Only the Torah is True, the Bible is Mixed with False (Page 3)

chayim
chayim: Zanjan wrote
However, we do have one way to know the truth - it's by what that person actually said, what they say they did, particularly of what they say of themselves. "You've ignored that."

I said before that what Peter wrote about jesus in the bible is not true, and all the good and wise words in the bible is what he took from the Jewish wisdom, in all prophecy books and what all the Rabbi's thought in that time, and it's all written in the Talmud and Midrash and Kabbalah and other Jewish books, even more wisely than what it's written in the bible

Zanjan wrote
"Then why didn't they do it? Of course it's not mentioned in the Bible - it's a lie"

They did it like it says in the talmud

The reason why the bible remained to exist is; because it's based on the truth, and it doesn't say those evil things jesus did really say
(Edited by chayim)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Where is your proof for what the Talmud said? Where are the 10 men who married one woman - history has no record of that.

Lets look at ancient Jewish **wisdom**, shall we?

I got my literal meaning and usage of Rav and Rabbi from an official Jewish site. The Law of giving one’s first born male to serve in the temple was a long-lived one, ruled by Moses, Himself. (Exodus 13:2) and repeated in the new Testament.(Luke 2:23)

The first fruits of anything are the finest so they’re the gift to God (somebody had to maintain the duties of the temple). As well, you know that the priestly families traced their paternal line back to Aaron, brother of Moses, who was the first priest – **an office appointed by God** and held for life.

However, the means of succession of the high priests eventually changed to appointment and election. Somebody forgot about God. King Herod the **Great** nominated 6 high priests, and sometimes even the people elected candidates to office.

We see how this becomes entirely political, with all its ugly trappings, transforming into the later, greater and nastier Sanhedrin of Jesus’s time.

The destruction of the second Temple destroyed the Jewish Priestly caste in 70 AD……….uh huh, magic number again. Without the temple that job was eliminated. The great sages (rabbis), of which were many – a dime a dozen - saw themselves as great leaders.

You see, it was the law that Jews should make pilgrimage to the temple once a year; now that it was gone, they had no place to go so needed to replace that with something. Somebody forgot about God. The Rabbis began writing new text - it was important to have consistency - and that was worthy of a paycheck.


SuperJew. In ancient religions, all over the world, people believed in making sacrifices to the gods – normally, it was animals but in hard times where they felt the gods were angry with them, they sacrificed young beautiful virgins or finest warrior, or their children. In their minds eye, they gave up what was most dear to them, and the gods would only be appeased by the purity and beauty of the offering – things THEY saw as innocent and pure.

However, God wanted people to abandon their perverted ideas and grow into spiritual strength - that is, to evolve. In the first century AD, God was saying “stop sacrificing others – sacrifice yourself! Naturally, that was the last thing they wanted to do so God gave them a role model in Jesus.


(Edited by Zanjan)
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chayim
chayim: Totally false, there are no God's, and never was, Only one God always, and sacrificing human is an evil disgusting thing, and it's totally unholy, God created the world human should live and know God and be one with him

No !! the Sanhedrin never changed any thing, changing anything in the Torah is a terrible sin, God's words can never be changed, this is the false christianity propaganda that something changed, or God's words and ways, or God with the Jews changed, that's why jesus was rightly killed, the Jews never changed anything in the Torah, this is the problem with islam and christianity, they changed God's words and ways

Everything what i say is not took only pure from God's words like it was said by God when it was given, and this is Judaism, everyone else changed God's words and belief, and are all false, Judaism never changed and never will change, Judaim is the Torah, off the Torah even one thing is off the truth and totally false, and God repeated this in all prophecy books, never to change anything from the Torah
(Edited by chayim)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Chayi, I wasn't talking about what YOU believed in - I was describing the cultural context of the day. If God knows all and has all knowledge, that includes knowledge of history - if a person wont try to learn some of what He knows, there can't be much God in them. .

You're right about the Sanhedrin not changing anything - they couldn't even change their own hearts. That's why they disappeared from history, leaving no trace behind. One day, people will say they never existed and it was just all myth.

Regardless, the so-called 'wisdom' of the great Sanhedrin didn't exist - they killed one man but not the religion. Even the non-religious are smart enough to know that if one wants to stomp out a religious group, they should NEVER make a martyr out of one of their members. Didn't you hear why Osama Bin Ladin's body was dumped at sea?



