Amaleq13

To my knowledge, Josephus never uses the term except in the disputed Jesus references.

Amaleq13

I think I'm following you now. Yes, Mt/Lk use the phrase to refer to JBap and yes I think they assumed he was an historical figure but I'm not sure how legitimate it is to use a later use of the phrase to understand Paul's.

No, because that would be circular. That's the second time you've tried to tag me with a logical error and, yes, I'm keeping track.

My position is that Paul's use of a phrase that offers a generic reference to a human cannot be used to argue against Doherty's proposal. That is because, within the context of Doherty's argument, Paul was referring to Jesus in a heavenly sphere where angels have flesh and can bleed.

In your opinion, what would qualify as such an indication?

Amaleq13

If this was a title by which James was known (like "the Just"), Josephus is simply repeating it. Zindler (The Jesus the Jews Never Knew) suggests that the entire reference to James is an interpolation but was originally place there by a James follower and subsequently modified by a Christian.

The basic idea behind the title is that there was a group of devout Jews whose faith was so strong they were known as "brothers of/in the Lord". James was the leader and, thus, was often referred to as "the" brother. The question I have is whether the use of "Lord" in place of "Savior Christ" (which would be the case, I think, within the mythical context) requires that James et. al. believed that Jesus was God? Could such a title (Lord) have been applied to the Risen Savior at such an early date without that sort of deification?

Regarding the apparent absence of any reference to Jesus in Photius' copy of Josephus, Layman wrote:
We know that a reference was apparently in some copies by the 200's. Also, Origen's alleged reference is quite problematic because no extant copy of Josephus carries the reference in this same context. This is actually evidence against the authenticity of the passage and evidence for very early Christian tampering.

I wrote:
Surely you don't expect me to be persuaded by an illogical appeal to numbers?

Layman replied:
A logical error is a logical error regardless of the context. The number of people believing a claim, regardless of their expertise, is not logically connected to the truth of the claim. The history of science is full of examples of a majority of experts agreeing on a conclusion that was later found to be incorrect. What is relevant is the basis for that agreement.

Layman

It undercuts your assertion that no one in history used such a term to refer to another person.

We have two examples that come from traditions related to Paul who do just that.

We have no reason to think that this term means other than what every other author used it to mean--the referenced party or parties was or were human.

I'm trying to understand your position. You have every opportunity to correct the record.

First, why should I think Doherty is correct that such terms were used in this way? The examples he provides all fail. For example, Doherty referes to Dionysus. But Dionysis was believed to have been on earth, had a real mother (who named Seleme), and was born in Thebes. That he was also a divine figure is irrelevant because Jesus is also believed to have been a divine figure who was born on earth and had a real mother.

But you need not take my word for it. Richard Carrier notes the same failing:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...uspuzzle.shtml

Despite Carrier's review and other similar criticisms on this specific point, I am unaware that Doherty has produced the needed examples.

Second, Paul is not here simply describing Jesus as having human characteristics, he is flatly emphasizing the fact he was a human being. No one has ever used such a term to refer to the heavenly realm. It is by definition excluded.

It is a pecular tact I have seen many Doherty disciples take--arguing that Paul's references to Jesus' humanity are irrelevant because Doherty's theory postulates that they must all occur in heaven. Since the issue is whether Doherty's theory has any merit, this is hardly convincing. The issue is WHY should I think that all these terms that normally apply to human beings acting on earth can ONLY be references to heavenly actions by a nonhuman spirit. The problem is greatly compounded for Doherty because Paul tells us he is a pharisee and we know what pharisees meant when they referred to a messiah and to the resurrection.

So yes, I'm accusing you of being circular again here. Simply asserting that black must mean white doesn't cut if for me.

The burden is not mine to show this, it is yours. Everything about this passage is inconsistent with Doherty's theory.

"But when the fullness of time came"

A reference to Jewish eschatology that is inconsistent with Platonic notions of a static universe of heavenly archetypes and earthly copies.

"God sent forth His Son, born of a woman"

Paul uses a standard Jewish idiom to stress that God sent forth his Son as a human being.

"born under the Law"

A clear reference to Jesus being a Jew. And a Jew born at a particular time--prior to God's establishment of a new age of freedom from the law.

Paul uses this phrase elsehwere to refer to Jews on earth. Such as in 1 Cor. 9:20-21: "To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being with the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law."

