Word: sanhedrin
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...those discoveries is especially intriguing. In 1990, diggers in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City uncovered an ossuary (repository for bones) with the inscription JOSEPH SON OF CAIAPHAS. This marked the first archaeological evidence that the high priest Caiaphas, who according to the Gospels presided at the Sanhedrin's trial of Jesus, was a real person. So, indisputably, was Pilate. In 1961, diggers in Caesarea found the fragment of a plaque indicating that a building had been dedicated by PONTIUS PILATUS, PREFECT OF JUDEA...
...then popular literary subjects of Jewish Americans and psychoanalysis. The paganized, foul-tempered Mickey Sabbath is beyond all that. Some readers will find the material and language too scabrous for their taste. Others will have their own reasons to cry foul. Roth's old adversaries in the suburban Sanhedrin should have no beef: Mickey is not bad for the Jews; he is bad for everybody. But orthodox feminists will be driven nuts by Drenka the Insatiable, and the Japanese will be offended by Mickey's ravings against a defeated enemy's celebrated prosperity. "In his grave, Franklin Roosevelt is spinning...
...number of historians, however, have proposed detailed theories that minimize Jewish involvement -- including that of the Jewish religious leadership. Ellis Rivkin of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, contends that real religious courts were separate from the Sanhedrin, the council of Jewish functionaries that dealt with Jesus after his arrest. He depicts the Sanhedrin as a political body that collaborated with the Roman occupation forces and lacked any religious legitimacy. "Neither ((Jesus')) religious teachings nor his beliefs could have been on trial -- only their political consequences," says Rivkin. In his book, though, Brown sifts the ancient documents, Jewish and pagan...
Other Jewish writers doubt the Sanhedrin trial occurred at all. For example, the nighttime hearing and the rushed verdict described in the New Testament violate religious law. But Brown says there is no reason to suppose that Jews of A.D. 30 would have strictly observed procedures not codified until two centuries later in the Mishnah, the rabbinical collation of oral law interpreting the Bible. As for those who think the Romans would not have contemplated an execution on the basis of Jewish religious disputes, Brown notes that 30 years later Jewish leaders sentenced Jesus, the son of Ananias, to death...
...then, decided that Jesus must die, and what were the reasons? In Brown's reading, Jesus' judges were a loosely defined group of Jewish aristocrats led by Caiaphas, the high priest who survived 18 years in the post. The Sanhedrin members were reacting to perceived threats to their faith -- and trying to avoid trouble with their constituents and the Romans. "There was surely an admixture of insincerity, self-protective cunning, honest religious devotion, conscientious self-searching, and fanaticism," Brown concludes. Among the less-than-noble motives: Jesus had uttered prophecies against the Temple, which by one estimate provided the livelihood...