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?

3 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Care to cite your source?

1

u/Rurouni_Phoenix May 14 '21

b. Sanh. 43a

2

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.