spin

You are still there, TedM, with no arguments, nothing to get past the opaque term "brother(s) of the lord". Despite the fact that anyone who does the will of god is now Jesus's brother or sister or mother, you tenaciously hold on to a tradition unsupported by the christian religious literature that James the brother of the lord and the brothers of the lord were the genetic siblings of Jesus. In a passage related to 1 Cor 9:5, we find 500 brothers in 1 Cor 15:6. Apostles, brothers, Peter in each case. One lot of brothers are those of Jesus and the lot according to you isn't. As I said, "Surely it is only the weight of tradition, and no evidence at all, which dictates to you how you interpret the figure. Isn't that correct? (italics added)"


spin

Chris Weimer

Is there another reference I've missed to this except to Matthew?

No, in 15:6 we only find brethren, not brethren of the Lord.

No, but the text itself. There are two terms at work here: the brethren, and brethren of the lord. You're equivocating here.

Not at all.

spin

What exactly are you asking?

I didn't claim any different. I said that in each case Paul refers to brothers, apostles and Peter. That one lot of brothers being called "brothers of the lord" is something that must be shown as a different reference from the simple brothers reference in 15:6.

You are merely assuming what you want "brothers of the lord" to mean. Nothing more.

Bald statements get bald responses.


spin

Chris Weimer

Paul uses the term brother/brethren or sister/sisters in Roman, both Corinthians, and Galatians 83 possibly 85 times (depending on Rom. 15.13, I Cor. 15.31). He uses it in I Thes. 19 times, Philippians 9 times, and even Philemon 5 times.

The only time he ever uses the phrase "brother/brethren of the lord" is at I Corinthians 9.5 and Galatians 1.19. He only uses this term when talking about leadership - in the first instance comparing his apostleship with the apostles, the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas, meaning that both groups and Cephas are in the leadership position; and then in Galatians, he names James explicitly as a brother of the lord.

Now please, spin, by all means try to equivocate and claim that the two are the same.

Now, you're merely assuming that it doesn't have the connotations it has. You've given no evidence that brother/brethren of the Lord doesn't mean what it says.

At least you're accepting that you made such a bald statement.

TedM

Thank you for saving me the time to say this. It seems pretty obvious to me that is term designates a special group that doesn't include all Christian "brothers". If that is the case the meaning of the singular "brother" or "brethren" is CLEARLY is not same as when found in the phrase "brother(s) of the Lord".

There certainly COULD have been a special group of men not related to Jesus given such a title. There is NO evidence for it, though. Not even in the surviving "tradition", despite what would have been the obvious preference by the Catholic church to literal brothers. This is the same tradition that spin claims is biasing my viewpoint. I"m not simply accepting tradition because it exists. There are reasons it makes more sense than the alternative in this case.

ted

spin

You looked everywhere other than in the two places I pointed. You're joining the ranks of the numerical fiddlers.

It should be obvious from the two places I ponted to that most of your numbers aren't relevant. 1 Cor 9:5 obviously refers to a context which includes only brothers within the non-Pauline sphere, which suggests the Palestinian situation, as is the case with 1 Cor 15:6. It is naturally the case with James the brother of the lord. So one explanation is that we are dealing with a group of believers in Palestine, perhaps in Jerusalem, who were known as the brothers of the lord.

It says "brothers of the lord". How do you interpret what it says and why?

With three specific exceptions, which I consider interpolations, the term "the lord" refers to god. The exceptions are 1 Cor 2:8b, 1 Cor 6:14, 1 Cor 11:27. I have argued that it is very difficult to support the notion that a writer uses a term -- in this case "the lord" -- such that it means two distinct references without indicating which it is the writer means at any given time. This is the implication of thinking that Paul used "the lord" to mean both Jesus and god. I argue that Paul didn't do such a thing at all, that that would have rendered his literary efforts rather confused and incomprehensible to his readers. It is only after Paul's time, with the development of binitarian then trinitarian thought, that Paul's use of the term "the lord" could become so confused that editors could allow such interpolations in the text.

No, I made a bald response.


spin

Chris Weimer

Perhaps, but where's the evidence that suggests that? Naturally if Jesus had family, why would they be diverse and not together in Palestine still? You're twisting the text to say what you want to say and not what it literally says.

I follow the advice you gave - read it literally unless there's compelling reasons to do otherwise. You haven't give any.

Also 11:29.

Would it? How do you know what his readers may have already known?

But Paul already uses Jesus Christ our Lord, and then he refers to the Lord also. He does this. I don't see how you're reconciling this?

spin

Rubbish. You imagine that "brother of the lord" means what you've been told it should mean. If the text had said, "brother of Jesus" then there would be no problem. It's just that you want Paul to mean something that you haven't shown him to mean.

For chrissake read it literally and not the eisegesis you have accepted.

"[O]f the lord" is a later interpolation. Just check a more recent bible. It's not there. It just messes up the meaning of the text. We've been through this interpolation at length.

This is simple linguistics. Does "the lord" mean "god" or does it mean "Jesus" when it is used and how do you tell? We know that when Paul cites the Hebrew bible "the lord" certainly means "god". This suggests that his other uses of the absolute form "the lord" (ie not titular or descriptive) should for consistency be the same. In three places it isn't. Each of these three are not part of the discourse.

When a term is used in a text, the reader needs cues to understand. If a word has no cues provided then one has to take the word at its most basic. We know that that is shown by the LXX usage of kurios.

Have you seen Memento?

I have been through this a number of times. There are descriptive and titular uses of kurios, such as in "the lord Jesus" or "our lord". Then there's the use of "kurios" found in the LXX. Paul cites a number of LXX references, though he doesn't usually indicate that they were from the scriptures. There are no cues that the usage is any different from any other usage. We must assume, until shown otherwise, that Paul was being consistent with his usage of the term.

You must agree that for Paul Jesus and god are two separate references. Paul's use of these terms is usually distinct enough for one to see that he was no binitarian, eg 1 Cor 3:23, "you belong to christ and christ belongs to god." How would you reconcile the one term being used of the two, such that there are no cues to distinguish the particular usage?

If you have difficulties with that question, you should see that the term "brother of the lord" is not transparent.


spin

TedM

I've given you more twice in the past, most recently on the James Brother of Lord thread. The context did not favor your interpretation that "Lord" meant God. There is no basic use of the word. Paul uses it both ways and the contexts make its meaning clear usually.

The only reason to conclude then that the phrase "brother(s) of the Lord" isn't meant to refer to literal brothers of Jesus is the idea that such a special group existed. We have no evidence of this group. Tradition would have favored the meaning you suggest, yet not only is it silent about it, it supports the other-literal meaning. Normal use of the phrase also goes against it. And, Paul's silence about such a special group goes against it. As does the way in which Paul uses it for only James in Galations, which suggests that there was no other James in the group, and neither John or Cephas were in the group. Sounds like a pretty small group doesn't it? Taken together the traditional understanding of this phrase seems the most likely to be correct.

ted

Steve Weiss

The answer is no. The evidence required is beyond historic proof. I think that we would have it by now given 2000 years. There is a tooth fairy though.