Amaleq13

How you can consider a straightforward description of the evidence "tenuous and speculative" is beyond me.

I'm simply taking the evidence as it stands given your interpretation. According to your interpretation the James/John/Peter trio in Paul includes the brother of Jesus but it is a different "James" who is depicted as part of the inner circle of three disciples in the Gospels.

I accept that the author of the story attributed to Mark is depicting Peter in that role but I am "leery" of assuming this to be a reliable description of history given the absence of any confirming evidence in Paul.

I don't think Paul would consider the Risen Christ to have physical brothers and I also don't think Paul would consider any prior physical relationship the Incarnated Form had to continue to be at all relevant or worthy of mention subsequent to the resurrection. Hence his general disregard for any details about the Incarnated Form (eg the name of his mother).

We apparently only have one in Paul.

(1) This would be credible had Paul mentioned another important James and applied the identifying phrase in the context of the trouble he was having with the "pillars". He does neither so this piece of speculation appears to be unsubstantiated.

(2) You appear to have forgotten that I also suggested Paul could easily have identified James in the traditional Jewish fashion by referring to his father.

The question ignores the evidence from early Church Fathers that the "titles" by which James was known were applied by his fellow Jews in recognition of his righteousness which makes no sense except as something which preceded his involvement with Paul's sect.

This point ignores the evidence as well since the title is clearly connected to James' righteousness in the context of Judaism.

This completely ignores the evidence of Paul who explicitly connects his apocalyptic expectations to the resurrection. Your expectations are entirely irrelevant to the actual evidence though you seem to consider them to be equal.

jjramsey

That would be useful as supporting evidence, but standing alone it doesn't mean much. Also, one might expect that if there were only one James, then he would have just been known as "James," just as "Cephas" is known as just Cephas and John as just "John," with no adornment. That Paul bothers to add an additional identifier when he refers to James is a hint, albeit a slim one, that there was more than one James.

And you accuse me of reading into Paul! This sharp distinction between the (nameless?) Incarnated Form, who may have had physical brothers, and the Risen Christ, who did not, looks more like something from a liberal Protestant theologian, especially the use of the capitalized phrase "Risen Christ." Paul himself certainly did not use "Incarnated Form" and "Risen Christ" as special terms, and he seems just fine with indicating that "Jesus Christ" was a human when he wrote that he "was descended from David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3).

As I pointed out above, if there had been only one James, Paul would have likely just called him "James."

Yes, I did forget that, but the essential problem is the same. If the way the Galatians are familiar with James is as Jesus' brother, not as the son of Joseph, then that is how Paul is going to be stuck addressing him.

And you aren't the least suspicious that James' reputation as an exceptionally righteous Jew might be a tad hagiographical, a pious exaggeration? That in itself would explain why the Galatians might not have heard of it: James' righteousness hadn't been invented yet. Good grief, the texts from the first century already have their own exaggerations. Shouldn't you be at least as suspicious of the Church Fathers when their portraits look too rosy?

Again, you are acting as if Paul's connecting his apocalyptic expectations to the resurrection would be less likely or less expected if Jesus were apocalyptic. This is absurd.

Amaleq13

I think you see it as a "hint" only because you are interpreting Paul under the influence of the Gospels/Acts. Alone, as it is in Paul, it suggests nothing of the sort.

That appears to be an accurate description of your persistent inclination to read information from the Gospels into his letters.

...is obtained from no other source than Paul who explicitly makes a sharp distinction between flesh vs spirit and spends the overwhelming majority of his letters talking about the risen Lord Jesus Christ compared to what little he says about the human form God's son took, named "Jesus" if it makes it easier to understand, in order to serve as a sacrifice. (I've dropped the capitals since they apparently cause you such confusion. I am heavily but unapologetically influenced by the Jedi mind tricks of Joe Wallack)

You seem to be confusing me with someone denying that Paul asserted Christ had taken human form but, more relevantly, that provides yet another alternate way of identifying James that would be entirely consistent with everything else Paul says:

"James, the brother of Jesus according to the flesh"

Hell, I think it would even be qualifier enough to allow Paul to use "Lord" or even "Christ" instead of "Jesus".

