The most powerful argument against the Christ-Myth theory, in my judgment, is the plausibility of what Ethelbert Stauffer called “the Caliphate of James.” It is not merely that Galatians 1:19 refers to “James the Lord’s brother,” though that is powerful evidence that Jesus was a recent historical figure. It is not just that Mark 6:3 lists James and three more brothers and at least two sisters of a historical Jesus. One can also assemble divers (sic) hints from Galatians, Acts chapters 15 and 21, and the Pseudo-Clementines to imply that James was viewed in some manner as Jesus’ vicar or vice-regent on earth, a successor to a deceased or occulted Messiah. Accordingly, various gospel texts seem to show the brothers of the Lord in either favorable or unfavorable light, would appear to be polemical shots between one leadership faction (the Pillars or Heirs of Jesus) and another (the Twelve)

Robert M Price, The Christ Myth Theory and its Problems, pp.331-2.

The disciples said to Jesus, “We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?” Jesus said to him, “No matter where you come it is to James the Just that you shall go, for whose sake heaven and earth have come to exist.”

Gospel of Thomas 12

Some gospels reflected who really was second in command during the time of Jesus. (Cf. Gal. 2:12). The rejection of these gospels reflect the denial of certain factions to this fact. The Gospel to the Hebrews has James as being first to Jesus’ post resurrection appearance:

Gospel to the Hebrews Fragment 5

The Gospel is called, “according to the Hebrews” which I have recently translated into both Greek and Latin, a gospel which Origen frequently used, records after the resurrection of the Savior: And when the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the priest, he went to James and appeared to him. For James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour in which he had drunk the cup of the Lord until he should see him risen from among them that sleep. And shortly thereafter the Lord said: Bring a table and bread! And immediately it is added: He took the bread, blessed it and brake it and gave it to James the Just and said to him: My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of man is risen from among them that sleep.

Jerome, On Illustrious Men, 2

There are reasons for thinking that this gospel was early, for one it had an earlier tradition of the Temple veil being ripped at the death of Jesus (Mark 15:38). The gospel of Hebrews had the lentil falling (Jerome , On Matt. xxvii.51; Letter to Hedibia (Epistle 120, Question #8). “The veil being ripped is a massive anachronism in the gospel of Mark as Titus was the one who ripped the Temple Veil in 70CE (War 5.5.5 cf b. Git 56a). This is known because after Jesus died, all of the Temple activities and services carried on as normal in every way without the trauma of a ripped veil. None of the enormous activities of getting a new veil were needed.

Three hundred priests had to perform its ritual bath” (M. Mid. 1:5; b. Sanh. 88b). It was an enormous, densely-woven tapestry, fifty-five cubits (c. 82 feet) in height (War 5.5.5) and as thick as a hand’s breadth (Exod. Rab. 50:4 [on Exodus 36:35]; M. Sheq. 8:4-5; Num. Rab. 4:13 [on Numbers 4:5]). Despite the mythical claims in Mark’s gospel, the veil was still in place and still intact in 70 CE” [1]

It is Jerome that reports (On Matt. xxvii.51) “In the Gospel I so often mention we read that a lintel of the temple of immense size was broken and divided.” And in Jerome’s letter to Hedibia (Epistle 120 #8) he writes , “But in the Gospel that is written in Hebrew letters we read, not that the veil of the temple was rent, but that the lintel of the temple of wondrous size fell.”

The epithet “the Just” distinguishes the Lord’s brother from others named James. Its use of him is said to have been universally recognized and based on his saintly way of life. Hegesippus provides our earliest evidence of the use of the title in relation to James apart from the Gospel of the Hebrews, which could be dated as early as 140CE. The support of the Nag Hammadi tractates confirms that Hegesippus puts us in touch with a widespread tradition. The surprise is that it is not attested in the New Testament. Perhaps that is because, apart from the Epistle of James, where 5:6 may suggest the title “the Just” or “Righteous,” none of the other New Testanlent books is from a pro-Jamaian perspective.

Painter, Just James, The brother of Jesus in History and Tradition, 2nd ed., p.125.

Painter’s study “confirms that the problem of recovering the historical James is no more straightforward than the quest for the historical Jesus. There is one advantage. With Paul we have firsthand evidence of James. Paul’s letters were written by one who knew James and grudgingly acknowledged his greatness, naming him the first of the three pillar apostles. Such a one was not only great within the context of the Jerusalem church, He ensured that Jerusalem reached out authoritatively to the church of all the nations.”[2] “What singled him out was the conviction that the risen Lord had appeared to him and appointed him as the leader in his place. This tradition is found in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of the Hebrews, Clement of Alexandria, and Eusebius and might well be found also embedded in 1 Cor 15:7. Paul certainly knew James as the first of the three pillar apostles (Gal 2:2, 6, 9). The leadership of James, rooted in his relationship to Jesus as brother and risen Lord, was also tested and tried in a life that was both exemplary and decisive. Clearly, James was no mere heir to the leadership of Jesus. His leadership proved him to be a towering figure in the early church.”[3] The letters just show James in charge of the whole Jesus movement as “men from James” came checking up on Paul (Gal. 2:12).

The post resurrection appearance contained in 1 Cor. 15 reflects competing factions all getting a look in. On the one hand we have “Cephas and the twelve” (Cephas meaning “Rocky” in Aramaic, believed to be Peter, Petros being the Greek for “Rocky”), on the other hand we have “James and the apostles” all written in to the post resurrection scene. This passage represents competing factions in the power struggle post Jesus’ crucifixion. As the canonicals were an offspring of the Pauline side we have the gospel of Matthew elevating Peter as second in command.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Matt 16:19-20

The terms ‘bind’ and ‘loose’ reflect the powers of the Sanhedrin as seen in rabbinical literature and also reflects a passage in Isaiah where the power was transferred from King Hezekiahs chief minister Shebna to Eliakim:

And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place; and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father’s house.

Isaiah 22:22-23

The Second Apocalypse of James has James exceeding Peter holding those keys, James being a keeper at the door to heaven. James is a guide who escorts those through the door of heaven (55,6-14; cf. 55,15-56,13). It is James that is elevated above all in the First Apocalypse of James on a level to that of Jesus.

As Bütz pointed out, “it is not only in the Jewish Christian literature that we see James elevated over Peter. We also see this in Acts and in Galatians. And it is also in Acts and Galatians that we see so much of the evidence for the thoroughgoing Jewishness of James and the apostles. So the leadership of James, and the strict Jewishness of the apostles, are clearly not total fabrications by the later Jewish Christian community. They may indeed be somewhat exaggerated, but they surely have a solid basis in fact.”[4]

Painter notes on James in Acts:

“In Acts the family of Jesus appears among his followers, and James is portrayed as the leader of the Jerusalem church. There is nothing to suggest that this view represents a radical change within the Jesus movement”[5] Not only is James the leader, you can tell from where James is first mentioned that the other brothers of Jesus also had leadership roles, as Peter said, – “Announce these things to James and the brothers” (Acts 12:17). For a leader of the Jesus movement, James is only mentioned three times in Acts 12.17, 15.13, 21 18. “It is as if Luke has pushed James into the background, but, because of his prominence, has been unable to obscure totally his leading role.”[6]

As Eisenman pointed out in his book James the brother of Jesus, fiction does not try to write people out of their narratives and yet that is what happened in Acts.[7]

James is mentioned for the first time in Acts 12:17 as if he had been introduced before and is mentioned as the leader of the Jerusalem church in such an off hand way, that we the reader should know about him and would have if Acts had not been overwritten. Acts assumes we already knew who James was. Another James, James the brother of John was killed at the beginning of chapter 12 (decapitated) just before introduction of this James the Just and according to the epistles is brother of Jesus. (Cf Gal.2:12; 1:19)

It looks like Stephen was a stand in (ie this was the overwrite) for James as Stephens attack in Acts and James attack in the Pseudo Clementines Recognitions are very similar. This similarity can still be glimpsed at in Acts 7:52: “the Just One, whom you have now betrayed and murdered.”

Eisenman has seen a plausible alternative narration contained in the Ebionites Acts of the Apostles, also known as the Pseudoclementine Recognitions, that the Stephen narrative may have replaced an earlier James passage. This is the episode where Paul has physically attacked James with a faggot resulting in James falling down the steps of the Temple.

James held debates on the Temple steps with the High Priests or Temple Establishment, one of these episodes ended in the riot led by Paul – in which Paul picked up the ‘faggot’ – that resulted in James being injured and left for dead. ( Ps. Rec. 1.69-70).

Of course Acts glorifying Paul, had to write that particular passage out of its narrative.

Eisenman has also argued that the election of Matthias may have been originally about James too. Elsewhere it is shown that it was James that was elected for the first bishop of Jerusalem:

“James the Just was the first to have been elected to the Office of Bishop of the Jerusalem Church. (Eusebius, EH 2.1.2).

“After the Resurrection, the Lord imparted the gift of Knowledge to James the Just and John and Peter. These gave it to the other Apostles and the other Apostles gave it to the Seventy, of whom Barnabas was one.”~ Seventh Book of Clement’s Hypotyposes (meaning Outlines in English).

Eusebius uses the same word ‘Episcope’(‘Bishop’), that the narrative of Acts has just used to describe the successor to Judas Acts 1:20.

As Painter said:

The variety of ways in which the appointment of James is described suggests that the direct appointment of James by Jesus, a tradition found in the Nag Hammadi tractates, especially the Gospel of Thomas logon 12, and also in Gospel of the Hebrews and the Pseudo-Clementines is being opposed. There is no tradition in which the risen Jesus authorizes a successor other than James.

Painter, Just James, p.114

In later times we have both the gnostic (Nag Hamadi tractates etc.) and anti-gnostic traditions (Clement, Hegesippus, Origen, Eusebius) claiming James as the leader.

The Psuedoclementines shows us that there is a tradition there that Paul attacked James at the Temple, ( this is a seperate incident from Josephus account), shows a similar story but blames the Pharisees. The real history is in the epistles themselves, it shows Paul hijacking this movement, breaking away from James & co, ignoring any written orders from “certain men that came from James” (Gal. 2:12).

In the gospels too we have attempted cover ups. They go so far as to include Mary the sister of her own sister Mary (John 19:25). Also John actually never mentions James by name when talking about the brothers of Jesus. The Jesus of the gospel of John commits the care of his mother to the Beloved disciple, elevating him above his brothers (including James).

Mark 6:3 names out Jesus brothers James, Joses, Jude and Simon. He also informs us that Jesus has two sisters which later apocrypha name as Mary and Salome. Matthew 13:55 changes Joses nickname Joseph. Luke as we will see has a political agenda not to name any family members.

James Tabor in his book The Jesus Dynasty deals with the mystery of the other Mary.[8] He goes through the crucifixion scenes to gather clues in each of the canonical gospels.

In the gospel of Mark we have

1) Mary Magdalene.

2) Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses. [James to “less” or least (μικροῦ) as it is rendered in greek suggests a younger brother of Jesus].

3) Salome (Mark15:40).

In the gospel of Matthew

1. Mary Magdalene 

2. Mary mother of James and Joseph

3. The mother of the sons of Zebedee ( Matt27:56)

Luke just mentions women in his policy of downgrading the family of Jesus. (Luke23:49,55)

In the gospel of John

1. Jesus’ mother Mary

2. Her sister Mary, wife of Clophas

3. Mary Magdalene 

With three Marys has John got something to veil?

The Mary in Mark and Matthews gospel who is mother of James and Joses (or Joseph) is more than likely Mary mother of Jesus. 

The Mary sister of Mary in Johns gospel is more than likely the same and one person, (Tabor shows both having the same named children). Peter Cresswell believes John 19:25 would have originally read “”But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and his mother’s sister, and Mary Magdalene”[9]

This would reconcile the three gospel accounts perfectly. Clopas and Alphaeus in Greek both render the Aramaic word ‘Chalphai’. ‘James son of Alphaeus’ (Mark 3:18) or ‘James the less’ (Mark 15:40) is distinguished from James son of Zebedee brother of John. As James is the son of Alphaeus in all the gospels it stands to reason that Jesus was really Yeshua ben Clopas. According to the Patristics, Simon son of Clophas was supposed to have taken over the movement after the murder of James. (Preserved by Hegesippus as reported by Eusebius in Church History 3.11). Being called ‘James the less’ suggests he was a younger brother of Jesus. (Cf Luke 2:7 where Jesus is firstborn). As Painter puts it:

And he did not know her until she bore a son; and he called his name Jesus. (Matt. 1:25) The natural way to read this implies that Joseph did come to “know” Mary after she bore her son, just as “before they came together” (1:18) implies that they did not “come together” until later. … togther with Luke 2:7, which refers to Jesus as Mary’s “firstborn son,” implying that there were others born later, a view which he found to be confirmed by references to the brothers and sisters of Jesus in other parts of the New Testament.[10]

In another book by Tabor Paul and Jesus, we see Lukes political editorial changes to Mark:[11]

“Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3).”

Luke omits the names of the brothers and has the people ask, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” (Luke 4:22).

Both the gospel of Matthew and Luke remove “son of Mary”, as the gospel of Mark is not aware of Joseph. 

Mark “’Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?’

Matt. ‘Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary?’ (Matt. 13:55).

To call a man the son of his mother would usually imply therefore that his father was unknown – that is to say, he was illegitimate. Both Matthew and Luke changed this.

