Jesus' appearances to Peter and James

[John2]

For those who may not be aware of them (I know Rakovsky is), Howard discusses these puns and word connections and alliterations here. It's only partly viewable on googlebooks (starting with pg. 188 and ending with pg. 190), but there's enough of it there to get the idea. The text is replete with them.

https://books.google.com/books?id=4tdEB ... ns&f=false

[John2]

Dang it, I wrote it down too and must have misplaced it. I don't have Howard's book with me right now, and this part isn't viewable on googlebooks, but the Hebrew Mt. 12:4 doesn't have "which was not lawful for them to do."

[John2]

The absence of "which was not lawful for them to do" in the ST Hebrew Mat. 12:4 is consistent with 1 Samuel 21, as Smith points out:

"The priest determined he could release that bread if David and his men were consecrated as soldiers normally were when they fought in a holy war. If David's men had kept themselves from women, Ahimelech could share the consecrated bread with them. David assured the priest that 1) both he and his men had indeed abstained from sexual relations; and 2) their vessels, i.e., their clothing and/or bodies were holy, i.e., ritually clean."

https://books.google.com/books?id=zpK7A ... A6&f=false

[rakovsky]

If Jesus, James, and the 12 apostles were just about keeping the Torah and healing some people, then they wouldn't have been so extremely outcast by the rest of Judean establishment society, and James wouldn't have been killed by the Sanhedrin as Josephus records. The Talmud has multiple stories about James and mentions how the Sanhedrin killed several of Jesus' disciples.

[John2]

They would have been outcasts for breaking the Pharisaic Oral Law (like Jesus does in Matthew). Josephus says that the Pharisees were the dominant sect of the time and that even the Sadducees "addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them" (Ant. 18.1.4).

[John2]

Here's another verse that supports the broader sense of "Judea":

"Now when Jesus had finished these sayings, he went away from Galilee and entered the region of Judea beyond the Jordan."

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/19-1.htm

A commentator adds:

"of Judea beyond Jordan—that is, to the further, or east side of the Jordan, into Perea, the dominions of Herod Antipas."

http://biblehub.com/matthew/19-1.htm

[rakovsky]

They would have been outcasts for breaking the Pharisaic Oral Law (like Jesus does in Matthew). Josephus says that the Pharisees were the dominant sect of the time and that even the Sadducees "addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them" (Ant. 18.1.4).

OK, but now you seem to be forgetting for a moment that the Sadducees who didn't practice the Oral Law were in charge of the Temple and that it was the chief priests and Sanhedrin who condemned Jesus and James according to the gospels and according to Josephus.
If this was simply a matter of Jesus and James not keeping the pharisees' unique rules like Kosher, they would not have gotten killed by the Sadduccees and the Sanhedrin for that.

[John2]

I should have cited the whole sentence, which specifically says that the Sadducees addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees "when they become magistrates":

"But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them."

This was pretty much the situation in Judea since the time of the Maccabees according to Josephus:

"These [Pharisees] have so great a power over the multitude, that when they say any thing against the king, or against the high priest, they are presently believed" (Ant. 13.10.5).

"...the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses; and for that reason it is that the Sadducees reject them, and say that we are to esteem those observances to be obligatory which are in the written word, but are not to observe what are derived from the tradition of our forefathers. And concerning these things it is that great disputes and differences have arisen among them, while the Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have not the populace obsequious to them, but the Pharisees have the multitude on their side" (Ant. 13.10.6).

"[Queen Alexandra] permitted the Pharisees to do every thing; to whom also she ordered the multitude to be obedient. She also restored again those practices which the Pharisees had introduced, according to the traditions of their forefathers, and which her father-in-law, Hyrcanus, had abrogated. So she had indeed the name of the regent, but the Pharisees had the authority; for it was they who restored such as had been banished, and set such as were prisoners at liberty, and, to say all at once, they differed in nothing from lords" (Ant. 13.16.2).

[rakovsky]

I should have cited the whole sentence, which specifically says that the Sadducees addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees "when they become magistrates":

"But they are able to do almost nothing of themselves; for when they become magistrates, as they are unwillingly and by force sometimes obliged to be, they addict themselves to the notions of the Pharisees, because the multitude would not otherwise bear them."

I am extremely skeptical that the chief priests and Saducees of the Sanhedrin demanded obedience to the pharisees' oral laws, which Sadduceeism rejected, and that this is the reason why the Sadducee priests and Sadducee-run Sanhedrin wanted to kill Jesus.

I seem to remember also that there were a few cases when Jesus spoke approvingly or with acceptance about some ritual in the oral law.

[John2]

But this is how the NT presents things, that the Pharisees wanted to kill Jesus and colluded with and used their influence over the ruling authorities (a power that they wielded since the time of the Maccabees) and used his breaking of the Oral law only as an excuse:

"Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath ... Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus" (Mk. 3:2-6).

"Then the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away. Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words" (Mk. 12:12-13).

You don't think the Pharisees would have similarly used their political (and not just religious) influence with judges, like they did with kings and priests and Herodians?