You would have a point if the only reason one uses special identifying phrases is to differentiate from others of the same name. It isn't so you don't.

It seems absurd to suggest that the Galatians knew James as the brother of God's Son but without any knowledge of his father's identity. That is contrary to everything I know about the way people think. You tell somebody that God's Son, upon taking the form of a human, had a mother and they might not ask who she was. You tell them God's Son had a brother, on the other hand, and it is ridiculous to suggest that they wouldn't ask who his dad was. In fact, it seems to me that identifying and clearly differentiating any siblings by way of their human father would be virtually guaranteed.

I assume that it is exaggerated but, apparently unlike yourself, I see no reason to go beyond that to assuming that the titles or his reputation are entirely fabricated.

I agree that your misrepresentation of my position is absurd. What is also absurd is to suggest that something one might expect to result in apocalyptic beliefs is the actual reason for Paul's even though Paul nevers says anything to support it and offers something else as the reason.

Paul expresses apocalyptic beliefs and connects them to the resurrection of Jesus but never to anything Jesus taught. This is a fact.

If Jesus had been an apocalyptic preacher, Paul would likely have expressed apocalyptic beliefs. This is a speculative hypothetical that, as reasonable as it might be, has absolutely no evidence in Paul's letters to support it as a reality.

TedM

Anyone else having server problems...whew..

The idea that GMark created a brother of Jesus who wasn't part of the inner circle requires an explanation since that is inconsistent with the James of Galations. Additionally, if GMark created a brother of Jesus named Simon (he is also listed along with James, Joses, and Judas), that is possibly inconsistent with the creation of brother James, since we have the names of two of the 3 pillars in Galations showing up in GMark (Mark indicates that
inner-circle Peter was also named Simon) both as in the inner circle and as brothers, yet, only one in Galations is indicated as a brother. What a mess! Why create such a mess?

If you are implying that the author of GMark was trying to somehow match Galations, he failed miserably.


Paul simply doesn't do that. He mentions dozens of people by name, yet NEVER identifies a person as the biological "son of" somebody. Do you really think Paul and others would have identified a brother of Jesus as "son of Joseph"? I don't. I would expect "brother of Jesus" or some equivalent since Jesus was a lot more important to believers than Joseph. Ideally for us it would be something like "older brother of our Lord Jesus", but Paul wasn't writing to us--people who wouldn't know who Paul meant by "brother of the Lord".

ted

Amaleq13

The fact that the story in Mark depicts a brother of Jesus named James who wasn't part of the inner circle requires an explanation.

Mine is that the inner-circle-James is the same man for both Paul and Mark while brother-James is just a background detail (real or imagined) for a family that considered Jesus crazy. The phrase "brother of the Lord" in Paul is just another reference to the righteous reputation of James.

That doesn't mean he couldn't if he felt a need to differentiate between men named "James".

Given that Paul was in competition with him for authority but also needed to specifically identify him? Absolutely. It would emphasize by contrast that Jesus is the Son of God rather than emphasizing that James is the brother of Jesus. Whether other people used it is less relevant than whether they would understand the identification.

There is also the question of why the Romans would allow the brother of an executed messianic-claimant to lead an apparent continuation of his efforts.

And, since somebody is bound to bring Josephus into this, there is also the question of why he would mention both Jesus and his brother and their brotherhood but not mention that the latter became the leader of the "tribe of Christians" and was a primary reason they had not become "extinct".