(Edited by Zanjan)
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chayim
chayim: They didn't kill jesus because to wipe off his belief, he was killed for his sins, like it was the Jewish command when the temple and the Sanhedrin existed, the Sanhedrin did not disappear, their words are part of the Talmud and the Jewish laws, like the prophets are not considered disappeared, because Sanhedrin is only when the temple is built, and by the 3rd temple it will return, the place of the Sanhedrin is in the temple, and only there they may say their understanding, because of God's spirit glory and wisdom in the temple was presence in the Sanhedrin

The Sanhedrin didn't hate jesus because of a political issue, it was pure and simple that he was sinning and making other people sin, and it's the command of the Torah that someone who worships false God's and making other people worship them, is to be killed, so it was nothing about the Sanhedrin, it was pure simple the command of the Torah
(Edited by chayim)
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Barbara the Jew
Barbara the Jew: see why would Jews use a Roman instrument of torture. Jews never crucified people , the romans did
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Nancy
(Post deleted by staff 10 years ago)
Barbara the Jew
Barbara the Jew: Alexander is not a jewish name!
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Barbara the Jew
Barbara the Jew: Nancy I looked at the article the people doing the crucifixions were not "religiously jewish" here is a paste and copy.
The seeds of strife planted earlier took root as the Hasmonean era produced sacrilegious heirs and pitted Jew vs. Jew in a bloody civil war.

The Sadducees, who were the heirs of the Hellenists, formed a very potent and powerful force in Jewish society, but they subscribed to a philosophy that was essentially non-Jewish, to a Greek view of the world.

The rabbis did not take it lying down. They understood that if the Sadducees prevailed there would be no Jewish people
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Zanjan
Zanjan: "They didn't kill jesus because to wipe off his belief, he was killed for his sins"

Right, they judged souls - God said that was HIS job. We see plainly how lousy their judgement was.

There's plenty of factual, historical proof of the sins of the Romans and Herod - clearly, this proof wasn't hard to get. The world loves naughty stuff and still does. Yet no historical proof of sins by Jesus. We have historical fact that the top Jews sinned - if they had not, God wouldn't have let anyone destroy their temple.



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chayim
chayim: They did not judge anything, God judges and he said what you should do if someone sins, punishing to death by the Sanhedrin was only when it has 2 eye witnesses, and they warned him that it's a sin and if you will sin you will be punished with that punishment, but when a sinner does not have any eye witness, than God does the punishment

When the Jews sinned, God punishes anyone according to his sin
(Edited by chayim)
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chayim
chayim: herod was not jewish, his father was jewish but not his mother
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chayim
chayim: Alexander, was an (Egyptian) Macedonian king, not Jewish
(Edited by chayim)
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Rederella
(Post deleted by staff 10 years ago)
chayim
chayim: No, there were 2 Alexander's, the original name Alexander is an Egyptian name, and the king Alexander was from Macedonian, right, he was not Jewish, Macedonian is not Jewish, but there was a Jewish false king from the descenders of king David, that was not eligible to be king
(Edited by chayim)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Yes, two different Alexanders; Alexander the Great lived hundreds of years later; he was a Greek king. The origin of a name doesn't determine one's nationality.

Your false Jewish king was Herod, the equivalent of the AntiChrist. He was a Nabatean who adopted the Jewish Faith. The Jews never considered him as an actual Jew, and certainly not one who practiced as a Jew would - they complained about him..he was something of a megalomaniac and a diabolical madman.

He was a client king of the Romans, born shortly before the end of the early Sanhedrin,under the Hasmonian dynasty; replaced by the greater Sanhedrin. Herod was governor of Galilee but when he fled to Rome to plead his case, the Romans there elected him "King of the Jews".

Herod wanted to kill the expected Messiah, King of the Jews - there was a prophecy of when this time would be so he had all the male babies 2 years or less slaughtered. Nobody was going to take HIS crown! Nobody did - Israel has never had a temporal king since.

Since Herod, two Spiritual Kings have walked its land and have their final resting places there.

(Edited by Zanjan)
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chayim
chayim: The Talmud never ended, it's existing today, and it's relevant today
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Zanjan
Zanjan: It ended as in "no more entries were made". It's only relevant to the Jews.

