Doug Shaver

Just "possibly"? That's all you're asking? You want an alternative interpretation that is not provably impossible?

aa5874

That is not really true. There is no corroborative external historical source that can show that some Pauline writings were actually written in the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple or that Jews in Jerusalem were worshiping a Jewish man as a God or asked to worship a man as a God by any character called Paul.


Once any Epistle that was claimed to have been written by Paul is found or reasonably deduced to have been written at a time when the Pauline writer is assumed to have been long dead, then the authenticity of any letter under the name of Paul MUST be questioned.

There are many fundamental problems with Paul.

1. Paul's post-ascension activities and conversion appears to be fabricated.

2. The Pauline writers own words appear at times to contain fiction.

3. There are no external historical sources to corroborate any Pauline activity or writings.

4. Up to the middle of the 2nd century, Justin Martyr did not use any information from Acts of the Apostles or the Pauline writings even though he mentioned Marcion that Tertullian claimed had known and modified the Pauline writings.

5. No Gospel writer used a single verse from any Pauline Epistle.

It would appear, based on the evidence, that ALL the Pauline writings were after the middle of the 2nd century. Not even the words of the Synoptic Jesus matched any of the words of the Pauline revelation Jesus. The Synoptic Jesus, who spoke to the Jews primarily in riddles, was totally unaware of the Pauline Jesus.

PhilosopherJay

Hi ApostateAbe,

Thanks for this thoughful response and thanks for pointing out the factual error. I was quite mistaken when I stated that Josephus used the phrase "Lord's brother." He did say that the James he was talking about was "the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ."

Philosophers tend to say interesting things, but they do make factual errors. Heraclitus said that "A man cannot step into the same river, twice," which seems to mean that at least some things are constantly changing. This seems true to me. On the other hand, he said that "The sun is the breadth of a man's foot." Astronomical websites tell me it is 109.2 times the size of the Earth. While I have great respect for Heraclitus, I have to go along with the websites on this one. In defense of Heraclitus, we should remember that he had no tools to actually measure the size of the sun, while modern day astronomers have scientific instruments, telescopes, mathematical theories and data to work from.

People have made a lot of good, sharp criticisms in this thread I think and your responses have been good as well. It has been useful. I apologize for adding another lengthy discourse.

The thread started out with the promise or hope that there was good evidence for an historical Jesus. However, the only real material evidence came from Pauline text. Now Paul is the main witness to the Lord/God Jesus, so immediately one has to be surprised that he is also the main witness to the historical Jesus. Paul says that the heavens opened up and the God Jesus appeared before him, and then Jesus went back in the hole or I assume Jesus went back in, and the hole closes up and Paul became blind, but then he recovered his sight. This seems to me to be something that happens more to story/mythological characters in story/myths than to historical people. Also I recall that Paul is the teacher mentor of Thecla. She, as I recall, preserved her virginity by praying to god and a mountain opened up and she went inside the mountain and the mountain closed up. It seems to me that this might be suggesting that it is hard to preserve virginity. In any case, it seems that when Paul is around in a story we can expect heavens and mountains to open and close.

It seems to me that the testimony of such a character has to always be considered as dubious, even when we are presented by letters of such a character. We cannot be sure that the stories grew out of the man and his letters, or the man and letters grew out of the stories. Still, we are assured that the letters written by him are real, or at least that the real ones are real, the ones to he wrote to the Virgin Mary and Seneca aren't real, but the ones he wrote to churches, not the ones that Marcion says he wrote, because Marcion has tampered with them, and not the pastorals, although they made it into the New Testament, but, at least some of them are considered real by all theologians/historians, except for the small group of skeptical theologians/historians who don't even believe that these are real.

In any case we are to take these six or seven letters and find our proof in them. We, at least have 40 or so pages and at 250 words per page or 10,000 words that might attest to the historical Jesus. But, it turns out that 9,994 of these words don't attest to the historical Jesus, but six do - James, Lord's, brother, Apostle, Chephas, Peter. Minus these six words, there is no textual evidence for the existence of Jesus. I said that only 1% of the epistles was evidence. What I should have said is 6/10,000, or 6% of 1% or .06% of the words can be used as evidence. This seems to me the reverse case of Heraclitus. We started out believing the evidence was 109.2 times greater than the measuring object, but it turns out that the evidence is really less than the breadth of man's foot. It is the breadth of a hair.

But, as you said, even a hair can attest to an historical event.

