Good Friday and the first night of Passover — 27 Comments
Jesus was a Jew who celebrated Passover. Good Friday is the day Jesus died. The Society of Jesus was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola. A Jesuit school is in the Final Four this year. The head coach is Creighton alum Porter Moser.
Just to be picky, Passover corresponds to Maundy Thursday, not Good Friday.
Back in … 1989, if memory serves, the first night of Passover was on Maundy Thursday. I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines. Our Rabbi was deluged with requests from devout Christians to participate in our Passover Seder. So we did it up right. Had it catered at the Subic Bay Officers’ Club, passed out Haggadot (the Haggadah is the script for the Seder) to all participants, and assigned reading parts to some of the attendees. We had about 30 Jews and 80 or more Christians at our seder, and a great time was had by all.
Ken
Correct. Jesus celebrated Passover on Thursday. He got railroaded and killed on Friday. Saturday is the day Porter Moser leads the Ramblers to victory over Michigan; Jesus not involved in the game, weak ball handling skills.
Weak ball handling? Jesus? And I used to trust your judgement, Cornhead!
I once attended a seder run by a Jewish woman for Christians. Quite lovely. It was there I learned the Dayenu song — “It would have been enough…”
Last year I discovered a wonderful, crazy video version by “The Maccabeats” in which Dayenu is sung in different pop styles with a surprise ending.
He could walk on water but not real good with his left hand.
This past week I read an educational graphic book, “Judenhass” (“Jew Hatred”) by Dave Sim, one of the top cartoonists of our time, in which he shows the pervasiveness of anti-semitism in world history.
The book is hard to describe. Sim has placed it in the public domain. You can download a free copy here:
I’ve never understood anti-semitism. I thought that was something WW2 settled. I can’t believe it’s gaining traction again.
Huxley-
Thanks for the video…it made me smile.
Huxley; No, Jew-hatred has been around practically forever.
Judaism has generally emphasized cleanliness and personal hygiene. So if the Jews aren’t getting sick from the (filth-borne) plagues during the Dark Ages, then it’s OBVIOUS that the Jews were poisoning the wells.
The German Crusaders in the 1100s would start their trips to Jerusalem by sacking the local Jewish neighborhoods. It was good practice. And Deus Lo Volt!
And part of that was that Christians weren’t allowed to lend money at interest to other Christians, and the Jews generally weren’t allowed to participate in the trades like blacksmithing, so the Jews became the moneylenders to the princes and noblemen. And how to you avoid having to pay back your debts? Execute the people who loaned you money.
Ferdinand and Isabella exiled all the Jews from Spain in the 1490s; convert or leave! It’s likely that some of Columbus’ sailors were escaping Jews. And to catch the people who had only PRETENDED to convert to Catholicism, the Inquisition was established.
In Tsarist Russia, Jews were confined to their own villages. In Poland, the term was “ghetto”. Long-held Jew-hatred in Poland, Germany and France was part of the reason that nobody resisted when the Nazis set out to eliminate Jews from Europe completely.
Jew hatred in the Americas has always been relatively mild; not allowed to go to the “right” schools or join the country clubs, or allowed to enter the USA when fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. That was Roosevelt in action.
This year Passover starts tonight, Friday night, but for non-Israelis and some reform Jews, it will still be the holiday on Sunday. The Date of Easter each year is calculated so that it falls as close to Passover as possible. Some Christian theologians have tried to change that to a fixed date so that it has nothing to do with those Jooos and their Passover.
BTW, Cornhead, I think you’re being a little unfair to the Romans. As far as they knew, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah in Jewish terms, which meant being a descendant of David who was going to restore the independent Jewish kingdom. Obviously, that would be sedition and rebellion, punishable by death. I’m sure they felt they were 100% justified in the execution, hence INRI. Considering what happened in 66 and again in 135, they probably figured they had been rather restrained.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now,
And forever will be,
PassEasterOver forever and ever
Boruch hu uvaruch Shemo
Amen
vanderleun might split hairs but he’s basically an ex-hippie turned conservative Trump supporter as I described in the Allan Bloom topic.
Huxley; No, Jew-hatred has been around practically forever.
Ken Mitchell: Too true.
I have known realio, trulio antisemites. One was a good surfer buddy who became a top KKK guy in the Southeast. Congress passed laws because of my friend and his friends.
I have done far more than my share of spelunking on sites like Stormfront trying to understand. I imagine I’m on some Google enemies list because of my searches.
But I can’t make sense of antisemitism except as resentment and scapegoating of a minority group which kept making good no matter what was thrown at them.
