In the "Does Jesus have siblings?" column...

[etv78]

(Catholic Doper FWIW) "brother" is plainly referring to his apostles! I've NEVER heard it posited that Jesus was related to his apostles. In this case, "brother" is meant in the global, human family, sense.

ETA: Link to column: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1338/did-jesus-have-siblings

[TSBG]

(Catholic Doper FWIW) "brother" is plainly referring to his apostles! I've NEVER heard it posited that Jesus was related to his apostles. In this case, "brother" is meant in the global, human family, sense.

ETA: Link to column: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1338/did-jesus-have-siblings

So you're Catholic, and official Catholic doctrine is that Jesus had no siblings, and you've never heard that Jesus had siblings?

If only there were a real Sherlock Holmes to solve this mystery.

[blindboyard]

Might want to look at Matthew 12:46-9, too. The whole point of his remark there is that his "mother and brethren" in the literal sense are less important than in that there metaphorical sense you're talking about. Which rather implies that he had brethren.

[scottsunderwater]

All mankind are brothers of Jesus in the " human family, sense" so it makes little sense to claim that a handful of boys were referred to this way in order to differentiate them from anyone else. There are Catholic scholars who try and wriggle out of the biological brother definition by claiming that the 'original' Greek of the bible is a mistranslation from the Aramaic, but if we go down that road anything in the bible you don't like can be a typo.

Further, the only evidence we have of the historical Jesus are records of his brother James. This does not preclude him being a stepbrother, but given that Jesus was an observant Jew who advocated others follow likewise (contrary to Paul's neo-platonic spin when selling the religion to the Romans- you try and convert someone to a religion that insisists on circumcision) it would be the duty of a Jewish wife to have relations with her husband.

I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment, but from memory I believe both Luther and Thomas Aquinas (the latter being about as revered a Catholic church father as you can get) lamented the inconvenience of the fact Mary did not stay a virgin, but they did not contest the fact.

Sure, the Vatican in the 19th c. decided Mary remained ever virginal, but they came up with a lot of silly ideas back then. Other than that, there is no reason to reject the biological brother reading, even for Catholics.

[postpic200]

yes and his name is bob

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5q142NFkA

Sorry couldn't resist. :)

[suanhacky]

I hate to contradict Cecil, but given that the term used for brothers, "adelphoi", was used in the Greek Old Testament for Abraham and Lot (Uncle/Nephew) and in a variety of family configurations, it is not tortuous to render it differently than "blood brother." Fact was, there was no extensive vocabulary for familial relations, which requires additional scrutiny before jumping to any conclusion about who's on first.

Also, given that the brothers of Jesus were described as advising and reproving him in John's Gospel (with parallel accounts in the other three), it would seem that they would have to be older than him in order to get away with rebuking him. "Don't correct your elders" was a practical maxim for social behaviour back then.

Lastly, why during the Crucifixion would Christ commit his mother to John (who isn't a relative at all) if he had blood brothers who were still alive? Maybe that had a falling out, but that seems like quite the snub.

[Kyriosity]

The Catholic take, however, is that the words have yet another meaning: cousins, or perhaps Joseph's children by a previous marriage. This tortured reading is necessary so as not to contradict the aforementioned doctrine of the virgin birth. Just so we're clear, the VB does not mean the Immaculate Conception, the belief that Mary was free of original sin, which was declared Catholic dogma in 1854. Virgin birth means that Mary remained a virgin despite having conceived Jesus.

Not quite. The not-literal-brothers take does not support the doctrine of the virgin birth, per se, but the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary. The doctrine of the virgin birth, which all orthodox (with a lower-case o) Christians believe (see the Apostles' Creed) states that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus. The doctrine of perpetual virginity, which is particular to Roman Catholicism and capital-O Orthodoxy, states that Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life. Protestants are happy to take "brothers" literally: The Holy Spirit was involved in Jesus' conception in a miraculous way; Joseph was involved in the brothers' and sisters' conception in the natural way.

~Valerie

[cmoose]

In Galatians 1:19 Paul says that after three years, he went to Jerusalem and stayed with Peter fifteen days, "I saw none of the other apostles - only James, the Lord's brother." I see no point in this use of "brother" except to distinguish between another apostle named James not the brother of Christ.

[ccdriver]

Jesus was Virgin -born, AND He had siblings. Mary was a vrigin until after she gave birth to Jesus. The verse in Matthew 1:25 reads, "...and kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son and he called His name Jesus." So there is no reason to suppose those other siblings didn't come from Mary. The Catholic Church came up with the story that Joseph had a previous wife and children to fit their idea that Mary could NEVER have sex, and had to remain a virgin for life. The Bible does not say that.
To the person who mentioned the passage where Jesus commends his mother to the disciple John from the cross, his brothers didn't believe in Him until after the resurrection, so it's possible that's why she went home with John instead of them. The Bible doesn't tell us that, either.

[ccdriver]

Exactly!

[ambushed]

Paul is well known to be the earliest Christian author. In the earliest copies we have of Paul's writings, he frequently uses the Greek word "adelphos", just as he's done in this case. The question is whether Paul's use of the word "adelphos" here is a reference to a biological sibling.

Paul used the term "adelphos" every time he referred to any member of any Christian group! So, while Paul in Galatians refers to James as the Lord's "adelphos", only in English translation can Paul's personal usage of this 1'st century Greek term be conflated with a biological sibling, and only then if one is also lazy and fails to employ critical thinking.

