^[1] Emil G. Hirsch, “High Priest,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906), 6:393.

^[2] m. Avot 1:1–2:8. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 672–76.

^[3] Neusner, 672–76.

^[4] The historicity of this council is a topic of considerable dispute in academic literature, but the debate is not my concern for this article.

^[5] Shulamis Frieman, Who’s Who in the Talmud (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995), xxix.

^[6] Neusner, The Mishnah, 330.

^[7] David Kantrowitz, ed., Mishnah, Judaic Classics DVD-ROM (Brooklyn, NY: Judaica Press, 2009).

^[8] For confirmation of this from an Orthodox perspective, see entries for each man listed in Frieman, Who’s Who in the Talmud. From a Reform (liberal) perspective, see the entries for each man under The Jewish Encyclopedia. Also see Jewish Encyclopedia for “Nasi” and “Sanhedrin.” Also see Menachem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles = Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri, A Philip and Muriel Berman ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 41.

^[9] Gerald Y. Blidstein and Isaac Levitats, “Nasi,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007); Joseph Jacobs and Kaufmann Kohler, “Nasi,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906); Kaufmann Kohler, “Ab Bet Din,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1906); Hugo Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007).

^[10] Also see Jacob Neusner, First-Century Judaism in Crisis: Yoḥanan Ben Zakkai and the Renaissance of Torah, Augmented Edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 82–88.

^[11] Jacob Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, Second Edition (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2003), 13.

^[12] For a recent study of the Pharisees from multiple scholars, see Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine, eds., The Pharisees (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021).

^[13] Antiquities 13.171–73. Roland Deines, “Pharisees,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 1062.

^[14] Antiquities 13.288–98; 13.405–15; 15.3; 15.370; 17.41–45; 18.4; 18.11–15.

^[15] Wars 2.162.

^[16] Antiquities 13.298.

^[17] Menahem Mansoor, “Pharisees,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007), 16:31.

^[18] Stemberger, although he casts doubt upon the equation between Pharisees and sages, accepts that the sages of the Bavli accepted the Pharisees as their forerunners. He notes, “Another example is b. Nid. 33b. In the Tosefta (Nid. 5:3) a Sadducean woman says: ‘Even though we are Sadducean women, we all bring our inquiries [regarding menstrual impurity] to a sage.’ The Bavli transforms this saying: ‘My lord, high priest, even though we are Sadducean women, we fear the Pharisees and we bring all of our inquiries to a sage.’” Günter Stemberger, “The Pharisees and the Rabbis,” in The Pharisees, ed. Joseph Sievers and Amy-Jill Levine (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021), 247.

^[19] Although this stops short of the sages calling themselves “good Pharisees,” it undoubtedly holds up certain Pharisees as the Jewish ideal. Jacob Neusner, The Jerusalem Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008).

^[20] Schulim Ochser, “Simeon the Just,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901–1906). Flesher writes, “Scholars have attempted to identify him with Simeon I (310–291 b.c.e.), Simeon II (219–199 b.c.e.) and Simeon the Maccabee. While the case for Simeon II appears strongest, none of the identifications is by any means certain.” Paul V. M. Flesher, “Great Assembly,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 1089.

^[21] b. Sanhedrin 107b. This account anachronistically places Jesus of Nazareth in this time period as well.

^[22] b. Sanhedrin 19a; b. Berakhot 48a.

^[23] Josephus, Antiquities 15.3. Scholars sometimes identity Pollio in this passage as another name for Abtalion.

^[24] Hillel and Menachem were originally paired together, but m. Hagigah 2:2 and y. Hagigah 77D say that Menachem “departed” from his post. Josephus in Antiquities 15.373, places Menachem during the time of Herod and says that he was an Essene. It is possible that Menachem was once a Pharisee and was paired with Hillel, and then left to join the Essenes. Shammai took his place.

^[25] Ezekiel 7:26; Jeremiah 18:18; 1 Chronicles 23:2–6 (as judges); 2 Chronicles 15:3; 19:8–11; 23:8; 24:20; 31:4; Nehemiah 8:6–13.

^[26] Rami Shapiro, ed., Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing; SkyLight Paths Publishing, 2014), xii.

^[27] See Deut 12:5–7; 16:16; 31:9 for things that could only be done at the central sanctuary, which eventually came to be placed in Jerusalem. God explicitly states his choice of Jerusalem in passages such as 1 Ki 11:32, 2 Ki 23:37, 2 Ki 21:4, Ps 132:13, etc.