At this point in the thread, the historical Jesus was hanging by thread, a thread made up of six hairs. Here you greatly strengthened my faith by saying that there was no reason to doubt the historical nature of these hairs. All doubts were unreasonable and just ad hoc attacks, taken out of thin air. The argument was sound, the size did not matter, the best explanation was that these were hairs created by the historical Paul and they do attach the Historical Paul to the Gospels, and that was enough. It was here that I pointed out (and others in even better fashion) that the hairs, the key phrases kind of, sort of, almost exactly matched the hairs in the gospels, but there were some gaps or problems.

I found two mysteries:
You solved these mysteries by pointing out that Josephus does not use the phrase "the lord's brother," but calls "James the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ". You solved the second mystery by saying that Origen was refering to Gal. 2:9 "reputed to be a pillar" when he quoted Paul as saying that James was a brother of the lord by virtue of his virtue and doctrine.

At first I was very glad to read this because it kind of, sort of, almost exactly solved the problem. But as I think more on it, I think find the mysteries growing wider.

The problem is not that the exact phrase "lord's brother" is used in both Josephus and Paul, that is just a factual error I made. the problem is that both Paul and Josephus assume that they can refer to James as the brother of Jesus the Christ or the lord's brother and their audience will know whom they are talking about. They assume that their audience are good Christians who have read the gospels. Only Paul was allegedly writing before the gospels were written and Josephus was writing in Greek to a largely Greek-Roman audience.

So now we have two mysteries whereas before we had only one:
1) Why does both Paul and Josephus use phrases that relate James as being a brother of Jesus but give no other description of him. They could have well said that he was from Galilee, that his mother was Mary, that he was 6 feet tall, that he had a crooked nose?
2)Why does one of them describe Jesus as Lord, while the other describes Jesus as Christ? Neither of which are how James is called in the gospels.

According to Mathew: 10.2 The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zeb'edee, and John his brother; 10.3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus. According to Matthew. There is another James described in Matthew as the brother of the carpenter's son: 13.55 Is not this the carpenter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? So we have three James. Two are apostles and one is the biological brother of Jesus.
6.3Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?"
Luke agrees that James was a partner with Simon (Peter) 5.10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zeb'edee, who were partners with Simon.
In Mark we find 5.37And he allowed no one to follow him except Peter and James and John the brother of James. Here it seems that James is associated with Peter, but it the apostle James with a brother named John that is being associated with Peter and John as one of the most favored apostles of Jesus. Mark describes James as the brother of "the carpenter":
The Gospel of John never once mentions James.

Thus in the gospels, we have two apostles named James, a James who is described as a brother of John and a partner of Simon/Peter and who is one of the three top apostles of Jesus. We also have James, a brother of Jesus, but there is no indication that he is follower of Jesus, in fact Jesus seems to reject him.

On the simple level of an exact formulaic match, we should expect that James would be referred to the same way he is referred to in the gospels as the brother of Jesus, the brother of the carpenter or the brother of the carpenter's son. So we don't get an exact match in form between Galileans and the gospels, we get a kind of, sort, almost exactly like match. But at least the story elements match. No, the story elements do not match. In Galatians, the brother of Jesus is a top apostle along with James, but in the gospels, the brother of Jesus is not an apostle and the only James associated with Peter who is a top apostle of Jesus is the brother of John. We can say that Galatians not only doesn't match, but contradicts the gospels on points, 1) Is Jesus' brother his disciple, 2) the chief apostle - it is James, brother of John, 3) the partner of Peter - it is again James, brother of John.

In light of this we can say that the author of Galatians contradicts the authors of the synoptic gospels and the role and relationships of John, Jesus' brother, or the gospels contradicts the author of Galatians.

Our two mysteries have now turned into three:

Now we get to our original second mystery. Why does Origin say, ""Paul, a genuine disciple of Jesus, says that he regarded this James as a brother of the Lord, not so much on account of their relationship by blood, or of their being brought up together, as because of his virtue and doctrine."

Can the answer be that Paul refers to James as a pillar of the church in 2.9 and that Origin has interpreted this to mean that he was symbolically a brother of the lord? Origin gives us three choices for the identity of James, 1) biological brother of Jesus, 2) someone raised like a brother with Jesus, but not biologically related, and 3) just a virtuous person with doctrine supported by Jesus' follower who is given the title of "Lord's Brother"

One would have to ask why being called a "pillar of the church" would mean that you were not 1) a biological brother of Jesus or 2) someone raised like a brother with Jesus? Calling someone a "pillar of the Church" does not make it less likely that he is called "brother of the lord" due to the first two reasons. If Origin has done this, then we can certainly accuse him of putting words into Paul's mouth that he never wrote. He has certainly made a rather careless deduction.

