Jesus in the Talmud

Notes to Chapter 6 167ding and permitting in halakhic matters; they are also technical terms used inmagical texts and expressing magical powers. See the magical use of the verbsasar (“to bind with a spell”) and sherei (“to release from a spell”) in Sokoloff,Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, pp. 150f., 1179; idem, A Dictionary ofJewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period, Ramat-Gan: Bar Ilan UniversityPress, 1990, pp. 68, 567; Giuseppe Veltri, Magie und Halakha. Ansätze zueinem empirischen Wissenschaftsbegriff im spätantiken und frühmittelalterlichenJudentum, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1997, pp. 32, 78, 123. Seealso Smith, Jesus the Magician, p. 114.Chapter 6Jesus’ Execution1. Hanging as an actual mode of execution is regarded in the Bible as a non-Jewish law (Gen. 4:22; Josh. 8:29; 2 Sam. 21:6–12; Ezra 6:11; Esth. 7:9). On thedeath penalty, see Haim Cohn, The Trial and Death of Jesus, New York: Harperand Row, 1971, pp. 211–217, and the summary in Haim Hermann Cohn andLouis Isaac Rabinowitz, “Capital Punishment,” in EJ, 1971, vol. 5, cols.142–147.2. m Sanh 7:1: stoning (seqilah), burning (śerefah), slaying (hereg), and strangling(heneq).3. Paul Winter in his classic On the Trial of Jesus (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1961,pp. 70–74) suggests, rather unconvincingly, that the death penalty of stranglingwas introduced by the rabbis in order to secretly exercise jurisdiction even incapital cases, although they were deprived of this authority after 70 C.E.4. m Sanh 6:1.5. b Sanh 43a. I follow the Firenze (II.1.8–9) manuscript with reference tothe other available manuscripts.6. Or (a different interpretation): “On such and such a day, on such and suchan hour, and in such and such a place (the criminal will be executed),” announcingthe precise time of the execution.7. This is the Mishna lemma, which is commented upon in the following.8. Literally before him, on his way to the execution.9. Chronologically, sometime before the execution.10. Only in Ms. Firenze.