aa5874

But, Paul's gospel was from an entity in a non-historical state, in a resurrected and ascended state. Paul's gospel is irrelevant to an actual existence of Jesus.

Hallucinations or visions do not need actual living Jesus.


The Pauline writings on their own support mythicism.

ApostateAbe

Well, I am not going to just take your word for it on that point. I think it pays to grasp that my perspective is that those two "clues" in the places with light really are clues. If you disagree, then fine.

Toto

This isn't a matter of personal preference. If you can't justify your perspective with recognized criteria, it's no better than a religious belief.

ApostateAbe

I think that's fair. I didn't mean to imply that it is all a matter of personal belief. Do you accept all of the elements of ABE? If not, then maybe you can direct me to a set of historical methods that you accept as legitimate.

ApostateAbe

Toto, I remember you saying that historians don't have criteria. I'll just use the Argument to the Best Explanation, by C. Behan McCullagh. So, this argument is for people who would accept the method of Argument to the Best Explanation. If you don't accept ABE, then this argument is not for you, and I don't give a damn, unless you tell me what methodology you do accept, and I will work with it.

1. The statement, together with other statements already held to be true, must imply yet other statements describing present, observable data. (We will henceforth call the first statement 'the hypothesis', and the statements describing observable data, 'observation statements'.)

There are two competing propositions.

Proposition #1 is my own: Paul meant the literal sibling of Jesus when he wrote, "James, the brother of the Lord," in Galatians 1:19.

Proposition #2 is the hypothesis of "[s]ome people with PhD's in New Testament related areas" who "have speculated that there was a group called the Brothers of the Lord, which did not consist of biological brothers of Jesus of Nazareth, but of people who considered themselves especially godly."

2. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory scope than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must imply a greater variety of observation statements.

Proposition #1: explains Paul's two uses of the phrase in Galatians 1:19 and 1 Corinthians 9:5. It also explains the name "James" included as among the four brothers of Jesus in Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55-56. It also explains Josephus' description of James being the brother of Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews.

Proposition #2: explains Paul's two uses of the phrase in Galatians 1:19 and 1 Corinthians 9:5.

+1 for Proposition #1.

3. The hypothesis must be of greater explanatory power than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must make the observation statements it implies more probable than any other.

Proposition #1: implies that Jesus had literal siblings. If so, then these siblings are expected to have a place in Christian myth. Both the gospels and Josephus reflect that myth.

Proposition #2: implies that there were a small group of high-status Christians who were called, "brothers of the Lord," and who were not apostles. If so, then these people would be expected to have a place in Christian myth. Such myth isn't found anywhere except in the two passages of Paul.

+1 for Proposition #1.

4. The hypothesis must be more plausible than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must be implied to some degree by a greater variety of accepted truths than any other, and be implied more strongly than any other; and its probable negation must be implied by fewer beliefs, and implied less strongly than any other.

Proposition #1: is plausible. A living Jesus would be expected to have brothers with an elevated place in Christian myth.

Proposition #2: is not as plausible. There was a high-status group of men familially unrelated to Jesus who were called "apostles," not "brothers of the Lord." This hypothesis requires two groups of such men instead of just one.

+1 for Proposition #1.

5. The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.

Proposition #1: does not entail any new suppositions to the standard models of early Christianity with an historical human Jesus.

Proposition #2: entails a new supposition about early Christianity--that there was a high-status group of Christians called, "brothers of the Lord."

+1 for Proposition #1.

6. It must be disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, when conjoined with accepted truths it must imply fewer observation statements and other statements which are believed to be false.

Proposition #1: does not conflict with accepted models of a historical human Jesus.

Proposition #2: does not conflict with accepted models of a mythical Jesus.

No added points.

7. It must exceed other incompatible hypotheses about the same subject by so much, in characteristics 2 to 6, that there is little chance of an incompatible hypothesis, after further investigation, soon exceeding it in these respects.

Proposition #1: scores +4.

Proposition #2: scores +0.

Proposition #1 wins.

aa5874

Your ABE proposition is useless to determine the VERACITY and date of writing of Galatians 1.19.

Your ABE proposition does not take into account the description of the LORD.

Once the LORD was DEEMED to be the Creator of heaven and earth, was raised from the dead, and was NOT a man then your ABE proposition is IRRELEVANT.

ApostateAbe

aa5874, do you accept the legitimacy of ABE? If you do not accept it, then I do not give a damn, unless you tell me what set of methods you do accept. If you do accept it, then I suggest that you choose a hypothesis that represents your explanation for Galatians 1:19, then choose a competing hypothesis that you think best represents the closest competition, then do the scoring of those two hypotheses for items 2-6 of ABE. See which hypothesis scores the highest, and then I will review your scoring.

yalla

Abe, that is an incomplete and shonky argument for your bit of wishful thinking that James is the sibling of a particular unnamed person.

