So you’re saying they were very naughty boys?
I am sure the post misses some messiahs. For example,
Yet in the “Book of Samuel” there is a tale of how, bowing to popular demand, Samuel anointed one Saul as basically king of Israel, but this could not have happened after David because the latter shows up as a young man in the second half of the first book.
Yeah, i meant to correct that. Saul was the first Messiah, not David.
Anyway, the point is that “Messiah”, in the common parlance, meant “chosen to be king of Israel”, with the implication that that king would throw off the yoke of Rome. So of course Rome executed everyone who claimed to be the Messiah.
What people are failing to understand is how Roman administration worked in practice in a Roman province.
Things were done according the law. The law mattered. A governor could not act arbitrarily or outside the law. We are talking here of peacetime, since in open warfare law did not apply. But Judea was not at war, and the law did apply.
Pilate was eventually dismissed and sent to Rome to be judged by the Emperor, because he had executed people without trial – people who were not Roman citizens, and who were the leaders of armed men who fought against Roman soldiers who were preventing them from gathering at Mount Gerizim. The Samaritans complained to Pilate’s superior, and the complaint was upheld. He should have held a proper public trial, where they were entitled to legal representation, and entitled to argue their case publicly.
The law actually mattered in Rome. I can’t stress this enough.
Roman Law dealt with actions, not words. You could say you were a king, in fact you could even say you were the Emperor, and people would just laugh at you. But if you had an army at your back, or you acted to claim power, that was a very different thing.
The Zealot leaders who claimed to be messiahs, or who were thought by their followers to be messiahs, were taking violent action against Rome. It was the action that mattered, not their title.
In the case of Jesus, he repeatedly refused to deny that he had claimed to be a king, yet Pilate still said that he had committed no crime and wanted to release him.
Heresy did not exist as a crime in Roman religion. There were no standard or fixed beliefs. The Roman view was that if you offended a deity, then it was up to that deity to punish you, not up to human beings.
The threat to report Pilate to the Emperor for not acting against a man who called himself a king, was an empty one. No Roman authority would have taken that seriously unless Jesus had acted to undermine Roman rule.
We can’t know what Pilate’s thinking was that prompted him to execute Jesus in the end. One thing we do know about Pilate, from his whole ten year administration, is that he couldn’t stand religious fanatics. The fact that the Temple authorities were asking him to execute Jesus, would in itself have made him reluctant to do so.
Perhaps he came to the conclusion that Jesus, being a Jew, was subject to Jewish law, which operated alongside Roman law in Judea. He was found guilty of a Jewish crime of heresy after a Jewish trial, but the Temple authorities were not allowed to execute him (or anyone else for any reason). That was why they brought him to Pilate in the first place. Pilate probably argued that whether Jesus was guilty of a Roman crime or not was immaterial, and whether Pilate himself disagreed with it was immaterial, since Jesus was subject to Jewish law in this case, not to Roman law. Therefore the Temple authorities had a right to request his execution.
The historical records of the time show us virtually nothing, actually.
We have basically no direct biography of Jesus written by a non-religious author who was contemporary to Jesus. The closest we have are the writings of Josephus, who was a Jew that “Romanized” and allied with the Roman authorities during the Jewish Wars (it was common throughout the Empire for most of its history for some portion of the “native” population to basically “Romanize”, meaning adopt either Latin or Greek as their primary language, adopt Roman customs etc.) Joseph wrote a decent history of this time of troubles, and provides a non-Christian and close to contemporary historical source for some figures mentioned in the New Testament. Notably however his references to Jesus, are fairly scant (and one is considered to not be genuine and to have been added by later Christian scribes), but he does have a brief account of figures like John the Baptist and other people mentioned in the various books of the New Testament.
Josephus was not quite contemporary to Jesus, he was born right around the time Jesus would have died, and wrote his works some 30-40 years later.
Large sections of the New Testament were not even likely written contemporary to Jesus.
The four Gospels which do contain biographical details on the life of Jesus were written at their earliest around 65-75 AD by Mark (commonly regarded as the first written gospel), John believed to have been written/revised over a longer period from the 70s to early 100s AD, Matthew written around 80 AD and Luke around 110 AD. You also have to take into account these gospels are specifically religious texts written by early Christians who were not historians, not serving a historical purpose, and who themselves could not have been direct source witnesses for any of the stories themselves.
