gurugeorge

Why is this even a subject for discussion?

The simplest and most blatantly obvious explanation is that James is one of these "brothers of the Lord".

Any other interpretation is shallow foppery.

darstec

I think the question is whether or not James is a sibling or brother in the sense of comrade/fellow believer. The gospels sort of indicate that a James is a sibling, or that Joshua has siblings.

This then relates to the question of whether the gospels borrowed from the epistles or were they independent works, and which came first. Some scholars have proposed the whole New Testament is a product of the second century CE. Others claim the NT except for a couple of epistles is first century and allow large expanses of time between the composition of the various book upon which each is dependent.

The question is hardly settled except by those that think goddidit, don't be askin' no questions, and that's it. [Note: I know you don't take that position but some Fundamentalists do.]

gurugeorge

Yeah, the thing is, if you accept (as even many Christians scholars do) that the Pauline epistles are the earliest known writings, there should be no question about it. Siblinghood doesn't even enter into it, siblinghood is not at all explicit in the Paul writings. If you take the Pauline epistles, in sequence, as the earliest writing, without immediately contaminating them with later ideas, all that's explicit is that there are (apparently) these people in a cultic category called "brothers of the Lord", and there is (apparently) a person James called "brother of the Lord". The natural, logical connection, is that the latter is a member of the former class, not that he was the literal brother of ANYBODY.

This suggests a very live option: that siblinghood is a later idea that creeps in, along with the idea that the first "apostles" mentioned in Paul were people who knew the cult deity personally, and were disciples of him - again, an idea that's not explicit and obvious in the Pauline epistles.

These related ideas - of Jamesian siblinghood and apostolic personal-eyeballing of the cult figure - probably enter the tradition with the GMark allegory (of the catastrophe of 70 CE being the Jews' own fault), post-Diaspora, after links to the original version of the religion had been broken, or forgetfulness or confusion had muddied the picture.

And without these ideas, what do we have? We have a cult in which neither Paul nor any of the people he's talking about claim to have had personal contact (other than in a visionary sense) with the cult figure.

This, together with the evident lack of certainty in early Christian days about the time of the cult figure's sojourn on Earth (otherwise why have so bizarrely specific a thing as "born under Pontius Pilate" in an exalted creed?), suggests that the earliest Christianity was just a new idea about the Messiah (i.e. that he was not one to come, but rather had already been, in some not-too-distant past), and not a claim to personal contact with a Messiah claimant.

darstec

I agree. Thanks for clarifying. I thought I knew your POV but wasn't sure with that last post.

spamandham

In fairness, we do not know a priori that "brothers of the lord" refers to something other than blood brothers. Taken in isolation, the James reference and the 'brothers of the lord' reference could refer to kinship.

Where this falls apart is in the larger context where it's clear that Paul always uses variants of 'brother' to refer cult members, rather than kinship, and not once emphasizes any kind of importance of blood relationship.

Further, we know that James is the head of the Jerusalem church, a position befitting of some lofty title, yet if "the lord's brother" is not a title, then poor James is left with no title at all. This doesn't seem reasonable in a cult which clearly shows great emphasis on hierarchy from the earliest times.

gurugeorge

Yeah, that's true, but I think the 1 Corinthians 9:5 is very telling, re. "sister wife", and weights it back the other way. If literal brother were meant later in that passage, it would have to imply incest being ok, which seems far more unlikely than that it is simply talking in cult jargon.

show_no_mercy

Paul in Romans 8:29 says that Jesus was the firstborn among brothers. Did Paul mean literal brothers or brothers by faith?

If it was literal brothers, then the Catholic dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary is out the window.

Paul also uses the term "family of believers" in Gal 6:10. This, I think, makes the most sense out of Paul's use of the word "brother". To think that the James of 1:19 is the literal brother of "the lord" (either god or Jesus) seems to be a huge statistical outlier, considering that the context of every other time Paul uses the term "brother" and "family" he means fellow believers.

spamandham

I agree that the rest of the context is what undermines the idea that those two bits refer to kinship.

spamandham

I've read Romans 8 as meaning adopted spiritual brotherhood assigned due to extreme virtue. That James is known as 'the lords brother' and was also remembered as extremely virtuous is not coincidence. He earned the title through the perception of virtue. Maybe he was actually a real prick, but since he was the head of the head church, a facade of virtue would no doubt have followed him, just like it does popes.

Agreed. I really don't understand how anyone can objectively argue that 'brother of the lord' refers to kinship. I've never seen a good explanation for that, it's just taken as a given since it supports the status quo.