (or even during the first first temple for that matter) TLH seems to be a form of capital punishment not mentioned by the sages. Instead they tried to make things more humanitarian.

Godfrey

That doesn't make sense. Who is claiming that Jesus existed "because" he worked miracles? Most theists say he existed "and" he worked miracles. I don't see that the spurious (but relatively common) claim of miracle-working has any bearing on whether the person actually existed.

To reiterate: Peter Popoff claims to work miracles. He exists.

ph2ter

Very close sentence has The Ladder of Jacob, an apocryphal work.
And there shall be these signs at the time of his coming - a tree felled with the axe will drip blood: three-month old babies4 will speak rationally...

The source may be Isaiah 10:33 - 11-3:
10
33See, the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
will lop off the boughs with great power.
The lofty trees will be felled,
the tall ones will be brought low.
34He will cut down the forest thickets with an ax;
Lebanon will fall before the Mighty One.
11
1A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
2The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord—
3and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

also Job 14:
7“At least there is hope for a tree:
If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
and its new shoots will not fail.

Davka

I have no idea if Q is supportable. Higher Criticism has always struck me as a lot of self-important academics engaging in a mental masturbation circle-jerk. All I'm really saying is that there is insufficient evidence to come to any hard-and-fast conclusions about the genesis of Christianity. It was a chaotic time, and no doubt much information was irreparably destroyed.

Davka

"Against" the wall is probably as clear as we can get. But there are a lot of different ways that something can be thrust against a wall. I can contemptuously thrust something against a wall, leaving it leaning or slumping there. I can thrust a dagger into a wall. I can slam something hard against a wall. And so on.

The text is murky, that's what I'm trying to get at. Insisting on one specific hard-and-fast reading is absurd, because we simply don't have enough to go on. There are several different possibilities.

And that's really the bottom line when it comes to the whole "messiah (hung on/impaled on/hung from/stuck on) a (tree/wooden stake/cross)" issue. Who knows what the writers intended? Does it really matter? All we really know is that by the late 2nd century CE, the cross was being used by at least some believers as a symbol for their faith.

We also know that (a) Pauline writer apparently liked the idea that Messiah had been "cursed" by being suspended in some manner on a wooden thingamajig.

Duvduv

Anyway, the halacha is NOT impalement. It is where the hands are tied together and the body is hanged by the hands close to sunset, and the immediately removed.

As far as Haman is concerned, he was not hanged according to Jewish law, he was hanged by the noose, as was the baker in Egypt. As were ten of Haman's sons and then also his main wife (one of many) Zeresh.

There are different punishments for different offenses whereby there are TWO witnesses who are required to give precisely the same testimony in every detail in order for the punishment to be carried out,whatever the death sentence is. If there is a single detail that is a discrepancy between the two witnesses, the violator does not receive capital punishment. In fact, capital punishment was carried out very rarely at all during the life of the Sanhedrins.

It wasn't a matter of severity but a matter of the type of offense.

Anyway, if people want to get carried away with non-existent impalement in Jewish law, then as the Arabs say, Ahlan Wasahlan. Be my guest.

semiopen

I'm sure the talmud discusses what to do with a body that has no hands.

Amazingly, you think you can say this stuff without any references. How do we know how frequently capital punishment was carried out (over more than 1000 years)? Why would we believe that the Sanhedrin was the court?

Your comments about Haman and the Baker are absurd. Can you show any references that would back up your assertions that hanging was even a possible punishment in those countries during the various periods? I'm under the impression that FRDB is not a place where one can spout unsubstantiated drivel.

Hanging

If an ancient culture wanted to punish someone by death they probably would have made it as painful as possible.

Alexander_Jannaeus#Judean_Civil_War_and_the_Crucif ixion_of_the_800

The whole Wiki is pretty good. This has been mentioned here previously, while there might be some doubt about the account -

What does the Talmud say about this guy?

Duvduv

I don't understand what is absurd about people being hanged by the neck on the noose in the Book of Esther or in Genesis. If you want to bash the Book of Esther just tell me that there is no documentary evidence of a Queen Esther or Ahaseurus or Haman or Mordechai outside of Jewish sources! Why go as far as picking on the method of execution of Haman?

It states in the Talmud that if the Sanhedrin imposed capital punishment once in seventy years it would be considered a "bloody Sanhedrin." They did not impose the death penalty very often, which is more than we can say in our modern "enlightened" age. See tractate Makkot 7a.

As far as Jannaeus is concerned, the Talmud does not say that he crucified anyone. It says that he persecuted and killed the sages who escaped dto Egypt, including R. Yehoshua ben Perachia, who was accompanied by one Yeshu, the son of Yosef Pandera and Miriam.