^[28] For this identification with the returned exiles of Nehemiah 8–10, see y. Bereshit 1:5, y. Bereshit 7:3, and y. Megillah 3:7. In his treatment of the Great Assembly, Menachem Elon writes, “Clear information is lacking concerning the specific functions of the Great Assembly (which during its existence was the supreme institution of the Jewish people), nor is it known precisely how its membership was selected. Even the number of its members is disputed. According to one tradition, the Great Assembly had 120 members, whereas according to another tradition, its membership was only eighty-five.” Elon, Jewish Law, 555.

^[29] It is not known how many tribes are represented in this number. They could be all Judahites, or they could include other tribes. The Tanakh and New Testament do not allow for the notion that the ten tribes of the Northern Kingdom were completely lost, since there is record of post-exile families from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh (1 Chr 9:3), and Anna, of the tribe of Asher (Luke 2:36). Even if only a few of the ten tribes are represented in Nehemiah’s counting, there is still a heavy representation of Levites in comparison. Also note that the same order of priest, Levite, and people is given a few verses later in Neh. 10:34.

^[30] The priests were Levites. Thus, the percentage is (22 + 17) / 84 = 46%.

^[31] Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century (APFC) No. 30. A. Cowley, ed., Aramaic Papyri of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), 108–18.

^[32] APFC 30.18. Cowley, 114.

^[33] Antiquities xi.7; cf. Cowley p. 108.

^[34] Josephus, Against Apion 1.22 §§183; 1.23 §214; §205.

^[35] Of course, Moses did not build Jerusalem or the Temple. It would be easy for a Gentile observer to conclude that Moses had done so, given his stature and importance in Jewish life.

^[36] This had been true of the Jewish people for several centuries (since 586 BCE) but was an inaccurate statement about Israel lacking kings before the Exile.

^[37] Diodorus Siculus, “Historical Library,” trans. Attalus.org, vol. 40, 40 vols., n.d., http://attalus.org/translate/diodorus40.html. Emphasis added.

^[38] Carl R. Holladay, “Hecataeus, Pseudo-,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992).

^[39] Craig A. Evans, “Sanhedrin,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 1193.

^[40] James Hamilton Charlesworth, ed., The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1983–1985), 1:784–85.

^[41] Sir 45:15–17. Rick Brannan et al., eds., The Lexham English Septuagint (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2012).

^[42] Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:115.

^[43] Charlesworth, 2:137.

^[44] Brannan et al., The Lexham English Septuagint.

^[45] Brannan et al.

^[46] Philo, Philo, trans. F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1929), 7:559.

^[47] Brannan et al., The Lexham English Septuagint.

^[48] Other Jewish historians of the period were Justus of Tiberias and Nicolaus of Damascus. Steven Bowman, “Josephus in Byzantium,” in Josephus, Judaism, and Christianity, ed. Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1987), 366–68.

^[49] A medieval version of Josephus’s writings, attributed to Yosippon or Joseph Ben Gorion, was commonly used by Jewish people in the Middle Ages. David Flusser, “Josippon,” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, ed. Fred Skolnik and Michael Berenbaum (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference and Keter, 2007).

^[50] Louis H. Feldman and Gohei Hata, eds., Josephus, the Bible, and History (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1989), 196.

^[51] Antiquities 4.214; 4.218. Flavius Josephus, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged, trans. William Whiston (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1987), 117. Emphasis added.

^[52] Against Apion 2.185–87.

^[53] Feldman writes, “From time to time, the voice of God happens to be revealed in the high priest’s words (A XIII, 282, where it happened to the high priest John Hyrcanus I). In other words, the gift of prophecy will be bestowed upon him.” Feldman and Hata, Josephus, the Bible, and History, 198. See also John 11:49–52, which refers to the High Priest Caiaphas prophesying.

^[54] Against Apion 2.193–194.

^[55] Josephus wrote in Greek, which is why some of the names in the list below are not in their Hebrew form, such as “Jesus son of Phiabi.”

^[56] James C. VanderKam, “High Priests,” in The Eerdmans Dictionary of Early Judaism, ed. John J. Collins and Daniel C. Harlow (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 740. Emphasis added.

