What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

[John2]

Paul wrote:

The Antiquities mention is fairly straightforward to defang, because it so obviously depends on a misrecollection by Origen which was accepted by Eusebius and Jerome. Centuries passed, and by golly, the Origen-Eusebius-Jerome version became the only version there is.

How does this "defang" the James passage in the Antiquities? Origen's "misrecollection" isn't the same as what Josephus says. In fact, in War 4.5.2, Josephus says Jerusalem fell because of the death of Ananus.

I should not mistake if I said that the death of Ananus was the beginning of the destruction of the city, and that from this very day may be dated the overthrow of her wall, and the ruin of her affairs, whereon they saw their high priest, and the procurer of their preservation, slain in the midst of their city. He was on other accounts also a venerable, and a very just man ...

This sounds more like what Origen could have "misrecollected" than the James passage to me. Compare the above with what Origen says in his Commentary on Matthew 10.17:

And to so great a reputation among the people for righteousness did this James rise, that Flavius Josephus, who wrote the “Antiquities of the Jews” in twenty books, when wishing to exhibit the cause why the people suffered so great misfortunes that even the temple was razed to the ground, said, that these things happened to them in accordance with the wrath of God in consequence of the things which they had dared to do against James the brother of Jesus who is called Christ. And the wonderful thing is, that, though he did not accept Jesus as Christ, he yet gave testimony that the righteousness of James was so great; and he says that the people thought that they had suffered these things because of James.

Perhaps Josephus' description of Ananus as a "very just man" reminded Origen (or whoever he learned the story from) of James. And Josephus also mentions Ananus' death along with someone named Jesus, which could have also confused Origen (or whoever he learned the story from). And Josephus says that this Jesus was "inferior" in comparison to Ananus, which could have given Origen (or whoever he learned the story from) the impression that Josephus consequently "did not accept Jesus as Christ."

And Origen doesn't say he saw his James story in the Antiquities (or anywhere at all), only that Josephus is the guy who wrote the Antiquities in twenty books, which I think supports the idea that Origen (or whoever he learned the story from) "misrecollected" the Ananus passage in the War.

[Trees of Life]

Galatians 1:19 (Paul's meetings with Cephas and James) is seen, along with the received mention of James in Antiquities, as a slam-dunk by some historicists. If Paul met Jesus' brother, and then years later Josephus crossed paths with him, then James' brother Jesus was a historical person.

Gal. 1:19, Paul met 'James, the Lord's brother ', not as you recite ' Paul met Jesus' brother '.

When taking cognizance that James son of Zebedee is a milk-kin brother of Jesus and James son of Alphaeus/James the Less is a redeemed/foster brother of Jesus, on all accounts of continuity, the James of the three pillars of Gal 2:9, is James son of Zebedee.

[Paul the Uncertain]

@robert j

My curiosity about the marginal note hypothesis probably should have been phrased differently. If there were a marginal note, then somebody wrote it and that somebody must have thought that the note improved what was already on the page in some way. Why couldn't the "somebody" be a scribe copying an unimproved exemplar, and making the improvement in the copy he was producing, for no other reason than thinking that his version was better for its intended use than the one he was copying?

Clearly, if there were evidence of a marginal note alongside some different description of James, then that would be a different situation.

You seem inclined to accept that broader interpretation (correct me if I'm wrong on that), but have rejected some explanations for why Paul would have used that phrase in that non-sibling context.

Yes, I think it's figurative. I don't so much "reject" any seriously possible interpretation as give some proposed readings more weight than others. The "co-religionist, say no more" reading (which Carrier champions) has been discussed elsewhere at length for years now. I have nothing to add to what others have already said about it. I think James is a distinguished co-religionist of Cephas and Paul, but I am happy to acknowledge that there's some chance that he wasn't distinguished.

Is that as far as you are willing to go in providing a rational for the phrase in question?

No, and that's what the blog post is about.

In my understanding of Paul, it was not his intention to allow his intended readers to "have broad latitude in finding ... what they bring to him". That strikes me as what a Pauline apologist might say to explain the existence of widely divergent interpretations of the letters. Paul wanted his readers to accept his authority and to find in his letters just exactly what he wanted them to find. Not that he always succeeded --- nor that we modern readers can always readily figure it out.

Mmm... Paul's a complicated guy. He volunteers that he is all things to all men. He's not a great orator in the opinion of some audience members. There are parts of what he knows about the subject (what he learned in the Third Heaven) that he either won't or can't express in words at all. That we have some of these letters seems to be because his congregations needed some clarifications. Sometimes the respose to that need was to send somebody else to explain - maybe Timothy et al. expressed themselves better than their boss.