Paul’s epistles (14 books of the 27 book New Testament–although the authorship of 7 of the 14 are in question) were written by someone who lived contemporary to Jesus, but Paul is anything but a neutral observer to history–and Paul never directly met Jesus or witnessed any of the events of his life.
As best we can tell there was a prophet/preacher who took on students in Ancient Judaea, he was Jewish, and likely all of his early students were Jewish as well. A form of cult or sect of Judaism developed around him, whether he ever proclaimed himself the Messiah during his lifetime, or was even executed for that, is absolutely unknown. I mentioned previously there are two mentions in the works of Josephus to Jesus, one the Testimonium Flavianum asserts that he was the Messiah and put to death for proclaiming such–this work is almost universally believed to have been inserted into the works of Josephus by later Christian scribes, and to not be authentic. There is later mention of Jesus in Josephus writings that is believed to be genuine, and that makes little sense by itself unless there was elsewhere a reference to Jesus, so there is a belief that ~4th century Christians basically took whatever was actually written by Josephus, rewrote it to match Christian orthodox teachings of the time, and that no record remains of what was originally there. So, it’s hard or basically impossible to really know what was there.
My opinion is there was a Jesus, and he was crucified. Paul who was contemporary to Jesus (but again, not acquainted with him in life), I think would have been going a bridge to far to have just invented the entire religion out of whole cloth if there hadn’t been some Jesus to generate the initial Jewish sect. I have long suspected, as have many theological scholars far beyond my knowledge–that at least some elements of Jesus story have been merged with those of John the Baptist, who likely has had part of his story subsumed into that of Jesus.
The only reason Christianity is a major world religion today is because of Saul of Tarsus AKA Paul the Apostle. There is in my opinion no chance Christianity evolves to be anything other than a niche Jewish sect without him, likely one that would have not survived the Jewish wars that were coming along in due course, and probably one that would be almost entirely forgotten to history. Instead, it’s the world’s largest religion–this is because of Paul.
I don’t believe Paul was insincere in his beliefs, or “manufactured” the religion, but I do believe his unique background lead him to “craft” the religion in a way that insured its long-term success. A few key points:
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Paul was an educated and devout Jew, but also well acquainted with the Roman world, AFAIK he spent much of his life in Asia Minor and knew how to interact well with Gentiles
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Paul was a Pharisee (a school of thought in Judaism of the time), and had been specifically educated in Jewish law and theology. He likely had an upper-class background and some have suggested he was a member of Herod the Great’s extended family. This back ground of being dually a worldly citizen of Rome and a devout, well educated in theology religious Jew created a very unique set of competencies in Paul.
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At the Jerusalem Council, Paul established that Christianity is for all, not just Jews. He rejected the application of Mosaic Law / Levitical law as requirements for salvation, and specifically rejected the idea that Christians need to be circumcised. In this, Paul cleaved away from Judaism the many laws and cultural practices that made it something mass numbers of Romans would never accept.
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Paul had created a theology and religion that had great appeal. In contrast to traditional pagan folk religions spread throughout the region, which taught that you had to make regular sacrifices to appease the Gods, who were never entirely reliable, Paul taught that Jesus had been the one true God made manifest in flesh, and by performing the ultimate sacrifice had made any further sacrifices unnecessary, that by faith in him one could be granted salvation and eternal life, the resurrection of Jesus being seen as a guarantee of a believer’s own resurrection in heaven. Paul is also believed to have promulgated the concept that communion and baptism are rituals that serve as spiritual union with Christ. Pauline Christianity promises no rewards on earth other than those of living a Godly life, but they promise a guaranteed ultimate reward in heaven. They also taught, in a world with almost no social mobility and extreme class inequity, that the wealthiest man was no higher in God’s eyes than the poorest, that even the worst sinner was never beyond redemption, that the prostitute in the street was no lower in God’s eyes than Caesar.
I think these things broadly created an effective religion that had two important aspects for spreading: one is “virality”, or how appealing the beliefs are to others. The other is fanaticism, Christianity created fanatical believers. Fanaticism is not unique to Christianity, and is found in all religions, but Christian fanaticism was dramatic and extreme compared to typical Roman religious practice.