According to Cresswell, “the gospel of John has two references [to Joseph] that could be taken as Jesus was of the tribe of Joseph, but had a differently named father (John 1:46, 6:42). The latter reads, ‘Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?’”[12]

Dr Price in his book Deconstructing Jesus has suggested Luke changed the northern messianic title Messiah Ben Yoseph into his actual father. Dr Price has shown the rivalries between on the one hand, the northern Israel kingdom and their messiah Ben Yosef and the southern kingdom of Judah and the Davidic messiah, here is a classic bit of commentary by Dr Bob from his book Deconstructing Jesus:

“there is that otherwise baffling episode in which we listen in on Jesus refuting the southern notion that the Messiah must be a descendant of King David (Mark 12:35-37). It would make perfect sense as a bit of polemic aimed from up north in Galilee or Samaria, by Jesus people who rejected any notion of a Davidic Messiah. Mark has preserved it for us, not because he himself rejected the (Davidic) Messiahship of Jesus (he didn’t- Mark 10:47-48), but simply because it was a controversy story showing Jesus trouncing his opponents. Mark didn’t much care what the issue under debate was, as long as he could show Jesus silencing the scribes. But in the process he has told us more than he wanted to……Some scholars have suggested that for Jesus to be called Joseph’s son in the gospels is a later misinterpretation of Jesus’ title as the Galilean Messiah. Just as “Jesus the Nazorean” need not refer to having roots in Nazareth but may instead imply membership in the pious Nazorean sect (see Acts 24:5), “Jesus son of Joseph” may be a messianic title. My guess would be that, once the southern idea of Jesus as a descendant of David caught on, someone tried to reinterpret his northern messianic identity, reinterpreting the epithet “son of Joseph” by making Joseph refer to the immediate, if adoptive, father of Jesus, instead of his remote ancestor, whose prophetic dreams promised him that the sun, moon, and stars would one day bow before him (Genesis 37:9).”[13]Dale Allison has suggested the ending of Mark was cut off as it may have been set in Galilee. “Then again, if the story was set beside the Sea of Galilee (cf. Lk. 5:1-11; Jn 21:1-17), those who, like Luke, thought of the appearances as confined to the south might have wished to expunge it, discreetly pass it by, or move it elsewhere.”[14]

There is more editorial changes in Luke’s efforts to make the family of Jesus anonymous. As seen above Marks crucifixion scene we have “Mary the mother of James and Joses” present. Luke changes this to unnamed women to read “the women who had followed him from Galilee” (Luke 23:49).

At Jesus’ burial scene Mark says that “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses” were at the tomb (Mark 15:47). Here we see Luke changing this account to read “the women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb” (Luke 23:55). This is very deliberate editing out of the names.

In the resurrection scenes Luke has them all in Jerusalem. He yet again edits out Galilee as the scene of the resurrection as Luke is determined not to highlight Jesus’ origins and not to highlight his family. This is because he wants to downgrade anything to do with James, his Galilean origins and where James leadership would have taken hold. In Acts Jesus tells the disciples to “stay in the city” until Pentecost and “do not leave Jerusalem”. 

Luke also edits what the angel or angels say at the tomb. In Mark and Matthew the angel says Jesus will be seen in Galilee. Luke adds two angels and edits the text to say, “remember what he said while he was still with you in Galilee?”

This is deliberate rewriting of history to downgrade James and his leadership in the aftermath of the crucifixion.

Luke also aims to move away from the apocalyptic messianic movement that the Jesus movement was. First he portrays Jesus as a prophet instead of the political title “messiah” right throughout his gospel, second he changes the apocalyptic age to come in Marks gospel by redefining the kingdom of god to mean just Jesus’s ministry, for example this can be seen as he changes this verse in Mark 9:1, ESV: “And he said to them, “Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God after it has come with power.”” to what is found in Luke 9:27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.” There is nothing about it coming in power.

According to Luke Jesus own ministry is the kingdom of god. It is nothing to do with establishing a political kingdom of god right here in earth. In Luke 17:21 he defines “the kingdom of god is in your midst”, there is no end of age here, Luke has changed it to a theological kingdom of god that is Jesus’s ministry.

Familial politics.

When joining rival tribes sometimes we get symbolic brothers, like the later generations of both organisations make their leaders brothers or cousins. This usually helps when one sect is trying to tag onto another. We can see this with the Nazorean and Mandaean movements especially played out in the gospel of Luke.

Only Luke mentions Jesus and John were related. The other gospels seem unaware of it, or consider it a matter of no importance whatsoever. The Gospel of John says Jesus and his disciples started out associated with John the Baptist, but they split off, formed a separate group that competed directly with him. The gospel of John also shows indications of an active debate between the followers of Jesus and John the Baptist as to which of the two was the authentic messiah. There was apparently a rupture in their relationship over something significant.

The Mandaeans literature saw Jesus as a false prophet (ch7 The book of John).

Then you have Steve Mason’s following remark, “Yet we see an obvious and major difference between Josephus and the Gospels in their respective portraits of the Baptist. To put it bluntly, Josephus does not see John as a “figure in the Christian tradition.” The Baptist is not connected with early Christianity in any way. On the contrary, Josephus presents him as a famous Jewish preacher with a message and a following of his own, neither of which is related to Jesus. This is a problem for the reader of the NT because the Gospels unanimously declare him to be essentially the forerunner of Jesus the Messiah.”[15]

Dr R M Price made a very astute observation, “The historical Baptist had no more endorsed Jesus as the one who was to come (as portrayed in the gospels). It means, too, that Christianity failed to co-opt and absorb the Baptist movement. But it tried.”[16]

From the following passage the Baptist movement can easily be seen as an independent separate movement: Acts 19:1-5 “While Apollos was at Corinth, Paul took the road through the interior and arrived at Ephesus. There he found some disciples and asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?”

They answered, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

So Paul asked, “Then what baptism did you receive?”

“John’s baptism,” they replied.

Paul said, “John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus.” On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

From this passage we can deduce that these two movements had existed separately, as shown in Acts the Baptist movement had existed in Asia Minor independent to Christianity, both existed after the death of both Jesus and John the Baptist.

Steve Masons said, “the early Christian tradition has co opted a famous Jewish preacher as an ally and subordinate of Jesus”.[17]You can tell that the Baptist movement was a way more popular at the start by the way Christianity attempted to tag onto John the Baptist in their own propaganda tracts, (ie, the gospels). Even Josephus dedicates more space to John the Baptist passage than to the passage about Jesus. Dr R M Price comparing the Baptist movement to the Simonites led by Simon Magus, christianity had also tried to absorb these as seen from their propaganda in Acts 8:9-24.[18]

 

Rival competing movements aside, when we talk about unified institutions leadership roles are usually passed from family member to family member. At the time of Jesus all the main religions-political movements were run on familial political concepts where a movement passed from father to son or brother. Ethelbert Stauffer provides many examples of this:[19]

 

High Priests, Kings even other messianic figures all had familial political organisations. Annas provided 9 High priests: 5 sons, 1 son-in-law, 1 grandson and 1 grandson-in-law. With the Maccabee Kings it was felt that God had called a family. Anthroges the shepherd had his brothers as generals.

Ancient people thought in a familial political way. This happened from the highest of institutions such as the Emperors to the lowest such as messianic rebel types. Many messianic type movements as seen from  Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmud and the gospels claimed that their messianic leader derived their lineage from the line of David. ( see the genealogies of both Matthew and Luke; cf: 4Q174 III 1-9 is a Midrash on 2 Samuel 7:10-14 (and the use of Exodus 15:17-18, Amos 9:11) for the restoration of Davids house; cf: Erza8:2; Tannit 4.3).

The Emperors at the time of Jesus came from the Julio-Claudio line. Josephus said in Apion 1.7 that the line of High Priests coming from Aaron had to be unbroken. From 6-70CE the house of Annas provided 9 High priests. This concept was not only true of Emperors and High Priests but of the bandits and messianic figures found in Josephus works. 

Hezekial the archbandit eventually beheaded by Herod the Great, founded a family of guerilla kings including his son Judas the Galilean and great grandson Menahem who provided much resistance to Roman rule.

Anthroges the shepherd ( Ant17.10.7, War2.4.3) emulated the shepherd king David and took for himself the diadem in Judea. His movement was also led by his brothers who were all over 6 feet tall. 

In 1 Macc 5:55 some warriors who wanted to go alone, contrary to Judas Maccabee and his brothers orders, failed miserably because they went against the orders of the family God supported (1Macc5:61).

In the gospels we see more of this concept when we see two brothers James and John (same names as the ‘pillars’) wanting to sit at the left and right of Jesus’s messianic title. 

This Judaic principle of familial politics can be seen in the earliest leadership of the Christian Church. A ‘caliphate’ of James was first suggested by Adolf Von Harnack but discussed at length in a paper released by Ethelbert Stauffer. A movement that interpreted Jesus as a new king of the Jews, the tradition of royal succession. Leadership would fall to Jesus’ oldest surviving brother. In this sense the movement’s embrace of James as leader makes sense.

We see much evidence of the relatives of the lord, (1 Cor. 9:5, Gal. 2:19, Acts 1:14) and we see there are many attempts to suppress their leadership role in the NT.

We have the rivalry of seeing the Jesus movement and the jockeying for leadership within this movement. We see many competing factions in the Lord’s resurrection appearance seen in 1 Cor. 15. We have ‘Peter’ and ‘the twelve’ competing with ‘James and the apostles’. Even if this passage was heavily interpolated by competing factions it shows the familial faction as one side and Peter and the twelve in the competing side. 

“In the New Testament, as Harnack and Stauffer argued, we seem to see the remains of a Caliphate of James. And that implies an historical Jesus. And it implies an historical Jesus of a particular type. It implies a Jesus who was a latter-day Judah Maccabee, with a group of brothers who could take up the banner when their eldest brother, killed in battle, perforce let it fall. S.G.F. Brandon made a very compelling case for the original revolutionary character of Jesus, subsequently sanitized and made politically harmless by Mark the evangelist. Judging by the skirt-clutching outrage of subsequent scholars, Mark’s apologetical efforts to depoliticize the Jesus story have their own successors. Brandon’s work is a genuine piece of the classic Higher Criticism of the gospels, with the same depth of reason and argumentation. If there was an historical Jesus, my vote is for Brandon’s version.”[20]

Unlike Bob and Brandon, I don’t see Jesus as a zealot, these groups were much better organized groups to Roman resistance than the Jesus group was. A much better alignment would be to a group Josephus distinguished to the zealots and sicarii and that is the sign prophets. Josephus had said of the sign prophets that they were ‘not so impure in their actions’ (War 2.258).

Getting back to James:

“Following the lead of Ethelbert Stauffer, researchers have even used the language of ‘Caliphate’ to speak of a strong line of succession that derived from Jesus through James”[21]

Dr. Price compares the caliphate to that of the succeeding caliphates of Mohammad.

In another book Deconstructing Jesus, Price said that Jesus was part of a group of Nazoreans, but the gospel of Matthew changed this to being from Nazareth because he could not accept that a Jesus was just one of the group members (being god and all that). This to me suggests the Nazorean group is a lot older than Jesus ministry. Also see all the messianic figures in Josephus, DSS and charismatic figures in the Talmud that were just like Jesus. The familial concept was the way all these movements were run, they would only trust their brothers etc and all this is suggested in the attempted suppression of Jesus’ family in the gospels as Tabor suggests.

The caliphate model is slapped on in light of the ample evidence of the familial political situations that ruled Kings, High Priests, messianic leaders etc.

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[1] C H Lawson, “What if the Historical Jesus was the heir to the throne?  A Reconstruction based on the First Century Dead Sea Scrolls”, Journal of Higher Criticism 17/2 (2022), pp.127-174.

[2] Painter, Just James, The brother of Jesus in History and Tradition, 2nd ed., p.xviii.

[3] Painter, ibid, p.xxv.

[4] Bütz, James, The Brother of Jesus and the lost teachings of Christianity, ch8.

[5] Painter, ibid, p.42.

[6] Painter, ibid, p.56.

[7] Robert Eisenman, James the brother of Jesus, ch.6.

[8] James Tabor, The Jesus Dynasty, pp. 77-80.

[9] Peter Cresswell, Jesus the Terrorist, p.18.

[10] Painter, Just James, p.35

[11] James Tabor, Paul and Jesus, ch.1.

[12] Peter Cresswell, Jesus the Terrorist, p.14.

[13] Dr R M Price, Deconstructing Jesus, ch2

[14] Allison, Resurrection, p.55

[15] Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p.155.

[16] Dr R M Price, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, ch7, where Price was comparing the Baptist movement to the Simonites led by Simon Magus, christianity had also tried to absorb these as seen from their propaganda in Acts 8:9-24.

[17] Steve Mason, Josephus and the New Testament, p.157.

[18] Price, The Amazing Colossal Apostle, ch7.

[19] Ethelbert Stauffer, “The Caliphate of James.” Trans. by Darrell J. Doughty. Journal of Higher Criticism 4/2 (Fall 1997), pp. 120-143; originally: “Zum Caliphate des Jacobus”, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (ZRGG) 1952 p.193-214.

[20] R M Price, The Christ Myth Theory and its problems, p.21

[21] Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner (eds), The Brother of Jesus, James the Just and his mission, p.ix.

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[James was an] embodiment of the ancient lost prestige of the Jerusalem church— a prestige it desperately hoped to recapture. According to ancient tradition, the brother of Jesus was the first bishop of Jerusalem, the “mother of the churches.”

Hugo Méndez, The Cult of Stephen in Jerusalem, p.9.

