Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”

Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”

It makes sense that the sect which survived Jesus’ execution would be more likely to leave an early historical trace than Jesus himself, given his relative obscurity in his lifetime. Seeing that this sect seems to have been led initially by his brother James, it also makes sense that we would get early historical references to James. This is why two references to Jesus’ brother, one contemporary and one by a non-Christian historian, represent a crucial flaw in the claim that Jesus never existed.

Sometime in the 50s AD Paul of Tarsus wrote a letter to the Jesus Sect community he had established in Galatia, in what is now Turkey. He was concerned that the Galatian community had been contacted by people from the Jesus Sect community in Jerusalem who had undermined Paul’s authority. This seems to have been over the question of whether to be a Christian a Gentile believer had to first become a Jew and follow the Torah, including undergoing circumcision and maintaining kosher dietary practices. Paul maintained that Jesus’ death had done away with the old Covenant with the Jews and so made this unnecessary. As several (rather sanitised) accounts in Acts relate, this led to a conflict with the Sect leaders in Jerusalem. So in his letter to the Galatians, Paul assures them that he is “an apostle sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus” (Galatians 1:1), expresses amazement that they “are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ” (1:6) and says “some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ” (1:7).

The crux of the argument these “people” appear to have made against Paul’s authority seems to have been that he was subordinate to those who had been members of the Jesus Sect before him, and so did not have the same authority as these more senior members. Paul argues strenuously that his teachings had been revealed to him by Jesus himself – “I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.” (1:12). He tries hard to stress his independence from “those who were apostles before I was” (1:17), though in doing so he has to admit that he did meet with at least two of the Jerusalem elders:

“Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days.  I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother.” (Galatians 1:18-19 – though see below on variations in this can be translated)

So here he is forced to admit he did meet with two “who were apostles before I was”. One was Peter, and as an Aramaic speaker himself Paul uses the original Aramaic form of his nickname, “Cephas”. And the other is James – “τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου” – the brother of the Lord. Given that we have multiple early Christian sources that say Jesus had four brothers (and some sisters), that the eldest of them was called James and that this James was a leader of the earliest Jesus Sect community in Jerusalem, this has long been read straightforwardly as a reference to Jesus’ sibling. And given that non-existent, non-historical and purely mythical beings cannot have flesh and blood siblings who can be directly attested in this way, this is a strong piece of evidence that a historical Jesus did, in fact, exist. As Bart Ehrman has commented wryly:

“And so Jesus’ brothers were his actual brothers. Paul knows one of these brothers personally. It is hard to get much closer to the historical Jesus than that. If Jesus never lived, you would think that his brother would know about it.” (Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth p. 148)

Even the most determined proponents of the Jesus Myth thesis are forced to admit that this passing reference is difficult to get around. A few try some rather weak gambits to dismiss it, claiming that Paul saw visions (which is true) and so was psychotic and delusional (which does not follow at all) and so can be ignored. Others simply try to claim he was lying about meeting James. Neither of these dodges work, given that Paul is not talking about seeing James in a vision, is not boasting about meeting Jesus’ brother and is actually mentioning it in passing in a way that rather undercuts the argument for his independent authority that he is trying to make. So all but the most boneheaded of Mythicists have to admit that Paul did indeed meet this James.

This leaves Mythicists with the problem of trying to argue that this reference to meeting “the brother of the Lord” is not, in fact, a reference to meeting Jesus’ actual sibling. And they are also forced to admit that this is a considerable problem to overcome, with even the inevitable Dr. Richard Carrier PhD (who has a doctorate) saying “I assign it 2:1 in favor of historicity” (“Did Jesus Have Actual Brothers” in On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review). Elsewhere he makes a similar, though rather backhanded, admission of the difficulty this reference poses to Mythicism by saying it is “in my opinion the only actual evidence [‘historicists’] have” (On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, p. 582). Fellow Mythicist Robert Price is rather more frank, stating “[the] most powerful argument against the Christ-Myth theory, in my judgment, is the plausibility of …. ‘the Caliphate of James'” (Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, p. 333). So how do Mythicists try to get around this piece of evidence? Broadly speaking, by arguing that the word “brother” here is figurative rather than literal and that this is a reference to a believer called James, not to a literal flesh and blood relative. On the face of it, this expedient seems it could work, though as we will see, it actually requires some highly contorted and contrived argument.

There is absolutely no doubt that Paul did use forms of the word ἀδελφός (“brother”) in a purely figurative sense and that this was a term used for fellow believers. We can find multiple examples – e.g. “Sosthenes, our brother” (1Cor. 1:1), “Timothy, our brother” (2Cor. 1:1), “Quartus, the brother” (Rom 16.23) etc. as well as a large number of uses of the plural form to refer to the “brethren” to whom these letters were addressed. This means that the idea that “τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ Κυρίου” in Galatians 1:19 is figurative has, at least, a prima facie plausibility. The problem lies in the fact that it is only in this passage that the form “brother of the Lord” is used. And there is only one other place where another version of this construction is found – in 1Cor 9:3-6:

“This is my defence to those who sit in judgement on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord (καὶ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου) and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living?”

The problem these examples pose for the idea that all of these references to “brothers” are figurative and simply means “fellow believers” is that in both Galatians 1:18-9 and 1Cor 9:5 the “brother/s of the Lord” are mentioned alongside and separate from other believers. In 1Cor 9:3-6 these “brothers of the Lord” are distinct from “the other apostles” and from “Cephas”, despite them being believers as well. And in Galatians 1:18-19 this “James, brother of the Lord” is somehow distinct from Cephas again, despite Cephas being a believer. So if these uses of ἀδελφός simply mean “a believer”, why this distinction? And why is it only to be found in the two examples where the word is not simply a form of ἀδελφός, but is part of the specific phrase “ἀδελφὸν/ἀδελφοὶ τοῦ Κυρίου” (brother/brothers of the Lord)?

The mainstream reading of these two passages answers this question very easily: James and the other siblings of Jesus were believers, but were distinct from other believers because they were his literal brothers. But the Mythicists cannot accept that reading because if they do … their whole theory collapses. So here is where the tangled, contrived, motivated readings begin.

James and the Brothers of Jesus

James and Jesus’ other brothers have had an interesting history in the traditions of Christianity – largely one which has progressively downplayed and marginalised their significance. They first appear reasonably early in the earliest gospel (Mark 3:31-35) and are mentioned by name a few chapters later:

“Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.

‘Where did this man get these things?’ they asked. ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?’ And they took offence at him.

Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honour except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.'” (Mark 6:1-4)

Synoptic cognates of this episode can be found in Matt 13:54-57 and Luke 4:16-30, though the latter does not have the reference to his siblings. Traditionally, the Marcan text above, with its reference to a “prophet [being] without honour …. among his relatives and in his own home”, has been taken with other texts as evidence that his brothers were not followers of his. Given that Acts 1:14 explicitly depicts “Mary the mother of Jesus, and … his brothers” with the disciples in Jerusalem directly after the resurrection and depicts James as one of the leaders of the early Jesus Sect there (see below, but the key texts are Acts 12:17, 15:13-21 and 21:17-26), this has led to a long tradition that his brothers only came to believe in Jesus belatedly. This has been challenged more recently by Robert Eisenman and, with rather more credibility, by John Painter (Just James: The Brother of Jesus in History and Tradition , 1997) and Jeffrey J. Butz (The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity, 2005). Both Painter and Butz argue that the traditional readings of the gospel accounts of Jesus “rejecting” his family (Mark 3:31-35, with Matt 12:46-50, Luke 8:19-21), his family thinking he was “out of his mind” (Mark 3:21) or his brothers not believing in him (John 7:5) are all based on dubious translations or misinterpretations of the texts and that James and the brothers, along with his mother Mary, were part of his following from the beginning.

