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>Why would the Mishnah describe Joshua ben Perachiah as a good, upstanding Pharisee who fails to keep his student Yeshu from becoming a magician if there are other traditions that say Joshua ben Perachiah was also a magician? A likely answer is that Josahua ben Perachiah was appropriated by the rabbinic authors and so had to invent stories about Yeshu being excommunicated in order to explain the fictional disconnect between Yeshu and his “reformed” uncle. Following this line of thought, these stories about Joshua ben Perachiah excommunicating Yeshu are just trying to explain why Joshua ben Perachiah was not really a magician like his famous contemporary was. He was a good but overly harsh rabbi who, in the Talmud’s own words, pushed the impressionable Yeshu away. Every good rabbi was supposed to push their student with one hand – cricitizing them to keep the student disciplined – and then bring them back with the other hand, so as not to student to give up in frustration, but the Talmud says that Joshua ben Perachiah pushed Yeshu away with both hands, causing the boy to become the idolater that both of them had always been
>The Mishnah says that after Yeshu was excommunicated by Joshua ben Perachiah, he returned with knowledge of Egyptian magic, seduced people into following him. The Talmud also identifies five disciples rather than twelve, and says that Yeshu was stoned to death of idolatry and then hung on a tree in the town of Lydda during Passover. This Passover execution parallels the story element of Jesus being crucified in Jerusalem on or near Passover from the gospels. Yeshu is then said to be one of the top three worst idolaters of all time and is boiling in excrement as punishment for his spiritual crimes
