The Weekly Sift

mosckerr  On April 22, 2025 at 5:08 am

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Having a deep conversation with Gary: lutherwasnotbornagain.com here on wordpress.

He writes: Although the allusions in non-Christian sources (the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and Talmudic texts) are almost negligible, they refute the unsubstantiated notion that Jesus might never have existed.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/The-relation-of-the-early-church-to-the-career-and-intentions-of-Jesus
While there is no archaeological or other physical evidence for his existence, most scholars agree that Jesus did exist and that he was born sometime in the decade before the Common Era and crucified sometime between 26-36 CE (the years when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, ruled Judea).

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-do-jews-believe-about-jesus/

Although the allusions in non-Christian sources (the Jewish historian Josephus, the Roman historians Tacitus and Suetonius, and Talmudic texts) are almost negligible, they refute the unsubstantiated notion that Jesus might never have existed.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Christianity/The-relation-of-the-early-church-to-the-career-and-intentions-of-Jesus
While there is no archaeological or other physical evidence for his existence, most scholars agree that Jesus did exist and that he was born sometime in the decade before the Common Era and crucified sometime between 26-36 CE (the years when the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, ruled Judea).

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-do-jews-believe-about-jesus/

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My response:
mosckerr

April 21, 2025 at 10:23 PM

Hi Gary your sentence presents an interesting tension: on one hand, it acknowledges that non-Christian references to Jesus are “almost negligible,” yet on the other hand, it asserts that they are sufficient to refute the claim that Jesus never existed.

Who are these “the majority of scholars agree that Jesus was a historical figure”? The Talmud interprets the T’NaCH, that it commands prophetic mussar rather than history. Why because mussar applies across the board equally to all generations, whereas history applies to only one generation who lived thousands of years ago.

Bart Ehrman (agnostic/atheist, textual critic): Did Jesus Exist? (2012)
E. P. Sanders (Christian, New Testament scholar): The Historical Figure of Jesus (1993)
John P. Meier (Catholic priest and historian): A Marginal Jew (multi-volume)
Paula Fredriksen (historian of ancient Christianity and Judaism)
Geza Vermes (Jewish historian and Dead Sea Scrolls scholar)

These scholars draw their conclusions, based upon “historical-critical methods” applied to both canonical and non-canonical sources, and cross-referenced with Roman and Jewish texts.

Rabbi Akiva, for example, famously interpreted every extra letter of the Torah as containing halakhic or moral significance—not merely historical data. The stories of Avraham, Yosef, Moshe, etc., are less about documenting past events and more about conveying archetypes of emunah (faith), din (justice), rachamim (compassion), and the different & distinct oath britot. Tefillen, for example, shares a common denominator with Sefer Torah – with either a person can swear a Torah oath. The Order of the Rashi tefillen different than the Order of the Rabbeinu Tam (Rashi’s grand-son) tefillen. This dispute by Reshonim scholars 1057 – 1185 CE. Rashi started his formal Talmudic education in 1057 and Rabbeinu Tam passed in 1185 — both dates approximate. Once you go way back into history, it becomes a guessing game for later generations.

The Classic viewpoint taken by Tannaim and Amoraim scholars, the people who wrote the Mishna and Gemara; and the Gaonim Era of scholarship. Rav Ashi and Rav Ravinna sealed the Talmud at about 450 CE. Why? So that all generations thereafter would have the same masoret traditions. Such that the earlier generations could not make a valid claim that they were closer to the actual Torah revelation in time. Hence the generation of Ezra sealed the T’NaCH and Rabbi Yechuda sealed his Mishna in about 210 CE.

Jewish history from 550 to 1038 C.E marked by intense scholarship at the Babylonian academies by scholars who studied and interpreted the Talmud. This time period known as the Gaonim period which preceded the Reshonim period 950 – 1400 CE. The gap between the sealing of the Talmud and the Gaonim period, known as the Sovoraim scholars – the final editors of the Talmud.

