Toto

Hasn't this question been answered for you yet? Paul generally uses the term adelphos or brother to refer to a fellow believer. You believe that he meant a biological brother here, but you have no good reasons other than your desire to show that there was a historical Jesus.

aa5874

You can read the Epistles to see what is written in them. We can't really say what "Paul" believed only what is written in the Epistles. "Paul" may have ONLY wanted people to believe what he wrote.

It is has been deduced that someone may have wanted people to believe "Paul" wrote ALL the epistles.


Look at Galatians 1.1

Ga 1:1 - Who wrote Galatians 1.1?

But, it is clear that the Pauline write wrote that he was not the apostle of a man and he referred to Jesus as the Son of God. It is clear that the Pauline writer wrote about a God/man who was the creator of heaven and earth, equal to God who was crucified, died, buried and resurrected.

Nowhere did a Pauline writer state when the Pauline Jesus was crucified.

Your belief that Paul believed his Jesus was crucified in the recent past is unconfirmed.

Please state the actual date when any Pauline writer wrote any Epistle to any Church, the date when the Church ACTUALLY received the letter and the date when the Pauline Jesus was crucified.

If you can do that then perhaps we can figure out what happened in the past in the Pauline writings.

Juststeve

Toto:

What I know is that the mythers, in order to avoid the implication that Paul actually met Jesus’ brother James, claim that when Paul refers to him as the brother of the lord he means only a fellow believer who coincidentally has the same name as one of Jesus’ brothers. Possible but hardly a drop dead argument.

The argument works even less well in the case of 1 Corinthians 9:5. In support of their right to take wives with them on missionary journeys Paul lists others who do all of whom would be fellow believers, or as you would have it brothers of the lord. Nevertheless he differentiates between Apostles, “the lord’s brothers” and Cephas. If the term “the lords brothers” includes Cephas and the Apostles, as it would given your understanding, why list them separately? If on the other hand he was arguing that even the Lord’s physical brothers, and the revered Cephas took their wives along on their journeys, (the Gospels tell us Jesus had brothers) then Paul said just what he meant.

I think that the more plausible understanding. You don’t.

Steve

Kapyong

Gday,

Wrong again.
That's NOT what mythers claim at all.
Sadly - you just never seem to understand the MJ theory.

Mythers do NOT claim there was another believer called James who coincidentally had the same name as Jesus' brother James.

Once again you completely got the MJ theory wrong.

And once again your argument just falsely assumes Jesus HAD a brother in the first place.


K.

Juststeve

The argument posits that Jesus had a brother named James because it says so in Josephus and the Gospels. That's not an assumption, its evidence you have to explain away.

Steve

Toto

That's not evidence.

The gospels were clearly written after Paul. Biblical scholars do not claim that the gospels are an accurate description of the events of 30 CE, so if you want to treat that claim as established, you need to show some reason for that assumption.

The reference to James the brother of Jesus called Christ appears to be a much later insertion into Josephus.

spin

We have a horse and a cart and they are on the road of chronology. Our problem is to be able to put the information in the correct order. Paul's letter to the Galatians was written well before either Josephus or the gospels. We must start with Paul and work forward, not with Josephus and the gospels and work backwards. You cannot understand Paul by retrojecting later ideas into his writings. We have enough trouble identifying just what Paul wrote because these texts were preserved by an inherently unstable process, scribal copying. Paul talks of "James the brother of the lord". We know how the church understands the expression, but what did Paul?


spin

Kapyong

Gday,

Steve -

You actually argued that Jesus MYTHERS - who do not even believe that Jesus existed at all - claimed that there were two Jamess - one a believer, and one an actual physical BROTHER of Jesus.

Wow.

Do you really believe that
MJers argue that Jesus had a physical brother called James ?

Do you really not see the problem there Steve?

Your posts would be better received if you showed you knew what MJers actually argued. But you don't seem interested in learning what they really say.


K.

