Last weekend I was pondering a Talmudic teacher / student story where Jesu(s), str8 outta Egypt, schools his teacher by, um, worshipping a brick. Much as such tales might appeal to a Graves or even a Jenkins; the Gospels have shunned this one. If for no other reason, herein Iesous has, himself, a rabbi over him. Even where a Gospel touches upon Jesu's life pre-ministry, like... sigh, Luke or Infancy Thomas; such cannot have anyone in-position to teach the Rabbi (as opposed to testing him). And the timing between Gospel and Talmud diverges way divergent.
Most readers refuse that the accounts can be bridged. I am not most readers.
Yesterday I got to pondering (again) Papias' backhanded review of Mark's Gospel: "not in the correct order" (or timing!). Mark was writing a passion-play about the first-fruit of Qiyama. All agree that, before acting out Zechariah upon the stage of the Temple courts, Jesus learnt his troll-trade in Galilee and other northern regions. His prime fishery was the "Pharisaic" community. That means rabbis.
I speculate: these were Jesu's rabbis. Mark would, then, have collected stories about Jesu's apprenticeship to transplant them to his ministry.
Mark's source would be some vita of this annoying young twerp. This biography was itself unimpressed with the Peraḥya-to-Shammai school. At the same time I must concede: most rabbis were equally unimpressed with Zechariah LARP, in any faction. Accordingly Jesu's followers were at first a very minor minority. But... maybe that's the point. Major rabbis like Hillel and Gamaliel could take Jesu less seriously than they took Shammai. Such a reformist nonchristian Jew could appreciate some tweaking of the big Shammai schnoz, perhaps all the better if a joke of a failed messiah was doing it.
The brick story was perfect for Hillel. It was ineptus for Luke (and for Mark); but even Christians did not forget all the agrapha, most famously those which "Thomas" caught.
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