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chayim
chayim: The Talmud was always only for the Jews, and the Torah too, the reason of no more entries is, because the generations went down, but it continued outside the Talmud, there are thousands of Jewish books around the discussions of the Talmud, and inside the Talmud around it's text
(Edited by chayim)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: "because the generations went down"

That should have been your first clue. The Talmud was written by people; thus, people would have continued writing it IF the world could have found it meaningful.

The Words of God, on the other hand, are always timeless and meaningful - for that reason, every Prophet and religion of God has quoted them. Everyone does to this very day.

Conversely, the Talmud is a moldering relic nobody wants to read except Jews. Not saying it isn't useful; it testifies to the Jewish mindsets of the time - >NOT to the truth in a new religious movement (Christianity).


(Edited by Zanjan)
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moofy
moofy: The true facts about the bible is; that peter wrote the Jewish belief, but he put it up falsely on the name of jesus, jesus was a plain Jewish sinner and that's why he was killed, the whole story on his punishment to be killed was totally false, jesus never wrote nothing, it's everything what peter wrote from the Jewish books, the Torah and Tanach the prophecy books, and the translation is many times not accurate and mistaken
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Peter wasn't interested in writing solely about Jewish belief: In fact, it looks more like he wanted to separate and differentiate the two beliefs (Judaism and Christianity), which is seen in his writings.

Jesus wasn't simply killed because he sinned. The Sanhedrin didn't have that type of power. I suggest you look into the actual story before making silly remarks like this. The story itself is much more complex than Jesus just violating Jewish law.


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moofy
moofy: The Talmud was written by great righteous rabbi's that were totally truth and righteous, even jesus was a student till his 32 years to them, his rabbi was, rabbi "Yehoishuya Ben Parachia", jesus did unholy demonic magic, and not holy miracles, like the Egyptians did against Moses in Egypt
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What do the Jewish sources actually tell us about Jesus?

- A person named Yeshu ha-Notzri is mentioned several times in the Talmud
- The content of these references is not consistent with the story of the NT

[Sanhedrin 43b]:

There is a reference to a Yeshu who was hung (compared to crucified) on the day before Passover; who was a member of the royal family

BUT

The Talmud states his execution was announced 40 days in advance, so this reference doesn’t fully match the NT story.

It is further stated there that Yeshu had five disciples named:
- Matai (Matthew), Nakai, Netzer, Buni and Todah
- All five of whom were also executed; which again, don't agree with the NT

[Sanhedrin 107b] [Sotah 47a]:

The Talmud tells about a Yeshu who was an unworthy disciple of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachiah; but this was more than 100 years too early than Jesus of the NT.

http://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/texts/517/
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moofy
moofy: The History of the Talmud

At various times during the Hadrian persecutions, the sages were forced into hiding, though they managed to reconvene at Usha in 122 CE and then in a time of quiet managed to re-establish again at Yavneh in 158 CE.

With so much persecution and unrest, with the Jewish people fleeing the land of Israel, the rabbis knew that they would not be able to keep a central seat of rabbinic power alive for long.

Yet, during these great periods of chaos, some of the finest rabbinic minds made their mark.

Among them:

Rabbi Akiva
Rabbi Meir (Rabbi Akiva’s disciple & husband to the legendary Bruriah)
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (author of the Zohar)
Rabbi Eliezer (Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s son)
Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel II (A direct descendant of King David)


YEHUDAH HA NASI

Another man was to emerge and make his mark: The son of Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel II
- Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi (Judah, the Prince).

He is one personality who is absolutely fundamental to understanding this period of time and one of the greatest personalities of Jewish history.

He had a unique combination of attributes, being both a great scholar and strong leader, which gave him the power to lead the Jewish people at this chaotic time. He was also a man of tremendous personal wealth, which put him in a position to wheel and deal and do what needed to get done, not just with the Jews in the Land of Israel but with the Roman authorities as well.

Hadrian dies in 139 CE
- His death brings an improvement in treatment of the Jewish community

During a period of relative quiet, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi managed to befriend the Roman emperors who succeeded Hadrian, particularly Marcus Aurelius (161-180 CE)

“Providentially, in the course of the Parthian war, Marcus Aurelius met Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, and they became friends and eventually confidants . Marcus Aurelius consulted with his friend in Judah on matters of state policy as well as on personal questions."