Painter and Butz both make solid cases for this, and at the very least it has to be accepted that the traditional interpretation rests on some surprisingly slender reeds. Even if the interpretation that they only came to be followers later is maintained, there is no getting around the consistent early representation of James as a leading figure in the early Jesus movement, as indicated in the Acts texts noted above. And his status as “the first bishop of Jerusalem” has deep roots in the earliest Christian writings. The Gospel of the Hebrews (as reported by Jerome) and the Apocryphon of James both refer to a post-resurrection appearance by Jesus to James, which Paul also mentions in his list of those to whom the risen Jesus was said to have appeared (1Cor 15: 3-8). The Gospel of Thomas depicts the disciples asking who will “rule over us” once Jesus had departed and has Jesus replying “you should go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being” (Thomas 12:2). Later accounts of the Nazorean, Ebionite and Elkesaite variants of early Christianity mention that these sects held James in particular esteem and even traced their traditions to him. The second century Christian writer Hegesippus gave a detailed, if highly hagiographical and rather fanciful, account of James which is preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, II.1, saying “James, the brother of the Lord, succeeded to the government of the Church in conjunction with the apostles.” Eusebius also records a similar statement by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD), who wrote “Peter and James [son of Zebedee] and John after the ascension of our Saviour, as if also preferred by our Lord, strove not after honour, but chose James the Just as bishop of Jerusalem.”

So while the traditions regarding James have several clearly ahistorical elements, the idea that he was the leader of his brother’s sect in Jerusalem is strongly attested. And this is in spite of the fact that this became increasingly awkward for later Christians to acknowledge. Traditions that regarded Peter as the preeminent follower of Jesus and leader of the early sect seem to have been forced to acknowledge James’ high status even though this did not fit with their conception of the apostolic succession. Eusebius also records that after James’ execution his (and Jesus’) cousin Simeon, “the son of Clopas”, succeeded him. Other traditions survive of an ongoing memory of descendants of Jesus’ family, with Hegesippus mentioning descendants of Jesus and James’ brother Judas who “took the lead of every church as witnesses and as relatives of the Lord. And profound peace being established in every church, they remained until the reign of the Emperor Trajan” (Eusebius, III.32). He also mentions these desposynoi (meaning “of or belonging to the master or lord”) again at III.20, relating another story from Hegesippus about them being brought before Domitian because they were regarded as descendants of King David but were released when they “showed their hands, exhibiting the hardness of their bodies and the callousness produced upon their hands by continuous toil”, proving they were merely simple peasants.

These memories of the importance of James and other descendants of Jesus’ family were awkward for the early Christian sect because they worked against the idea that authority was based entirely on apostolic succession and the conception of Jesus as a divine saviour rather than a prophet from a family with prophetic authority. They became still more awkward with the rise and development of the concept of Jesus’ mother not just being a virgin when she conceived him, but that she also remained “ever virgin” – making the existence of James and the other siblings a problem for exegetes who wanted to maintain this popular idea. The western tradition dealt with this by maintaining these brothers were actually Jesus’ cousins; an idea which is common in the Catholic Church to this day. The eastern tradition, with perhaps a better grasp of what the Greek word αδελφοι can mean, took the path of claiming they were half-brothers of Jesus – older children from an earlier marriage of Joseph’s – with this being the teaching of the Orthodox traditions today. The concept of Mary’s eternal virginity was rejected by the sixteenth century Protestant reformers, and so that tradition has maintained the idea that they were Jesus’ actual younger siblings. But theological concerns have caused Protestant scholars to downplay James’ status and authority for other reasons. Luther’s theology was based on the Pauline idea of “salvation by grace”, but his Catholic opponents pointed to contrary texts in the epistle attributed to James to justify their doctrine of “salvation by works” (see James 2:14, 2:24 and 2:26). This meant that Luther and the other reformers took something of a dim view of James, increasing his marginalisation in the western Christian tradition.

But despite all this, there are sufficient early references to James to make his co-called “caliphate” as the brother and successor of Jesus most likely historical, for all its awkwardness for later Christians. And this increases the difficulty for Mythicists who need to make James’ status as a flesh and blood, historical sibling of the historical Jesus go away.

Brothers or “Brothers”?

As already noted above, in both Galatians 1:18-9 and 1Cor 9:5 the “brother/s of the Lord” are mentioned alongside and separate from other believers, which poses a problem for Mythicists who want to argue that the use of the words “brother” and “brothers” here is purely figurative and simply means “a believer, a follower of Christ”. If, however, these uses of “brother/s of the Lord” refers specifically and literally to Jesus’ siblings, this distinction from the other believers makes perfect sense. This is why this is and has always been the way these two texts have been read, but Mythicists have to find a way to avoid this interpretation at all costs.

So enter the indefatigable champion of convoluted Mythicist apologetics, Dr. Richard Carrier, Phd (who has, in case you didn’t realise, a doctorate). I will have to apologise in advance, gentle reader, for the amount of detail I am about to go into when analysing Carrier’s arguments regarding these two texts. This is, unfortunately, necessitated by the fact that his reasoning is characteristically contrived and convoluted, but also because Carrier has the rather petty habit of accusing any critic of his thesis of having not actually read his book if he thinks he can get away with it. So forgive me if the analysis below seems overly detailed – I’m simply trying to be thorough.

Carrier leaves the attempt to neutralise the implications of Galatians 1:18-9 and 1Cor 9:5 until toward the end of his clunky opus, On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. He begins with 1Cor 9:1-6:

“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defence to those who sit in judgement on me. Don’t we have the right to food and drink? Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only I and Barnabas who lack the right to not work for a living?”

If “the brothers of the Lord” simply means “believers, followers of Christ”, why are they listed separately to “the other apostles” and “Cephas”? Carrier admits that it is at least “possible” that this is because the term refers to Jesus’ literal siblings, saying it could have been “policed in such a fashion that it was only ever used of Jesus’ actual kin” and says it may be that “even though every Christian was in fact a brother of the Lord and all knew it, they were forbidden to refer to themselves with that specific sequence of words – instead they could only call themselves ‘brother'” and not “brother of the Lord”. (p. 584) But he then declares that while it is possible, it is less likely than his alternative explanation, declaring this “makes the ‘brother of the Lord meant Christian’ the simplest hypothesis (it requires the fewest ad hoc assumptions)”. But the only “ad hoc assumptions” in the literal interpretation of “brothers” here are ones Carrier has loaded onto the text, not ones found anywhere in the actual words of Paul. In considering the literal interpretation he assures us that it is possible the term “brothers of the Lord” could have been “policed in such a fashion that it was only ever used of Jesus’ actual kin” and says it may be that Christians were “forbidden to refer to themselves with that specific sequence of words”. The problem here is that all this rigid stuff about the term being “policed” and its use for anyone other than Jesus’ siblings being “forbidden” is entirely in Carrier’s head. Nothing in the text requires or even suggests any of this “policing” or “forbidding” that Carrier imagines – these are simply things he piles on top of the words used to try to make the literal reading somehow seem unlikely (though he also never actually says why this would be less likely; he simply asserts this, in typical Carrier style). There is no need to imagine this weirdly rigid “policing” scenario. Paul simply has to use the term “brothers of the Lord” to differentiate these literal brothers from the figurative ones he refers to elsewhere.

