James Brown

One staple argument among apologists that I've heard several times lately is that James was an enemy of Jesus who converted, which strengthens the case that Jesus' resurrection was attested to by more than just his apologists.

Does this hold water? Looking through BibleGateway, I see that one of Jesus' brothers is named James, but there's also one of his disciples called James the son of Zebedee (brother of John), and a James son of Alphaeus. So right off we have three James' to keep straight, two disciples, one brother.

Acts has James of Zebedee put to death by the sword.

Later in Acts, there's a James that is the head of the Christian church in Jerusalem ("James and the brothers").

Paul lists James singly in his I Corinthians 15 list of post-resurrection appearances. But which James does he mean--one of his disciples or his brother?

In Galatians 1, Paul states he saw James the Lord's brother. . . and that's it.

Then in the Book of James, he calls himself the servant of Jesus, and never mentions either his blood relationship to Jesus or the fact that he was an enemy until he saw the resurrected Jesus.

So to William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas and especially Mike Licona, I have to ask:

1) On what grounds do you call James an enemy of Jesus?

2) When did Jesus ever appear bodily to his brother after the resurrection?

Toto

Christian apologetics has arranged all this evidence to say that Jesus' brother, along with his other family members, thought he was crazy, but then Jesus appeared to him (the reference in I Corinthians) and he then went on to head the Jerusalem Church.

The basis of identifying this James as Jesus' brother and not a disciple is that Paul seems to know of only one James, whom he calls the "brother of the Lord." But Paul doesn't know anything about this James ever thinking that Jesus was crazy, so this is a disjointed harmonization of Paul and the gospels.

Various commentators think that there was an important person named James in early Christian history, who lost out in some power struggle, and got written out of history. This James might have been Jewish, might have been Christian, but is generally lost to any real historical data - but that did not stop Robert Eisenman from writing 1136 pages on James the Brother of Jesus (or via: amazon.co.uk) (a book that has not held up well.)

Anaximanchild

Thread moved to BC&H.

IamJoseph

James, called the brother of Jesus, is a fictional figure. Please provide any historical evidence aside from the Gospels James existed in Judea around this time?

Further, a resurrection in secret or witnessed by a few, stated by Europeans via writings centuries later - is certainly no attestation, but infers an intentional means to cover up a fictional story.

Of note, the greatest miracle in Geo-History, that of a dvine revelation by the Father of creation - was not in secret but witnessed by more than 3 million Hebrews and a mixed multitude of other peoples: it is equivalent to one Billion today. This should be the yardstick for measuring miracles.

Doug Shaver

Are you expecting any of them to show up here anytime soon?