I've seen mythicists argue the point this way:
1. If Paul wrote it, then "James the brother of the Lord" indicates a fellow Christian and not an actual brother.
2. But if an interpolator wrote it, then the interpolator put in "James the brother of the Lord" to show that James was an actual brother.
It's a kind of "heads I win, tails you lose" approach.
I think there are two parts to an analysis of the passage:
1. What is the natural reading of the passage?
2. Is there evidence that it is an interpolation?
That's something to keep in mind as I address each of your points.
When you replied to
theheno saying that the 10 or so points that I outlined were quote
“really REALLY terrible” (that's your own capitalised emphasis) and telling him that you were going to go over it all to show how
“really REALY terrible” it all was, I thought you would have at least some sort of credible defense for most of those points … but in fact your response here is not remotely credible or informative at all!
Look, you are trying to drag us back through all of the same old arguments that we have discussed to death literally thousands of times on each of those points (and many others) in all sorts of HJ threads over the last 12 years, almost all of which you have been heavily involved in. So you know very well that we have been over all that you have said countless times.
That really is a complete waste, in fact an abuse, of peoples time here to keep going over the same things with you hundreds & hundreds of times. But just for the sake of completion on this, I'll take the time to reply on all that you've said -
OK, firstly, re your above comments -
Quote
“1. If Paul wrote it, then "James the brother of the Lord" indicates a fellow Christian and not an actual brother.
2. But if an interpolator wrote it, then the interpolator put in "James the brother of the Lord" to show that James was an actual brother.” …
… If those words were in any of the original letters dating from around 50-60AD (and of course we have no idea if they were in those original letters), then as you know Richard Carrier has explained that in a peer reviewed book “On The Historicity of Jesus”, by saying that all members of that “Church of God” (such as James and Peter and the rest) were regarded as “brothers of the Lord” through Baptism (he cites Romans 6.3 to 6.10 .. and he then gives about 20 further references to passages in Paul's writing which he say's “confirms this” (see Carrier page 108).
Now, although we have all discussed that many times in previous threads, I personally did not choose to put Carrier's explanation in my list of 10 general points, because without reading Carrier again, I'm not sure that I found his citations to Paul all that convincing for baptised “brothers of the Lord”, however, that book is one of the very few that has been properly peer reviewed, and that means that “experts” in this field are fully aware of what Carrier says there, and if they did not agree or if they thought it was too fanciful then they should have required that explanation to be removed … but that has not happened, and that explanation has therefore passed peer review as entirely reasonable.
However apart from what Carrier says about “brothers of the Lord”, other authors such as Alvar Ellegard (Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ), have pointed out that throughout Paul's letters he very frequently refers to Brothers, Brethren, Sisters etc., but almost always in the sense of brothers and sisters in the faith, but rarely if ever as actual blood relations in a human family. So on balance, just on that basis alone, if Paul refers to James as a “brother” it probably only meant a brother in their religious faith.
On your second point where you write quote
“2. But if an interpellator wrote it, then the interpellator put in "James the brother of the Lord" to show that James was an actual brother” … a later interpellator would not know that anyone called James was indeed as you say “an actual brother (of Jesus)” … remember that any such interpellator is almost certainly writing at a much later date when he would not himself have ever met either Paul, or Jesus or any of the various people named James in the biblical writing … a later interpellator would by then only be adding things that had become general belief, and whilst by 200AD (date for P46) it may have become the general belief that Jesus had a brother named James, that belief was not necessarily true by any stretch of their imagination. IOW – it could have been added as if it was a believed fact, even though it was no more than an untrue rumour or misunderstanding of earlier texts … but the later interpellator certainly would have no idea if what he was writing was true.
??? I don't understand. Do we ignore one-off remarks? In occasional letters of the sort written by Paul, that does simplify things since it would eliminate a lot of text! But I don't understand the significance and connection to either the natural reading or whether it is an interpolation. Can you clarify please?
Well a remark like that in just one of Paul's letters, where it was never mentioned again, and where it is unclear as to what it actually meant (real brother or brother in faith) is certainly suspicious if it is never repeated or explained anywhere else in what are claimed to be 7 long genuine letters. It's suspicious because -
(a) Paul would be finally meeting the actual brother of a figure who totally changed everything that was ever important to Paul in his entire life, and yet he never asks James a single thing about Jesus, and James never tells him or anyone else a single thing about Jesus.
