‘Deciphering the Gospels’, by R. G. Price, argues the case for Jesus mythicism, which is the view that Jesus never existed on earth in any real form but was an entirely mythical figure in the same way as Hercules or Dionysus. (The author is not the same person as Robert Price, also a Jesus mythicist author.) I’m an atheist who holds the opposing (and mainstream) view that Jesus was originally a human being of the 1st century about whom a later mythology grew up. I’m therefore reviewing Price’s book to discuss his arguments and my reasons for disagreeing.
The first post in this book review is here. Links to the posts on all subsequent chapters can be found at the end of that post.
Paul and Jesus’s brothers
Out of all the comments from Paul that I listed in the previous post that point towards Paul having believed in an earthly Jesus, Price addresses only one more; Galatians 1:19.
This verse, for context, is in the middle of a passage in which Paul is letting the Galatians know how little contact he’s ever had with the church (which, to Paul, is a positive, because he believes that this means he’s working solely from what Jesus told him to do rather than from the influence of less enlightened church members), so Paul is stressing how little time he’s spent with the church and how few of the apostles he saw while there. However, he does tell us that as well as staying with Cephas (Peter) during the fifteen days he spent there, he did meet one other apostle, named in the Greek as ‘Iacobus’, a name which our translations consistently anglicise as ‘James’ (as this is the version of the name used in all English works, it’s the version I’ll use as well throughout this post). And, the important point for our purposes… Paul identifies this Iacobus/James as ‘the Lord’s brother’. Since ‘the Lord’ is one of the terms Paul uses for Jesus, this means that Paul is saying he met Jesus’s brother.
Since mythical divine beings don’t typically have real-life flesh-and-blood brothers walking the earth and meeting people, that one passing comment is a pretty significant problem for mythicist theory. Let’s look at what Price has to say about it.
Price’s explanations
Price gives us two different theories. The first is that ‘brother of the Lord’ was just a general term used for Christians:
Many people, including Earl Doherty and Arthur Drews, have pointed out that the term brother or brothers was regularly applied to apostles and members of the church in general and conclude that this is how it was being used here as well.
Except that it isn’t. There are indeed many examples of church members referring to one another as ‘brothers’, a clearly metaphorical term indicating close bonds of union in shared belief; when Paul used the term in that sense, as he often did, he was implying that the person in question was metaphorically his brother due to their shared membership of the church. Or, even more than that, that the person or people referred to were metaphorically brothers to everyone else in the church. However, there’s a crucial difference in the wording here. In this verse, James isn’t being referred to just as ‘brother’; he’s being referred to as ‘the Lord’s brother’. That’s a very different phrase. Paul wasn’t referring to James as his (metaphorical) brother, but as the brother of the Lord; i.e. Jesus.
Now, it might of course still be meant metaphorically. Maybe Paul meant that James had had a deep enough bond with Jesus for the two of them to be described as brothers even without having an actual blood relationship. However, while that is plausible, it still doesn’t fit well with mythicism. We don’t typically describe actual humans as having even a metaphorical fraternal relationship with divine heavenly superbeings. A child-to-parent relationship, sure; Judaism has used that particular metaphor for millennia, with Christianity following in its tracks. But not a brotherly relationship, with its rather different connotations of a bond between equals.
This, however, does bring us to Price’s second theory; that ‘the Lord’s brother’ was meant metaphorically in a different sense. Not to describe a particularly close bond, but as a title to indicate James’s level of importance in the church, or perhaps his sterling qualities:
If this is the case, then the reason that Paul called James “the Lord’s brother” in Galatians is because James was seen as such a major pillar of the community, whom people called a “brother of the Lord,” which was a title similar to “the Just.”
So this theory is effectively the reverse of the previous one; Price is now theorising that, far from ‘brother’ being meant in the sense of a generic title for any male church member, it was a specific title for this one man in particular. Price thinks that over time this metaphor became misunderstood as a claim that this particular James was literally Jesus’s brother:
This James was only later considered to be a literal brother of Jesus. It was probably the early Christian chronicler Hegesippus, in the late second century, who recorded the first concrete association of “James the Just” as the literal brother of Jesus, helping to cement this view into Church tradition.
The first problem with this explanation is that ‘brother of the Lord’ is not, in fact, similar to ‘the Just’. ‘The Just’ is a title that refers to an important quality of the person described, while ‘Brother of the Lord’ refers to a relationship, not a personal quality. But it’s still possible that this phrase could have been used as a metaphor, and, interestingly, we do have some evidence for this. Price quotes this passage from Origen which was written in the third century:
Paul, a genuine disciple of Jesus, says that he regarded this James as a brother of the Lord, not so much on account of their relationship by blood, or of their being brought up together, as because of his virtue and doctrine.
Against Celsus; Origen
Origen seems to be citing a letter we no longer have, as none of the existing letters attributed to Paul say any such thing. So, this raises the question of whether Paul actually did write something similar to the phrasing Origen here attributes to him. Unfortunately we can’t assume that he did, partly because Origen seems to have been willing to be rather free with his citing of what writers actually said (in the same passage he claims that Josephus attributed the fall of Jerusalem to the killing of James, which isn’t at all what Josephus says) and partly because so many later epistles were falsely claimed to have been by Paul that we can’t assume Origen had a genuine Pauline epistle here.
However, if Paul actually did write the words attributed to him by Origen, then that’s a very interesting contribution to the debate which doesn’t point in the direction Price thinks. If Paul actually found it worth spelling out that James’s appellation of ‘brother’ was not ‘on account of their relationship by blood or of their being brought up together’, then that is strong evidence for an early church who followed a human Jesus. If a group who followed a divine heavenly being did take the highly unlikely step of referring to one of their human members as this divine heavenly being’s brother (and it is highly unlikely, as I wrote above), then it would have been very obvious that this was metaphorical. No-one there would have had to spell out that this wasn’t on account of a blood relationship or being brought up together, because no-one in the group would have thought for a minute that it would be. If Paul really did write those words, then that would point clearly to a human Jesus.
However, since we can’t know whether Paul wrote those words or not, that doesn’t help us. We’re left with the same question as before: how likely is it that a group would describe one of their human members, however virtuous, as metaphorically the brother of their heavenly quasi-divine leader who only dropped in from heaven to visit them? And with the same answer as before: not very likely at all.
On top of this, we have an even bigger problem with Price’s interpretations here: Galatians 1:19 is only one of the two places in which Paul uses this phrase.
The problem of 1 Corinthians 9:5
1 Corinthians 9:5 is, as it happens, also a passing comment in the middle of a mini-rant. Paul isn’t happy about the church refusing to support him financially in his work of preaching the gospel, although he is Absolutely Not Trying To Claim This Support because he considers himself obliged to preach the gospel regardless, but still, hmph, what about all these other church members who get supported for this work the way the scriptures apparently say they should… And, in the middle of this, he happens to make this comment:
Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?
So, Paul not only refers to ‘brothers of the Lord’, he does so in a way that inadvertently makes it clear that they are in a separate category from ‘the other apostles’ and ‘Cephas’. ‘Brother of the Lord’ therefore was clearly an appellation that was given to more than one person, that wasn’t just some sort of generic term for church members overall, and that also wasn’t a term for particularly important church members (or Paul wouldn’t have differentiated ‘the other apostles’ and ‘the brothers of the Lord’ as two separate groups).
And so, yet again, we have something that’s very difficult to explain under mythicist theory but very easy to explain under historicist theory; if Jesus was a real person, of course it was plausible for his parents to have had other children.
So, how does Price explain 1 Corinthians 9.5?
In one of the most notable pieces of question-begging I’ve seen in a while, Price actually quotes this verse in support of his argument by assuming that it can’t mean actual brothers and working from there to claim that this verse therefore proves Paul would use ‘brother of the Lord’ in a way that doesn’t mean an actual brother of the Lord.
The five hundred brothers mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, as well as “brothers” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 9, are examples that are often cited to show the use of brothers of the Lord in ways that clearly don’t mean literal relatives. […] Some people even try to argue that this mention of brothers in 1 Corinthians 9 means relatives, but this really wouldn’t make sense, for why would literal brothers of Jesus even be a part of this issue, especially since in later accounts where literal brothers of Jesus are discussed, they have nothing to do with him or his movement? Indeed Jesus’s family is portrayed as being rejected by him in the Gospels.
Firstly, I have to point out that the ‘some people’ who believe this mention of ‘brothers’ to refer to actual brothers (or at least actual relatives) include, as far as I know, everyone who’s ever read this passage bar the occasional mythicist. I mean, someone (hiya, db!) is probably going to dig me out an obscure reference to someone somewhere who has argued otherwise, but when practically everyone believes the obvious meaning of a word in a passage to be the actual meaning then I don’t think ‘some people try to argue’ is quite the correct phrase.
Secondly, the passage tells us why Jesus’s brothers would ‘even be a part of this issue’. Paul is complaining that he doesn’t qualify for a privilege (getting church support for himself and a dependant) that some other groups of church members do. The brothers of Jesus are a part of this issue because they do get this privilege which Paul thinks he should have. Price is talking as though there’s some kind of inexplicable mystery about the idea of ‘brothers’ here referring to actual brothers when, in fact, it makes perfect sense in context.
Thirdly, let’s look at Price’s claim that ‘later accounts’ (which I assume from context has to mean the gospels) show Jesus’s brothers as having nothing to do with him/his movement. After going through the very brief references in the gospels to Jesus having a brother called James, which are indeed blink-and-you’ll-miss-them, Price makes this point:
Given that the Gospels were all written after the works of Paul, and that the Gospels serve as a backdrop for the Christian movement, and that the Gospels establish the positions of the major Christian leaders, it would not make any sense for the Gospels to totally ignore James the literal brother of Jesus […] if James the brother of Jesus is the one who was a leader of the Christian community.
Which would be a good point, except that, later in the chapter, Price himself gives us a plausible counterargument without even noticing that he’s done so. Here’s what Price says later in the chapter:
In both the writings of Paul and the Gospels, conflict between James son of Zebedee and the others is shown. […] It appears, according to the writings of Paul, that James and John held to a more Jewish version of the faith and did not embrace the Gentile apostleship.
In the first century, however, James son of Zebedee was considered a pillar of the Christian community, but perhaps later Christians sought to exclude him from tradition and sever ties to his sect.