"so that he might redeem those who are under the Law"

Jesus became human, came under the Law himself, to help those who were identically situated.

"that we might receive the adoption as sons."

Paul comes full circle. God sent his Son to become human so that we could become like his Son.

Amaleq13

Nothing there is labeled in that way. Are you referring to this list?:

Jesus had a brother named James (see Josephus as well).
Jesus had followers (was a movement starter)..
Jesus had a follower named Peter.
Jesus was crucified.
Jesus was buried.
Jesus was handed over.
Jesus had a final meal with his disciples.
Jesus called Twelve Disciples.
Jesus prohibited divorce.
Jesus taught on the imminent coming of the Kingdom.

If so, I think I already addressed these. Maybe it was the other thread. I'll use "JT" to refer to the Jerusalem Tradition of Paul/Pillars and "Q" for, well, the Q community:

Jesus had a brother named James

The title "brother of the Lord" is applied literally from JT.

Jesus had followers

Obtained from Q.

Jesus was crucified.
Jesus was buried.

Obtained JT. I've read some suggestions that Paul introduced the notion that crucifixion was the specific mode of death but I'm not necessarily persuaded by it.

Jesus was handed over.

Also obtained from JT which apparently obtained it from an inspired reading of Scripture.

Jesus had a final meal with his disciples.

A combination of the JT eucharist combined with the Q-inspired disciples.

Jesus called Twelve Disciples.

One of the subgroups of the JT folks.

Jesus prohibited divorce.

Mark's personal belief imposed on Jesus. (i.e. Isn't Jesus portrayed as allowing divorce in certain circumstances elsewhere?)

Jesus taught on the imminent coming of the Kingdom.

Obtained from Q.

Layman

Ya know, it is somewhat inconcistent for you to reject 99.9% of experts and offer me one outlier as proof you are correct on this.

I'm familiar with the idea. I'd like some evidence that such a group existed. Postulating original texts that were since does not meet that standard.

There is absolutely no evidence for this.

Well, you were the one that asserted that Lord meant God.

You tell me, it's your postulation.

Actually, the attestation of manuscripts prior to the 9th Century that include Josephus referring to Jesus is so overwhelming that reliance on Photoius "omission" as evidence for an interpolation is quite ridiculous.

We have Origin in the 200s. Eusebius in the 300s. ambrose in the 300s. Jerome in the 300s. Isorus Pelusiota in the 400s. Solozomen in the 400s. Cassidorus in the 500s. There are others between here and Photius, but I've not the resources at hand to reproduce them now. Unless you can give me some good reason why Photius would have tried to use the references to Jesus to prove something--unlikely in the 9th Century--to someone then I don't see that this argument has any value.

It is probative evidence of the truth.

Then why do courts take into account what the majority of scientists think about evolution in all these dispute about teaching evolution in the class room?

The notion that we should put blinders on and ignore the opinions of experts is itself illogical.

Amaleq13

Conceded, damn you!<shaking raised fist>:notworthy

Doherty seems to be relying a lot on the depiction in Ascension of Isaiah. The problem with that is the date of the document places it well after Paul's writing. It would be more compelling to find evidence of this kind of thinking closer to Paul's day.

I was kidding and forgot to include a smiley.

I think his response to Carrier's review mentions that he plans to take the suggestions and attempt to produce a more scholarly treatment. I also think there have been health issues involved which have prevented him from attempting such an effort.

Could you expand on this? What, exactly, do you understand Paul to mean here?

Bernard Muller

Amaleq13 wrote:
I don't understand how this idea works with the idea of Jesus having a father and mother. He wasn't born but he had parents? How do you figure Paul reconciled that apparent paradox?

I do not see a paradox here, just that Paul replaced "born" by "come/made" to take in account his adopted belief of Jesus' pre-existence. For Paul, Jesus was born before he came to earth as a baby. It would not make sense for the Word/Jesus to be "born" twice.
I think Paul knew about Philo's **firstborn** Logos.
And the author of 'Hebrews' has Jesus the "firstborn" of God (1:6).

Amaleq13 wrote:
Doherty seems to be relying on a similar notion described in the Ascension of Isaiah even though this is understood to be a later text. I'm pretty sure his website provides just about everything in the book.

OK, I'll take it from here. Actually, I am familiar with 'Ascension of Isaiah', normally dated well into the 2nd century AD. But in it, Isaiah is never really a Messiah, just a prophet.

