Are these proposals & ties feasible? As arguments for an historical Jesus? -
Born to the Jewish name of Hanan [the Younger], Ananus* became the sixty-fourth High Priest to officiate in the temple of the Lord since Aaron the High Priest. As the nasi, or the high priest, it was his duty to preside over the service of the main festivals of Passover, Pentecost, Yom Kippur and the Feast of Tabernacles. He automatically became the president of the Great Sanhedrin which presided in the Council of Hewn Stones near the entrance to the Temple of Herod.
- * aka Ananias; & Annas (?)
In 6 CE Ananus was inaugurated as high priest of the temple of Herod in Jerusalem. It was at that Passover in the spring of that year, in what would have been the twelfth year of Yahshua’s life, that Joseph, Mariam, and Yahshua would have gone to participate in the festival. Ananus, as the newly appointed chief priest, along with the elders of the Sanhedrin, might have had a private investigative session with young Jesus/Yahshua as he may have been destined to someday replace his great uncle, Joseph of Arimathea and sit in the ‘Seat of David’ as one of the elders of Israel in the Great Sanhedrin.
The House of Hanan / Ananus supposedly carried a pathological genetic desire to destroy the House of Joseph of the royal house of David (there is some tie to the House of Amalek of old who, in their descendants the Amalekites, carried a pathological genetic desire to destroy the children of Israel).
For thirty three of the next thirty five years, Ananus [the Elder], the father of the dynasty of the House of Ananus, was the most powerful controlling force in the political, social and religious governance in the land of Judea until the inauguration of King Agrippa in 41 CE.
Ananus the Elder was the father-in-law of Caiphas the high priest when Jesus/Yahshua is reported to have assaulted their authority, and the their power, greed and control of the Judean economy, by driving out the money changers in the temple courtyard. Yahshua/Jesus was the most potent rebel against the authority the House of Ananus. This occurred at the beginning of Caiphus's ministry.
- Ananus, the high priest was the most powerful and the wealthiest Jewish man in Judea. It was Ananus who received all the revenue of the temple of Herod. It was the power of Ananus that Jesus was challenging when he drove out the ‘money changers.
Ananus [the Elder] and Caiphas are recorded as having commissioned Saulus, the young Pharisee in the School of Gamaliel, to
- .(i) round up the Nazarene converts in the city of Jerusalem and throw them into prison; and, with an armed incursion force, to
(ii) enter the Roman province of Syria in the absence of a Roman governor to forcibly extradite the escaping Nazarenes (fleeing to Damascus) back to the prisons of Judea.
It was Ananus the Elder's son Jonathan who was the high priest who brought the Greek Nazarene deacon Stephen before the Sanhedrin and then had them stone him to death for blasphemy (later, as a former high priest, Jonathan so aggravated the incoming Roman governor Festus, by trying to meddle in Roman politics, that Felix hired a Jewish Sicarii assassin to kill Jonathan).
- This caused the power of the high priest to temporarily slip out of the hands of Ananus the Elder. Simon, son of Camithus (Josephus, Antiquities XVIII, ii, 2) was installed as high priest, because Jonathan had overstepped the bounds of Roman law. As well as killing the deacon Stephen without Roman approval, he supposedly commissioned the Pharisee Shaul to take Roman authority in his own hands.
It's feasible that Ananus (Annas), as a young priest, took Mariam and Yosef, supposedly having a child out of wedlock, to the high priest in the days of Herod. In the apocryphal gospel the Protevangelion of James, a young priestly scribe called “Annas” 'discovered' that Mary, the virgin, was with child and reported her to the high priest.
the Protevangelion of James 11:1-22 -
- “Then came Annas the scribe, and said to Yosef/Joseph, Wherefore have we not seen you since your return? And Joseph replied, Because I was weary after my journey, and rested the first day. But Annas turning about perceived the Virgin big with child. And went away to the priest (high priest) and told him, Joseph in whom you placed so much confidence, is guilty of a notorious crime, in that he hath defiled the Virgin whom he received out of the temple of the Lord, and hath privately married her, not discovering it to the children of Israel."
.