Tertullian who saw it from both ends–first as a pagan Roman who persecuted Christians, and later as a convert–he said:
I think there is some evidence that Tertullian’s description of the spread of Christianity is accurate. Roman brutality did little to stop its spread–and very likely may have intrigued Romans who wondered about this strange sect that rejected all the Gods and inspired in its believers a willingness to die for their beliefs.
It should be noted that Christianity wasn’t operating in a vacuum for becoming the replacement to “Hellenic” Paganism. Mithraism was a mystery religion that emerged roughly at the same time as Christianity (it is only documented as being around as early as the late 1st century, so slightly later than Christianity), that was somewhat derived from Persian Zoroastrianism. Note that Christianity itself, at least in my opinion, almost certainly represents some influence of Zoroastrianism in its beliefs. But Mithraism was limited by its origin as a Roman “mystery religion”, there were commonly religions in the Roman Empire that were operated in secret, and that you had to know someone to join. Part of it was because frankly them being mysterious was part of their appeal and paradoxically attracted members, part of it was keeping peace with mainstream cultural religions and social traditions. Mithraism never emerged much from being a mystery cult so wasn’t geared to compete.
Manichaeism which is yet another Zoroastrianism derived religion (arguably a Zoroastrian heresy mixed with some Gnostic beliefs), was coming on strong in the 300s and was also a competitor for replacing Paganism in the Empire (St. Augustine was a Manichean in his youth.) As best we can tell Manichaeism declined partially because of the same type of persecution that Christianity persisted through.
We could apply Occam’s razor, and guess that the Temple Authorities, who operated under the auspices of their Roman overlords, alerted Pilate to new seditious groups that came to their attention. Whether Jesus himself intended to challenge the Roman state, he must have looked like the leader of a seditious band of armed men. After all, they called him the messiah, and that was what “messiah” MEANT at the time, it meant someone who claimed the mantle of the king of the Jewish state who would be led by the Jewish God to free it from occupation by outsiders.
Of course all of this is based on the writings of non-contemporary followers of his sect. So it may or may not have reflected Jesus’s actual activities. For all we know maybe he did foment a small failed rebellion but it didn’t fit the narrative that his followers wanted to believe of him and so didn’t get passed down to the writers of the gospels. I’m pretty sure that if the deification of Trump takes off in a big way, his followers will leave the Jan 6th insurrection out his holy book, and describe his persecution as wholly without reason. (Not that I think Jesus shares even the slightest quality with Trump.)
It’s true that Paul was influential in this decision, but you’re giving him far too much credit. It was actually Peter who was the most influential voice on that side of the debate (Acts chapter 15 devotes a significant portion of space to Peter’s speech). In addition, it was James the Just (the half-brother of Jesus) who made the final decision.
Possibly, but remember we don’t really think we have any of the surviving works of Peter to this day, while we do of Paul–and Paul’s epistles make it clear he rejected the heresy of the Judaizers, it’s one of the things he is most significantly known for, in fact.
Well, no; “Messiah” doesn’t just mean anointed. The word for a person who is the subject of an anointing is pronounced “mashuach” (CH is a glottal fricative, like in CHanukah). The awaited martial leader prophesied in the scriptures is “mashiach.” There’s a common derivation-- mashiach is also a noun from “to be anointed,” but I’m pretty sure (there are native Hebrew speakers who can correct me) the difference is that the “I” sound implies the future. In any event, they are different words.
David was a mashuach, but not the mashiach.
A lot of people have been proposed as mashiach, who did not turn out to be, but no one regarded the proposal as blasphemy. Cyrus of Persia, who did actually free the Jews from captivity in Babylon to return to Judah, was suggested as mashiach, and he wasn’t even Jewish.
To suggest someone was mashiach, or to claim to be, was not blasphemy. But to organize a rebellion against Rome was a crime. To do so under the banner of mashiach was not blasphemy, but Rome may have perceived it as a greater threat.
The sanhedrin members at the time of the Roman occupation were Roman puppets. I am entirely speculating, but it is doubtful that the sanhedrin would contradict Rome. If the Romans wanted someone gone, the sanhedrin was likely to make it more palatable to the Jews by trumping up a blasphemy charge. Whatever is was, though, it wasn’t claiming to be mashiach. However, it could have been the way he made the claim, if he did something like pronounce the name of G-d-- more likely, though, it was desecration of the Temple. I’m not saying the desecration charge might not have included the detail that he did so while claiming to be mashiach, but that would just be a detail of motive, not something that bore directly on the crime.
