Diogenes the Cynic

That's very creative on your part but it isn't blasphemy. The Talmud says that no one is guilty of blasphemy unless he utters te Tetragrammaton. Frgiving people is not and was not blasphemy under Jewish law. Sorry. Mark's trial also has a number of other procedural errors which betray the entire story as fiction. The "blasphemy" error is only one of many.

easychair

I disagree that when Jesus (assuming he existed) said, "Whose face is on the coin?" he was saying that taxes should be paid to Caesar.

I think he was indicating that the coin face was an idolatrous image that should be rejected according to Jewish law. His adversaries were trying to trick him into admitting that he was for tax evasion which would have been a capitol offense.

A tax rebellion against Rome would certainly have been something that Messianic rebels would have supported.

Chris Weimer

Why else would they take "up stones to cast at him" after saying "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am."

The Greek is relating Aramaic, but it is possible that Jesus uttered the Tetragammon here. How long is the tradition of the taboo of YHWH? And would a messianic leader who proclaims himself the Son of God care about such a rule? Obviously, having his disciples eat on the Sabbath is a sin of the Ten Commandments proportion, so why would he care about rabbinic (aka heirs of the Pharisees, a constant butt of his polemics) tradition?

Vorkosigan

Crispin Fletcher-Louis has argued that Mark represents Jesus as the True High Priest, and thus, his blasphemy would be asserting himself in that role. It's online at

http://www.marquette.edu/maqom/

The trial is utter bullshit, of course. My Commentary notes on it are online here

Vorkosigan

Chili

Your study is exhaustive and I am not about to get into it but you are on the right track. Jesus was the ultimate Hight Priest and as such could he not take the Nazarene vows, for example. But the trial was not bullshit because even Mark must show the mechanics that makes redemption possible and give substance to the meaning of the vows.

Let me add (once more) that the naked young man that ran away after the last Jew left was the son-of-man set free from slavery to religion so that Jesus-the-Jew could be handed over and stand convicted.

The escape of the young man itself proves that Jesus was an impostor and therefore the lion cloth served to protect this ego that was to be tried and crucified. The beauty here is that religion served its purpose and when the last Jew left they took not only religion with them but also the entire ego of Jesus-the-man (in the image of God).

The lion cloth was the fig leave that was added in Gen. 3 to identify this impostor as a second identity when "man" tripped and fell over the first dam that was placed before man, hence the second identity was called A-dam and that was removed here 'with' the departure of the last Jew.

Notice that the lion cloth is part of the Crucifix to identify the Adamic nature as opposed to the non-Adamic nature that fled here.

Diogenes the Cynic

The pdf of the Fletcher-Louis piece is too small to read on my computer. Could you summarize how he makes his case that usurping the role of the High Priest was blasphemy? I there any documentation that it was regarded as such. This would seem to contradict the Talmud.

Thanks.

dongiovanni1976x

Criminal comes from the Latin, "cernere: to judge" - and judge comes from the Latin combination of jus (law) + dicere (to say); so to paraphrase Foucault, "whatever those in power say is a crime, is criminal."
Hence Jesus was likely arrested for causing a disturbance during a tulmultuous time of the year (Passover) in a hotbed province (Judaea) known for being troublesome. Pilate's duty was to "keep the peace" and in so doing had the power to criminalize Jesus in his eyes how he saw fit.
Thus this is why the Roman historian Tacitus tells us "under Tiberius all was quiet." (But, assuming I understand what you mean ny the word 'criminal', I do not know of anything "criminal" Jesus was accused of doing- aside from what Diogenes mentioned).

Mr. Aardvark

Here is a theoretical possibility. Assuming that none of the charges brought against Jesus were death-penalty offenses at the time, instead of arguing that strongly suggests late authorship of the Gospels, perhaps the Gospel writers in fact knew that these were not death penalty offenses and that is precisely why they attributed these offenses to Jesus: to give him cover for his real crimes and create the grounds for the apologetic that he was unjustly punished. Perhaps there was more cunning here than error.

I'm not committed to this view, but I'm throwing it out for discussion.

Toto

The Acrobat reader allows you to adjust text size. 150 or 200 % makes it readable.

Vivisector

Mr. A.,

One of the many puzzles I can't get my head around - what really got Jesus crucified? The punishment was obviously something befitting robbers, insurrectionists and the like. However, it's hard for me to imagine Jesus and his band (a) fomenting an insurrection that (b) was noteworthy enough to get him crucified but (c) fly beneath Josephus's radar (unless the original, if any, TF contained more info along these lines) but of such a nature that (d) James seems to have carried on in his tradition with little if any break. I think you're right, that the Gospel authors created the charges and trial as a device to soften the actual charges against him and provide a theological basis for his death. I also think Crossan's parallels between Jesus's trial/death and the scapegoat motif are very interesting. In fact, I often wonder if the Gospel authors knew *anything* at all beyond the bare facts of his crucifixion during Pilate's prefecture.

Cheers,

V.