Doug Shaver

I have no problem regarding Paul as a reliable witness to the following facts:

1. There was a leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem by the name of James.

2. James was often referred to by other Christians as "the lord's brother."

What I have not seen is any cogent noncircular argument to the following conclusion: "The lord's brother" cannot plausibly be construed as meaning anything other than "sibling of Jesus of Nazareth."

aa5874

You are only displaying a lack of knowledge about the QUEST for an Historical Jesus.

Please stop repeating your Chinese Whispers.


HJers cannot find an historical Jesus for over 250 years.

HJers realized that Jesus of the NT was Non-historical on their OWN.

Just ask Ehrman who first STARTED to look for an Historical Jesus and who first Identified the NT is about a NOn-historical Jesus, the Jesus of Faith.

You obviously have NO idea that Scholars have ALREADY IDENTIFIED that the NT is about a Non-historical Jesus.

The Biography of the Non-historical Jesus is in the NT so JUST go look for YOUR Jesus if you can.

You can JOIN the QUEST you may be lucky to find "him".

JoeWallack

JW:
So, let's evaluate Paul's credentials as a general witness using these criteria and to keep things simple, use ratings of High, Medium and Low:

Knowledge

Location = In position to acquire

Time = As far as we know Paul becomes interested in Jesus after he is dead but not long after = Medium

Physical = As far as we know Paul is in the same country = Medium

Scope = In position to acquire quantity

Did not know Jesus' during his lifetime. Could have come into contact with many who did = Medium

Independence = Availability of sources

No known sources. Could have had multiple sources = Medium

Summary of knowledge credentials = Medium = Paul has the potential to be an average witness.

Credibility

Paul has a primary theme that what he says is incredible. He emphasizes that his source is the supernatural and not the natural. He preaches a Jesus in the Jewish Bible that is not there and has to go to people outside of Israel and unfamiliar with the Jewish Bible to convince them of Israel and the Jewish Bible = Low

Unbiased = Extent of information filtering

Paul is very biased and starts with his conclusions and than looks for evidence to support them with a very high level of information filtering. This is compounded by the Transmission issue. We have evidence that Paul was edited towards orthodox beliefs. What we are unsure of is how much = Low

Confirmation = Extent of agreement with other quality sources

Paul has a theme of conflict with co-religionists, not cooperation = Low

Summary of Credibility credentials = Low = Paul lacks the potential to be an average witness.

By useful analogy, Paul's credibility would be considered impeached by our Court system and his witness would be useless. This is only the legal treatment though. Based on the above criteria, his witness still has value, just a relatively low amount. The less useful analogy is comparing Paul's rating here to that of other ancient witness. This shows how Paul compares to other ancients but can not change his witness rating in absolute terms, which is the standard.

Paul had the position potential to be a decent witness to HJ but not the credibility so he can not be the best witness to a certain HJ. He can be a witness to certain HJ if there is better evidence or he could be okay evidence for a more likely than not HJ.

Advice to the would be historicist. The standard is d i s t a n c e between what would be quality evidence and what the evidence is and not the distance between what the evidence is and what the evidence is.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

JoeWallack

JW:
Now let's evaluate Paul's specific witness for HJ for the offending verse in Galatians:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Galatians_1

Knowledge

Location = In position to acquire = Could be second hand witness to Jesus having brother = Medium

Time = As far as we know Paul becomes interested in Jesus after he is dead but not long after = Medium

Physical = As far as we know Paul is in the same country = Medium

Scope = The extent of evidence for HJ. Here we have one word for HJ support (brother) and the indefinite "Lord". There is also no context for a brother reference. We also have the problem of high figurative use of "brother" with the religious context = Low

Independence = Availability of sources

No known sources. Could have had multiple sources = Medium

Summary of knowledge credentials = Medium/Low = Paul has the potential to be a witness to HJ having a brother but scope of the specific is Low.

Credibility

Saying that Jesus had a brother is not incredible. The statement though is surrounded by the incredible which reduces its credibility = Medium

Unbiased = Extent of information filtering

The entire theme of Galatians is the preference for the spiritual over the physical. Paul is clear that he is the spiritual and portrays James as his competition. James than would represent the physical so a reference to James as "brother" of Jesus may have been intended as part of Paul's spiritual/physical diechotomy. Of course it could just mean that James was Jesus' brother but the point is that the context has scope for Paul using "brother" here as an insult rather than biological = Low

Confirmation = Extent of agreement with other quality sources

Strangely Ehrman el-all take confirmation here as an asset since "Mark" ascribes to Jesus a brother named "James". But "Mark's" James brother was clearly never a follower/promoter of Jesus. So this is contradiction, not confirmation = Low.

Summary of Credibility credentials = Medium/Low = Paul's specific statement is not incredible but is contradicted and has some doubt as to literal/figurative usage

Because Paul's specifics here score Medium/Low this could not be a key piece of evidence for almost certain HJ. While it's not first hand witness it could be second hand. It is witness for HJ just not quality evidence.