The references to ‘James son of Zebedee’ here are a little confusing. Price is referring to the ‘James’ mentioned in Galatians 2 (verses 9 and 12), who is not specifically identified but from context is probably the same James mentioned in 1:19. Even if that isn’t the case, this James seems rather unlikely to have been James the son of Zebedee, as Acts 12:2 tells us that that particular James was killed by Herod Antipas quite early on, at a point which would have been well before the visit to Jerusalem to which Paul is referring in Galatians 2. However, via some interesting logic contortions, Price seems to have convinced himself that a) Acts was wrong on this point and b) that this James must be the son of Zebedee rather than any of the other people of this very common name.
However, all that is by-the-by. Setting aside the dubious ‘son of Zebedee’ claim, let’s look at Price’s main point here: the possibility that later Christian authors would have wanted to downplay the importance of an early church member who held to a theology different from that which eventually won out. And Price is onto something there. We know that there was significant conflict in the early church. We know that Pauline theology was the one that eventually won out. And, in view of the conflict described in Galatians, we have reason to suspect that this theology wasn’t the one held by Jesus’s original followers.
So, on the background of that first-century conflict, how would church writers from the Pauline side of the church have dealt with awkward traditions about key members of the early church having held to beliefs that were now considered mistaken? I agree with Price on this one; that would have been rather a strong motive to downplay the importance of these people in the accounts. (It wouldn’t even have had to be a conscious thing; more a case of ‘Well, James was clearly misguided, so let’s focus on what these others had to say’.)
In other words, we have an obvious explanation from Price himself of why the gospels might have wanted to ignore a brother of Jesus who became a leader in the early Christian community; because tradition had preserved the rather awkward information that this brother did not agree with the new belief system that, by the time of the gospels, was being taught as The Truth. As potential motives go, I’d say that’s a satisfactorily convincing one. And so, in fact, we have a good explanation of why the gospels had so little to say about James, and Price is wrong when he thinks we’re forced to fall back on the explanation that James wasn’t an actual brother of an actual Jesus.
In conclusion
Paul makes two passing mentions of brothers of Jesus (one of ‘brothers’ collectively and one of a specific brother), which Price, despite his best efforts, has not managed to explain away. And there’s an important difference between these two mentions and the other information we get from Paul about Jesus; these can’t be easily dismissed as just Paul’s own beliefs.
We’ve had to be very cautious about using other Pauline-derived information as evidence for the historicity side, because Paul himself makes it so clear that he gets his information about Jesus from what he thinks Jesus told him in a vision. Therefore, although Paul clearly did believe that Jesus had lived a human life, and made many comments referring to this, we can’t assume that this belief came from actual knowledge of what the original church were saying rather than from his own belief about what he thought Jesus had said to him in visions. However, the mentions of Jesus’s brothers come from much more prosaic sources. He mentions the brothers collectively because he’s annoyed that the church is giving them and their wives financial support which he himself doesn’t get, and he mentions James in particular because he met him.
So this, unlike most of what Paul says, actually is reliable information. Not theological expositions based on visions, but passing comments about people of whose existence and status Paul has personal knowledge. These two comments that Paul makes in the midst of rants about other issues are very good evidence that the Lord of whom he’s speaking (Jesus) had human brothers. And that, in turn, is good evidence that Jesus was human.
I understand (Wikipedia concurs) Catholic dogma to include the “perpetual virginity” of Mary. While this doesn;t mean that all Catholics agree with mythicists in rejecting the literal meaning here (I’ve read that 50% of Catholics don’t believe in transubstantiation) it seems likely that a substantial number of Catholics do.
Price is mostly correct. Here’s another piece of the puzzle.
https://apolloniustyaneus.blogspot.com/2013/12/turin-shroud-proof-or-doom-for.html
@another stewart, #1:
That’s a good point, and I agree. The standard Catholic interpretation is apparently that the word either refers to stepbrothers (Joseph’s children from a previous marriage), or cousins, which does apparently work with the Greek as the word ‘adelphos’ could cover other close relatives too. Of course, that wasn’t what Price was trying to claim. He was trying to claim that the word was being used metaphorically as a reference to church members generally, dismissing the idea that it could even mean relatives, and talking as though the people who thought that the word meant ‘relatives’ were just a foolish minority here.
Anyway, I’ve updated the wording of the post. Thanks.
Price is mostly correct. Here’s another piece of the puzzle.
Apolllonian@3,
Price is completely incorrect. Since the Shroud of Turin is without any real doubt a 14th-century artefact (we not only have carbon-dating, independently by two highly reputable labs, we also have the contemporary statement of Pierre d’Arcis, Bishop of Troyes that it’s a fake, the herringbone weave of the cloth (characteristic of the medieval period, unknown from the time of Jesus) and the fact that it’s badly anatomically wonky – the forearms and fingers on the two sides of very different lengths, the head too small for the body, the position of the arms and hands implausible) your link is really not a piece of the puzzle at all. I don’t find the alleged similarities to the bust of Apollonius particulrly convincing – the nose is quite different, as is the beard, and the Shroud face is much narrower (indeed, this is part of the anatomical abnormality). Of course the artist might have used a bust of Apollonius in making the image. I have, incidentally, seen the Shroud – I was in Turin during its recent showing there. It’s deeply unimpressive.
@Apollonian, #3:
In addition to the points made by KG in #4 (thanks, KG!), there’s also the fact that the question of whether the Shroud was a picture of Apollionus has precisely zero to do with whether Jesus existed. Even if we did for the sake of argument consider the Shroud to be a picture of someone other than Jesus, why on earth would that be evidence that Jesus didn’t exist? There are plenty of pictures of people who aren’t me, and I can assure you that I still exist.
By the way, in answer to the last paragraph before the asterisks in that post, what do you find strange about Paul being ‘unknown to history’? From the point of view of historians, he was some guy who turned up in a place and started a smallish cult with strange beliefs, possibly creating some fuss which was dealt with by the authorities. That’s not actually the kind of thing that would be important enough for historians of the time to care enough about to record even if they heard of him. It’s not as though they knew at the time that he was going to end up changing history.
We know that there was significant conflict in the early church. We know that Pauline theology was the one that eventually won out. … we have reason to suspect that this theology wasn’t the one held by Jesus’s original followers.
A much more interesting set of questions than the relationship between Jim/Jake and Josh/Jesus. If there was an original actual J-boy, wotthehell did he preach? Prob’ly something quite different from the Pauline or Gospel spiels. This fortifies the argument that neither the events nor the lessons of the “New Testament” tell us anything about any OG Jesus.
KG @ # 5: … the Shroud of Turin … it’s badly anatomically wonky …
Which clearly indicates it was created by a time-traveling “Midjourney” AI, as demonstrated on another blog in this very network.
Dr Sarah @ # 6: … he was some guy who turned up in a place and started a smallish cult …
This sounds more like J than P, since Paul purportedly persecuted, then boosted (or hijacked), a cult already extant.
KG
“Since the Shroud of Turin is without any real doubt a 14th-century artefact (we not only have carbon-dating, independently by two highly reputable labs, we also have the contemporary statement of Pierre d’Arcis, Bishop of Troyes that it’s a fake”
You should do more research instead of repeating the same again and again. The statement of this Bishop is no evidence. See here for details:
https://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2022/11/sceptics-and-shroud-turin-shroud.html
On the same blog you can find answers to other objections as well.
“I don’t find the alleged similarities to the bust of Apollonius particulrly convincing – the nose is quite different, as is the beard, and the Shroud face is much narrower (indeed, this is part of the anatomical abnormality). Of course the artist might have used a bust of Apollonius in making the image.”
Thanks for shooting yourself in the foot. So the similarities are not convincing (it’s not Apollonius) but perhaps the artist used the bust of Apollonius (so it is Apollonius!). But why Apollonius of all people? And who did he use for the rest of the body? His cousin?
Dr Sarah
“there’s also the fact that the question of whether the Shroud was a picture of Apollionus has precisely zero to do with whether Jesus existed.”
You are deluding yourself. If the man on the shroud is Apollonius that proves once and for all that he was the so called Jesus. And you can consult other literature for the historicity problems with Jesus.
Apollonian,
Self-described “Australian evangelical Christian in my 70” Stephen E. Jones, who you link to, and who provides no evidence that he has any relevant expertise at all, provides us with: “My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker”. This is truly desperate stuff, which I invite anyone to take a look (and a laugh) at. Jones claims (falsely) that there is “overwhelming evidence” of the shroud’s authenticity, and himself admits that none of the “contamination” or “sample swapping” scenarios to explain away the radiocarbon dates works, so he has to resort to unproven accusations of computer fraud against people who are conveniently dead, and so can’t sue him:
And this is the kind of absurd hooey you are relying on?
Don’t be absurd. If the Shroud image is of the actual body of Apollonius, as you claim, then (if the bust represents his appearance accurately, which of course your claim requires), the Shroud image should closely match the bust. But if an artist used the bust as a source, perhaps along with others, it need not do so – both aspects of the image which do match, and those which don’t, would be the result of artistic choices.
No, it doesn’t. You haven’t even tried to provide any argument that it does.
Apollonian (and his source Stephen E. Jones) give us an amusing demonstration of a characteristic of crankery – that with regard to any one target of crankery (Jesus mythicism, Shroud of Turin radiocarbon dating denial, anthropogenic climate change denial, attacks on Covid vaccines, 9-11 “truthers”…) there is always a wide range of mutually incompatible crank narratives on offer. I must admit Apollonian’s compounding of Jesus mythicism and Shroud radiocarbon dating denial is unique in my experience!
KG
“Self-described “Australian evangelical Christian in my 70” Stephen E. Jones, who you link to, and who provides no evidence that he has any relevant expertise at all, provides us with: My theory that the radiocarbon dating laboratories were duped by a computer hacker.”
This is Jone’s own theory. Carbon dating is not flawless and could be wrong for various reasons. Recently an Italian used a method based on X-rays and came to the conclusion that the shroud could be 2000 years old. The research goes on whether so called skeptics like it or not.
“Don’t be absurd. If the Shroud image is of the actual body of Apollonius, as you claim, then (if the bust represents his appearance accurately, which of course your claim requires), the Shroud image should closely match the bust. But if an artist used the bust as a source, perhaps along with others, it need not do so – both aspects of the image which do match, and those which don’t, would be the result of artistic choices.”
I see you dodged the questions.
– Why use a bust instead of a person? You still need to draw the body.
– Why Apollonius of all people?
“No, it doesn’t. You haven’t even tried to provide any argument that it does.”
