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

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Paul the Uncertain wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2019 5:17 pmFinally, howdy Ben.
Hi there. :)
Bernard Muller wrote: Wed Apr 17, 2019 8:06 pmAnd for the Origen business, I think Ben is right, and damned, I will have to make some changes on some of my web pages, maybe only one, I hope.
Bookmark both this post and also the one in which you changed your mind about 1 Corinthians 11.23-28. Next time someone accuses you of being stubborn, you can point to these examples of you changing your mind, and your website to match. :)
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Paul the Uncertain
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Hi again, Bernard
I think you are dealing with minuscule unevidenced possibilities, as I noticed you do some time ago. Keep them if you please. But you look to me like as an extreme "uncertaintist".
You are, of course, entitled to your view. However, your opinion of me has no relevance to the questions discussed here.

This is not a methodological thread, but it is obvious that the evidence available to any of us is sparse and equivocal. It follows that our individual prior opinions, what "makes sense" to each of us, will differ and loom large in our individual conclusions. Personalizing that global situation to any individual is unhelpful.
I already explained that: there was no need to identify the James in Gal 2:9 & 12 other than by his name, because that was done in Gal1:19.
But Paul did anyway. So what?
Forget about 1 Corinthians "brothers of the Lord": these brothers are not identified by number & name.
I am reluctant to forget half of what little evidence there is on point. These brothers are plural, which suffices to conclude that James is not the only one whom Paul ever called the brother of the Lord That's a small step but a step all the same in reconstructing what he meant. It also helps in estimating (against) the chances of interpolation, not a lot, but some.
And next, in Galatians, first it is James, the brother of the Lord, then James as one of the pillars. That follows the rule of good writing.
What Paul wrote is good writing if there were two Jameses, and equally good writing if there were only one James. Good writing doesn't discriminate between one-James and two-James hypotheses.
If I would mention in a text, at first, "Reagan, a past US president", and then a few lines after, I mention "Reagan" again (only his last name), everybody (except maybe yourself) will know it is Reagan, the former US president.
Paul did not refer to James on either occasion by name alone. So the better analogy would be a text where you wrote "Reagan, a past US President" then a few lines after, "Reagan, a former governor of California."

Now, I happen to know that there was one man named Reagan who was both president and governor, and only one US President named Reagan. So yes, you may rely on a contemporary American like me knowing who is being discussed, and that he is one person you've mentioned twice.

You cannot assume, and perhaps don't much care, whether your good writing will be as effortlessly understood two thousand years from now, particularly not in a discussion prompted by the question of what a "US president" meant to you, yours being the only then-extant use of the phrase.

Finally, I am glad to read that you and Ben had a productive conversation here.
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Bernard Muller »

to Paul the Uncertain,
Paul did not refer to James on either occasion by name alone. So the better analogy would be a text where you wrote "Reagan, a past US President" then a few lines after, "Reagan, a former governor of California."
But a former governor of California is still a unique description for that Reagan. After all there was only one governor of California named Reagan.
Gal 2:9 "And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars ..." does not provide an additional identifying detail about specifically James.
There may have been other "James" as pillars, but if it was not the one in Gal 1:19, Paul would have given a unique personal attribute for that other "James", to avoid confusion.

Cordially, Bernard
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Paul the Uncertain »

Hi, Bernard

We seem to be in agreement that Paul would describe each James sufficiently that his first readers could identify which James was meant with enough confidence for them to follow Paul's argument. That doesn't necessarily suffice for us to identify the James(es) with similar confidence two millennia later.

Thanks for the information that there has been only one California governor named Reagan. I didn't know that. I'm unsure what difference it makes to the necessity of improving your example; Paul did not simply designate his James(es) by name alone on either occasion. That was the point of adding something to your second bare mention.
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

.
As a Jesus agnostic, I sometimes enjoy following strenuous discussions between historicists and mythicists about the same old stuff. As everyone knows, one of these long-running questions is about James, the Lord's brother. I'm not sure how many posts Neil Godfrey has written about the Lord's brother, but there are really many. Tim Widowfield wrote over at vridar 5 years ago:

Recently I ran a search for the phrase here, and after reading each post, it struck me how much time we’ve spent wondering what it means …

The same is true here too. I especially remember some good discussions between Paul the Uncertain and robert j and the many efforts by Giuseppe.

