Asha'man

From the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, the following text supposedly refers to the Christian Jesus:
This passage refers to both stoning and hanging. I should point out that the traditional Jewish punishment for blasphemy was exactly that: death by stoning, and then the corpse would be hung from a tree until nightfall. I’m pretty confident that this text means exactly what it says, stoning and hanging according to Jewish law, and is not an oblique reference to crucifixion. The crime is sorcery and apostasy, which I think would be something the Jews would prosecute, not the Romans.

From the Jewish Encylopedia:
I don’t know when the passage in the Talmud was actually written. Supposedly, it was sometime in the second century, but it isn’t clear when. Actually, the writing isn’t as important as the date of origin, when the story was started, even if it was passed orally. It may predate the Gospel stories, or it may be after them. I would tend to think that the earlier story is more accurate in showing the real origins of Christianity, but I don’t know which one is earlier.

It seems to me that there are only three real options:

• This passage refers to some other Yeshu, not the one that the Christians were talking about.
• The earlier story was about stoning, and the Christians changed the story when it was recorded in the Gospels.
• The earlier story was about crucifixion, and the Jews changed the story when they put it in the Talmud.

Assuming we skip the first option as uninteresting, then who changed the story, and why?

I can already speculate on a good reason for the Christians to have changed the story.

Anyone want to speculate on why the Jews might have changed the story, clearly taking the blame for Jesus’ death instead of the Romans?

Toto

Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.? goes into this passage extensively, but I don't recall the author speculating on how or why the story was changed.

Why do you think that the Jews would have changed the story? It looks to me like the early Christians updated the story for the Gospels at about the time they split off from the Jews.

Haran

Did you read all of Peter's comments? The views he expresses about the polemic nature of this text are, I believe, pretty widely accepted views in historical Jesus circles.

The Mishnah (which explained the Torah) was written down ca. the 3rd century AD and the Talmud (which explained the Mishnah) was written much later. Two versions were produced, the Jerusalem (Yerushalmi) Talmud (compiled ca. 5th century) and the Babylonian (Bavli) Talmud (compiled ca. 6th century).

The story of concern is in the Talmud and not the Mishnah, so the story might date back to the second century (as Peter writes), but not necessarily. Perhaps the polemics were already there that early (who really knows), but the story (as you can see) does not seem to have been written down in that format until the 5th century or so.

Many historical Jesus scholars are very wary of this information and only use it with qualification.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Asha'man,

Were "the Jews" responsible for the death of Jesus?

The evidence from the NT in this regard is quite mixed and contradictory, so it's very difficult to draw a firm conclusion on that basis. Generally, it seems that, according to the NT, the responsibility for Jesus' death can be divided more or less equally between the Jewish leadership and the Roman authorities.

At the same time, it does seem like the "official story" may have been changed by the Catholic editors at some point in time.

In general, I feel that the fall of Jerusalem and the Temple ca 70 CE gave a big boost to Christian propaganda and recruitment. Christian missionaries probably used these historical events as ex post facto "evidence" that "God is angry at the Jews". In a way, since the evidence of "God's anger at the Jews" was already there for all the world to see (the ruins of the Temple), citing the death of Jesus as the cause of this anger would have been only too tempting for those Christian missionaries.

Thus, regardless of whether or not the Jewish leadership was really culpable of Jesus' death, the opportunity for scoring an ideological point was there, and it was probably used by the Christians.

So it may well be that all those passages in the NT that accuse the Jews of killing Jesus (such as Acts 27:29) are quite early (i.e. dating soon after 70 CE).

(ACTS 27:29) Peter and the other apostles replied: "We must obey God rather than men! (30) The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead -- whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree."

OTOH, later on, at the time of the struggle against Marcion -- who of course wanted to dispense with the OT altogether -- it may well be that some Christian leaders may have wanted to make the Jews look somewhat better in Christian's eyes. So they may have toned down some of their accusations against the Jewish leaders. Could it be that the Catholic authorities may have also shifted at that time, i.e. mid-second century, some part of the blame for Jesus' death to the Romans?

One may object, of course, that in the 2c the Romans were at the height of their power. So why would have the Christians complicated their life, at that late stage, by accusing the Romans of killing their leader Jesus?

But they didn't really accuse them point-blank. After all, as the NT would have it, Pilate "really, really didn't want to kill Jesus", but "his hand was forced by those bad Jews".

The whole puzzle about these claims and counterclaims is certainly not for the faint-hearted. There's certainly a huge number of complications there with all these accounts. It's often said in conventional NT histories that the level of Christian anti-Judaism had been increasing as time went by, and as Christian separated from Judaism still further. But it also stands to reason that some reverse processes may have also been at work, especially in the context of anti-Marcionite struggles, which had certainly presented Christian leadership with a very considerable challenge.

So it's very difficult indeed to separate the early NT traditions from the late ones in this context.

All the best,

Yuri.

Asha'man

Thanks for the link to Did Jesus Live 100 B.C. Fascinating reading, and I'm not done yet.

Actually, I can't imagine why the Jews would have changed the story. I thought some xians might suggest something.

I'm already convinced that the stoning/hanging is the earlier version of things, and that the Christians changed it. I was looking for counter-arguments.