“The years of Marcus Aurelius’ reign, ending in his death in 180, was the high-water mark in the intercourse between Rome and the Jews. The Jews, under the leadership of Rabbi [Yehudah HaNasi], would use this period of blissful respite to prepare themselves for the struggle of darker days surely lurking around the corner.”

At this time - 170-200 CE - The Mishna was born.

What is the Mishna?

At Mount Sinai the Jewish people received the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah was the oral explanation of how the written laws should be executed and followed.

The Oral Torah passed from generation to generation and was never written down.

Why?

Because the Oral Torah was meant to be fluid.

The principles stayed the same, but the application of those principles was meant to be adapted to all types of new circumstances.

This worked exceptionally well as long as the central authority - the Sanhedrin - remained intact and the chain of transmission was not interrupted (teachers were able to freely pass on wisdom to the next generation).

But in the days since the destruction of the Temple, the Sanhedrin had been repeatedly uprooted and teachers had to go into hiding.

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi realized that things would not get better any time soon. He saw that the Temple would not be rebuilt in his generation and possibly in many generations to come. He saw the Jews fleeing the land as a result of the constant persecutions and impossible living conditions. He saw that the central authority was weaker than ever and might cease altogether To make sure that the chain of transmission would never be broken, he decided that the time had come to write down the Oral Torah.

This was a mammoth undertaking. Although much of the work may have already been done by previous generations of rabbis, the monumental task of editing, explaining and organizing this vast amount of material was left to Rabbi Yehudah.

The end result of this massive undertaking was a definitive, yet cryptic (the basic principles were all there yet a teacher was still required to elucidate the material) version of the entire Oral Law called the Mishna.

Incidentally, the word Mishna means “repetition” because it was studied by repeating; mishna then, by extension, means “learning.”

Maimonides, in his introduction to his Mishneh Torah, explains it as follows:

He gathered together all the traditions, enactments, and interpretations and expositions of every position of the Torah, that either come down from Moses, or had been deduced by the courts in successive generations.

All this material he redacted in the Mishna, which was diligently taught in public, and thus became universally known among the Jewish people. Copies of it were made and widely disseminated, so that the Oral Law might not be forgotten in Israel

SIX CATEGORIES OF JEWISH LAW

The Mishna, which is written in Hebrew, is divided into six basic segments or “orders” and further subdivided into 63 tractates with a total of 525 chapters.

These 6 segments dealing with six basic areas of Jewish law:

1. Zeraim (Seeds): Covers agricultural rules and laws for foods as well as blessings
2. Moed (Holidays): Deals with the rituals of Shabbat and other Jewish holidays
3. Nashim (Women): Examines issues between men/women such as marriage/divorce
4. Nezikin (Damages): Covers civil and criminal law
5. Kodshim (Holy things) Concerning laws of the Temple
6. Taharot (Pure things): Concerning laws of spiritual purity and impurity

Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi finished the Mishna in 190 CE in the town of Tzipori in the Galilee.

You can visit the site today at a site called Beit She’arim (where the Sanhedrin had previously been located prior to its move to Tzipori). There is a vast number of burial caves carved into the side of a mountain. Based on evidence found at the site, archaeologists believe that one of these caves contains the grave of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, along with many other great scholars of that time.

Not long after the death of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi the period know as the era of the Tannaim came to a close. The term Tanna, is derived from the Aramaic word “to teach” and covered a period of 200 years from ca.10 BCE to 200 CE beginning with Rabbi Shimon the son of Hillel the Elder and ending with Rabbi Yossi ben Yehuda.

WRITING THE TALMUD

During the centuries following the completion of the Mishna, the chain of transmission of the Oral law was further weakened by a number of factors:

- Economic hardship and increased persecution of the Jewish community
- It caused many Jews, including many rabbis, to flee the country
- Many of these rabbis emigrated to Babylon in the Persian Empire

The role of the rabbis of Israel as the sole central authority of the Jewish people was coming to an end. This decentralization of Torah authority and lack of consensus among the rabbis led to further weakening of the transmission process. It became clear to the sages of this period that the Mishna alone was no longer clear enough to fully explain the Oral Law. It was written in shorthand fashion and in places was cryptic. This is because it was very concise, written on the assumption that the person reading it was already well-acquainted with the subject matter.