The Jews convicted Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah. Blasphy. The put words into his mouth. “That’s who you say that I am.”
But the Jews couldn’t carry out the sentence. The Romans had to do it.
Passover cannot begin on a Friday. So if the Last Supper was presumably the day before Jesus was crucified, i. e. a Thursday night, it could not have been a first-night seder.
“Passover corresponds to Maundy Thursday”
The first *day* of Passover can be a Thursday, with the seder on the preceding Wednesday night.
In the years 30-36 the only year Passover began on a Thursday was 30. There is a tool to look this stuff up:
When I was a little boy I was obsessed with calendars. Maybe still am somewhat. I went to Hebrew school in the afternoon after regular school and sorta learned how the Jewish calendar works. A few years ago I found a website that described it in detail and wow is it complicated.
The Jews convicted Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah. Blasphy. The put words into his mouth. “That’s who you say that I am.”
Cornhead: As usual the Gospel stories share a rough correspondence, but don’t necessarily line up on the fine points. In the Gospel of Mark Jesus does indeed claim to be the Messiah:
___________________________________________
And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? But he held his peace, and answered nothing.
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?
And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.
In any event it wasn’t “the Jews” who convicted Jesus but Caiphas and the Sanhedrin. That many Christians have seen fit to blame all Jews then and since for Christ’s execution is a sad, terrible thing IMO.
Huxley:
Weren’t Caiphas and the Sanhedrin Jewish?
Blaming the Jews for the death of Christ always struck me as idiotic. Jesus had to die in order to rise from the dead. As an occupying power, and for political reasons, there was no way the Romans would conduct a capital trial. Pilate refused to convict Jesus. That left the Jewish government as the only entity that had any authority to conduct a trial.
Weren’t Caiphas and the Sanhedrin Jewish?
Cornhead: Obviously. Not sure of your point.
Mine was that “Caiphas and the Sanhedrin” are not equal to “the Jews.”
I’ve read various takes on Christ’s trial and how it could have happened or couldn’t have happened. I see no reason to favor your version.
According to Flavius Josephus, Pilate did indeed sentence Christ to be executed by crucifixion.
I don’t consider it knowable two thousand years later, at least not until H.G. Wells works the kinks out of his time machine.
Some bibles translate “The Jews” phrase into “Sanhedrin” and various other transliterations.
The letter Y and J does not exist in hebrew. It’s an Eastern type language that reads right to left, not left to right. I can read that way, due to foreign language practice. Westerners… not so much.
Hebrew, in several ways, is closer to Japanese than it is to Greek/Latin and thus English.
When English people read “The Jews”, they immediately thought of the pogroms and the Jewish enclaves. This was a mistranslation on top of a misunderstanding. These Westerners weren’t Semitic experts or even scholars. Often they were unlettered farmers and uncivilized mercenaries, who had to rely on priests and other literary individuals (remember literacy wasn’t even 50% back in the day) to read for them.
Whole bunch of telephone game antics developed and distortions were produced in interpretation.
According to Flavius Josephus, Pilate did indeed sentence Christ to be executed by crucifixion.
Pilate wanted to prevent a rebellion but executing the king of the Jews was not guaranteed to stop one. From his perspective, the Jews made no sense, and that included Caiphas. If this person truly was the royal lineage from David (and Mary/Joseph’s history is relevant enough to conclude that they did have royal blood from both parental lines) then it would be equivalent to Pilate telling the Iranians to kill his Roman God Emperor Pontifex Maximus. Even if Pilate managed to get his king killed, all that would mean was a civil war. To him, killing Jesus or not killing him were both problems that he wanted to wash his hands of and try to punt back to the Jews. Since the Sanhedrin had the power to execute Jewish people for violations of the Torah. They did it all the time without asking the Romans. But the Sanhedrin didn’t do that because they thought that the Jews would riot and kill them, if they killed another prophet of YHVH.
The steps Pilate took was first to switch the jurisdiction around, first to Caiphas and when that didn’t work, he switched it to Herod, who occupied a governorship or vassal king position under Rome. Herod then punted and kicked the can back to Pilate. Pilate then just said he will inflict a punishment, but the minimum. The Roman centurion seemed to have the right idea, but the Roman legionnaires were probably illiterate savages and loved playing sadistic tortuers on non Roman citizens. So they did “too much” and Jesus almost died as a result of the flogging with blades clipped to the whip ends. Pilate was somewhat upset, because if Jesus had died to his punishment, then he’d be held liable for any rebellion that occurred later. (Romans taking revenge on everybody and everyone for vengeance due to family members, and then killing themselves to prevent capture, was pretty big)
Pilate kept trying to kick it back to Caiphas but it didn’t work. So after the flogging, Pilate said “okay, this is passover, and I am authorized to pardon one person. So you can have this rebel and murderer called Barnabas Savior, or you can have this person you call the king of the Jews, Jesus (Yeshua also meaning salvation or savior) pardoned. Caiphas chose Barnabas the Savior.
