Joshua ben Perachiah

Joshua ben Perahiah or Joshua ben Perachya was nasi of the Sanhedrin in the latter half of the 2nd century BCE.

Biography He and his colleague Nittai of Arbela were the second of the five pairs (Zugot) of scholars who received and transmitted Jewish tradition.

At the time of the persecution of the Pharisees by John Hyrcanus (c. 134-104 BCE), Joshua was deposed — a disgrace to which his words in Menachot 109b allude. However, in Sanhedrin 107b and Sotah 47a, it was during the persecutions of Pharisees 88-76 BC by Alexander Jannaeus, not John Hyrcanus whose persecution he fled. He fled to Alexandria, but returned to Jerusalem when the persecutions ceased and the Pharisees again triumphed over the Sadducees.

Teachings The following ethical maxim found in the Ethics of the Fathers shows his gentle judgment of his fellow men and his eagerness to spread knowledge among the people:

Only a single halakhah of Joshua's has been preserved: he objected to the import of wheat from Alexandria as impure because, with no rain falling on it, it was watered by still water in conflict with .

In other traditions he was known in Jewish magical papyri as an exorcist, and his name was used in incantations inscribed on magical bowls.

Yeshu

In another tradition he is also the teacher of Yeshu (in uncensored manuscripts of the Talmud), where he and Yeshu flee to Egypt. In other manuscripts his student is Judah ben Tabbai. The account as it appears in the Talmud is as follows:

Dunn (1992) considers this to be a story of Jesus from the late Amoraic period, which contains old polemical elements that were already current in New Testament times. His story is parallel to that of Elisha and Gehazi. However: Gustaf Dalman, Joachim Jeremias (1935, 1960), and others do not consider the Yeshu mentioned as Joshua's pupil to be Jesus.