So they began to have discussions about it and to write down the substance of these discussions.

Since at this time a significant portion of the Jewish population was living in Babylon, which was outside the bounds of the Roman Empire, the rabbis there put together their discussions, the end product of which was called Talmud Bavli or the Babylonian Talmud.

Even before this process had begun in Babylon, in the land of Israel, another set of discussions took place and the end result was the Jerusalem Talmud (the Jerusalem Talmud was not written in Jerusalem; it was written in Tiberias, the last place where the Sanhedrin sat but was called the Jerusalem Talmud in deference to the Sanhedrin’s home)

Due to persecution of the Jewish community in Israel the Jerusalem Talmud, completed in the mid 4th century CE, was never completed or fully edited.

The Jerusalem Talmud is much shorter and more cryptic/harder to understand than the Babylonian Talmud. The situation of the Jews in Babylon was much more stable and the rabbis in Babylon had considerably more time to edit and explain the subject matter.

Although there are two Talmuds, they are not really separate.

The Rabbis of Babylon had access to the Jerusalem Talmud while they were working on their text. But if there is dispute between the two Talmuds, the Babylonian Talmud is followed.

Both because Babylonian Talmud is considered more authoritative and the Jerusalem Talmud is more difficult to study, Jewish students pouring over the Talmud in yeshiva are using chiefly the Babylonian Talmud. The Talmud is more than just an application of the details of the Jewish law as expounded in the Mishnah. It’s the encyclopedia of all Jewish existence.

The Talmud also contains a lot of agadata:

These are stories that are meant to illustrate important points in the Jewish worldview. These stories contain a wealth of information on a huge range of topics.

This information was vital to the Jewish people because Jewish law was never applied by reading a sentence in the Torah and executing it to the letter.

Take for example, “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.”

It was never Jewish law that if someone blinded you, that you should go and blind him.
What is the good of having two blind people?

It was always understood on two levels:

1) Justice must be proportional (it’s not a life for an eye)
2) The value of an eye for the value of the eye, refers to monetary damages

Thus, the Talmud presented the written and oral tradition together.

To read the Talmud is to read a lot of arguments.
On every page it seems that the rabbis are arguing.

The purpose was to arrive at the kernel of truth, called pilpul.

This word has a negative connotation outside the yeshiva world, as people read these arguments and it seems to the uneducated eye that the rabbis are merely splitting hairs, and that some of the arguments have absolutely no basis in everyday life. But this is not so.

The reason why the rabbis argued about things that may not have any application to everyday life was to try to get to truth in an abstract way; to understand the logic and to extract the principle.

Another important point is that much of the discussion and dispute is focused on relatively minor points while the larger issues are generally not disputed.

You don’t see a single argument as to whether or not you eat pork, or whether or not you can light a fire on the Sabbath. These things were a given, they were totally agreed upon.

Only small points were subject to discussion and these rabbis were wise enough to know that a day would come when the principles established by getting to the core kernel of truth would have far reaching implications.

GEMARA

When you look at the page of the Babylonian Talmud today, you will find the Hebrew text of the Mishna is featured in the middle of the page. Interspersed between the Hebrew of the Mishna are explanations in both Hebrew and Aramaic which are called the Gemara.

The Aramaic word Gemara means “tradition.” In Hebrew, the word Gemara means “completion.” Indeed, the Gemara is a compilation of the various rabbinic discussions on the Mishna, and as such completes the understanding of the Mishna.

The texts of the Mishna and Gemara are then surrounded by other layers of text and commentaries from a later period.

The text of the Mishna is quoting rabbis who lived from about 100BCE to 200 CE.
These rabbi are called the Tanaim, “teachers.”
The text of the Gemara is quoting the rabbis who lived from about 200CE to about 500CE.
These rabbis are called, Amoraim, “explainers” or “interpreters.”

The surrounding text of today’s Talmud also quotes Rishonim, literally “the first ones,” rabbinic authorities (from c. 1,000 C.E. until 1,500 C.E.) who predated Rabbi Joseph Caro, the 16th century author of the code of Jewish law known as the Shulchan Aruch.