The word “Messiah” [Anointed one] translated into Greek gave its name to the new religion… the oil extracted from fruit was, like the fat of animals, a symbol of wealth and abundance. In the anointing with oil, the basic idea of Messianism had found its symbolic expression…..a symbol of blessing which god gives. The second Isaias (xlv. 1) gives the name Christ to the heathen king, the Persian Cyrus. In the second psalm, Christ, the son of god, is a victorious prince, probably one of the Maccabeans, who returns to live on Mount Zion….

Albert Kalthoff, The Rise of Christianity, pp.73-4.

“Jewish messianism, both as an interesting phenomenon in the history of religion in its own right and as the context in which the earliest acclamation of Jesus as messiah must be understood.” ~

John J. Collins, The Scepter and the Star, (2nd edition), p.3

In this blog I explore some very similar divergent concepts that existed before Christianity and can be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. As Prof. Schiffman said, ironically if we accept that Christianity is not in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the more we can extract and understand Christianity from the scrolls

       Just like Paul’s epistles, the Scrolls were written by apocalyptic Jews and therefore are extremely useful for understanding Christianity. 

KING AND PRIEST MESSIAH

Frank Moore Cross [1] believes the doctrine of the two messiahs found at Qumran has its roots in the restoration of a diarchy, that of a perfect King and a perfect High Priest, who “shall take office standing by the side of the Lord of the whole earth”. (Zechariah 4:14). People had hoped that these would come about at the end of days. This is known as an eschatological concept coming from the Greek ἔσχατος eschatos meaning “last” and -logy meaning “the study of”. These eschatological Jews hoped to establish a new kingdom right here on earth in the last days. This eschatological concept is most developed in two apocalypses written towards the end of the first century CE, 4 Ezra and 2 Baruch. 

At Qumran, the Damascus Document, the Rule, the War Scroll, the Testamonia (4Q175) and the Testaments of twelve patriarchs all show the doctrine of the two messiahs. The double messiah concept shows a division of power that was already reflected from the time of Moses and Aaron.

     David, the ideal king of the old days, is taken as the archetype of the ideal king of this new eschatological age. Zadok, priest of David and high priest in Solomon’s temple, scion of Aaron is the archetype of the new Zadok, the messiah of Aaron.

     Sometimes you will get the expression “the messiah of Aaron and the one of Israel” ( CD XIV 19). Aaron being the priestly messiah and Israel is the secular messiah both of the projected diarchy that Frank is talking about.

     In Christianity (and to some degree later Rabbinical Judaism) the doctrine of the diarchy was replaced by the merging of the two figures into one. This was caused by the destruction of the Temple when the rule of the High Priest was permanently broken.

     The Dead Sea Scrolls shine a light on the eschatological salvation and also introduce the figure (or figures) of a messiah. They clarify the origins of messianic hope that plays such a central position in Christianity.

HEAVENLY MESSIAH

Melchizedek fits right in there with the binary messianism as he was a priest-king. As Cargill has said,”I came to notice the centrality of Melchizedek and the texts that reference him- Gen.14 and Ps.110 – to every aspect of these various interpretations of binary messianic expectations.”[2].

       Florentino García Martínez [3] also sees in the Melchizedek scroll a “heavenly messiah”. (11QMelch col. II 6-9). [please see the appendix at the end of this Chapter to reference the lines in this passage]. The Melchizedek scroll found in cave 11 is an extremely interesting scroll. It was found in a fragmentary state but as the scroll uses many biblical metaphors and quotes, much of this scroll was able to be reconstructed by the experts who recognized the parts of the Hebrew Scriptures that a particular scroll was quoting. In it a heavenly figure proclaims liberty to the captives at the end of days (eschatological). He sets them free and makes atonement for their sins (lines 5-7). The messenger of Isaiah52:7 is identified in 11QMelch as the anointed of the spirit. (line 18). This Melchizedek redivivus, has a superior anointing to that of the ceremonial oil used for Kings or priests, he has an anointing of the spirit. It is Melchizedek who executed judgment and takes his place as God in the divine council (Psalm 82.1; line 9-14). The text describes the heavenly high priest on the great day of Atonement when Psalm 82 would be fulfilled. “God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.”(Psalm 82.1; line 10).

The protagonist of this text is a heavenly person, an Elohim, called Melchizedek, who at the end of times, will execute justice and be the instrument of salvation. It shows that God was deemed to act through his high priest Melchizedek. The spirit of this heavenly messiah would be applied to a human figure, at the end of days to restore gods kingdom as other types of messiah redivivus figures would.

       Melchizedeks earthly origins serve as a backdrop for his exalted heavenly position. This figure was “king of Salem [i.e., Jerusalem or according to Cargill,[4] he was king of Sodom before Sodom was changed to Salem by the Deuteronomists] and priest of God Most High,” as mentioned in Genesis 14:18-20.

       He was revered by Abraham who paid him tithes, Melchizedek in turn gave Abraham bread and wine.( just like Jesus in the Eucharist). You could compare “the wine and bread brought out by Melchizedek in Gen. 14:18 to a text from Ugarit, which may describe a festival poem used in southern Canaanite Temple ceremony……this gesture [bringing out the bread an wine] on part of Melchizedek should be interpreted as part of an offer of a peace treaty between the King and the man who rescued the people and property of Sodom.” [5] The status of Melchizedek is as a heavenly being can be seen in 2 Enoch and Psalms 110:4.

       It explains in Hebrews how Melchizedek came to be seen as a divine figure. After Adam every character had a genealogy, naming parents etc. but not so for Melchizedek! Therefore he saw him as an eternal divine figure. In Hebrews it’s stated this person had no genealogical record in a book (i.e. Genesis) about genealogical records. Also the author of Hebrews notices his name means “king of righteousness”. (Hebrews7:2-3). He stated he is a high priest just like Jesus not of the Levi order, i.e. a priest of a different order and an eternal order. (Hebrews5:6). Followers of Jesus wanted to claim him as high priest but this would never be accepted as he was not from the line of Levi. Convenient to have him come from Melchizedek instead! So in Hebrews they had Jesus as a Melchizedek redivivus. 

       The author of Hebrews associates Melchizedek to Christ and has established a priestly line distinct from that of Aaron, one from whom Jesus can be derived. ( from the Tribe of Judah, Hebrews 7:14).

       “Others know Melchizedek from his apparent mention in Psalms110.4, where the psalm is typically translated, following the LXX, this way: “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” (NSRV). It is this reference to Melchizedek in Ps. 110 (LXX 109) that heavily influenced the later Christian understanding of him. Many Christians know Melchizedek from his multiple mentions in chapters 5-7 in the New Testament epistle to the Hebrews, where he is invoked as proof that Jesus qualifies as both as king of Israel and as high priest, despite not being of the tribe of Levi.”  [6]

He was King of Righteousness, King of Peace, Son of God, having neither a beginning of days nor an end of life. – Hebrews 7:2-3.

Margaret Barker is a very erudite scholar and it is well worth reproducing what she has to say on Melchizedek here:

“When David conquered Jerusalem, he conquered a Jebusite city which would have had its own established cult and Temple. Of this nothing is known for certain, although it is widely thought that the mysterious Melchizedek figure who appears in the Abraham stories (Genesis 14:18-20) is a memory of the Canaanite high god El Elyon in Jerusalem. The Old Testament never condemned El Elyon when Baal and all other Canaanite gods were denounced which suggest that the high god, in some form, retained a place in the new cult of his ancient city.” [7] 

“The blood ritual and judgment at the heart of time were followed by the great feast of Tabernacles and the enthronement of the Lords anointed in triumph over the judged and defeated powers of evil. This was represented in the Melchizedek text by a quotation from Isaiah: ‘How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, Your Elohim reigns ( Isaiah52:7, 11QMelch).

After the enthronement, the creation was renewed. All this was claimed by the first Christians as giving the truest expression of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The fulfilment of the blood ritual was explored in the epistle to the Hebrews as Jesus as the new Melchizedek. Also in Colossians 2:15 with its assertion that the powers of evil had been defeated and in Revelation with the ascension, enthronement and renewal of creation.” [8]

The Melchizedek scroll describes a heavenly messiah that became associated with Jesus in Hebrews.

PROPHET MESSIAH

Paul E. Hughes [9] sees a prophetic messiah in the scrolls, figures like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But it is Moses (Exodus2-3) that is the ideal prophet messiah type. Both NT and Qumran use Moses as a prophetic and messianic figure. 4Q175 testimonia text, refers to a prophet like Moses, quoting two texts from Deuteronomy, the second of which, Deut18:18-19, is about the raising up of a prophet like Moses in a context that considers the matter of prophetic authority. 4Q377 (Apocrophon Of Moses C) refers to the post-Exodus Sinai revelation implicating a curse on those who fail to keep “all the commandments of the Lord as spoken by Moses his messiah”.(4Q377 2 4-6).

Geza Vermes [10] does not see the Prophet as designated the Messiah, even though he has an eschatological function and is associated with the other two types of messiah: “Until there shall come the Prophet and the Messiahs of Aaron and Israel. (IQ Ser. 9: II)” He does state in a footnote 31 from p.137: “The only possible Qumran example in which the word ‘Messiah’ and the prophetic office seem to be connected is a fragment dealing with the heavenly being, Melchizedek.” [11] As studied by Dale Allison, Matthew models his Jesus on the prophet Moses.[12] This would emulate a great prophet and liberator, thus showing the original political connotations of being the messiah. Dale Allison [13] also sees The Community Rule, 1QS 9:9–11 and 4 Q Testimonia were interpreting scripture to envision their leader as “the prophet like Moses”.

SUFFERING MESSIAH

The concept of Messiah Ben Joseph as a foreseen military failure is not developed until later rabbinic literature. (Targum of Zechariah 12:10). There is no development of a slain messiah prior to the Kokhba revolt, Kosiba may have even inspired this concept.

       In Qumran there is a Joseph text, representing the northern tribes but it is not as developed as the Messiah Ben Yosef concept that is found in much later rabbinic literature. Here we don’t have that concept of a slain messiah.

The Joseph text 4Q372.

In fragment 1 Joseph is mentioned twice:

‘and in all this Joseph was cast into the hands he did not k[now]’ line 10, ‘in all this Joseph [was given] into the hands of foreigners’ line14-15

The opening words of the psalm (line 16) has ‘my father and my god’. The references of God as father is infrequent in Hebrew literature. The NT speaks frequently of God as father.

       The text is referring to the fall of the historical northern kingdom. This study suggests the Joseph figure of 4Q372 appears to be a righteous king or `eschatological patriarch’ who quotes in his death-throes Psalms 89 and 22, like the suffering Ephraim Messiah of Pesikta Rabbati 36-37. ( “Messiah Ben Joseph”).

       The text is reflective of the tension and polemics of the Jerusalem community and the community centered at Mt Gerizim (ie the Samaritans) who based their claim to legitimacy on their descent from Joseph.

       4Q372 is not history but prophecy, a view supported by its verbal forms. It talks of the exile of Joseph and his suffering under foreign rulers. Messiah Ben Joseph belongs to the northern tribes. It speaks of a prayer for restoration of himself and destruction of his enemies occupying his land.

A messiah similar to a suffering messiah such as messiah Ben Joseph is a later development such as seen in Marks gospel. The disciple in Marks gospel misunderstand that Jesus has to suffer and instead had wanted a glorious messiah.[13].

Footnotes

[1] Frank Moore Cross, Notes on the doctrine of the two Messiahs at Qumran and the extracanonical Daniel Apocalypse (4Q246), Current Research and Technological Developments on Dead Sea Scrolls, Volume 20, edited by Parry & Ricks.

[2] Robert Cargill, Melchizedek, King of Sodom, Preface.

[3] Florentino García Martínez, Two Messianic figures in Qumran texts, Current Research and Technological Developments on Dead Sea Scrolls, Volume 20, edited by Parry & Ricks.

[4] Robert Cargill, Melchizedek, King of Sodom, ch1.

[5] ibid.

[6] ibid, introduction

[7] Margaret Baker, The Gate Of Heaven, 15.

[8] ibid, 62-3.

[9] Paul E.Hughes, “Moses’ birth story: A Biblical Matrix for Prophetic Messianism”, Eschatology, Messianism and the Dead Sea Scrolls, Craig & Flint.

[10] Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 137.

[11] ibid, 137, fn 31; Cf. M. de Jonge – A. S. van der Woude, ’11QMelchizedek and the New Testament’, NTS 12 (1966), pp. 301-8; J. T. Milik, ‘Milki-,sedeq et Milki-resa ‘ dans les anciens ecrits juifs et chretiens’, JJS 23 (1972), pp. 95-144.

[12] Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology.

[13] Dale C. Allison, Jr., Scriptural Allusions in the New Testament: Light from the Dead Sea Scrolls (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2018)

This book is fascinating showing where the DSS hits off of the NT.

[13] Eileen M. Schiller, The Psalm of 4Q372 1 Within the Context of Second Temple Prayer, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly Vol. 54, No. 1 (January, 1992), pp. 67-79;

Thiessen, Matthew. “4Q372 1 And the Continuation of Joseph’s Exile.” Dead Sea Discoveries, vol. 15, no. 3, 2008, pp. 380–395.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. 6 After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at once most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

I Cor. I5.5-9

Paul’s list of-post­ resurrection appearances ( I Cor. I5.5-9) turns out to be a competition list between James and the apostles and Cephas and the twelve. Bart Ehrman tells of a pre Pauline tradition of a creed within 1 Cor. 15.3-8. [1]

There are clues that Paul did not devise this statement himself. First is the way Paul introduces it with the words “delivered” and “received” (1 Cor. 15.3). The terminology of “received” and “delivered,” as often noted by scholars, is the kind of language commonly used in Jewish circles to refer to traditions that are handed on from one teacher to the next.

