Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Oct 06, 2020 1:48 pm
<snip>
First, do we have to assume that the gospel traditions convey history before we can use this Talmudic information as evidence of history?
If one reads the gospel story as an allegory, rather than as factual history, it allows stories about Yeshu to add to an understanding of that allegory. In particular, viewing the gospel allegory as fundamentally a political allegory, allows Hasmonean history to be relevant. So, yes, the time of Alexander Jannaeus becomes relevant to the gospel Jesus story. The Yeshu stories may well be allegories of the Jesus figure in the gospel story but, nevertheless, by bringing Alexander Jannaeus into their Yeshu stories these allegories - or parodies - indicate that more history is involved with the gospel story than the time of Pilate.
Jannaeus is dated 103-76 b.c. The end of the Hasmonean dynasty ended with Herod executing Hyrancus II - dated by Josephus to 30 b.c. Just over 70 years of Hasmonean history. That is the backdrop to the gospel story. Yeshu was hung. Jesus was hung on a cross. Same story different setting, different context. In the gospel context the curse of being hung up was overturned - non-value becomes salvation value. The Yeshu story retains the curse of being hung up. i.e. Jewish writers of the stories were interested in historical reality not NT philosophising.
Consider the DSS where a negative appraisal, the curse of the law, is given to the one hung up alive - the wicked priest. A wicked priest that Greg Doudna has identified with the last Hasmonean King and High Priest, Antigonus. The hung up wicked priest of the DSS; the hung up Jesus figure of the gospel story in the time of Pilate, the Yeshu stories that place the birth of the one hung up in the time of Alexander Jannaeus; stories that reflect either a negative or a positive appraisals of the one hung up.
Civil war in Israel between the two sons of Alexander Jannaeus, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. Hasmonean history that led to the downfall of the Hasmonean dynasty. A tragedy; a downfall from which the gospel writers managed, by moving away from the curse of the law, to create a spiritual, a philosophical, non-nationalistic, world view. The gospel Jesus story did not wipe clean the slate of Hasmonean history - the negative, cursed, hung up figure is still there - but now, with a resurrection story, this figure displays a positive value of salvation. Out of historical tragedy sprung hope of a new intellectual, spiritual, world.
https://www.academia.edu/12144236/_Allu ... 4Q169_2011_
Greg Doudna
"Allusions to the End of the Hasmonean Dynasty in Pesher Nahum (4Q169)" (2011)
Antigonus Mattathias
was captured in Jerusalem and killed by gentiles in a foreign country.
And of particular interest in light of the allusion in Pesher Nahum is
the fact that Cassius Dio, the Roman historian, says that Antigonus
Mattathias was hung up alive on a cross and tortured in the process of
being executed by Mark Antony.3 In his death at the hands of gentiles
Antigonus Mattathias corresponds with the portrayal of the death of
the Wicked Priest, and Antigonus Mattathias is the only Hasmonean
ruler of the first century bce who does.
And so it seems to me that the wicked ruler of these texts reflects
Antigonus Mattathias, and that the Lion of Wrath alludes to Mark
Antony who hung up alive Antigonus and perhaps other members of
Antigonus’s regime similarly unremarked in Josephus, and that key
Qumran pesharim such as Pesher Habakkuk, Pesher Psalms A, Pesher
Nahum, Pesher Hosea B and others all allude in their various ways to
the downfall of this last Hasmonean ruler, Antigonus Mattathias. And
it is surprising to me that this suggestion seems to be new. Despite
the striking correspondences between Antigonus Mattathias and the
Wicked Priest just named and no obvious counter-indication, so far as
I have been able to discover there has never previously been a scholarly
suggestion that the Wicked Priest might allude to Antigonus Mattathias.
And in asking how Antigonus Mattathias was missed I am
including myself, for I too missed this in my study of Pesher Nahum
of 2001.