Toto

But there was. The gospels condemn the Jews, even as they claim the authority of Jewish scripture.

So who was this James? James the Just?

Or perhaps the second century Christians invented a first century history from themselves, including appropriating a Jewish high priest James to their side and turning him into the brother of Jesus.

Toto

I base my theories on evolution. I assume that the human brain has not evolved in any significant way in the past 2000 years, and that people in the first century operate much as we see people today.

The human brain is hard wired to look for patterns and explanations, since this is what allowed our species to survive. The human brain is not hard wired to keep an accurate scientific record of past events. Whenever you read an ancient document, the first explanation that should come to mind is not the naive realist one, that this was some sort of record of what happened. The document must be examined in terms of its social utility in explaining what happened, or in encouraging good behavior or group solidarity, or as propaganda for one's cause.

You can see this in all the recent studies of memory, and in all the examples we have of urban legends and modern myth making. People selectively remember facts and weave them into a story that makes sense, and then convince themselves that was what happened. If necessary, they will invent facts to improve the story, or invent stories out of whole cloth. People do this to socialize their children and teach moral lessons, or just to make sense out of the world, because making sense feels better.

You can apply these principles to early Christians, whose primary purpose was social solidarity and survival in the Roman Empire. You can also apply these principles to 20th century Christians and post-Christians trying to make sense of their received religion in the light of modern scientific knowledge.

So a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th century Christian wants to find earlier evidence for his beliefs, so he can win the propaganda war and convince his fellow Christians to keep the faith. He will try to see James, or Seneca, or Philo as really Christians, the same way modern American Christians try to make George Washington into a good Christian, or even Thomas Jefferson - by inventing facts, forging documents, painting a picture of Washington in prayer, whatever it takes.

So - trying to extract any historical information from the gospels based on the criteria that the HJ guild uses has to be seen in terms of their own need for an explanation that makes sense of their world. If you have followed Chaucer, he has explained that he thinks the world needs a historical Jesus to keep it civilized and promote racial justice. I think that is also a motivation for many of the Jesus Seminar, a generation whose political experience was the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War, who wanted a Jesus who would promote pacifism and brotherly love. I am actually quite sympathetic to this, and wish that it had actually worked, but it didn't. Their historical Jesus was not coherent enough or strong enough to transform society.

Getting back to Josephus: the more I read of him, the less reliable he seems. He was a propagandist above all. But what is the likelihood that he would have a neutral view of Christianity if he had known about it? I would say close to 0. The Christian gospels paint a most unflattering view of the Jews and promote a blasphemer as the son of god. Josephus wrote Against Apion to counter a Roman anti-Jewish writer. Would he not have done the same with the gospels if he had read them?

The only thing that makes sense of this is that Christians either did not exist as a coherent group in the first century or were a hidden secret society that the Romans and Josephus knew little or nothing about. This is not a mythicist position - it is the best explanation of the lack of evidence for Christianity, whether or not it started with a mythical or human Jesus.

So the best explanation I see for a positive or merely neutral reference to Jesus Christ in Josephus is a later Christian interpolation, since the Christians had the means, motive, and opportunity. The idea that Josephus knew of a Jesus called Christ and did not condemn the idea is implausible in comparison.

jgoodguy

Or simply included a tradition or belief of an assimilated group. Or was a tradition of the orthodox from the get to. Or something else.

hjalti

Abe, this doesn't work. If we use the same method to evaluae the TF, then I don't think you can find many examples in the NT that say something like "was Christ".

But ok, "called Christ" isn't one of the more common phrases in the NT, but it is there. So it is something we could expect a Christian to write.

I don't know why you say that the "pattern matches" your theory. I don't know why you would expect Josephus to say that.

I'm not brushing Tacitus and Pliny aside.

But regarding Suetonius, I don't think that you can just assert that it's prima facie likely to refer to Jesus. Saying that it does refer to Jesus is just as much speculation that thinking that it isn't about Jesus. On the face of it, the passage sounds like this Chrestus was active in Rome.

jgoodguy

Add to that, the fact that the ancients did not have the precise naturalistic world view of this time, but mixed imagination and reality without moral hindrance.

avi

Yes, I agree with everything you wrote here.

Josephus, as you noted, just doesn't make sense, if he had been, as we believe, a Jewish official/priest leading the fight against the Roman Occupation, and concurrently someone willing to overlook the obvious blasphemy and heresy promoted by Christians, from a Jewish perspective.

But, I wonder if you are correct here, or another way of writing, I suppose, more honest, is to argue that your explanation of what caused the huge expansion of Christianity, seems both facile, and undeveloped.

My own explanation for the huge expansion of Christianity in the fourth century, which fundamentally, follows exactly what you have expressed above, namely that human behaviour, consciousness, and attitudes have not changed in the past couple of millenia, is that Christianity offered blokes of limited abilities, few assets, and a hopeless outlook for the future, an opportunity to purchase a seat at the table. Other religions demanded compensation, and the Christians undoubtedly appreciated payment as well, but perhaps in more modest sums than their competitors....

avi

Toto

In the fourth century, things get more complicated.

beallen041

When did the distinction begin, in your opinion?

So in your first response to me, you said James was a Christian, but now you are saying James was a Jew. Are you saying that first century Christians saw no distinction between the two then? What, then, was the role of Jesus in the mind of one of these first century Jew/Christians?

It also became implausible to Origen in the 3rd century that Jesus had a brother, would you agree? So we have three things that 2nd or 3rd century Christians would have believed about James that were untrue:

1. He could enter the holy of holies (untrue according to you).

2. He was not Jesus' brother (untrue in your opinion, I assume).

3. There was a distinction at the time of James between Jews and Christians (untrue according to the gospel authors).

It seems that lots of things that were untrue about James were believed within decades of his death. What makes his biological relationship so certain that it is the cornerstone of the modern case for the historical Jesus?

ApostateAbe

Like so many religious developments, it was gradual and evolutionary. The distinction started to develop with the apostle Paul, who admitted uncircumcised Gentiles into the Christian faith, and his community discarded many of the ancient Jewish laws governing cleanliness. Of course, they believed it to be more of an upgrade to the Jewish faith and not a violation of it. James was a Jew and not part of the community of Paul, and he was a Jew in every sense. When Christianity grew among Gentiles, there arose some rivalry between Jews and Christians, and that is when the distinctions become sharper. But, even today, the distinction has not been completely established. The so-called "Messianic Jews" belong to both religious traditions, and they are much more compatible than mutually-exclusive due to their common origins.
Yes, early Christians saw little or no distinction between Christianity and Judaism (Christianity was seen by them as a subset of the Jewish religion). The role of Jesus was to be a doomsday prophet/son of God/sacrificial lamb/savior of the world.
The sibling relationship between Jesus and James is multiply attested by early sources, not just by Josephus, but also by Paul, Mark and Matthew. Most often, the debate is focused on Paul, who seemingly had direct eyewitness contact with James (Galatians 1:19).

beallen041

Abe, Paul nowhere mentions James, the brother of Jesus. Certainly not in Galatians 1:19. Where do you get this idea from?