Yes it does. Who do you think you’ re fooling? This is real desperation. “Hey guys the shroud man is in fact Apollonius of Tyana, a holy man born at the beginning of the first century, who is called the pagan Jesus because he cured the sick, raised the dead, exorcised demons and foresaw the future. Turns out that he was also crucified. But it’s all just sheer coincidence.”
Try this claim and let’s see how far you can go.
Apollonian@12
This “method” has never been calibrated on objects of known age. In short, it’s complete tosh.
I didn’t “dodge them” – I just considered them too puerile to bother with. I don’t know whether the artist(s) used a bust at all, or if so, whether it was one of Apollonius. But that bust does resemble 14th century ideas of what Jesus would have looked like, so if a copy of it happened to be handy, it could have been a useful aid. The unanatomical aspects of the Shroud image suggest the artist(s) perhaps didn’t use a model for the body!
Since the only significant source for Apollonius’s life and death are from the 3rd century biography by Philostratus (which was written by command of the emperor’s wife), the similarities with Jesus could easily have been a result of incorporating bits and pieces of Christian lore – such borrowing practices were common among authors of the time. But this is all otiose, as the Shroud is, without serious doubt, a medieval artefact.
KG
“This “method” has never been calibrated on objects of known age. In short, it’s complete tosh.”
I haven’t looked into it, but as I said the research goes on. Don’t cry about it.
“I don’t know whether the artist(s) used a bust at all, or if so, whether it was one of Apollonius.”
And yet this doesn’t stop you from proposing something so ridiculous.
“But that bust does resemble 14th century ideas of what Jesus would have looked like, so if a copy of it happened to be handy, it could have been a useful aid.”
Unbelievable nonsense. The people of the past looked the same as in the Middle Ages. Nobody would go around looking for a bust. That’s a bust of a man with a beard and there are numerous busts like this one. And Jesus was portrayed the way we know since at least the 6th century.
“Since the only significant source for Apollonius’s life and death are from the 3rd century biography by Philostratus (which was written by command of the emperor’s wife), the similarities with Jesus could easily have been a result of incorporating bits and pieces of Christian lore”
Speculations again.
“But this is all otiose, as the Shroud is, without serious doubt, a medieval artefact.”
All you can do is keep parroting the same nonsense. There are serious doubts whether you like it or not. You would know it if you had actually done some research.
You’re clutching at straws. It’s utterly absurd to compare a “method” which has just been dreamed up by a single research group solely to apply to the Shroud, with radiocarbon dating, which has been tested, developed and refined over decades, so that its application is consistent and its limitations are well-understood. You shrug off the unevidenced claims of computer hacking from the crank you yourself promoted and now claim the radiocarbon dates “could be wrong for various reasons” without even suggesting one!
Italians of the 14th century did not generally wear their hair and beard long. It was also a period of reviving interest in the classical period and in Greek culture, stimulated by contact with the east during the Crusades – and particularly the 4th Crusade, which captured Constantinople in 1204. So if the artist(s) wanted to depict Jesus with long hair and beard, a classical bust might well have been available and convenient. But as I’ve pointed out, the resemblance isn’t that close. It’s also notable that, as you say, Jesus was depicted that way roughly since the 6th century – but not earlier. That’s several centuries after he (and Apollonius) lived. Anyhow, you focus on this irrelevant nonsense because you have zero grounds for asserting that the radiocarbon dates are wrong. The Shroud is a 14th-century artefact.
Pretty much all that’s available about Apollonius is speculation, because the only significant textual source is a dubious piece of work from well over a century after his death. Incidentally, how is it known that the bust depicts Apollonius of Tyana? And even assuming it does, how is it known it does so accurately?
No, there are not. This nonsense is only maintained by people with either a religious or a financial motive for claiming the Shroud is or might be genuine, and occasional cranks like you.
If the man on the shroud is Apollonius that proves once and for all that he was the so called Jesus.
No, it proves nothing of the sort. You’re giving non-sequiturs a bad name. And even if the shroud could be proven to be the face of Jesus hisself, it still wouldn’t prove a damn thing ABOUT Jesus — only that he was a man who’d had a burial shroud that someone else recovered.
I haven’t looked into it, but as I said the research goes on.
Yeah, right…you assert something as fact, then when your assertion is debunked, you fall back on “teach the controversy.” Go to bed.
KG
“It’s utterly absurd to compare a “method” which has just been dreamed up by a single research group solely to apply to the Shroud, with radiocarbon dating, which has been tested, developed and refined over decades, so that its application is consistent and its limitations are well-understood. You shrug off the unevidenced claims of computer hacking from the crank you yourself promoted and now claim the radiocarbon dates “could be wrong for various reasons” without even suggesting one!”
Are you really THAT ignorant? It’s no secret that carbon dating is not at all bullet proof.
“Taken alone, however, the carbon dating is unreliable at best, and at worst, downright inaccurate.”
https://www.labmate-online.com/news/news-and-views/5/breaking-news/how-accurate-is-carbon-dating/30144
“Italians of the 14th century did not generally wear their hair and beard long. It was also a period of reviving interest in the classical period and in Greek culture, stimulated by contact with the east during the Crusades – and particularly the 4th Crusade, which captured Constantinople in 1204. So if the artist(s) wanted to depict Jesus with long hair and beard, a classical bust might well have been available and convenient.”
Simply pathetic excuses to explain the face match. Assuming an artist needed a model he could easily find a man with a beard. He would never even think of a bust, especially since he planned to make a full body shroud.
“But as I’ve pointed out, the resemblance isn’t that close.”
The resemblance is undeniable. The faces match on very specific features.
“Pretty much all that’s available about Apollonius is speculation, because the only significant textual source is a dubious piece of work from well over a century after his death.”
This is not uncommon with ancient sources. And it’s still far better than the gospels.
“Incidentally, how is it known that the bust depicts Apollonius of Tyana? And even assuming it does, how is it known it does so accurately?”
Your desperation is going wild. Just a glance at any Greek sculpture shows that the artist did his best to depict each person. Resorting to such excuses is an admission that the faces match.
“No, there are not.”
You have already made a fool of yourself with the bogus Bishop statement proving that you never actually check any claim. That sums it all up for you.
Raging Bee
“No, it proves nothing of the sort.
Oh please, stop humiliating yourselves.
“And even if the shroud could be proven to be the face of Jesus himself, it still wouldn’t prove a damn thing ABOUT Jesus.”
It would certainly prove that Jesus was a real person who was crucified.
“Yeah, right…you assert something as fact, then when your assertion is debunked, you fall back on “teach the controversy.”
Nothing was debunked. KG is simply resorting to one excuse after another. The Italian study as far as I know has not been refuted. I simply pointed out that more research is needed.
Oh brother! Jesus! Geee- suss! 😉
Maybe had brothers..
Wouldn’t it save time and reduce unnecessary intermediates to claim the Shroud of Turin proves the existence of Apollo?
Apollonian, #8:
How?
The only evidence we have ever had of the Shroud being a picture of Jesus rather than anyone else is that, over thirteen hundred years later, someone claimed it was. How do you get from that to the idea that proving the Shroud is actually a picture of someone else would prove ‘once and for all’ that that person was Jesus?
#14:
Actually, it’s normal for hair/beard styles to change with the times, and average height has increased considerably over time.
And we now know this to have more to do with images of Greek gods than with the typical looks of a first-century Aramaic man.
#17:
KG has literally just explained to you that men in that time and place rarely wore beards or long hair.
On the contrary, it’s a very good question. From what I could find out about the bust’s provenance, it’s not clear how old it is or whether it was copied from life or any actual pictures, so it could easily be an idealised image of what Apollionus was thought to look like (in exactly the same way that Jesus’s pictures are), or of a handy subject whose face seemed to fit the stereotype.
Dr Sarah
The only evidence we have ever had of the Shroud being a picture of Jesus rather than anyone else is that, over thirteen hundred years later, someone claimed it was.
Wrong. The shroud is not a “picture”. It depicts a crucified man with the exact same wounds as Jesus. So if it is genuine how did the image of Apollonius, the so called pagan Christ, appeared on it? Because he was the real Jesus.
And we now know this to have more to do with images of Greek gods than with the typical looks of a first-century Aramaic man.
Not really.
https://web.archive.org/web/20180412063738/http://www.patsearch.it/FM/Shroud_of_Turin.htm
The images do not appear but you can find them here.
https://apolloniustyaneus.blogspot.com/2013/12/blog-post_4201.html
KG has literally just explained to you that men in that time and place rarely wore beards or long hair.
This was just a silly excuse to explain the face match.
On the contrary, it’s a very good question. From what I could find out about the bust’s provenance, it’s not clear how old it is or whether it was copied from life or any actual pictures, so it could easily be an idealised image of what Apollionus was thought to look like
Unfortunately, there is nothing idealised about the bust. It shows a man with very specific characteristics, including non symmetric eyebrows, non symmetric eyes and a scar on the left eyebrow.
Apollonian, #22:
By all means use the word ‘image’, or ‘depiction’, or whatever else you prefer instead, but that doesn’t change my main point: The only evidence we’ve ever had for the Shroud being a genuine picture of Jesus is that someone who lived thirteen hundred years later claimed it was. That’s not even good evidence, let alone proof. So proving the Shroud was an image (or whatever word you prefer) of someone other than Jesus wouldn’t prove a thing about Jesus’s existence, any more than proving the Hitler diaries to have been written by someone other than Hitler somehow proved Hitler didn’t exist.
Yes, I know there were similar images of Jesus as far back as at least the sixth century. That doesn’t change the archaeological evidence that we have regarding the appearance of typical Jewish men in the first century, which do not look like the portraits of Jesus that were drawn much later.
And you concluded this… how?
True; ‘idealised’ probably wasn’t the word I wanted. Let me rephrase; it could easily be an image based on a general (possibly later) idea of what a sage would look like, with the long hair and beard.
Dr Sarah
So proving the Shroud was an image (or whatever word you prefer) of someone other than Jesus wouldn’t prove a thing about Jesus’s existence, any more than proving the Hitler diaries to have been written by someone other than Hitler somehow proved Hitler didn’t exist.
Another silly and desperate comparison. Hitler’s existence is established even without any diaries. Not so with Jesus. So as I said, if the shroud is genuine and the man on it is Apollonius, it would be next to impossible for this to be a coincidence. It would also explain why there is simply zero proof that Jesus existed.
Yes, I know there were similar images of Jesus as far back as at least the sixth century. That doesn’t change the archaeological evidence that we have regarding the appearance of typical Jewish men in the first century, which do not look like the portraits of Jesus that were drawn much later.
