It’s not possible and that’s not the only problem with the story.
The Sanhedrin could only meet during the day, only at the temple, never on the sabbath and definitely not on a holy day like Passover. Matthew has the Sanhedrin meeting at the house of the high priest on Passover night. This would be akin to the US Supreme Court convening at the chief justice’s home on Christmas Eve.
The Sanhedrin was also required to wait 24 hours between trial and verdict. Verdict is pronounced on Jesus immediately.
Most problematic (IMO) is the fact that the Sanhedrin convicts Jesus of blaphemy when Jesus had said nothing blasphemous under Jewish law.
Not to sound like ** Fuel ** Diogenes, but isn’t the blasphemy Jesus’ claim that he is the son of Yahweh? I am not, nor have I ever been, a fundamentalist believer in Christianity… but I do think that the statement from Jesus acknowledging that he claimed to be the son of Yahweh is where the blasphemy lies.
And thank you for your clarifications to my post. I spent three years in college arguing with my formerly Southern Baptist roommate that the Sanhedrin could not have met, and he refused to believe me, but I didn’t have the information to back up my claim. I do think I used an analogy similar to yours at one point, however. :o)
Not meaning to play devil’s advocate here, but looking on the entire tale of Jesus’ arrest/trial/conviction/crucifixion, it does seem to want to portray this as “innocent victim who undergoes horrible, but heroic, fate”, which lends heaps of a sort of Leslie Nielsenesque “Wrongfully Accused” to this whole matter. Given the fact that the captors of the Jews were not strangers to persecuting them, this does not seem to be out of line with either aspect of that (wanting to portray the Romans as bloodthirsty while simultaneously portraying Jesus as this perfect martyr person).
I addressed this already in the Biblical errors thread but I’ll say it again. “Son of God” was a figure of speech in Jewish tradition for anyone who was righteous, favored by God, or chosen for a specific purpose. It was not a literal claim to divinity. Neither was it blasphemous to claim to be the Messiah. The Jewish Messiah wasn’t (and isn’t) God.
Diogenes, given the standard another has been held to in his “was this a miracle?” thread, one might make the argument that you should similarly be held to that standard. However factual you believe your assertion that the Jewish Messiah wasn’t/isn’t God, it remains (however fervently) your belief:)
I say this, by the way, as much for anything else as to assure Fuel that I and others who are discussing this issue with him in the other thread are not requiring one standard of him and another of anyone else:)
iampunha, I don’t think you understood what I was saying. The Jewish Messiah is defined as human by Jewish tradition, not by me. Regardless of whether the Messiah is actually God, the Jews believe that he won’t be. This is a factual statement of Jewish doctrine, it’s not an opinion.
The synoptic Gospels say that he was arrested on the first day of Passover after the Seder. John says that he was arrested on the day of preparation before the Seder.
The Gospels all agree that he was crucified on a friday, the confusion is whether it was before or after the Passover had begun.
No problem, punha, I guess I could have phrased myself more clearly (e.g. “According to jewish tradition, the Messiah is not God.”) I can see how my flat initial statement could be misread.
I think that would have eliminated all misunderstanding:) I had thought, based on my scant knowledge of both you and Judaism, that you were putting forth as fact your opinion.
And now back to slightly more important matters, like the color of Caiaphus’ sandals:D
Visual representations of crucifixions from the first and second centuries are extraordinarily rare and it is true that the best known of them, the Alexamenos graffiti, does indeed seem to show Jesus being crucified on a crux immissa. But visual representations of Jesus carrying the Cross (or a bit of it) don’t appear until very much later. Which is why it is not in the least surprising that artists then got some of the details wrong. Does one really have to point this out to a trained archaeologist?
No, of course not. That’s what makes it so odd that the OP found it puzzling that there is a discrepancy between standard Christian iconography and current archaeological interpretations.
I’d even question the term “standard Christian iconography” inasmuch as, for example, the reproduction of images of Christ himself varies depending on the region of origin of the drawing. I have even heard a strong argument, as long as we’re on the subject of the images of Christ, that, rather than being a carpenter, Jesus and his father were rather stone masons.
The argument relying upon the sparsity of trees in the area. As I don’t know enough either way, I mention it without implying any validity or lack thereof to either the premise or the argument.
Passover lasts a week. Unless the Last Supper lasted 8 days or I am missing something big here, which is very possible since I am ~5 hours past my bedtime here, it did not constitute all of the Passover. Looking back at Dio and Shodan’s posts on page 1 of this thread, I do not see any error in my post.
On the contrary, the specific iconography of Christ carrying the Cross, particularly the form of the cross he is shown carrying, has been strikingly consistent over the centuries. The only significant variation has been that images in the Orthodox tradition have often preferred to show him carrying a ‘Russian’ cross, which Antiquarian no doubt feels is as much a shocking archaeological solecism as those images showing him carrying an entire crux immissa. Unsurprisingly, Orthodox artists were just as ignorant as their Western counterparts as to how exactly crucifixions had been carried out.