Pilate was OMG WTF ARE YOU DOING. He was definitely stressed and pulling out his hair. At one time Pilate talked to Jesus and was told pretty much nothing except “your hands are not the guilty hands, the hands with blood are the authority over you and the ones that led you to this”. Pilate, seemingly being counseled to just get it over with because it wasn’t his fault, washed his hands (literally apparently) in front of Caiphas, and said he will be crucified. Hope ya happy.
Caiphas, big phat Hussein smile on his face, of course he is happy. Now he can avoid the Zealots or Messianic faction from causing trouble with Rome (boy was he wrong).
If a Judge sentences an innocent person to jail or releases a guilty person to freedom, the excuse is usually “that is not the fault of the Judge, that is the fault of the System”.
Well, is it still not the fault of the Judge when the Judge took bribes and used falsified witnesses? Is it still not the fault of the Judge when he has ulterior political motives similar to Roe v Wade’s incident. At a certain point people have to hold judges and lawyers accountable, and not just hand wave it away. To judge meant to determine the life and death of a person, and that is how the bible uses the term. It does not mean “to have an opinion like everybody else”.
As for why Jesus of Nazareth did not proclaim his innocent and testimony to Pilate, it was because the prophecies said that the perfect lamb of God would go to the slaughter sacrifice altar without a word of protest.
Jesus proclaiming himself the Messiah already happened to the disciples and apostles. That was enough.
Passover is set in Torah to be Nissan, a few weeks after the first light of spring. For us that would be a few weeks ago in our March. Well, depending on geo zones.
The Hebrew Lunar calendar is the same as every other ancient and also modern Chinese calendar, it is based on the cycles of the moon. Which is about 28 days, not 30 days.
So the solar Gregorian Julian calendar is significantly different. It mismatches. (Which is also why Jesus was not born in 0 Anno Domini, the Year of our Lord Jesus the Christ). Ancients often matched their calendars to the reign years of their top liege and king. So if you were going by the reigning years of Jesus the King of the Universe, Westerners should be counting from 33 AD on. Thus 2018, Anno Domini, our current date, is technically read as 2018 years after the reign/birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But that is inaccurate. Both for the birth and the reigning years. Jesus was crowned after the Crucifixion. That means the date is off by more than 33 years… So the second millennium only official starts… right about the time of US Civil War 2 actually. Interesting coincidence. Also a lot of things will happen during the next 2 or 3 decades: scalar tech, One world religion, Beast system, Google crypted tattoos to control tech, mind machine singularity, real AI, etc.
This also touches upon the Sabbath. The Sabbath is just X days after the new moon. It’s not on Sunday or Saturday. It’s just whatever X moon happens, wait six days and rest on the 7th. Now you could also rest on the six and the 7th too, it doesn’t really matter.
As for Deus Vult, some Catholic Christians are calling for another Crusade, what they call the Last Crusade.
be afraid, since the crusader army killed almost as many Christians as they did heathens, muslims, and pagans.
“it is based on the cycles of the moon. Which is about 28 days, not 30 days.”
It is actually closer to 30 days. The exact period of a month prescribed by the Hebrew calendar is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 “halakim”. One hour consists of 1080 halakim so it is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3.3 seconds.
The Hebrew calendar alternates 30-day and 29-day months but occasionally a day is added or subtracted to keep Rosh Chodesh (the first day of the month) aligned with the new moon. Also when a month is added to the year to keep it roughly aligned with the solar calendar it is a 30-day month.
It is actually closer to 30 days. The exact period of a month prescribed by the Hebrew calendar is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 “halakim”. One hour consists of 1080 halakim so it is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3.3 seconds.
I looked it up just now and the reference claims 29.5 days, so that concurs with FOAF’s numbers.
Lunar Leap Years
Since the solar year is 365 days long but a moon year is only 354 days (29.5 x 12), an extra month is added to the Hebrew calendar every two or three years. The formula is a bit esoteric, but every 19 years there are seven leap years (the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth years). In a leap year a 13th month is added called Adar Sheni (Adar II).
Rabbinical authorities have to keep recalculating the calendar because of the leap years.
However, the figure for 29.5 days is not universally observed throughout history. For example, look up January 2018, where 2 supermoons existed in one month, which also meant 2 super full moons.
