Opus1

Okay, I'm getting a lot of negative feedback here with virtually no substantive rebuttal. So here are some specific questions:

1) Did Jesus' mother have a sister named Mary?

2) Were James and Levi brothers?

3) Were James and Levi Jesus' cousins?

4) Was Mary the mother of Joses and James the Less the same woman as Mary the mother of Jesus?

5) Were Judas the Zealot (aka Thaddeus Lebbaeus) the same as Judas Iscariot?

6) Was Simon the Zealot the same as Simon Iscariot?

7) Was Joseph, called Barsabbas, the same person as Judas, called Barsabbas?

8) Are Thaddeus and Theudas contractions of Thomas Judas?

9) Do you believe Papias when he states that Cleopas and Alphaeus are the same person?

10) Is the author of the epistle Jude the brother of Jesus, or another Judas?

11) Who is this "Judas, son of James" (or Judas, brother of James) mentioned in Luke? Is this Jesus' brother Judas? Judas the zealot? Someone else?

12) Is Joseph called Barsabbas the same as Joseph called Barnabas?

13) Finally, does anyone find this tangled web to be even the remotest bit interesting? I mean, James and Levi are both sons of Alphaeus, and yet they are never mentioned together. Why is that? Mary is said to be the wife of Cleophas, but we're never told who this is, unless he's the Cleophas mentioned in Luke 24, who's an equally obscure figure. And this Mary is supposedly the mother of three of Jesus' disciples, although she is never called the mother of Levi.

Layman mentioned different sources. I agree. I'm not sure this is a rebuttal of my observations or an agreement with them. I suppose I should state an actual conclusion, so here it is:

Not all of the people mentioned in the New Testament are actual, individual entities. Some are combinations; others whom we now consider to be two separate people were originally one individual who got split over time.

Hilarius and Polycarp, please read my post. The analysis of the relationships goes far beyond the fact that many people have the same name. The NT is much shorter than Josephus' extensive works, and the characters are related in many bizarre ways, not just sharing the same name.

I was offering my thoughts on the names problem and a rebuttal on the Eisenman stuff.

I still don't see why this support Eisenman's theory.

But I appreciate the effort.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Opus1: Okay, I'm getting a lot of negative feedback here with virtually no substantive rebuttal. So here are some specific questions:

The reason you are receiving no substantive rebuttal is because your entire argument is a non-sequitir. The issue of multiple people with the same name does not establish any theory that would pit the brothers of Jesus as the bearers of original Christianity against Paul and his new Christianity. The different names arise from the gospel writers utilizing different sources and traditions. If they had merely copied Mark (or another writer), then we would have found complete uniformity between all of the gospels. I don’t hold to inerrancy so I’m certainly willing to admit some of the writers made a mistake or two when giving names of obscure figures. ALL ancient historians are guilty of this. They didn’t have access to the type of records we have today.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Eisenman argues that Jesus originally had a small group of disciples, many of whom were his brothers. But then Paul came along, preaching a radically different version of Christianity than that practiced by James after his brother's death. As such, it became necessary to distance Jesus from his brothers. After all, it's awfully tough to sell your version of Jesus when the guy's own brothers are teaching a different brand, especially when you've never even met him! Thus, we get stories in the Bible about how Jesus dissed his brothers and was not welcomed in his hometown.

This doesn’t make sense. If the gospel writers weren’t interested in history, then why wouldn’t they just have said Paul was one of the original disciples of Jesus? The book of Acts depicts Paul submitting to James, the brother of Jesus. The person who wrote Acts is the same person who wrote Luke. They would never have written such a thing if your conspiracy theory were true. Paul tells us the same thing in Galatians 1 & 2. He met with James, the brother of Jesus and they agreed that they had the same message. The only distinction is that Paul was primarily a missionary to the Gentiles, while James and the other Jerusalem apostles were missionaries to the Jews. Paul could never have pulled off such a blatant lie when writing to the Galatians. These early churches communicated with one another. The Jerusalem apostles sent out missionaries, too. There was certainly conflict with Paul, but it related to food laws and whether or not levitical impositions should be placed on Gentiles. You haven’t touched on the issue of Peter at all. He was neither a brother of Jesus nor a follower of Paul. As an original disciple of Jesus he would have been greatly respected. If he had said Paul was completely distorting Christianity, then people would have listened. However, we find no such thing.

Please provide some actual evidence for what the differences were between the Christianity of Jesus’ brothers and that of Paul. You can’t make up theories, manufacture non-existent evidence, and then ignore all of the evidence which contradicts your theory. Mistakes regarding names have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with any claim that Paul was distorting Christianity.

Did it occur to you that the stories in the Bible about Jesus’ conflict with his brothers could be historical? There’s nothing unusual about family disputes, especially when the main person involved in the dispute ends up being executed as a criminal. It only seems logical that a person causing enough trouble to get himself executed would not always see eye-to-eye with his family.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">But, problems remain. All the early stories of Jesus have him doing things with people named Simon, James, Judas, etc. So the solution is obvious: Jesus had disciples by those names, but those disciples were not his brothers, who just happened to have those same names.

Correct. There were a lot of very common names in this era.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Things really get sticky when the doctrine of the virgin birth (and Mary's perpetual virginity) gets invented. Suddenly Jesus can't have brothers at all! So Mary, the mother of James and Joses, suddenly becomes a distinct entity, because she can't be the same Mary who is Jesus' mother. Like a game of telephone, the changes spread, with each author making his own modifications, either intentionally or just out of outright confusion, until we arrive at the nearly indecipherable mess we have in the New Testament. Or, it could be the perfectly harmonious, unified, inerrant word of God. Your choice.

You’ve set up a false dichotomy. It isn’t an all or nothing scenario. You seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the gospels can only be considered reliable if they are inerrant. No ancient historian was inerrant. If you know of one, then please let me know.

I agree with you that the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity led to later problems for those who held the doctrine. However, this doctrine was obviously developed AFTER the gospels were written, otherwise we wouldn’t have mention of any siblings of Jesus.

Peace,

Polycarp

[This message has been edited by Polycarp (edited April 18, 2001).]

Opus1

Many Christians (over 1/2 in the U.S.) are inerrantists. Inerrancy is an important Biblical doctrine. Many, many stories in the Bible are not--and cannot--be supported by evidence. They are about small but important things that nobody else would have written down, such as Jesus' speeches. If it can be shown that the Bible is in error in certain aspects, then we may question whether it contains some errors in other important aspects. How can we know what is real and what is false in these aforementioned areas where there is no evidence outside of the Bible? And why would an omnipotent God go through all the trouble of creating the universe, sending his son to die for us, and then letting a bunch of dumb humans screw up part of his message? While many Christians accept an errant Bible, I cannot believe that it is both errant and the word of God.

I offered Eisenman's theories as a possible explanation, rather than just asserting error and leaving you all hanging. Like I said, I haven't even read his book. But as long as we have agreement that the Bible is not inerrant, I'm happy.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Opus1: I offered Eisenman's theories as a possible explanation, rather than just asserting error and leaving you all hanging. Like I said, I haven't even read his book. But as long as we have agreement that the Bible is not inerrant, I'm happy.

I'm glad you now seem to recognize how weak Eisenman's theory is. We were even able to find something on which we agree (errancy). Thanks for the discussion !

Peace,

Polycarp