You again evade the point. Jewish men are irrelevant. The article argues that the portraits of Jesus were not based on Greek gods but on the shroud itself.
And you concluded this… how?
Because it’s just plain silly!!! The image is of a full body, front and back, not a face. But since there were no people with beards the supposed artist instead of picking someone to let his beard and hair grow, he went around looking for an ancient bust to make just the face??? This is pure desperation, plain and simple. Furthermore the image on the shroud is faint and not a painting like Mona Lisa. So any average guy could be used to make it.
Let me rephrase; it could easily be an image based on a general (possibly later) idea of what a sage would look like, with the long hair and beard.
And you fail again. General idea??? The bust is neither idealised nor general. It shows a man with very specific characteristics as I pointed out. What exactly is general? The non symmetric eyebrows? The scar on the left eyebrow? Even the beard has a specific shape. And we have busts of so many people, sages and non sages. Why is this bust different?
@Apollonian, #24:
First off, I think you’re repeatedly missing the main point here: the Shroud has never been considered evidence for the historicity debate. I’ve been reading historicity/mythicism arguments for years, and I have never seen anyone suggest that the Shroud is any sort of evidence for Jesus’s existence. It’s simply irrelevant to the topic. So, proving it to be an image of someone other than Jesus would make absolutely zero difference to the debate.
…to working out what a Jewish man of that time would have been likely to look like?
Which would still leave us with the question of how we could know that the Shroud was a an image of Jesus rather than anyone else. By the way, how is that article any less speculation than the argument that the apparent Jesus/Apollonius similarities ‘could easily have been a result of incorporating bits and pieces of Christian lore’?
Dude, are you seriously trying to suggest that an artist trying to forge a shroud of Jesus would have done so by expecting a model to spend months growing a beard? I’m not sold on the idea of him having used a bust, but the idea that a forger would happen to have access to a bust that looked about right still strikes me as a lot less unlikely than the idea that a forger would expect someone to spend months growing his beard out and dealing with comments about what a scruff he was.
Just so we’re clear: if you want to continue commenting here then keep it civil to both me and to others. That is not up for negotiation and if you keep pushing the line I will bar you. I have now put you on moderation. If you can keep your comments civil, then I will approve them.
The fact that the bust has the kind of look that had come to be associated with Jesus, and thus would have made a possible model if someone who had access to the bust was trying to forge a burial shroud. Yes, by the way, I do know that’s speculation; but so are the theories that Apollionus might have been crucified without anyone ever recording it, that someone might have saved his burial shroud, and that people might have invented a Jewish character called Jesus based on the stories of a pagan sage.
the Shroud has never been considered evidence for the historicity debate. I’ve been reading historicity/mythicism arguments for years, and I have never seen anyone suggest that the Shroud is any sort of evidence for Jesus’s existence.
For one simple reason: It’s not yet proven to be the real thing. But if it’s Apollonius on it, it’s a different story.
Which would still leave us with the question of how we could know that the Shroud was an image of Jesus rather than anyone else.
The point is that people then believed it was!
By the way, how is that article any less speculation than the argument that the apparent Jesus/Apollonius similarities ‘could easily have been a result of incorporating bits and pieces of Christian lore’?
Because the article compares actual portraits of Jesus with the shroud. No speculation there.
Dude, are you seriously trying to suggest that an artist trying to forge a shroud of Jesus would have done so by expecting a model to spend months growing a beard?
Oh please…. Here you are suggesting even more outlandish things, about an artist traveling thousands of kilometers to find a bust (when he planned to make a full body shroud) instead of just finding a guy with a beard. After all, with the image being so faint many people could be used. And if you had bothered to check more you would know that the beard would be the least of his problems.
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2016/01/problems-of-forgery-theory-index-z.html
if you want to continue commenting here then keep it civil to both me and to others.
This is pretty audacious from someone who just called me “dude”. First, I’m not your buddy/friend or whatever. And there was nothing wrong with my wording. No name calling, no insults.
The fact that the bust has the kind of look that had come to be associated with Jesus, and thus would have made a possible model if someone who had access to the bust was trying to forge a burial shroud.
You can find the same kind of look on other busts. See the busts of Epictetus or Heraclitus or other philosophers. And the shroud is full body not face. This simply won’t fly no matter how you push it.
Apollonian@17,
I’m amused that the best you can come up with in the way of attempting to discredit carbon dating is an unsigned, unreferenced opinion piece on a commercial website. It is of course utter nonsense that as that piece cliams:
Yes, it was discovered that rates of C14 deposition vary over time – but taking 1950 as a base year was nothing to do with this – it’s simply a convenience, so dates are often given “BP”, standing for “Before Present”, with “present” being 1950 – the approximate date when carbon14 dating came into practical use. But of course the extra decay expected in the now 73 years since is taken into account when calculating dates of samples. Radiocarbon dates have since been calibrated using dendrochronology, and those from dates as recent as any in question with regard to the Shroud are highly reliable – which is why it was used. Shroud authenticity proponents were happy with this, becuase they thought the results would vindicate them. When they didn’t, the Shorudies came up with excuses, and have continued to do so ever since, without, however, being able to agree on one – because none of them have any evidence to support them.
TBC
@Apollonian, #26:
For future reference: When someone tells you that keeping it civil is a requirement not up for negotiation, that is really not a good time to start arguing that you haven’t said anything wrong. ‘And you fail again’ is a rude way to speak to someone. So are ‘You are deluding yourself’, ‘You have already made a fool of yourself’, ‘Are you really THAT ignorant?’, and repeatedly referring to other people’s arguments as ‘silly’, ‘ridiculous’, ‘puerile’, or ‘nonsense’.
By the way, I do understand that you might disagree on whether or not this behaviour is rude, or whether or not it’s acceptable on blogs, or some other aspect. However, regardless of your personal thoughts on the matter or your standards for your own blog, either of which are your business, I dislike that sort of behaviour and thus I am objecting to it on here. You can either stop speaking to people that way in the comments here or stop commenting altogether.
I apologise for calling you ‘dude’. Looking back, it was excessively flippant and I won’t do it again since you object to it.
Looking at your actual argument:
I think one major thing that caused confusion here is that you led with with ‘Price is mostly correct’. Price thinks Jesus never existed on earth but originated as a mythical being thought to exist in a heavenly plane. I’m arguing that Jesus was originally a real first-century person. You’re arguing that Jesus was originally Apollonius of Tyana, who was a real first-century person. I’m a bit puzzled as to why you’re describing Price as ‘mostly correct’ when, in fact, your view on this particular debate seems completely to contradict his.
More to the point, however, I’m trying to figure out how you think any of this went down. If you actually think Apollonius was Jesus, how on earth do you think that a pagan Greek came to be thought of as the Jewish Messiah when he was so clearly not Jewish? Why was anyone calling him by a Hebrew name (Yeshua) if his name was actually Apollonius? The teachings attributed to Jesus actually fit in very well with typical teachings of Second Temple Judaism; how would that be the case if ‘Jesus’ was actually a pagan Greek with a completely different education? And what on earth is the whole deal with you thinking Apollonius then started travelling around spending years pretending to be a Jewish preacher called Saul/Paul who taught a new religion based on the life of ‘Jesus’ who was actually secretly himself; why do you think he would have done any of this?
Answering some specific points:
In which case, surely we’re still left with the problem that we don’t have any way of knowing that the face on the Shroud was Jesus’s actual face, of which we have no reliable record.
If you’ve got information on where the bust in question was during those centuries then I’m happy for you to share it. I haven’t been able to find any information, so I don’t know whether or not we can rule out the possibility of an artist happening to have access to that particular bust (made more complicated by the fact that we don’t know when or where the Shroud was produced in the first place).
http://theshroudofturin.blogspot.com/2016/01/problems-of-forgery-theory-index-z.html
This blogger is arguing that no naturalistic explanation works (if the Shroud was made by an actual crucified body, lifting the cloth off the body would normally have caused breakage of the blood clots), and that this proves that the Shroud image was created by Jesus’s miraculous resurrection. Since I take it you don’t agree with that conclusion, that still leaves us with the problem that we don’t know how the image could have been created. As far as I can see, no-one has yet come up with a naturalistic explanation for the Shroud that properly explains how the image is in the form it is, so we have problems with explaining it regardless of whether it’s a forgery or someone’s actual burial shroud.
KG
I’m amused that the best you can come up with in the way of attempting to discredit carbon dating is an unsigned, unreferenced opinion piece on a commercial website.
Well, if you don’t look like the “commercial website” you can do some research yourself to find out how reliable is carbon dating. I won’t waste any more time with you.
Dr Sarah
‘And you fail again’ is a rude way to speak to someone.
This is your opinion. But the sentence simply means that you are wrong.
repeatedly referring to other people’s arguments as ‘silly’, ‘ridiculous’, ‘puerile’, or ‘nonsense’.
Unfortunately there are silly arguments and I don’t know what kind of word you would use to refer to them. And in case you didn’t notice, “puerile” was used by KG along with “cranks”, “crankery” and “hooey”. It was he who started it so I responded accordingly.
If you’ve got information on where the bust in question was during those centuries then I’m happy for you to share it.
It’s completely irrelevant. After all the shroud is not a painting so using a bust for the face and adding the body later doesn’t make any sense and it’s out of the question. The man is either “Jesus” or some medieval guy.
Finally:
And what on earth is the whole deal with you thinking Apollonius then started travelling around spending years pretending to be a Jewish preacher called Saul/Paul who taught a new religion based on the life of ‘Jesus’ who was actually secretly himself; why do you think he would have done any of this?
