TedM

Nothing is ever enough for you aa. All 4 say there was a James who was Jesus' brother/cousin, yet you require 'proof' from them that he ALSO was an apostle. I gave a fairly good argument based on the gospels that he actually was the Son of Alphaues but you have yet to acknowledge that you even understood it, so I don't know what you found wrong with it. Maybe it was just that the words you required weren't explicitly there in the Apostle lists. The problem is that if it was that still wouldn't be enough. I'm convinced that there really is no such thing as corroboration for you, because you refuse to acknowledge that supportive evidence and reasonable conclusions based on the supportive evidence mean anything.

You continually look for what ISNT there. As long as that is your default skeptical position there is no point in trying to have a discussion that involves probabilities and logical deduction. You can always weasel out with the fall-back 'myth' claims you find so delightful.

TedM

Almost no one thinks Josephus called Jesus the Messiah. How could you even consider that as what my view is? You're not dumb, so you know that I don't have that view, yet you act as though I do. I assume this is because you have some kind of problem with the assumption that Josephus said something in the TF other than Jesus was the Messiah, like what actually is in the James passage - ie "called Christ".

Why hang onto an unreasonable one when that is a reasonable one? That's not 'bias'. Since we seem to agree that Josephus would not have believed Jesus was the Christ, he would not have called him the Christ without making clear that was not his own personal belief. As such the TF phrase is wrong. There are reasons to not just throw it out though -- like other passages that have the more reasonable phrase, that we do know about. It isn't just a 'thin air' knee-jerk reaction, as you seem to want to portray it to be.


Clinging? Come on. You deal with what is there if you have any desire for truth. You don't just dismiss it as being 'tarnished' and therefore unworthy of being scrutinized to see if anything of value can be determined.

spin

If you cannot stomach the fact that the text plainly says that Jesus was the messiah, you have a reason for rejecting it. Christian scribes have interfered with the text. Concocting biased claims about being able to discern what was original in the TF, as christian scholars attempt, is purely arbitrary, demonstrating the confirmation bias. That you accept that the text has been interfered with shows you that christian scribal interference does occur. You then have to consider suspect any christian related content.

aa5874

You have nothing but presumptions and rhetoric. You have an extreme limited knowledge of the Myths of antiquity.

You don't know what you are talking. How easily you forget that it is CORROBORATED in the Canon that the LORD Jesus was the born AFTER his mother was made pregnant by a Ghost.

It is known in Jewish, Greek and Roman mythology that Myth Gods have Sons.

Job 2:1 KJV We know from Jewish Mythology that the Jews accepted that the Lord God had Sons and that Satan would meet with them in heaven.

The Pauline Corpus is a source of fiction, mythology, fraud, false attribution and was unknown by Jesus cult writers and even non-apologetics up to at least 180 CE.

There is no apostles in the Gospels and Acts that was the Lord's brother.

The Lord Jesus is corroborated to be the Son of a Ghost in the Canon and Apologetics.

Essentially, the LORD is fiction/mythology in the Canon.

TedM

You either reject it completely or you deal with it. Skeptics with closed minds reject it completely. Truth-seekers deal with it. They examine the words to see which ones are 'Josephean' and which ones aren't. THey look at the context, etc..They don't just throw it out. That is fine for amateurs to do, but if a scholar does it he is lazy. Since there are texts or records that say something like "called the Messiah" in the TF, then it isn't 'purely arbitrary' to propose that that was original to Josephus.

TedM

Well aa, it appeared that you were willing to actually use your noggin on this issue yesterday. Just when it looked like maybe you were getting somewhere, you did an about face and pulled out the 'ole mythical Jesus can't have been a human since he had a ghost for a father' argument. I guess that's more comfortable. Well, it almost a delight (comparatively speaking) up to that point..I guess we're done for now on this one..

spin

The TF says "he was the christ". End of story. The James passage talks of the brother of Jesus called christ. If you accept that "he was the christ" wasn't original, then you need to show that the rest of it was. Recent christian scholarship here has been an insult, evoking the worst behavior expected only of maximalism. The utter refusal to provide a reasonable epistemology for how they know the rest of the TF is veracious is unscholarly. If you cannot say how you know something, then you don't know it. In fact though there is more of the TF that is unpalatable to the modern christian scholarly community, so it gets omitted as well. The picture is of people saying "we don't like these bits, but we can't see any problems with what's left, so we'll keep it."

Are you the person who usually posts under the name "TedM"?

aa5874

Your post are all rhetoric and completely useless.

You present no evidence from antiquity or make unsubstantiated claims about brother and cousins.

Galatians 1.19 specifically claimed James was an apostle and brother of the Lord. In Galatians 4.4 the LORD Jesus is the Son of God.

Galatians 4:4 KJV There TWO Jameses--the Son of Zebedee and the Son of Alphaeus--None was the Son of God.

Galatians is a source of Mythology like those of the Jews, Greeks and Romans.

There is NO apostle called James that is the human brother of the Son of God in the List of Apostles in the Canon.

TedM

I'm TedM. There are reasons to not suspect that a Christian wrote the entire TF, and that a Christian had anything to do with the James phrase. Why would a non-Christian insert the James phrase? Because of a false story about James that he believed? That's rich. I mentioned the Josephean phrases in the TF. That's not to be ignored. It means something. Either we have 2 interpolators, or one who simply didn't care if it was not Josephean in some places and VERY Josephean in others..OR Josephus wrote some of it. I don't have the answers, and only lean one way at the moment, but to dismiss both passages because there were other Messiah claimants who Josephus didn't mention were called Christ is for me simply bizarre. If Jesus continued to be called Christ by a tribe of Christians in Josephus' time, I would not expect him to intentionally avoid mentioning that for ANY reason. Why should he? Because the others who died 50 years before and who have no followers once may have also been called Christ and he failed to mention that? That's just bizarre.

TedM

I see you didn't look up the cousin/brother issue. Had you done so you may have learned something new. I did, and I learned something new.

Give it a whirl, aa.