The Historical-Critical Method stems from German Protestant Origins. The historical-critical method emerged out of 18th–19th century German Protestant scholarship, especially during the Enlightenment. Its foundations, laid by thinkers like: Julius Wellhausen, F.C. Baur, David Friedrich Strauss (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, 1835), and Rudolf Bultmann, who sought to “demythologize” the New Testament. This approach aimed to strip the Bible of its divine authority and treat it like any other piece of ancient literature—subject to human error, redaction layers, myth-making, and ideological editing. In short, historical-critical scholars de-sacralized Scripture and tried to reconstruct the “real” history behind the text, often in direct opposition to traditional Talmudic and post Talmudic Jewish or even Christian attempts to monopolize how to read and interpret scripture. Persons like William Tyndale (executed in 1536), serve as but one glaring example of the church efforts to dictate how the Bible understood.

By the mid-20th century, major assumptions of Higher Criticism were heavily critiqued—even from within its own camp. Archaeological finds (e.g., Dead Sea Scrolls, Ugaritic texts) complicated Wellhausen’s clean chronological categories. Linguistic and literary studies questioned the neat separation of J, E, D, P sources. Form and redaction critics began to focus more on the final form of texts, acknowledging the limitations of speculative source division.

Even Jewish scholars like Umberto Cassuto and later Moshe Greenberg challenged Higher Criticism, defending the unity and structure of the Torah as a coherent work. Umberto Cassuto and Moshe Greenberg stand as important counterpoints to the Protestant-European dominance of historical-critical scholarship. Each, in his own way, pushed back against the Wellhausenian paradigm and sought to restore Torah’s integrity as a unified and deeply meaningful text—rooted not in myth or redaction, but in remembering the oaths sworn when great Torah leaders swore an oath brit alliance.

The deep irony emerges: the same Protestant German method that tried to discredit the historical reliability of Tanakh, now Gary you use, along with some New Testament scholars to argue for the historicity of Jesus! Bunk. German Protestant Higher Criticism knows nothing of prophetic mussar. This 19th Century scholarship, utterly foreign to the logic of Torah and Oral Torah (e.g., PaRDeS, כלל ופרט); Protestant theology in general and Higher Criticism in particular – both operate from a framework that rejects the Oral Torah brit of Sinai as mythology or nationalism. So when secular or liberal Christian scholars use “historical-critical” methods to say “Jesus surely existed,” it’s not based on any Torah-rooted epistemology, but on Enlightenment rationalism and Euro-Christian assumptions.

This explains why the Talmud doesn’t engage in historical apologetics. Its scholarship makes no attempt or effort to prove Moshe existed or David ruled over Israel in archaeological terms. Its authority comes from the oath brit alliance and deriving the specific oaths sworn in order to cut T’NaCH britot. I brought the dispute between Rashi and Rabbeinu Tam over the order of tefillen as an example of this classic type of scholarship which strives to remember and distinguish between oath from oath sworn.

Post Talmudic scholarship branched off into two opposing main schools. The Baal HaMaor understood the Talmud as judicial common law which interprets the distinctions which separate earlier Court rulings on cases heard before the Courts from later Court ruling heard before the Courts. The opposing branch of classic post Talmudic scholarship focused upon organizing law into simple religious codes to address the needs of the Jewish people scattered across all of the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

The Baal HaMaor line of scholarship, whose research the ongoing interpretive chain of tradition—not from historical-critical validation—lost the debate. The opposite of the P’rushim vs. Tzeddukim Civil War in Judea remembered through lighting the lights of Hanukkah. The B’HaG ruled that remembering the oath sworn when lighting the lights of Hanukkah elevates this rabbinic mitzva unto a Torah time oriented commandment!

My Rav learned from Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv the sh’itta/methodology of Common Law interpretive school of Talmudic scholarship. The opposing branch that turned the halacha into Codes of Jewish law, based itself primarily upon Greek and Roman statute law assimilated influences. A direct violation of a Torah negative commandment. The Rambam replaced the Pardes logic of rabbi Akiva’s kabbalah of the Oral Torah with Aristotle’s syllogism. The Pardes logic – inductive reasoning, whereas Aristotle’s logic – deductive reasoning! A day and night difference on the order of static vs dynamic engineering.

