Quoted By:
>Since the Talmud refers to Christians as the “Notzi”, or Nazarenes, and the Bible and Church Fathers confirm that this was the pre-Christian designation for a follower of Jesus, this story may represent part of a historical reasoning for the religious conflict between Pharisee and Nazarene. The “magic” attributed to Yeshu may have included unorthodox Egyptian healing techniques or rituals. The miracle stories in the first three gospels, the Synoptic gospels, likewise reflect a tradition of ritualistic healing measures not found in the Old Testament, which the Pharisees and elders constantly lodge theological complaints against. It is only much later, when Acts of the Apostles is written, that a distinction is made between the miracles of Jesus and the trickster magic of the supposed “fountainhead” of the heretical Gnostic mysteries, Simon Magus
>There is also evidence that at least one ancient sect of proto-Christians believed Jesus lived in the first century BCE. Epiphanius, a fourth-century heresy-fighting bishop, himself endorsed a legend from a competing Jewish sect of Christianity that said that Jesus inherited his Messianic kingship from Alexander Jannaeus. Of course Epiphanius still believed that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate so he apparently did not even realize that Alexander Jannaeus lived a century earlier:
>“The priesthood in the holy church is [actually] David’s throne and kingly seat, for the Lord joined together and gave to his holy church both the kingly and high-priestly dignity, transferring to it the never-failing throne of David. For David’s throne endured in line of succession until the time of Christ himself, rulers from Judah not failing until he came ‘to whom the things kept in reserve belong, and he was the expectation of the nations’