What I miss in these discussions is that imho no one seriously tries to examine other passages from Paul's letters in order to better understand what meaning Paul might have given the phrase. Rather, historicists seem to assume that this phrase can be interpreted very easily by referring to the gospels and the later tradition. Mythicists seem to be primarily concerned with being able to reject this „slam dunk“ argument of the historicists with rational reasons. But imho they are not really interested in the meaning of the phrase either.

I am currently interested in this phrase for completely different reasons and I would like to investigate the question a little more closely. It seems to me that an overview of how often the word „brother“ occurs in Paul's letters is a good start.

letter words of the letter occurrence of brother/s percent
1 Thessalonians 1.481 19 1,283 %
Philemon 335 4 1,194 %
1 Corinthians 6.830 39 0,571 %
Philippians 1.629 9 0,552 %
Galatians 2.230 11 0,493 %
2 Corinthians 4.477 12 0,268 %
Romans 7.111 19 0,267 %

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Ken Olson
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Ken Olson »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:41 am What I miss in these discussions is that imho no one seriously tries to examine other passages from Paul's letters in order to better understand what meaning Paul might have given the phrase. Rather, historicists seem to assume that this phrase can be interpreted very easily by referring to the gospels and the later tradition. Mythicists seem to be primarily concerned with being able to reject this „slam dunk“ argument of the historicists with rational reasons. But imho they are not really interested in the meaning of the phrase either.
Hi Kunigunde (if i may),

I had a brief discussion with Ben Smith on what "brothers of the Lord", as opposed to just "brothers", may mean in Paul's letters here:

viewtopic.php?p=113189#p113189

Best,

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

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Ken Olson wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 12:09 pm
Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:41 am What I miss in these discussions is that imho no one seriously tries to examine other passages from Paul's letters in order to better understand what meaning Paul might have given the phrase. Rather, historicists seem to assume that this phrase can be interpreted very easily by referring to the gospels and the later tradition. Mythicists seem to be primarily concerned with being able to reject this „slam dunk“ argument of the historicists with rational reasons. But imho they are not really interested in the meaning of the phrase either.
Hi Kunigunde (if i may),

I had a brief discussion with Ben Smith on what "brothers of the Lord", as opposed to just "brothers", may mean in Paul's letters here:

viewtopic.php?p=113189#p113189

Best,

Ken
Hi Ken, thank you for pointing out your interesting discussion with Ben. I would like to come back later to some specific points. I am glad that you also think it is important to pay more attention to Paul's use of words.
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Kunigunde Kreuzerin »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 11:41 am I am currently interested in this phrase for completely different reasons and I would like to investigate the question a little more closely. It seems to me that an overview of how often the word „brother“ occurs in Paul's letters is a good start.

letter words of the letter occurrence of brother/s percent
1 Thessalonians 1.481 19 1,283 %
Philemon 335 4 1,194 %
1 Corinthians 6.830 39 0,571 %
Philippians 1.629 9 0,552 %
Galatians 2.230 11 0,493 %
2 Corinthians 4.477 12 0,268 %
Romans 7.111 19 0,267 %


The passages in the letters in which the word "brother/s" occurs can imho be divided into three groups for a better overview.

- 1st group: the word is used to address the recipients of the letter (Romans 1:13 "I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you ...")

- 2nd group: the word is used in a general sense for "confrere" in instructions on how to behave; no specific person is meant (1 Corinthians 6:5f. "... Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?")

