SLD

Hunnnh??

Since when did the Jews leave it to the Romans to enforce their Jewish laws? If they wanted him executed they could just as well have done so themselves - and they could have followed their own Jewish laws to do so, executing Jesus by stoning him or other Jewish methods of execution. IIRC, there are absolutely no records of the Jews ever crucifying their own, or turning over their own to be crucified by the Romans. Nor would the Romans bother with enforcing Jewish religious laws that Jesus allegedly broke. The very fact that he was crucified points to who did it and why: he was crucified by the Romans for sedition against the state. That's what the Romans did to those who rebelled against their rule.

SLD

godfry n. glad

I don't think this is correct. IIRC, there was a politico-religious civil war around the time of Alexander Janneaus, where the authorities had large numbers of dissenting Pharisees crucified.

Also, IIRC, the Romans took the "privilege" of imposing capital punishment on their own away from the Judean authorities, but that may have happened after the time of the reputed execution of the reputed Jesus. After that, capital punishment would have been imposed either informally (murder, as with the Sicari) or by the Romans.

godfry

contracycle

As I recall, crucifixion is not just "capital punishment" but a particular form of punishment reserved for crims against the state. Which would m,ake it all the more perplexing that it was employed for what is alleged to be an essentially internal dispute in the Hebrew church.

My (Anglican) aunt has a lovely theory about what happened to Jesus. Having been to the ancient 'university' of Juggernaught in India, she reports that the priests their claimed to have a coffin inscribed "Jesu" which, they say, is Jesus. The theory is that his missing years are spent in India learning a variety of herbal concoctions and eastern somatic disciplines. He this survives the cross by employing "suspended animation" and doping himself to the gills; his subsequrent ascension through the clouds is a metaphor for returning to India, where he died happy and old. In which case, nobody killed jesus, he escaped.

Radcliffe Emerson

Number one, the bible is fiction, nothing more, nothing less. No other writings from those periods support the bible at all.
Number two, the methods of crucificion are what is officially taught in Christian seminaries now. An acquaintance of mine was ordained as a Methodist minister, and he told several of us about this kind of stuff. They know historically that bodies were left on the wood until they rotted away, then thrown to the dogs.
That is historical fact, not make-believe crap like the bible.
Number three, I question ANY account made up by humans in history about someone rising from the dead. It has never happened, never will. When you die, you're gone, pure an simple.
If someone was in a coma and revived, ancients would believe they had returned from the dead.
Ancients made up gods to explain the world around them. As humans learned more (and continue to learn through science), those myths collapse and fade away.
All of the attributes given Jesus are simply taken from earlier pagan beliefs and tacked onto Jesus' legend.
And by the way, most of the miraculous crap grew decades later as ordinary humans wrote the stories that became the gospels and added their own myths to them.
Paul is the first to write about Jesus and while mentioning the cruficion, he says nothing about the virgin birth, physical resurrection, raising of the dead, feeding the thousands, or any of that stuff that is myth.
I personally believe Paul invented Jesus to gain followers and sponge off of them so he wouldn't have to work for a living, much like tv evangelists do today. Paul made have taken instances of a man who was killed by the Romans for starting an insurrection, and naming him Jesus. Paul reinterpreted a revolutionary movement with mystical overtones.
Doesn't anyone ever wonder why Paul is always vague on his references? He always say things like "Several people were there, they saw it" and doesn't name names, dates, where folks could go to ask those people. Any journalist making that comment today (well except on Fox News) wouldn't be taken credibly at all.
Why doesn't anyone care that the earliest followers of the alleged Jesus, the ones who would have known him, did not believe he was divine, did not believe in a physical resurrection, virgin birth, or eternal damnation?
Oh, yeah, I guess they were blinded by Satan, which is why the godly emperor Constantine had to declare them heretics and have most of them killed.
geesh

AndresDeLaHoz

Yeah, saying "put to death by the jews" was probably not the most sensitive way to go. I asked the question because I was discussing the movie "The Passion" on some other board and the question of anti-semitism came along. Since I realized I knew nothing about that aspect of the Jesus story, much less how it actually fitted with the reality of the 1st century, I asked it here. No, I didn't ask it to make it seem as if the Jesus story is evil and anti-semitic. I probably should have asked "does the death of jesus by jews make sense historically", but I'm not smart in the morning.

godfry n. glad

The Roman state.

Prior to the arrival of the Romans in the Levant, the state and the "church" amongst the "Hebrews" were one in the same. Pre-Roman Judea has often been typified as a "temple state", where the highest authority was the High Priest.

This page has a nice overview of the Judean Hasmonean dynasty, including Alexander Jannaeus, although I won't vouch for its accuracy. It includes this charming detail about AJ:


Charming, eh? But still, it is _an_ incident of the Judean authorities...i.e., the High Priest...using crucifiction as a method of execution of fellow Judeans.


