Johann_Kaspar

Strange, I was thinking he died as a king
Maybe you would like to rewrite the gospels. Or add a new layer. One more...
Is it that you believe those gospels were written once and never tampered with, no addition, no deletion, no re-ordering, no change, only one layer...

Johann_Kaspar

I do not agree. You are discarding much too easily the fact that xians had the control for 14 centuries of all textes and they could keep or destroy or rewrite what they wanted, like they wanted. If entire works are missing, books for critical periods are missing too. What is left is not to be taken at face value. The xian agenda was to try to turn a warlord into a so called prince of peace.
That said I do not discard the possibility of a MJ, but not on Doherty's grounds.

jjramsey

The problem is that if the church had really rewritten all the texts "what they wanted, like they wanted," then we shouldn't see the internal tensions in the New Testament that we see.

Johann_Kaspar

Read better, it is not what I wrote.

jjramsey

Yes, what you wrote was "xians had the control for 14 centuries of all textes and they could keep or destroy or rewrite what they wanted, like they wanted." Now in your reply on what I said about Nazareth, you said "Is it that you believe those gospels were written once and never tampered with, no addition, no deletion, no re-ordering, no change, only one layer?" However, the kind of tampering that would cause the text to consistently refer to Jesus as a Nazarene whose hometown was Nazareth (when the text had not done so before) would have to be fairly coordinated; tweaks from a scribe here and a scribe there wouldn't cut it. Give that you said that "xians had the control ...," you implied that such coordination was possible. I pointed out that the tensions in the NT as we have it would indicate otherwise.

Chunk

Does it make much difference to the MJ/HJ arguement if Paul and the Apostles were
in agreement or disagreement? Werent they basically teaching the same thing:

Galatians 2:2
I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those
who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to
make sure I was not running or had not run in vain.

Galatians 2:6-9

And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me;
God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. On
the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the
uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised
(for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked
also through me for mine to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who
seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right
hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they
to the circumcised.

Surely the HJ/MJ arguement rests on where Paul and Apostles got their "gospels" from?

I fall on the side of an HJ. I know thats not popular here, and the verses I base that
on have most likely been countered mainy times. None the less, here they are:


Galatians 1:19

But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother.

Nowhere else in his epistles, does Paul refer to anyone as the "lords brother". He
frequently refers to groups of Christians as brothers. He also refers to other Christians
as his brothers. He also refers to people as "brothers beloved by the lord". However, he
only once calls someone the "lords brothers", which leads me to believe that he meant
something different to all of the other occasions.

Wether they were writing fact or fiction, the gospel writers must also have picked up on
this, because James is called the brother of the lord in the gospels. If Jesus is mythical
surely the gospels are based on a distorted version of what Paul and the Apostles were
teaching. Is it a coincidence that the gospel authors invented the idea of James being the
brother of Jesus, and Paul making this comment in his letter to the Galatians?

Ephesians 6:21

But that ye also may know my affairs, [and] how I do, Tychicus, a beloved brother and
faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things

Beloved brother and minister in the lord. Not the lords brother.

1 Cor 7:12

To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever,
and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her.

This implies, for me, that Paul is aware of Jesus as a physical person and so he makes
the point that this is him speaking and is not something that Jesus said. If Jesus was
purely mythical and knowledge of him has been brought about through reading of scripture
this verse doesnt make sense. If Jesus' teachings were known just from scripture, I dont
see why Paul would imply that sayings of Jesus were known.

Galatians 1:11-12,15-16

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.
For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught [it], but by the revelation of
Jesus Christ.

But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called [me] by his
grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen

1 Corinthians 15:8

And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

Paul claims that Jesus appeared to him and that his gospel comes from a revelation of
Jesus, not from man. If Jesus was mythical and had just been revealed through scripture,
surely Pauls gospel would BE the revelation of Jesus Christ, rather than him having
recieved his gospel BY the revelation of Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 3:1

Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have [free] course, and be
glorified, even as [it is] with you

This verse appears to attribute sayings to Jesus. Why wouldnt Paul describe it as the new
revelation about the lord? I dont think you can say for certain that the verse is refering
to sayings of Jesus, but at the same time it doesnt make sense for Paul to refer to a new
revelation from scripture about Jesus as "the word of the Lord".