Remember, Hebrew does not really have past and future, only perfective and imperfective 
And when forming nouns, “i” vs “u” affects the transitivity depending on whether the supposed stem is perfect or imperfect.
I will not pretend to have more than a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, but it is true that the pattern of “mashiach”, when referring to a person, can represent a quality (duration in a state) or occupation. [See Gesenius §84a]. Which does sound appropriate for an awaited martial leader. Also isn’t “ch” (heth) here a pharyngeal fricative??
Yup. Because (as I’m sure you meant) the term had nothing to do with claiming to be divine; which would indeed have been considered blasphemy.
Unlike Jesus, though, we have video.
Even if trump (pbuh) manages to make it illegal to be untrump (punishment: death) there will still be secret copies kept, watched in basements by the believers. If caught, they will martyr themselves because they know the truth and it cannot be suppressed.
Just wanted to say I noticed I hadn’t seen you @RivkahChaya in a while and missed you. Glad to see you!
Not at all. Pilate was, if not on Tiberius’s shit list, very high on the “should I really leave him alive” list, especially after the fall of Sejanus (Pilates patron and noted anti-semite). The last think Pilate needed was a complaint from the locals, over some esoteric piece of religious law that no one in Rome cared a jot about. You did not want to be the idiot who started a rebellion.
Not unexpected. We have precisely one contemporary mention of Hannibal. Everything else dates from later or survives only as a quote in subsequent work. There is no mention of Pompeii and Herculaneum, an event that took place a few decades after the cruxification, and besides Pliny the Youngers letters, only scant few mentions of the eruption elsewhere (Josephus mentions it offhand, is one example I can recall err off hand). There would obviously have been a lot written about the latter two examples, but the passage of time means little will have survived. There would have been some stuff written about Jesus as well, but again not much or any contemporary Roman texts would be expected to survive.
We don’t need to imagine, we have an Arabic translation of Josephus which doesn’t have that passage.
People who were in danger from Sejanus and Tiberius were powerful people in Rome, not minor provincial governors.
What we know (from Philo) is that there was an incident where Pilate installed some dedicatory plaques in Herod’s palace in Jerusalem. He was careful to ensure that these plaques didn’t have any images on them, since any images of any kind were forbidden in the city.
(Jews at the time had the same kind of attitude towards images in religious settings that Muslims have today. In particular, no depictions whatsoever of people or animals were allowed anywhere in Jerusalem. In fact, when the Temple was built there was a huge fuss even about decorations of leaves and greenery on some of the walls.)
However, there was an objection about the plaques anyway, probably because they were dedications to Roman deities. The Jewish authorities wrote to Tiberius, who angrily ordered Pilate to remove them and put them in the Temple of Augustus in Caesarea instead – which he did.
So a threat to complain to Rome about Pilate violating Jewish laws by refusing to execute a condemned Jewish heretic would have been taken seriously, but not a complaint about someone calling himself a leader, if he had not been engaging in any anti-Roman activity.
I think we are in agreement. If Pilate refused to allow his execution and in doing so unnecessarily pissed off the High priest and other influentials, he would have been in trouble. Even if he had to use a legal fiction of “rebellion against Rome” to get it done.
I don’t agree. I think that’s Christian propaganda from trying to suck up to Rome.
Israel was constantly on the edge of revolt, and doing anything that might incite the people to open rebellion would have been a problem with Rome. So desecrating the temple by posting homage to false gods within it would certainly have gotten Pilate in trouble.
But failing to execute someone?
By the time of Jesus, Israel had pretty much abandoned its death penalty. The talmud says:
The Mishnah outlines the views of several prominent first-century CE rabbis on the subject:
“A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called a murderous one. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah said, ‘Or even once in 70 years.’ Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiba said, ‘If we had been in the Sanhedrin, no death sentence would ever have been passed’; Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel said, ‘If so, they would have multiplied murderers in Israel.’”[27][28]
Now, wikipedia goes on to say that this is controversial:
The Talmud notes that “forty years before the destruction of the [Second] Temple, capital punishment ceased in Israel.”[29] This date is traditionally put at 28 CE, a time that corresponds with the 18th year of Tiberius’ reign. At this time, the Sanhedrin required the approbation of the Roman procurator of Judea before they could punish any malefactor by death. Other sources, such as Josephus, disagree. The issue is highly debated because of the relevancy to the New Testament trial of Jesus.[30][31] Ancient rabbis did not like the idea of capital punishment, and interpreted the texts in a way that made the death penalty virtually non-existent.