Yeah, a charming little tale with very little to recommend it.

godfry

Doctor X

I do not know . . . I rather like this:

and I will remember it. It has about as much likelihood of him rising from the dead and wandering about.

It reminded me of a "gospel" given with some humor by a mentor. He tried to explain how stories rise to "explain" other stories or possible events. I agree that if any historicity exists in the NT--Synoptics specifically--it has to do with "difficult" traditions--"why did the Romans execute him?" "Roman?!! No . . . no . . . no it was the Jews . . . yes . . . them."

Anyways, he "proclaimed" that Junior claimed to be able to destroy the Temple. He went there, "tried"--it failed--a riot insued. The Romans arrested people--and dealt with trouble in their wonderfully efficient manner.

A "Judas"--seeing that Junior could not do what he claimed--angrily turned "state's evidence." A "Peter" denied he knew Junior--"what? Me?!!" The Romans dispatched Junior.

Evidence? What? You want evidence? You have eyes but do not hear!

Basically, it "solves" some stories. THAT in and of itself does not make it true anymore than sitting back and proclaiming the stories ARE true by some fiat. Mt and Lk never intended to be in a book with Mk--or one another. We have them and we can see the mythmaking--Mt and Lk create their own birth narratives to "solve" problems and lend legitimacy.

At best, I think, we can only look at what was the "most likely."

We really know very little. Perhaps that is what allowed the mythmaking to blossum and remain popular today. Or . . . to quote another mentor:

--J.D.

Diotima

Very interesting! I will not get into the discussion of the historicalness of Jesus and I will do my best to be brief

The fact that despite the plethora of literary evidence for crucifixion over the centuries in the ancient world, the direct anthropological evidence amounts to but one case,is a problem indeed.

To my knowledge there are two possibilities. One is that most victims were actually tied to the cross. In Byzantine Art that I am quite aware of, the Bad and the Good thieves are depicted tied to the cross despite the fact that the Gospels do not describe how they were affixed on the cross. Many scholars have argued that crucifixion, was actually a bloodless form of death because the victims were tied to the cross...

I know that some of you will point out the extract of Josephus where he mentions that " In the fall of Jerusalem , the (Roman) soldiers out of rage and hatred amused themselves by nailing their prisoners in different postures."

I think that the number of individuals being crucified may in fact determine the manner in which the execution took form.

If, as in the case with the account of 6,000 prisoners of war being crucified along the Appian Way as part of a victory celebration it would seem plausible that the most quick and efficient manner was employed. That would be to simply tie the victim to the tree or cross with his hands suspended directly over his head. Death would occur within minutes or perhaps an hour if the victims feet were not nailed or tied down. ( Doctors can explain this)

While this would explain the lack of any direct evidence on the human skeleton when tied to the cross, it would not explain the lack of evidence when the victim was nailed.

This latter issue is best explained by the fact that nails of a victim crucified were among some of the most powerful medical amulets in antiquity and thus removed from the victim following their death.

This is attested to by the Mishriaic passage 10 which states that both Jews and Amorites (colloquium for non-Jews) may carry a flail or whip from a crucifixion as a means of healing. For the Jews, this was even, according to some Rabbis, permitted on Shabbath when Jews were normally forbidden to carry object. As this Mishnaic passage mentions both Jews and non-Jews carrying these objects, one can infer the power of these amulets.

Now, I hope I am allowed to attempt a personal interpretation of the Gospel although I do not claim originality. It was vital for the authors to have a body... if the body of Jesus was left to rot on the cross, then the resurrection would be a problem to explain. This is the reason until our days, the Ortodox Greek Church refuses to cremate the dead. The dead needs its body to meet God in the Day of Judgment.


Doctor X

In case you mean execution by crucifixion , you are very correct. After reading your post I did a TLG search to see what the ancient authors had to say about "stavrosis" crucifixion in Greek....to my surpise apart from the famous extract from Plutarchus the system gave me the reference of Curtius Rufus according to which Alexander the Great had 2.000 survivors from the seige of Tyre crucified on the shores of Mediterranean!!! I didn't know that I must confess...

BTW I am glad to be here.... this forum was suggested to me by a poster I know from the other forum where I post dressed as a famous queen... I have been lurking here for some time now until I heard the voice of my lord calling me...

Ted Hoffman

Over 800 assembled....
Then all 800 were crucified?

So, what was it - 800 or over 800?
Who was counting? They weren't 807? or 899? 0r 1200?

This is like the account of Jesus drowning 2000 pigs. Round figures set my skeptik bells ringing - its an indication of lack of historical accuracy.

Diotima

Probably you are right but the best way to proceed with ancient texts, in my opinion, is to project them in their historical context.

For example , what we learn in the passage you quote, is not the number of the crucified Pharisses but that the crucifixion was in practice in Alexander's era...