A guy named Jesus was crucified. Yes or no?
Most scholars would agree with that. Mind you, for years, many tried saying Jesus Christ was as imaginary as the Easter Bunny. But evidence piled up. And when I say evidence, I mean that there’s more evidence for Christ’s existence than there is for any ancient figure.
So the goalposts move. We accept that Jesus said some cool things that people like but we often punt on the divinity. So we’re now looking for those shimmering fragments of the divine hidden in the dusty, labyrinthine corridors of history, not just the Good Book, but the other books, the ones written by the very folks who were, let’s be honest, a bit skeptical of our long-haired, revolutionary brother from Nazareth.
Well, look at this! We’ve got the Babylonian Talmud; hardly a PR wing for the early Church, recording these absolute cosmic glitches in the matrix. For forty years, from 30 AD to 70 AD, the supernatural machinery of the Temple just… stopped working. It’s like the universe sent a celestial “404 Error: Ritual Not Found.”
Check out the “irregularities” recorded. This isn’t just superstition; this is real time record keeping of the physical world reacting to a spiritual earthquake:
The Scarlet Thread: For centuries, this bit of wool turned white. It was a crimson-to-snow confirmation of forgiveness. Then, suddenly, after Christ’s death? Nothing. It stays red. It’s as if God is saying, “The old subscription has expired. I’m doing something new!” And it stayed red for almost 40 years until Jerusalem was destroyed.
That’s worth a “wow,” isn’t it?
The Left-Hand Lot: For forty years straight, the lot “for the Lord” ends up in the left hand. Mathematically? That’s a statistical impossibility! It’s the Divine Hand pointing elsewhere, away from the old structures. If you’re flipping a coin, the odds of it landing on “left” forty years in a row is roughly 1 in in one trillion. For you science geeks, that’s means “Fat Chance.”
The Extinguished Lamp: The Menorah’s western light, the one that’s supposed to be the eternal pilot light of the soul, kept flickering out. You see, the pilot light was gone because the True Light was crucified, resurrected, walked among us, and ascended to Heaven.
The Self-Opening Doors: The Temple doors swinging open? That’s the Spirit saying, “I’m not staying in this box anymore. The veil is torn, the doors are wide, and I am heading out into the streets, into the hearts of the broken and the messy!”
Think about the timing! If Jesus was crucified around 30 AD, and the Temple was leveled in 70 AD, that forty-year window is a generational “grace period.” It’s the transition from the external ritual—the blood of goats and the smoke of altars—to the internal reality of the Ultimate Sacrifice.
The Talmud is documenting the exact moment the Old Covenant became the New.
It suggests that Jesus wasn’t just a guy with some radical ideas about tax and sandals; He was the pivot point of history. Even the institutions that rejected Him had to write down the fact that, after Him, the old ways simply died because the New Life had arrived. We aren’t just looking for God in the clouds, we’re finding Him in the very records of those who didn’t even mean to look!
Isn’t it marvelous when the “extra-biblical” evidence starts shouting the same truth as the soul?
April 8, 2026 at 11:11 am
For those who would like the specific citation and quote from the Babylonian Talmud that is discussed above, here is the link to Yoma 39b —
https://www.chabad.org/torah-texts/5446117/Talmud/Yoma/Chapter-4/39b
The traditions regarding the cessation of the usual ritual miracles and the self-opening of the Temple doors are mentioned in the context of various traditions about the saintly High Priest Simon II the Just (Shimon ha-Tzaddik), who died circa 200 B.C. is eulogised in the Old Testament in Ecclesiasticus chapter 50. Here is the whole passage from Yoma 39b —
“The Sages taught: During the year in which Shimon HaTzaddik died, he said to them, his associates: In this year, he will die, euphemistically referring to himself. They said to him: How do you know? He said to them: In previous years, on every Yom Kippur, upon entering the Holy of Holies, I was met, in a prophetic vision, by an old man who was dressed in white, and his head was wrapped up in white, and he would enter the Holy of Holies with me, and he would leave with me. But today, I was met by an old man who was dressed in black, and his head was wrapped up in black, and he entered the Holy of Holies with me, but he did not leave with me. He understood this to be a sign that his death was impending. Indeed, after the festival of Sukkot, he was ill for seven days and died.
“Without the presence of Shimon HaTzaddik among them, the Jewish people were no longer worthy of the many miracles that had occurred during his lifetime. For this reason, following his death, his brethren, the priests, refrained from blessing the Jewish people with the explicit name of God in the priestly blessing.
“The Sages taught: During the tenure of Shimon HaTzaddik, the lot for God always arose in the High Priest’s right hand; after his death, it occurred only occasionally; but during the forty years prior to the destruction of the Second Temple, the lot for God did not arise in the High Priest’s right hand at all. So too, the strip of crimson wool that was tied to the head of the goat that was sent to Azazel did not turn white, and the westernmost lamp of the candelabrum did not burn continually.
“And the doors of the Sanctuary opened by themselves as a sign that they would soon be opened by enemies, until Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai scolded them. He said to the Sanctuary: Sanctuary, Sanctuary, why do you frighten yourself with these signs? I know about you that you will ultimately be destroyed, and Zechariah, son of Ido, has already prophesied concerning you: “Open your doors, O Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars” (Zechariah 11:1), Lebanon being an appellation for the Temple.”