As Rabbi Soloveitchik, a 20th Century Modern Orthodox famous scholar, once said: “We do not believe in Torah because it is historically verified; we believe because of the revelation at Sinai, transmitted through our mesorah.”

Euro-Christian historicism merits respect on par with manure used as fertilizer. The historical-critical method emerged in 18th–19th century German Protestant scholarship, rooted in Enlightenment rationalism. Thinkers such as Julius Wellhausen, F.C. Baur, David Friedrich Strauss, and Rudolf Bultmann laid the foundations of this approach. Their goal was to strip the Bible of divine authority and treat it like any other flawed ancient text—subject to myth-making, redaction, ideological bias, and historical error.

The rich irony, the very German Protestant methodology designed to discredit the Torah’s historicity, now widely used by Christian scholars to argue for the historicity of Jesus! A theological sleight of hand! These scholars—often secular or liberal Christians—employ Enlightenment-era tools, not to validate prophecy, brit, or Divine law, but to construct a quasi-historical Jesus that fits modern ideological preferences. These conclusions simply not rooted in Torah epistemology, (branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, sources, limits, and validity of knowledge), nor in Talmudic interpretive traditions like PaRDeS or klal u’prat, but in Euro-Christian rationalism and post-Reformation theological assumptions. And unlike the prophetic mussar of the T’NaCH—which applies equally to all generations—the historical Jesus belongs to a distant past, devoid of national covenant, divine command, or legal brit.

The epistemological sleight of hand that the historical-critical method performs: it tries to debunk Torah by treating it like a myth, then constructs a sanitized Jesus through the very same tools. It’s like using acid to dissolve Sinai and then bottling what’s left as some kind of universal moral tonic. All this Enlightenment-era critique may ironically serve to reawaken a deeper appreciation of the Torah’s non-historicist logic—rooted in brit, mussar, and legal accountability, not in positivist source analysis.

Historical-critical scholars approach prophecy as if it were Hellenistic historiography—missing entirely the oath britot alliances that go beyond merely the functions of nevu’ah restricted to a caged moral summons, some historical archive. Torah functions as a Constitutional political document. Judea sit at the throat of a major artery of trade that connects North Africa to Europe! Countless military invasions have likewise warred through the Middle East! Hence the concept of oath sworn alliances first and foremost addresses political alliances and not religious theological belief systems.

That Wellhausen’s model—which once deemed Torah as myth—now retroactively used to support Jesus as a real figure – not myth?! A philosophical bait-and-switch. Historical Jesus studies often end up “re-sacralizing” Jesus in liberal moral terms (as proto-socialist, proto-anti-racist, etc.), bypassing any divine brit or halakhic framework. It’s the liberal Protestant version of avodah zarah.

The Talmud never “proves” Moshe existed. It presupposes brit, which his Torah instructs. The authority of the Torah, not empirical but juridical. The brit itself—the foundational claim—not historical reconstructions, not evidence from Ugarit, a large body of ancient texts discovered at the archaeological site of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria) in the late 1920s. Torah logic (PaRDeS, klal u’prat, midrash halakhah), in a word – generative. It strives to remember the oaths, for example, sworn by the Avot, by which they cut an oath brit alliance with the Divine and established the chosen Cohen nation. Greek logic (like Aristotle’s syllogisms) aims at abstraction and metaphysics. They’re not just different tools—they imply different realities.

The very methodology that once dismissed Torah as legend, now enlisted to “prove” that Jesus existed—not as a fulfillment of brit or nevu’ah, but as a proto-liberal symbol molded by modern ideology? This bait-and-switch, not merely methodological—rather it represents theological avodah zarah. Historical Jesus studies, especially in liberal Protestant and secular academic circles, no longer aim at truth through brit judicial common law justice. Instead, they fabricate a figure who satisfies postmodern tastes—Jesus the anti-imperialist, the community organizer, the intersectional savior. All this without mitzvot, without brit, without Sinai and without Horev Oral Torah Pardes logic.

