Solitary Man

Hey, who would have guessed it? Hand waving! Do I get a prize?

And the first part was responding to this:

http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthr...91#post5225391

aa5874

Total fallacies. Josephus in all his writings showed no independent tradtion for an HJ. Tacitus wrote not a single word about an HJ. There are more than one person called Paul, not even the early Church fathers realized the forgery. The Gospels and extra-canonical gospels appear to be written well after the supposed events, up to or exceeding 100 years, and are filled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and fiction.

The HJ can only be corroborated by one's imagination.

Minimalist

Belief is everything, Solitary, I suppose.

I've seen nothing convincing about any of that list you run through. The TF is actually laughable.

Toto

RT France wrote his slim volume on the evidence for the Historical Jesus to refute Wells, and discussed the evidentialry problems in all of those sources. Have you read France? Is that what you call hand waving?

France chose not rely on anything but the presumed historical value of the gospels. But he wrote a few decades ago, and the historical value of the gospels has not stood up in any recent work.

So we are left with no hard evidence for the HJ, and a variety of theories to explain the evidence we do have.

Solitary Man

Belief in what? Nice try, buddo. I've been an atheist for a long time now. Way to try the ol' ad hominem attack.

And that you merely mention the TF when I said Josephus merely displays your profound ignorance in the subject.

Solitary Man

France is great, sometimes I find his biases getting in the way. I have his works on Matthew.

Acknowledging the problems with the evidence in no way states with such faith as you have that the evidence is all...what did you say? Oh right, "sorry" and "unconvincing". As for the historical value of the gospels being diminished lately, all I suggest you do is read Meier. Or any recent work on the Historical Jesus. Even the most minimalist of the mainstream, ones like Bill Arnal who in his speech on Christian origins last SBL off-handedly proposed Acts as a response to Marcion (proposed, not argued for, not believes, but of course, those ignorantly casting aside academia wouldn't understand this, would you?), even he thinks there is enough evidence that we know that an historical Jesus existed.

As for hard evidence, what hard evidence do you have for Cato the Elders grandfather? You don't have any. You have to assume it by inference.

Oh, the hypocrisy! Begging for hard evidence on your knees, and yet you decry the FACT that you're being hypocritical by requiring it! This is why the mythical Jesus theory is a crackpot theory, is entirely outside the mainstream, and is scoffed at deservedly by real scholars.

Ben C Smith

Which ones make the most sense, IYO?

Ben.

Steven Carr

And if Paul claims his historical Jesus was with the Israelites during the Exodus, then only a crackpot asks what sort of Jesus Paul thinks was historical...

Toto

Another argument from common sense? Is all this supposed to make sense?

It does not make sense to me that Jesus' biological brother would not be identified more clearly as his real brother, given that the term "brother" was used for fellow believers, and especially in a society where family ties are so important. We don't know who James' father was, or if he was supposed to be Jesus' younger or older brother, or half-brother. If he were well known as Jesus brother, I think that Paul would have needed to spend more time explaining why Paul had some better insight into Jesus than this so-called pillar.

So the most straightforward explanation is that Brother of the Lord is a title of some sort.

But if I had to lay odds on it, I would only rate the probability of this being true at about 30%.

The other alternatives:

James was the biological brother of the historical Jesus.

James had some other family relationship to the HJ - half brother, or adopted brother?

The reference to James as the brother of the Lord was an interpolation by an anti-James faction in the second century, and James was never known as the brother of anyone - he was just an early Christian. Or maybe an early Jew that the Christians assimilated into their history.

The entire letter to the Galatians was forged in the second century.

James is a purely mythological or fictional creation.

:huh:

Do you think that James the Brother of the Lord wrote the Epistle that bears his name? Was the Jude who wrote an Epistle Jesus' brother also? What were the other brothers of Jesus called?

Ben C Smith

Not common sense. Historical and literary sense.

Not always, but I believe we should try to make as much sense of it as the evidence allows.

A brother in the Lord is pretty easily recognized as a fellow sectarian. What about a brother of the Lord?

What examples do you have of people in antiquity being identified as the real brother, the real father, the real relative of somebody else? (I do not presume to know here; I am asking.)

Important, yes. Does this importance of family lead you to expect a more complicated identifier for James (the real brother)? If not, then I do not see the relevance of this observation. If so, then does your expectation jive with other historical works of approximately the same period?

Trivially true. What does it mean to you that we do not know these things about Jesus and James (at least from Paul)?

Why does his personal revelation not fill this gap for you? I personally might expect Paul to perhaps mention his own credentials, and he does so. Why do you expect him to mention the credentials of his potential rivals?

So far you have not actually argued for this phrase as title; rather, you have argued against the alternative. This might be taken to imply that your argument for this option is negative (eliminating options) in the main. Is that accurate?

It stands to reason that this title was not reserved for James alone, judging from 1 Corinthians 9.5, correct?

The first two options here take brother of as indicating a family relationship. What about the last three? If someone in century II was responsible for the brother of phrase, do you think the interpolator or forger intended it (A) as indicating family relationship or (B) as some sort of title?

The attestation for both of these epistles is later than I like to see for genuine articles, but that may just be a by-product of their Jewish-Christian origin in a principally gentile Christian church. I am more inclined to accept Jude as genuine than James, but neither is very secure in my mind.

Ben.