One of Paul's many goals (certainly at least in the ahistoricist view) was to synthesize the various Jesus stories that arose from Q, conflations of fables and parables and sayings of Cynic and Stoic philosophers and sages and other itinerant preachers and teachers, Jewish Wisdom literature, the accretion of myth and stories retrospectively force-fit onto the name Yeshua/Jesus, and the so-called "Mystery Cults" (the Gnostics and so on) of the day, who had long already adopted the term "adelphos" to refer to initiates of those gnostic and other mystery cults. Paul, who was a scholar possessed of enormous philosophical and theological knowledge, brought that meaning of the word into his writings as well as the mere courteous title "adelphos".

In 1 Corinthians 1:1, Sosthenes is called adelphos, and in Colossians 1:1, so is Timothy. And in Corinthians 15:6, 500 adelphos receive a spiritual vision of the risen Christ. Are they biological siblings of Jesus? Of course not!

That alone makes it essentially impossible for James to have been a biological sibling of Jesus, for if he had been, Paul would have used a different description to distinguish James from Sosthenes, Timothy, and 500 other people (no doubt many women among them), none of whom could be Jesus' siblings!

So when we encounter the English phrase "James, the brother of the Lord" (not "James, the brother of Jesus"!) in Galatians 1:19 and recognize that Paul once again used the term "adelphos", it is foolish to contend that Paul meant that James was Jesus' biological sibling.

Some will object: "Paul does put special emphasis on James and his relationship to the Lord. How do you explain that?"

Like this: The evidence strongly suggests that James was the head of one particular Christian group in Jerusalem which focused exclusively on the spiritual Christ, as opposed to Jesus the alleged human teacher or minister (that also makes it tremendously unlikely that James would be Jesus' sibling). This group called themselves the "Adelphos of (or "in") the Lord". The leader of this group, whomever he or she was at any specific time (early Christians saw no problem with women leaders, to their great credit), was apparently given the official title that was translated into English as "The brother of the Lord". It was an honorary title, not a description of a biological sibling relationship to Jesus the man.

Again, that last is also made clear by the references to "brother of the Lord" rather than to "the brother of Jesus".

But what of the writings of others beside Paul? What are we to make of their references to James?

Let's look at the epistle named for him. While no knowledgeable biblical scholar still believes that this is a genuine Pauline epistle (or even written by this James), it is instructive to look at the opening line, which reads in English: "James, a Servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ..." If James was thought by the author to be in fact the biological brother of Jesus the man, why is he referred to there as the Lord Jesus Christ's "servant" and never even his brother or adelphos at all?

And then let's look at the epistle of Jude. That opens by describing Jude as "a servant of Jesus Christ, and a brother of James". While the Gospel of Mark 6:3 identifies Jude (and others) as the adelphos of James (implying that both Jude and James are the biological siblings of Jesus), had they been thought to be so in Paul's day 20 years or so before Mark was written, they would have been described as such, but they were not so described until the (fictional, in my view) Gospels!.

There were a great many frustrating and polarizing differences in the beliefs and teachings of the church among the early Christian communities (as Paul's genuine epistles abundantly documents), and there would be no better way to bring more order to all the massive disorder than for a true biological sibling of Jesus the man to be clearly identified as a primary authority. The Jews thought bloodlines and family trees were extremely important. For just one example, who qualified for the priesthood was considered to have enormous importance, and since the priesthood was purely inherited from family members, had a member of Jesus' biological family been known or had come forward, he or she would have had enormous power to unite the highly fractious and angry bunch of wildly different beliefs and tenets and theologies all over the place. Those communities would have rejoiced to have had a member of Jesus' family leading them. The Jewish early Christians, of that age at least, were highly authoritarian and would have loved nothing more than an authority figure based on the most fundamental basis: birth and bloodline. But they could find no one like that at all.

No relative of Jesus is ever identified by anyone in the early, pre-Gospel Christian world. Even if such a person were to have been reluctant to exert any authority or even to receive some minor recognition, he or she would have been identified anyway, since someone else would claim authority by proxy by dint of his friendship with Jesus or with one or more of Jesus' biological siblings.

But no relative of Jesus was ever identified or claimed prior to the Gospels!

The Evangelists merely assumed James and Jesus were siblings, based mainly I suspect on the fact that there simply was no way to distinguish between the several different meanings of the Greek word "adelphos".

Which bring us to references to Peter/Cephas. Again, we must turn to Paul, for Paul is the single earliest New Testament writer, predating by two decades even the first Gospel to be written, which the largest scholarly consensus identifies as Mark and dates to ~ 72 AD.

Paul refers to Cephas as an "apostle" (though only once), as do the canonical Gospels. But the Gospel's "apostles" are a group of twelve men, and that Cephas/Peter was one of them. How does Paul refer to the "apostle" Cephas?

He refers in 1 Corinthians 15:5-7 to a group who had a msytical vision of the risen Christ (not Jesus the man), and writes that "... he was seen by Cephas, and afterward by the Twelve ... then he was seen by James and afterward by all the apostles".

This tells us that although the vision was reportedly seen by Cephas, he was not one of "the Twelve", and further that there were more "apostles" than just "the Twelve". Bottom line, Cephas was not one of a group of twelve apostles but was instead just one of a large group of many apostles. There's no credible reason at all to think that Cephas ever knew Jesus the alleged man. So the fact that Cephas is, at least 30 years later, referred to in the Gospel of Matthew as the "rock" upon which Christ will build "His Church", it's abundantly clear that either this Cephas is fictional (as I contend Jesus is) or Matthew's Peter and Paul's Cehphas are just not the same guy.