In any case, he has taken Paul to mean that the phrase "Lord's brother" is a title. But if Origin is right, and Paul meant this as a title, then the case that this phrase ties Paul to the gospels and the historical Jesus falls apart. Then Paul wasn't talking about the historical brother of Jesus, but of a title anybody could have had. The evidence of the historicity of Jesus becomes no evidence at all.

Worse is that Eusebius tells us that Origin is not the only earlier Christian who reads Paul as giving a title with the phrase "lord's brother." He also cites Clement (H.E. 2.1.4):

We now have three Church Fathers, at least according to Eusebius, Origin, Clement and Eusebius, supporting the idea that the phrase "Brother of the Lord" is a title and not a reference to a biological brother of Jesus. Such a supposition appears to eliminate Paul and Galatians as an historical witness for Jesus.

This also seems to add two more candidates to whom the James is that Paul refers to. Thus we have:

1) Synoptic gospel plot suggest James, brother of John, partner (homosexual companion) of Peter.
2) A biological brother of Jesus that the synoptics mention.
3) Someone who may have been raised as brother to Jesus as mentioned in gnostic texts like Gospel According to James
4) A James who was thrown off the temple and beaten by a fuller
5) A James who was beheaded
6) A James that was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin as described by Josephus (Ant. 20.9)

So, we have another mystery to add to our other three:

It seems to me that all of these mysteries would be best solved by assuming interpolation of texts, which we have strong evidence was a continuous process throughout the early history of Christianity. Other answers seem ad hoc to me.

Thus the tiny gap in the historical evidence has grown to a hole, the hole the size of an opening in the heavens or the opening in a mountain, or the size of the sun.

It seems that the problem with the hair that we were analyzing is that it is not a piece of hair at all, but a piece of spaghetti. It seems to have been left at the scene of the crime by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But I do not wish to introduce another theological explanation into the discussion.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

spin

Whooooosh. Once more we come to this rubbish.

[My latest blog entry:]

Kepha is a name in Hebrew, which has supplied us with two forms in Greek, Caiaphas and Cephas. Peter is not simply a translation of a common noun. It would be like translating "Rachel" as "ewe" or "Caleb" as "dog".

While Paul uses the name "Cephas" through 1 Corinthians and the rest of Galatians, the name "Peter" only occurs in Gal. 2:7-8 and a reader who knew only Paul's writings would never think that Cephas and Peter were the same person. At the same time, if Paul consistently used the name "Cephas" one would need to work from the context of a developed christian tradition in which John 1 were well known to make the association.

As pointed out many times the Epistle of the Apostles provides a list of the apostles which includes both Cephas and Peter, there is no problem for the writer involved to use both Cephas and Peter as different people.

Once has to knowingly retroject from John to insist on the equivalence between Cephas and Peter, ie from a later form of the christian tradition to an earlier form without knowing how the tradition developed.

Gal. 2:7-8 functionally deals with the same subject as 2:9 except for two things, 1) it talks of Peter and 2) it ascribes to Peter what 2:9 ascribes to the three pillars, James, Cephas and John, ie the mission to the circumcised. This last point is a contradiction, either Peter (who one claims is Cephas) or James, Cephas and John had the mission to the circumcised, but not both: one is not three.

Next we look at how 2:7-8 is attached to the rest of the passage. After ridiculing the pillars ("the acknowlegded leaders, though what they are makes no difference to me... those leaders gave nothing to me"), the text moves onto v.7 which starts "(but) on the contrary" (τουναντιον, see it used in 2 Cor 2:7 and 1 Peter 3:9). This linkage is rather awkward, for if one asks "contrary to what" it is difficult to find the "what", unlike the two other examples.

So we have a number of problems with Gal 2:7-8:

1) it suddenly uses the name "Peter" which we only know from later tradition and not used elsewhere in Paul;

2) it contradicts the following verse, which ascribes the mission to the circumcised to the three pillars; and

3) it sits awkwardly in the discourse of its context.