“The terminology of “received” (paralambano, παραλαμβάνω ) and “delivered,” (paradidómi, παραδίδωμι) as often noted by scholars, is the kind of language commonly used in Jewish circles to refer to traditions that are handed on from one teacher to the next.” [2]

Transmitters of the Tradition

In rabbinic literature the chain of tradition is given as follows: Moses received the Torah on Sinai and delivered it to Joshua, who in turn delivered it to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Synagogue (Perkei Avot 1:1).

I have one slight change from Bart’s creed reconstruction in that I see James in the original creed rather than Cephas. ‘Cephas’ and ‘the twelve’ is in competition with ‘James’ and ‘the apostles.’ Bart shows ‘the twelve’ is an import, I also see Cephas added (by Paul) as an import to downplay James. (Ehrman has Cephas at the end of this creed but it could just as easily have been James as he is also mentioned and was the leader of the Jerusalem church according to Gal 2:12).

The creed that is held in 1 Cor. 15:3-8 is

1a Christ died

2b For our sins

3c In accordance with the scriptures

4a and he was buried

1b Christ was raised

2b on the third day

3b In accordance to the scriptures

4b And he appeared to James.

The following is taken from chapter 4 of Bart Ehrmans’ “How Jesus Became God.”

So in the passage in question 1 Cor. 15.3-8, there are a number of indications that it was not Paul’s writing and is pre Pauline. Firstly we have grammatical formations that are foreign to Paul. One is the verb “he appeared” to the “twelve”.

Bart Ehrman finds the original creed is in vv.3-8. The second half of v.6 (“many of whom survive”) and all of v.8 (“last of all he appeared even to me….”) are Paul’s comments on the tradition. There are reasons for thinking the original creed was contained in vv.3-5., this produces a very tightly formulated, brilliantly structured creedal statement.

Stuart G. Waugh has a very interesting reconstruction of this creed where he names nobody (except Christ). [3] Here is Stuart G. Waugh’s reconstruction of 1 Corinthians 15:1~11:

“Now I make known to you, brothers, the Gospel which I preached to you, which you received, in which you also have stood, through which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless in vain you believed. For I handed on to you, in the very first things, that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day. Therefore whether I or they, so we preach and so you believe.”

Waugh’s reconstruction in Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book III, chapter 18, verse 3, and in Tertullian, Against Marcion, 3:8. He uses the Dialogue of Adamas in his reconstruction. If and this can only be an interesting hypothesis as we have to use Marcion cautiously as we do not have accurate MSS of Marcion. If this reconstruction is original it would argue in favour of competing factions adding their names later. It would be a reflection of these rival factions.

Awareners of the parallelism provides some support for the view, going back to Harnack, that we have evidence of rivalry between groups supporting Cephas and James.[4]

One group who were not considered a faction were the 500 and I don’t see this added later. One of the most interesting part of the post resurrection appearances is that he appeared to 500 brothers. Dale Allison cannot figure out who the 500 were that Jesus appeared to in his ressurection appearances, ἔπειτα ὤφθη… πεντακοσιίοις ἀδελφοῖς, after that he appeared to…five hundred brothers (1 Cor. 15:6). But then he gives us a hint of who they might be but as a Christian scholar cannot conceive of it: “with reference to the five hundred, [he] speaks of “brothers” (ἀδελφοί), not “brothers and sisters” (ἀδελφοί καὶ ἀδελφαί),” [5] This hint leads me to think that these could have been the remnants of the group that had revolted in Jerusalem. The gospels do not use this in their narratives as the evangelists try to suppress the movements rebellious past, mentioning this remnant would do nothing for the pacifist layer the gospels were trying to convey. After all this was a movement trying to survive persecution in the aftermath of the Roman Jewish war. “Whereas the apostle was writing to people in Greece, the appearance to the five hundred must have occurred in Israel, where surely the majority of surviving witnesses still lived.” [6]

[1] Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, chapter 4.

[2] From Ehrman “Did Jesus Exist?” Page 122.

[3] Stuart G. Waugh in his blog

http://sgwau2cbeginnings.blogspot.com/2012/06/marcionite-1-corinthians-151-11.html

[4] Painter, Just James, p.108.

[5] Allison, Dale C., Jr., The Resurrection of Jesus, Apologetics, Criticism, History, (Bloomsberry, 2021), p.74

[6] Allison, ibid, p.51

When Paul was plying his missionary trade in the the oriental regions, the competing superior stoic and platonic philosophy affected Paul’s ability for success in his mission. It explains why Paul was not able to make inroads into Athens, (something Luke tried to make up for in his retelling of Christian origins, Acts 17:15-34) but he was able to succeed a little better in the wild city of Corinth. He exacerbated at one stage “More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8). He disregards those displaying superior philosophy:

“Do not deceive yourselves. If any of you think you are wise by the standards of this age, you should become “fools” so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight. As it is written: “He catches the wise in their craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.” (1Cor.3:18-20).

Paul saying the wisdom of the wise shall perish was brilliant marketing as of course smart people would automatically reject this.

So to try and break in Paul says “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” (2 Cor. 10:4.)

In discussing how Paul used philosophy for his theology, Troels Engberg-Pedersen [fn 1] notes:

“Rarely, if ever, does Paul draw manifestly and overtly on any distinct philosophical position that can be directly connected to either Stoicism or Platonism. He simply does not directly speak Stoicism or Platonism. Instead, he does argue on issues that are distinctly philosophical in ways that reflect some form of knowledge of philosophical thinking on those issues; and he does this in such a manner that his arguments are genuinely illuminated by bringing in distinctly philosophical ideas from this or the other type of philosophy.”

Here are some of the philosophical themes Paul used to argue his case (page numbers from book in footnote):

P205
“In Galatians “Paul distinguishes between the ‘spirit’ (pneuma) and the law, connects the latter with the ‘flesh’ (sarx), …”

P207
“… Paul operates with the pneuma and the sarx as ‘apocalyptic’ powers that are fighting one another over getting control of the Galatians.”

P208. “Romans 7:7–8:13 … show the vital difference between living under the Mosaic law alone (as described in 7:7–25, cf. 7:5) and being filled with the pneuma of Christ (8:1–13, cf. 7:6). Once again, we find the curious mixture of ‘apocalyptic’ thinking (of the pneuma and sarx as independent powers) and a cognitive, philosophical perspective that we noted in the Galatians passage.”

In Paul’s joining of the Jesus group, Paul tells us it (Gal 1:16) was that God revealed his Son IN Paul. The spirit of the Son entered Paul. Similarly the spirit of the Son enters Christians generally and they become Sons of God. (Gal. 3:16) This is, obviously, a spirit possession cult, maybe not obvious to all. Modern translators try to say god revealed his son to Paul as in a vision but this is not what the Greek says. So the cult members were known as “in Christ”.

This spirit possession was seen through an eschatological lens.

Paul hints that experience of the Spirit is closely linked with the eschatological hope. Thus, in outlining the present period of travail in Romans 8.11 ff., he speaks of Christians being the ones who have the first fruits of the Spirit (v.23). The implication is that, despite having already tasted of that glory (cf. Heb. 6.5), even Christians long for a greater liberation still to be made manifest; Christians too, therefore, join in the travail of the messianic woes which precede the coming of God’s kingdom (cf. 2 Cor. 1.22).

Christopher Rowland [*1]

This spirit possession of the Lord in eschatological terms had a precedent in Ezekiel:

I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God (NRSV).

Ezek 36:25-28

Jesus was a realized messiah, the first fruits and the movement Paul was writing to were to be possessed by “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you”, (Rom. 8.11), they were to be like mini christs. Paul saw himself as a host for the spirit Christ, i.e. a spirit possession cult:

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

(Gal. 2:19-20)

As Michael B. Thomson says “Paul’s vision for ministry included the transformation of individuals and communities into the saviour’s likeness (2 Cor 3:18). He laboured so that Christ would be ‘formed’ in his hearers (Gal 4:19), that his congregations would grow up into the image of the one into whom they had been baptized (Rom 6)” [2]

In the Graeco-Roman world, pneuma was understood as a material substance, often associated with the divine, and considered responsible for new life and vitality in human anatomy. When the Gentiles receive the spirit of the Son into their hearts and thus cry out ‘Abba’ to God, they take in something of the essence of Christ. Thus for Paul baptism is an embodied transformation. The spirit materially changes the Gentiles into Gentiles-in-Christ, securing the new connection between the baptized, Christ, and the founding ancestor, Abraham.
[This is all laid out in ] Galatians 3:26–29.

Caroline Johnson Hodge, Paul and Ethniticity [3]

Paul also promised the Corinthians all new bodies in the ressurection, continuing with Troels Engberg-Pedersen essay:

P209
“Paul’s “notion of a ‘pneumatic [“spiritual”] body’ (Cor. 15:44) he is drawing on the Stoic idea that the ‘heavenly bodies’ like the sun, moon, and stars (cf. 15:40–41) were made up of material bodies whose materiality consisted precisely in their being put together by pneuma (Engberg- Pedersen 2010). In addition, Paul insists, in a manner for which one may find a counterpart in Aristotle (Asher 2000), that the pneumatic, heavenly, resurrection bodies will come into being through a process that will take the form of a genuine transformation. This particular earthly and mortal body will ‘put on immortality’ (15:53) in the sense of undergoing what Aristotle called a ‘substantive change’ (from this something into this something that is substantially different).
The second noteworthy thing is the extent to which Paul situates his whole argument squarely within a hierarchical cosmology of the usual kind in Graeco-Roman philosophical physics, with earth and heaven figuring as opposed poles that are also evaluatively asymmetrical. Within this cosmology there are beings (those that possess ‘flesh’: human beings, animals, birds and fishes, 15:39) who all have a ‘psychic body’—that is, they are alive—as opposed to what holds of inorganic matter. Only some of those with a ‘psychic [p.210] body’, namely, human beings, may then receive a ‘pneumatic body’. In short, there is a complete (ancient philosophical) scala naturae implied in this argument.
And why? Apparently because Paul did not just settle for telling the Corinthians of the ‘mystery’ (15:51) that he does reveal by means of suitably ‘apocalyptic’ imagery (the last trumpet etc.). Instead, he wanted to construct a reasoned picture of what would happen, one that was at least in principle discussable in ancient cosmological terms.”

————————————
Footnote:

[1] This OP draws on the scholarship of Troels Engberg-Pedersen, “Paul the Philosopher” in Handbook in Pauline studies, Eds Novenson and Matlock, Oxford 2022, ch. 11.

[*1] Christopher Rowland, Christian Origins, An Account of the Setting and Character of the most Important Messianic Sect of Judaism, 2nd edition, p.112

[2] Michael B. Thomson, “Paul and Jesus” in Handbook in Pauline studies, Eds Novenson and Matlock, Oxford 2022, p.396.

[3] Caroline Johnson Hodge, “Paul and Ethniticity” in Handbook in Pauline studies, Eds Novenson and Matlock, Oxford 2022, p.555

TWO FEEDINGS
Mark’s gospel has two versions of the miraculous multiplication of loaves and fishes (6:34-44; 8:1-9).

HISTORICISTS EXPLANATION
The thing that strikes us first is perhaps the suspicion that a single basic sequence was passed on intact by means of a process of oral transmission which eventually allowed many of the details to change and develop, until there were (at least) two versions circulating by the time Mark encountered the tradition. They were different enough that he decided not to risk leaving either set out. Like a modern fundamentalist faced with a set of biblical contradictions, Mark may have assumed similar events happened twice. At any rate, the mere fact of the doubling of the story chain is highly significant, since it allows us to gauge the kind of variation and evolution that was possible in the oral tradition.

SEMITISM:
Semitisms are linguistic features within the Greek texts which are dissimilar and otherwise unused in the Greek language but common and well known in the Semitic languages and translations of Semitic texts such as the LXX.

Hebrew and Aramaic use particles or prepositions to indicate the case of a noun and its function in the phrase or sentence. (unlike Greek which has an inflectional noun declension), so overuse of nouns and pronouns connected to possession, nominative, and accusative case is extremely bizarre writing in Greek but normal in NW Semitic.

