Sanhedrin

So he took the roots, right, where'd he get that from? He took the roots, he washed them with the blood of a lion, of a pig, of a lamb, and of a monkey.

which runs into the Gemara in the end of Sanhedrin, which seems to indicate monkeys only existed after the Tower of Babel, after the humans were cursed to become monkeys.

We had assumed many years ago that Darwin was onto something.

There is a lot of similarities between the apes and humanity.

That's based on a gemara in Erev, and we have it over here.

It's on number 18.

Omer Abichanina, by the way, this is a gemara in Sanhedrin, by the way.

A daf'ayin that has a long piece against wine, okay? And there's a lot of very sharp comments about wine found in that piece of gemara.

But it's interesting because he is drawing these sources from the Talmud.

Here, one of the other sources that's cited is Sugya in Sanhedrin, a very short little passage about Gehazi, who was the servant of Elisha.

He went to Gehazi to repent, but he did not repent.

He said, repent.

Yeah, they have all the garments for the priests.

They have the Sanhedrin ready to go.

Like, it's all ready to go.

But I think Paul is saying, even though there will be a physical temple, the devil is actually coming after souls.

Some of the really super...

Orthodox Jews like if you say Jesus is the Messiah they can kill you because you're a blasphemer.

They can literally stone you So that's like the new saying that's a potential of the new Sanhedrin So right almost going back to the first century where a lot of these Jews thought they were doing their religious duty Duty by persecuting Christians, right?

That's absolutely right.

Should have included that.

No, but the Perek in Shas that everybody should learn, even just crack out an art scroll or whatever, is the last chapter, Perek Chelek of Sanhedrin.

It is far and away the wildest and most interesting, I think the most interesting chapter in all of Shas.

And it's also filled with content about geula and redemption and olam haba and all these kinds of questions.

We are looking at the book of Acts, chapter 4, verses 23 through 35.

And this picks up after Peter and John have been released by the Sanhedrin.

After they were released, they went to their own people and reported what the chief priest and the elders had said to them.

When they heard it, they raised their voices together to God and said, "'Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them, it is you who said by your Holy Spirit through our ancestor David, your servant, why did the Gentiles rage and the peoples imagine vain things?' The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers have gathered together against the Lord and against his Messiah.

It says there was not a needy person among them, and that's sort of a nice idea, but it's also taken from Deuteronomy, that the idea or the hope or the belief was that once the people of God lived in the land that God had given them, there would be such a sense of flourishing that there wouldn't be any needs, that everybody would have enough, because God created the world where there is enough for everyone.

And to live with justice and to live faithfully would mean that everyone had enough, that God would sustain us in ways that we don't see currently in our world.

And this chapter, which we talked about in the last podcast, began with this idea of who's going to have the authority? The Sanhedrin, the Jewish authorities, or is it going to be the apostles? And this ends with, they laid everything at the apostles' feet.

So for this community, it is the apostles who have the authority and trust of the people of this community.

Ideally, there's Nebuah, and we even have clear direction of what the will of Hashem is.

There's a Sanhedrin, there's no Machlokas in the world, because if there is ever a Machlokas, you're able to go to the Sanhedrin, and they resolve it, and they pass in a certain way.

There's an ideal world, which we have a vision of and we're looking towards.

And then the world became dark.

And the Bais HaMikdash was destroyed, and Nebuah came to an end, and the Sanhedrin was dispersed, and then we got used to living in a world of Galus.

And, you know, we're not going to suffer more than we need to.

So we try to come to terms with it and we try to form Kehillos and do the best we can do in the Dalet Amatz of Halacha wherever we're able to go all the way around the world and we become accustomed to it to a point where we say we're managing just fine.

It's important for you to hear that.

In Acts 4, the disciples went before the Sanhedrin.

And the Sanhedrin said to each other, we can't have him keep talking about this Jesus of Nazareth.

And so they came back and they said, you must stop talking about Jesus.

What did they say? Yeah, go ahead.

when God says no or what God commands.

Like I said, when Sanhedrin prohibited the apostles from proclaiming Christ, Peter and the apostles said, we must obey God rather than people.

So Christians may honor their country, but they must never give it the worship and the unquestioning obedience or ultimate hope that that belongs in the Lord alone.

The church is made up of people from every nation, and the believer's deepest citizenship is in Christ's kingdom.

We've looked at the possibility of extrajudicial killing.

In the final chapter, the 11th chapter of the Mishnah of Sanhedrin, we'll complete that overview of the different kinds of death penalties of capital punishment that the Sanhedrin can ordain.

But before we get to the 11th chapter, in the 10th chapter, the Mishnah takes a diversion.

It takes a digression.