This is further revealed by all the bitter disputes between Paul and Cephus and many of the rest of the "apostles", including "the Twelve", the title apparently given to a more "select" group of the many "apostles" (note that Paul insists that he was an apostle, too). Both the title "apostle" and the title "the Twelve" appear, again, to be honorary titles rather than descriptive ones (think of them in light of the special group of twelve Mormon "apostles", for example). Because if "the Twelve" were actually the direct followers of a biological Jesus (as a literal reading of the Gospels would have it), who would dare argue with such holy personages and criticize them as forcefully as Paul so often did?

Look at how important bloodlines are in terms of the leaders of religious sects when the original leader dies or is otherwise removed from the scene, such as we see in Islam and in Mormonism. The blood relative doesn't necessarily end up the sole or primary leader, but the blood relative is an extremely important and noted personage in the remaining movement or splinter movement.

No, had James been a blood sibling of Jesus, he would have been celebrated as such and would have been seized upon as an authority by dint of his bloodline, or someone else would have capitalized on being the friend or special associated of the blood relative. Sociobiology is powerful indeed in such situations, as religious history has shown over and over again.

Recall that Paul was an avid persecutor of the "Son of God" faith, and like all zealous anti-zealots, the blood relations of any alleged "founder" of such a faith would be subject to special attention and control. But Paul never indicated any such special attention. Instead, he refers to both James -and- Cephas as "adelphos", showing no special interest in James as he would have done if James were a biological sibling of Jesus. Over and over again, a biological sibling would absolutely have been repeatedly called upon to interpret his biological brother's words and ideas, just as we see pretty much whenever there is a biological relationship to call upon.

While the Jerusalem Church headed by James as "the" adelphos of "the Lord" (never adelphos of Jesus!) was important, it was by no means the central authority of the new church, which instead was Paul. That's simply not credible if James has been a biological sibling of Jesus.

James' group in Jerusalem had the following name: Adelphon en Kurio, "Brothers In the Lord". Never are they called "Brothers in Jesus". This is strong evidence that no historical or other Jesus was known of or referenced, else they would have either named themselves The Brothers of Jesus or they would have written or asked James or Paul about this Jesus, but there's no evidence that never happened. It seems clear that his was a church that worshiped a spiritual Lord rather than any historical figure. If "Adelphon en Kurio" referred to biological siblings, they would all have to be biological siblings of some unnamed "Lord"! One cant' arbitrarily claim adelphos means "biological sibling of Jesus" in certain instances but "members of a like-minded community who believed in a spiritual Lord" in others.

Arguing that a tiny difference in one passage can only mean a reference to a biological sibling is quite absurd and fallacious given that this is never followed up upon. Had James been a biological sibling, much more would have followed, including the kind of special treatment I've already described. It's far too little a thing to base a historical argument upon given all the changes made by copyists that Ehrman brings out in his book Misquoting Jesus.

[Knorf]

And thus are the words "torturous" and "logic" combined anew.

[John W. Kennedy]

Oh please, there’s nothing the least bit tortuous (the word you presumably meant) about, “The word ἀδελφοί provably had multiple meanings; therefore you can’t arbitrarily insist on one to the exclusion of all others.”

By the way, the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary has been taken quite seriously at times. To judge from the 13th-century L'Histoire du Saint Graal, some seem to have seen it as the single great key to the entire Christian religion. Seems strange to me, but there it is....

[Kyriosity]

Paul and the other New Testament writers called all Christians "brothers" because we are all adopted sons of the same Father. We have a common parent, not some ill-defined distant relationship with one another. So if Paul's usage is an argument for anything, it's for "brother" meaning "brother."

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

So are you saying that “brother” means “anybody” or that it means “Christian”? (Warning: either one leads you into a trap.)

[Kyriosity]

I'm saying that "brother" means son of a common parent. Christians are brothers because they are adopted sons of a common parent, God the Father. It seems most believable to me that Jesus, James, et al. were brothers because they were natural sons of a common parent, Mary of Nazareth.

~Valerie

P.S. Re your signature, I'm not much of a poetry reader, but I've enjoyed Williams's novels.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I hate to contradict Cecil, but given that the term used for brothers, "adelphoi", was used in the Greek Old Testament for Abraham and Lot (Uncle/Nephew) and in a variety of family configurations.
That's true, but just as it is in English, it's primary meaning was a literal sibling, and without qualifiers or other indication from context, that's how it would be taken,

Look at Mark 6:3:

"Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?" So they were offended at Him.

Now Matthew 13:55:

is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?


In both of these passages, the people remarking are from Jesus' hometown expressing skepticism at him because they know him and his family. There is nothing in the context of these verses that qualifies the use of the words adelphoi and adelphai ("brothers" and "sisters" respectively) as anything other than literal, and the conjunction with his mother makes any reading other than the literal tendentious and strained.

In English, if you hear somebody say, "I know that guy. That's Bob, and that's his mother, Badge and those are his brothers, Ned and Fred," the prima facie meaning of that statement, absent any other qualifiers or context, is that he is referring tro literal siblings.

The texts of the above quoted pasages does not give the reader any reason to deviate from the plain reading and opt for a figurative one instead.

[Kyriosity]

n English, if you hear somebody say, "I know that guy. That's Bob, and that's his mother, Badge and those are his brothers, Ned and Fred," the prima facie meaning of that statement, absent any other qualifiers or context, is that he is referring to literal siblings.

