S.C.Carlson

I think these questions assume that Doherty has looked at the sources that Ehrman cited. It seems more likely to me that he has not.

Fortunately, with the existence of Roger Pearse's Tertullian Project, anyone with an Internet access can follow the cites to Tertullian.

It would be nice to have an on-line project one for Irenaeus as well, but in the interim there are PDFs of Harvey's edition of Irenaeus on-line at Christian Hospitality's Biblical Archives.

Of course, when dealing with Tertullian and Irenaeus, it helps to know Latin.

Stephen

dog-on

I didn't mean to imply that you did, I apologize if I was unclear.

Anyway, this is from Doherty's site:

If Doherty is to take the text, with the inclusion of this passage as a given, he is then forced to provide a coherent argument against it as meaning that Christ was physically born to a woman. His argument from scripture (re: Isaiah), as well as the interpretation of Burton is coherent based on keeping the text intact.

Point taken but, if in the end, the argument is to show the position of mythicism as the more likely solution, the addition of the argument from interpolation only strengthens the overall case. My allusion to WMD is based on the possibility that, in the end, interpolation may well be the decisive argument against HJ. I am not arguing that interpolation should be, somehow, joined to non-interpolation as a single argument.

dongiovanni1976x

Why would it be odd for a believer to address James as the brother of the Lord? Henever says "Yahweh's brother" though. Paul singles him out in Galatians as Jesus' brother but never addresses Jesus in such an informal way out of reverence for him. But James is certainly a person that Paul claims to have met and in fact seems likely to have been rebuffed by him- causing a sense of insecurity in Paul and in his position.

Galatians 1:19

Rick Sumner

I agree that an argument that it is an interpolation makes a stronger case than reading it as a title (which I've never found persuasive). I'm not sure that a strong argument for interpolation can be mustered, but that's another question. That it makes a stronger argument for mythicism is what makes it seem to be ad hoc, not a point against that observation.

My point is that Doherty is indicating that he might shift from one to the other. Since he has not indicated that he finds his initial position to be in error, this does look suspiciously ad hoc--picking the argument that best serves a mythicist case rather than the one that best serves the evidence. Could be that's not the case, we'll have to wait and see on this. But stating that it looks ad hoc is in no way out of line, and certainly not representative of the outright persecution Earl (and to lesser degree you) suggests it is. There is nothing "unfair" about it, and suggestions that it is are offensive at best, and entirely insulting at worst.

So perhaps we should wait for Doherty to address this seeming conundrum: Most specifically, if he does not think his initial position is in error, then why look at the possibility of interpolation? And if he does think it is in error, then what persuaded him that was the case?

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Doug Shaver

No, he does not. You're assuming that "lord" = "Jesus."

Doug Shaver

Let's compare them with Paul, making the pertinent substitution in each instance.
I don't see Galatians fitting the pattern set by the other two, in which someone "born of a woman" is clearly "human just like you and me." Being born of a woman does not itself confer any unique qualities on anyone. That is the point the expression, to emphasize commonality with other human beings. Considering the context of the Galatians passage, Paul could hardly be emphasizing Jesus' commonality with other humans. If "born of a woman" were his words, then he must have meant something other than what was usually meant by the phrase.

I see nothing in the context that makes it likely. I see nothing in any of Paul's writings implying that he was responding to claims that Jesus was not really human. And if it had been his intention to prove Jesus' actual humanity, he could hardly have done a poorer job of it. Quite regardless of whether anything that Paul wrote might incidentally corroborate Jesus' humanity, nothing in his work looks anything like an argument that was intended deliberately to prove it.

Furthermore, I find it implausible, given a historical Jesus, that belief in his divinity would have become so entrenched barely a generation after his death as to inspire a docetist faction of sufficient influence to provoke a response from Paul.

Ted Hoffman

There is a logical fallacy afoot here.
The presumption that Doherty would not bother to look at other explanations as possible unless his own explanation is found to be wrong is incorrect.
This is not about right or wrong. It is about the most probable explanation, which is what History is about.

dongiovanni1976x

Does not seem like such a stretch to make such an assumption since it is pretty obvious that Paul believed Jesus to be THE LORD.
Seems pretty clear to me, especially in light of Mark 6:3 and Josephus' recounting of James' execution.

Ben C Smith

To the contrary, I think that is exactly what Paul was emphasizing:

God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law.

Paul here operates on the principle that the redeemer had to be like those redeemed. We see this same principle at work in Hebrews 2.18; 4.15; 5.2, where Jesus is said to have been tempted like us, and thus able to sympathize with our temptations. We see an even heavier version of this principle in 2 Corinthians 5.21, in which Paul says that he who knew no sin became sin for us. Paul himself even makes that principle a part of his own apostolate in 1 Corinthians 9.19-23, where he becomes as a Jew to the Jews, as one without law to those without law, as a weak person to the weak, and so forth.

After calling Jesus the son of God, then, Paul resolves the ambiguity that such a phrase might raise (in antiquity a son of God might be an emperor, an angel, another god, and so forth) by affirming that Jesus was a human being just like us, based on the principle sketched out above. I do not think he was responding to anyone here who doubted that Jesus was human; he was telling the Galatians how it could be that they were sons instead of slaves of God (Galatians 4.6-7): Jesus, the true son of God, was made human like them so as to redeem them.

Ben.

dongiovanni1976x

For obvious philosophical reasons people would find it odd that an omnipotent God would actually suffer - even if he SEEMED to be human. It is perfectly reasonable to make such a rationalization- especially for those individuals who never met Jesus and only heard stories of his great powers. But even those who may have met him could come to this same conclusion by rationalizing the absurdity of an omniotent God suffering.