Now while it is easy to explain why such an interpolation could have crept into the text, ie a scribe noted the Petrine ascendency in the margin of a text which gets included in later copies, it's rather hard to explain why Paul should write these two verses.

Once Peter is found in these two verses it's not strange to find scribes inadvertently changing "Cephas" to "Peter", for by the time the interpolation was made, it reflected the then current state of christian tradition. And so Cephas becomes Peter, as scribes change the text further.

Before we hear the same same stuff about Cephas being Peter through unanalytical retrojection from later tradition, I would like those infidel who think that it is correct to argue against the implications of the Pauline text for retrojection to actually make their case. Deal meaningfully with the three issues I've pointed out above. Simply repeating the conventional wisdom is making the same sort of blunder that Abe makes throughout his efforts.


spin

ApostateAbe

Philosopher Jay, others and especially you have really been an incredible challenge for me, but I think now is about the time I really need to get back to what is important in my own life. Really, that is a flimsy excuse, because I saw that long post of yours, I am filled with terror, and I want to hide in a corner. I have an exam, a GRE no less, coming up very soon, in addition to a bunch of school work that will hopefully wrap up my last quarter in my undergraduate odyssey. So, I may get back to you, but God knows when. I already broke my word when I said that I would focus on school work in light of a long criticism from Elijah.

Chaucer

I want an honest addressing of the plain fact that "Lord's brothers" cannot possibly refer to apostles, since apostles are referenced already in this verse -- and as "apostles" only -- and that therefore "Lord's brothers" can only refer to siblings -- unless something "brotherly" that is other than apostles is referenced by "brothers" here in the four corners of verse 5. Toto addressed this honestly by citing Price as one theorizer who has posited a brotherly group outside of apostles. While I agree with Abe that that is not a convincing theory since it confounds the possible with the likely, <edit>.

Chaucer

PhilosopherJay

Hi ApostateAbe,

I completely understand. I am often pressed for time and wish to respond to something but usually, days, weeks and months pass and it is forgotten. Thank you for raising the interesting points that you did in this thread.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Toto

But creationists are outrightly dishonest. There is an overwhelming amount of peer reviewed and cross checked data that supports evolution and natural selection. Creationists, however, start from the premise that the Bible is true, then conclude that there must be something wrong with this evidence or the theory, and so they construct a parody of a sciency-sounding argument.

The HJ-MJ debate, however, involves a field where the data is missing, corrupted, and sparse. There is ample room for different theories, which different scholars, acting honestly and out of good will, can fit to the same data.

And this is what you assert but have not proven with your sermon.

aa5874

But, this is exactly the argument from the HJ. It is the contention of HJ that something is wrong with evidence.

An HJer will state that there is something wrong with Matthew 1.18, Luke 1.35, Mark 16.6, John 1, Acts 1.9, Galatians 1.1 and all the data OF ANTIQUITY that show or depict Jesus as a MYTH.

Your statement may not be entirely correct.

There is ample data from antiquity that describes Jesus in a mythological manner, but there is probably only one or two pieces of forgeries with the name Jesus Christ external of the NT and Church writings and even then the forged or corrupted material claimed Jesus was raised from the dead. See the "TF" Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3.

The claim that data is missing cannot be part of the debate since it is the data that is found that must be used in the debate.

And you may not realise that the HJ is not really a theory in the true sense, perhaps a suggestion, since it is actually not based on the information found in the NT or Church writings or any other external historical sources.

As a demonstration that there is NO ample evidence for an HJ, could you honestly name a book of antiquity, external of the forgeries in Josephus, that have ample information of an HJ?

mountainman

The HJ theory was first espoused by Eusebius in his "Church History" which must be seen as the first and only historical theory of the HJ to have been written. Eusebius had many many continuators in the centuries after he kicked the bucket but he had no rivals -- nobody but nobody went back across the ground of his own historical theory of "history" before Nicaea.


What needs to be appreciated is that Eusebius's "THEORY" of history, prepared almost 300 years after the events being researched, has never been treated as a "THEORY" since apologists treat it as "gospel truth".


Eusebius's Historia Ecclesiastica and other works all suggest -- IN THEORY -- an HJ three centuries after the events. The question becomes whether or not the Eusebian theory of history is to be accepted or rejected. People try and have it both ways. They accept some of it but reject other bits. Acting honestly and out of good will, I believe that the way forward is to reject Eusebius's THEORY of HISTORY as simple minded 4th century imperially sponsored propaganda with no historical basis whatsoever.