So by this strange argument Carrier proceeds as though he has somehow disposed of the literal interpretation of “brothers” here, which still leaves him with the issue of why this particular category of believers is listed separately to “Cephas” and “the other apostles”. He considers some alternatives and then concludes thus:

“Paul must mean by ‘brothers of the Lord’ … simply Christians  – and in particular Christians below apostolic rank. That finally makes the point of his argument clear: if even regular Christians were being given the privilege (of being supported by the communities they traveled to on church business), then surely Paul should be, being an actual apostle.” (p. 586)

But his reasoning here is not only strange, but it does not appear to be supported by the text. Paul begins by stressing his apostolate status (“Am I not an apostle? …. If I am not an apostle to others then at least I am to you”), then brackets his reference to the “brothers of the Lord” with people who are also apostles: “the other apostles” and then “Cephas”. So what qualifies all these people, including Paul? Apostolate status. The whole force of his argument depends on all of the people he refers to being apostles, which means Carrier’s attempt to claim “brothers of the Lord” is a distinct category of “Christians below apostolic rank” makes no sense. Given that his attempt to exclude the literal reading of “brothers” also failed, that is precisely the most logical and likely reading we are left with.

Carrier tries to dismiss the literal reading of “brothers” still further by arguing that the “authors of the Gospels show no knowledge of [the brothers of Jesus] even having been believers, much less apostles; even less privileged ones” (p. 587). As noted above, however, a sound case can be made for the brothers as followers despite the tradition of interpreting the key gospel texts otherwise. That aside, Carrier is forced to accept that they were known to have, at least, become followers given that Acts 1:14 has “Mary the mother of Jesus, and … his brothers” with the disciples in Jerusalem after the Resurrection and before Pentecost, so he falls back on saying the author of Acts “shows no knowledge of them ever doing anything, much less being apostles”. This, of course, is predicated on his interpretation that the “James” mentioned several times in Acts and depicted as having pre-eminent status in the early Jesus sect is in fact James, son of Zebedee, and not James the brother of Jesus. This is a highly dubious reading, given that James the son of Zebedee is depicted as being executed at Acts 12:2 and the “James” who held such high status appears in the narrative several times afterwards (see Acts 12:17, 15:13-21 and 21:17-26). Carrier tries to get around this with more of his contorted arguments. In his recent blog post replying to Daniel Gullotta’s critique of his book (see above) he argues:

“Basically, Acts is unreliable. Especially in chronology. When Acts contradicts Paul, sound historical method requires us to side with Paul. Because unlike the author of Acts, Paul is an eyewitness to what he reports.” (“Did Jesus Have Actual Brothers” in On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review)

The problem with this argument is the chronology in Acts actually does not contradict Paul. In Galatians Paul refers to meeting “James the brother of the Lord” (Galatians 1:19), presumably sometime in the 30s AD and not long after his conversion (detailed in Acts at Acts 9:1-31, with his visit to Jerusalem at Acts 9:26-29). Paul then says that “after fourteen years” (Galatians 2:1) he went to Jerusalem again and met “James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars” (Galatians 2:9), which would be sometime around 50 AD as detailed in Acts 15:1-21. James the son of Zebedee is depicted in Acts as being executed between these two episodes (Acts 12:2), so there is no problem with the chronology at all and certainly no “contradiction” between the sequence of events in Acts and Paul’s references. Elsewhere (see here) Carrier tries to argue that the encounter with James and the other “pillars” mentioned in Galatians 2:9 occurred before the execution of James son of Zebedee in an earlier visit to Jerusalem that Carrier thinks is implied by Acts 11:29-30, concluding with his characteristic scholarly eloquence that the “chronology in Acts is fucked”. But the only thing that seems decidedly fornicated here is Carrier’s contrived argument. There is nothing in Acts 11:29-30 to suggest this was when he met “the pillars” and Paul’s references to that meeting in Galatians 2 fits the account of the “Council of Jerusalem” in Acts 15:1-21 far more neatly. There is no contradiction between Paul’s references and the chronology in Acts, which means the James of Galatians 2 is not the executed James son of Zebedee, but James, the brother of Jesus.

Carrier needs this James to be different to the James of Galatians 1:19, however, because he needs to maintain his position that there (as in 1Cor 9:5) the term “brother of the Lord” means “a Christian below apostolic rank”. Since the James of Galatians 2:9 clearly is of high rank, and probably an apostle, he cannot be the run-of-the-mill, non-apostolic Christian brother of Carrier’s reading of Galatians 1:19. So Carrier needs them to be two different Jameses and the one in Galatians 2 to be the still living and not yet executed son of Zebedee. Writing of his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion, Paul says:

“Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother.” (Galatians 1:18-19)

Again, Carrier cannot have “brother of the Lord” here mean, literally, Jesus’ sibling. So he attempts to bring this text into line with his argument that “brother/s of the Lord” is a reference to any ordinary, non-apostolic Christian, by separating the James of Galatians 1:19 from the “pillar” called James in Galatians 2. Aside from his contorted “the chronology in Acts is fucked” argument, above, he does this by arguing that the “James and Cephas and John” of Galatians 2:9 are actually Peter along with James and John the sons of Zebedee, noting these three are listed together multiple times in the gospels (he cites Mark 5:37, Mark 9:2, Matt 17.1, Luke 5:10, Luke 8:51 and Luke 9:28). The first problem with this argument is that in all of these examples James and John are always listed together, due to the fact they were brothers. Whereas in Paul’s reference James is listed first and John last, separated by the mention of Peter/Cephas:

James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars” (Galatians 2:9)

“Peter, James and John the brother of James” (Mark 5:37)

“Peter, James and John” (Mark 9:2)

“Peter, James and John the brother of James” (Matt 17:1)

James and John, Zebedee’s sons, were Simon’s partners” (Luke 5:10)

“Peter, John, and James” (Luke 8:51)

“Peter, John, and James” (Luke 9:28)

It makes sense that these two are always referred to together, even when the fact they are brothers is not referred to explicitly – this is common practice when referring to siblings. So it would be odd for Paul not to do so in Galatians 2. And while the gospel references often seem to put these brothers with Peter in some kind of higher category than the rest of the disciples, there is nothing to indicate that James had any pre-eminence over the other two in this trio, so it is hard to see why Paul would not only list James first but depict James as having some kind of authority over Peter in Galatians 2:12. None of these problems arise if we accept the usual reading that this is not James son of Zebedee, but is actually James the brother of Jesus – in that reading both the precedence and higher authority of James makes perfect sense.