Which only leaves us with the question, how did Bob's mother get a crazy name like "Badge"? ;)

~Valerie

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Just to throw another log on the fire, Josephus mentions the killing of a person called james who was "the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.'"

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Which only leaves us with the question, how did Bob's mother get a crazy name like "Badge"? ;)

~Valerie
Her parents were big Cream fans. :cool:



In truth, I meant to write "Madge." Edit window is closed now, though.

[Kyriosity]

In truth, I meant to write "Madge." Edit window is closed now, though.

I figured that. Just couldn't resist the joke, though. :D

Your fellow lousy typist,

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

I'm saying that "brother" means son of a common parent. Christians are brothers because they are adopted sons of a common parent, God the Father. It seems most believable to me that Jesus, James, et al. were brothers because they were natural sons of a common parent, Mary of Nazareth.So are you saying that when Jesus uses the word “brother”, he is instructing his followers only in how to treat each other, and that Christians have no moral obligations toward non-Christians? (I warned you there was a trap ahead.)

[Farmer Jane]

I think there's a difference between a fraternal connotation and a literal one.

When did people start calling each other "brothers" in Christianity, anyway?

[Irishman]

John W. Kennedy,isn't that why he has those lessons about loving your neighbor? You know, the one culminating in the story of the Good Samaritan? Nowhere in that lecture does it refer only to "brothers".

[John W. Kennedy]

And what about all the times He does use the word “brother”?

[Soapscumbuildup]

Jesus had half brothers and sisters. Joseph and Mary had kids after she had Jesus. James was Jesus's flesh and blood half brother.

[Powers]

Jesus had half brothers and sisters. Joseph and Mary had kids after she had Jesus. James was Jesus's flesh and blood half brother.

Thank you. Did you read the rest of this thread, wherein it is pointed out that many people believe Mary remained a virgin forever? Why are you so certain that your interpretation is correct?


Powers &8^]

[Annie-Xmas]

Just to throw another log on the fire, Josephus mentions the killing of a person called james who was "the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christ.'"

Maybe it was a different James and Jesus.

C'mon, it's not like THAT Jesus was the only one with THAT name.

A catholic once told me that for Jesus to tell John & Mary "Behold your mother" and "Women, behold your son" would be a terrbile faux pas if Mary had other children. I'm not sure that is true, but wouldn't it be the same if Jesus's brothers were Mary's stepsons?

[Kyriosity]

So are you saying that when Jesus uses the word “brother”, he is instructing his followers only in how to treat each other, and that Christians have no moral obligations toward non-Christians? (I warned you there was a trap ahead.)

Jesus did not think that everybody was a brother. He called some sons of the devil. Of course it isn't the case that Christians have no moral obligations to non-Christians. How did you make that leap of logic? As Irishman has pointed out, Jesus taught us to love not only our brothers, but also our neighbors and even our enemies.

Is there some particular use of "brother" in the Gospels that you think is going to be a trap for me? If so, let's hear it.

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

Because you insisted on defining the word “brother” in such a way that only baptized Christians count. You can’t have it both ways. If the many Dominical statements that use the word “brother” apply to humanity at large, then you cannot demand that “brother” be regarded as having only one meaning.

[CurtC]

I understand why Christians think it's important that Mary was a virgin - it's because it says so explicitly in the gospels, and it leads to the idea that his father was God his own self.

But why are the Catholics hung up on the idea of perpetual virginity? It seems like a strained conclusion to reach, and one completely unnecessary to understand the religion. Why do they care?

[Irishman]

It's because Mary is supposed to be untainted by sin, so she could be the perfect vessel for Jesus. So she can't just be a virgin prior to Jesus, she must remain a virgin after Jesus.

[Uneeke1]

Josephus' comment below appears to make a very short & clear statement that James was his brother and not just one of the apostles.

Book: Josephus and Modern Scholarship. By Louis H. Feldman. Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1984.

Page 705: "Almost all scholars have accepted as authentic Josephus' reference (Ant. 20. 200) to James, 'the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ.'"

NOTE: Pages 705-707 contain overviews of numerous scholarly opinions on this matter. The bulk of these opinions concur that the passage is authentic, and the few that don't are debunked.

[Skammer]

It's because Mary is supposed to be untainted by sin, so she could be the perfect vessel for Jesus. So she can't just be a virgin prior to Jesus, she must remain a virgin after Jesus. Mary as an untainted vessel is the reason for the doctrine of her Immaculate Conception (i.e. the belief that she herself was conceived free of Original Sin). But it doesn't really explain, to my satisfaction anyway, why Roman Catholics insist on her perpetual virginity afterward. He job as Christ-bearer was over; she could have really whored it up after that. :D

AFIAK not even RCs believe that Mary was completely sinless her whole life, so the insistance on perpetual viginity puzzles me as well. It's not even like having sex with your husband would have been a sin anyway! It just seems like a relic of 19th century prudishness or something.

[Knorf]

What I never understood is, if Jesus required an "immaculate vessel," meaning that Mary also had to be free of original sin, why that wouldn't be recursive. Why shouldn't Mary's mother also have necessarily been free of original sin, for Mary to be, if Mary had to be for Jesus to be?

Of course the fact is that none of it makes the least sense in the first place. It's all very illogical and contradictory. It still doesn't make any sense that Mary necessarily had to remain a virgin after Jesus was born. He's born, in the world now, why can't Mary go and fuck someone? Was Jesus's presence in reality somehow dependent on Mary's virginity once he was already here? Would Jesus have started sinning egregiously if she let her precious vagina get penetrated?