It ignores the following [incomplete list follows]:
-Is Rufus Paul's brother?
-Are the apostles having incestuous sex with their wives?
-Are the '500 brethren' who 'saw' JC actually blood related kin siblings?
[Same father who used presumably dozens/hundreds of wives to mother his 500 children?]
-Paul calls these 500 'brethen', are they his kin?

Your crudely and incompletely expressed Prop 1 necessarily demands, if you wish to apply it consistently anyway, that the answer to all the questions above [and dozens similar] is "Yes".

Prop 1, as you express it, is a 'fail', it scores zero because it is selectively incomplete.

Prop 2 is a false dichotomy.

There are other possibilities besides your narrow preferred option.

For example, that each of the '500' is a member of the 'brotherhood' of believing followers, that James is just one such believing follower [and there are presumably many more than just the [500'] who Paul claims to have met and no particular high status is required to include his name.

I said as much in one of my previous comments, such status of James is not required, its plausible/posible but not necessary.
Do I score points for predicting your line of argument before you made it and also refuting it?

A note on your [and other apologists] use of the word 'plausibility'.
It carries very little weight.

For example in the case of the '500 brethren' above I speculated that for such persons to be truly kin siblings of each other [a 'fact' demanded by your interpretation of 'brother' in the case of Gal 1.19 as signifying such, you need to be consistent you know] such can be explained by a man having had lets say 100 wives with whom he fathered an average of 5 living children [strictly speaking all males] who happened to see JC in some manner.

Its 'plausible', but how probable?

If that is not the case how do you explain the word 'brethren' being applied by Paul to the '500'?
And you must explain it because the word 'brethren' is interpreted by you [when you want it to be] as implying kin sibling in Gal 1.19.

You have to be consistent and apply your Prop 1 to all the information in the text.


There are other major flaws in your Prop1 vs Prop 2 scenario but that will do for now.

cheers
yalla

Toto

We can work with it for now, but remember that it is just a best explanation, not a proof. And the ABE is usually used for more comprehesive theories, not for single charges or facts.

You have set up one particular alternative. To be fair, Proposition B should just be that James had the title "brother of the Lord" for some reason other than siblinghood with Jesus, whether he was the head of a group of brothers, or just had that title because he was particularly godly.

I disagree. The references to "James" in the gosples and Josephus can easily be explained by either proposition if you assume that Paul's phrase could be misread.

But there are additional facts that your hypothesis does not explain, that Prop 2 has a better chance of explaining:

Why does Paul show no deference to James, if James was Jesus' brother?
Why do the gospels refer to a James who was a disciple, and a James among Jesus' family?
Why does Paul refer to James as the brother of the Lord and not the brother of Jesus?
Why does Paul not seem to know about other biological brothers or sisters of Jesus, not to mention his mother or father?

I disagree with your formulation of Proposition 2, so I will pass over this, other than to note that practically everyone had lots of brothers in that traditional society, including gods and mythical creatures.

Neither proposition is implausible, and that is all you can say.

Same objection.

...

In short, you've got nothing much.

ApostateAbe

Thanks for examining this, Yalla. I'll express my objections in bullet points.

• Paul does not use merely the phrase, "brother" in Galatians 1:19 as he so often does in the rest of his writing. He uses the phrase, "brother of the Lord." The debate is over the meaning of the entire phrase. There is only one other time that Paul uses that same phrase. It is in 1 Corinthians 9:5.
• 1 Corinthians 9:5 is the passage that would imply that such a group of men have a high status in the church. They are placed alongside the apostles and Cephas as having certain privileges unfairly granted to them that are not granted to other Christians. That is the basis of mythicists such as Doherty and Price speculating that they are a high-status group of Christians (but not the brothers of Jesus). That is the competing theory I used in my analysis. If you have a different proposition, then lay it out and stand behind it. Tell me what seems to be the most probable estimate for who the "brothers of the Lord" may be.
• An "apologist" is normally defined in this field as someone who defends faith in Christianity, especially Biblicist Christianity. I am not an apologist, though C. Behan McCullagh arguably could be. I oppose faith in Christianity, unless it is an alternative to faith in Islam or cults, which are even worse. So please do not call me an apologist. Thanks.
• Though plausible and probable may be used approximately the same way in normal writing, the word "plausible" is more specifically and usefully defined in item #4 of ABE. In this context, plausibility is only a part, and the end values would determine the greatest relative probability.

Cheers.