Doug Shaver

Since Paul does not say "James the brother of Jesus" but "James the lord's brother," you damned well need to presuppose something. At the very least, in order to construe "lord's brother" as "sibling of Jesus," you have to presuppose that the Christ Jesus about whom Paul was writing was one and same person as the Jesus of Nazareth about whom the gospel authors were writing. But with that very presupposition, you have declared an end to the debate about Jesus' historicity.

Granted. But if I'm a juror, I need to see proof that no boot other than the boot found at the suspect's house could have made that print. I'm not obliged to believe that it's an exact match just because the prosecutor says it's an exact match.

And in this case, we don't have an exact match. We have what you claim to be a match that is close enough to warrant a conviction. The way it looks to me, the possibility that some other boot made that print is sufficient to allow reasonable doubt.

I'm not sure what I would think if I were to consider the passage in isolation, as if nothing else that Paul ever wrote had any relevance to determining what he could have meant by "the lord's brother." But I don't think that is the right way to consider the issue. If the question is considered in the context of Jesus' historicity, then all the evidence relevant to his historicity has to be brought to the table. In that context, I consider the assertion "He could not plausibly have meant anything other than "sibling of Jesus" to be, um, not well supported, to put it charitably.

So say the gospels, but in Paul's day they hadn't been written. If we're not presupposing anything about them, then they are irrelevant to interpreting Paul's writings.

Apparently so. We may infer, then, that his readers were aware that a certain James who was prominent in the Jerusalem church was known as "the lord's brother." We cannot infer, from Paul's writings alone, why that epithet had been bestowed on him, and to infer a reason from the gospels is to beg the question of Jesus' historicity.

ApostateAbe

Doug, the server crashed and posts were lost, but I think I got your latest message, and I said to you that I will be in Palm Springs starting next week, and if you would like to hang out next weekend, send me a private message with your phone number. It will be my first time in Palm Springs.

mountainman

There is a noticeable and obvious lack of humor in the new testament canon's obession about this fictional portrayal of a new world god. Is it a valid question then whether the author or authors of the NT were some form of obsessional fanatics.

No Robots

Certainly, there are elements of fanaticism in the NT.:huh:

Zaphod

Unless he is a concoction by separate committees, whose minutes have been sloppily redacted over many years by new committees. I can't see how a character's incoherence argues more for his validity than for his manufacture.