That the James of Galatians 2 is the same one referred to in Galatians 1:19 also makes the most sense rhetorically. As one commentator notes:

“The decisive consideration in arriving at this conclusion is the literary convention that requires an author of a closely argued narrative to stipulate that a different person is being referred to (should that be the case) when the same name recurs in the same account. Otherwise intended readers could be misled or at least confused.” (William R. Farmer, “James the Lord’s Brother, According to Paul” in James the Just and Christian Origins, ed.s Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, Brill,1999. p. 133)

So this is most likely not some ordinary, sub-apostolic Christian that Paul mentions in passing along with Cephas/Peter – it is the brother of Jesus and the James who was the pre-eminent pillar of the Jerusalem community.

Carrier tries to further sustain his idea that “brother/ of the Lord” refers to ordinary, non-apostolic Christian believers by reference to the grammar of Galatians 1:17-19, asking:

“Why didn’t Paul just say ‘of them that were apostles before me [1.17] I met none except Peter and James [1.18-19]’?” (pp. 588-89)

Here he refers to an argument by L. Paul Trudinger ( ἝΤΕΡΟΝ ΔΕ ΤΩΝ ΑΠΟΣΤΟΛΩΝ ΟΥΚ ΕΙΔΟΝ, ΕΙ ΜΗ ΙΑΚΩΒΟΝ: A Note on Galatians I 19.” Novum Testamentum, vol. 17, no. 3, 1975, pp. 200–202), who analyses the grammar of this sentence and concludes that the best reading is in fact “Other than the apostles I saw none except James, the Lord’s brother” (Trudinger, p. 201). Obviously this reading helps Carrier, because it means the sentence is excluding James from the category of “the apostles”, bolstering Carrier’s reading of “brother” as meaning “a non-apostolic Christian”. Trudinger’s interpretation has been criticised, however, by George Howard ( “Was James an Apostle?: A Reflection on a New Proposal for Gal. I 19.” Novum Testamentum, vol. 19, no. 1, 1977, pp. 63–64), who argues that the extra-Biblical examples used by Trudinger to support his reading are not valid:

“ἕτερος in each instance makes a comparison between persons or objects of the same class of things. Thus while the Corcyraeans might have been forced against their will ‘to make friends other than those they now had’, the ἑτέρους belong to the same species of beings as the former, that is, both are friends. Again, while Ether is described as ‘being an element other than the four’, still it is an element along with the four.” (Howard, p. 63)

So what Howard is saying here is that the grammar has Paul making a distinction between James and the other apostles, but still includes James in the category of “apostle”. Carrier dismisses this in a footnote, arguing it “is refuted by the fact that both the apostles and James are of the same class (they are all Christians, which is precisely Paul’s point)” (p. 590, n. 101). He elaborates on this in one of his many blog posts that try to pick a fight with Bart Ehrman:

“Ironically, in his attempt to answer Trudinger, George Howard, the only person to answer Trudinger in the peer reviewed literature (OHJ, p. 590, n. 101), observed that the examples Trudinger referenced still involve ‘a comparison between persons or objects of the same class of things,’ such as new friends and old friends belonging to the general class of friends, and indestructible elements and destructible elements belonging to the general class of elements. But that actually means Cephas and James belong to the same class (Brothers of the Lord, since Jesus is ‘the firstborn of many brethren…’), which entails the distinction is between Apostolic and non-Apostolic Brothers of the Lord, just as Trudinger’s examples show a contrast being made between destructible and indestructible elements and old and new friends. Howard’s objection thus actually confirms the very reading I’m pointing to. It thus does not in fact argue against Trudinger at all—who would agree both Cephas and this James belonged to the same class of things: Christians.” (“Ehrman and James the Brother of the Lord”)

Unfortunately for Carrier, this line of argument does not work. His authority here, Trudinger, quotes Lightfoot on the syntax:

” ἕτερον [“other”] is linked with εἰ μὴ [“if not”] and cannot be separated from it without harshness, and that ἕτερον [“other”] carries τῶν ἀποστόλων [“of the apostles”] with it” (Trudinger p. 200, citing J.B. Lightfoot, St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, p. 228).

So Trudinger’s argument depends on the “class of things” in question being “the apostles”, not “brothers of the Lord”/Christians. This means Howard’s objection to Trudinger’s reading stands. This also means the reading that Carrier’s argument depends upon, where James is explicitly excluded from the category of “apostles” (i.e. “Other than the apostles I saw none except James, the Lord’s brother), has a major problem. Howard concludes: “Some ambiguity may still remain, as Lightfoot and Burton explain …. however the ambiguity that does remain lies within the force of εἰ μὴ [“if not”], not ” ἕτερον [“other”]” (Howard, p. 64).

Carrier’s attempt to argue that the James of Galatians 1:19 is simply a “brother of the Lord”; i.e. an ordinary, non-apostolic Christian, therefore has major problems on several fronts. It is also a strange way to refer to any old “brother of the Lord”/ordinary Christian, given its use of the definite article (τὸν). After all, Paul says “THE brother of the Lord”, not “A brother of the Lord”, which Carrier claims is effectively what he is saying. If Paul really was saying (or meaning) “A brother of the Lord” he could simply have left off the definite article. Or he could have written ἀδελφός τίς τοῦ Κυρίου, “a brother of the Lord” or perhaps εἷς τῶν ἀδελφῶν τοῦ Κυρίου, “one of the brothers of the Lord”. These would express what Carrier wants the text to be saying rather better than “THE brother of the Lord”, which implies something of significance in identifying James in this way. Incidentally, Carrier also claims in his rather snotty response to Daniel Gullotta’s critique that “Trudinger argued that the James in Galatians 1 is not the apostolic James in Galatians 2.” This is complete nonsense. Trudinger argues that Galatians 1:17-19 means Paul did not regard James as an apostle, but he makes absolutely no mention of Galatians 2 and definitely does not argue that there are two different Jameses in Galatians 1 and 2. Carrier is imagining he has allies that do not exist.

Josephus on James

Despite Carrier’s convoluted efforts, the reading of “brother/s of the Lord” in the Pauline material as a literal reference to Jesus’ siblings remains the best interpretation. This leaves the Mythicist thesis with a critical flaw, given that non-existent, unhistorical, celestial mythic beings cannot have flesh and blood earthly siblings known to Paul and, in at least one case, met by him. The inconvenient existence of Jesus’ brother is further bolstered by the fact he is attested outside of Christian texts – in Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XX.200-203:

“When, therefore, Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity. Festus was now dead, and Albinus was upon the road; so he assembled the Sanhedrin of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Messiah (τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου Χριστου), whose name was James, and some others. And, when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. But as for those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they disliked what was done; they also sent to the king, desiring him to send to Ananus that he should act so no more, for that what he had already done was not to be justified; nay, some of them went also to meet Albinus, as he was upon his journey from Alexandria, and informed him that it was not lawful for Ananus to assemble a Sanhedrin without his consent. Whereupon Albinus complied with what they said, and wrote in anger to Ananus, and threatened that he would bring him to punishment for what he had done; on which king Agrippa took the high priesthood from him when he had ruled but three months, and made Jesus, the son of Damneus, high priest.”