(b) It's suspicious because that same James supposedly wrote his own gospel in which he never claims even to have ever met any living Jesus, let alone claiming to be his actual brother! So the person who is supposed to be “the Lords brother”, never says anything of the sort!
(c) This brother “of the Lord” is supposed to have been witnessed by both Paul and James to be the supernatural Son of God appearing to them from the skies … so if James is the actual brother of the Son of God, then it means James had a supernatural Son of Yahweh as a member of his family household! And yet … neither Paul or James think that's unusual or remarkable enough even to bother saying anything about it at all!?
No scholar believes that the Gospel of James was written by James. Scholars generally regard it as a mid-Second Century work. What significance do you see in your point to what is in Paul? Because there is none as far as I can see.
None of those “scholars” think that
any of the gospels were written by the named authors! So if you are going to reject the contents of g.James on that basis then you have to reject the contents of all the gospels!
Does that gospel of James claim that it's author was the brother of Jesus the Son of God or not? If it does not then it really cannot be taken seriously when Paul writes
“other apostles saw I none, save James the Lords brother”!
And by the way, if we are going to dismiss the contents of gospels on the basis that nobody thinks they were written by the named authors, then that also casts huge doubt over the veracity and authorship of Paul's letters too. Because we have 13 letters, where 6 of them are said by those biblical scholars to be later forgeries, but where in fact that means that all 13 of the letters are then necessarily under serious doubt, because the only thing that distinguishes the claimed genuine letters is that they all appear to be written in the same style as if coming from one author, but that tells you nothing about who that author really was! … it might just as easily be the case that one of the “fake” letters was the only one actually written by Paul! … or it might just as easily be the case that none of them were written by Paul!
We have absolutely no idea what Paul talked about with the Pillars, beyond what he wrote in his letters. Trying to determine what someone knew from what they DIDN'T talk about is a risky business.
Well we do know what Paul said to the “Pillars” and what those Pillars said to Paul, because it's right there in his letters! He tells us what was discussed. And he specifically tells us that their messiah beliefs were of no interest to him because his own messiah belief came to him from God! And he further makes crystal clear that he got no such beliefs from those “Pillars” because he insistently tells us that the gospel he preached (which was his belief in Jesus as the messiah) quote “came from no man” and “nor was I taught it by anyone” … so he was very specifically saying that he got none of it from “brother” James or from any of the others in any Church of God … he got it from divine revelation because quote
“God was pleased to reveal his Son in me”, and he says that it was all
“according to scripture”.
If you are speculating that James also told him that he was the brother of the supernatural Scion of Yahweh that spoke to them all from the skies, then you will need some evidence for how and where you got that knowledge of what was not written in the letters?
So you draw significance from Paul not asking James and Peter about the earthly Jesus that they met. Let's assume, then, that James and Peter only met a spiritual Jesus in visions, same as Paul. Did Paul ask them anything about the spiritual Jesus that they met? What do you conclude from what Paul DIDN'T ask them about the spiritual Jesus? Wouldn't he have been curious?
You write that sentence as a straight fact of claiming that James & Peter had “met an earthly Jesus” … can you please quote the evidence that convinces you that James and Peter really had met some earthly Jesus? That's the first thing that's wrong there with your sentence and your beliefs.
We do not have to assume that quote
“ James and Peter only met a spiritual Jesus in visions, same as Paul”, because in the letters that is the only way it was ever said that James or Paul or anyone else ever witnessed Jesus … there is afaik no other statement in Paul's letters describing how any of them had ever met an earthly human Jesus … if you can produce a quote where Paul explains how Peter and James or anyone at all had definitely met, or even claimed to meet, an earthly human Jesus, then please do produce the quote?
Paul says (that he somehow knew, or had been told) that he was not alone in having witnessed a heavenly vision of Jesus speaking from the skies. He specifically says that James, the 12, and 500 others at once etc. had all seen just such a heavenly appearance of Jesus. So according to his own letters, Paul had learned of those other witnesses from various people. Presumably, the “Pillars” had all told each other of their fantastic divine revealed vision of the Christ.