Certainly there's nothing obvious in the Bible itself to support that Mary had to stay a virgin. But Catholics seem to have the most fucked-up ideas about human sexuality imaginable.

[Kyriosity]

John,

1) You have not read my definition carefully enough. Brother does not mean "only Christians" in every context. It means "son of a common parent." For instance, in one case Jesus encountered a man who complained that his brother wouldn't share their inheritance. Jesus didn't throw the biological meaning of brother out the window there.

2) So far I don't think I've tried to have it both ways. I'm asking you to point me to some particular statement of Jesus that you think would trip me up in that regard.

3) You just added the word "baptized." Of course no one had yet been baptized into Christ's name (in the Trinitarian formula) because His new covenant had not yet been instituted through His death, burial, and resurrection. So in a sense, there were no "Christians" before then. But there were members of the old covenant -- sons of God and therefore brothers. Jesus makes this clear in the negative when He calls out the covenant-breaking Jews who sought to kill him. They claim to be sons of God, but he calls them sons of the devil.

~Valerie

[Kyriosity]

It's not even like having sex with your husband would have been a sin anyway!

In fact, NOT having sex with her husband would have been a sin. This idea that sex always carries some taint of sin is ridiculous. Chastity before marriage is contented virginity. Chastity in marriage is a joyful, generous, faithful, exclusive sexual relationship.

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

John,

1) You have not read my definition carefully enough. Brother does not mean "only Christians" in every context. It means "son of a common parent." For instance, in one case Jesus encountered a man who complained that his brother wouldn't share their inheritance. Jesus didn't throw the biological meaning of brother out the window there.Your entire original point was based on the idea that only “son of a common father” is possible.

[Kyriosity]

No, I never said that. The common parent of Jesus and James, biologically, was their mother, Mary. See my post on 4/16 at 6:10 p.m.

I'm really puzzled by our interaction, John. You seem to be trying to get me to contradict myself or trying to lead me to recognize some error in my thinking, but so far I don't get what you're trying to get me to see. What is your point? Why not just come out with an argument on your side, and we can perhaps have a productive conversation from there?

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

What started all of this off was your Paul and the other New Testament writers called all Christians "brothers" because we are all adopted sons of the same Father. We have a common parent, not some ill-defined distant relationship with one another. So if Paul's usage is an argument for anything, it's for "brother" meaning "brother."And I am saying that that doesn’t hold water, because, when applied to many Dominical uses of the word, the implications are dreadful.

[Kyriosity]

...when applied to many Dominical uses of the word, the implications are dreadful.

OK, give me some examples.

~Valerie

[John W. Kennedy]

Just go to bible.com and do a search on “brother”.

[Kyriosity]

Sorry, John. I'm not going to do your work for you. If you want to convince me of something, you're going to have to hold up your end of the conversation. If you don't think it's that important, no worries.

Have a happy Easter!

~Valerie

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Gal. 1:18-19:

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother.

To me, the way this sentence is constructed appears to be identfying James as Jesus' "bother" in a manner which is distinct from Cephas (AKA Peter) and the other apostles. Either Paul intends the word literally (the most plain reading), or it has some titular meaning which does not necessarily apply to the other apostles. The most parsimonious interpretation of this verse (esepcially in conjunction with the synoptic identifications of James) would be that James was simply Jesus sibling.

[ambushed]

Paul and the other New Testament writers called all Christians "brothers" because we are all adopted sons of the same Father. We have a common parent, not some ill-defined distant relationship with one another. So if Paul's usage is an argument for anything, it's for "brother" meaning "brother."

~Valerie

If you'd look at it again more closely, I think you'd come to agree that your last, ineluctably ambiguous sentence in particular is so nakedly tautological as to bring a gently amused :confused: smilie to your own face as well as mine, does it not?

I'd written above about how "the Greek word 'adelphos' cannot be disambiguated, so the sibling claims are specious" (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13667930&postcount=11). Surely you can see that the English word "brother" is very nearly as ambiguous as 'adelphos'!

The members (at least the male ones) of many thousands of different labor unions have called or still call each other brother. Frat boys still call each other brother. African-American men have called each other brother at least since the Civil Rights era. Last night I watched John Sayles's delightfully sly 1984 science-fiction film The Brother from Another Planet. Do you actually imagine that this black, three-big-toed extraterrestrial was intended to portray a biological sibling of a male human?

As I pointed out above, well before the time of Paul, various Gnostics as well as various mystery cultists had long already adopted the word "brother" (adelphos) to refer to their leaders, fellow members, and initiates. Paul simply brought that meaning of the word into his writings.

I repeat: In 1 Corinthians 1:1, Sosthenes is called adelphos, and in Colossians 1:1, so is Timothy. And in Corinthians 15:6, 500 adelphos receive a spiritual vision of the risen Christ. Are they biological siblings of Jesus? Of course not!

That alone makes it essentially impossible for James to have been a biological sibling of Jesus, for if he had been, Paul would have used a different description to distinguish James from Sosthenes, Timothy, and 500 other people (no doubt many women among them), none of whom could be Jesus' siblings!

So when Dio, above, cites the English phrase "James, the brother of the Lord" (not "James, the brother of Jesus"!) in Galatians 1:19 and recognize that Paul once again used the term "adelphos", it is foolish in the extreme to contend that Paul meant that James was Jesus' biological sibling.

But I'll return to Dio later...