Yeah I know, that’s a long story. In short: Paul’s letters are not original. Some are complete forgeries, the rest have been tampered with by Marcionite circles. The identity of Saul is an invention by the author of Acts. See the excellent work by Herman Dettering, The Fabricated Paul to understand the problems with the official version of Paul. Also an interesting analysis here (and following pages):
https://web.archive.org/web/20220414033638/http://nazoreans.com/paul.html
/contd from #26
I wasn’t quite accurate @26: carbon isotope ratios are compared with the ratio found when a particular sample from 1950 was measured, 1950 being before atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons added a lot of C14. But this is not related to earlier changes in the isotopic composition of atmospheric carbon, which are the reason uncalibrated C14 dates are slightly off for some periods – it is these changes that are accounted for by the calibration of C14 dates using dendrochronology (tree ring dating). Climatic conditions affect the width of annual tree-rings, and overlapping series of tree-rings now go back several thousand years. The isotopic composition of samples from tree-rings of known date can thus be used to correct the uncalibrated C14 dates. There are other factors which can lead to slight inaccuracies even in calibrated C14 dates, related to the materials being tested and where they originated, but none of these can come near making a 1st-century object give a 14th-century result (I notice that the only person quoted (without a specific source) in the article you linked to @17 is a professor of neuroscience – his expertise appears to be in the cognitive effects of HIV infection, and more recently, Covid-19 infection. I can’t see anything that suggests he has expertise relevant to C14 dating. Your own source @8 rightly dismissed all the hypotheses about contamination, sample taken from the wrong part of the Shroud, etc.- the only possible explanations for a 1st-century shroud giving a 14th-century date are deliberate fraud or hacking on someone’s part, and of this, there is simply no evidence. Of course the Catholic Church could give permission for re-testing, but it won’t, presumably because it wants to keep alive the lucrative idea that the Shroud might be genuine – although admittedly, Shroudies would certainly dismiss the results of new tests when they came back with the same result as the original ones.
Actually, it’s not, because the gospels are closer in time to the lifetime of Jesus than Philostratus’s life of Apollonius of Tyana. gMark, and probably gMatthew and gLuke, were written well within the period when people who knew Jesus would still have been alive – although of course even the time to the writing of gMark is plenty long enough for processes of mythification. Wikipedia’s article on Apollonius has an amusing section on the history of comparisons between Jesus and Apollonius, which started as early as the third century with the anti-Christian Porphyry, who argued that Apollonius outdid Jesus but wasn’t worshipped, so why should Jesus be? Notably, he did not claim Apollonius was Jesus! So writers of that time appear to have accepted that the two were different people.
The faces are similar, but I’ve pointed out aspects of them that don’t match, and you have not disputed them. I notice you don’t provide any evidence that the bust does represent Apollonius of Tyana. I wouldn’t have questioned this, except for the fact that there are online descriptions of it as representing the mathematician Apollonius of Perga, and the poet and head librarian at the Museum of Alexandria, Apollonius of Rhodes, although certainly most attribute it to Apollonius of Tyana. I linked @15 to the frontispiece of an early 19th century book on Apollonius of Tyana, which shows the bust, but it is labelled “Apollonius of Tyana(?)”. I tried following it up on the website of the Capitoline Museum in Rome, where it is said to be kept, but putting “Apollonius” into their search facility yields no results, and going through the list of sculptures fails to find the bust. I’m guessing you can’t provide any evidence that the bust is of Apollonius of Tyana (or who sculpted it, or when, or where, or whether Apollonius sat for it), or you would have done so.
That the crank you referred to says it was bogus doesn’t show that it is. He himself admits that the Pope replied to d’Arcis, telling him to shut up, but also only allowing the shroud to be described as a “representation” of Jesus’s shroud.
Apollonian@22:
Actually, that doesn’t answer how the image appeared, if it was either Jesus’s or Apollonius’s shroud. Wrapping a dead body in a shroud doesn’t produce such an image. Christian believers in its authenticity have an answer: it was a miracle. So, are you claiming Apollonius was a genuine miracle worker, whose powers continued after his death? If not, what are you claiming?
In fairness, if the shroud is a 14-th century artefact, no-one knows how it was made. But we do know there was an extensive medieval relic-forging industry, and it’s unsurprising if many of their techniques have been lost, since they would of course have been kept secret. Relics were very lucrative, attracting pilgrims to the places they were displayed.
I see that @29 (1) I said #26 when I should have said #27, and (2) Dr. Sarah@28 made the same point as me about the mystery of how the image came into existence, whether the Shroud is genuine or not! Apologies – I wanted to complete my respone to Apollonian’s #17 before looking at any later comments.
@KG, #31: It’s not you, it’s a result of Apollonius being on moderation. His #26 was lingering in moderation for a while before I approved it, but then came through timestamped with when it had been posted rather than when I approved it, which threw off the numbering. Thanks for all the info, BTW!
@Apollonian, #29:
My apologies for attributing ‘puerile’ to you; you’re right, that wasn’t you. The rest were.
If you disagree with an argument, you could always try just explaining why you disagree instead of getting repeatedly critical and ridiculing anyone who disagrees with you.
Not sure why you went through the Wayback Machine for the link? It’s simpler and quicker just to go straight to nazoreans.com/paul.html. Anyway, reading through this and browsing through different parts of the site, it seems to be a whole mishmash of unevidenced comments, misreadings of documents, different conspiracy theories, and unwarranted leaps of logic, jumping from claim to claim in a way that makes it impossible to follow through an actual line of argument.
A few examples that particularly caught my eye:
• In 1 Corinthians 1:13 Paul rhetorically asks ‘Was Paul crucified for you?’ in a context that’s clearly meant to indicate the absurdity of this; this author misinterprets this line completely and takes it to be Paul saying he was crucified for them, thus reading this line as holding the exact opposite to its actual meaning in context.
• In Galatians 4:14, when Paul refers to the Galatians as having received him as if he were Christ, the author of this webpage reads this as Paul claiming he was Christ.
• There are several points where the crucifixion is described as Jesus having been ‘hung on a tree’ (the word can mean ‘tree’ or ‘wood’, according to greekbible.com), but the author doesn’t seem to realise that this is another way of describing crucifixion; he/she leaps directly to the conclusion that this must be two different deaths of two different people, even though nothing in the text would support this.
• The author claims, without reference, that ‘Christ’ is the Greek word for a pacifistic spiritual leader. It’s actually an anglicised form of the Greek word ‘Kristos, meaning ‘anointed’, which is a direct translation of the Hebrew word for ‘Messiah’.
• While the author mostly seems to be trying to claim that Jesus was invented by a group of conspirators, he/she also claims that Jesus visited Cornwall. I mean, if you’re going to follow conspiracy theories, at least pick one and stick to that one!
That’s not an exclusive list by any means, just some that particularly stood out to me. Basically, it’s a hot mess.
Anyway, as far as I could glean from this, the author seems to think that both Jesus and Paul were deliberately invented by a group of conspirators including Marcion, based on various real people as templates, for… still very unclear reasons. The only thing I could find about the motives was the sentence ‘In some cases it was simple self preservation, in others it was to acquire fame and in some to turn a nifty profit from the sale of their creations to members of the Roman aristocracy who understood the satirical nature of the writings.’ Is that it? I didn’t read the whole webpage; do you actually know of any better explanations as to why people would go to all this trouble inventing and disseminating an entire religion?
Not sure why you went through the Wayback Machine for the link?
The site appears down for me.
I didn’t read the whole webpage; do you actually know of any better explanations as to why people would go to all this trouble inventing and disseminating an entire religion?
People have been creating religions and philosophies for a long time. Nothing new there. The point is that the official version we have been taught is simply not true. First of all there never was one Christianity. There were many sects competing with each other, like the Docetists who did not believe in a flesh and blood Christ. In these religious wars dozens of gospels and letters were written by unknown authors. Now the head of one of these sects was Paulus/Apollos or Apollonius. In the 2nd century his letters were found by Marcion who compiled the first New Testament. In order to promote his own agenda he changed them according to his needs (text tampering was rampant). All of this would have been just religious competition but then politics came along. In the 4th century one branch of Christianity became the state religion and condemned everyone else as heretic. So what we understand today as Christianity is by no means the one true Christianity.
@Apollonian, #34:
People have been creating the philosophical and the other-worldly claims of religion for a long time, and embroidering existing religions for a long time, and evolving the different ideas over a long time. What people do not typically do is sit down and deliberately work out a complex and detailed new religion that they know to be false and then disseminate that. So, if you’re arguing that that’s what happened here, then it’s not going to fly unless you can come up with plausible motives that would apply in this case.
So, if you believe that the whole thing was initially deliberately invented by Marcion et al at some point in the second century, how do you believe it turned into so many sects so quickly? For that matter, why did they all at least seem to believe that their Christ had spent time on earth in some form that at least appeared to be that of a human being living on earth?
1. Why do you believe that Paul was really Apollonius?
2. You’ve said that you believe Jesus was also really Apollonius. If Paul was really Jesus, why would he be talking about Jesus as a separate and semi-divine being?
3. If Paul and Apollonius were the same person, why did that person spend years setting up new religious groups and teaching them the ‘Christ died for your sins, believe in Christ to be saved’ and ‘God will resurrect believers with new spiritual bodies’ theology under the name Paul, only to then go back to spending the rest of his life once again presenting as a Greek and teaching quite different beliefs?
So, if you believe that the whole thing was initially deliberately invented by Marcion et al at some point in the second century, how do you believe it turned into so many sects so quickly?
I thought this was clear. The sects already existed. Marcion was a Gnostic who rejected Jewish practices and did not “invent” anything from scratch.
For that matter, why did they all at least seem to believe that their Christ had spent time on earth in some form that at least appeared to be that of a human being living on earth?
As I already said they did not all believe in a human Christ. Christ was simply the spirit of God within. And others were even completery unaware of him. Theophilus of Antioch, a 2nd century bishop, never mentions Jesus in his work.
1. Why do you believe that Paul was really Apollonius?
2. You’ve said that you believe Jesus was also really Apollonius. If Paul was really Jesus, why would he be talking about Jesus as a separate and semi-divine being?
3. If Paul and Apollonius were the same person, why did that person spend years setting up new religious groups and teaching them the ‘Christ died for your sins, believe in Christ to be saved’ and ‘God will resurrect believers with new spiritual bodies’ theology under the name Paul, only to then go back to spending the rest of his life once again presenting as a Greek and teaching quite different beliefs?
Paul, like Jesus, is absent from history. The name Paul or Paulus is simply a Latin version of Apollos, that is Apollonius. He never meets Jesus and yet he turns out to be a super apostle surpassing his disciples. The original letters of Paul are lost so we don’t know what exactly he taught. From the letters we have today we can find evidence that the original author is not a Jew, and that he speaks about a divine being, not a man. The name Jesus Christ was probably added later to the text. What is certain, is that the Christian Paul is not the historical Paul.
In general you should do some research. Don’t expect answers in a few comments. For the early Christian beliefs, check Jesus from Outer Space by R. Carrier. For Paul, see Dettering’s The Fabricated Paul.