Just how important was the work of Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi and those that followed him would become very clear in the next hundred years when the Jewish people face another threat.

This is when the Roman Empire decides to convert its entire population to Christianity.
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moofy
moofy: Zanjan: The destruction of the second Temple destroyed the Jewish Priestly caste in 70 AD……….uh huh, magic number again. Without the temple that job was eliminated. The great sages (rabbis), of which were many – a dime a dozen - saw themselves as great leaders.

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Josephus Flavius was an eye-witness to the siege of Jerusalem.

The Roman forces were led by Flavius Vespasian and his son Titus, both subsequently Roman emperors. In 69, Josephus was released (War 4.622-629) and according to Josephus’s own account, he appears to have played a role as a negotiator with the defenders during the Siege of Jerusalem in 70.

“A last and cherished hope of the tyrants and their brigand comrades lay in the underground passages, as a place of refuge where they expected no search should be made for them, intending after the complete capture of the city and the departure of the Romans to come forth and make their escape. But this proved to be but a dream: for they were not destined to elude either God or the Romans” (War 6.370, Loeb edition).
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moofy
moofy: Nancy:

Jews never crucified people???
In the times of Jesus - no.
A couple of hundred years earlier - yes, very much so.

"Alexander Jannaeus attempted to arrest the last of the Pharisee leaders. Most escaped. However, those he caught were often executed via crucifixion, which he learned from the Romans. In one incident, he nailed 800 people to crucifixes in one day along the road outside Jerusalem and slew their wives and children in front of them as they slowly died on the crucifix."

Copied from http://www.jewishhistory.org/sadducees-and-pharisees/, chapter "Uncivil Civil War, second paragraph.

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@Nancy:

This is a truncated source, which has a much more in-depth history.

One individual crucifying others does not mean "all the Jews" however.
That's a blanket generalization that oversimplifies the events.

@SUPER JEW: She is technically correct; however, the name may be unfamiliar because it's not in Hebrew in this context.

Assuming that Jews have never killed anyone is also a generalization.
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YANNAI (Jannaeus ALEXANDER 126–76 B.C.E.):

Hasmonean ruler of Judaea (103–76 B.C.E.):

Son of John Hyrcanus; was high priest and king. According to Josephus, Yannai was hated by his father and for this reason was forced to spend his childhood in Galilee. When his eldest brother, Aristobulus, inherited the high priesthood from their father, he was imprisoned together with other brothers and his mother for fear they would attempt to seize power. Upon the death of Aristobulus, his widow, Salome Alexandra, designated Yannai as the successor, and the new high priest married his sister-in-law, in accordance with the Jewish rite of levirate.

Since Josephus holds that Aristobulus had already transformed the government into a kingdom, he also assumes that

The kingdom of Alexander Yannai, 10376 B.C.E. Based on Zev Vilnay, New Israel Atlas, Jerusalem, 1968. The kingdom of Alexander Yannai, 103–76 B.C.E. Based on Zev Vilnay, New Israel Atlas, Jerusalem, 1968.

Yannai inherited the kingship from him. However, Strabo's assertion (16:2, 40) and the testimony of Aristobulus' and Yannai's coins may support the opinion that Aristobulus never was a king and that Yannai became a king only at a later stage of his rule.

The political history of Judaea under Yannai may be divided into four periods.

1) The first period extends from 103 until about the year 95:

At the start of his rule, Yannai took advantage of the dissensions inside the Ptolemaic kingdom and besieged one of the most impressive Ptolemaic strongholds on the Mediterranean coast: Ptolemais (Acco).

Ptolemy Lathyrus, who previously was compelled to retreat to Cyprus by his queen Cleopatra III, his mother, promptly reacted. While leaving part of his army besieging Ptolemais, he invaded Judaea and defeated Yannai.

The latter was saved only by Cleopatra's intervention. She launched a military campaign against Lathyrus, took again Gaza and Ptolemais, and forced him to retreat again to Cyprus.

Thus freed from Lathyrus' threat, Yannai seems to have turned to Transjordan, perhaps in order to take revenge upon Lathyrus' allies, notably Theodorus, the tyrant of Amathus. Yannai succeeded in conquering Gadara in Transjordan, and Amathus.

In the meantime, Cleopatra met her death, while Lathyrus carried on waging war against his brother Ptolemy Alexander.