Unlike the other, hotly contested reference to Jesus in Josephus – the so-called “Testimonium Flavianum” at Ant. XVIII.63-4 – this reference is almost universally regarded as genuine and as referring to the Jesus and James of the Christian traditions. And this reference has added weight given that Josephus was not commenting on something that happened long before his time on the other side of the Empire. He was a younger contemporary of James, being around 25 when James was executed, and was a fellow citizen of Jerusalem, a small city of roughly 80,000 inhabitants. It seems he was in the city when James was executed, though it may be he returned to it very soon afterwards, having just been on an embassy to the Roman Senate on behalf of the Temple priesthood (see Josephus, Life, III). Either way, as a member of the priestly caste himself, the young Josephus would have followed the circumstances of the deposition of the high priest Ananus very closely. So all this makes Josephus’ passing mention of James rather close to direct testimony and certainly makes it hard to dismiss as some kind of rumour or Christian story.

All this means that this reference to James and, through him, to Jesus is quite difficult for Mythicists to dispose of. Among recent scholars, very few have tried to argue that this account is somehow spurious. One of the few to do so is Tessa Rajak in a footnote in her Josephus: The Historian and his Society (Duckworth, 1983, p. 131, n. 73), where she argues that this passage’s depiction of Ananus is at variance with the one in Jewish War IV.319-21 and so the Antiquities XX.200-203 account is an interpolation. There are several problems with this proposal. Firstly, it is not unusual for someone to have two differing assessments of a politician in relation to two different circumstances or issues. After all, if a modern writer expressed approval for President Obama’s healthcare policy in one work, but condemned his use of drone strikes against terrorist groups in another, this would not be good grounds to consider one of these to be spurious. Secondly, as Louis H. Feldman points out in response to Rajak’s note, it is unlikely that a Christian interpolator would refer to Jesus as “the one called the Christ” and says “a Christian, we may suggest, would have said ‘the one who was the Christ'” (Feldman, Josephus, the Bible, and History, Wayne State University Press, 1989, p. 48, n. 22). Thirdly, the idea that a Christian interpolator would invent this complex historical anecdote, complete with the death of a Roman procurator and the deposition of a high priest, just to slip in a passing reference to James and an even more oblique reference to Jesus makes little sense. Contrary to Mythicist fantasies about Christian writers salting the historical sources with interpolated references to Jesus to prop up his historical existence, there simply were no Jesus Mythicists in the ancient world and so no need for Christians to insert this kind of reference. Unlike the elements in the Testimonium that all scholars agree are interpolated, this reference serves no apologetic purpose and bolsters no theological claims. The Testimonium’s additions helped Christians support the claims that Jesus was the Messiah and had risen from the dead, by allowing them to point to a Jew (supposedly) stating this things as facts – things that were most hotly disputed by Christianity’s Jewish opponents. But this passing reference does nothing like this and bears no hallmarks of a apologetic Christian addition to the text.

This last objection is also the most serious flaw in the most recent attempt at arguing this passage is a wholesale interpolation, made by Nicholas P.L. Allen (“Josephus on James the Just? A re-evaluation of Antiquitates Judaicae 20.9.1″, Journal of Early Christian History, Volume 7, 2017, Issue 1). These issues make the idea that this passage is not genuine extremely difficult to sustain.

Carrier, Yet Again

So enter, yet again, the relentlessly ubiquitous Dr. Richard Carrier, PhD (he has a doctorate in history from Columbia, in case you were not aware). Carrier does not try to argue that the whole passage is interpolated, probably because he recognises the problems with this outlined above. Instead, in his article “Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200” (Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 20, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp. 489-514), he argues that only the words “who was called Messiah” were added, probably when a marginal note was mistaken for a correction by a later copyist and inserted into the text. This means, according to Carrier, that the text originally did not identify the Jesus who was the brother of the executed James with this phrase and this Jesus was actually the “Jesus son of Damneus” mentioned at the end of the passage, not Jesus of Nazareth. Et voilà – a solid reference to Jesus as a historical person by a Jewish historian disappears.

You may not be surprised when I tell you, gentle reader, that Carrier’s argument is critically flawed.

Firstly, in Carrier’s article in the Journal of Early Christian Studies he argues that the phrase “who was called Messiah” is “exactly the kind of thing that a scholar or scribe would add as an interlinear note to remind himself and future readers that—so the scribe believed—the Jesus here mentioned is Jesus Christ, as we would do today with an informative footnote or marginal note.” (p. 495). But is it “exactly the kind of thing” we’d find in such a note?  Carrier doesn’t bother to actually argue this; in typical style, he simply asserts it. No alternatives are explored, no argument is made why other possible kinds of notes are somehow less likely – we’re simply told that this is the case. No attempt is made to explain, for example, why this (supposedly) marginal note agrees grammatically with the (supposed) main text; with λεγομενου Χριστου in the genitive, so it is in the same case as Ιησους.  Surely that alone argues against the idea that this phrase is a marginal or interlinear note to some extent, but Carrier does not bother to even address any alternative ideas – a characteristic of his writing.

Though he does address the structure of the phrase a little in his second argument as to why this element is not original to Josephus’ text, when he claims the idea it is a later note to the text is supported by the fact that it is a “a participial clause — remarkable brevity for something that would sooner otherwise spark a digression or cross-reference, had Josephus actually written those words.” (p. 495). But, again, he does not bother to support this idea by showing other examples of known marginal glosses or interlinear notes, nor does he interrogate it by showing that other uses of the present participle λεγόμενος (“called”) in Josephus do indeed tend to spark “a digression or cross-reference”. In fact, if we do Carrier’s work for him and look at how Josephus uses that verb elsewhere we find that, in fact, it usually looks exactly like what we find in the Antiquities XX passage, with a quick reference to someone or something being “called” something and no digression, cross reference or even explanation as to why it was “called” this at all.  Some examples:

” … he should find them between Jerusalem and the ascent of Engedi, at a place called ‘the Eminence’, and that he should not fight against them.”(Antiquities IX.11)

” … Pacorus left with Herod two hundred horsemen, and ten men, who were called ‘the Freemen’…”(Antiquities XIV.342)

“Jonathan and his colleagues …. raised a report of their own contrivance, that Roman horsemen were seen at a place called ‘Union’, in the borders of Galilee … “(Life 54)

In all of these examples we see Josephus using forms of the participle λεγόμενος to briefly note what people or places are “called” with no digressions or cross references at all. And there is an even closer parallel found in the same book as the James reference:

“As soon as the king heard this news, he gave the high priesthood to Joseph, who was called Cabi, son of Simon, formerly high priest.”(Antiquities, XX.196)

So why did Carrier not look at these and other similar usages of this kind of phrase and make an actual argument why they are not marginal glosses while the XX.200 one is? Assertion is not argument.

But Carrier’s article is very strong on unsupported assertions. He goes on to claim:

“[W]e would certainly find here an explanation of why this Jesus was called “Christ,” what that word meant …. and why Josephus thought it important to mention either, since the passage as written leaves no stated reason why either Jesus or his moniker Christ is mentioned at all.” (p. 496)

But he does not explain why we should “certainly” find this. And, as the multiple examples above show, this is completely wrong anyway. Josephus often referred to people and places and says they were “called” something without bothering to explain why or what the thing they were “called” meant in that context. The text we have in Antiquities XX.200 reads perfectly naturally without any such explanation – he says Jesus was the one “called Messiah” precisely because, a few lines later, he mentions a second Jesus, this one the “son of Damneus”, and he wants to differentiate between them. Josephus does this consistently in passages where he mentions two different people with the same name, which is something (given the number of Jewish figures or Seleucid kings with common names in his narrative) he does often (more on this below).

