David Hillman

I have been thinking about the Taiping rebellion in 19th century China, a nationalist and religious revolt by the poorest against exploitation and a foreign dynasty. It proclaimed the heavenly kingdom of transcendant peace, proclaiming from the 1850's that the kingdom of God was at hand. Its leader was Hong Xiuquan who had been taken up into heaven in 1844 where he met God and Jesus and was informed that he was the younger brother of Jesus. All who joined the movement were to hand over all their property to overseers of a sacred treasury, rather like Luke's stories of the early church (though it seems that nobody knows where Luke got these stories).

Paul speaks of James brother of the Lord, and elsewhere of brothers of the Lord who have the right to have wives. The explanations of the phrase are
(1) that they were literally brothers of Jesus who must then have existed, or (2) that brother is a title with no implication of liteal brotherhood. I suggest there is a third option that James and then others had had visions revealing that they were (adopted?) brothers of a mythical Jesus.

I am not sure which is the more likely option.

GakuseiDon

I think we need to look at the evidence for each one option. For (1): there is evidence from early writings like the Gospels and Josephus which seem to portray James as an actual brother of Jesus. For (2): there is no evidence that there were an early group of Christians with the title of "Brothers of the Lord". For (3): I'm not aware of any evidence that James and others had visions revealing that they were adopted brothers.

(2) and (3) are certainly possible. I'm sure we can suggest many reasons whereby (2) or (3) is true and the Gospel writers still decided to make James an actual brother. In addition, the James passage in Josephus could be an interpolation. But rather than concentrate on the evidence against (1), I would be interested if there is any evidence for (2) or (3).

Toto

Surely Paul's continual use of brother to mean believer is some sort of evidence for 2.

GakuseiDon

It is, sure, but the Gospels have a James as a brother of Christ; Josephus does also. Early references appear to suggest that Jesus had a brother called James. It isn't that it is possible that Paul thought that "James, the brother of the Lord" was a kind of title -- of course it is possible -- but that the evidence suggests that this is so.

Doug Shaver

That is certainly a possible explanation. I'm still waiting for a historicist to produce a cogent argument that it is the only plausible explanation.

Doug Shaver

Yeah, the gospels and Josephus are "early writings," but as evidence that "brother of the lord" had to have meant "sibling of Jesus," they would be a lot more compelling if they had been earlier than Paul.

Larkin31

The textual suggestion is primarily #1 for James. #2 is difficult to rule out. And whether James actually WAS the brother of this man "Jesus," we will likely never know for certain one way or the other.

spamandham

It's high time we quit trying to treat the Gospels as first hand history reports and recognize them for what they are; origins stories written long after the purported events.

If the gospels depict James as Jesus' brother, they do so because it aids the story in some way, not because it is necessarily actual history. It *might* be actual history, but it just as easily might not be. If James were known as 'brother of the lord' to the gospels writers, that's enough to explain why the gospels mention him in that capacity.

We know from the letters of Paul that it was commonplace among Christians to refer to each other as brother/sister when there was no blood relationship. Christians still do this even today. So we do not have a good reason to assume a blood relationship every time we see the word 'brother'. We also see in the gospels a *deemphasis* on blood relationships in favor of cult solidarity. So this is a strike against the idea that Jame's blood relationship with Jesus is what is honored.

We do know, however, that James is singled out in a special way when he is referred to as 'brother of the lord'. We also know he is the head of the Jerusalem church...the church that Paul obviously sees as the cornerstone church. It follows then that the leader of that church is a very special brother, not an ordinary one, since he is the head of the head church.

This is the best explanation for the title, IMHO.

tradewinds

I would say someone who is the brother of a lord has peerage. I am sure there were great Khans and lessor Khans. I would have liked being a Duke.

Chili

A good place to start is to say: who was Jesus? . . . if Christ was born unto Joseph. He sure was not Christ and he was not Joseph, but if he has a dual nature as God-man it is not hard to figure out that he was the reborn Joseph . .. which is especially true if we are supposed to be born again to inherit (not earn) the kingdom of God.

Do you think maybe that James is a pretender along John 1:13 who was born of carnal desite etc but not of God?