No, I didn't mean that Kefar Sekania was "a Christian town," and most certainly not in the times of Josephus ... Outside of the disputed Testimonium Flavianum (and possibly Antiquities 20.200), Josephus writes absolutely nothing about Jesus or Christians. He doesn't seem to know about them. And so for him to describe a town as "Christian" would have been very strange indeed.outhouse wrote:
"If we go by what Strange says about this town, it was Jewish per Josephus accounts of attacks being made on the Sabbath."
When I wrote that "Kefar Sekania, in the Talmud, is a town associated with the Christians," I was simply referring to sentences in uncensored manuscripts of the Talmud, where "disciples" of Yeshu Ha-Notzri are said to live in that area:
Abodah Zarah 17a:
Tosefta Hullin 2.24:”Once I was walking along the upper market of Sepphoris and found a man, one of the disciples of Yeshu ha-Notzri whosa name was Jacob of Kefar Sekania.”
Abodah Zarah 27b:"Once I was strolling on the road of Sepphoris when I met Jacob from Kefar Sekania who told me a heretical teaching in the name of Jesus son of Pantiri and it pleased me."
All that says, is that the Talmud itself associates Kefar Sekania with Yeshu Ha-Notzri, and his disciples. And that, consequently, when the same source, the Talmud, also refers to the town as "Kefar Sekania of the Egyptians," (bGittin 57a) that means something. It doesn't mean that the town is Christian -- or Egyptian -- it simply means that the Talmud associates the two, at least geographically."It once happened to Ben Dama the son of R. Ishmael's sister that he was bitten by a serpent and Jacob, a native of Kefar Sekaniah, came to heal him but R. Ishmael did not let him; whereupon Ben Dama said, 'My brother R. Ishmael, let him, so that I may be healed by him: I will even cite a verse from the Torah that he is to be permitted'; but he did not manage to complete his saying, when his soul departed and he died.5 Whereupon R. Ishmael exclaimed, Happy art thou Ben Dama for thou wert pure in body and thy soul likewise left thee in purity; nor hast thou transgressed the words of thy colleagues, who said, He who breaketh through a fence, a serpent shall bite him'?6 — It is different with the teaching of Minim, for it draws, and one [having dealings with them] may be drawn after them."