Carrier’s third argument as to why the phrase “who was called Messiah” is not original notes that the same phrase is found in Matt 1.16. He admits that the phrase was “not impossible for Josephus to construct on his own” (p. 497), but he assures his readers with his usual blithe confidence that it is “far more probable” it came from a Christian hand.  Again, this is just asserted, with no exploration of examples of the use of the phrase του λεγομενου Χριστου in Christian writings apart from Matt 1.16 to support this claim of probability. This is perhaps because there are very few. Origen refers to Jesus as being “called Christ” in Contra Celsum I.66 and IV.28, as does Justin Martyr in First Apology XXX. Apart from these examples, Christian writers actually tended to assert Jesus was the Messiah rather than referring to him merely being “called” such in an abstract way, for obvious reasons. So this construction is actually highly unusual for any Christian writer and so distinctly odd for Carrier’s hypothesised glosser. But, yet again, Carrier does not bother exploring any of this.

In this fourth argument Carrier says that the phrase could not be original to Josephus because the passage in Antiquities XX.200 says the Jews were outraged at the death of this James. So, he argues, it is “inexplicable” and “makes little sense” that this outrage would be on the behalf a member of a sect that was both “hated” and “illegal”, and so this James cannot be any Christian and must be someone else. There are multiple problems with this argument. To begin with, we have very little idea how “hated” the Jesus sect was in the 60s AD or even how distinct a “sect” it was within the Judaism of the time. Even Acts, written some decades later and with the polemical purpose of showing the Jesus sect to be persecuted by the Jewish authorities, depicts its members preaching openly, teaching in the Temple itself, taking part in Jewish rituals there and being defended by at least some of the Sanhedrin. The idea that the sect was actually “illegal” is even more difficult to defend since while the author of Acts plays up the afflictions of the Christians at the hands of the Jewish authorities, not even he claims they were anything but occasionally censured.

But leaving these unsubstantiated claims about Christians being “hated” and their sect being “illegal” aside, we can still read the reported outrage as making sense if this James was indeed a Christian. After all, Josephus says that the action against Ananus was taken by “the most equitable of the citizens, and such as were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws” because “they disliked what was done”. So the text tells us that it was the “breach of the laws” that was the problem for these equitable citizens and even if the Jesus sect was “hated” or even “illegal”, it’s still perfectly reasonable that “equitable citizens” would object to them being treated in a way that was itself illegal. Especially if some of these citizens also had a political beef with the High Priest and wanted a way to remove him. So the text makes perfect sense as it stands.

Finally, Carrier claims the mention of the death of this James in Antiquities XX.200 “does not agree with any other account of the death of James the brother of Christ” (p. 497). Here he is referring mainly to the only substantial account we have, that found in one of the fragments of Hegesippus. But it is hard to tell why we should expect a passing mention of an execution that has few details at all, as we find in Josephus, to have much “agreement” with a detailed account, as we find in Hegesippus – there’s simply not much in Josephus to overlay with Hegesippus. Nor should we be surprised that Josephus’ terse and fairly neutral account might be different in many respects to Hegesippus’ florid Christian hagiography. Nor would it be at all surprising that we would find some difference between the brief account by a citizen of Jerusalem who was 25 at the time and most likely in the city when the execution and its political aftermath occurred and that of a Christian chronicler who was born almost a century after the event was was writing up to half a century later again.

Carrier concludes his five arguments for thinking that the “who was called the Messiah” is not original to Josephus’ text by noting they are “not a conclusive proof” and admitting “[o]ne can advance explanations on all counts” (p.497). The issue then becomes which explanation is the most probable. And at this point the reader would expect him to examine that issue and look at the relative value of the alternative explanations, particularly if that reader is aware of some of the many problems with Carrier’s arguments noted above. But, bizarrely, Carrier goes on “I will not delve any further into that debate”(p. 498). Really? How convenient. Perhaps he was aware that such “delving” into alternative readings would expose his arguments’ many flaws. Once again, Carrier is better at shifty polemics than thorough and exacting scholarly analysis. He has a point to get to and he does not want pesky things like alternative interpretations to distract from his pushing on to reach it.

So what about the supposed removal of an original phrase?

As we have seen, all five of Carrier’s arguments for the phrase “who was called Messiah” as an interpolation have serious flaws and, despite his considerable efforts to make it appear otherwise, his overall case is weak. But it gets worse. This is because he not only has to argue that this phrase was a later addition by a Christian scribe (via a hypothetical marginal note), he also has to come up with a way an original phrase that identified this Jesus as “son of Damneus” came to be removed and the supposed marginal note – “called the Messiah” – was put in its place. The way he does this is contrived in the extreme:

“In fact, the text may have originally said, “the brother of Jesus ben Damneus, the name for whom was James, and some others.” Since “Jesus ben Damneus” appears again a few lines later (and as I have argued, it is more likely that Josephus actually meant this Jesus), a scribe who saw a marginal note “who was called Christ” (τοῦ λεγομένου Χριστοῦ) scribbled above “ben Damneus” (τὸν τοῦ Δαμναίου), regardless of how or why it came to be written there, may have inferred a dittography. This is a common scribal error where a copyist’s eye slips to a similar line a few lines down (by mistaking which “Jesus” he had left off at), then realizes he had picked up at the wrong place, but corrected himself and then wrote a superlinear phrase intended to replace the erroneous material. A later copyist would then interpret the earlier copyist’s correction as calling for the erasure of “ben Damneus” as a dittograph, omit the words, and replace it with the gloss, “who was called Christ.” ” (p. 512)

Got all that? So Carrier’s thesis involves using his flawed five arguments against the authenticity of the “who was called Messiah” phrase, then the supposition that this was a marginal note and then this further supposition where another scribe erases the original “son of Damneus” and replaces it with “who was called Messiah”. It is exceedingly difficult to not find this tangle of contrived hypotheticals to be anything more than an ad hoc “just so story” confected to explain this passage away.

And note the word “may” in the first sentence of his thicket of suppositions above. This whole idea of not just the scribal insertion of a marginal note, but the removal of an earlier identifier of this Jesus as “son of Damneus” is hurried into a dense paragraph on the second last page of Carrier’s 25 page article, and it is qualified by a word that suggests this may or may not have happened.

How Josephus uses identifying appellations

If Carrier’s mere “maybe” is not what happened, then his whole argument is in contradiction to the way Josephus identifies people via adding appellations to their name. Nowhere in any of his works that I can find does Josephus refer to someone by their name alone when introducing them to his narrative for the first time (e.g. “Jesus”) and then refer to them by their name and an appellation a few sentences later (e.g. “Jesus, son of Damneus”). This is for the very obvious reason that it would be highly confusing to do so.

So it seems that Carrier’s tangled alternative – the contrived one involving suppositions piled on suppositions and multiple imaginary scribes, which dangles by the slender thread of that little word “may” and is rushed into a contorted paragraph at the very end of his article – is critical to keeping his whole argument from collapsing.