But that passage of the Mishnah was written around 100ce, before Christianity was very important. And it’s not as if ancient Israel was gung-ho about executing heretics. An entire tribe of heretics ( the Samaritans ) lived within their borders, and they made no attempt to wipe them out.
On the other hand, Israel was rife with Messiah wannabees at the time, and Rome was very diligent in executing them, as they were seen as attempting to lead insurrections. I have no doubt that the Jewish authorities of the time, who wanted to stay in the good graces of Rome, cooperated in turning over Messiahs to Rome for execution. But it wasn’t because they were heretics, it was because they were a threat to civil stability.
It wasn’t the Temple, it was in Herod’s palace (where probably Pilate was living) that he put up those plaques.
On the death penalty, the Jewish Virtual Library says that theory and practice differed, and people were definitely executed by the Sanhedrin, even in contradiction to theoretical views on the death penalty.
That the Sanhedrin had the power of inflicting the death sentence and that they exercised it is historically attested. Herod was arraigned before it on a capital charge, although he was enabled to escape and avoid the penalty (Jos., Ant., 14:168–70). Judah b. Tabbai admitted that he had wrongly sentenced a perjured witness to death (TJ, Sanh. 6:4, 23a–Tosef., Sanh. 6:6). The son of his colleague, Simeon b. Shetaḥ, was also wrongly condemned to death through false witness, and when the witnesses confessed their perjury the condemned man refused to take advantage of it lest his father, the head of the Sanhedrin, be accused of favoritism, and he went to his death, though innocent (TJ, loc. cit.). It is also clear from an incident vividly described by Simeon b. Shetaḥ that the laws of evidence were strictly adhered to (Tosef., Sanh. 8:3). One anonymous case is cited in the same context. “It happened that a man was being led to his execution. They said to him, ‘Say, "May my death be an atonement for all my sins.’” He replied ‘May my death be an atonement for all my sins, except for this one (for which I have been sentenced to death). If I am guilty of it, may my death not be an atonement, and the Bet Din and all Israel shall be guiltless’" (the version in the Babylonian Talmud adds “but may the witnesses never be forgiven”"). When the matter was reported to the sages, their eyes filled with tears, but they said, “It is impossible to reverse the decision, since the matter is endless; [he must be executed] but his blood is on the necks of the witnesses” (TJ Sanh. 6:5, 23a).
Nevertheless, in none of those cases is the manner of execution given and the remarkable fact emerges that in the two cases cited where the mode of execution is explicitly stated the verdicts were extra-judicial. One was the action of Simeon b. Shetaḥ in sentencing 80 women in Ashkelon to hanging for witchcraft (Sanh. 6:4, cf. Sanh. 46a. Derembourg suggests that Simeon b. Shetaḥ is a mistake for the Hasmonean), while of the other it is stated: “It once happened that during the Greek period a man was sentenced to death by stoning for riding a horse on the Sabbath. Not that he was liable to death, but because the special circumstances of the time demanded it” (Sanh. 46a).
What is perhaps the most cogent evidence that the talmudic discussions on the death sentence did not reflect the actual practice is provided by a third instance. In Sanhedrin 7:2 R. Eleazar b. Zadok gave evidence of an actual case of death by burning which differed diametrically from that given by the Mishnah. The answer was given that “the Sanhedrin at that time was not competent.” In the Tosefta (9:11) and the Jerusalem Talmud (7:2, 24b) Eleazar b. Zadok vividly describes the circumstances under which he witnessed it. “I was a child and was being carried on my father’s shoulders and I saw it,” to which his colleagues replied “You were then a child, and the evidence of a child is inadmissible.” That the incident happened is therefore definite; the rabbis in the two replies were concerned with establishing their theoretical view of the law even when it conflicted with the actual practice of the past.
How do you reconcile this with Jesus rescuing the adulteress in the “cast the first stone” story?