@Apollonian, #36:
Unfortunately, absolutely nothing about the claims you have made so far or the information on the site you linked to is clear. Are you saying the various sects pre-dated Christianity? If so, why did they all believe in a ‘Christ’ who had been on earth and why did they all consider themselves to be followers of this ‘Christ’?
Although not from scratch, the website did seem to be claiming that Christianity as a religion was deliberately invented and spread by Marcion and other ‘conspirators’.
I know; that’s why I said they all believed their Christ had spent time on earth in what at least appeared to be the form of a human living on earth. There were Christians (the Docetists) who believed that Jesus only looked like a human being rather than having actual flesh, but no record of anyone arguing that he never lived on earth at all.
What, and you’ve assumed the only possible reason for that is because he didn’t know about Jesus? The only surviving works we have from Theophilus were written for the purpose of convincing his pagan friend and thus are focusing on issues his friend brought up.
If you mean he’s not in history books, then I discussed this back in comment #6; hardly anyone back then made it into any history books unless they did something particularly noteworthy by historians’ standards, and ‘goes round founding groups and preaching some weird beliefs to them’ didn’t typically make the grade, given how common that sort of thing was back then. You’re talking as if this needed a weird conspiracy theory to explain it, and it really doesn’t.
Where do you get this from? Paulus was a known Latin name from the word ‘parvulus’ or ‘little’.
Yes, because he believed he’d seen Jesus appear to him and he went round telling everyone his version of who he thought Jesus was, which massively skewed this new belief system within a few years of it starting out. I’m not sure what your point is here.
Well, either the theology in the letters we’ve got is roughly representative of what he taught, in which case it doesn’t make sense that he would undergo a complete switch back to being a pagan who taught completely different things, or it isn’t representative of what he taught, in which case it doesn’t make sense that we would have letters claiming it was (why would Marcion would change someone else’s letters that completely instead of just writing his own if he wanted to do that?)
Why was he claiming to be one, though?
A being whom he described as having lived on earth. See my previous post, https://proxy.freethought.online/geekyhumanist/2023/06/30/deciphering-the-gospels-proves-jesus-never-existed-review-chapter-9-part-3/. Paul does seem to have believed that ‘Christ’ was some kind of semi-divine being (probably the equivalent of an angel), but he also clearly believed that this ‘Christ’ had come to earth to at least appear to live a human life.
The name ‘Jesus’ isn’t even in the text of Paul’s epistles, and the descriptor ‘Anointed’ (the translation of the Greek word Kristos) is there so many times that it’s hard to see how it could have been added later. Now, none of this is answering my second or third question above; want to have another go?
Now, that’s an interesting assumption of yours, so let’s look at what you could be basing it on.
You know that I’m writing a detailed review of a book arguing that Jesus never existed, because this post is part of that review. So you know I’ve read that book. You know that I looked through the site you linked to, because I not only told you I had but picked out a few of the (many) points with which I disagreed. And you don’t know what other research I have or haven’t done, because you haven’t asked. (For the record, I’ve read Carrier’s book ‘On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt’, attended one of his on-line courses, and read posts by other people arguing both sides of the debate.)
So… with that level of knowledge, why are you jumping straight to telling me I ‘should do some research’ as though you’re assuming I haven’t done any? Do you have any basis for that assumption other than the fact that I’m disagreeing with you and that it’s probably easier for you to blame that on lack of research on my part rather than lack of a coherent or evidence-based argument on yours?
Unfortunately, absolutely nothing about the claims you have made so far or the information on the site you linked to is clear. Are you saying the various sects pre-dated Christianity?
As I said you should start your own research. You seem to ignore a lot of things and I’m tired of this. After all I can’t possibly explain everything here. That site was not supposed to be the absolute source of information, but point some things that do not add up. If you are looking for a really detailed site:
https://www.jesusneverexisted.com/
I’ll skip the rest.
What, and you’ve assumed the only possible reason for that is because he didn’t know about Jesus? The only surviving works we have from Theophilus were written for the purpose of convincing his pagan friend and thus are focusing on issues his friend brought up.
Are you serious? And then you complain that I ridicule other arguments! What do you expect me to do with this??? In many of the issues discussed he would bring up Jesus first and foremost if he knew about him, but instead we get complete silence.
– When he explains the meaning of the name Christian, he says it’s “because we are anointed with the oil of God”. No Christ.
– Next he talks about the resurrection of the dead where he writes all sorts of generalities but not one word about Jesus! Not one word on this central Christian doctrine.
– Later on Repentance etc he cites only Jewish prophets: Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Zachariah, even Solomon. But there is no Jesus. Only the “Gospel”.
For the record, I’ve read Carrier’s book ‘On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt’, attended one of his on-line courses, and read posts by other people arguing both sides of the debate.
Well you still have to do more. And I mean a LOT more. You should study the literature starting with Dettering’s work. It’s clear that you cannot let go of the Jesus myth. It might take you years but in the end you will realize that Jesus is a phantom. Apollonius of Tyana was the real deal.
Dr Sarah says @#37 August 26, 2023 at 6:33 pm
Yes to all
Cf. “DrKippDavis on what is actually going on in the Jewish literature that Carrier muddles in his book – Biblical Criticism & History Forum”. earlywritings.com.
Something of a pattern there. Whenever you can’t answer a point in any substantive way, this is your fall-back response. With regard specifically to carbon-14 dating, there is nearly 3/4 of a century of research on it, and the consensus of relevant experts is that it is highly reliable, and certainly cannot produce a 14th-century date for a 1st-century piece of organic material.
What do you mean by that? @30, I said:
You made no response to this. Of course, you’re not obliged to respond to every point, but here is surely an opportunity for you to make a positive case: in what sense was Apollonius of Tyana “the real deal”, and if the image on the shroud is an image of Apollonius, how do you think it got there?
OP: “I have to point out that the ‘some people’ who believe this mention of ‘brothers’ to refer to actual brothers (or at least actual relatives) include, as far as I know, everyone who’s ever read this passage bar the occasional mythicist.”
The debate revolves around whether the term “brothers” in 1 Corinthians 9 refers to kinship brothers (those related by blood) or to fellow believers in the Christian community (church brethren). Here’s the relevant passage from 1 Corinthians 9:5 (NIV):
“Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?”
In this verse, the apostle Paul is defending his rights as an apostle and is comparing his actions to those of other apostles and “the brothers of the Lord.” The key question is whether these “brothers of the Lord” are biological siblings of Jesus (i.e., kinship brothers) or if they are simply fellow Christians (i.e., church brethren).
The debate over this passage has persisted for centuries, and different Christian traditions and scholars have varying interpretations. Some argue that the term “brothers of the Lord” refers to Jesus’ biological siblings, while others believe it refers to close followers or disciples of Jesus within the early Christian community.
db@41,
Who are these “others” who “believe it refers to close followers or disciples of Jesus within the early Christian community.” apart from mythicists?
KG@42
Catholic tradition: “Atheist vs Catholic: What Does Brother Of The Lord Mean???”. YouTube.
Critical scholars: who opine, “there are good reasons to be more skeptical.”
db@43,
With regard to the Catholic Church, the motivation for not wanting to admit that Jesus had brothers is the notion of Mary’s “perpetual virginity”. Alternative explanations to the “not actually related in any way, just followers” claim were that Jesus’s brothers were actually born from a (completely invented) earlier marriage of Joseph’s; or that the “brothers” were actually cousins (which requires there to have been an implausible confusion of kinship terms). I don’t see any reason to take any of these three alternatives seriously.
As for Kunigunde Kreuzerin and Joe Wallack: who? What relevant expertise do they have? Kreuzerin appears to be a lawyer – and also appears, incidentally, to think the reference to “brothers” probably means “brothers”. The only link I can find other than yours and others on that site that seems to refer to Wallack is this one – I wouldn’t automatically credit its criticisms of Wallack, but nor would I automatically dismiss them – and Wallack in fact appears in the comment you link to, not to be questioning the interpretation that “brothers” in the text means “brothers”, but Paul’s credibility, which is a completely different argument from the one made by Price, which is the one Dr. Sarah is criticising.
KG@44
Who indeed? LOL what kind of critical scholar would opine the following:
The use of the word “brothers” in 1 Corinthians 9 is part of Paul’s strategy of creating a sense of unity and solidarity among the Corinthian Christians. Paul’s use of the word adelphoi (brothers) in 1 Corinthians 9 is a way of emphasizing the shared identity and common bond that all Christians have, regardless of their biological relationship. This is important in the context of 1 Corinthians, where Paul is addressing a number of divisions and conflicts within the Corinthian church.
The word “brothers” in 1 Corinthians 9 is consistent with the use of the word in other ancient Mediterranean cultures, where it was often used to refer to members of a social group or community, regardless of their biological relationship. The word adelphoi (brothers) was used in the ancient Mediterranean world to refer to a wide range of relationships, including biological siblings, members of the same clan or tribe, fellow citizens, and even members of the same religious community. In the context of 1 Corinthians 9, it is likely that Paul is using the word adelphoi in a figurative sense, to refer to his fellow Christians.
One who wasn’t paying attention to the context in which Paul is using the word – a whinge about his right to be treated equally with “other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas” (KJV 1 Corinithains 9:6) being questioned. It doesn’t make sense for Paul to contrast himself with “the brethren of the Lord” if the latter include “all Christians”. Nor is it plausible that any Christian would be given the privileges Paul is claiming for himself on the grounds that he is an apostle.
Further to #46: Sorry: 1 Corinthians 9:5, not 9:6. Incidentally, I can’t find the “opining” you appear to be quoting online. Could you provide a source?
@KG #46 says, “One who wasn’t paying attention to the context in which Paul is using the word”
LOL you mean the context per 1Co 9:4-5 where Paul proclaims his “street cred”! Which affirms his supernaturally mandated authority (…ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν/échomen exousían…) which he had previously demonstrated to the Corinthians per:
1) performing the ritual of the Lord’s Supper
2) chaperoning itinerant female “brethren”
db@48,
LOL I mean the context I explained @46. Try reading it again. A term can of course be used both literally and metaphorically in different contexts, but in the case of Corinthians 9:5 it appears to be only those who have some strong ideological motivation to reject the literal reading (such as Catholic theologians and mythicists – brethren under the skin, one might say) who claim that “brethren” is being used metaphorically.
@db, it’s great to see that over forty comments into the thread someone is addressing the actual post, but it would be even better if you’d read it properly first. If you look at the post again you’ll be able to see that a) it discusses the question of whether ‘brothers’ could be metaphorical and b) it explains why it doesn’t help the mythicist case if it is, If church members could be considered ‘the Lord’s brother’ even metaphorically, then this would still point towards the Lord being human.
