Carrier on Ehrman and Tim O'Neill

[MrMacSon]

...the 'bishop of Jerusalem' was consistently associated with as Jesus's brother ... That James was actually Jesus's brother and was a 'bishop of Jerusalem' as all extant history tells us?

What evidence is there that Christianity was developed and structured enough to have bishops, & other roles such as priests, etc., in the first half of the 1st century AD/CE??

[winningedge101]

...the 'bishop of Jerusalem' was consistently associated with as Jesus's brother ... That James was actually Jesus's brother and was a 'bishop of Jerusalem' as all extant history tells us?

What evidence is there that Christianity was developed and structured enough to have bishops, & other roles such as priests, etc., in the first half of the 1st century AD/CE??

Within 25-30 years of Jesus's death we already have deacons, bishops, etc. Jesus's disciples and apostles were also probably referred to as elders. We know this from Paul's letters and also from Acts. This is excluding other writings of the early church from the second century onward.

[MrMacSon]

the bishop of Jerusalem was consistently associated with as Jesus's brother ... You say the only reason this James was associated as Jesus's brother is because of Galatians ... That James was actually Jesus's brother and was a bishop of Jerusalem as all extant history tells us? Or that this James was just "another brother of the Lord" and had no family relation to Jesus?

The current discussion on another thread, starting with this post - http://www.earlywritings.com/forum/view ... 085#p51085 -, seems relevant

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Jacob was one of the most common names in Palestine, and the only reason any Jacob is identified as Jesus' brother is because of a single reference made by Paul in Galatians 1:19 (which may or may not have been intended to reference a literal sibling of a historical Jesus. I'm not persuaded that we can know either way), but even if it was, Jerusalem was still crawling with dudes names Jacob.

Incidentally any High Priest named Jesus would have been "called Christ" in that they would have held the honorific of "Anointed." All Jewish kings and High Priests were "Messiahs/Christs." It is not even clear that the word "Messiah" would have primarily meant anything else to Josephus.

It doesn't matter how common the name Jacob was in Judea it doesn't change the fact that the bishop of Jerusalem was consistently associated with as Jesus's brother. Just because there were thousands of Jesus's doesn't change the fact that the one we're talking about is the one from Nazareth, specifically the "messiah". You say the only reason this James was associated as Jesus's brother is because of Galatians but I think you would have to be reading Jesus mythicism into this to honestly come to that conclusion. What is more probable? That James was actually Jesus's brother and was a bishop of Jerusalem as all extant history tells us? Or that this James was just "another brother of the Lord" and had no family relation to Jesus? Like I said, mythicism when it comes down to it seems like helpless revisionist history, not actually trying to reconstruct history, but a pure ideological movement. To me it has no more credibility than those who said that the Old Testament and the history of Israel and Judah is nothing more than a pious fiction of the third to second century B.C.

What source do you believe exists for a James being both the brother of Jesus being the Bishop of Jerusalem? Paul never says that. Acts doesn't even say that. There are 7 different guys named "James" in the New Testament. There is a James who Paul says was the leader of the Jerusalem church, but he does not say this James was Jesus' brother. He refers to someone else as "James, the brother of the Lord," but does not say this James is the same as the head of the church. James the brother and James the head of the Jerusalem cult could be a mashup of two different Jameses. 2nd Century tradition is really of no utility. No extant Christian writers had any access to reliable historical information by then.

James the head of the church might have been Jesus' brother, but that's not explicitly stated by Paul. It's an inference made by later Christians.

[winningedge101]

And why should we doubt those later Christians? What makes you think we should distrust this strong tradition of James the BROTHER of Jesus and bishop of Jerusalem?

[DCHindley]

And why should we doubt those later Christians? What makes you think we should distrust this strong tradition of James the BROTHER of Jesus and bishop of Jerusalem?

The Christian writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries were trying to reconstruct their Judean roots at a time when they really had no clue when they had made a clean break with Judaism. It was an afterthought, a rationalization, created out of oral legends collected and recast into literary form by the likes of Papias and Hegesippus, who were not historians by any means, but similar to romanticists of the enlightenment onwards. The recast legends were formulated to support Christian legitimacy as a kind of school derived from Judaic roots, which, despite the three major Judean rebellions, still possessed a form of legitimacy in Roman law.

DCH

[Giuseppe]

And why should we doubt those later Christians? What makes you think we should distrust this strong tradition of James the BROTHER of Jesus and bishop of Jerusalem?

here a strong reason to doubt about these later Christian claims re James.

[outhouse]

Within 25-30 years of Jesus's death we already have deacons, bishops, etc. .

What do you have to substantiate this opinion?


Please provide sources for such or admit it is faith based.

[outhouse]

You say the only reason this James was associated as Jesus's brother is because of Galatians but I think you would have to be reading Jesus mythicism into this to honestly come to that conclusion. What is more probable? That James was actually Jesus's brother and was a bishop of Jerusalem as all extant history tells us? Or that this James was just "another brother of the Lord" and had no family relation to Jesus?

It is not that easy.

We have a long standing track record of these authors from this time period, attributing names rhetorically to build authority in the text they produce.

They had no bishops in that time and factually no orthodoxy at all! Not only that is he was a bishop we would expect to see the movement centered and originating from Jerusalem and it did not originate there in any way, less the Passover traditions from the crucifixion.


You also need to explain why an Aramaic Galilean who was battling Hellenistic in the corrupt temple, suddenly decided to take residents in a Hellenistic center where Koine was the more the native language then the Aramaic a James would have used.


You also have to explain why we have no Aramaic transliterations in James was a bishop you would also have to explain why he produce ZERO text.


You also have to explain why Paul did not hunting when persecuting in Israel, and he only hunted in the Diaspora. If James was an elder or main leader Paul would have started there, Explain that.

What is more probable?


That there would have been a Hellenistic community in Israel that may have had held on to Jewish traditions tighter then Diaspora Proselytes communities accepting gentiles where it was more acceptable to pervert Judaism.

Authors like Pauls community, used powerful names in their writing to build authority that their group were the ones to follow, and that they actually had debates with what were viewed as founding fathers. This was the prose they were trained to write in. We have a track record of Pauls communities using his name after he died in the known pseudepigrapha that came from his communities.

So Pauls own people/apostles were trained to use powerful names to build authority in textual traditions.

[Colin]

If of interest - indirectly to this thread - my review of Dr Carrier's article can be found at my blog gettingtothetruthofthings.blogspot.co.uk - it's the article of October 2015 entitled "A review of Richard Carrier's journal article on Origen, Eusebius and Josephus". (I would have just posted the URL but, as one can't, this is my signpost.)

Comments welcome.