Jesus ben Ananias

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Jesus ben Ananias (written in New Hebrew as ישוע בן חנניה Jeschua Ben Hananiah) was a Jewish prophet from the land who appeared in the year 62 AD during the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem and there repeatedly prophesied the imminent destruction of the Jerusalem temple .

His woes over the city, the temple and the people evidently related to the biblical prophet Jeremiah , who was written about in Jer 26  EU around 597 BC. BC predicted the destruction of the first temple in 586 BC. Occurred. Jesus ben Ananias was therefore arrested by the highest Jewish religious court, the Sanhedrin , interrogated and handed over to the Roman procurator Lucceius Albinus . This let him scourge bloody and then run. After the Jewish uprising began, he is said to have been killed by a Roman catapult bullet in 68. The Jewish historian Flavius ​​Josephus reports on this farmer who, in his opinion, was uneducated in his main work, History of the Jewish War (VI 5.3), after the Romans actually destroyed Jerusalem and the temple in the Jewish war in AD 70 .

The process of public criticism of the temple in Jerusalem, arrest and interrogation by the Sanhedrin and extradition to the Roman governor shows strong parallels to the Passion reports of the New Testament about Jesus of Nazareth . Unlike him, however, Jesus ben Ananias was a hitherto unknown loner who did not gather any followers and did not want to reform the temple cult. This is probably why he was not sentenced to death by the Sanhedrin and not executed by the Roman governor. However, it confirms the continuity of the prophetic tradition in Judaism parallel to and independent of Christianity in the making . For some NT historians such as Otto Betz, this proves the credibility of the Jesuan prophecy of the destruction of the temple ( Mk 13.2  EU ), which also referred to Jeremiah's analogous prophecy.

At the same time, the case of Jesus ben Ananias strengthens the view held by Jewish historians such as Paul Winter that the Sanhedrin, dominated by Sadducees , was not allowed to pass death sentences or use coercive measures under the high priest , who was then appointed and deposed by Romans , but only with maintaining the public order and insofar it was only the executive organ of the Roman occupying power. An interaction with the Romans was also given in this case.

Jesus ben Ananias is possibly identical with Abba Joseph ben Chanin , who is mentioned in the Talmud and who also appeared as a prophetic critic of the priests shortly before the temple was destroyed.

literature

Single receipts

  1. ^ Paul Winter: On the Trial of Jesus , 1961.
  2. ^ Heinrich Graetz : History of the Jews, From the oldest times to the present
personal data
SURNAME Jesus ben Ananias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION jewish prophet
DATE OF BIRTH 1st century BC BC or 1st century
DATE OF DEATH 1st century