TedM

If you are suggesting his meeting with James too is an interpolation, I see no need for that. I also don't see it as an afterthought, or as in passing. Paul simply says he also met with James.. The separation of James and Cephas is very possibly so he wouldn't give the impression that he met with James for 15 days also.

IF the passage originally didn't include mention of James at all, what purpose does it serve there, IYO? IF the interpolator was simply looking for a way to designate James as a brother of Jesus, why did he not also do that in the next chapter?

ted

TedM

My point was that while "the Lord" was known to be YHWH, "my lord" was apparantly not so clear to those who were reading it...that Paul may have been as unclear as whoever wrote the psalm. That was all I was saying.

Then I said that Paul's distinction is even less in a sense because he also referred to Jesus as "THE Lord Jesus Christ". That's closer to "The Lord" than "my Lord" is.

This started with my challenge of your conclusion that there are no references to Jesus as "the Lord" by Paul to go beyond the 3 that you reject as interpolations, by listing 4 whose context more strongly suggest he is referring to Jesus as "the Lord" as opposed to YHWH. You favor the idea that Paul was "toggling" and provide an example of someone else who did so. Fine. You may be right. I just didn't think several of those passages came across as "toggling" between God and Christ, or "being in Christ". I won't say the interpretation is clear and certain, though.

I'm curious, why does Paul sometimes refer to God as Lord and other times as simply "God"?

ted

dog-on

This is indeed an interpolation which served the purpose of subjugating the Apostle of the Heretics to the proto-Orthodoxy through the Book of Acts. Not in Marcion's version.

http://www.radikalkritik.de/DetGalExpl.pdf

spin

Can't make you drink.

Actually, I haven't proposed any "toggling". I have proposed two distinct uses of the term o kurios and those two uses are transparent. Where it stands by itself it refers to YHWH.

I sympathize: I've seen the difficulties you've been having.

That's the way it was in the Hebrew bible and carried over into the LXX. Why wouldn't Paul do it, if it permeates his religious consciousness?

While we're here, why do you think Paul would flip-flop between god and Jesus as the reference to the absolute form of o kurios without letting the reader know?


spin

TedM

Either he was careless, or there was no need to let the reader know because it was transparent to the reader. What references do you think would have been unclear to his readers if he was flip-flopping, and why?

ted

jakejonesiv

You are exactly correct.

But even the later catholic interpolation was based on a misunderstanding of James the Just as "brother of Yahweh."

As I noted earlier in this thread, the Hebrew Scriptures testify to the concept of "the brother of Yahweh" as a religious designation, not as God's literal brother.

Jake

jakejonesiv

Or the assumption of unity of authorship is incorrect.

TedM

Yes, I overlooked that one. Thanks--I agree.

I don't think anyone takes it literally here. I'm not sure how relevant this name that means "the Lord" is. It seems like much is being made of it just because it existed at some point previously.

Do we have any evidence of how prevelant the name was, or whether it had any connection whatsoever to a group called "the brothers of the Lord" in early Christianity? If the point is simply that the 'concept' was something Jews were aware of and could accept, I'll grant you that, so it does allow for the possibility of such a group of people. I would argue though that it is one thing to allow someone to have a name with a certain meaning, and it is quite another to actively refer to people by the meaning of their name. The Jews may have found one to be acceptable, and the other not.

Unfortunately, there is no argument in favor of the existence of the group that I've heard other than the idea that Paul would ever refer to Jesus as "the Lord", so by default the group must have existed. I think an interpolator very likely could have referred to Jesus as "the Lord" since this is found in the gospels ("I have seen the Lord"). If Paul wrote it, then to me the only real response to the lack of evidence is

1. the concept existed
2. Paul would never have written that

I think #1 is quite weak and #2 is very questionable. That's why I have asked Spin to give me examples of verses that would have been very unclear to Paul's readers had he been referring to Jesus as "the Lord". Galations 1:19 doesn't qualify, and neither does 1 Cor 9:5.

ted

Malachi151

I think a bigger question is, if Paul thought that Jesus was a person with a family, etc., and that this James was really his literal brother, then why does Paul mention him as an afterthought in Gal 1:19 and then as a source of division in Gal 2, and why is he subordinate to Peter (Cephas), and why doesn't Paul ever say anything more about James, or show interest in the person who grew up and intimately knew the greatest and most powerful being that ever lived?

TedM

I don't think mentioning an exception to a group qualifies as being evidence of an afterthought.

If James or the group that hung around him was causing division, why should Paul not mention that? I'm not convinced that James himself WAS causing division. After all, Paul says he agreed to Paul's position regarding Gentile circumcision, which was the primary issue of concern to Paul in Galatians.

I don't see evidence of this. The fact that 'men from James' caused Cephas to act differently among the Gentiles in Antioch in Chapter 2 suggests the opposite.


Where do you want him to do this? Paul doesn't talk much about Jerusalem Christians in any of his writings. He is concerned more with his flock, which were located elsewhere. The creed in 1 Cor 15 does mention James, though. It is clear from Acts and Paul's writings that while he seems quite concerned with keeping peace with Jerusalem Christians, the focus of his ministry was NOT on them.

ted