So, to go back to your comment #44: If the group referred to as ‘the Lord’s brothers’ mentioned in 1 Corinthians 9:5 were indeed only metaphorically the Lord’s brothers as per the examples you gave, then that would mean that Jesus was a member of the same clan or tribe as these men, or a fellow citizen, or a member of the same religious community. Setting aside for a moment the problem that none of those fits with the context (which clearly implies a smaller subgroup within the religious community), mythicists have the rather bigger problem that none of these are consistent with mythicism. If Jesus was a clan member, a fellow citizen, or a member of their proto-church, then that tells us that he was a person who led an earthly life.
Pretty sure Apollonian’s gone for good, but in case he glances back here I’ll answer #38. May he lead a life of learning and self-awareness in whichever part of the internet he now dwells.
Ahem. This, I’m afraid, is where I point out that you’ve ignored almost everything in the post on which you’re commenting, the fact that this is part of a detailed and informed commentary on the whole subject on which you are still insisting that I should ‘start’ the research that I’ve been doing for years, and any awkward questions raised about inconsistencies in your claims. In short, when you accuse other people of ignoring a lot of things that’s very much a pot-kettle/stones-in-glass-houses situation.
Unfortunately, you’re barely explaining anything here.
When I listed some of the major errors that I’d found on the site, did that give you pause at all? Did you check them out? Did you see it as a reason to wonder about their credibility and what else they might have got wrong?
And, since you didn’t (because, let’s face it, you pretty clearly didn’t), why didn’t you?
Nope. I’m looking for your answers to the questions I asked about your own claims. The fact that you either won’t or can’t give those answers is telling.
This is a common assumption, but in fact it doesn’t stand up well to examination. I recommend GakuseiDon’s piece https://web.archive.org/web/20051124151051/https://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseidon/Doherty2ndC_Review.htm, which examines Christian writings from this time period and finds that this kind of avoidance of discussing Jesus’s life, and focus on abstract philosophy and ancient writings instead, is actually quite typical of Christians writing for non-Christians… even where we know from their other writings that they believed in an earthly Jesus. GakuseiDon discusses the sociological reasons for this, and his piece is well worth reading if you’re genuinely interested in the topic. Regardless, when we know that writers who believed in an earthly Jesus would still focus on other arguments when writing to pagans, that indicates that the reason can’t be ‘they didn’t think Jesus existed’, or whatever peculiar variation thereof you’re trying to claim.
(snort) Have to? Apart from anything else, Apollonius, you seem to be vastly overestimating the importance of this debate to, well, anything.
I’m curious to know: what would you consider an adequate amount of research for someone to do on this subject? And would you still demand that level of research from someone who agrees with you? Is your real answer to the former question, by any chance, ‘Whatever amount it takes for them to think I’m right!’?
What’s clear, unfortunately, is that you jump to conclusions that suit you. After reading Carrier’s book I believed for years that he was probably right in thinking Jesus hadn’t existed. It was only when I started reading deconstructions of his arguments that I started looking at the issue more discerningly and realised the number of places at which Carrier’s arguments don’t hold up. It’s not about not being able to ‘let go of the Jesus myth’, but about my pesky little habit of going with the better and more evidence-supported side in an argument.
@Dr Sarah #50 says.
While ‘brothers’ being metaphorical may not help the mythicist case, it absolutely torpedoes and sinks any historicity argument that relies on ‘brothers’ NOT being metaphorical.
The opening of 1Co 9 is Paul’s defense against the accusation that he is not a bonafide apostle. If Paul’s argument is topically outlined:
I. Position statement
II. Evidence statement
III. Equality statement
Per his position statement, Paul says, I have seen Jesus Christ our Lord.
So did he see a human ghost, or a ?
Paul says that all his cult’s brothers and sisters are fictive kin of his fictive second-god.
Good job my arguments weren’t relying on that, then. Would you care to address the argument I did make about metaphorical brothers?
He seems to have either seen some sort of hallucination or had some sort of internal experience that he interpreted this way. Please explain what you think that has to do with the ‘brothers’ comments.
Where?
@Dr Sarah #53 says, “Where?” per Paul that all his cult’s brothers and sisters are fictive kin of his fictive second-god.
@#54 continued
Paul’s equality statement “the other apostles and brothers of the lord” is part of an argument that occurs after 1Co 9:4-5, where Paul affirms his authority (…ἔχομεν ἐξουσίαν/échomen exousían…) over:
the Lord’s Supper
itinerant female “brethren”
Just as Paul refers to itinerant female “brethren” as adelphē gunē i.e. fictive kin. Then so to Paul refers to male “brothers” as the brethren of the Lord oi adelfoi tou kyriou i.e. fictive kin.
db@54,55
I notice that Carrier, at least in your quote, does not identify where Paul says that “all his cult’s brothers and sisters are fictive kin of his fictive second-god”. Could you supply an actual reference to Paul saying that, rather than Carrier saying he says it? (You must by now have noticed that Carrier is not considered by Dr. Sarah or some commenters here as a source whose claims are to be accepted without question.)
Surely if anyone would be considered “fictive kin” of Jesus, it would be the apostles. So why are they listed alongside the “brethren of the Lord”? At least in the KJV (I admit I can’t read the original Greek), 1 Corinthians 9:5 reads:
@db and KG, #54, #55, and #56:
Carrier is actually correct with the ‘first of many brethren’ quote (it’s Romans 8:29, in the context of saying that the people God called to him would not only be adopted as children of God but also made in the image of Jesus). His claim that ‘fictive brothers’ are ‘the only kind of brothers of Jesus Paul does repeatedly describe’ stands up rather less well, unfortunately. Breaking this down:
• Paul, on one occasion as cited above, describes Jesus as ‘the first among many brethren’, implying that all Christians are brothers or sisters of Jesus.
• Paul also repeatedly uses the word ‘brother’ in a symbolic sense (or fictive, if you like that word better), to describe the relationship of other Christians to one another/himself; i.e., all Christians are metaphorically brothers (or sisters) of one another.
• Paul, on two occasions, refers to ‘the Lord’s brother(s)’ (singular in Galatians 1:19, plural in 1 Corinthians 9:5). In neither of those cases is it clear from context whether the term is meant metaphorically or literally.
So, when Carrier claims that the brothers of Jesus ‘repeatedly’ described by Paul are ‘fictive’, he is, I’m afraid, question-begging. We simply have no information either way from those two quotes or their context as to whether ‘brother’ is meant biologically or metaphorically in those cases.
However, before heading further off into that rabbit hole, it’s worth remembering that that isn’t the issue here. As I pointed out in #50, there are many ways in which metaphorical brotherhood would still imply a historical Jesus. So the question isn’t ‘Did Paul mean that the brothers in question were biologically Jesus’s brothers?’, but ‘Were they Jesus’s brothers in some way that would apply to a mythical Jesus?’
Now, because Carrier’s found one possible way in which this could technically be so – Paul might, theoretically, have been describing these people as brothers of Jesus in the sense of them all being metaphorically sons of God – he is, as far as I can tell from that quote, assuming that this is what Paul did. And there are a few reasons why that doesn’t stand up.
Firstly, Carrier seems to be missing the point of describing Christians metaphorically as children of God. It’s not so that we can draw up a family tree and say ‘aha, look, logically this means you must also be brothers of Jesus’. It’s to symbolise a particular relationship with God which is both close and hierarchical. Not only was this relationship far more important than any relationship with Jesus, but the hierarchy was also important; church members were family members of God, but in a junior sense, with God still ruling over them. ‘Brother’, on the other hand, implies a close relationship between equals or near-equals.
Is it likely that Paul would have described the symbolic relationship between a heavenly being and his followers that way? (It’s noteworthy that the one time in which we do see Paul using the ‘brethren’ description with Jesus, it’s in the context of Jesus being first among the brethren.) And is it likely that Paul’s normal focus would have been on describing Christians as the brothers of Jesus rather than as the children of God? For an analogy, imagine mentioning Ashley Biden and referring to her as as Hunter Biden’s sister rather than as Joe Biden’s daughter; sure, it’s factually correct and there are even contexts where it would make complete sense, but in most cases she’s going to be referred to as Joe Biden’s daughter because, from most people’s POV, that’s the important relationship.
And, finally, there is a key point which is getting ignored here: in both of those phrases, contextually Paul is using ‘the Lord’s brother(s)’ to distinguish the person or people from other people in the church. In Galatians he uses it to specify a particular James, and in 1 Corinthians he uses it to specify a group of people who get particular financial privileges that not everyone in the church gets. And that makes no sense at all if Paul were using the term as a general one for any church member. It only makes sense if Paul thought of a specific subgroup of church members as the Lord’s brothers. Which means that, regardless of whether he was meaning ‘brother’ in a biological or a symbolic sense, he can’t have been meaning it as a term for every male cult member. He thought of a particular group of people as having some kind of fraternal-type relationship with Jesus, in a way that doesn’t make sense if Jesus hadn’t lived as a human on earth.
(Quick note: I know the words ‘church’ and ‘Christian’ are anachronistic for Paul’s time. I’m using them as a quick way of referring to this group and the members of it, and hope that will be clear.)
Dr. Sarah@57,
Thanks for that. But I’m still strongly inclined to think Paul was referring to literal brother(s) of Jesus (and AFAIK most relevant experts who don’t have an ideological motive to deny this agree). In Galatians 1, James is described both as an apostle and as “the Lord’s brother”, so if the latter refers to a set of fictive “brothers of the Lord”, this set must surely either be a subset of the apostles (but this is contraindicated by the 1 Corinthians reference, where the two sets (apostles” and “brothers of the Lord”) are included in the same list, or overlap with the set of apostles, with neither set being a subset of the other, with James “the Lord’s brother” being so designated to distinguish him from some other apostle called James (if all apostles counted as “brothers of the Lord”, so describing James would be redundant, if the two sets were disjoint, James would not be an apostle, contrary to the “save”). In such a case, it would surely be more likely Paul would refer to “James the son of X”, the usual way of distinguishing individuals with the same name among Jews at that time. (Of course it could be that there was more than one “James the son of X”, or that Paul didn’t know the name of James’s father, but he would probably have been introduced to him as “James the son of X”, and if necessary could have added “from Y”, or “the tall” or whatever.) Only if James were Jesus’s literal brother would that relationship be a clearer identifier and more salient than the name of his father.
