That this Jeschu is our blessed Lord is by no means evident. On the contrary, the balance of probability is that the pupil of Jehoshua Ben Perachia was an entirely different person.
This Jehoshua, son of Perachia, is a known historical personage. He was one of the Sanhedrim in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus. He began to teach as Rabbi in the year of the world 3606, or B.C. 154. Alexander Jannaeus, son of Hyrcanus, was king of the Jews in B.C. 106. The Pharisees could not endure that the royal and high-priestly functions should be united in the same person; they therefore broke out in revolt. The civil war caused the death of some 50,000, according to Josephus. When Alexander had suppressed the revolt, he led 800 prisoners to the fortress of Bethome, and crucified them before the eyes of his concubines at a grand banquet he gave.
The Pharisees, and those of the Sanhedrim who had not fallen into his hands, sought safety in flight. It was then probably that Jehoshua, son of Perachia, went down into Egypt and was accompanied by Jeschu.
Jehoshua was buried at Chittin, but the exact date of his death is not known.[85]
Alexander Jannaeus died B.C. 79, after a reign of twenty-seven years, whilst besieging the castle of Ragaba on the further side of Jordan.
It will be seen at once that the date of the Talmudic [pg 057] Jeschu is something like a century earlier than that of the Jesus of the Gospels.
Moreover, it cannot be said that Jewish tradition asserts their identity. On the contrary, learned Jewish writers have emphatically denied that the Jeschu of the Talmud is the Jesus of the Gospels.
In the “Disputation” of the Rabbi Jechiels with Nicolas, a convert, occurs this statement. “This (which is related of Jesus and the Rabbi Joshua, son of Perachia) contains no reference to him whom Christians honour as a God;” and then he points out that the impossibility of reconciling the dates is enough to prove that the disciple of Joshua Ben Perachia was a person altogether distinct from the Founder of Christianity.
The Rabbi Lippmann[86] gives the same denial, and shows that Jesus of the Gospels was a contemporary of Hillel, whereas the Jeschu of the anecdote lived from two to three generations earlier.
The Rabbi Salman Zevi entered into the question with great care in a pamphlet, and produced ten reasons for concluding that the Jeschu of the Talmud was not the Jesus, son of Mary, of the Evangelists.[87]