1 Corinthians 15:3-8

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for
our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the
third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the
twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are
still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the
apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Paul here seems to imply that the time between the appearences and the resurrection is small.
If this is written pre-gospel, he has no reason to lead us to believe that the time was short
if it wasnt. If hes talking about a Jesus existing way back in the past, it makes no sense
for him not to mention this here.

If some of the people he appeared to are still alive, then Jesus must be an historical figure
in the recent past.

What is the MJers answer to the comment about James being the Lords brother? It seems like
an obvious verse that an HJer would use to defend their position.

For me, Paul is refering to an historical figure in the recent past. However, i think its
likely that he believes Jesus lived before he came to Earth. Any verse that seems to refer to
Jesus in the very distant past is more likely a result of this, than that Paul doesnt believe
in Jesus living very recently.

Iasion

Greetings,

G'day there Silas, welcome to IIDB :-)
I'm sure you'll find the discussion here informative and interesting.

Briefly, I meant that Paul ORIGINALLY argued the crucifixion as a metaphor, later mis-understood as history.

Iasion

mikem

[QUOTE=Chunk].

The gospel they both preached was the same insofar as they all preached Christ as the Messiah. The implications of Paul's version were diferent though, because of his insistence that it was not necessary to become a Jew first. This was the crux of the argument between him and the Judaizers, who appear to have thought that non Jewish converts to the new movement were second class citizens. For Paul "you are all one in Christ Jesus", because he regarded faith in Christ as the sole criteria for membership. The Jerusalem membership were happy to accept non Jewish converts, but in my view were deeply uneasy about Paul's disregard for Jewish custom.

I think that the ideological diferences between Paul and his opponents does shed some light upon the broader HJ/MJ debate for the following two reasons.

Firstly, why were the Jerusalem leadership so loyal to following Jewish customs if not because their dead leader, now Messiah, was himself a practicing Jew?

Secondly, the actions of Paul and the Jewish leadership, as described by Paul, reveal a tension in the balance of power between them, but at the end of the day, it was the Jerusalem leadership who were regarded as the final court of appeal, and why? Because they had actually known Jesus, and so were regarded as the pillars of the church. They were the crucial link, and the visible proof if you like, that their message about the death and resurrection of Jesus was true.

Neither argument is a knock down proof of course. The shape of conflicts in the early church does seem to me to make more sense on the grounds that there was a historical Jesus than on the suppostion that thee wasn't.

Yes. And from a historicist point of view, the apostles got their gospel from Jesus. Without Paul, the Christian movement would have remained a messianic sect within Judaism. Paul took the Jewish gospel of Jesus the Messiah, which was originally intended for a Jewish audience, and universalised it.

I happen to agree with you, however that is an issue that has been debated on the forum quite vigourously, and you would have a hard time of it making your case! And not just from mythicists either.

A case can be made, and has been made, for saying that this whole passage is a later interpolation based on the resurrection stories in the gospels. I recommend an article by Robert Price in the Library section of IIDB called "1 Corinthians15:1-11 as a post-Pauline interpolation". It is very thorough and well argued. If you want to use that bit of Corinthians as evidence for a HJ, you need to get to grips with Price I think.

Romans 8:3, Galatians 4:4, Phillipians 2:6-11 keep cropping up in this context. The appear to speak about the preexistence of Christ, rather than the man Jesus. However this is at least one scholar, JG Dunne, who has written a book "Christology in the Making" that argues that none of these passages need be interpreted as referring to literal preexistence. If this is the case, then the man Jesus was adopted by God to be the Messiah. Acts 13:33and Romans 1:4 suggest that Paul was an "adoptionist". That at least is my view.

yalla

Gidday Chunk,
I suggest to you that you have provided the answers to some of your questions.
Were Paul and the others teaching basically the same thing [according to Paul]?
Yes.
Did they add anything?
Nope. Now that is really strange if they had spent years whatever wandering around with a real live JC as alleged in the gospels.
How did Paul get his info.?
From revelation.
Did Paul respect them?
Well sort of, but not excessively.

