show_no_mercy

That is what Paul implies!

Paul never uses the word "lord" to refer to the God of the Hebrew Bible. He only uses the word "theos". However, Paul uses multiple phrases like "in the Lord" or "the word of the Lord" which are Hebrew sayings that always refer to the God of the Hebrew Bible, but Paul only seems to use the word "Lord" to refer to Jesus.

So when Paul says "the word of the Lord" in 1 Thess 4:15 is he refering to YHWH, or to Jesus? The LXX uses "logon kuriou" in Isaiah 1:15 and Jonah 1:1, the same phrase Paul uses in 1 Thess 4:15. Is Isaiah's "logon kuriou" refering to Jesus? Is Jonah's "logon kuriou" refering to Jesus? Is Paul's "logo kuriou" refering to Jesus?

As spin pointed out, "brother of the Lord" is actually a Hebrew name, just like "the Lord is salvation" is a Hebrew name. Paul doesn't seem to know that both of those phrases can be names; "the Lord is salvation" is rendered from Hebrew to Greek as "Jesus"... !

Kapyong

Gday,

None at all.
I never claimed that.

My claim is clear and specific :
There is NO evidence that Mithras was born on Dec. 25th.

It's an urban legend spread by the uninformed.


K.

spin

I tried to point you away from making a generalization based on the English possessive structure "lord's brother(s)" rather than sticking with the more generic "brother(s) of the lord". You don't go round calling the Jews "god's sons", though they could be called "sons of god". Leave out the English familiar possessive and its collocations.

You are once again confusing issues, but I missed the first post where you started off on the wrong track with Origen. Origen was the first to claim that Josephus knew about James who Origen called "the brother of Jesus called christ". Origen is the first church father to mention it in connection with Josephus and thus apparently relating the James of the gospel brothers of Jesus list with the figure of the James seen mentioned in Galatians.

There are two Jameses in the list of the disciples. There are at least two possibly three James in Acts, yet none of them is related in that late text with Jesus.

So we have a James in Jesus's family, but where's the connection with the James of Paul, who Paul calls "brother of the lord" (remembering that Paul calls all believers "brothers" and refers to a number of believers as "brothers of the lord")? It certainly appears in Origen. Where's your evidence for any earlier? Cutting through your assertions, I don't see any.


spin

sschlichter

James is a brother of jesus in Matt 13:55, mark 6:3

There are two james in Acts. One is identified as the borther of John and killed in 12:2 leaving the other.

the other is a leader in the Jerusalem church. Singled out in Acts 12:17, spoke out in the council in Acvtys 15:13.

in Acts Paul is said to have met with this james (not the dead one) in Acts 15 in Jerusalem and in Acts 21, again in Jerusalem.

Paul collaborates this account when he singles out a James in the appearances of Christ. he goes to jerusalem and sure enough, meets a pillar of the chruch known as james. This pillar had the authority to send others (Gal 2:12)

Paul lets us know that this James is the Lord's brother (an excellent translation given the context) in Gal 1:19.

Josephus also collaborates that James is a brother of Christ.

One could imagine that James is another person that Paul uses the term brother of the Lord to describe if there was any indication that such a term existed. there is not such a phrase.

spin

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

(Another lovely source that, Acts. You'll never be able to date or use it meaningfully.)

That's what the text says.

Here's where we see you getting to the retrojection of ideas from an undatable later source, whose purposes are not clear to you. You seem to assume that some of its intentions were to relate history, but when that source contradicts Paul regarding events and significances, you should be wary of depending on it. Yet, you use it with gay abandon.

If, for example, one of Acts' intentions was to collect disparate traditions and try to make sense out of them or rationalize them, you have no way of checking the results. Whatever the case you are using material both unprovenaced and undatable that would not be considered evidence in any court. The methodology is straight apologetic in its approach to the value of the text.

Where do you think the writer of Acts might have got the data about the meeting? Obviously Acts was written well after Paul. Do you think that the writer of Acts didn't have his copy of Galatians, when obviously he hyad a number of written sources? How long will you persist in this blunder?

You are in no position to judge the excellence of translation, apparently not knowing the first thing about the language.

Pretending not to know that there is dispute over the text mens that you are not trying to be serious. Acknowledge the difficulties of questioned the texts.

You have rehearsed the basic idea which we all knew was your thought. You haven't really added much that is new other than a wade through Acts. You are still misusing texts in a mix and match manner.

However, if we start where we should, ie with Paul, we find references to brothers throughout his work as believers. He calls an otherwise unaccounted for group as "brothers of the lord", a phrase whose significance you cannot analyse from Paul's writings other than to know that it has religious significance, because they are allowed to marry. He also refers to James as "brother of the lord", which links to the plural form of the phrase.

Next written apparently is Mark, in which Jesus rejects his brothers (3:31-34), so can we really think that those brothers went into the family business of Jesus? That is your assumption. Then finally -- who knows when? -- Acts comes along with its normative approach to trying to tie up loose ends in the early tradition. And you accept its reports without analysis.