Redundancy of Nominal/Accusative/Genitive phrases
-συμπόσια συμπόσια 2x in Mark 6:39-42

Idiomatic Narrative Phrases

• ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν in Mark 6:37
• Ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις in Mark 8:1
• ἔκλασεν καὶ ἐδίδου in Mark 8:6

This would mean that there was a previous text which would have been translated from a Semitic language into Greek.
———————————————————-
MIRRORING THE SEPTUAGINT
The two sea miracles recall Moses’ parting the sea (Exod. 14), while the pair of feeding miracles mirror Moses’ feeding the Israelites in the wilderness with manna and quails (Exod. 16; Num. 11:4-15, 18-23, 31-32) and Elisha’s miraculous multiplication of food in 2 Kings 4:1-7 and 4:42-44.
———————————————-
SOURCE Deconstructing Jesus, Dr Price.
———————————————

MEN ONLY AT FIRST FEEDING
At Mark6:44 the word ‘ANER’ (ανηρ) is used. It is a Greek word for male gender only. This was very strange to have males only at the first feeding so Matthew changed this to include women and children. Why male only? Because it parallels with both 2Kings4:43, “How can I set this before 100 men…”
Not only that but it also parallels with a feeding in the Odyssey by Homer of only men……

HOMER EPICS AND THE GOSPEL OF MARK P86 onwards (MacDonald).
“When Telemachus and Athens arrived at Pylos they witnessed a feast to Poseidon on the shore at which the celebrants sat divided into units and 500 men were in each, 4500. Later Homer makes it clear that this is a feast only the men of Pylos participated. The male only party in Homer presumably is due to the nature of the feast – a sacrifice by sailors to secure favorable weather and seas from Poseidon.
The 5000 whom Jesus served at the shore of the Sea of Galilee likewise were exclusively male. Mark gives no justification for the presence of men only. Matthew added women and children.
The correlations of disembarkation at shores and the feedings of 4500 or 5000 men are not accidental. They are Marcan flags.
Homer’s second feast at Menelaus’s Sparta was lavish but presumably smaller and because it was a wedding feast it included women.
Similarly the crowd in Mark’s second meal though substantial, is smaller than at the first and like the Spartan wedding seems to have included women.”
————————————————-
SOURCE Homeric Epic and the gospel of Mark, MacDonald.
————————————————-

WHICH IS MORE LIKELY?
ORAL TRADITION
Or
MARK USED SOURCES OF KINGS, EXODUS, NUMBERS AND THE ODYSSEY.

Part 20 of my Historical Jesus series

Raphael Lataster wrote in an article in 2014:

“Even when discussing what appear to be the resurrection and the last supper, his only stated sources are his direct revelations from the Lord, and his indirect revelations from the Old Testament. In fact, Paul actually rules out human sources (see Galatians 1:11-12).” [1]

Yet Paul does indeed hint at alternate forms of knowledge about Jesus. While he is adamant that his specific circumcision-free gospel was received via revelation, he also has to concede that he once went to meet with Peter, James and John to run his understanding of the gospel by them to ensure that he “had not run in vain.” (Gal. 2:2).

In the last part we discussed Gal. 1:11-12 where many mythicists think that Jesus is a revelatory being only, and this revelatory Jesus was Paul’s only source of information on the gospel (doctrines) of the Jesus movement. This tends to be the crux of the Carrier-Doherty hypothesis and other agnostic adherents such as Lataster. Granted it is clear that he considers his own inventions as something given from above. Yet it is only when Paul claims he gets his information (or knowledge gnosis) on some of the aspects of the gospel which happen to be in contradiction to the movement’s gospel, that Paul says he gets it from revelatory Jesus. Yet not everything he gets is from revelation (except his own version of the gospel which is in contradiction to the movement’s gospel).

              When Paul joined, he received the gospel from the movement and distorted it himself as I will show in this article. 

“Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” (Gal. 1:7)

From that passage you can see the opponents of Paul had the same gospel about Jesus but were ‘correcting’ Paul’s version.

Paul is so jealous of the Jamesian side checking up on him (2 Cor.11:4, Gal. 1.6-9) that it is evident this movement was around before he joined. Also there is evidence of pre-existing creeds (eg 1 Rom. 1:3-4 ;1 Cor.15:3-8) and pre existing ritual (1 Cor. 11:22-25) that all show a thriving movement in existence. (Discussed below).

As seen in the last part, Paul was on James’s circumcision team at first. You can see the earlier expression of the Jesus movement but now Paul was now coming out of the law observant aspect:

“Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.” (Gal. 5:11)

Here in this article I show you that Paul does not rule out human sources for everything. That agnosticism on the historicity of Jesus is not necessary. In fact with my last bunch of blogs (here, here, here and here) and this one, historicity can quite easily be established.

            Sometimes Paul gets his information from sources other than revelation (apocalypse).

The fact that Paul specifically claims he has a revelation proves this to be an exception to the rule that generally he “receives” tradition. His need to explicitly note his revelation proves that he differentiates revelation from regular reception/teaching which he does in Galatians:

“1:12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by a revelation (apokalypseōs, ἀποκαλύψεως) from Jesus Christ.

13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it.” (Gal. 1:12-13)

•In Gal. 1:12 specifically notes that this specific kind of “received” bit he got was not from man or a teaching (didache).

•In Gal. 1.13 Paul openly claimed that he used to persecute Christians before he converted. Which means he must have known at least something about what Christians preach before his conversion (he wouldn’t have persecuted them for literally no reason). Which in turn means he learned at least something about what Christians preached from other men. Not everything Paul learned about Jesus was from revelation, it’s only his version of gospel that Paul learned from his own revelation. This was so Paul could legitimise his version of the gospel above those of the “pillars”.

“Now, brothers and sisters, if I come to you and speak in tongues, what good will I be to you, unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or word of instruction?” (1 Cor. 14:6)

As seen in this verse Paul explicitly defines a difference where he distinguishes teachings (didache) from revelation. Other examples of his explicit notation of revelation include Galatians 2:2, Romans 16:25, 2 Cor. 12:7.

“I went in response to a revelation and, meeting privately with those esteemed as leaders, I presented to them the gospel that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure I was not running and had not been running my race in vain.” (Gal. 2:2)

Here in these examples he isn’t saying he received a tradition, but received his “gospel” via a “revelation” (apocalypse).

Why was Paul afraid of running … in vain? He feared of being turfed out of the movement, so he was comparing his gospel with that of the Jerusalem council. As Gerd Lüdemann once stated, they hardly talked about the weather. So in this example of revelation it still has human source on the gospel of the Jerusalem Council.

So in these ‘revelation’ verses means that because he treats these as separate categories, unless he is explicitly saying he has revelation, there is no reason to accept that revelation was how he received the tradition. I will note other examples where he explicitly distinguishes between:

a) that which is taught and received, and b) that which is revealed.

Now let me discuss a different source.

“I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the traditions just as I passed them on to you.” (1 Cor 11:2)

From that verse you see Paul is passing on traditions he got from the movement. Paul also indicates himself he received his gospel message from others in First Corinthians:

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance”(1 Cor. 15:3)

Paul himself had received a Christian message, before he started to proclaim it. This particular tradition that Paul passes on is a pre-Pauline creed. (Discussed next section) Paul uses the language of passing on an oral tradition. Here, the language is like a tradition that has been refined into a creed. It’s evidence for what people before Paul believed. Paul isn’t saying he got this from mystical sources (dreams, revelations). He’s saying the opposite.

           Paul’s Last Supper formula origin (1 Cor.11:22-25) is that he is passing on what he has received and that he thinks the origin is Jesus. By implication of the terminology he uses, his tutors or predecessors gave it to him. Or he simply learnt it from participating in Jewish Christian communities. The idea that he received everything in visions from above is not a proper nuance of what’s going on here.

          The terminology of “received” (paralambano, παραλαμβάνω ) and “delivered,” (paradidómi, παραδίδωμι) as often noted by scholars, is the kind of language commonly used in Jewish circles to refer to traditions that are handed on from one teacher to the next.” [2]

            In rabbinic literature the chain of tradition is given as follows: Moses **received** the Torah on Sinai and **delivered** it to Joshua, who in turn delivered it to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Synagogue (Perkei Avot 1:1).

           Paul is very emphatic about the fact that what he got from Jesus in visions was confirmed by what the apostles were already teaching. The only reason he says he gets things directly from visions was to put himself above the ‘pillars’. Paul always tries to make himself out greater than the ‘pillars’ so of course he says “he received it from the Lord” (what better authority), Paul would never have been so foolish to use common Jewish terminology  “paralambano” which indicates he is receiving a tradition handed down. This indicates a ritual picked up rather than something Paul just hallucinated.

         This Last Supper formula also has the markers of a Jewish Oral Tradition which is taken to mean that this is actually the oldest piece we have about Jesus, this along with other pre Pauline traditions (discussed below) incorporated in Paul’s epistles show it is already an oral tradition before Paul receives it.

Which means that because he treats these as separate categories, unless he is explicitly saying he has revelation, there is no reason to accept that revelation was how he received the tradition (because he otherwise explicitly notes said revelations).

PRE-PAULINE LITERATURE INCORPORATED IN PAULS EPISTLES.

Bart Ehrman tells many pre Pauline traditions. [3] They are in a different style – poetic vs. the usual prose of Paul’s work. I will examine these now.

Paul’s Last Supper formula

In First Corinthians as discussed already indicates a church ritual tradition of Eucharist (thanksgiving) already widespread. 

“For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:22-25)

Paul actually gives the hint that this “new” ritual is an ancient idea, the consuming of Christ as “spiritual food” in 1 Cor. 10:1-17

“Our forefathers … ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ …

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.” (1 Cor. 10:1-17).

In another graphic metaphor Paul speaks of “Christ, our Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5:7) and he piles in references to yeast, bread, dough and anything else he can think of to give his ritual fulsome Jewish antecedents. It was a celebratory meal held by communicants. Consummation of a God has a very ancient pedigree that goes back to Egyptian times.

Creed at the start of Romans

“Concerning his Son—born from David’s seed according to the flesh, 4Marked out by resurrection of the dead as God’s Son in power according to a spirit of holiness—Jesus the Anointed, our Lord, “. (Rom. 1:3-4)

Seems to be a quotation of an earlier hymn or creed. This particular creed shows that the earliest Christians thought that Jesus became divine after his resurrection.

            These pre Pauline traditions show post resurrection adoptionest views, where God adopted his son as divine sonship after the resurrection. (Later adoptionists using the gospels, implied God adopted his son at the baptism).

(Cf Acts 13:32-34).

Here is the reconstructed creed:

“Born from David’s seed,

Concerning his son,

According to the flesh,

Marked out by Resurrection,

of the dead, Son of God,

According to the Spirit.”

The Philippians hymn

6 who, though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God

   as something to be exploited, 

7 but emptied himself,

   taking the form of a slave,

   being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, 

8   he humbled himself

     and became obedient 

     to the point of death—

   even death on a cross. 

9 Therefore God also highly exalted him

   and gave him the name

   that is above every name, 

10 so that at the name of Jesus

E P Sanders just shows Paul picking up traditions some of which just contradicted each other, “The two most substantial passages in which he commented on who Jesus was are Romans 1:1–6 and Philippians 2:5–11. In the first passage he states that Jesus was ‘descended from David according to the flesh and designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead’. The reader of this passage would understand that Jesus was ‘designated’ Son of God, and further that he was designated such only at the time of the resurrection. In later terminology, this is an ‘adoptionist’ Christology. Jesus was adopted by God as Son, not born that way.

   every knee should bend,

   in heaven and on earth 

     and under the earth, 

11 and every tongue should confess

   that Jesus Christ is Lord,

   to the glory of God the Father. 

(Philippians 2:6-11; Cf Isaiah 45:23-25)

The second passage goes to the other extreme. According to Philippians 2:5–11, Jesus was ‘in the form of God’ before he was born, but then he took on ‘the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men’. The passage continues, ‘and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death’. God ‘highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name’, that is, Lord. Here, strikingly, the word ‘Son’ does not appear. Instead one gets ‘form’: Jesus was in the form of God, then he was in the form of a slave, that is, he was in human form…..the passage basically states that Jesus Christ was pre-existent and was in some sense divine, but that he became human before being exalted even higher than he had originally been, to the status ‘Lord’.

One sees that it is impossible to derive from Paul’s letters anything approaching one single doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ. It is possible that both the passages just quoted are pre-Pauline in origin, in which case they show that he drew on, rather than composed, quite diverse statements, one offering a ‘low’ Christology, the other a ‘high’ Christology.” [4].

Resurrection creed

This creed has a number of indications that it was not Paul’s writing and is pre Pauline. There are grammatical formations that are foreign to Paul such as the verb “he appeared” to the “twelve”.

         The original creed is in vv.3-8. The second half of v.6 (“many of whom survive”) and all of v.8 (“last of all he appeared even to me….”) are Paul’s comments on the tradition. There are reasons for thinking the original creed was contained in vv.3-5., this produces a very tightly formulated, brilliantly structured creedal statement.

1a Christ died

 2b For our sins

  3c In accordance with the scriptures 

   4a and he was buried 

1b Christ was raised

 2b on the third day

  3b In accordance to the scriptures

   4b And he appeared to James.

(Ehrman has Cephas at the end of this creed but it could just as easily have been James as he is also mentioned and was the leader of the Jerusalem church according to Gal 2:12).

Conclusion

In conclusion to this blog I will reiterate the mythicist position as repeated by Carrier and show how easily it can be dismissed in three steps.

Carrier asks in one of his blogs, “When we sweep away all imaginary and hypothetical evidence and draw conclusions solely from actual evidence (and stop using fallacious, self-refuting arguments), we end up with at least one plausible alternative (as a dozen experts now agree): when Paul appears to say the only way anyone ever met Jesus is in visions, how it appears is how it was. That is in fact the simplest explanation of the evident facts. We can retool our hypothesis of historicity, add a bunch of ad hoc excuses for why Paul would only ever, and repeatedly, talk that way and no other, despite Jesus having recently been a renowned executed criminal who hand-picked his Disciples in life. And with that newly elaborate theory we can get the evidence in Paul at least to fit our new hypothesis. But that it fits does not make it the more probable. It rather only leaves us with at best a 50/50 chance it is what it seems, or it is what you have elaborately now proposed. So what evidence do you have that your newly elaborated theory is correct? You can’t circularly appeal to your hypothesis as evidence for your hypothesis. And you can’t fabricate evidence that doesn’t exist. So what then?” [5].

