Ben C Smith

How other speakers of the same language and culture as the original statement understood that statement is always relevant.

It was clear to Mark. It was clear to Josephus. It was clear to Hegesippus, to Origen, to Eusebius, to Jerome, and to virtually everybody who ever mentioned it. And it is clear to me. The prima facie reading stands to be questioned only if there is evidence against it.

Touché. But, pending further argumentation, I disagree with Carlson on that one, and agree rather with Peter Kirby:

This argument is also weak. It presumes that the reference in 20.9.1 was intended to be a cross-reference to an earlier place. However, Josephus may not have intended this identification to serve as a reference to an earlier passage. The plausibility of such an identification without any earlier reference is established from the similar example in Wars of the Jews 2.247 (see above).

Furthermore, as you probably know, I am in favor of some original mention of Jesus in the Testimonium anyway. But I am willing to expunge the Testimonium in its entirety for the sake of arguments except for those about the Testimonium itself, because in that case I think the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate genuineness, whereas for the James reference the burden of proof is on those who doubt genuineness.

What, you mean you thought wrong again?

Just kidding. Okay, I overdramatized it a bit. Sorry.

(This just reminded me of Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties: Why in the name of all that is good and sacred in this great world of ours do you always accuse me of overdramatizing??)

Just to be clear, then, on which side do you see the burden of proof resting in the case of James the brother of the Lord, or for that matter James the brother of Jesus called Christ?

None of them very heavy. There was a time when I really wanted brother of the Lord to refer to something else; I wrestled with it for a long time before deciding it was far better to just let the evidence carry me whithersoever it would.

Ben.

Amaleq13

Unfortunately, none of your examples seem to me to qualify as coming from the same "culture" as Paul. Surely you aren't suggesting that the fundamental meaning of a phrase cannot be changed radically over the course of a few decades? Even with an intervening "incident" like the destruction of Jerusalem and subsequent dispersal? With the possible exception of Josephus, the "brothers of the Lord" had long ago ceased to exist by the time any of your "support" was written and even he is writing well after the fact.

Really? He introduces a previously unknown and clearly different James as part of the Big Three and depicts Brother James as considering Jesus to be out of his mind. Clear as mud, Ben.

Maybe. It seems strange to me that he would mention Jesus, James, their relationship, and the continuation of the "tribe of Christians" but never mention that James was one of, if not the, reason for that continuation. Clear as mud, Ben.

I understand that everyone mentioning it subsequent to Mark's story tends to agree but you don't seem to understand that this could just as easily result from accepting the story as any it could result from some sort of independent knowledge of history. Let's ignore the fact that the references of the first two don't appear to actually be present in Josephus. Let's ignore the fact that one of the first two even says that James was called "brother" not so much because of an actual relationship but due to his piety. Clear as mud, Ben.

There simply is no prima facie reading of "brother of the Lord", Ben, no matter how many times you repeat the assertion.

That's fine but the point is the issue is far from resolved. On that topic, I've heard back from spin with regard to the unique nature of the structure of the short reference and it directly addresses Peter's objection. IIUC (by no means a sure bet), only the first of the examples you offered is truly analogous since the others involve a prior mention of the individual or familial relationship or an individual so familiar as to assume prior knowledge. Since Giora is not mentioned prior to the phrase, that appears to offer the same odd construction. I don't know that a single similar example establishes it as "Josephan" but it does seem to require that "always" be tempered with an "almost".

Apology accepted (what else can I do with an excellent Family Ties reference) but, IMO, you did more than overdramatize. You got it completely backwards. I've been arguing against the notion that understanding the phrase to be anything but literal is crazy. It is simply wrong to suggest that the intended meaning is clear and that there is no other possible way to understand the phrase and simply wrong to suggest that understanding it literally creates no difficulties with the evidence.

For the former, I think it is upon anyone offering an interpretation for the phrase though the absence of directly relevant evidence makes such an effort inevitably speculative. For the latter, it is upon anyone arguing for a genuine core to the TF since, IMO, the short reference requires it.

I disagree that evidence from a myth of Christian origins with unestablished historicity, a possibly interpolated phrase, or the opinions of men living in the following century can be said to take you anywhere with anything approaching reliability.

Ben C Smith

Mark??

Of course it can. Show me the evidence.