- 3rd group: all other cases


letter occurrence of brother/s address confrere other cases
Romans 19 10 ... (1:13, 7:1, 7:4, 8:12, 10:1, 11:25, 12:1, 15:14, 15:30, 16:17) 5 ... (14:10, 14:10, 14:13, 14:15, 14:21) 4 ... (8:29, 9:3, 16:14, 16:23)
1 Corinthians 3920 ... (1:10, 1:11, 1:26, 2:1, 3:1, 4:6, 7:24, 7:29, 10:1, 11:33, 12:1, 14:6, 14:20, 14:26, 14:39, 15:1, 15:31, 15:50, 15:58, 16:15) 11 ... (6:5, 6:6, 6:6, 6:8, 7:12, 7:14, 7:15, 8:11, 8:12, 8:13, 8:13) 8 ... (1:1,
5:11, 9:5, 15:6, 16:11, 16:12, 16:12, 16:20)
2 Corinthians 12 3 ... (1:8, 8:1, 13:11) x 9 ... (1:1, 2:13, 8:18, 8:22, 8:23, 9:3, 9:5, 11:9, 12:18)
Galatians 11 9 ... (1:11, 3:15, 4:12, 4:28, 4:31, 5:11, 5:13, 6:1, 6:18) x 2 ... (1:2, 1:19)
Philippians 9 6 ... (1:12, 3:1, 3:13, 3:17, 4:1, 4:8) x 3 ... (1:14, 2:25, 4:21)
1Thessalonians 19 14 ... (1:4, 2:1, 2:9, 2:14, 2:17, 3:7, 4:1, 4:10, 4:13, 5:1, 5:4, 5:12, 5:14, 5:25) 1 ... (4:6) 4 ... (3:2, 4:10, 5:26, 5:27)
Philemon 4 2 ... (1:7, 1:20) x 2 ... (1:1, 1:16)

(Note 2 Corinthians)
Last edited by Kunigunde Kreuzerin on Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Whosonfirst?

Post by JoeWallack »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJiUVp890TY&t=150s

JW:
Of related interest is Paul's strange/bizarre/macabre use/misuse of "father". A significant theological/magical point of Paul is that Paul's god is the father of everyone or at least the group he wants it to be at the time. Paul's figurative use of "father" is more over developed than Donald Trump's tan and smirk. On the other side of heaven, so to speak, Paul mentions many specific individuals known to him, but unknown to me is any instance of Paul referring to a specific person's human father, like say for instance, himself. [understatement] This suggests that Paul's lack of use of biological father for fellow believers is intentional[/understatement]. For those who need points sharply explained, Paul may have felt that rhetorically not using "father" in a biological/human sense for believers helped emphasize his theology of being spiritually adopted by god.

I think this supports a similar/same conclusion for Paul's use of "brother". Regarding the infamous James reference, "the brother of the Lord", I think this is the exception. In general and specifically there, James is presented as competition, not cooperation. The context is human verses divine witness and discrediting James as inferior witness because of the biological brother to Paul's spiritual witness supports a meaning here of the biological. Further supported by GMark.


Joseph

FAITH, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

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Ken Olson
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Re: What did Paul mean by brother(s) of the Lord?

Post by Ken Olson »

Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 10:37 am The passages in the letters in which the word "brother/s" occurs can imho be divided into three groups for a better overview.

- 1st group: the word is used to address the recipients of the letter (Romans 1:13 "I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you ...")

- 2nd group: the word is used in a general sense for "confrere" in instructions on how to behave; no specific person is meant (1 Corinthians 6:5f. "... Can it be that there is no one among you wise enough to settle a dispute between the brothers, 6 but brother goes to law against brother, and that before unbelievers?")

- 3rd group: all other cases

Is your suggested system of classification and end unto itself, or is it a prelude to making some further point about Paul's use of ἀδελφός 'brother'?

At the risk of stating the obvious, it would seem that in all three cases, Paul uses the word in a sense approximating our word 'Christian'. He doesn't have the word Christian or any other single word that is synonymous with it, but ἀδελφός is probably the closest thing we have in his letters. When he addresses the assemblies (churches) and the brothers, it seems that the assemblies are composed of brothers and the brothers comprise the assemblies. (I take it he uses the masculine plural to refer to mixed groups of both genders, as the NRSV assumes; the feminine singular 'sister' in the sense of a member of the church or Christian is found in 1 Cor. 9.5).

Best,

Ken
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