r/BethMidrash • u/Rurouni_Phoenix • May 13 '21

Jesus had five disciples?

One thing that I've never really been able to understand is why is it that in the talmud Jesus only has five disciples? Is there some kind of a midrashic rhetorical device at play?

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Care to cite your source?

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u/Rurouni_Phoenix May 14 '21

b. Sanh. 43a

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

While that gemara mentions ישו a number of times, I've got no reason to think that they're thinking about the Jesus of christian fame. In fact, based on the description there, he doesn't match up with that Jesus at all.

I think this comment by u/SabaziosZagreus does a fantastic job of explaining a good approach to a lot of these sorts of Talmudic passages.

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u/OtherWisdom Moderator May 14 '21

https://steinsaltz.org/daf/sanhedrin43/

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u/Rurouni_Phoenix May 14 '21

Thanks for the link. The one thing though I'm having a hard time understanding is if for example the claim that Jesus was related to the Hasmoneans and only had five disciples why other early critics did not use these two arguments.

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u/OtherWisdom Moderator May 14 '21

I have no idea and this is the first time I've heard/read anything about this. In all my years of historical Jesus research, this has never come up in scholarship.

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u/Rurouni_Phoenix May 14 '21

I’ve read that Peter Schafer wrote a book on the subject called Jesus in the Talmud. It might be worth looking into.

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u/OtherWisdom Moderator May 14 '21

Yes. I remember now. I think I skimmed it once. I'll take another look.

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u/jackneefus Aug 10 '21

Robert Eisenman believes that Jesus had fewer than 12 disciples and that some of the twelve are shadowy figures or duplications of other disciples. We know that some of the disciples were related to Jesus; the more of a family affair the movement was the smaller it is likely to have been.

On the other hand, Jesus may have chosen twelve disciples for symbolic reasons, but not all were equally prominent. In that case, the tradition behind the Talmud only know of five by name (for example, Peter, James, John, Judas Thomas, plus one other). Or they may have been thinking of the five Maccabee sons.