@KG, #58:
Oh, I agree that it’s most likely that ‘brothers’ was meant literally in the biological sense. I just think it’s also worth remembering that, in the context of mythicism, that’s not really the key question, and a better question is ‘how well does Paul’s use of ‘brother[s]’ here fit with mythicism vs. historicity?’ As per #50, it’s theoretically quite possible for Paul to have meant ‘brother’ metaphorically in ways which still would not fit well with mythicism.
OP: “Since mythical divine beings don’t typically have real-life flesh-and-blood brothers walking the earth and meeting people, that one passing comment is a pretty significant problem for mythicist theory.”
Paul implies that baptized Christians are adopted by the farther god. Thus all baptized Christians are fictive kin to farther god, his first son, and other baptized Christians.
“Did Dapper Dinosaur And Kipp Davis Prove Jesus Existed??? ft. Richard Carrier”. @time:02:29:57 YouTube. Godless Engineer. Dec 8, 2023. “Paul explicitly says that all baptized Christians are the brothers of the Lord… which means that he would have to distinguish between fictive Brothers of the Lord and biological Brothers of the Lord… when he refers to the brothers of the Lord he just assumes there’s only one known category and the only category that he tells us he knows about is the fictive category and that ends that argument…”
So, what would be the point of Paul refering to “James the Lord’s brother” in Galatians 1:19 if all baptised Christians are brothers of the Lord in the sense he meant? He’s talking about the only apostles he met during a visit to Jerusalem – “Cephas” (Peter) and “James the Lord’s brother”; but this James is an apostle, which is a far more specific category than “baptised Christian” (any apostle would of course also be a baptised Christian, while the converse would not hold). Suppose Paul was referring to a biological brother of Jesus. Those he was addressing would know about this brother, and the context would make it clear to them that in this case, Paul was referring to an actual, biological brother; there would be absolutely no need to make that explicit. Carrier is talking blithering nonsense!
Gal 1:19
δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου.
de ton apostolon ouk eidon eu mi Iakobon ton adelfon tou Kyriou.
but of the apostles I did not see
otherwise [I saw] James the brother of the Lord.
db@62,
Well, you’ve switched to an entirely different point, as far as I can see. No-one else appears to agree with Trudiger (I don’t know Koine Greek so I can’t judge for myself), but even if he’s right, I can’t see how this goes against James being a biological brother of Jesus: if all members of the cult were considered “brothers of the Lord”, what would be the point of so identifying James? If it is claimed “brothers of the Lord” was some other group, well, we simply have no evidence for that. Maybe Paul didn’t consider James an apostle – the tradition is that Jesus’s family were dismissive of his claims during his lifetime.
“Paul explicitly says that all baptized Christians are the brothers of the Lord… which means that he would have to distinguish between fictive Brothers of the Lord and biological Brothers of the Lord… when he refers to the brothers of the Lord he just assumes there’s only one known category and the only category that he tells us he knows about is the fictive category and that ends that argument.” –Carrier per “Did Dapper Dinosaur And Kipp Davis Prove Jesus Existed??? ft. Richard Carrier”. @time:02:29:57 YouTube. Godless Engineer. Dec 8, 2023.
db@64,
So you’ve gone back to the point you made @60, which I answered @61. What’s the point of doing that? Neither I nor anyone else is going to be convinced by the fact that you’ve quoted Carrier twice rather than once!
The grammar is clear: Paul did not say “I saw two apostles,” it says he saw an apostle and an exception to an apostle, whatever exception that is supposed to be. That he used a highly convoluted construction to say this makes quite clear he means to say this; this isn’t just some accidental garbage sentence Paul got tangled into when trying to just say he met two apostles. This is Trüdinger’s point. And Howard has no real objection to it. Nor has anyone since. Which is why many new Bible translations now follow Trüdinger.
Likewise, if Paul meant to say “I went to see the apostle Peter but also saw the apostle James,” again, that’s what he would say. That’s why it is relevant that he chose to say none of these obvious, simple things in Greek but chose an extremely convoluted and highly uncommon grammatical construction instead. We need to explain why Paul chose to do that. And Trüdinger has the only plausible answer to that question.
_____
–Comment by Richard Carrier on November 7, 2022 at 3:21 pm
OK, so now we’re back to the point you made @62, which I answered @63. There’s a suggestion here that Paul only considered as apostles those who he believed had seen the “risen Jesus”, (which included Peter and himself, but may not have included James). At any rate he was, it’s clear, eager to establish his own high status in the cult, and the fewer people who shared the title of “apostle” which he gave himself, the higher. In particular, if there was a biological brother of Jesus who was also an apostle, that brother would threaten to outrank him, so (if James was such a brother) he had reason to find a way to deny him the title if he possibly could.
@#67 KG says, “Paul only considered as apostles those who he believed had seen the “risen Jesus”…
Carrier concurs:
“As far as Paul appears to know, the first time Peter and gang ever saw Jesus was after Jesus died, and they only knew he died from scripture (this is, after all, literally what 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 says; but see my survey of all the evidence in OHJ, Chapter 11.2, 11.4, and 11.8). There is a reason Paul has never heard of anyone being a “disciple” of Jesus, and why he keeps assuming “apostle” simply meant someone receiving a vision of Jesus (1 Corinthians 9, where there is no notion of any other way to see Jesus; Romans 10:12-16, where the Greek makes clear he is talking about apostles; and so on).” [Carrier (10 October 2023). “Things Fall Apart Only When You Check: The Main Reason the Historicity of Jesus Continues to Be Believed”. Richard Carrier Blogs.]
Per Galatians 1:19, Paul did not say “I saw two apostles,” it says he saw an apostle and an exception to an apostle, whatever exception that is supposed to be. Which is some person named Iakobon who is labeled with the cult’s fictive kin title, “brother of the lord” and who Paul does not—per the Greek syntax—grammatically class as an apostle.
db@68,
But as I point out @61, Carrier has not shown that “brother of the Lord” is used in a fictive-kin sense. He has merely asserted it.
@db, I am honestly not sure what point you are trying to make here. You’re arguing (or being the mouthpiece for Carrier arguing) that Paul didn’t think of this particular James as an apostle; OK, got that far. What on earth is that supposed to have to do with whether Jesus existed?
Linssen refutes any historicity from Paul and plumps for the hypothesis that later cultus members—not the original devotees of the ΙS ΧS cult—invented Paul and attributed to Marcion the collection of the Pauline epistles.
test
UTC to local time zone
db@71,
Is there any reason we should take Linssen any more seriously than, say, Velikovsky?
Here’s a quote from Linssen:
Is this an author worth taking seriously? Or a crank?
db @ # 71, quoting Linssen: … it is widely assumed that Jesus Christ is the Anointed – yet even that word does not appear anywhere in the New Testament, neither in the Epistles nor in the Gospels.
Huh. I just found 18 instances of “anoint[ed, ing, &c]” in the NT (KJV). Does that answer KG’s closing question @ # 74?
Happy 2024 to all!
@75 Pierce R. Butler says, “I just found 18 instances of “anoint[ed, ing, &c]” in the NT (KJV).”
Linssen argues that the early MSS evidence attests that Jesus wasn’t the Christ/Messiah/Anointed (Gr:ΧΡῙΣΤΌΣ/χρῑστός:chrīstós) but the ΙΣ ΧΣ (Lord IS XS).
IMO which translates to “Lord Redeemer the Chrism Bringer”, a middle-platonic intermediary power. The significance of all this for the origins of Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ as Logos, mediator, creator, etc scarcely needs to be pointed out, Cf. Godfrey, Neil (2 December 2010). “The Second God among Ancient Jewish Philosophers and Commoners”. Vridar.
Linssen plumps for the pre-christian IS XS as something totally different that later became the christian “Christ the Anointed”.
db@76,
What’s your view of the quote from Linssen I gave@74? Because I’m not about to take anything this crank says seriously.
On ALL the early MSS only having Lord IS XS standing for “Jesus Christ” or “007”.
Per Leucius Charinus » Fri Apr 05, 2024 4:54 am @ https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11709#p169772
”
Suppose Ian Flemming’s books mention “IS BD” but not “James Bond” and a small little known cult was formed about these books. If “IS BD” was an historical figure then it follows that the insiders to the identity of “IS BD” would be people within British Secret Service department of MI6. These people alone would have sufficient education (and security clearance) to know that the historical “IS BD” was the historical James Bond.
However those who were outsiders to MI6 would have absolutely no idea who the historical “IS BD” was. Interested investigators would have to turn to the elite members of MI6 as an authoritative source for the identity and history of “IS BD”. The outsiders would have to turn to the insiders.
What could possibly go wrong?
“
db@78,
What on earth are you on about? The link doesn’t help.
@KG: The earliest surviving manuscripts of the gospels and epistles don’t write ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ out in full, instead using an abbreviation of two Greek letters for each (apparently because the names were at the time considered too sacred to write out in full, similar to ‘Yahweh’ in Jewish scriptures). This recently seems to have led to a profusion of mythicists arguing that really these letters didn’t stand for ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ but for various other things that then got somehow retconned into meaning ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ at a later stage, for reasons that I suppose might possibly be specified if I ever got as far as reading any of them.
@db: John 1:41 and 4:25 both specifically use the word ‘Messiah’, which is the Hebrew word for ‘Anointed’, so Linssen is wrong about it never being used. There’s also the fact that the Synoptics all describe Jesus – or IS, if you like that better – in ways that align with the kinds of things Jews expected of the Messiah at the time; the description depicts an apocalyptic preacher who performs miraculous healings which are signs that he’s ‘the one who is to come’, and two of the Synoptics claim he was descended from David and born in Bethlehem, with Matthew in particular explicitly linking these to prophecies considered to be Messianic. Does Linssen explain why the Synoptics so consistently present the man they’re describing as fitting Messianic standards, if not because they were trying to portray him as the Messiah?
Thanks, Dr. Sarah@80!
@80 April 22, 2024 Dr Sarah says : “John 1:41 and 4:25 both specifically use the word ‘Messiah’,”
Do you see canonical gJohn as the layer cake seen by scholars such as Dennis R. MacDonald?
IMO, John-prime did not feature canonical 2:13-17
@db, #82: Sorry for delay in approving this one. Due to a combination of no-one having commented for ages and me being in the middle of a house move, I hadn’t been checking, and it got caught in the spam filter until now.
It’s a fair point that the specific mentions I cited could have been later additions. However, that still doesn’t address the points I raised in the rest of my comment.