All this is quite easily answered,

1) Paul never says that is the only way people knew of Jesus. (Of course if a person is dead, the only way of contact from then on is through visions, but that was not the only ever way as Carrier insists. (When Jesus was alive as on the historicist hypothesis then obviously before he was executed you could have met him in person. Sorry to be so obvious but some obvious facts staring mythicists in the face have to be spelled out to them).

2) Only one passage refers to Paul getting his Gospel by Revelation.

3) This passage is about a specific salvific message of Jesus, not his life.

So really mythicism is only more probable with Carrier insisting on only his interpretations and his own readings into Paul’s epistles. It is much better let the epistles interpret themselves using comparable apocalyptic Jewish literature and attitudes of first century apocalyptic Jews so that these epistles will no longer sound so “weird” as Carrier often states. Given an examination of Paul’s sources, has more than sufficiently refuted the idea that Jesus was a revelatory being only.

(I wish to thank Christopher M. Hansen and Tim O’ Neill whose commentary in my Facebook group [6] helped immensely with this blog).

Back to HOMEPAGE

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[1] Lataster, Raphael, The Truth About ‘Historical Jesus’ in this link

http://theconversation.com/weighing-up-the-evidence-for-the-historical-jesus-35319

[2] Ehrman, Bart, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, (Harper Collins, 2012), p.122.

[3] Bart Ehrman, How Jesus became God, ch4.

[4] E P Sanders, Paul: A Very Short Introduction, ch8

[5] Extract taken from this blog:

Lataster v. McGrath: Jesus Must Be Real…Because, Reasons

[6] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1038530526485151/

PART 19 of my Historical Jesus series.

The most exciting scholarship on Paul is called “mirror reading”. As you know we only have one side of Paul’s conversation. How we know the “authentic 7” are genuine letters [1] is because reading those letters is like listening to one side of a telephone conversation. I say 7 in parenthesis as the 7 letters written by Paul are not necessarily literary units but instead more likely a mashing together of multiple letters. They don’t sound like fake letters, fake letters have well developed abstract treaties, these on the contrary are occasional, bad tempered and polemical. This provides endless fascination as attempts are made to reconstruct the situation that caused Paul to be so angry, why he insists he does not lie and why he told his opponents that he wished they would castrate themselves! (Gal. 5:12). When Paul says he’s not lying- that’s the sign Paul is answering opponents. (Gal. 9:20; Rom. 9:1;2 Cor.11:31). We are aware that Paul is battling powerful Opponents who are accusing him of all sorts of things. In the last part I showed that these opponents were actually quoting Jesus against him, We recognize that Paul is actually answering accusations being told to his congregations.

A certain mistrust always remained between Paul and the Jerusalem Assembly headed by James, between the former persecutor and now self proclaimed apostle. Much tension comes because Paul is a “Johnny come lately” and not among the original apostles. In “1 Cor. 15:3-8, which strongly suggests that Paul was never included in the official list of resurrection witnesses compiled by the church in Jerusalem.” [2] This is what is known as a pre Pauline tradition. [3] Paul “tries to explain his omission from the official apostolic witnesses on the grounds that he is the least of the apostles and unfit to be called an apostle because of his prior persecution of the church.”[4] He defends his apostleship right from the start of Galatians (Gal 1:1). Let us now show you the mirror reading that has been done on Paul’s letters by various scholars.

“I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (Gal 1:11-12)

          It is only when he is preaching his own gospel which opposes the Jerusalem council does he say he received it from a revelatory being – Jesus Christ. But of course he would say that as his gospel is in direct contradiction to the actual leaders of the movement. He needed a higher authority to counter the accusations that were being thrown at him.

The interpretation that Paul is insisting his gospel is much better than the gospel from the Jerusalem authorities has better explanatory power of Gal. 1:11-12 rather than that Jesus is a revelatory being only, which tends to be the crux of the Carrier-Doherty hypothesis. Being a revelatory being does not rule in one way or the other in favor of mythicism. You can just as easily have revelations of somebody who previously lived (which is exactly what is stated (2 Cor 5:16, Rom. 5:15, Gal 4:4, in fact there are too many damn human references to rule in mythicism’s favour in Paul’s letters) (see part 15). Paul is very emphatic about the fact that what he got from Jesus in visions was confirmed by what the apostles were already teaching. The only reason he says he gets things directly from visions was to put himself above the ‘pillars’.

           Paul set out this from the very start of his letter:

“Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead.” (Gal 1:1)

By the tension contained in these letters you can tell that Paul’s personal credentials were being questioned especially as he was diverging from Jewish Law (or at least relegating it down a peg or two). Paul wanted to show that his gospel is of superior quality to those super apostles before him, that he got his gospel from a higher authority.

“Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Gal 1:10)

Paul rhetorically asks this as he claims that he does not have to please the ‘pillars’ of the Jesus movement but God alone. Yet with some mirror reading we can show the agitators [this is what Paul calls them] said that Paul received his gospel from the same Jerusalem authorities. (Gal. 1:18-2:9) and that they were only there to perfect Paul’s gospel (Gal. 4:21) with circumcision and observing cultivate festivals. (Gal. 4:10) [5]

The Galatian believers, largely of non-Jewish background (4:8), are being persuaded to adopt key elements of the Jewish cultural tradition — most dramatically (for the menfolk), circumcision (5:2-6; 6:12-13; cf. 5:12). Paul warns them of the implications of this move: a commitment to observe the whole Law (5:3). [6] It appears that they did not plan to oppose Paul or his theology directly but instead to offer a completion to it. This is evident in Gal. 3:3 where Paul angrily asks, ‘ Having started out with the Spirit, are you now finishing up with the flesh?’ [7]

Since Paul considers that the Galatians are being ’bewitched’ by the persuasion of his opponents (Gal. 3:1), and since the Galatians are turning all too quickly to the ‘other gospel’ (Gal. 1:6), it may be fair to conclude that, generally speaking, in answering the Galatians Paul is in fact countering the opponents themselves and their message.[8]

              From Paul’s own mouth….Peter pursues the mission to the Jews (Law observant); Paul pursues the mission to the Gentiles (Law-free) (Gal. 2:7) [9]. But as Martyn asks if there was a “possibility that at least some early Christian preachers directed their evangelistic message to Gentiles without surrendering observance of the Law, then one can think immediately of reasons why Paul and Luke would have suppressed evidence pointing to such activity.” As is obvious, the New Testament is the collection of the documents of the victorious party, Outside sources show there was a law observant missionaries to the gentiles, this is viewed against the background of Jewish Christianity. Sim recognizes the problem that “We have no documents directly produced by the Jerusalem church and its leading members.” but we are not completely in the dark about the other side. Martyn uses two second century sources from Jewish Christianity (or Christian Judaism) to corrobated a Law-observant mission to Gentiles. These are The Ascents of James and The Preachings of Peter, both letters are embedded in the Pseudo-Clementine literature. [10] Paul’s interlocutors are similar to those in extra biblical independent sources of Jewish Christians having a law observant mission to the gentiles. This is preserved in Jewish Christian literature. The Preachings of Peter cohere very well with Jewish Christian teachings and see Paul as the person  ‘who is my enemy’. Pauls opponents teachings are corroborated with the Ascents of James which also sees the law observant mission as grounded in genesis promise of ascendance of Abraham. Paul gets terribly interested in Abraham in Galatians and is answering a question not in Genesis. If it is not in Genesis it is more likely a response to the teaching of the opponents.

               Theissan also reconstructs where on the divergent spectrum of beliefs by Jews, at which point Paul and James were. Matthew Theissen discusses five major reactions of. different sets of divergent Jews and what positions they would take in relation to converting gentiles. [11] Here I will reproduce two of those positions, the one Paul belonged to and the other position his opponents took. The rift and polemics contained in Paul’s epistles all have to do with the gentile problem!

Now for two of the major position that Theissen discusses-

1. Eschatological:

In 2nd century BCE the Animal Apocalypse provides a striking example of this pattern: at the eschaton, God transforms the gentiles, who are portrayed as unclean animals, into white bulls, that is, clean animals (1 Enoch 90.37–38).

Still they stay as gentiles.

For those called “Righteous gentiles”, there was the Noahide law that didn’t expect circumcision, nor did they have to follow anything but to live a righteous life and follow the seven Noahide laws and were assured a place in the hereafter.  

God does not transform them into Jews (sheep). They remain gentiles, but have now undergone a miraculous genealogical purification that makes them acceptable to God.

2. Conversion:

The Jamesian arch, Paul’s opponents and only seen in Paul’s polemics had a different solution to the gentile problem. According to those who held this view, gentiles could and should become Jews, joining Israel in its worship of the one true God and adopting the entirety of the Jewish law as one’s way of life.

“As later rabbis observed, Genesis 17 links circumcision to God’s covenant with Abraham in an unparalleled way by mentioning ברית thirteen times in connection with the institution of circumcision (m. Ned. 3.11).”

The fact that Abraham figures prominently in both Galatians and Romans, Paul’s two letters that are most concerned about the possibility of gentiles adopting the Jewish law and the rite of circumcision, suggests that he was responding to a message that pointed to Abraham and his circumcision as a model for gentiles-in-Christ. 

So to counter the opponents throwing Abraham’s model circumcision, Paul insists “Abraham’s initial acceptance by God, the fact that he was already reckoned righteous at the stage in his story marked by Gen. 15.6, that is, prior to his subsequent circumcision (Gen. 17), as Rom. 4.9-11 makes clear.” [12] Abraham’s faith preceded his circumcision: it was thus that he could be held up as the spiritual father of the uncircumcised (Rom. 4:10-11). Indeed, the pronouncement of Abraham’s faith (Gen. 15) precedes that of his circumcision (Gen. 17). [13]

Paul says Jesus was under the law “born of a woman under the [Mosaic] law” (Gal 4:4).

It’s unusual to state that Jesus was under the law, unless Paul was yet again fighting the Jerusalem council who stated this very obvious fact. 

Those who want to impress people by means of the flesh are trying to compel you to be circumcised. The only reason they do this is to avoid being persecuted for the cross of Christ. (Gal 6:12)

Those in the movement that don’t make a full conversion, would be under threat from those Jewish neighbors (in trouble with people like Paul before he joined the movement) and would possibly be attacked. The teachers insisting that the converts get circumcised were acting from pressure of a zealous movements in Jerusalem in the lead up to the Roman Jewish war. This nationalistic swing affected the Jerusalem Assembly’s insistence that the Gentiles get circumcised. [14] Paul suggests that this was actually a change in policy on their part. (Gal. 2:3).

Paul also originally taught circumcision but has stopped. An earlier expression of Christianity. Paul coming out of the law observant (gal 5:11)

He was on the team of his opponents.

11 Brothers and sisters, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished. (gal 5:11)

All this of course eventually blew up in The Antioch incident of Gal. 2:11-14, that I discussed previously in part 17.

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[1] Pauline letters that are authentic according to consensus Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon.

[2] Sim, David C. “The Family of Jesus and the Disciples of Jesus in Paul and Mark: Taking Sides in the Early Church’s Factional Dispute.” in Paul and Mark, Comparative Essays Part I, Two Authors at the Beginnings of Christianity, Ed. Oda Wischmeyer, David C. Sim and Ian J. Elmer, ( 2014, de Gruyter), p.75.

[3] The original creed is in vv.3-8. The second half of v.6 (“many of whom survive”) and all of v.8 (“last of all he appeared even to me….”) are Paul’s comments on the tradition. There are reasons for thinking the original creed was contained in vv.3-5., this produces a very tightly formulated, brilliantly structured creedal statement.

1a Christ died

 2b For our sins

  3c In accordance with the scriptures 

   4a and he was buried 

1b Christ was raised

 2b on the third day

  3b In accordance to the scriptures

   4b And he appeared to James.

(Ehrman has Cephas at the end of this creed but it could just as easily have been James as he is also mentioned and was the leader of the Jerusalem church according to Gal 2:12).

For more on Pre Pauline traditions, see Bart Ehrman, How Jesus became God, ch4.

[4] Sim, ibid, p.77

[5] Jewett, Robert, The Agitators and the Galatian Congregation, New Testament Studies / Volume 17 / Issue 02 / January 1971, p. 207.

[6] Barclay, John M.G., Paul and the Gift, ch.11

[7] Jewett, Robert, ibid, p.208.

[8] Barclay, John M.G., Mirror-reading a polemical letter: Galatians as a test case, Department of Biblical Studies University of Glasgow, JSNT, 31 (1987), p.74-75.

[9] Martyn, J. L., (1985).  A  Law-Observant Mission to Gentiles:  The Background of Galatians. Scottish Journal of  Theology, 38, p.308

[10] ibid, p.309.

[11] Paul and the Gentile problem, Matthew Thessian, ch1.

[12] Dunn, James D. G.,The New perspective on Paul, (Eerdmans, 2005), p.47ff

[13] Lüdemann, Paul: The founder of Christianity (Prometheus, 2002)

[14] Jewett, Robert, ibid, p.204-206.

BACK TO HOMEPAGE

As a historicist, it is important not to presume the historicity of Jesus, so here I am going to examine one idiosyncratic phrase Paul uses in his letters.

These are the two passages that use the phrase “brother/s of the Lord”.

Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and brothers of the Lord and Cephas?

1 Cor. 9:5

I saw none of the other apostles except James, the brother of the Lord.