[crucible]

Why would he have not said, instead, "Our brother in Jesus", or "Our Brother"? I think the "Brother OF Jesus" is pretty clear.

[ambushed]

Why would he have not said, instead, "Our brother in Jesus", or "Our Brother"? I think the "Brother OF Jesus" is pretty clear.

Forgive me, but I can't quite disambiguate your reply. Were you addressing me? And if so, were you agreeing or disagreeing with what I wrote?

I had noted the following in my most recent post: So when Dio, above, cites the English phrase "James, the brother of the Lord" (not "James, the brother of Jesus"!) in Galatians 1:19 and recognize that Paul once again used the term "adelphos", it is foolish in the extreme to contend that Paul meant that James was Jesus' biological sibling.

One of the points I was making with that paragraph was to again underline the under-appreciated but nevertheless very telling fact that there's not one single example anywhere in any English translation of the New Testament where the phrase you quoted, "Brother OF Jesus" ever appears.

It's nowhere in the King James Version
It's nowhere in the New King James Version
It's nowhere in the New Living Translation
It's nowhere in the New International Version
It's nowhere in the English Standard Version.
It's nowhere in the Reina-Valera 1960 Version
It's nowhere in the New American Standard Bible
It's nowhere in the Revised Standard Version
It's nowhere in the American Standard Version
It's nowhere in the Darby's Translation
It's nowhere in the Webster's Bible
And, finally, it's nowhere in Young's Literal Translation!


The fact that in any English translation of the New Testament one only finds the phrase "the brother of the Lord" instead is practically shouting at us that James, just like Sosthenes, Timothy, Jude, 500 different people (including women), and others, were all spiritual/honorary "brothers", not biological siblings at all.

(BTW, I'm not defending the primarily Catholic "ever-virgin" view; I'm simply defending against drawing unwarranted and irrational inferences -- based entirely on the extremely biased reading of the text while wearing gospel-colored glasses -- concerning the English translation of the Greek word "adelphos", which simply cannot be disambiguated, neither by us today nor by the long-after-the-fact gospel Evangelists!)

I realize that it's relatively long (not that any Dopers -- of all people -- should consider that a drawback, of course, though some do anyway), but if you were arguing against my view, I'd like to propose that you to carefully re-read my [url=http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=13667930&postcount=11]post of April 9'th above[/b]. Thanks!

[ambushed]

Before I begin further replies to your posts in this thread, Dio, I'd like to make a few genuinely friendly comments. You've certainly got a very interesting mind and personality, Diogenes (please note that I'm not using the word "interesting" as a left-handed compliment or an insult, veiled or otherwise). You've frustrated and confused me several times before over many years on the topic of the historical Jesus as you alternate between defending a relatively traditional historicist view against my own and others' mythicist arguments (as you've done here) while simultaneously defending skeptical and mythicist arguments against historicist arguments (in previous threads, anyway). You get pitted for that kind of defending-all-views thing regarding other topics, but I've long had a more positive interpretation of your behavior...

You've told me in the past that it's because you've keep vacillating in your own mind between one side of the spectrum and the other. But my own hunch has been more that you're sort of an "intellectual centrist"; that you just don't much like moving away from the center of any spectrum (an outlook that has real merit in most cases). I've also thought for a long time that another explanation was that you were trying to make sure that other points of view that were not your own were represented in a given thread, as a matter of honorable intellectual fairness.

But if I might make a suggestion? Please consider making it explicit when you're posting as a kind of devil's advocate. I know very well just how deeply educated and amazingly well-informed you are, how sharp your thinking is on this enormously broad issue surrounding whether Jesus was a historical figure or not. You've agreed with nearly all of the mythicist arguments put forth many times in the past, and you've also argued against those very same positions many times as well. Surely you can understand why I find it somewhat frustrating to have to keep re-arguing and re-arguing the very same points we've actually agreed upon several times before, yes?

Please don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not even hinting that I'm asking you to stop changing your positions or -- Bob forbid! -- to agree with me! Absolutely not! My own views keep evolving, too! There's something seriously wrong with anyone whose views are not still changing and evolving! I'm simply talking about (for lack of a better word) the tone you seem to adopt -- as if a given post decidedly IS your own personal position -- when you actually seem at least to be arguing for a position that isn't or may not be currently your own.

I offer my sincere apologies, my friend, if my words failed to carry the genuine warmth and respect I'd hoped that they would or if you feel I've overstepped the bounds of propriety...



Moving on...
... Look at Mark 6:3:

"Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?" So they were offended at Him.

Now Matthew 13:55:

is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary, and his brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?

In both of these passages, the people remarking are from Jesus' hometown expressing skepticism at him because they know him and his family. There is nothing in the context of these verses that qualifies the use of the words adelphoi and adelphai ("brothers" and "sisters" respectively) as anything other than literal, and the conjunction with his mother makes any reading other than the literal tendentious and strained.

"Tendentious"? My friend, there are some extremely important and relevant facts relating to those quotations that, rather than being tendentious, very much need to be strongly emphasized:

(1): Not a single one of those passages were written by anybody who had known Jesus or his family. They were all piously embellished or even outright fabricated decades later, and their books all continued to be revised and edited for centuries!

