My view, right now (it might be different this afternoon), is that the Josephus reference to James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ could be authentic.
I don't reject any of the arguments against this view.
However, I don't find the argument that we don't have a copy of Josephus earlier than the eleventh century a strong argument against authenticity.
OK, well we are all entitled to a view. And I don’t want to spend excess time going over the whole thing again. But just out of interest;- look at what you say above -
- you are talking about a single sentence which you are attributing to Josephus, who was thought to be writing circa. 100AD. In fact not even a single sentence but just half a sentence, interpreted as saying something like “James, the Lords brother”, and you say that you do not find it significant when I emphasise to you that it is in fact apparently an impossibility for you to mean what you say about getting that from Josephus, because you are actually getting it from what Christian copyists wrote 1000 years later!
And you don’t think that is “a strong argument against authenticity”?
Well … even if those four words (“James, the Lords brother”) were in whatever was originally written by Josephus, where on earth do you think Josephus could ever have obtained any such idea?
Do you really think it’s credible that Josephus himself knew this person “ James”, and knew that he claimed to be the “lord’s brother”? Frankly that is absurdly unlikely.
So where did those four words come from? Where did Josephus (or his 11th century Christian copyists) get that idea from?
OK, well as we all know, that particular idea seems to come originally from just one ultra-brief sentence in one of the Pauline Letters.
However, as Ellegard points out – Paul frequently used phrases saying something like “brother of the Lord”. But in all cases he apparently means “brother in religious belief”. It is far from clear that Paul ever meant that any particular person named “James”, of which there are several in the Gospels, and often all badly confused with one-another, ever actually meant anyone as the true flesh & blood family brother of Jesus.
So when you talk about this four word sentence coming from Josephus c.100AD, what you really mean is that it’s coming from Christian copyists 1000 years later, and that those copyists appear to have got that idea from just 4 words supposedly once written by St Paul!
But just on the writing of Paul – Paul seems to be a wandering lifelong street preacher. That’s all he ever did. What then is the likelihood that in 50AD wandering street preachers like Paul could actually write perfect extensive life histories in Greek?
Who actually wrote the Pauline Letters? And where did they get their beliefs from?
In those Pauline Letters, Paul himself never claims to have ever met Jesus.
And despite mention of names which sound like the names of personal “disciples” of Jesus, it’s far from clear that Paul ever really claims to have met anyone who was a personal “disciple” of Jesus.
On the contrary, as far as I know – what is described under the name of Paul’s letters, is really a religious vision of a belief in a messiah, as understood by Paul to be the fulfilment of what Paul already believed must be the truth according to the prophecies of the Jewish Old Testament stretching back to at least 500BC!
Again, if you read about the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) you can find almost exactly the same sort of beliefs that Paul had concerning the expectation of an apocalyptic messiah appearing as a fulfilment of what the “proto-Christians” of that community believed to be the proper interpretation of the Old Testament.
Further – Pauls dream- like vision of Jesus is also extremely similar to the beliefs shown in the DSS. Ie, where that DSS community believed that the real world of Gods revelations was shown to them in their dreams. And where to become “real”, the dreams had to be interpreted by the highest priests in the community. They believed that what they saw in their religious dreams was actually a vision of
reality … the dreams were thought to be Gods way of providing them with insight into religious
reality. To repeat – this is all very similar to what Paul was describing in his visions of Jesus and his reliance on “scripture”.
So - - where did this half sentence come from “James, the Lords brother”?
Well, it appear to come from whoever wrote the 2nd and 3rd century copies of Paul’s Letters (not originally from Josephus or anyone else). But there is really nothing to show that Paul actually knew anyone to be literally the blood brother of Jesus. It appears more likely to be simply a reference to one of many Christian followers who were “brothers” in their obedient beliefs of a messiah named Yehoshua (ie”Jesus").
Paul of course (apparently) never met Jesus anyway … on the contrary, Paul seems to be preaching apocalyptic messianic dream-based beliefs very similar to what the DSS community of that same religion had been writing about from 170BC, ie from around 200 years before Paul ever lived.
puhleeeeeze...........