You assume that -- because a text later than the one we are analysing names James as one of Jesus's brothers, and because Acts talks of Paul meeting a James, and because Paul refers to the James he meets as "brother of the lord" -- you can interpret "lord" here as Jesus. I bet you assume that Moses is an Egyptian name or that he was a prince of Egypt.


spin

Doug Shaver

Given the context, "brother of the lord" is no less excellent and does not presuppose anything that the context does not assert.

sschlichter

Yes, it does. making the same claims before origen made them.

while thinking of all the things that just might be, I think it might be possible that their are two sources recounting the same meeting.


there is little serious debate on this.

classic. You just used the two references that we are discussing as evidence for the two references we are discussing. it is true that there are 2 palces where Paul refers to a select group of men as brothers of the Lord. It appears that the title is reserved for those that shared a mother with the Lord. Do you see any other instances?

Why do you think you might not see the term used elsewhere? I will answer for you. Because it is a term that is contrived to avoid what appears to be corroboration.

there is no assumption. these are all clues (hints and ripples since you deal in those). you have provided no reason to believe they are not true and the attempt to pin the idea on Origen is simply a game.

spin

What, that James was the brother of Jesus? Sorry but what is your source again?

I guess you don't like getting told that your basic argument is built in ignorance of the relationship of the materials you are working with and that you should start with the earliest material and read what it says instead of obscuring it with later ideas.

Pointless conjecture. So all the people that Paul calls brothers had the same mother!? Or do you just depend on an a priori commitment to what you want the text to say? Why do you fall over your mouth every time you open it?

Because the group didn't survive? Because it was not considered mainstream? Your speculation is just your speculation.

Clues aren't retrojections.

You have no way of testing them.

What are you now thinking I've pinned on Origen? I merely related the interpretation of the notion that "James brother of the lord" was James, the brother of Jesus.

sschlichter, all you have done in this discussion is try to impose your view (based on an erroneous methodology of not reading the texts for what they say but reading them as though they must reflect later beliefs) over the one I had presented. I put forward a notion and you challenged it by trying to overlay your own. That is not helpful. I then tried to explain some background, which you read and did not try to comprehend. The linguistic notion of a word supposedly used for two different referents indistinguishably you refused grapple with.

You then attempted to foist an interpretation onto Paul's phrase "James the brother of the lord" that is not in his text. I even indicated that your interpretation is not something that comes from the new testament at all and suggested that it might have been Origen who put forward the notion that this "brother of the lord" was actually Jesus's brother (the reason for this apparently being the 2nd c. move towards binitarian notions -- outside a Jewish context -- which in some way Origen would have inherited).

You have made no attempt to comprehend the implications of a term which can mean two different things being used by a writer who doesn't distinguish the referent when the term is used. It means lack of comprehension of the message that contains the term (does it mean god here or Jesus?). You seem to one of those who don't care and can see no problem. And you wouldn't allow me to develop it so you could understand.

Ultimately I could find no valid argument in your comments and you refused to deal with mine. We've been that way for a while. I'm sure you won't mind if I bow out of this discussion.


spin

sschlichter

so there was a group that existed called brothers of the Lord that Paul referred to twice. he only referred to that group when referencing a man named James who Matt, Mark state is also the name of a brother of Jesus. the author of Acts who links James with the early church corroborates Paul's interactions with a man named james who is a leader of the church. You want me to beleive that is because the author of Acts mis-read Paul and did not know about the brothers of the Lord. yet, there is no evidence of this

also , there is no evidence that their is a brothers of the Lord club, never referred to besides by Paul when referring to a man that is coincidentally, the brother of the Lord Jesus or when referring to a group of men that Paul lists in the context of pillars of the church of which james is a member according to Josephus.

all this is because it is better for you if Paul would stop referring to Jesus as the Lord as he does

Since you are now equivocating the term brother as paul refers to others with brother of the Lord, yes I would bow out.

show_no_mercy

This entire logic falls apart once you get rid of the assumption that the entire New Testament is one consistent whole. Your use of Mark and Matthew to explain what Paul meant when he says "brothers of the Lord" is like using Einstein to explain what Newton meant.

Paul says that Jesus appeared to "Cephas and then the twelve" (thirteen), whereas Matthew says that Jesus appeared to "the eleven" which assumes Cephas and Peter are the same person and is also included in the eleven. Not one consistent whole.

How do we know Paul is talking about Jesus' physical, and not spiritual, resurrection? Duh! Because John has Thomas see Jesus' wounds in his resurrected body. This is nonsense and is literally anachronistic. You can't use later texts written by different authors with different intent to explain what an earlier author meant in an earlier text. It is a worthless methodology, and only an apologist with no concern for logic would use it.

We already know that later evangelists took the Jewish phrase "son of God" literally. How do we know they didn't do the same thing here with "brother(s) of the lord"?