(2): Consider even the traditional story of a turn-of-the-millennium Jesus (something I consider to be approximately a century too late) and the consensus dating of Paul's "awakening" circa 50 CE -- the earliest known to us today -- and ask yourself who might have theoretically lived early enough to have known anything reliable about Jesus' family, and that the Gospel authors are absolutely not among them. Then carefully consider the fact that neither Paul nor any other genuine pre-Gospel writer ever wrote anything about Jesus' human mother or father, let alone any other of their children! This strongly indicates that there mustn't have been even any oral traditions concerning them! And then consider also that all references by these early writers to any adelphos cannot be disambiguated and were also always referred to as adelphos of "the Lord", NOT adelphos of Jesus!

(3): Consider also that the authors of the Gospels wouldn't have been able to disambiguate the Greek word adelphos any better than anyone can today! I see no alternative other than that they were clearly employing pious midrashic techniques (as well as other literary techniques, of course) to invent everything concerning Jesus' alleged birth, early "biographies", travels, and, most of all, his alleged "family". In the past, you've seemed to know this as well as I, Dio. Paul and other early writers (as well as the promulgators of various oral tradition branches, I'm sure) had already referred to honorary/spiritual adelphos of "the Lord", so several decades later when the not-very-sophisticated authors of the canonical Gospels such as Mark and Matthew (who either didn't grasp that the epistles' Jesus was portrayed as spiritual rather than biological being, or otherwise felt that they needed to reify and historicize him for proselytization purposes), clumsily went ahead and piously invented human parents and biological adelphos for him.

When you carefully consider all you've long known regarding these points, Diogenes, do you find my objections valid? I very much would like to see what you have to say since I've learned much and I also want to continue to learn even more from you!

Respectfully,
ambushed

[LurkMeister]

ambushed, you may not be aware of this, but Dio is currently suspended from the SDMB, and is unable to read or respond to your post at this time. I'm not sure when his suspension is due to expire, but even after it does he may not check for posts like yours. Just so you know that he's not deliberately ignoring you.

[Baker]

ambushed, you may not be aware of this, but Dio is currently suspended from the SDMB, and is unable to read or respond to your post at this time. I'm not sure when his suspension is due to expire, but even after it does he may not check for posts like yours. Just so you know that he's not deliberately ignoring you.

The post in ATMB about Dio's suspension was made on 7/2/11, so he could be back soon, as it was for one month.

[ambushed]

ambushed, you may not be aware of this, but Dio is currently suspended from the SDMB, and is unable to read or respond to your post at this time. I'm not sure when his suspension is due to expire, but even after it does he may not check for posts like yours. Just so you know that he's not deliberately ignoring you.

The post in ATMB about Dio's suspension was made on 7/2/11, so he could be back soon, as it was for one month.

Thank you both for the friendly heads up. I was aware of his suspension (I'd seen the notice under his handle), and I also knew his return was imminent. However, it's often extremely difficult for me to find the kind of very extended time I need to read and absorb a given thread's history with enough focus and concentration to respond intelligently. So on those fairly rare occasions when I can manage that, I need to reply right away or I'll just have to read everything all over again an unknown number of weeks or months later!

Still, thank you both for your neighborliness!

[Lon Chaney]

Arguing about the virgin birth and the pepetual virginity seems sort of like a moot point. It's not medically possible for a virgin to give birth, unless they're artificially inseminated, I suppose. But I highly doubt that Mary was artificially inseminated. Unless you believe in magic, this whole virgin birth thing is a fairy tale.

[Giles]

Arguing about the virgin birth and the pepetual virginity seems sort of like a moot point. It's not medically possible for a virgin to give birth, unless they're artificially inseminated, I suppose. But I highly doubt that Mary was artificially inseminated. Unless you believe in magic, this whole virgin birth thing is a fairy tale.
In this context, "miracle" is another word for magic. Of course, if God is omnipotent, then Joseph could have given birth to Jesus, and Catholics could have had a doctrine about the perpetual virginity of the Father of God.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Before I begin further replies to your posts in this thread, Dio, I'd like to make a few genuinely friendly comments. You've certainly got a very interesting mind and personality, Diogenes (please note that I'm not using the word "interesting" as a left-handed compliment or an insult, veiled or otherwise). You've frustrated and confused me several times before over many years on the topic of the historical Jesus as you alternate between defending a relatively traditional historicist view against my own and others' mythicist arguments (as you've done here) while simultaneously defending skeptical and mythicist arguments against historicist arguments (in previous threads, anyway). You get pitted for that kind of defending-all-views thing regarding other topics, but I've long had a more positive interpretation of your behavior...

You've told me in the past that it's because you've keep vacillating in your own mind between one side of the spectrum and the other. But my own hunch has been more that you're sort of an "intellectual centrist"; that you just don't much like moving away from the center of any spectrum (an outlook that has real merit in most cases). I've also thought for a long time that another explanation was that you were trying to make sure that other points of view that were not your own were represented in a given thread, as a matter of honorable intellectual fairness.

But if I might make a suggestion? Please consider making it explicit when you're posting as a kind of devil's advocate. I know very well just how deeply educated and amazingly well-informed you are, how sharp your thinking is on this enormously broad issue surrounding whether Jesus was a historical figure or not. You've agreed with nearly all of the mythicist arguments put forth many times in the past, and you've also argued against those very same positions many times as well. Surely you can understand why I find it somewhat frustrating to have to keep re-arguing and re-arguing the very same points we've actually agreed upon several times before, yes?
Thanks for the kind words.