^[57] There is archaeological evidence for Caiaphas being an important priest in this era. In 1990, Israeli archaeologists discovered a first-century ossuary (bone box) with “Joseph son of Caiaphas” on carved on the outside, and the bones of a 60-year-old man inside. The scholarly consensus is that this is the same Joseph Caiaphas as mentioned in the New Testament and Josephus. Additionally, in 2011, archaeologists from Bar-Ilan and Tel Aviv University discovered another ossuary, called the Miriam ossuary, which has an inscription that names Miriam as “daughter of Yeshua son of Caiaphas, priests of Ma’aziah from Beth Imri.” This is further evidence that Caiaphas was a priest. Boaz Zissu and Yuval Goren, “The Ossuary of ‘Miriam Daughter of Yeshua Son of Caiaphas, Priests [of] Maʻaziah from Beth ҆Imri,’” Israel Exploration Journal, no. 61 (2011): 74–95. For further discussion, see Eckhard J. Schnabel, Acts, Expanded Digital Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), 236–37; Craig A. Evans, “Caiaphas Ossuary,” in Dictionary of New Testament Background, ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

^[58] “But, I hereby give testimony concerning the family of the House of ‘Aluba’i of Bet Ṣeba’im and concerning the family of the house of Qipa’i [קיפא, Caiaphas?] of Bet Meqoshesh, that they are children of co-wives, and from them have been chosen high priests, and they did offer up sacrifices on the Temple altar.” Jacob Neusner, The Tosefta: Translated from the Hebrew with a New Introduction (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), 1:687.

^[59] Crispin Fletcher-Louis, “Priests and Priesthood,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 700–701.

^[60] Similar conclusions can be reached from Acts 5:21.

^[61] Acts 9:14; 22:5; 24:1; 25:2, 25:15; 26:10, 26:12.

^[62] 1QpHab Col. viii:10–13. Florentino Garcı́a Martı́nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations) (New York, NY: Brill, 1997–1998), 17.

^[63] Eric W. Covington, “Jonathan Maccabeus,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

^[64] Alison Schofield and James C. VanderKam, “Were the Hasmoneans Zadokites?,” Journal of Biblical Literature, no. 124 (2005): 83.

^[65] CD–A Col. xiv:3–4. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 1:573.

^[66] 1QS Col. ii:19–23. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, 1:73.

^[67] CD–A Col. xiv:3–8; 4Q267 Frag. 9 v:7–10; 1Q33 Col. xviii:5–6; 4Q491 Frags. 1–3:9–10; 11Q19 Col. xxi:4–6.

^[68] 1QS Col. ix:5–8. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 1:91.

^[69] CD–A Col. xiii:2–4.

^[70] 11Q19 Col. lxi:7–9. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (Translations), 2:1283.

^[71] 11Q19 Col. lvii:11–19. Garcı́a Martı́nez and Tigchelaar, 2:1279.

^[72] Gedalyahu Alon, Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World: Studies in Jewish History in the Times of the Second Temple and Talmud, trans. Israel Abrahams (Jerusalem, Israel: The Magnes Press, 1977), 48–88.

^[73] Gottlob Schrenk, “Ἀρχιερεύς,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 268–69.

^[74] Wars 2.162.

^[75] Antiquities 13.298.

^[76] Life 21; see also Wars 2.411.

^[77] Life 189–198.

^[78] For example, see the opinions of Werner Keller and Stuart Cohen in Stuart Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, Kindle (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016), chap. 4. Dauermann summarizes Cohen’s view as follows: “The Pharisees declared this shift in the balance of powers to be theologically obvious, divinely foreordained, and inevitable, in view of the termination of sovereign rulership in Israel (the keter malkhut) and, with the destruction of the Temple, the obliteration of the priesthood’s base of power and operations. Good salesmen that they were, they reasoned that no other rational choice remained for the Jewish community beyond a reorganization of community life and power under their own benign, capable, and divinely mandated stewardship.” (Kindle Locations 3001–3005)

^[79] Against Apion 2.185–87. “And where shall we find a better or more righteous constitution than ours, while this makes us esteem God to be the governor of the universe, and permits the priests in general to be the administrators of the principal affairs, and withal intrusts the government over the other priests to the chief high priest himself! which priests our legislator, at their first appointment, did not advance to that dignity for their riches, or any abundance of other possessions, or any plenty they had as the gifts of fortune; but he intrusted the principal management of divine worship to those that exceeded others in an ability to persuade men, and in prudence of conduct. These men had the main care of the law and of the other parts of the people’s conduct committed to them; for they were the priests who were ordained to be the inspectors of all, and the judges in doubtful cases, and the punishers of those that were condemned to suffer punishment.”

^[80] Against Apion 1.28–29. “As to the care of writing down the records from the earliest antiquity among the Egyptians and Babylonians; that the priests were intrusted therewith, and employed a philosophical concern about it; that these were the Chaldean priests that did so among the Babylonians; and that the Phoenicians, who were mingled among the Greeks, did especially make use of their letters, both for the common affairs of life, and for the delivering down the history of common transactions, I think I may omit any proof, because all men allow it so to be: but now, as to our forefathers, that they took no less care about writing such records (for I will not say they took greater care than the others I spoke of), and that they committed that matter to their high priests and to the prophets, and that these records have been written all along down to our own times with the utmost accuracy; nay, if it be not too bold for me to say it, our history will be so written hereafter;—I shall endeavor briefly to inform you.”