Amaleq13 wrote:
I didn't consider them to be specific enough to qualify as grounding Jesus in history.

Once again, I would not confuse 'historical' with 'historic'. You are right that in Paul's epistles there is no historic Jesus. But there is a flesh & blood, poor, humble Jew who got crucified in weakness.

Amaleq13 wrote:
Do you think Paul's faith in Christ crucified/resurrected was so strong that he could have embraced it without any knowledge of an historical figure?

I think Paul had knowledge of HJ (and also his audience). That does not mean he had to describe him in his letters. More so because he was not an eyewitness, and HJ was so puny there was little he could use anyway. And Paul wanted his Gentile Christians to stay focused on the great Savior in heaven, not a dead Jew.
If there was a "mythicist" issue then, then we would expect Paul to answer that, one way or another. That's not apparent in his epistles.

Amaleq13 wrote:
I haven't entirely rejected the possibility that Paul's Jesus existed at some time in the distant past. This seems to be hinted at in your posts.

Well, not so distant. For me, HJ died in 28AD, Paul got converted in 35AD. Humm, I thought you read my website.

Amaleq13 wrote:
Isn't the phrase "according to the flesh" somewhat open to interpretation? Could we read it to mean "incarnated in the tradition of" or something along those lines? The more I read Paul, the more strange his thinking seems to me.

In the two following verses, the meaning is very clear:

Gal4:23 "But he [biblical Ishmael] who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he [biblical Isaac] of the freewoman through promise"

Gal4:29 "But, as he [biblical Ishmael] who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him [biblical Isaac] who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now."

Of course, both Ishmael and Isaac were thought to live on earth.
Both had a human (different) mother, but Paul is suggesting Abraham got help in order to father Isaac (in Genesis, Abraham is thought too old to father anyone then).

"incarnated in the tradition of"? Of whom?
That looks to be a convoluted definition for me. Where did you get it from?

Amaleq13 wrote:
The fact that Paul doesn't seem bothered by referring to James as "the brother of the Lord" or to his fellow Christians as "brethren in the Lord" (Phil1:14) seems to argue against your assertion. ...
That Philipians reference also makes me wonder how sure we can be about the preposition in question. Could the "brother of the Lord" in Paul be just as easily read as "brother in the Lord" or is the vocabulary too specific?

There is quite a difference between "brother **of** the lord" and "brother **in** the Lord".
Many Christians have no problem to call themselves as brothers in the Lord, but if one of them claims he is brother of the Lord, that would raise a lot of eyebrows.
Paul used the expression "in the Lord" or "in Christ" often, meaning "Christian(s)" most of the time:
1Th2:14;3:8;4:16;5:12; 1Co3:1,4:15,17;9:1-2;15:18,58;16:19,24; 2Co1:21;2:14,17;12:2; Php1:14;3:1;4:1-2,4,10,21; Phm1:6,8,16,20,23; Gal1:22;3:14;3:26,28;5:10; Ro8:1;12:5;16:3,7-13,22
BTW, the pillars of Jerusalem (James included) are never said to be "in Christ" or "in the Lord", whenever Paul mentioned them:
1Co16:1,3; 2Co8:4,13-15;9:1,12-15; Gal2:1-10; Ro15:25-26,31
That would have been most advantageous for Paul, more so because those were considered "saints" (= God's people):
1Co16:1,2; Co8:4;9:1,12; Ro15:25,26,31

Furthermore, Paul was not going to elevate a James as a quasi-equal (spiritually) to the Lord, in view of his stressed relationship with him.

Best regards, Bernard

Amaleq13

I wrote:
If this was a title by which James was known (like "the Just"), Josephus is simply repeating it. Zindler (The Jesus the Jews Never Knew) suggests that the entire reference to James is an interpolation but was originally place there by a James follower and subsequently modified by a Christian.

Layman replied:
First, it would have been a different (but admittedly related error) for me to assert the truth of the claim simply because Zindler says it. That would have been an appeal to authority. You seem to have ignored my "if" above. Second, I rejected the claim that I should accept the concensus opinion simply because it is the concensus.

It is unrealistic to talk about these things as though we can have any sort of certainty in our conclusions. We will always be speculating given the nature of the evidence. Josephus, for example, was clearly a popular target for Christian interpolators and we have no extant copies earlier than the 10th century. That leaves a pretty significant amount of room for trouble, I think. Any conclusion based on Josephus, therefore, have to be offered with a fairly substantial grain of salt. That is why I started out my comment with an "IF".