Historical-critical scholars misread prophetic literature, as if it were Greek-style historiography or some political memoir. They miss that nevu’ah in Tanakh, nothing about chronicling the past—but rather sustaining the oath sworn alliances which apply to all the generations who trouble to “remember” those specific sworn oath alliances in the first place. The past or “history” serves only as a tool to study mussar in “historical contexts”. The prophets don’t merely “moralize”—they litigate. Nevu’ah as the key legal mechanism, expressed through Aggadah in a constitutional framework of Torah בראשית & Talmud. And the Torah itself most definitely not “Xtian scripture” in the new testament, koran, book of mormon and scientology substitute scriptures – sense. The Sefer Torah serves as the first oath-brit codification, a national charter built on public oaths and collective responsibility.

Wellhausen, Baur, Strauss, and Bultmann were not merely academic critics—they were Protestant theologians operating within post-Reformation frameworks. They saw religion as belief systems, not political-legal sworn alliances! Situated at the strategic crossroads of competing empires, Judea – always a geopolitical pressure point. That’s why Torah begins with the Avot swearing oaths, and why every brit alliance in Tanakh completely political—land, law, and loyalty—and not abstract belief system theologies or Creeds. The Avot in their day a tiny speck minority population, as likewise the Jewish people relative to the Goyim today.

Hence, Talmudic tradition doesn’t argue for Moshe’s historicity, the way historians argue for Julius Caesar. Moshe Rabbeinu accepted not through archaeological proof but through juridical continuity: mesorah, halakhah, brit, and Sanhedrin common law courts of law. The Oral Torah remembers the oath alliances sworn by my forefathers. The Oral Torah remembers the oath alliances, viewed through interpretive Torah logic discipline, not historical or even physical forensic evidence. The modern scientific method which requires empirical physical evidence as much avoda zara as Euclid’s 5 axiom of geometry which limits reality to three physical dimensions. The question isn’t “Did it happen?”—it’s “What oath does this obligate me to today?”

At the root lies an epistemic chasm. Torah logic—PaRDeS, כלל ופרט, midrash halakhah—the kabbalah of inductive, generative, dynamic Oral Torah reasoning. It reads horizontally across generations, preserving and applying the brit through interpretive tradition. It prioritizes & remembers oaths, not merely historical events. Greek logic, by contrast—epitomized in Aristotle’s syllogism—deductive, hierarchical, and abstract. It searches for universal forms and metaphysical truths. Torah logic binds the people to HaShem through brit. Greek logic abstracts truth from history and separates law from life.

Herein why the Rambam’s use of Aristotelian categories, while brilliant, marked a radical “Civil War Hanukkah” shift toward Tzeddukim codification and away from P’rushim fluid common-law methods of Talmudic dialectic. Why the Baal HaMaor’s line of thinking—seeing halakhah as jurisprudence, not religion—holds the key to reawakening and please HaShem, restoring the Sanhedrin lateral common law Federal Court system within a Torah Constitutional Republic as the post 1967 June War victory of Zionism, as much or more so over European imperialism as Arab racist Nazism which rejects the 1917 Balfour and 1947 two/thirds UN General Assembly vote which recognized Jews equal rights to achieve self-determination in the Middle East!

Not a state run by some crude and utterly primitive Theocracy, which spins around a worthless central axis of a grand building made of wood and stone but the Torah faith: צדק צדק תרדוף. A republic founded on oath alliances—a Torah Constitutional Republic. A sovereign nation whose law flows from Sinai, not from tin-horned theologians, historians, or Enlightenment skeptics. Not a postmodern Jesus built from Protestant Shoah ruins, but the living memory of Horev, written not in parchment alone but in brit-bound hearts of the chosen Cohen people.