^[81] David Instone-Brewer, Feasts and Sabbaths: Passover and Atonement, vol. 2A, Traditions of the Rabbis from the Era of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 145.

^[82] m. Horayoth 3:4, m. Megilla 1:9. For evidence of the survival of the priesthood during their battles for legitimacy against the rabbis, see Jewish Priesthood after the Destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in A.D. 70, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5lzPpUQBxM.

^[83] m. Avot 6:6 (in Kinyan Torah, cf. m. Avot 4:14): “Torah is greater than priesthood and kingship, for kingship is acquired through thirty achievements, and priesthood through twenty-four, but the Torah is acquired through forty-eight things.” William Berkson and Menachem Fisch, Pirke Avot: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Life: Translation, First edition. (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society, 2010), 215.

^[84] A bastard who would be otherwise invalidated. m. Horayoth 2:1.

^[85] B. Sanhedrin 59a.

^[86] Daniel Gruber writes that Akiba was instrumental in adding loopholes to the requirements of tithing, thereby abolishing the Levites’ ability to survive on the tithes of the people. Daniel Gruber, Rabbi Akiba’s Messiah: The Origins of Rabbinic Authority, Revised 2013 Edition (Hanover, NH: Elijah Publishing, 1999), 150–51. An online discussion on maaser rishon shows how tithing to Levites today is a rarity, forcing Levites into secular occupation or the rabbinate: Isaac Moses, “Why Don’t We Distribute Ma’aser Rishon or Ma’aser ’Ani Nowadays?,” Forum post, Mi Yodeya, August 4, 2014, https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/25891.

^[87] Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, locs. 3292–95.

^[88] Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue : The First Thousand Years, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 496.

^[89] Levine, 473.

^[90] Levine, 473.

^[91] Levine, 474.

^[92] Levine, 498.

^[93] Dauermann, The Rabbi as a Surrogate Priest, locs. 3188–89.

^[94] There is very little evidence of Gentile Christian knowledge of the Mishnah or Talmud until the Middle Ages, but some of the few Christians who interacted with Jews knew that it existed. Eusebius (fourth century) knew about “unwritten tradition” (deuterosis, δευτέρωσις=Mishnah) within Judaism (Ecclesiastical History 4.22.7; Preparation for the Gospel 11.5; 12.4), as well as, perhaps, the Didascalia’s (third century) references to deuterosis. One of the first Christian works to explicitly quote and interact with the Talmud was Peter Alfonsi’s Dialogue Against the Jews, written in 1109. About Alfonsi’s Dialogue, Resnick writes, “It employed arguments based on philosophical reason, the conclusions of medieval science, and a long tradition of Christian biblical exegesis. But more important still, it was the first polemical work written in Spain, or anywhere in Europe for that matter, that turned systematically to Jewish post-biblical literature in general, and the Talmud in particular, in order to demonstrate the inferiority of Judaism and the truth of Christian teaching. In so doing, Alfonsi would transform Christian polemical tradition, marking his treatise as the most important such work to be written in a thousand years.” Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick, Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation 8 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 29.

^[95] Many Jews continued to use Greek for centuries after 70 CE, and Byzantine Jews kept it even longer. However, by the time of the Muslim conquests, Jewish knowledge of Greek was a rarity. Both Origen and Jerome could read Hebrew, but it was not until the Renaissance that Christians started regaining knowledge of Hebrew.

^[96] Saldarini claims that the controversy has been known since at least Geiger in 1857. Anthony J. Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 5:978; Paul P. Levertoff, “Sanhedrin,” in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, ed. James Orr et al. (Chicago, IL: Howard-Severance, 1915), 4:2690; G. H. Twelftree, “Sanhedrin,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Jeannine K. Brown, and Nicholas Perrin (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 837.

^[97] Hirsch, “High Priest,” 6:393.

^[98] Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” 18:22.

^[99] For discussion of Options 2–4, see Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” 5:978. Saldarini does not even consider Option 1. Also see Mantel, “Sanhedrin,” 18:22–23. Rabbinic scholar E.P Sanders does not consider the rabbinic claims because the evidence saying otherwise is so strong: E. P. Sanders, “Law in Judaism of the NT Period,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 4:261–62; Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, Third Edition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 567–68.