How does one have two full moons in January even if that month has what, 31 days?
What astronomical observations means is that the number 29.5 is not accurate throughout history. It never has been. People were told wrong. Of course, I did not spend 2000 years observing the heavens myself, but that is merely lack of data, not the presence of data supporting universal time stream consistency of lunar cycles being 29.5.
Without data, they are still calculating upon mathematical assumptions, which is not a good idea. So their dates are wrong. In fact, everyone’s dates are wrong. But that’s okay, since humans being wrong isn’t such a new thing.
There is also no calculus general solution for the Sun/Moon/Earth system, because it is a Three Body Problem. Thus there is no way to actually calculate anything concerning the past or the future, other than using astronomical observations. Astronomical observations have to be calculated using a different method than Newton’s Calculus however. The Ancients observed significant differentiations in the moon and sun and stars, thus they often created macro scale astronomical calculators based on degrees, circles, and what not.
References to be used are the native reds in North America vis a vis the mound builders, plus the ancient Egyptians and the Pyramid at Giza.
Based upon ancient ruins, we can tentatively conclude that the stars have adjusted themselves a little bit for some reason. Other structures were designed to measure the rise and fall of the moon, by focusing the light. This would have been critical if their calendar and religious festivals were set to the lunar cycle.
However, if the lunar cycle was easily predicted numerically by calculating 29.5 days, they would not have needed to do so. Their math was sufficiently advanced enough to do the additions on their own, but they still used observational platforms. They didn’t need calculus because calculus doesn’t work with 3 body problems like the celestial bodies.
Newton’s theories only work for two bodies acting on each other. Impossible, so far, for a 9+n body solar system. Astronomical observation is still the pin point precision software we utilize today, as the math can’t calculate apparently predictable circular cycles and orbits.
This is sometimes why physicists refer to classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Classical Kepler/Newton/Copernicus mechanics is very difficult to use for some things, as the models don’t explain the observed phenomenon.
It just means humans haven’t figured it out: including the time of the cycle of the moon. But that’s okay, some mystery still needs to be remain in the heavens.
For budding astronomers and moon gazers (vs moon bats on the Left), they can use this to check the observed times.
January, at least, is accurate. Not every chart people post up is based on observations. Some of it is merely calculations (like the weather channel) that ends up being wrong when people look up at the sky.
I was doing research on subjects related to the moon in Jan 2018, that’s why I noticed there was something off about it.
Cornhead – The sign over Jesus’ head said Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” not “Jesus of Nazareth, blasphemer,” or “Jesus of Nazareth, upsetter of the social order,” or even “Jesus of Nazareth, challenger of religious orthodoxy.” And it was in Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire, not the Greek which the Romans actually spoke, or the Aramaic which the Jews spoke. That tells you what the crime was and who did the execution.
Of course, the Romans went to the Jewish collaborationist government to get approval for the execution. And Caphias said exactly what the Jewish collaborationist Judenrats said in Nazi-occupied Europe, “better for one man to die than for the whole nation to be destroyed.”*
Claiming to be the Messiah would not be blasphemy — either you are or you aren’t. Many people before and since have claimed to be the Messiah and none were considered to be blasphemers. However, claiming to be the Son of God (physically, not in the general sense that we are all children of God) would be blasphemy — i.e., claiming God to be corporeal or to exist in the world corporeally. If Jesus had actually said that, and if the Jews were independent, that would have been a capital offense. (Whether Jesus would have been executed is another matter — the Rabbis (the intellectual descendants of the Pharisees) argue about how often the Sanhedrin should execute anyone. The positions are: once in seven years; once in seventy years; and never.)
*I’ve mulled over the question for years of whether it was better to collaborate or rebel against Rome. I’ve never come up with a good answer. If the Jews had been able to persuade the Romans to confine idol- and emperor-worship to exclusively Roman areas, and accept Jewish control over domestic policy, leaving foreign policy to the Romans, that might have worked, but I’ve talked to many experts in the field and they all say that would have been impossible.
Ymar Sakar — There certainly is a “Y” in Hebrew, the letter “yud,” the first letter of “Yoseph,” “Yehudi,” and God’s name.
Rabbinical authorities have not had to recalculate the calendar for over a thousand years — the mathematical rules for the calendar (as opposed to the original observational rules) began to be developed around 70 CE and were fixed no later than 835.
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Jesus was a Jew who celebrated Passover. Good Friday is the day Jesus died. The Society of Jesus was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola. A Jesuit school is in the Final Four this year. The head coach is Creighton alum Porter Moser.
Just to be picky, Passover corresponds to Maundy Thursday, not Good Friday.