I assure you, my position is not one of intellectual "centrism." I'm not afraid to take an extreme view on anything, but the HJ/MJ debate is one in which I'm simply, genuinely agnostic and undecided. I can see both sides, but I don't think either side is dispositive. The real evidence for HJ is decidedly thin (the argument is typically based on Josephus, Tacitus, Paul, and on the next tier down, some inferential arguments based on criteria of dissimilarity/embarrassment, and a tier down from that an independently attested common sayings tradition). All of these things are questionable and vulnerable to attack by mythicists, but I don't think any of them individually can absolutely be dispositively refuted, only questioned.

It's true that HJ cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, but I think it's also true that a real historical figure behind the myth cannot be dispositively disproven. My own feeling is that we don't have enough data to be certain one way or the other, and that even if there was a real HJ, it's virtually impossible to recover him from the available data.

Gun to the head, I lean a hair to the side of some kind of historicity, but that's just an educated guess. I don't assert it with certainity. I would basically characterize myself as favoring historicity 51%/49% over pure myth. Bart Ehrman has a book coming out soon which he says will specifically address mythicist arguments and provide the case for historicism. I'll be eager to read it, though I don't expect to see anything I haven't seen before. At least Ehrman is willing to take the subject on. Most prominent HJ scholars just hand wave mythicists away as fringe kooks (though, admittedly, the list of credentialed mythicists is decidedly small).
Please don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not even hinting that I'm asking you to stop changing your positions or -- Bob forbid! -- to agree with me! Absolutely not! My own views keep evolving, too! There's something seriously wrong with anyone whose views are not still changing and evolving! I'm simply talking about (for lack of a better word) the tone you seem to adopt -- as if a given post decidedly IS your own personal position -- when you actually seem at least to be arguing for a position that isn't or may not be currently your own.
On this particular subject, I'm generally just providing data without necessarily trying to provide a strong case one way or the other. It's unusual for me that I don't have a strong position on this. I'm usually just trying to be accurate about what the arguments are and what the data is.
"Tendentious"? My friend, there are some extremely important and relevant facts relating to those quotations that, rather than being tendentious, very much need to be strongly emphasized:

(1): Not a single one of those passages were written by anybody who had known Jesus or his family. They were all piously embellished or even outright fabricated decades later, and their books all continued to be revised and edited for centuries!

(2): Consider even the traditional story of a turn-of-the-millennium Jesus (something I consider to be approximately a century too late) and the consensus dating of Paul's "awakening" circa 50 CE -- the earliest known to us today -- and ask yourself who might have theoretically lived early enough to have known anything reliable about Jesus' family, and that the Gospel authors are absolutely not among them. Then carefully consider the fact that neither Paul nor any other genuine pre-Gospel writer ever wrote anything about Jesus' human mother or father, let alone any other of their children! This strongly indicates that there mustn't have been even any oral traditions concerning them! And then consider also that all references by these early writers to any adelphos cannot be disambiguated and were also always referred to as adelphos of "the Lord", NOT adelphos of Jesus!

(3): Consider also that the authors of the Gospels wouldn't have been able to disambiguate the Greek word adelphos any better than anyone can today! I see no alternative other than that they were clearly employing pious midrashic techniques (as well as other literary techniques, of course) to invent everything concerning Jesus' alleged birth, early "biographies", travels, and, most of all, his alleged "family". In the past, you've seemed to know this as well as I, Dio. Paul and other early writers (as well as the promulgators of various oral tradition branches, I'm sure) had already referred to honorary/spiritual adelphos of "the Lord", so several decades later when the not-very-sophisticated authors of the canonical Gospels such as Mark and Matthew (who either didn't grasp that the epistles' Jesus was portrayed as spiritual rather than biological being, or otherwise felt that they needed to reify and historicize him for proselytization purposes), clumsily went ahead and piously invented human parents and biological adelphos for him.
All of this is true, but the context of my quotations of Mark and Luke was not to argue that they were necessarily historically accurate, but merely as examples of the Greek being unambiguous as to intention. In those particular quotes, Mark and Matthew certainly intended the word adelphos to literally mean a blood sibling. Whether or not they are fiction was beside my point. I was addressing another poster about the language of the passages, not their historical accuracy.
When you carefully consider all you've long known regarding these points, Diogenes, do you find my objections valid? I very much would like to see what you have to say since I've learned much and I also want to continue to learn even more from you!
Yes, your questions are valid - particularly with regards to Paul. It is not a certainty that Paul's own use of the phrase τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου ("the brother of the Lord") was intended to be literal, titular or otherwise figurative. The fact that he only uses that term for James, and not the other disciples, seems to indicate some kind of special distinction and absent any other kind of qualifiers within that specific text would leave a plain reading of a literal sibling as the most parsimonious choice.

However, I don't argue that this choice is a certainty, only that we don't have enough data to say that it's certainly wrong.

[Giles]

And welcome back Dio!

[iftheresaway]

Gun to the head, I lean a hair to the side of some kind of historicity, but that's just an educated guess. I don't assert it with certainity. I would basically characterize myself as favoring historicity 51%/49% over pure myth. Bart Ehrman has a book coming out soon which he says will specifically address mythicist arguments and provide the case for historicism. I'll be eager to read it, though I don't expect to see anything I haven't seen before. At least Ehrman is willing to take the subject on. Most prominent HJ scholars just hand wave mythicists away as fringe kooks (though, admittedly, the list of credentialed mythicists is decidedly small).



Just as an aside - do you have a recommendation for any of these books, particularly ones which are not trying to prove "religion is true, there is a God", but which attempt to disambiguate history from legend? I'm really interested in learning more about the time and the history, but from a strictly factual point-of-view (well, ok, history isn't really strictly factual, but hopefully you get my drift).

Thanks!