Mark??

Please explain how the introduction of another James, brother of John, impeaches the fact that Mark has a brother of Jesus named James.

Why does that seem strange to you? And how do you know that James was the primary reason for the continuation of the Christian movement?

I do understand that. I am not going for an independent knowledge of history. I am going for how they read the phrase.

The first two what?

Think about that one for a moment. Origen really wants that phrase to mean brother in piety or some such, yet he admits (with that τοσουτον) that the phrase does indeed refer to the blood relationship.

Like you, I doubt Origen had any independent knowledge of history to inform him how to read that phrase in Paul.

Prima facie means upon first reading, or at first sight. A most cursory reading of Paul confirms repeatedly that for him Jesus was the Lord. Who has read the Pauline epistles, come across the phrase brother or brothers of the Lord and, upon this first reading, assumed it was meant not literally but metaphorically? I would wager that even you took it literally on your first reading, unless your first reading came from somebody like Wells.

Spin was explicitly discussing a grammatical construction. Prior mention of an individual (except as a grammatical antecedent) has nothing to do with grammar. If spin wishes to change the parameters of the argument, that is fine, but it should be acknowledged that the point is no longer one of grammar.

Does spin plan to address the issue on the relevant thread?

It is not crazy to suggest that brother of the Lord is metaphorical. Nor is it an easy row to hoe, since what actual evidence we have points in the other direction.

Of course there are other ways to understand the phrase. But what we require for those other ways, which by definition have to be nonliteral, is positive evidence in their favor.

I know of no piece of evidence that becomes suddenly inexplicable if James really was the brother of Jesus, much less if that is what Paul meant by the phrase.

It is not speculative to interpret brother of the Lord as brother of Jesus when Paul beats us over the head with Jesus is Lord. It is speculative to suggest any other interpretation without evidence.

I imagine you and I are doomed to butt heads on this, as usual, but I think I can state without fear of contradiction that in order to feasibly argue that James was not the brother of Jesus all of the following have to be true:

1. Paul meant brother metaphorically.
2. Mark (A) had no access to this aspect of the historical James aside from the information we glean from Paul and (B) either misunderstood or creatively reapplied the phrase brother(s) of the Lord.
3. Josephus never called James the brother of Jesus.
4. Hegesippus, who seems of a very different line of tradition than either Paul or Mark, had not only no reliable historical information about James but indeed also no reliable historical information about what brother meant when applied to James, who obviously interested Hegesippus intensely.

I disagree with each of the above propositions, and each would be a feat for me to overcome.

Ben.

Doug Shaver

Nice work. I'll be reading the whole thing as soon as I get some time.

I have no problem with that. So far as I'm aware, though, no Jew was expecting the Messiah to be God incarnate. There is no hint in the gospels (possibly excepting John) that Jesus ever said anything to his disciples that would put such an idea into their heads.

OK, but how did that start them thinking that he was God?

Maybe. My knowledge of Middle Platonic thinking is still pretty rudimentary, so I can't say a lot about how much we should expect to see of which elements. There is also the problem of figuring out how much philosophical background knowledge Paul would have presumed his readers to have.

Any passage with more than one plausible interpretation is not going to settle the issue. The issue becomes whether an interpretation that presumes a historical Jesus is the only reasonable one. If not, then it is not good evidence for a historical Jesus, but only a datum consistent with a historical Jesus.

NOGO

Brilliant! Yes it did.

The big difference is this.
As far as scriptures are concerned Paul tells us
1) that they are a source of revelation for him
2) He does refer to scripture many times but not always

For Jesus of Nazareth Paul
1) does not tell us that he is a source of revelation
2) never gives even a hint that he got anything from him.

See the difference?

NOGO

So you are suggesting that Paul purposely avoided talking about Jesus of Nazareth so that his letters would be timeless?

:banghead:

But wait a minute, Paul expected the end of the world to come within his lifetime!!!!!

Paul was NOT passing on some timeless wisdom.
His message was "the end of the world is about to happen, join us or perish"
His God walked the earth with supposeldly that very message and Paul ignores him for ... literary conformity?????

jjramsey

This can be boiled down into saying that Paul sometimes says "Scripture says" but never says outright "Jesus says." This is a slender reed on which to base your conclusion that there are only two possibilities for Paul for why Paul doesn't explicitly "attribute teachings to Jesus of Nazareth," either that he "attributes them to the risen Jesus ie throught inspirational routes" or that they "were not Jesus of Nazareth's teachings."