Back in … 1989, if memory serves, the first night of Passover was on Maundy Thursday. I was stationed at Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines. Our Rabbi was deluged with requests from devout Christians to participate in our Passover Seder. So we did it up right. Had it catered at the Subic Bay Officers’ Club, passed out Haggadot (the Haggadah is the script for the Seder) to all participants, and assigned reading parts to some of the attendees. We had about 30 Jews and 80 or more Christians at our seder, and a great time was had by all.
Ken
Correct. Jesus celebrated Passover on Thursday. He got railroaded and killed on Friday. Saturday is the day Porter Moser leads the Ramblers to victory over Michigan; Jesus not involved in the game, weak ball handling skills.
Weak ball handling? Jesus? And I used to trust your judgement, Cornhead!
I once attended a seder run by a Jewish woman for Christians. Quite lovely. It was there I learned the Dayenu song — “It would have been enough…”
Last year I discovered a wonderful, crazy video version by “The Maccabeats” in which Dayenu is sung in different pop styles with a surprise ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZgDNPGZ9Sg
He could walk on water but not real good with his left hand.
This past week I read an educational graphic book, “Judenhass” (“Jew Hatred”) by Dave Sim, one of the top cartoonists of our time, in which he shows the pervasiveness of anti-semitism in world history.
The book is hard to describe. Sim has placed it in the public domain. You can download a free copy here:
http://www.judenhass.com
I’ve never understood anti-semitism. I thought that was something WW2 settled. I can’t believe it’s gaining traction again.
Huxley-
Thanks for the video…it made me smile.
Huxley; No, Jew-hatred has been around practically forever.
Judaism has generally emphasized cleanliness and personal hygiene. So if the Jews aren’t getting sick from the (filth-borne) plagues during the Dark Ages, then it’s OBVIOUS that the Jews were poisoning the wells.
The German Crusaders in the 1100s would start their trips to Jerusalem by sacking the local Jewish neighborhoods. It was good practice. And Deus Lo Volt!
And part of that was that Christians weren’t allowed to lend money at interest to other Christians, and the Jews generally weren’t allowed to participate in the trades like blacksmithing, so the Jews became the moneylenders to the princes and noblemen. And how to you avoid having to pay back your debts? Execute the people who loaned you money.
Ferdinand and Isabella exiled all the Jews from Spain in the 1490s; convert or leave! It’s likely that some of Columbus’ sailors were escaping Jews. And to catch the people who had only PRETENDED to convert to Catholicism, the Inquisition was established.
In Tsarist Russia, Jews were confined to their own villages. In Poland, the term was “ghetto”. Long-held Jew-hatred in Poland, Germany and France was part of the reason that nobody resisted when the Nazis set out to eliminate Jews from Europe completely.
Jew hatred in the Americas has always been relatively mild; not allowed to go to the “right” schools or join the country clubs, or allowed to enter the USA when fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. That was Roosevelt in action.
This year Passover starts tonight, Friday night, but for non-Israelis and some reform Jews, it will still be the holiday on Sunday. The Date of Easter each year is calculated so that it falls as close to Passover as possible. Some Christian theologians have tried to change that to a fixed date so that it has nothing to do with those Jooos and their Passover.
BTW, Cornhead, I think you’re being a little unfair to the Romans. As far as they knew, Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah in Jewish terms, which meant being a descendant of David who was going to restore the independent Jewish kingdom. Obviously, that would be sedition and rebellion, punishable by death. I’m sure they felt they were 100% justified in the execution, hence INRI. Considering what happened in 66 and again in 135, they probably figured they had been rather restrained.
As it was in the beginning,
Is now,
And forever will be,
PassEasterOver forever and ever
Boruch hu uvaruch Shemo
Amen
vanderleun might split hairs but he’s basically an ex-hippie turned conservative Trump supporter as I described in the Allan Bloom topic.
Huxley; No, Jew-hatred has been around practically forever.
Ken Mitchell: Too true.
I have known realio, trulio antisemites. One was a good surfer buddy who became a top KKK guy in the Southeast. Congress passed laws because of my friend and his friends.
I have done far more than my share of spelunking on sites like Stormfront trying to understand. I imagine I’m on some Google enemies list because of my searches.
But I can’t make sense of antisemitism except as resentment and scapegoating of a minority group which kept making good no matter what was thrown at them.
The Jews convicted Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah. Blasphy. The put words into his mouth. “That’s who you say that I am.”
But the Jews couldn’t carry out the sentence. The Romans had to do it.
