Talk:Yohanan ben Zakkai/Archive 2

Sources

Would the learned contributor to this article at 0702 hrs on 15 June 2005, named 66.235.44.73, please add the relevant authorities (e.g. "New Testament scholars") for the claims made in his/her contribution and not be so obscurely general, so that one can have a proper discussion.

Meanwhile, my own unqualified observations.

a) The lack of evidence for a high priest with the name "Zakkaraias" during the first century CE is not pertinent in connection with John the Baptist. For according to Luke 1:5 his father Zachariah was not a high priest but a priest of the course of Abia. Abia was not one of the four priestly families that had returned from captivity, but one of the courses that had been formed out of them in order to reinstate the pre-captivity 24 courses. Zachariah is on record as officiating at an incence offering (Lk 1:9), which was not an offering reserved for the high priest.

Furthermore, the date/events we are interested in in this context, for they led to the consolidation with which Yohanan ben Zakkai has become so famously associated, are the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE by the Romans. But just a reminder: Zachariah according to Lk 1:7 was of "advanced age" when he begat John (around 5 BCE, depending on the authority one follows); and although there is no mention in the NT when he died, it seems reasonable to propose that he did not live to witness the destruction wrought by the Romans. As to his son John, he himself perished in the dungeon of Herod the tetrarch at the insistance of the latter's wife Herodias (cf. Lk 3:19-20, Mt 14:3-12), which must be dated after he divorced his first wife, the Nabatean princess, yet happened still decades before the destruction of Jerusalem. But perhaps contributor 66.235.44.73 can furnish the argument for adding this point in this particular context.

I have deleted the seemingly irrelevant reference to John the Baptist from the text added by 66.235.44.73, who in the Wikipedia spirit is of course welcome to reinstate it in a more helpful and pertinent version.

b) Re: Contributor 66.235.44.73's concluding suggestion: "For an additional remarkable parallel to Jesus and John, see Bagoas". Note that 66.235.44.73 starts the paragraph with "There is an intriguing parallel with New Testament scripture".

So the NT is the intended context of 66.235.44.73's argument. Now, am I missing something? Having followed through the links, and therefore having just had an involuntary crash course in pederasty – though perhaps the champions of political correctness in the secular society do not share my grievance but consider this indispensible knowledge – the Bagoas article deals with persons centuries before Jesus of Nazareth (unless 66.235.44.73 has another Jesus in mind). And which John is meant? The Baptist again? The disciple whom Jesus loved, thought to be John? And what is the parallel supposed to be? Is the word that caught 66.235.44.73's attention in the Bagoas article therefore eromenos, for which the translation beloved is offered? I was baffled by it, until, as I said, I took the links-crash course. But I need to take no crash course to realise that this forms no New Testament parallel – Jn 21:20 has the verb agapaō (a term known to Christians also from the Agape, the love meal)!

This sentence by 66.235.44.73 therefore seems to me to have no other purpose as to insinuate that the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and the disciple whom he loved was one of pederasty. I am therefore deleting it. If 66.235.44.73 insists on bringing it back, or something similar with such an insinuation, would the Wikipedia arbitrators kindly settle the dispute?

Portress 28 June 2005 23:38 (UTC)

Info

I added a whole bunch of stuff to the Yohanan page. The Johanan page suggested for merge seems to be heavy on New Testament references, of which I'm not familiar. I've got some personal interst in this article, so I may try to merge them in the future. What is the protocol for doing that? Yokai 08:45, 4 March 2006 (UTC)