As a result, Yannai turned again to the Mediterranean coast, and this time, he succeeded in subduing Gaza (c96). By this time, he had gained control of the entire coastal region from Mount Carmel in the north down to the Egyptian border (with the exception of Ashkelon).

2) The second period extends roughly from c. 95 to 88:

It seems that strengthened by his successes, Yannai assumed the title of king only at this stage of his rule, thus claiming to be free of any other political power.

In any case, Yannai's military policies may have overly angered the Jewish population and a civil war broke out, which lasted six years and whose leaders were probably the Pharisees. ---

Since they were unable to defeat the king's army reinforced by mercenaries, they called the Seleucid overlord of Judaea, Demetrius III, to come and fight against Yannai. Demetrius invaded Judaea and defeated Yannai near Shechem (89/88 BCE). Taking advantage of Yannai's weakness, the Nabateans compelled him to relinquish the territories he previously conquered in Transjordan.

3) In the aftermath of his defeat, Yannai was compelled to renounce the title of king.

- He seems to have spent the next 3 years fighting his Jewish opponents and recovering from his bitter defeat.

Having subdued their most powerful stronghold, Bethoma, he made his opponents prisoners, and bringing them back to Jerusalem, he ordered eight hundred of them to be crucified. Both Josephus and Qumranic Pesher Nahum echo the horror of such a cruel deed.

4) The last period of his rule (84–76 BCE):

It was the culmination of his power and of the territorial expansion of his kingdom. Both Ptolemaic Egypt and Seleucid Syria were on their decline. Although he still endured attacks from Seleucids, Antiochos XII Dionysus attempted to again subdue Judaea on his way against the Nabateans and from Nabateans themselves, when Aretas became the ruler of Damascus.

However, with the appearance of the Armenians under Tigranes in 83 BCE and Lathyrus' death in 80 BCE, Yannai got rid of his old enemies and felt free to recapture most of the territory east of Jordan, the Decapolis and Golan. New series of coins were struck bearing the title of king once again.

Yannai met his death while besieging Regev, a fortress east of Jordan. According to his will, the throne went to his widow. He left two sons, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, the former nominated high priest by Alexandra, until the civil war which erupted after the death of their mother (67 BCE).

Yannai and the Pharisees

Josephus on the one hand and rabbinic sources on the other record a number of clashes between Yannai and the Pharisees (eg, Ant., 13:372–383; Kid. 66a; Sot. 47a; Sanh. 19a).

However, according to Josephus (Ant, 13:400–404), on his death bed the king advised his wife to yield a certain amount of power to them, so that she could govern with no problems.

Yannai and Qumran Literature

Yannai appears at least in two Qumranic compositions.

Pesher Nahum is indignant of the way the "Lion of Wrath" took revenge of "those who seek smooth things" by hanging men alive after Demetrius' unsuccessful attempt to conquer Jerusalem (1Q p Nahum 1:2–8).

The historical coincidence points to Yannai's deed against his opponents, mainly Pharisees (here surnamed "those who seek smooth things".

Although the king is named "Alexander Yannai" by Josephus and "Yannai the king" by rabbinic literature, his full name was "Alexander Jonathan" as attested to by his coins.

Therefore most scholars think a previously unknown prayer (4Q448) recalls him when speaking of "Jonathan the king." The editors understood the prayer as "for the welfare of King Jonathan and his kingdom."

However the meaning of the biblical phrases quoted by the author suggests another interpretation. It is rather a call to God to arise against Jonathan the king so that God's kingdom may be blessed.

Another group of texts, mainly Pesher Habakkuk, recalls the way the "Wicked Priest" persecuted the "Teacher of Righteousness," the head of the Dead Sea sect, and his group.

The phrase "Wicked Priest" seems to aim at the High Priest living in Jerusalem, contemporary of the Teacher of Righteousness.

Thus some scholars identify this figure with Alexander Yannai, while other scholars seek to identify him with one of his predecessors or successors.

An additional hypothesis suggests to understand the phrase "the Wicked Priest" as a generic surname referring to each of the Hasmonean rulers, one after the other. The various opinions seem to result from the supposed times of the Teacher of Righteousness.

Source:
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0021_0_21193.html
(Edited by moofy)
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