^[100] Proposed by Sidney B. Hoenig, The Great Sanhedrin; a Study of the Origin, Development, Composition, and Functions of the Bet Din Ha-Gadol during the Second Jewish Commonwealth (Philadelphia, PA: Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1953).

^[101] First proposed by Büchler in 1902, and defended by Zeitlin and Mantel. See Saldarini, “Sanhedrin,” 5:978. Mantel’s defense is contained in Hugo Mantel, Studies in the History of the Sanhedrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961).

^[102] Lester L Grabbe, “Sanhedrin, Sanhedriyyot, or Mere Invention?,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 39, no. 1 (2008): 7–13.

^[103] Rabbi Moshe Shulman conveyed this explanation to me in private discussion.

^[104] Philo, Special Laws IV.188–192; Josephus, Against Apion 2.185–87; 2.193–194; the New Testament.

^[105] Douglas Mangum and Vasile Babota, “Sanhedrin,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

^[106] Evans, “Sanhedrin,” 1193.

^[107] “Despite the rich and impressive Hillel tradition, however, we can hardly conclude that with Hillel the rabbinic traditions about pre-70 Pharisees enter the pages of history. The traditions concerning Hillel do not lay a considerable claim to historical plausibility. They provide an accurate account only of what later generations thought important to say about, or in the name of, Hillel.” Neusner, From Politics to Piety: The Emergence of Pharisaic Judaism, 42. “Stories and sayings attributed to sages of the 2d and 1st centuries, b.c.e. are very few in number and almost impossible to evaluate historically.” Anthony J. Saldarini, “Pharisees,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 5:298.

^[108] Alon, Jews, Judaism, and the Classical World, 75.

^[109] E.P. Sanders contrasts Josephus’s summaries of Pharisaic power pre-70 (Antiquities 13.288; 13.298; 18.15–17) with the actual historical narratives that Josephus and the New Testament supply. He treats each narrative as a “case study” to test whether the Pharisees really had the comprehensive control which these texts and the Mishnah claim. In each case, Sanders concludes that the Pharisees were popular, but had no influence over the State or the Temple (king and priesthood), and sometimes did not have control of the populace either. He notes that Josephus is silent about the Pharisees (and their influence) for 60 years of first-century narratives, only reappearing near the revolt in 66 CE. Sanders attributes the pro-Pharisaic summary statements to Josephus’s earlier source, Nicolaus of Damascus, who was describing the Pharisees’ power during the time of Hyrcanus and Salome, the only time period in which Pharisaic influence over State and Temple is supported by historical narrative. Josephus included Nicolaus’s statements and made them appear broadly applicable because it may have been apparent to Josephus post-70 that the Pharisees were rising in prominence, and the exaggerated summary statements of Pharisaic influence would enhance both his, and the Pharisees’ authority. E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 597–648.

^[110] Gary G. Porton, “Yohanan Ben Zakkai,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992), 6:1025.

^[111] Philip S. Alexander, “What Happened To The Jewish Priesthood After 70?,” in A Wandering Galilean: Essays in Honour of Seán Freyne, ed. Zuleika Rodgers, Margaret Daly-Denton, and Anne Fitzpatrick-McKinley (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2009), 26.

^[112] Alexander, 26–27.

^[113] Grabbe, “Sanhedrin, Sanhedriyyot, or Mere Invention?,” 19.

^[114] Kaufmann Kohler, “Pharisees,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, ed. Cyrus Adler and Isidore Singer (New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1906), 9:666.

^[115] Shapiro, Ethics of the Sages: Pirke Avot—Annotated & Explained, xii.

^[116] David M. Maas, “Great Assembly,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

^[117] Besides the high priesthood angle that will be pursued in the following section, another important pathway ought to be considered. It is sometimes said that Yeshua’s Messianic identity was definitively rejected by the Sanhedrin during his trial, and because the Sanhedrin has official Torah-sanctioned weight, the determination of the Sanhedrin ought to stand. However, this logic is often pursued by those who assume that it was the Pharisaic leaders of Pirke Avot who constituted the ruling body in the Sanhedrin. I have established in this article that this was not the case. The leadership of the Sanhedrin during Yeshua’s lifetime was Sadduceean-dominated and high-priest-led. This piece of historical knowledge invalidates the argument given above, since Orthodox Jews today reject the halakhic and judicial authority of the Sadducees and have also delegitimized the priests from their role as the leaders of Israel’s courts. If the decision of the Sanhedrin should stand—always—then Orthodox Jews today should not oppose Sadduceean halakhah and theology. On the contrary, it would be better to question whether the Sanhedrin’s decisions are infallible. I believe the Sanhedrin’s decision about Yeshua was badly mistaken and ought not be heeded.