Joseph

ErrancyWiki

JoeWallack

JW:
I'm pleased to see that this Thread is the inspiration for the Skeptical reaction of critiquing Ehrman's book with a formal methodology. That I had the foresight to foresee this means I now have one more correct prophecy than John the Baptist whom "Mark's" Jesus said was the greatest prophet of all time.

BE claims that Jesus being crucified is the second key piece of evidence for certain/almost certain HJ. Scoobydoo?

Scoobydoo: Rho?

JW:
Once again BE uses an informal presentation to try and explain this relationship so the objective reader is left trying to piece it together herself. BE's explanation starts on Page 156 under the heading The Crucified Messiah.

BE's main points:

1) The crucified messiah is independent from the brother of the Lord as evidence for HJ.

2) Paul's claim has multiple confirmation.

3) A crucified Jesus is an excellent reason why Paul was initially anti Jesus promotion.

As noted, BE has no formal methodology here. He has only inventoried the best evidence he can find for HJ and presented it as an advocate for HJ with no direct critical analysis of the weaknesses of his points as evidence for HJ. His evidence for HJ and note of lack of evidence for MJ could be enough to demonstrate that HJ is more likely than MJ but he probably can not prove HJ certain without a formal methodology. How good his evidence above is depends on the related weaknesses:

1) The crucified messiah is independent from the brother of the Lord as evidence for HJ

Well it's not because Paul is the source for both based on the extant. Paul has implications that others were his source for the crucifixion but he also has implications that Revelation was his source. He has no explicit statement that any person was his source. Certainty and implication, that's a bad combination.

2) Paul's claim has multiple confirmation.

True, but how much is this worth if Paul is the source for everyone? We have nothing preserved from Paul's potential sources regarding the crucifixion. The implication is that Paul/orthodox did not like at least some of what they said. Could one of those things have been that Jesus was not crucified? Possible. Note that in the supposedly critical 1 Corinthians claim of what the others were supposedly saying about Jesus, Paul does not say they said that he was crucified (look it up). We also have plenty of contradiction to the crucifixion claim with the hanging alternative (including Paul hisself). In summary we have no 1st hand evidence for the crucifixion and no explicit 2nd hand evidence.

3) A crucified Jesus is an excellent reason why Paul was initially anti Jesus promotion.

This is a logical argument but lacks detail extant support. Paul indicates that he switched sides because God and Jesus told him to. Paul's related line of reasoning is that he started with the conclusion that Jesus was the Jewish messiah and than he worked backwards to find support. Not that God/Jesus were the ones who provided the argument that a crucified messiah was the correct position on Jesus.

We can see than that all of BE's key points here have some weakness and therefore Paul's claim of Jesus being being crucified can be evidence for HJ but can not be one of a few pieces of key evidence for certain HJ.

We are actually not finished here but just getting started. We next need to once again apply formal criteria to Paul's crucifixion claim to measure just how good it is as evidence for HJ.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki

Grog

Here, I'll try my hand as well. Why not (?), it's lunch time.

I read the book. I did not have time to study it though.

Good for him!

Ok, I am keeping that in mind. I agree, we are talking about the probabilities that an event happened in history based on the evidence at hand.

I think this conclusion isn't well accepted, even within the academy. You say in a later post that there is "at least one story" that only makes sense in Aramaic. Your point is that if it comes out of oral tradition in Aramaic, it must be true. How does "Aramaic oral tradition" necessarily obigate us to accept the story as evidence that Jesus existed?

So you, or Ehrman, someone you trust has thought of all the possible things that Jews could think of and have ruled out the Jesus story. 1800 years from now, someone could say, "No Christian could ever argue for the revelations that came to Joseph Smith so Mormonism must be true." How do we know what Jews could think of 2000 years ago? They thought of this:

Isaiah 53:1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression[a] and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.[b]
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

10 Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes[c] his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life[d] and be satisfied[e];
by his knowledge[f] my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,[g]
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,[h]
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

They thought of the Wisdom of Solomon. There are all kinds of wild things that Jews thought up. What about Jewish Gnosticism? They thought up that one too. But this one thing, that Jesus Christ lived on Earth could not be thought of? Read Philo for some interesting things that Jews of that time could think of.



What was the source for those "general facts"? When do we first see attestation of them?

Paul refers to James as the Brother of the Lord, not of Jesus. You are inferring that he means a sibling of Jesus of Nazareth. There are arguments against that position. You are aware, too, that Galatians has evidence (I would say) of tampering. You know of the Kephas/Petros problem that Ehrman now has no answer for? I think interpolation is a possibility in this case (along with 2 acknowledged interpolations in the "authentic" works of Paul). There is even possible attestation: Marcion's version of Galatians is said to not include the words "brother of the Lord". This is probably the weaker of the two arguments that have been made against this being evidence that Paul thought James was the blood relative of Jesus Christ.

That pretty well sums up his argument though and you didn't need almost 400 pages to do it. Well done!