Passover cannot begin on a Friday. So if the Last Supper was presumably the day before Jesus was crucified, i. e. a Thursday night, it could not have been a first-night seder.
“Passover corresponds to Maundy Thursday”
The first *day* of Passover can be a Thursday, with the seder on the preceding Wednesday night.
In the years 30-36 the only year Passover began on a Thursday was 30. There is a tool to look this stuff up:
https://www.hebcal.com/converter/
When I was a little boy I was obsessed with calendars. Maybe still am somewhat. I went to Hebrew school in the afternoon after regular school and sorta learned how the Jewish calendar works. A few years ago I found a website that described it in detail and wow is it complicated.
The Jews convicted Jesus for claiming to be the Messiah. Blasphy. The put words into his mouth. “That’s who you say that I am.”
Cornhead: As usual the Gospel stories share a rough correspondence, but don’t necessarily line up on the fine points. In the Gospel of Mark Jesus does indeed claim to be the Messiah:
___________________________________________
And the high priest stood up in the midst, and asked Jesus, saying, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? But he held his peace, and answered nothing.
Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?
And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.
Then the high priest rent his clothes, and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death.
–Mark 14:60-64 (KJV)
___________________________________________
In any event it wasn’t “the Jews” who convicted Jesus but Caiphas and the Sanhedrin. That many Christians have seen fit to blame all Jews then and since for Christ’s execution is a sad, terrible thing IMO.
Huxley:
Weren’t Caiphas and the Sanhedrin Jewish?
Blaming the Jews for the death of Christ always struck me as idiotic. Jesus had to die in order to rise from the dead. As an occupying power, and for political reasons, there was no way the Romans would conduct a capital trial. Pilate refused to convict Jesus. That left the Jewish government as the only entity that had any authority to conduct a trial.
Weren’t Caiphas and the Sanhedrin Jewish?
Cornhead: Obviously. Not sure of your point.
Mine was that “Caiphas and the Sanhedrin” are not equal to “the Jews.”
I’ve read various takes on Christ’s trial and how it could have happened or couldn’t have happened. I see no reason to favor your version.
According to Flavius Josephus, Pilate did indeed sentence Christ to be executed by crucifixion.
I don’t consider it knowable two thousand years later, at least not until H.G. Wells works the kinks out of his time machine.
Some bibles translate “The Jews” phrase into “Sanhedrin” and various other transliterations.
The letter Y and J does not exist in hebrew. It’s an Eastern type language that reads right to left, not left to right. I can read that way, due to foreign language practice. Westerners… not so much.
Hebrew, in several ways, is closer to Japanese than it is to Greek/Latin and thus English.
When English people read “The Jews”, they immediately thought of the pogroms and the Jewish enclaves. This was a mistranslation on top of a misunderstanding. These Westerners weren’t Semitic experts or even scholars. Often they were unlettered farmers and uncivilized mercenaries, who had to rely on priests and other literary individuals (remember literacy wasn’t even 50% back in the day) to read for them.
Whole bunch of telephone game antics developed and distortions were produced in interpretation.
According to Flavius Josephus, Pilate did indeed sentence Christ to be executed by crucifixion.
Pilate wanted to prevent a rebellion but executing the king of the Jews was not guaranteed to stop one. From his perspective, the Jews made no sense, and that included Caiphas. If this person truly was the royal lineage from David (and Mary/Joseph’s history is relevant enough to conclude that they did have royal blood from both parental lines) then it would be equivalent to Pilate telling the Iranians to kill his Roman God Emperor Pontifex Maximus. Even if Pilate managed to get his king killed, all that would mean was a civil war. To him, killing Jesus or not killing him were both problems that he wanted to wash his hands of and try to punt back to the Jews. Since the Sanhedrin had the power to execute Jewish people for violations of the Torah. They did it all the time without asking the Romans. But the Sanhedrin didn’t do that because they thought that the Jews would riot and kill them, if they killed another prophet of YHVH.
The steps Pilate took was first to switch the jurisdiction around, first to Caiphas and when that didn’t work, he switched it to Herod, who occupied a governorship or vassal king position under Rome. Herod then punted and kicked the can back to Pilate. Pilate then just said he will inflict a punishment, but the minimum. The Roman centurion seemed to have the right idea, but the Roman legionnaires were probably illiterate savages and loved playing sadistic tortuers on non Roman citizens. So they did “too much” and Jesus almost died as a result of the flogging with blades clipped to the whip ends. Pilate was somewhat upset, because if Jesus had died to his punishment, then he’d be held liable for any rebellion that occurred later. (Romans taking revenge on everybody and everyone for vengeance due to family members, and then killing themselves to prevent capture, was pretty big)
Pilate kept trying to kick it back to Caiphas but it didn’t work. So after the flogging, Pilate said “okay, this is passover, and I am authorized to pardon one person. So you can have this rebel and murderer called Barnabas Savior, or you can have this person you call the king of the Jews, Jesus (Yeshua also meaning salvation or savior) pardoned. Caiphas chose Barnabas the Savior.