Unfortunately for Carrier, this requires Josephus to do something else he seems to never do: use an appellation when introducing someone to the narrative and then using it again when mentioning them a few sentences later. Here are some examples of Josephus introducing a person to his account and using patronymic appellations to identify them:

“And now King Agrippa took the [high] priesthood away from Simon Cantheras, and put Jonathan, the son of Ananus, into it again and owned that he was more worthy of the dignity than the other.” (Antiquities, XIX.313)

Then five sentences later he refers to this Jonathan again (XIX.316). Does he call him “Jonathan, the son of Ananus” this second time? No, he simply calls him “Jonathan”.  Here is a second example; one which was referred to on another point above:

“As soon as the king heard this news, he gave the high priesthood to Joseph, who was called Cabi, the son of Simon, formerly high priest.” (Antiquities, XX.196)

A sentence later he refers to this Joseph again, but not as “Joseph, who was called Cabi” or as “Joseph, the son of Simon”. He simply calls him “Joseph”. We see the same pattern where Josephus refers to two people.  First he names them and identifies them with patronymics:

“There was one Judas, the son of Saripheus, and Matthias, the son of Margalothus, two of the most eloquent men among the Jews, and the most celebrated interpreters of the Jewish laws, and men well beloved by the people, because of their education of their youth; for all those that were studious of virtue frequented their lectures every day.” (Antiquities, XVII.149)

Then a few lines later he refers to them again. Again, he doesn’t call them “the son of Saripheus” or “the son of Margalothus”. He simply calls them “Judas and Matthias” (XVII.151) and refers to them again this way at XVII.157.  Yet another example:

“The like accident befell Glaphyra his wife, who was the daughter of king Archelaus, who, as I said before, was married, while she was a virgin, to Alexander, the son of Herod, and brother of Archelaus.” (Antiquities, XVII.349)

Again, in the following lines Alexander is simply called “Alexander” (XVII.350) and the appellation “the son of Herod” is not repeated.

There are many more examples, but it should be clear this pattern seems consistent. Given this consistency, there is a critical problem with the idea that Josephus called this Jesus “the son of Damneus” at XX.200 and this was removed later due to some confusion over him repeating that identifier some lines later at XX.203.  This does not seem to fit with the way Josephus identifies and refers to figures in his narrative. So are there any circumstances in which he does repeat an identifier that he has used a little earlier in the same passage?

As it turns out, there are. Though unfortunately for Carrier they do not support his argument – quite the opposite.

Like the various high priests, the Hasmonean rulers in Josephus’ history tend to share a number of personal names in common, so – again – he uses patronyms to differentiate between them.  For example, in Book XIV of Antiquities he refers to “Alexander, the son of Aristobulus” many times and once again we see the pattern noted above: he uses the patronymic appellation the first time this Alexander is mentioned and then in the immediately subsequent narrative refers to him simply as “Alexander”, given that he’s already identified who he means:

“Some time after this, when Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, made an incursion into Judea, Gabinius came from Rome into Syria, as commander of the Roman forces. He did many considerable actions; and particularly made war with Alexander, since Hyrcanus was not yet able to oppose his power, but was already attempting to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, which Pompey had overthrown, although the Romans which were there restrained him from that his design.” (Antiquities, XIV.82-83)

He goes on to refer to him simply as “Alexander” a further five times in the subsequent account: once more at XIV.83 and then at XIV.84, XIV.85, XIV.89 and XIV.90. He then moves on to a different anecdote, this one about Aristobulus, so when he returns to Alexander he again calls him “Alexander, son of Aristobulus” (XIV.100) and then refers to him again simply as “Alexander” the next time he is mentioned in the new anecdote (XIV.102). We see the same thing further on in Book XIV – he moves onto other topics to do with Crassus and the Temple treasure before turning back to mention Alexander’s death, whereupon he is referred to as “Alexander, the son of Aristobulus” once more (XIV.125).

The next section of his narrative concerns the activities of Julius Caesar in the east and two more Alexanders are mentioned, so Josephus is careful to differentiate them from Alexander son of Aristobulus by referring to them as “Alexander, son of Jason” and “Alexander, the son of Dositheus” (XIV.146). The daughter of “Alexander, the son of Aristobulus” is mentioned at XIV.300, so Josephus is careful to call him that, especially since a further Alexander is mentioned at XIV.307, who in turn is designated “Alexander, the son of Theodorus”.

So here we see a wider pattern where Josephus uses an identifying appellation when a figure with a common name is (i) introduced to an anecdote he is relating, (ii) is re-introduced at a later point after other narrative anecdotes have been related and (iii) when there are others with the same name being referred to in the same part of the narrative or soon after it.

If we take this and look once again at XX.200-203 we can see that a “Jesus” is mentioned at XX.200. According to Carrier’s “maybe”, this is “Jesus, son of Damneus” and so the original text would have designated him as such here, with this being removed and then replaced by the alleged marginal note “who was called Messiah” by Carrier’s complex series of hypothetical scribal emendations. But then we get a “Jesus, the son of Damneus” mentioned at XX.203.  Which for Carrier’s “maybe” to work means Josephus called him this twice within a couple of sentences. But, as we have just seen, this was not Josephus’ practice. He does not repeat this kind of appellation unless he moves on to a new anecdote in this narrative or there is another figure with the same name in the narrative and he needs to differentiate between them.

This means he would have referred to “Jesus, the son of Damneus” at XX.200, but just used “Jesus” the next time this person is mentioned at XX.203. And that means there would be no second “the son of Damneus” to imply a dittograph to the second of Carrier’s hypothetical scribes. So his whole contrivance collapses.

Further, if Josephus wanted to emphasise that the “Jesus” of XX.200 was indeed the same one at XX.203 he would have used methods we see him use elsewhere.  For example:

“At length Zamaris the Babylonian, to whom Herod had given that country for a possession, died, having lived virtuously, and left children of a good character behind him; one of whom was Jacim, who was famous for his valor, and taught his Babylonians how to ride their horses; and a troop of them were guards to the forementioned kings.” (Antiquities, XVII.29)

Or again:

“Now he and his posterity, who were in all fifteen, until king Antiochus Eupator, were under a democratical government for four hundred and fourteen years; and then the forementioned Antiochus, and Lysias the general of his army, deprived Onias, who was also called Menelaus, of the high priesthood, and slew him at Berea.” (Antiquities, XX.234-35)

But he doesn’t do this in XX.200-203. The most likely conclusion then is to read the text as we have it (especially since Carrier’s five arguments for “called Messiah” as an interpolation are so weak) and to see the reference to “Jesus, who was called Messiah” at 200 and “Jesus, the son of Damneus” at 203 to be examples of what Josephus does consistently when referring to different figures with the same name – using identifying appellations that differentiate between two different people with the same name. In other words, we should read the passage as virtually every Josephan scholar on the planet does, because it makes the most sense that way. Occam’s razor slices Carrier’s contrived nonsense to ribbons and leaves a direct historical reference to James, the brother of Jesus, intact.