Juststeve

Spin:

The question is whether Paul was referring to an actual brother of Jesus, or merely a fellow believer when he called him the “brother of the lord”. It is relevant to answering that question to note that the name Paul gives this fellow is James which is confirmed in other sources to be the name of one of Jesus brothers. This may be a coincidence, the later sources might have picked the name up from Paul’s letters, but in any event the situation would be different if Paul had claimed to have met with Sheldon, the brother of the lord. Then I would agree that there is no reason to suppose that Jesus had a real brother named Sheldon and some other explanation would need to be sought. As it is Paul is claiming to have met with someone named James, the brother of the lord and we have confirmation from outside sources that Jesus had a brother James.

Why exactly do you think it matters that the confirmation came after Paul wrote his letter?

Steve

spin

I need to present some background before continuing. The term "lord" (κυριος) had at least two meanings in a Jewish context. Consider Ps 110.1

[T2]Hebrew: נאם יהוה לאדני
The lord (YHWH) said to my lord (adonay)

Greek: ειπεν ο κυριος τω κυριω μου
The lord (ο κυριος) said to my lord (τω κυριω μου)[/T2]

In the Hebrew there are two distinct words. The first (YHWH) is taken to be the name of god; the second, a titular reference to god's chosen, usually understood to be David here. In Greek these two become different uses of κυριος, one is the non-titular usage, referring to god and the other, titular usage, referring to a person of position.

When Jesus is referred to as "the lord Jesus" we have a titular use. When someone is referred to as "my lord" we again have a titular use. However, when κυριος is a substitute for the name of god, then it is not the titular usage. (If this distinction is not clear yet, ask for more specifics before proceeding.)

In dealing with the Paul he clearly uses the non-titular κυριος to refer to god. He definitely uses the titular κυριος to refer to Jesus. It is my understand that Paul does not use the non-titular κυριος to refer to Jesus, although there are three examples in 1 Corinthians, which I have argued are all interpolated (and I'm happy to argue the cases individually and as reflections of a single phenomenon in which the term has taken on the Greek religious meaning). And I have challenged anyone to provide a clear example of Paul using the non-titular κυριος to refer to Jesus outside 1 Corinthians and those examples already noted.

When dealing with Gal 1:19 we find "James the brother of the lord", a clearly non-titular usage of κυριος, which should refer to god and god alone, if my analysis is correct. Paul typically uses the term "brother" to mean a fellow believer in his Jesus religion and given the theological connotations of the non-titular κυριος, I'd expect Paul, if he meant something other than what the non-titular κυριος commonly indicated, to be clearer in his communication and say "James the brother of Jesus". I find it very strange for people to think that Paul, if he used the non-titular κυριος for both god and Jesus, would use it without any indication as to what the term referred to. This is a formula for confusing his reading audience, when Paul works so hard to be clear.

At this stage people usually want to know what the term "brother of the lord" could mean if it doesn't mean what the church thinks it meant. First, I point out that the Hebrew name Ahijah means literally "brother of the Yah [ie the lord]". There is no problem in Hebrew to use the term "brother of the lord (YHWH)" for the name of a person. There is no problem using the term "son of god" even though we know that "son" here doesn't mean what it usually does.

There is interestingly in 1 Cor 9:5 a plural use of the term, ie "the brothers of the lord". Again the church will say that these are the brothers of Jesus, but isn't that strange when we know that the gospel Jesus rejected his family? The context asks us to understand a group of believers along with apostles and Cephas. This James could be a part of this specific group of believers.

Here you are putting the cart before the horse.

Not really.

This argument is like noting that as christians use the term "son of man" to refer to Jesus and understand that the mention of "son of man" in Dan 7:13 regards Jesus. We have confirmation of the fact, numerous times in the gospels when the term "son of man" is wrong. But it is wrong. That's why the NRSV is forced to use "human being"--which is what the Hebrew expression indicated--instead of "son of man" in an effort to stop the erroneous understanding of the text. It is dangerous to retroject ideas in an effort to understand the older text.

Wrong question.


spin