zaitzeff

Richard,

I have been following the post at the Doherty thread and am thankful you are still around. Or, that you were as of April 6!

How do you account for what I regard as the peculiar statement of Paul in reference to James that he was the brother of the Lord, and the similar reference in I Cor 9 to the brothers of the Lord?

How do you account for the passages in Josephus?

I read your review of the Doherty book. It seems to me that the strongest evidences we have that a real person lived of whom the stories were told, rightly or wrongly, is
1) the brothers references;
2) the Josephus passages;
3) Paul saying he was quoting the Lord re divorce in I Cor 7;
4) the similar passage in I Cor 9
"14 Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel."

It seems to me as if, in order to give a "fair review" of the Doherty book, that would require that you also give a "fair review" to how he deals with the evidence I regard as conclusive that there was a person named Jesus of whom the stories were told.

Toto

You can email Carrier if you want to get his attention.

But your evidence is far from conclusive. If Carrier did not mention it in his review, it might be because he agreed with Doherty's treatment of that evidence.

The term "brother" was used in Christianity to refer to a believer, not necessarily a biological brother. James is referred to as the "Brother of the Lord", but never as the brother of Jesus.

The two references in Josephus are probably forged. Read Doherty's arguments on his website.

Paul's references are a bit ambiguous. Paul's letters are full of interpolations, so you cannot be sure that Paul wrote anything in his letters in particular.

Amaleq13

This is the only relevant reference I could find in Mr. Carrier's online articles:

“The second and only other "martyr" recorded in Acts is the execution of the Apostle James, but we are not told anything about why he was killed or whether recanting would have saved him, or what he thought he died for.[18] In fact, we have one independent account in the Jewish history of Josephus, of the stoning of a certain "James the brother of Jesus" in 62 A.D., possibly but not necessarily the very same James,...�

From here.

Carrier footnotes Lowder’s discussion of the reference in Jeff's response to Josh McDowell here

“(1) "The phrase 'James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ' is too noncommittal to have been inserted by a later Christian interpolator who would have desired to assert the messiahship of Jesus more definitely as well as to deny the charges against James." This is probably the single most important argument in favor of authenticity; in my opinion, McDowell and Wilson are right about this. The phrase is incidental to the story. If this passage were an interpolation, it is surprising that so little is said about Jesus and James.�

I think Lowder should reconsider in light of a couple considerations. First, Josephus appears to consciously avoid using the word “messiah� throughout the rest of his writings even when discussing and condemning several messianic claimants. Second, the motivation described above is irrelevant to the actual “purpose� an interpolation serves in this position. It would not be added to “assert the messiahship of Jesus� but to identify the James mentioned. Considering this phrase as a subsequently incorporated marginal gloss appears to, IMO, completely eliminate this “single most important argument in favor of authenticity�.