Commenting on
the errant use of the Mishnah and other rabbinic texts by Latter-day Saints vis-à-vis
the trial of Jesus, Avram Shannon, assistant professor of ancient scripture at
BYU, wrote the following:
Difficulties
with the trial of Jesus
One instance where rabbinic literature has
been used to further understand the New Testament, but where there are very
real difficulties in how that literature was deployed, is the trial of Jesus.
The notion that the trial of Jesus was illegal is something that has pervaded Latter-day
Saint thinking since at least James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ. Latter-day Saints, building from Talmage, found
support in a book by Walter M. Chandler, an American lawyer and politician. The
evidence mustard for the illegality of the trial of Jesus comes from various
parts of rabbinic literature, without any real regard for questions of when and
where the various laws and quotations are coming from. Because the trial of
Jesus has been used so much for anti-Semitic purposes, it is especially important
to handle the rabbinic sources judiciously.
The Mishnah represents, in many ways, a
utopian law code—in other words, the Mishnah represents the way that the sages
understood the law of Moses and how they wanted it interpreted but not
necessarily how it was actually lived. The most obvious example of this is the
large amount of space dedicated to the administration and regulation of the
Jerusalem temple. The temple had been destroyed for over 130 years by the time
of the Mishnah was collated, but it still contained regulations on how to administer
the sacrifices and what the proper rules and vows and other temple-focused laws
from the law of Moses were.
The regulation of capital punishment is a
crucial example of probable utopian laws that has direct bearing on the trial
of Jesus. It is unclear from our sources whether the Jews living under Roman
control had the power to execute capital punishments. Mishnah Sanhedrin, the mishnaic
tractate on legal judgments and courts, presumes that the rabbis retain the
biblical power to enact punishment for capital crimes. The mishnaic tractate of
Sanhedrin covers many issues of rabbinic jurisprudence, including the
sentencing of crime according to the biblical mandate. Mishnah Sanhedrin 7:6
states, “Four forms of execution were transmitted to the [rabbinic] court:
stoning, burning, decapitation, and strangulation.” The Mishnah then lists
various ways in which these executions were to be performed. The Mishnah,
drawing on biblical laws, presumes that it has the power to perform execution.
The New Testament, however, makes an opposite claim. The contradiction is
likely because of the utopian nature of much of the Mishnah’s laws—they are
describing the world as they wished it to be. In John 18:31 the leaders of the
Jews tell Pilate, “It is not lawful for us to put any man to death.” This
passage is useful precisely because it lays out what appears to be a direct
contradiction between a rabbinic source on the one hand and the New Testament
on the other. Because of it, it shows the danger in using the Mishnah to
explore the illegality of the trial of Jesus. Thus, the connection between the
legal world described by the sages and the legal situation of Jesus’ trial is
tenuous at best.
This has been recognized by Latter-day Saint
scholars in recent years. Dana M. Pike notes, “Claims that Jesus’ ‘trial’ was
illegal because it violated Mishnaic regulation have no historical basis and
are best avoided.” Likewise, in their study companion to Talmage’s Jesus the Christ, Thomas Wayment and
Richard Holzapfel state, “Scholars today realize the Jewish sources used by
earlier scholars to identify the illegalities of the trial come from a later
period than the New Testament, and, therefore, likely do not give an accurate
portrayal of first-century Jewish practice. The Gospels do not accuse the
Jewish council of illegalities so we assume there are none to report.” This
acknowledgement is an important step in helping us better understand how to use
the New Testament and rabbinic literature in making comparisons. If rabbinic
literature is read only for its connection
to the New Testament, it is possible to make grave mistakes and overstatements.
(Avram R. Shannon, “Rabbinic Literature and the New Testament” in Lincoln H.
Blumell, ed. New Testament History,
Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament [Provo/Salt
Lake City: BYU Religious Studies Center/Deseret Book, 2019], 122-38, here, pp.
129-30)