Gal. 1:19

First off the passage that has “the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1:19) is staunchly debated by Carrier as indicating a fraternal brother, not the biological brother of Jesus. Carrier argues this on the basis of 1 Cor. 9:5 and then has an expose on a rather conjectured argument about how the title “brother of the Lord” would have denoted a place within the early Church hierarchy.

Let us break down why this passage that has “the brother of the Lord” (Gal. 1:19). 

Firstly when Paul says “brother of the Lord”, he means Jesus as the Lord. “Lord” clearly means Jesus. God himself is only mentioned previously as “God our father” not as “Lord” in Galatians. Jesus is the only one called Lord in Gal. 1. Paul refers to “Jesus the messiah” as the Lord as seen in 1 Cor. 8:6, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things and through whom we exist”.

            Let us now examine 1 Cor. 9:5 and see how the title “brother of the Lord” would have denoted a place within the early Church hierarchy. 

<<< “If Paul considered wives who were believers to be “sisters”, why wouldn’t you think Paul’s use of “brothers” in the same sentence would refer to male believers and not literal brothers of Jesus?”>>>>

μὴ οὐκ ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν ἀδελφὴν γυναῖκα περιάγειν, ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπόστολοι καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ κυρίου καὶ Κηφᾶς;

Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas? (1 Cor. 9:5)

Note here Paul does not have the corresponding idiosyncratic “sisters of the lord”. When referring to normal believers, he never calls them “sisters of the lord” or “brothers of the lord.” Not once. Never. He also never calls common people, like Timothy or Luke “brothers of the lord” either. He only uses the phrase twice and the only named time is for James, who is also an apostle. These “brother/s of the Lord” are a distinct subgroup. And we have evidence for only one such sub-group that fits the bill – the actual brothers of Jesus.

It’s very easy to tell when somebody today is on about a generic term brother or an actual brother. All you have to say is “hey brother” and you know that is generic. Then if you say “my brother Ian”, well you can pick up straight away that is an actual brother. The same thing is going on here with Paul’s use of “the brother of the Lord”. 

Let us now see how the argument for fraternal brother fails on contextual grounds, as well as linguistic ones.

Firstly: Because Paul uses a very specific phrase – “brother/s of the Lord” and not just “brother/s”. And he mentions these “brother/s of the Lord” along with other believers, like Cephas etc., which shows they are some kind of sub-group of believers, distinct in some way.

For example in Philippians:

καὶ τοὺς πλείονας τῶν ἀδελφῶν, ἐν Κυρίῳ πεποιθότας τοῖς δεσμοῖς μου, περισσοτέρως τολμᾶν ἀφόβως τὸν λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ λαλεῖν.

“And most of the brothers, in the Lord trusting by the chains of me more abundantly to dare fearlessly the word of god to speak.” (Phil. 1:14)

Paul uses “brothers in the lord” yet that is still not the same phrase as “brother of the Lord”. (ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου).

As a side argument which I flesh out much better here, Paul uses “in Christ” as a phrase for believers. This is because this movement happens to be a spirit possession cult. Brothers in the Lord would be part of the same meaning as in Christ.

So Paul never uses “brother of the Lord” as a general statement. The mere fact he uses “brother” is irrelevant to the full phrase “brother of the Lord” which he only ever uses twice. That exact phrase, in fact, only occurs twice in the entire Pauline corpus, including the pseudepigraphical texts.

Secondly: there is no contextual evidence in either Gal. 1:19 or 1 Cor. 9:5 to suggest that Paul is talking of a generic group or title of Christian followers. The plural of 1 Cor. 9:5 (ἀδελφοὶ) would still correspond to the prevalent Christian traditions of Jesus having multiple brothers (Mark 6:3; John 2:12; Matt. 13:55). What also would mark these two passages off is that elsewhere, when referencing brothers or sisters, Paul never bothers to use such a title for them. Even in the pseudepigrapha, the language “brother of the Lord” is not used by any followers of Jesus of a specific class.

Thirdly: It also insinuates that James is an apostle, ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου, “But, of the other apostles, I saw none, other than [εἰ μὴ]  James, the Lord’s brother.” εἰ μὴ transliterated as “if not”  is an idiomatic expression denoting an exception to a previously established rule. Thus, James is an apostle. 

The most compelling reason that Paul meant brother is that he saw James as an apostle in Gal. 1:19 and distinguished him, he also distinguished Cephas from the Lords brothers in 1 Cor. 9:5. This means ‘brother of the Lord’ could not be a Christian title. Paul distinguishes between “apostle” and “brother of the Lord” implying that not all apostles are brothers of the Lord. The term is used to differentiate James from Cephas. To this, a counter argument may assert that Paul didn’t say “I saw no other apostles EXCEPT…” but that he actually said “I saw no other apostles, ONLY…” meaning Paul was not referring to James as an actual apostle, only as a regular Christian. The only tenable argument is that it should be translated “I saw no other apostles, *except* James the Lord’s brother”. Therefore, the correct interpretation of the verse makes it clear that Paul is referring to James as an apostle and that he is distinguishing between “apostles” and “brother of the Lord” so that we can reasonably assume Paul did not simply mean “baptized Christian” when he referred to James as “the Lord’s brother.” Shows this biological brother is also an apostle according to the verse. Some Bible translations, like the NIV, do say “only” and not “except.” In the original Greek text, I can say that it’s actually not that convoluted and the only reasonable way to translate it in English is “no other apostle except for James”.

So by examing other examples where Paul uses ei mē (εἰ μὴ), will leave no doubt how Paul used ei mē (εἰ μὴ) in Gal. 1:19, he used it to say except and that makes James an apostle.

• Galatians 6:14 “But far be it from me to boast except (ei mē) in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…

• 1 Corinthians 1:14 “I thank God that I baptized none of you except (ei mē) Crispus and Gaius” 

• Philippians 4:15 “… no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except (ei mē) you only.” 

Moreover, the Greek word for “only” is monon, and this does not appear in Galatians 1:19 at all. Here are instances where Paul uses that word…

• Galatians 1:23 “They only (monon) were hearing it said…” 

• Galatians 3:2 “Let me ask you only (monon) this…” 

• Philippians 4:15 “… no church entered into partnership with me in giving and receiving, except (ei mē) you only (monoi).” 

Note that in Philippians 4:15, Paul uses both “except” and “only.”

A brother of the Lord is hence a biological brother.

So, in conclusion, I have yet to see any good argument that Galatians 1:19 should be interpreted “I saw no other apostles, *only* James the Lord’s brother.” The only tenable argument is that it should be translated “I saw no other apostles, *except* James the Lord’s brother”. Therefore, I think the correct interpretation of the verse makes it clear that Paul is referring to James as an apostle and that he is distinguishing between “apostles” and “brother of the Lord” so that we can reasonably assume Paul did not simply mean “baptized Christian” when he referred to James as “the Lord’s brother.”

 The appellative “the Lord’s brother,” does not designate a position within the Early Church hierarchy. The most plausible scenario, thus, is that it delineates James as Jesus’ biological brother.

Carrier is forced by these facts to resort to suppositions about imaginary sub-groups for which he has no evidence. But we have evidence for one such sub-group – Jesus’ siblings, including James. Paul commonly talks of brothers and sisters. When referring to normal believers, he never calls them “sisters of the lord” or “brothers of the lord.” Not once. He refers to no one else as specifically “the brother of the Lord”. The phraseology he uses there is exactly the same as how the gospels identify Andrew as “the brother of Simon”. Most of the time Paul uses more generic terms like “brothers in Christ”, “our brother”, or “brother so-and-so” when using “brother” in the generic sense. If Paul only meant “brother” in the generic sense in Gal 1:18-19 for James, it is odd that he doesn’t include Cephas in the category. The James here is more explicitly identified – i.e. this is the James known as “the brother of the Lord”. 

The simplest and most natural reading is Paul met Jesus’ brother and that implies a historical Jesus.

Let us now go through what Paul would say if James was only a fraternal brother:

Option 1 

‘I went to Jerusalem and didn’t meet any apostle other than Peter and James, a follower of Christ’.

“followers (imitator μιμηταί) of the Lord”, this is an attested reference to believers (though it’s more frequently used to describe “followers” of people) in 1Thesselonians1:6.

Here is a sample translation of what Paul would have wrote if he was not talking about a biological brother in Gal 1:19:

ἐλθὼν εἰς Ἱερουσαλὴμ, ἑτέρους δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ τὸν Πέτρον τε καὶ τὸν Ἰάκοβον τὸν μιμητήν τοῦ Χριστοῦ.

Option 2

If James was not a biological brother Paul would have said something like the following using the word brother:

ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν αδελφόν μας. (Our brother).

or he could have said:

ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον ἀδελφὸν ἐν Χριστῷ ( brother in Christ).

Paul never used “brother of the Lord” for a fraternal brother, not even once. 

Option 3

This is what he would not have written if James was a fraternal brother only, I only put this non feasible option in for comparison.

Gal 1:19

ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου.

So to sum up “Brother of the Lord” is used on two occasions: For James (who is also an apostle) in Gal. 1:19; For multiple “brothers of the Lord” 1 Cor. 9:5. The terms ‘our brother’ or ‘brother in Christ’ would be more likely to be used were James NOT intended to be indicated carnal brother.

These “brothers of the Lord” can be apostles (Gal. 1:19) or not (1 Cor. 9:5) which means that by process of elimination, this is not a position or station within Christianity. Therefore, a relative of Jesus is the most plausible answer.

Whenever Paul talks of fraternal brotherhood (i.e. “Christian” sense) he never uses the phrasing of “brother of the Lord”. The only related forms are in deutero-Pauline work:

ἀδελφὸς καὶ πιστὸς διάκονος ἐν Κυρίῳ (Eph. 6:21)

πιστοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ (Col. 1:2)

ἀδελφοὶ ἠγαπημένοι ὑπὸ Κυρίου (2 Thess. 2:13)

This is still radically distinct from Gal. 1:19 and 1 Cor. 9:5 however (cf. Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου and οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου).

A final argument by Carrier can be put to bed too. He says “brother of the Lord” is a title for non-apostolic Christians, so Peter would be excluded. However, the whole idea is ludicrous. Paul, though zealous to make the case that he is an apostle, refers to himself as a brother, which totally refutes Carrier’s idea. Carrier reckons that if any element of the data could have 5:1 odds in its favour, it would tip the whole into 50%.

He assigns ‘brother of the Lord’ to 2:1 in favour of historicity. But if it were possible to assign it at 5:1 (eg from counting the relative frequency of an alternative term for a rank-and-file Christian other than ‘brother’, then this would be the clincher.)

From what is written in this blog, ‘our brother’ or ‘brother in Christ’ would be more likely to be used were James NOT intended to be indicated carnal brother. If its 5:1, even Carrier would have to agree.

(I wish to thank Tim O’Neill, whose arguments I have expanded on: https://historyforatheists.com/2018/02/jesus-mythicism-2-james-the-brother-of-the-lord/)

The killer argument taken from Tim’s blog is that there is no plausible answers from mythicists to these questions-

“The problem these examples pose for the idea that all of these references to “brothers” are figurative and simply means “fellow believers” is that in both Galatians 1:18-9 and 1Cor 9:5 the “brother/s of the Lord” are mentioned alongside and separate from other believers. In 1Cor 9:3-6 these “brothers of the Lord” are distinct from “the other apostles” and from “Cephas”, despite them being believers as well. And in Galatians 1:18-19 this “James, brother of the Lord” is somehow distinct from Cephas again, despite Cephas being a believer. So if these uses of ἀδελφός simply mean “a believer”, why this distinction? And why is it only to be found in the two examples where the word is not simply a form of ἀδελφός, but is part of the specific phrase “ἀδελφὸν/ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου” (brother/brothers of the Lord)?”

Looking up the LSJ or Perseus Digital Library shows how other ancients use the phrase τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ [+name/title] (per Gal. 1:19) and οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ [+name/title] (per 1 Cor. 9:5) in their writings. All examples just show they always use it for a biological brother.

Then it is also easy to counteract the Catholic argument that was trying to perpetuate the virginity of Mary, the argument goes that James was only a cousin but the Evangelist use Adelphoi for brother and syngeneis for relatives.

Eg Luke 14:12 used Adelphous for brothers and syggeneis for relatives.

PART 18 of my Historical Jesus series.

Paul had many problems and his ekklesia of Corinth was on shaky ground but as Faith Robyn said, “ in 1 Corinthians, for example, Paul attempts to evoke a sense of unity among his addressees by invoking rhetoric about established groups. It does not follow that this supposed group was, in fact, cohesive.” [1] This image of cohesiveness was portrayed in Acts as it papered over the cracks of dissension and division. Acts like the exodus was an idyllic foundation myth of Christian origins. The letters of Paul “give us an impression of a movement that was not so well organised, a movement with diverse factions and competing theologies. In the Pauline communities, problems do not appear to be easily resolved. In these communities there are apostles, and Paul insists that he is one…..Acts is a charter myth, whose author composed an idyllic portrait of the early Jesus community. [2] The leadership of these communities relied on the charisma of those in charge.

Bart Ehrman sums up the problems of the Corinthian church very well in his Lost Christianities book:

“The community was experiencing serious disunity among its members, to the extent that some were taking others to court over their differences. There was chaos in the worship services, including their periodic communal meals, at which some members were gorging themselves and getting drunk while others had almost nothing to eat and drink. There were instances of gross immorality, including some men in the church visiting prostitutes and bragging about it in church and one other man living with his stepmother. And several genuine questions had arisen concerning proper behavior in this world: Is it right, for example, to eat meat that had already been sacrificed to pagan idols? And if bodily pleasure is to be restricted, is it permissible to have sex with your spouse?” [3]

When Paul keeps repeating- I do not lie, that is a sure sign of contention. That shows he’s fighting with the Jerusalem Council. Next we will examine where this Jerusalem Council quotes the words of Jesus against Paul.