Doug Shaver

All it took to make it likely was that they heard the stories and believed that they were true.

Maybe I would, too, if I were inventing a religion and knew that that was what I was doing. But I don't think for a minute that anybody involved in creating the stories that were eventually compiled into the gospels was thinking in terms of starting a new religion.

You're assuming that Paul would see that implication because you're assuming that Paul would think the way most people nowadays think. But 2,000 years ago, intellectuals didn't think the way most people nowadays think. Paul was assuming a great many things about the makeup of the universe that are totally foreign to modern thought. What we call the scientific revolution was still 1,500 years in his future.

I haven't done the relevant research -- or rather, I've barely begun to do it. Doherty has done it. So have a lot of people who disagree with him. I haven't seen his adversaries come up with any good evidence that he is ignoring any relevant evidence or applying faulty logic to any of the evidence.

Which suggests that educated people (i.e. people who could read and write) interpreted it differently. The historical record, such as it is, was not produced by the vulgar populace. It was produced by the intellectuals of that time.

Muller does not justify any assumption that Paul would have used the word in only one sense at all times and in all contexts.
It would be difficult to prove one way or the other in a single post. We'd have to list of all the ahistoricist assumptions and all the assumptions made by a typical historicist. I'm not sure anybody has ever done that, but it would certainly be an interesting exercise.

At this point I can only note that I was a historicist for most of my life, both as a Christian and as an atheist. I thought ahistoricists were just a few crackpots motivated mostly by a rabid anti-religious bigotry. Then I read Doherty. Compared to historicist thinking, his looked a lot more parsimonious to me. And, now that I have read lots of commentary from his detractors, it still does.

Amaleq13

Yes, the author of Mark cannot be assumed to be part of the same "culture" as Paul even if we accept a date of authorship around the fall of Jerusalem. And, yes, there are no "brothers of the Lord" in Mark.

I've explained this already in the thread but you don't appear to have read it. The former does not impeach the latter. The two depictions call into question a literal interpretation of Paul's phrase. In Paul, the James portion of the trio is the same guy as the brother and there is no indication of another important James. In Mark, they are two different characters.

Leadership is how such movements survive the death of their founder and James is clearly depicted as a primary leader.

And you are not obtaining a conclusion about "what really happened" (ie James was Jesus' literal brother) from that? Who are you trying to kid?

The first two men you named.

You think about it but without imposing your assumptions on Origen. Why could it not be a case of Origen dealing with two apparently contradictory traditions?

I'm well aware of the meaning but it seems to me that your "first sight" is through Gospel-colored glasses.

A less cursory reading with the Hebrew Scriptures as a background suggests that "Lord" is also applied to "God" as a singular descriptor.

Who has read the Pauline epistles prior to reading or being taught the Gospel story? Would literal interpretation be so obvious to someone who went from the Hebrew Scriptures, which are filled with a variety of references to "the Lord" with most indicating "God", straight to Paul?

Not so far and I doubt it is likely. He is not terribly interested in returning to an active role of participation at IIDB.

jjramsey

I'm sorry, but there is nothing parsimonious about Doherty. The whole idea of a crucifixion in the upper heavens is speculative. The idea that the events described in the various pagan myths were understood as taking place in an upper heaven is not supported by the evidence. The idea that mystery religions have a dying savior at their core is dodgy. Mithras doesn't die, and it is questionable whether Attis' castration could be thought of as salvific. Osiris' temporary resurrection kept him alive long enough to beget a son, but didn't save the world. Doherty's justification for presuming that Paul thought in these terms is based on an ideosyncratic translation of kata sarka as "in the sphere of the flesh," with "sphere" being used in the sense of "region," as in some place in the upper heavens. I know that he claims C.K. Barrett as support for this, but Barrett uses "sphere of the flesh" in a much more abstract sense that has nothing to do with geographic location. The only thing Barrett and Doherty have in common is the use of the same English phrase to translate kata sarka, but the meanings they ascribe to the phrase are vastly different. He has to resort to strained interpretation and speculation to explain away the evidence pointing to historicity.