Pilate was OMG WTF ARE YOU DOING. He was definitely stressed and pulling out his hair. At one time Pilate talked to Jesus and was told pretty much nothing except “your hands are not the guilty hands, the hands with blood are the authority over you and the ones that led you to this”. Pilate, seemingly being counseled to just get it over with because it wasn’t his fault, washed his hands (literally apparently) in front of Caiphas, and said he will be crucified. Hope ya happy.
Caiphas, big phat Hussein smile on his face, of course he is happy. Now he can avoid the Zealots or Messianic faction from causing trouble with Rome (boy was he wrong).
If a Judge sentences an innocent person to jail or releases a guilty person to freedom, the excuse is usually “that is not the fault of the Judge, that is the fault of the System”.
Well, is it still not the fault of the Judge when the Judge took bribes and used falsified witnesses? Is it still not the fault of the Judge when he has ulterior political motives similar to Roe v Wade’s incident. At a certain point people have to hold judges and lawyers accountable, and not just hand wave it away. To judge meant to determine the life and death of a person, and that is how the bible uses the term. It does not mean “to have an opinion like everybody else”.
As for why Jesus of Nazareth did not proclaim his innocent and testimony to Pilate, it was because the prophecies said that the perfect lamb of God would go to the slaughter sacrifice altar without a word of protest.
Jesus proclaiming himself the Messiah already happened to the disciples and apostles. That was enough.
Passover is set in Torah to be Nissan, a few weeks after the first light of spring. For us that would be a few weeks ago in our March. Well, depending on geo zones.
The Hebrew Lunar calendar is the same as every other ancient and also modern Chinese calendar, it is based on the cycles of the moon. Which is about 28 days, not 30 days.
So the solar Gregorian Julian calendar is significantly different. It mismatches. (Which is also why Jesus was not born in 0 Anno Domini, the Year of our Lord Jesus the Christ). Ancients often matched their calendars to the reign years of their top liege and king. So if you were going by the reigning years of Jesus the King of the Universe, Westerners should be counting from 33 AD on. Thus 2018, Anno Domini, our current date, is technically read as 2018 years after the reign/birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But that is inaccurate. Both for the birth and the reigning years. Jesus was crowned after the Crucifixion. That means the date is off by more than 33 years… So the second millennium only official starts… right about the time of US Civil War 2 actually. Interesting coincidence. Also a lot of things will happen during the next 2 or 3 decades: scalar tech, One world religion, Beast system, Google crypted tattoos to control tech, mind machine singularity, real AI, etc.
This also touches upon the Sabbath. The Sabbath is just X days after the new moon. It’s not on Sunday or Saturday. It’s just whatever X moon happens, wait six days and rest on the 7th. Now you could also rest on the six and the 7th too, it doesn’t really matter.
As for Deus Vult, some Catholic Christians are calling for another Crusade, what they call the Last Crusade.
be afraid, since the crusader army killed almost as many Christians as they did heathens, muslims, and pagans.
“it is based on the cycles of the moon. Which is about 28 days, not 30 days.”
It is actually closer to 30 days. The exact period of a month prescribed by the Hebrew calendar is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 “halakim”. One hour consists of 1080 halakim so it is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3.3 seconds.
The Hebrew calendar alternates 30-day and 29-day months but occasionally a day is added or subtracted to keep Rosh Chodesh (the first day of the month) aligned with the new moon. Also when a month is added to the year to keep it roughly aligned with the solar calendar it is a 30-day month.
It is actually closer to 30 days. The exact period of a month prescribed by the Hebrew calendar is 29 days, 12 hours and 793 “halakim”. One hour consists of 1080 halakim so it is 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3.3 seconds.
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Holidays/Calendar/calendar.html
I looked it up just now and the reference claims 29.5 days, so that concurs with FOAF’s numbers.
Lunar Leap Years
Since the solar year is 365 days long but a moon year is only 354 days (29.5 x 12), an extra month is added to the Hebrew calendar every two or three years. The formula is a bit esoteric, but every 19 years there are seven leap years (the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth years). In a leap year a 13th month is added called Adar Sheni (Adar II).
Rabbinical authorities have to keep recalculating the calendar because of the leap years.
