The death of these men appeased the Gibeonites, and then God answered prayer on behalf of the land, from which the Talmud deduces that “the death of the righteous atones.” Other Rabbinic sources state that just as the sacrifices and rituals of the Day of Atonement were effective only for those who repented, so also the death of the righteous secured atonement only for those who repented.266 It seems to me that the “Christian apostles” wrote about this several hundred years earlier, pointing to the
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