TedM

If Mark did that, he was doing something very weird. If the goal was to simply make a family that thought Jesus was crazy while maintaining a James in the inner circle, there was no need to add in a different James as a brother. Especially so, if everyone already knew that "brother of the Lord" was a title, and not a biological reference. Splitting the man into two would have been an unnecessary complication.. If for some bizarre reason he felt he had to give Jesus a brother named James who also was in the inner circle, rather than split the man into two men, he could have added the doubting James to the inner circle after Jesus' death, and made a big deal about how he went from thinking Jesus was crazy to becoming a "true" "brother of the Lord". Second, he further complicates things by making another brother Simon, since Galations doesn't say anything about Peter being "the Lord's brother". It's a very bizarre hypothesis...


Sure, he could have. There clearly was no need to though, and "son of Joseph" is nowhere close to being as descriptive as "brother of the Lord'.


I think how James was normally identified would be the most relevant factor. "Son of Joseph" most likely would NOT be how he was normally identified, and Paul NEVER uses that descriptor. Yes, he could have made an EXCEPTION in this case, but his competitive position to them ("what they are makes no difference to me", "lest I be running in vain") is stated below. The "descriptor" is just 3 words. That hardly is something I would call "emphasizing", especially if was the same descriptor the Galations used for James due to its preciseness.

Perhaps. If you would like to present your case for this, I'm willing to consider it. Without some evidence of Christian revolt under James, I doubt a strong case can be made.


Maybe he did.. According to Eisenman, Origen was "outraged" that the Josephus blamed the Roman-Jewish War of 70AD on the death of James, and not Jesus. There is nothing in the documents to that effect now, so who knows what may have originally been there that later scribes removed...

ted

Spanky

I don't understand why people take that little phrase "the brother of Jesus" and beat it to death.
There are two ways to look at it. Either James was the "real" brother of Jesus, or, he was using it as a term of endearment. No one can really read his mind so all is just speculation, no? All we can really do is look at his style of writing to determine what he was talking about.
My personal opinion has always been that he was using it as a term of endearment (is that the right expression?). If I was a believer we are all brothers of the lord.
Anyways, who cares? How do we know it wasn't added later on down the road anyways. Oh well, that's what Biblical Criticism & History is for anyways. To split hairs.

ETA: I don't think I should use term of endearment. I think Pauly used it to tell others to respect James and whatever James was about!

TedM

You may be right, but in my mind there is little justification for thinking it was a term of endearment or a title of respect because 1. it is of a different form than metaphorical references to the brothers IN Christ found elsewhere and 2. it would therefore have been a BIG DEAL to claim to be God's brother--thus raising expectations that weren't met (ie a description of what the term meant, why some were brothers and others weren't, why the term fell out of favor and was never revived, why the early tradition accepted the biological interpretation without question (aside from the brother/cousin issue)).

For these reasons I think most skeptics who FAVOR a "title" interpretation do so in order to support their prior conclusions about Jesus' historical existence.

ted

Julian

Or it is a title. Or it is a translation of a Jewish name (Ahiyah, if memory serves). Or it is a generic term for a christian. Or it is a spurious late addition. Or...

Nothing is ever very clear cut here.

Julian

Doug Shaver

Yes, if Paul is read under the assumption that when discussing Jesus, he was thinking of a man who he believed had recently lived in this world. After nearly 2,000 years, it is a hard assumption to abandon, even for most of those people who think that most of the things Christians believe about Jesus are a crock.

Its likelihood depends on how it fits in with the totality of evidence. Certain inferences that are reasonable when the reference is read in isolation get less reasonable after all the relevant facts are taken into consideration.

When, according to his own writings, did Paul think the death and resurrection happened?

Paul affirms that he and Cephas had both seen the risen Christ. He does not say when the rising occurred. He does not say when the death occurred. He does not say where either occurred.

They were claiming to have originated as sect within Judaism and to be the only adherents of authentic Judaism. They were claiming that the Jews' entire history was nothing but a runup to Christianity.

By Justin's time, which was the middle of the second century, the gospels were starting to circulate and some Christians were coming to believe that they recounted the actual origin of their religion. That proves nothing about how much truth was in them or whether there was any truth at all in them.