So why we would presume [other than through gospel coloured perception] that they [the pillars] had personal info re JC different to that of Paul? That they knew a real person and he only had inner revelations? He neither states such nor implies respect for such. If we don't let the gospels influence us we have nothing to suggest that they had a different source of information re JC to Paul.

James the lord's brother.
As you note, more or less, Paul uses kin/family terms... such as brother, brethren, mother, father, son, sister, kinsman... constantly. All the time. More than 20 times in Galatians alone. More than a 100 times in the genuine epistles.
Lots and lots of times.

But does he actually mean kin or blood relationship?

When he uses ''brethren" do we assume the persons addressed are his siblings? All of them [ he must use that word scores of times]?
Is the mother of Rufus [Rom. 16.13] also Paul's birth mum? Making Rufus his sibling? That is what Paul says..."his mother and mine".
To whom were the "500 brethren", who saw JC, brothers? Each other...all 500of them? Wow. Some daddy must have been busy with a lot of wives.
And he does use the sense "brother of the lord" elsewhere.
1 Cor 6.5..."..members of the brotherhood"
1 Cor 9.5 "Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a sister as a wife, as the other apostles AND THE BROTHERS OF THE LORD and Cephas?''
Note 2 things here.
One ..another example of the lord having brothers.
Two... they are having sexual relations with their sisters! That is what paul says. Incest.

Well not really. I don't really think that. I don't take all these sibling terms literally. I don't think Paul is the brother of Rufus, that the 500 were related and that the lord's brothers were having sex with their sisters etc..

Do you?

I think Paul uses these terms as a collegiate togetherness, as members in a club, the club of JC believers.
Fair enough?
And it flows from his statement that we are all sons of god. As in Rom 8.14ff .."For all who led by the spirit of god are sons of god.....Abba!Father! ...we are children of god ....and FELLOW HEIRS WITH CHRIST".

See if you are a son of god, as Paul says, and Jesus is a son of god, then you are a brother to Jesus.

Thus James the lord's brother.
He is not a sibling birth kin born of the same unnamed mother, having shared the same womb.

He is, like the 100s of others, just another member of the Christian club, albeit important enough to get a separate mention.
We are given no reason to think otherwise.
cheers
yalla

The Bishop

Paul didn't get his info from revelation, he got his info from having persecuted Christians for years. Undoubtedly, in fact, he had probably first heard the story about Jesus and what these guys were saying about him from concerned Jews, which had inspired him to begin his persecution in the first place (I don't know, possibly the details are in Acts and the epistles).

Chunk had already made his point, which was that Paul never referred to anybody else as "The Lord's brother". Chunk evidently does not think that Paul meant a literal brother at the other times when he said, "brothers and sisters" etc. He has made sufficient case for it to be a literal brother on this one occasion. For one thing, Paul probably would have written, "a brother in the Lord" or some other formulation. Context rules don't suddenly not apply just because two thousand years have gone by. Your case is based on changing obvious meaning, for the purpose of bolstering the baseless case that there never was a HJ. This is a symptom of what the MJ hypothesis really is.

I've made a realisation about the MJ scenario which explains (to me) why I have never accepted it, no matter how much I've read that tries to put the case to me. One spends a lot of time saying, "Why are you rejecting the Gospels as acceptable history?" or "Why don't you just accept what Paul wrote in the context of the Gospels?" or "It's just more likely that there was a real person than that someone wrote a complete mythology within twenty or thirty years or so of the figurehead's purported death" and you don't necessarily fully understand why you're arguing this way, and why it is so obvious to you and not to other rational people. I have finally realised what it is about the MJ hypothesis that explains why I just reject it, and I don't want to get into big arguments about it here, so I'd like to start a separate thread. In any case, I'm planning a substantial post on the subject which will take quite some thinking about, so I'll leave it there.