Paul quotes Jesus on divorce

        “To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife. To the rest I say this (I, not the Lord): If any brother has a wife who is not a believer and she is willing to live with him, he must not divorce her.” (1 Cor. 7:10-12)

This is one of the few places where Paul quotes the words of Jesus as authoritative, with the same authority as scriptural authority. [4] He can’t be referring to the Hebrew Scriptures, because in the Tanakh it is acceptable for a man to divorce a woman (Deut. 24:1–4), so it can only be the words of Jesus here. Mosaic law included provisions regulating divorce even though in other places such as Mal. 2:16, it was not ideal.

So it’s obvious that saying can’t have come from the LORD in the Tanakh, so it can only have come from somebody whom Paul calls Lord – Paul refers to “Jesus the messiah” as the Lord as seen in 1 Cor. 8:6, “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus the Messiah, through whom are all things and through whom we exist”.

It is important not to retroject the gospels back into Paul’s letters. It is important to recover Jesus’s teaching from First Corinthians only. As we know this teaching Paul quotes is not in the Hebrew Bible, it can only have come from the historical figure Paul refers to as the ‘Lord’. This can only be Jesus. For Jesus’ teaching on Divorce I do not use the gospels here- only the letter to the Corinthians, as the gospels are mostly later reworked traditions. Paul’s letters are the primary sources. [5]

            Chow examines the Greek of 1 Cor. 7:10-12, and has determined that Paul’s “peculiar reference to the situation of a divorced woman but not of a divorced man might indicate an actual case of a woman divorcing her husband.” [6] 

             Jesus has an absolute prohibition on divorce whereas “Paul then takes an intriguing turn as he overrides Jesus’ command by specifying when divorce is acceptable.” [7] among mixed marriages of believers and unbelievers:

“But if the unbeliever leaves, let it be so. The brother or the sister is not bound in such circumstances” (1 Cor 7:15)

Paul then applies this individual case to both women and men. Paul displays an awareness to distinguish between his own words and received traditions. Paul disagrees and differentiates the teaching of Jesus on divorce from his own. If Jesus was a figment of Paul’s imagination, this would hardly happen. (A figment of Paul’s imagination would actually agree with Paul – surprise, surprise 😀). This shows that this specific strict teaching on divorce was not received via revelation. As Jesus’ followers believed he was the Messiah, he therefore had the right to adjust the law and apparently at least even change it, for example, narrowing the margin of divorce. This is Jewish doctrine.

Yet Paul is not only dealing with the problems of his own congregation but with those of the Jerusalem Council. When Paul was dealing with a divorce case, Jesus was quoted against him by his opponents, (this we can determine through mirror reading dealt with next), that’s why Paul says ‘I, not the lord’.

Paul knows Jesus’ words are authoritative, so he’s at a loss when they are used against him. Paul in his usual charlatan way tries to get around them. When the Jerusalem council were checking up on Paul, Jesus’ words were quoted against him. There is no way Paul would bring up Jesus’ words that actually did not support him otherwise. Paul ruled one way and the people checking up on him told the congregations- that’s not what Jesus said at all!

Ian Mills in an interview with Derek Lambert had the following to say on this:

“[Paul] is confronting other people who are citing the teachings of Jesus against him. Look at Paul on marriage in first Corinthians, look at Paul on whether or not leaders deserve to be paid for their work. These are the places where Paul cites the teachings of Jesus and says I know Jesus taught that but I have reasons to do other things in these places. He is citing the teachings that everybody else knows is not his practice. Jesus taught certain things that did not accord with Paul in his practice and that is super interesting!” [8]

In 1 Cor. 1:12 Paul says “One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas” still another, “I follow Christ.”- those shouting the slogan “I follow Christ – but not you Paul, would make sense here. Paul is battling to take control of tf communities he converts, he lost those in Galatia, he may have managed to hang onto Corinth. [9]

This leads us nicely to our next discussion (in the next part) on the exciting “mirror reading” scholarship that is unlocking the polemics of Paul’s letters.

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[1] Walsh, Robyn Faith, The origins of Early Christian Literature, Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture, (Cambridge, 2021), p.11.

[2] Tyson, Joseph B. “Acts, Myth, and History” in Acts and Christian Beginnings: The Acts Seminar Report, Ed. Dennis E. Smith and Joseph B. Tyson, (Polebridge, 2013), Introduction.

[3] Ehrman, Bart, Lost Christianities, The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths we never knew, (Oxford, 2003), p.210.

[4] In 1 Corinthians 7:10-12, Paul relays one of Jesus’ teachings about marriage and divorce. In 1 Corinthians 9:14, Paul relays one of Jesus’ teachings about financial support for missionaries. Paul tells us Jesus gave a message of reconciliation in 2 Cor. 5:19-21. Paul also shows that Jesus taught the end times in 1 Thess.4:15.

[5] Each gospels puts its own interpretation on Jesus’ teaching of Divorce, thus making Pauls report on Jesus teaching the primary source.

In Matthew an interpretation is put on Jesus’ lips that divorce is acceptable in the case of adultery.

5:31 “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ 32 But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery. (Cf Matt.19:9)

The parallels in Mark 10:11–12 and Luke 16:18 do not mention the exception of adultery. 

Some of Jesus’ strict adherence of Divorce law is reflected in the gospels, What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:4–6; Mark 10:8–9).

In order to get around Mosaic law they have Jesus explain that Mosaic Law (Deut. 24:1–4) only existed because of peoples hardness of heart (Matt. 19:7–8; Mark 10:5; see Matt. 5:31–32).

Also of note and a reflection of later interpretations is when the Jesus states “And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery” in Mark 10:12, in response to the Pharisees’ question about divorce, this is an anachronism, as women did not have the right to initiate a divorce in Judaism at that time.

[6] Chow, Chak Him. “Paul’s Divergence from Jesus’ Prohibition of Divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:10–16” Open Theology, vol. 7, no. 1, 2021, p.172

[7] ibid, p.169.

[8] Ian Mills being interviewed by Derek Lambert on his Mythvision podcast, “Evidence for the Historical Jesus – Ian Mills”

[9] Adam’s White. Where is the wise man? Dissertation, (2013).

BACK TO HOMEPAGE

Herod the Toparch, that is, the King of Judaea, was informed in that year that magicians from Persia had arrived and had entered the Judaean country (and ordered them seized) The magicians came from Persia, having been instructed by an announcement which they had received, for a star had appeared to them, which had announced to them that in the East Christ the Savior had become god-man. They brought him gifts as to a great victorious king.

John Malala, (Historian from Antioch in the sixth century), Chronography 10.229

Magi: Persian sages or religious leaders who practiced a mixture of sorcery and astrology. The Jewish people in New Testament times identified the sorcerers in Pharaoh’s court as magi (Exod. 7–9) along with Balaam (Num. 22–24) and Nebuchadnezzar’s ineffective dream interpreters (Dan. 2). In the New Testament, magi are found in Matthew 2; Acts 8:9–24; 13:6–12.

Mark Allan Powell, Introducing the New Testament (2nd Edition), p.7

The story of the Magi is found in Matthew 2:1-12, and Raymond Brown sees the framework for composition taken from the Balaam prophecy found in Numbers:

A narrative of magi from the East who saw the star of the King of the Jews at its rising and were led by it to Bethlehem. While this narrative reflects the general belief that the birth of great men was augured by astronomical phenomena, its immediate inspiration came from the story of Balaam in Num 22-24, a man with magical powers who came from the East and predicted that a star would rise from Jacob. [*]

Although the framework for the story was built upon the Tanakh, as most gospel narratives are ex eventu Tanakh allusions, the real inspiration for this story came from the Magi that attended Nero’s court.

‘Magi’ is a transliteration of the Greek word magos which in turn came from old Persian word magus (“powerful”), a term used for Zoroastrian priests and astrologers of the later Persian Empire. The story of the Magi in Matthews gospel [original meaning Zoroastrian priests and not wise men or Kings as understood by modern readers] may have been inspired by a visit of the Magi to Nero in worshipping Nero as a god.

There were many ‘buffer states’ between the two superpowers of the east- the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire. States such as Armenia, Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene, etc were all Regna Minora of Northern Mesopotamia Between East and West. [1] Since the days of Cassius and his five legions who were wiped out by Parthia, Rome was wary of this superpower.
There was a major Roman–Parthian War (58–63 CE) over one such ‘buffer state’: Armenia. This was fought over Armenian succession, where the Roman client kingdom had lost out to Parthia in 52/53 CE, and Parthia had installed Tiridates as King.
In 60 CE, Corbulo [famous Roman general of Rhine fame, now legate of Syria] overcame the forces loyal to Tiridates and the unpopular Tigranes VI was appointed King of Greater Armenia. [2] All neighbouring buffer states were on the alert to support him militarily. Tigranes caused trouble with Adiebene, so Monobazus II of Adiabene got Vologaeses I of Parthia to help. Nero sent Paetus to annex Armenia in 63CE. This campaign was defeated by the Parthians, thus ensuring Tiradates became king. [3]
After the defeat of the Romans in Rhandeia in 62 CE, an arrangement was made between them and the Parthians, according to which the Romans recognized Tiridates as King of Armenia, and Tiridates agreed to come to Rome and receive his crown from the hands of Nero. [4]

Domitius Corbulo had achieved a compromise with the Parthians over Armenia (63 CE): Tiridates, brother of the Persian king Vologeses I, could rule Armenia if he put aside his diadem and received it in Rome—in 66 CE, as it happened—from the hand of Nero (Dio 62.23.3; 63.4.1). [5]
“Both in Apollonius of Tyana (Life I.4) and Matthews birth narrative were “inspired by the visit of Tiridates I [of Arminia] and his train to Nero that culminated in their reverencing him as a god. Matthew’s tale belongs to a body of material that attributes to Jesus titles and claims characteristic of the Emperors and their cults. People said that Tiridates and his magi had initiated Nero in their mysteries and secret meals. The gospel story implies that Jesus needed no initiation: he was the predestined ruler of the magi, as well as of the Jews; but unlike the ignorant Jews the magi knew this. They understood the star that signalled his coming and came themselves to meet him, make their submission, and offer the gifts due their ruler.” [6]
Cassio Dio reports a story of three Anatolian client Kings turning up at Neros birth and announcing, “Master I am a descendent of Arsacres, brother of the kings Vologaseus and Pacorus, and your slave. And I have come to you, my God, to worship you as I do Mithras.” When they were done they went back to their country by another way, much like Matthew said of the Magi. (Cassio Dio, Roman History LXIII.5.2).

“The picture of magi coming from the East to pay homage to a king and bring him royal gifts (vs. 11) would not have struck Matthew’s readers as naively romantic. When King Herod completed the building of Caesarea Maritima in 10-9 B.C., envoys from many nations came to Palestine with gifts (Josephus Ant. XVI v 1;##136-41). In A.D. 44 Queen Helen of Adiabene, a kingdom that paid tribute to the Parthians, converted to Judaism and came to Jerusalem with bounteous gifts for those affected by the famine which was devastating the land. In A.D. 66 there took place an event that captured the imagination of Rome (Dio Cassius Roman History Ixiii 1-7; Suetonius Nero 13). Tiridates, king of Armenia (a kingdom that was neighbor to Commagene-came to Italy with the sons of three neighboring Parthian rulers in his entourage. Their journey from the East (the Euphrates) was like a triumphal procession. The entire city of Rome was decorated with lights and garlands, and the rooftops filled with onlookers, as Tiridates came forward and paid homage to Nero. Tiridates identified himself as a descendant of Arsaces, founder of the Parthian Empire, and said, “I have come to you, my god, to pay homage, as I do to Mithras.” .After Nero had confirmed him as king of Armenia, ”the king did not return by the route he had followed in coming,” but sailed back a different way. It is significant that Pliny (Natural History XXX vi 16-17) refers to Tiridates and his companions as magi.” [7]
The three gifts they bring are symbolic:

“gold, as to a king; myrrh, as to one who was mortal; and incense, as to a God.” (Origen, Contra Celsum 1.60)

Gold is obvious, a gift fit for a king. Myrrh was used as an embalming ointment, a symbol of his death and frankincense an incense, as a symbol of deity. The Syrian King Seleucus I Nicator is recorded to have offered gold, frankincense and myrrh (among other items) to Apollo in his temple at Didyma near Miletus in 288/7 BC. (Greek inscription RC 5 (OGIS 214))

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[*] Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: : a commentary on the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke: new updated edition, (First published 1993), p.117

[1] Michał Marciak, Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene, Three Regna Minora of Northern Mesopotamia Between East and West, (Brill, 2017).

[2] Tigranes was grandson to Alexander (Marimeme I’s son strangled by Herod the Great).

[3] Kokkinos, The Herodian Dynasty, (Spink, 2010), p.248-250; cf Tacitus Annals 14-15.28.

[4] Menahem Mor, The Second Jewish Revolt, The Bar Kokhba War, 132–136 CE,
p.11

[5] Steve Mason, Judean War 2, p6.

[6] Morton Smith, Jesus the Magician, p.96.

[7] Raymond Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, p.174.