However, the figure for 29.5 days is not universally observed throughout history. For example, look up January 2018, where 2 supermoons existed in one month, which also meant 2 super full moons.
https://www.space.com/34515-supermoon-guide.html
How does one have two full moons in January even if that month has what, 31 days?
What astronomical observations means is that the number 29.5 is not accurate throughout history. It never has been. People were told wrong. Of course, I did not spend 2000 years observing the heavens myself, but that is merely lack of data, not the presence of data supporting universal time stream consistency of lunar cycles being 29.5.
Without data, they are still calculating upon mathematical assumptions, which is not a good idea. So their dates are wrong. In fact, everyone’s dates are wrong. But that’s okay, since humans being wrong isn’t such a new thing.
There is also no calculus general solution for the Sun/Moon/Earth system, because it is a Three Body Problem. Thus there is no way to actually calculate anything concerning the past or the future, other than using astronomical observations. Astronomical observations have to be calculated using a different method than Newton’s Calculus however. The Ancients observed significant differentiations in the moon and sun and stars, thus they often created macro scale astronomical calculators based on degrees, circles, and what not.
References to be used are the native reds in North America vis a vis the mound builders, plus the ancient Egyptians and the Pyramid at Giza.
Based upon ancient ruins, we can tentatively conclude that the stars have adjusted themselves a little bit for some reason. Other structures were designed to measure the rise and fall of the moon, by focusing the light. This would have been critical if their calendar and religious festivals were set to the lunar cycle.
However, if the lunar cycle was easily predicted numerically by calculating 29.5 days, they would not have needed to do so. Their math was sufficiently advanced enough to do the additions on their own, but they still used observational platforms. They didn’t need calculus because calculus doesn’t work with 3 body problems like the celestial bodies.
Newton’s theories only work for two bodies acting on each other. Impossible, so far, for a 9+n body solar system. Astronomical observation is still the pin point precision software we utilize today, as the math can’t calculate apparently predictable circular cycles and orbits.
This is sometimes why physicists refer to classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Classical Kepler/Newton/Copernicus mechanics is very difficult to use for some things, as the models don’t explain the observed phenomenon.
It just means humans haven’t figured it out: including the time of the cycle of the moon. But that’s okay, some mystery still needs to be remain in the heavens.
https://www.timeanddate.com/moon/@z-us-30093?month=4&year=
For budding astronomers and moon gazers (vs moon bats on the Left), they can use this to check the observed times.
January, at least, is accurate. Not every chart people post up is based on observations. Some of it is merely calculations (like the weather channel) that ends up being wrong when people look up at the sky.
I was doing research on subjects related to the moon in Jan 2018, that’s why I noticed there was something off about it.
Cornhead – The sign over Jesus’ head said Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” not “Jesus of Nazareth, blasphemer,” or “Jesus of Nazareth, upsetter of the social order,” or even “Jesus of Nazareth, challenger of religious orthodoxy.” And it was in Latin, the official language of the Roman Empire, not the Greek which the Romans actually spoke, or the Aramaic which the Jews spoke. That tells you what the crime was and who did the execution.
Of course, the Romans went to the Jewish collaborationist government to get approval for the execution. And Caphias said exactly what the Jewish collaborationist Judenrats said in Nazi-occupied Europe, “better for one man to die than for the whole nation to be destroyed.”*
Claiming to be the Messiah would not be blasphemy — either you are or you aren’t. Many people before and since have claimed to be the Messiah and none were considered to be blasphemers. However, claiming to be the Son of God (physically, not in the general sense that we are all children of God) would be blasphemy — i.e., claiming God to be corporeal or to exist in the world corporeally. If Jesus had actually said that, and if the Jews were independent, that would have been a capital offense. (Whether Jesus would have been executed is another matter — the Rabbis (the intellectual descendants of the Pharisees) argue about how often the Sanhedrin should execute anyone. The positions are: once in seven years; once in seventy years; and never.)
*I’ve mulled over the question for years of whether it was better to collaborate or rebel against Rome. I’ve never come up with a good answer. If the Jews had been able to persuade the Romans to confine idol- and emperor-worship to exclusively Roman areas, and accept Jewish control over domestic policy, leaving foreign policy to the Romans, that might have worked, but I’ve talked to many experts in the field and they all say that would have been impossible.
Ymar Sakar — There certainly is a “Y” in Hebrew, the letter “yud,” the first letter of “Yoseph,” “Yehudi,” and God’s name.
Rabbinical authorities have not had to recalculate the calendar for over a thousand years — the mathematical rules for the calendar (as opposed to the original observational rules) began to be developed around 70 CE and were fixed no later than 835.