For example, a concrete yes-or-no issue: can the congregant eat meat sacrificed to idols or not? Beats me. Part of Paul's answer is "OK, but don't ask, and don't tell." But then, what if some brother or sister watching you eat knows anyway, and ... so, Paul, the bottom line is what?

I think that indeterminacy was a feature not a bug for Paul's success in attracting new adherents. The tricky part seems to have come when the recruits then had to live their new faith along with others, and they compared notes. Then they discovered that they hadn't all signed up for the same religion. IMO, of course.


@John 2

How does this "defang" the James passage in the Antiquities? Origen's "misrecollection" isn't the same as what Josephus says. In fact, in War 4.5.2, Josephus says Jerusalem fell because of the death of Ananus.

Origen's misrecollection and its adoption by Eusebius and Jerome, suffice to explain the appearance of James the Just in our received text of Antiquities. The original, in my opinion, had linked the unfortunate James with a different Jesus. There are two candidate Jesuses in Josephus' story itself, and a third Jesus in War whose career spanned the time from James' trial through the siege, all the while predicting woe to Jerusalem.

As to the source material that Origen misrecalled, Josephus attributed the fall of Jerusalem to other factors in close proximity to James' trial, in Antiquities 20 itself. It is not a huge surprise that Origen misremembered Josephus' book the way he did.

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/201 ... o-do-that/


@Trees of Life

Gal. 1:19, Paul met 'James, the Lord's brother ', not as you recite ' Paul met Jesus' brother '.

Thank you for your comment. A re-reading of what you quoted will reveal that it doesn't recite what you misattribute to it. Rather it identifies a hypothesis about the meaning of the phrase. There is no controversy about how the individual words of the received text ought to be translated.

Similarly, the identification of the two Jameses is within the scope of the same if. That is to say, the hypothesis being discussed there (neither being advocated nor being taught) is a compound proposition.

[Bernard Muller]

I think James is a distinguished co-religionist of Cephas and Paul

After years of research, I concluded James, Peter and other eyewitnesses of Jesus were never Christians but stay orthodox Jews. Evidence, clues & explanations here: http://historical-jesus.info/108.html

Cordially, Bernard

[John2]

Paul wrote (in his link above):

Thus we find the ideas mentioned by Origen, actually expressed by Josephus nearby the trial of James. However, the first passage (from the end of 20.8.5) refers to murders in the Temple by assassins. The affront to righteousness and justice is unfairness to low-ranking priests (from the end of 20.8.8). The occasion of miseries is the Jews’ loss of their equal rights in Caesarea (from 20.8.9), which Josephus elsewhere considered the beginnings of the Jewish-Roman war (War 2.14.4.284 ff, link). Only the final part concerns the actual trial of James (from 20.9.1).

But what in Josephus' James passage would have given Origen the idea that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ"? The account of the death of Ananus in War 4.5.2 has all the ideas you mention (a "very just man" whose death caused of the fall of Jerusalem) and also explains why Origen thought Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ" (a charge repeated in Against Celsus): because Josephus considered Ananus' cohort Jesus to be inferior to him.

The only element that is missing in this scenario is James' name, but that can be explained by Origen (or whoever he learned the story from) "misrecollecting" the Ananus passage, which is supported by Origen not saying where his story can be found in Josephus. Contrast that with how specific he is about what Josephus says about John the Baptist in Against Celsus 1.47:

I would like to say to Celsus, who represents the Jew as accepting somehow John as a Baptist, who baptized Jesus, that the existence of John the Baptist, baptizing for the remission of sins, is related by one who lived no great length of time after John and Jesus. For in the 18th book of his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus bears witness to John as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who underwent the rite.

Eusebius is similarly specific about the location of the John passage in EH 1.11.4:

He [Josephus] relates these things in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, where he writes of John in the following words ...

But when Eusebius cites what Origen says Josephus says about James, he too doesn't specify where in Josephus it is located, even though he had access to Origen's work. And is it not odd that Origen is specific about the location of the John passage but not the location of the James passage (twice), even if his story was only his impression based on the context, as you say?

I still think this is all more likely due to Origen's "misrecollection" of the Ananus passage, which says that Jerusalem fell because of the death of a "very just man" who had an inferior cohort named Jesus. But in any event, how do you explain the coincidence of Josephus saying about Ananus exactly what Origen thought he said about James?