Well, I find exact descriptions of what Jesus Christ was to Paul in the letters of Paul. Not an argment from silence. In fact, what I see all the time is proponents of the HJ filling in their own silence with conjecture (well Paul just had no interestest in the real life Jesus or when Paul says "elemental spirits" he really means Roman soldiers, anyone can see that).

What evidence would accept? You won't accept an argument from silence. What if you were on a jury? "Well, they only presented the lack of evidence against Mr. Smith, and since that is an argument from silence we can rest assured that he is guilty." Does that make sense to you? The argument from silence speaks to the lack of evidence. It is up to the HJ side to establish that we shouldn't expect that evidence. For example, (to go on about the evolution analogy here) anti-evolutionists argue "where are the transitional forms?" and evolutionists rightly answer that fossilization only occurs under certain conditions, etc. etc, BUT look at what we do have!" That is what the HJ side has to do. Show us that there is a reason for the lack of evidence where we would expect it to be AND explain how the transition from Jesus to Christ occurred with our trace evidence. The HJ hypothesis fails to do that. That is the problem. The Jesus, Son of God theory fits the evidence much better. Why do you reject that (or do you)?


Not enough space or time. Lunch is over. You can start with Doherty's website though if you are actually looking.

aa5874

Any use of the Pauline letters for the historicity of Jesus is LOGICALLY flawed.

It cannot be established by any credible means that the Pauline character did LIVE and write as stated in the Pauline letters.

It is IMPERATIVE and MANDATORY that sources used as evidence for an historical Jesus is itself historically SECURE.

Presumptions about Paul are NO longer accepted.

Presumptions are being abused.

The Pauline writings are NOT historically secure and have been dated by Paleography to the mid 2nd -3rd century and Apologetic sources claim Paul was AWARE of gLuke and wrote his Epistles AFTER Revelation by John.

The very fact that there are contradictory sources for the Pauline letters have virtually reduced the Pauline writings to rubble.

See "Commentary of Matthew", the Muratorian Canon" and P 46.

It is unheard of that a PERJURED source is accepted as historically accurate.

The Pauline writings themselves have been deduced to be manipulated.

Ehrman is wasting people's time with Paul.

Who the Hell is Paul anyway??? What did he really say and when did he say or do those things???

JoeWallack

JW:
BE claims that Jesus being crucified is the second key piece of evidence for certain/almost certain HJ. BE cites Paul as the key witness but regrettably spends little time looking at the Pauline specifics, once again forcing the reader to do so.

It's generally agreed that Paul's earliest extant is 1_Thessalonians

In 1 Thessalonians we find the following mention of Jesus' crucifixion:

[Nothing]

The absence here of crucifixion is magnified by the scope of 1 Thessalonians. This is a policy statement on belief in Jesus written long after Paul's original visit. If this is all someone had there would be no reason to think that Jesus was crucified. Once again, since there is no explicit statement of crucifixion, it could not be a key piece of evidence for a certain crucified Jesus. So what is the implication of crucifixion, if any?

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php...hessalonians_2

The above is the most explicit statement in 1 Thessalonians regarding what supposedly happened to Jesus. There is no implication of crucifixion and the assertion that Jesus was killed by the Jews implies it was not crucifixion. This is immediately followed by the apparent anachronism of 2:16.

The broad problem from an evidential standpoint is that 1 Thessalonians is primarily philosophical in nature and not historical. The above establishes that 1 Thessalonians has no direct evidence for crucifixion. Does it have evidence in that direction, such as extreme suffering? There is also no direct support for Jesus' extreme suffering. The suffering analogy is here:

Note that the comparison is between the Gentile believers and the Jewish believers and not between believers and Jesus. Add to this the fiction that the Jews killed the prophets (that credibility problem again) and the misdirection issue that Paul has to try and sell those outside of the historical setting.

In summary we have the following weaknesses with BE's claim that Paul's assertion of the crucifixion is a key piece of evidence for certain HJ based on 1 Thessalonians:

1) The earliest extant Paul has no mention of crucifixion.

2) 1) is magnified by being a policy statement.

3) 1) is also magnified by being written long after Paul's original visit.

4) There is also no implication of crucifixion. Crucifixion is contradicted by blaming the Jews for Jesus' death.

5) Criteria for fiction test high (historical/anachronism).

6) The suffering analogy does not involve Jesus.

7) The letter is primarily philosophical and not historical.

8) The context is trying to convince those outside the historical setting.

This is probably the worst part of BE's book, claiming the crucifixion is key evidence for HJ without a detailed analysis of the related weaknesses. Based on the above, a possible sequence of events is:

1) Jesus promotion starts with belief that he was resurrected.

2) Analogy is made between suffering of Gentile and Jewish believers.

3) Analogy is made between suffering of believers and Jesus.

4) Jesus' suffering includes crucifixion.

There is no 1st or 2nd hand witness to support the above but there isn't any to rule it out either. Next we look at the next Pauline.



Joseph

ErrancyWiki