Would Paul have been curious to ask all the others about their visions? No, I don't think so – they just all claimed to have the same visionary experience as Paul … and they all agreed about that … Jesus (or some “Christ”) had revealed himself to all the true believers in the Church of God … that's what made those believers special, they had all be granted witness to Christ the Son of God.
Really. Can you list that variety of deceased or otherwise absent or non-existent names as the one-time Christ upon the Earth for each of the Pillars please? Start with James and Peter.
No you are quite right - I can't list that. Because now that I check, the passage I was thinking of was
not addressed to James, Peter or the Pillars (or at least, not in that passage in that particular letter), but in his letter to the Church of God in Corinth, where he says this -
1 Corinthians-1
10*I appeal to you, brothers and sisters,[a]*in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you,*but that you be perfectly united*in mind and thought.*11*My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household*have informed me that there are quarrels among you.*12*What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”;*another, “I follow Apollos”;*another, “I follow Cephas
”;*still another, “I follow Christ.”
So OK, you are right on that point - it was not a rebuke to Peter or James, but it was a rebuke to the faithful in the Church of God at Corinth for disagreeing about who they seem to have believed as the Messiah.
Few scholars think that Paul met Jesus in the flesh. But how does this help your reading about the James passage in Paul? Because I don't see the link.
The “link” is so obvious that it's not even a “link” - as far as we know from Paul, all of those people including James were only ever described as meeting or knowing Jesus as a vision in the skies. That's a purely religious belief in a supernatural vision of the Christ
How does this help your reading about the James passage in Paul? This just seems to be a cut and paste from some other argument..
No absolutely Not! I am pointing out to you (very clearly) that far from getting any information from James about his “brother” the Son of God, Paul explicitly and repeatedly insists to his readers that he did not get his Jesus belief from James (ie "from no Man"), but instead he got it from divine revelation through which he immediately understood from scripture that the Christ had already been sent to Earth in the unknown past.
Okay. Nothing wrong with speculation. But why was "James the brother of the Lord" added by the interpolator, in your opinion? What does the passage mean?
I think we have already been through that above! It's not my job to guess why any later scribe would think a reference to James should be explained and/or clarified with what Christians 150 years later came to believe about so-called “brothers of the Lord”. I do not need to guess about that. All I am pointing out is that the sentence would have been complete if it had stopped at “other Apostles saw I none” … but if that was the case then the rest of it would have been an addition by a later copyist who decided that Paul should have also seen James who was by then called “the Lords brother”.
Yes, modern scholars have identified many interpolations. Few see the signs of interpolation for the James passage. What should scholars do in that case? How should scholars treat passages that don't appear to be interpolations?
They can treat it however they want. I am not responsible for the nonsense that biblical scholars write and say. And if you don't think they write HJ- believing nonsense, then just take a look at Bart Ehrman's Book Did Jesus Christ Exist.
Okay. All we can do is evaluate what we have.
How do we evaluate Paul's letters? Well if that's what you are asking then the answer is that we cannot trust any of them to be authentically by Paul. So we cannot trust their content any more that the obviously extremely untrustworthy writing in the gospels.
That's a big problem at the heart of this entire subject … as someone else curtly remarked above, we should not be treating the bible as any sort of credible historical source at all!
Okay. Though both Paul and the Gospel of Mark describe Jesus as a Jewish man, so I think you are wrong. I'll do a separate post on that.
The biblical writing inc Paul's letters often describe Jesus as someone who sounds like a human man, but it's almost always qualified by remarks saying that he was actually the Son of God who had to take-on human form in order to descend upon the Earth as a supernatural Christ to guide the beliefs and the faith of the people. He was certainly not a normal man that any of them ever knew.
No, that's incorrect. Both Paul and the Gospel of Mark, our earliest layer with regards to texts for Christianity and Jesus-belief, present Jesus as a Jewish man who was a descendent of David, who was a near-contemporary in time to Paul. I'll put details into a separate post.