I wrote:
The basic idea behind the title is that there was a group of devout Jews whose faith was so strong they were known as "brothers of/in the Lord".

Layman replied:
Paul's letters seem to indicate that at least some of his fellow believers were called "brothers in the Lord" (Philipians). That such a group existed, seems to be a given if we believe Paul. The real question is whether the reference to James should be understood literally despite these apparent non-literal, similar references.

I don't understand your last sentence.

I wrote:
James was the leader and, thus, was often referred to as "the" brother.

Layman replied:
Again, I refer you to Paul (and Acts, I think) who call James a leader of the believers in Jerusalem. The only evidence for this as a title, that I know of, is from Origen who claimed that James was called this because of his great piety.

I wrote:
The question I have is whether the use of "Lord" in place of "Savior Christ" (which would be the case, I think, within the mythical context) requires that James et. al. believed that Jesus was God?

No, I believe that was Bernard replying to me.

I wrote:
Could such a title (Lord) have been applied to the Risen Savior at such an early date without that sort of deification?

If I knew the answer, I would have provided it. If you don't know, feel free to ignore the question.

I'm not sure where you got the idea that Photius should be understood as the only or even primary evidence against authenticity. He is just one piece. That Josephus fails to repeat the reference when repeating the same context in his other work also supports interpolation. This is probably a discussion for another thread, though.

Origen provides a similar reference (his adds "the Just" in reference to James which is not found today) but in a context that cannot be found in extant manuscripts. Elsewhere, Origen repeats this referene to Josephus but ommits "the Just". How is this evidence for authenticity? It is in this same reference that Origen tells us about the reason for James' title.



Eusebius repeats Origen's "James the Just" in his reference to Josephus. That there is no such phrase in any extant manuscript hardly suggests these two constitute evidence that the other portion should be considered genuine.

The fact is the evidence from Josephus is a mess.

I wrote:
A logical error is a logical error regardless of the context. The number of people believing a claim, regardless of their expertise, is not logically connected to the truth of the claim.

No, it is not. The basis of a concensus is only evidence logically relevant to the truth of the claim. By your flawed reasoning, the ancient concensus that the Sun revolved around the Earth should have been accepted simply because the majority believed it. In actual fact, the experts of the day were entirely wrong but the only way that could be determined was by examining the evidence.

I agree but I consider an appeal to the majority to be blinders in this case. You have misunderstood me because I have never suggested that we "ignore" the opinions of experts. In fact, I have suggested the opposite when I say we should understand the basis of their apparent agreement. Certainly, there are issues that require a level of expertise to even understand that basis (IMHO that includes string theory and the mathematics behind quantum physics) where we ultimately have to rely on expert opinions without any true understanding. Perhaps in those specific circumstances, an appeal to the majority is legitimate if not the only realistically possible option, but that hardly applies to the majority of issues.

You are kidding yourself if you think anything resembling certainty can be obtained from science. Experts can be wrong and, historically, they have been in very large numbers. It is a mistake to assume that the majority is correct and the only way to prevent that error is to understand the basis for the concensus before accepting it.

I'm participating in this Forum because it is fun to beat these topics around but I am under no misconception that I might obtain anything approaching a certain conclusion.

"Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science--by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans--teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us." --Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, p.28

Amaleq13

So Paul wrote this way because he didn't want anybody to get the mistaken impression that this was the first time Jesus had been born?

How is that reconciled with the Gospel depiction where Jesus performs miracles and attracts a following?

What do you think got Paul's Jesus crucified?

I wrote:
I haven't entirely rejected the possibility that Paul's Jesus existed at some time in the distant past. This seems to be hinted at in your posts.

Bernard replied:
Cut me some slack! It was a few years ago and I was focused on your John the Baptist stuff. I'm clearly going to have to visit again. Do you have a book out or are you planning one?

What requires Jesus to die so recent to Paul's conversion? Isn't the already established Jerusalem Church (and the ones Saul persecuted) a problem for a recent Jesus? Along those same lines, isn't the fact that the Romans allowed such an institution to exist an argument against accepting James as the literal brother of an executed rebel continuing the same movement?

My very own imagination.

If this was a title James held before Paul joined, wouldn't he be kind of stuck using it?


Thanks for your replies and I will revisit your website and check the whole thing.