[Paul the Uncertain]

@Bernard

Thanks for the link. I am OK with the reputed pillars never losing their Jewish identity, and conversely that Paul, despite raising money for them, might have never fully accepted the pillars' reluctance to accommodate his Gentile converts. In some sense, then, there could well have been two religions, Gentile and Jewish. In more modern terms, we might say the two religions were "in communion" or perhaps only "in partial communion."

Paul professes that Peter had a similar apostolic commission to his own, and that some one thing works through both of them in their respective missions (early verses of Galatians 2). Paul scarcely ever mentions the qualia of his own interactions with the risen Jesus, and we never hear anything about Peter's from Peter.

We don't seem to be in desperate disagreement.

@John 2

The hypothesis of importance is that Origen did misremember something that he'd read in Josephus. If there is more than one candidate for the thing he misremembered, then that can only increase the plasuibility that he misremembered something.

Does it greatly matter what, to the exclusion of all else, Origen remembered wrongly? Is that question even well posed? Is uniqueness logically required?

It is trivial to design a distance metric under which Origen's report is "closer" to the War passages you like than any passages I like in Antiquities, and equally trivial to design another distance metric where closeness runs the other way. Origen is gone, and he's the only who could possibly tell us.

My metric gives considerable weight to Origen's statement that Josephus wrote about his James in Antiquities. But, if he's misremembering anything, then of course he could misremember that, too. My metric would give no weight to Origen knowing that Josephus was Jewish, but another metric certainly could.

I don't find the coincidence you asked about so remarkable or rare as to demand any special explanation (two religious leaders are thought by their respective co-religionists to be concerned with justice - could be). Of course, anybody may give it whatever weight they like in their metric.

[John2]

It seems to me that if it wasn't what Josephus says in the Ananus passage about Jesus being inferior in comparison to Ananus that gave Origen the impression that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ," then we might be in pre-Eusebian TF territory, because I don't see anything about the Jesus in the James passage that would give Origen this impression.

Ant. 20.9.1-4:

... king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him [Ananus], when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest ... he [Ananus' father] therefore cultivated the friendship of Albinus, and of the high priest [Jesus], by making them presents ... And now Jesus, the son of Gamaliel, became the successor of Jesus, the son of Damneus, in the high priesthood, which the king had taken from the other.

In other words, when Origen is talking about what Josephus says about James (in both Comm. Matt and Celsus), why does he also say that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ"? If Origen was thinking of the Ananus passage, then it could have been because Josephus says there that "Jesus was also joined with him [Ananus] ... although he was inferior to him upon the comparison." Or maybe there was a pre-Eusebian TF that Origen always tied to the James passage for some reason (and again without a specific reference). I don't know what other options there could be, besides that Origen, for some inexplicable reason, had the impression that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ" and felt like mentioning it when he talked about what he thought Josephus said about James.

[Paul the Uncertain]

@John 2

that gave Origen the impression that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ,

I'm comfortable that Origen could figure out that Josephus was Jewish from his general reading, and need not to have relied on any specific passage. But if you think Origen needed a brief proof text, then go for it.

...and felt like mentioning it when he talked about what he thought Josephus said about James.

Origen explains that himself fairly well (Against Celsus 1.47, emphasis added):

... Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple, whereas he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities ... says nevertheless— being, although against his will, not far from the truth— that these disasters happened to the Jews as a punishment for the death of James the Just, ...

That is, Origen remarks on Josephus' near-agreement with Origen's view of the matter, despite their religious differences. What more ought Origen have "felt like mentioning," in your view?

[Bernard Muller]

to Paul the Uncertain,

Thanks for the link. I am OK with the reputed pillars never losing their Jewish identity, and conversely that Paul, despite raising money for them, might have never fully accepted the pillars' reluctance to accommodate his Gentile converts. In some sense, then, there could well have been two religions, Gentile and Jewish. In more modern terms, we might say the two religions were "in communion" or perhaps only "in partial communion."

I made a table where I show the different belief of the very early Jesus' groups and even (for Paul's followers) at different times.
Of course that cannot be very accurate, but I think I got the main elements. Again, this is according to my studies.
I am afraid that goes beyond what you envisioned:

http://historical-jesus.info/48.html

Cordially, Bernard

[arnoldo]

Regarding the possibility a scribal note was introduced in the text, Romans 16:22 would appear to support this possibility.

Romans 16:22 (KJV)
I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord.

FWIW, "brother and lord" was a salutation used in various ancient writings.

In the picture in the link above the scribe wrote the letter while the author wrote in large letters his salutation at the end; somewhat similar to Galatians 6:11