OK, well it will be interesting to see what you do put in another post. But the clear fact of the matter is that in all of the gospels (inc. the so-called short version of g.Mark) and in Paul's letters which bible scholars and afaik also you yourself claim as the earliest writing about Jesus, the Christ Jesus is repeatedly described as performing miracles and/or supernatural feats … e.g., even Paul's letters, Jesus is claimed as appearing to people as a heavenly vision in the skies, an that is most definitely supernatural and not the actions of an ordinary human!
I would argue that a historical Jesus is the best explanation for what we see in the earliest texts. Reframing the debate as to being about a Jesus "known either to the writers or to anyone else" doesn't intersect with that point. If you want to discuss whether any writer actually met Jesus, that's fine. I'd probably agree with you. If you'd like to discuss what is the best explanation for the existence of the earliest texts we have, we can have that discussion as well. That's the discussion I'd like to have. You can join in if you'd like to talk about the best explanation for the earliest texts.
We have been over all of that discussion about “what is the best explanation for the existence of the earliest texts we have” literally hundreds of times before!! And I'm certainly not going to waste my time being persuaded go back through all of that religious nonsense all over again. Look – if you are going to say that you cannot conceive of how a story of Jesus and the rise of a new religion called Christianity (a version of the previous religion, actually) could possibly happen unless Jesus was a real person at the heart of it all, then (a) we've been through that before in this very same thread, (b) it's known as the "fallacy of a claim from ignorance or personal incredulity" to say that there must have been a real Jesus at the heart of it simply because you can't personally think of a different answer/explanation that you prefer – so that's a completely fallacious argument from the get-go.
But also, Christianity is just one of countless thousands of religions, all of which have arisen as devout and tenaciously held beliefs of absolute divine fact, around deity figures who were completely and unarguably fictional. Jesus would really be the one and only exception to that. He would be the miraculous supernatural deity that really did exist! But really nobody in the 21st century is buying that any more … or, in fact, not quite – because millions of Christians all over the world, inc. the highest leaders of the faith in Popes, Cardinals, Archbishops etc. actually do insist that Jesus not only existed but that he was indeed a supernatural miracle worker from heaven! They actually still insist upon that even now in 2020! As a Christian yourself, maybe you even believe such nonsense too!?
In short, few of your points are relevant to the meaning of the "James the brother of the Lord" passage in Paul. Some of your points seem to be comments that are just irrelevant cut and pastes from some other discussion that you threw in.
Well, “in short”, your reply is actually devoid of virtually any credible worthy content at all. And (for the second time here) I have just explained to you why all of those points are clearly very relevant indeed.
If anything, you seem to agree (though I don't want to point words into your mouth), through the suggestion of interpolation, that the passage implies that Paul met the actual brother of the Lord. That supports the natural meaning of the passage. The question then becomes whether the passage is indeed an interpolation or not. I agree with you that interpolation is possible, but the usual signs suggesting interpolation are not there for that passage.
What? You read what I said in that previous post and you conclude that quote “you seem to agree (though I don't want to point words into your mouth), through the suggestion of interpolation, that the passage implies that Paul met the actual brother of the Lord” … how could you have possibly made a mistake as huge as that?? Everything I explained to you in those 10 points is telling you why I do NOT agree that Paul met the family brother of Jesus!
And no, there is no “natural reading of the passage” … the passage is ambiguous, because although it can be taken at face value to mean that James was the brother of Jesus, there are numerous reasons as explained in my 10 previous points why we should be very wary about accepting that conclusion … it's a conclusion that would have James and Paul and the rest saying that normal family brothers are also supernatural Sons of Yahweh who appear in the heavens!
So, my conclusion:
1. The natural reading of the passage is that Paul is claiming to have met James, who is an actual brother of Jesus
2. Scholars generally don't believe, from the evidence available, that the passage is an interpolation.
Again – there is no “natural reading of the passage” … instead the passage is highly problematic as I have just explained twice in great detail and at great time-consuming length, and it's something that all of us inc. you, have been over literally 500 times or more in these threads, and now you want to drag us through all the same stuff all over again without end. No. that's an end to it – James was not a brother to a supernatural Christ, and both Paul and James and the others all (according to Paul) personally witnessed this “brother” as supernatural … and that is frankly very obvious fanatical religious myth-making fiction.