Conclusions

The more naive kind of online Mythicists are fond of the argument that there “should” be contemporary references to a historical Jesus if he existed and so their lack  means he did not exist. This simplistic argument fails largely because it overestimates the likelihood of contemporary attestation of anyone in the ancient world and is ignorant of the fact that we have no contemporary references to any of the various other early first century Jewish preachers, prophets and Messianic claimants and so cannot claim we “should” have any for this particular one. It also ignores that, even in the highly exaggerated accounts in the gospels, Jesus’ career is depicted as both brief and obscure. gMark stresses that his renown spread across “all Galilee” – a tiny backwater region that could be crossed in a day. And if all the events and indicators of time passing in the synoptic gospels are added together the whole of his “career” only takes up two or three weeks. Further, unlike Theudas or the Egyptian later in the century, whose followings were substantial enough to necessitate the mobilisation of whole units of Roman troops, even the gospels depict Jesus’ movement being suppressed via a quick scuffle in a garden involving only an element of the Temple guard. The most laudatory sources available make it clear that Jesus was, in his time, fairly insignificant.

So it is hardly surprising that while we have no notices of his existence from his fairly brief and ill-fated career, we do have references to him as the sect he founded grew. And in those references we also have direct attestation of his flesh and blood brother, James.

These references to James, particularly Galatians 1-2 and Antiquities XX.200, are the Achilles Heel of Jesus Mythicism. The better educated Mythicists acknowledge the problems these references pose for their creaking thesis and the convoluted and tangled lengths that Mythicism apologists like Carrier have to resort to is further testimony to the flaws exposed by this evidence. Paul met Jesus’ brother. Josephus was a younger contemporary of the same brother and close to the events of James’ execution in his home city. James, the younger sibling of Jesus existed. And therefore so did Jesus of Nazareth.

275 thoughts on “Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”

  1. How exactly would it help Carrier to argue that the James referred to is the son of Zebedee? And, more generally, what should we make of the fact that Peter (Cephas) and the sons of Zebedee were real people (if that is what Carrier concedes)?

    On what basis can Carrier accept that those people existed but deny the existence of Jesus? It would be like arguing that the Argonauts were real but denying the existence of Jason.

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    1. “How exactly would it help Carrier to argue that the James referred to is the son of Zebedee?”

      His argument requires that the James of Galatians 1:19 is not an apostle, so that he can sustain his interpretation of “brother” as meaning “an ordinary Christian who does not have apostolate status”. If the James of Galatians 2:9 is the same person, it doesn’t make sense that this ordinary, non-apostle Christian is also one of the “pillars” alongside Peter and John. So he has to maintain that this James is a different person, the son of Zebedee and an apostle. All this is just more evidence of how tangled Mythicist arguments have to get to sustain their thesis.

      “On what basis can Carrier accept that those people existed but deny the existence of Jesus? It would be like arguing that the Argonauts were real but denying the existence of Jason.”

      There are a few Mythicists who claim all these people are “fictional” and that Paul also didn’t exist. A couple go so far as to claim that the wicked Constantine and Eusebius cooked up the entire first three centuries of Christianity, forged all ante-Nicean Christian documents and invented all of these “fictional characters”. Carrier’s narcissism and weird commitment to this contorted thesis of his has made him a bit of a loon, but he is not a total idiot. He believes that he can put enough distance between what Paul says and a historical Jesus to maintain the idea that Jesus is mythical. But Paul is giving direct attestation of Peter, James and John here, so it would be very hard to argue they too did not exist. So he has to find ways to accept they existed while reshaping Paul’s references to Jesus mean that, somehow, he did not.

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      1. It seems to me that reading “the brother of the Lord” as meaning “just another Christian” is a bit strained right off the bat. Paul went to Jerusalem to confer with the church big-wigs, so in context the reader would assume that anyone mentioned in that sentence was someone in that set. Identifying James as the one who is Jesus’s brother (as opposed to some other James who might have been around) makes sense; mentioning some random James that Paul happened to see and making clear that he’s a Christian is so much superfluous text.

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      2. Made an interesting discovery(though, maybe it’s old news.
        According to Carrier (2017)
        “Reality Revolutions conceived an idea for a mobile application that would assist in quickly investigating every argument for and against the historical existence of Jesus. They then collaborated with me in developing its structure and content. The purpose? To house a complete catalog of every argument and item of evidence and make it all easy to find. And we’ve just begun building it. As such it will be continually updated to become and remain the most complete app for the purpose ever developed…

        It’s called CHRESTUS.
        My s10 must be too old because it is not available for me. I was real skeptical about paying $7.99 to Godless Engineer for it anyway. I believe it has a peer review generator! Apparently, everyone can now be peer reviewed!!
        Ok, that was a lie.

  2. Wow that was a great article. I suspect you will get a torrent of how it could have been scenarios from Carrier anytime.

    This verse below seems to me another awkward explanation for fact about a historical Jesus that was well know by his followers but needed to be explained.

    What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “The son of David.” He said to them, “How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, YAHWEH said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet’? If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?” And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did any one dare to ask him any more questions.” (Matthew 22:42)

    Basically this verse is arguing the Messiah cannot be an actual descendant of King David because it would create the inappropriate cultural expectation that would require an elder ancestor to call his descendant Lord which was highly inappropriate.

    Of course this strange parable doesn’t work as any ancestor would be required to call their descendant Lord however it seems to explain away the awkward known fact Jesus was not descended from David, yet the Messiah was supposed to be.

    Perfectly consistent with a historical Jesus, this makes no sense with a made up Jesus though.

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    1. The traditional Christian exegesis on Matt 22:42 says Jesus is arguing that the Messiah must be more than just a descendant of David, given the Messianic interpretation he gives to Psalm 110:1 – an interpretation that his questioners seem to share. So, the standard Christian interpretation of this text is that it has Jesus claiming to be more than the traditional Jewish conception of the Messiah as a human descendant of David and that this is referring to his divine status. Of course, it can also be read, as you say, as Jesus being depicted as rejecting the idea that the Messiah is to be an actual descendant of David at all. This contradicts the Matthean infancy narrative, particularly the genealogy at Matt 1:1-17, which explicitly mentions David as one of Jesus’ direct ancestors (Matt 1:6). This could be explained by the fact that it preserves an earlier tradition, especially if (as many scholars believe) the infancy narrative is a later addition to the text. It’s interesting that this episode is unique to gMatt. The episode before it is paralleled at Luke 10:25-28 and so seems part of the Q material, but this sequel with the question about David is not there. Of course, this might be because the author of gLuke did find it in the Q material and considered it too odd and too hard to reconcile with his own genealogy (Luke 3:32-38) and infancy narrative to include it.

      Regardless of what it means or how it found its way into gMatt, the issue in this context is how it could be reconciled with Mythicism. Carrier is faced with explicit references to Jesus as a descendant of David is the Pauline texts, which he deals with via the bizarre expedient of having his celestial Jesus created from a sperm bank in the sky. Which shows how, when the chips are down, Mythicists give Creationists a run for their money when it comes to ridiculous ad hoc arguments to sustain their silly ideas.

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      1. The oddest thing is this myth seemed to trick everyone…. but him and his internet followers.

        How come no other critical scholar figured this out. How come no ancient critic such as Celsus figured this out. I wonder if these thoughts have crossed his mind.

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        1. The lack of any reference to the supposed “Mythic Jesus” form of proto-Christianity required by the Doherty-Carrier thesis is one of its key flaws. Doherty has tried to press references to Docetic forms of Christianity into service and claim that they are, in fact, references to a “Mythic Jesus” conception. This fails because Docetists believed that Jesus had no physcial body and was a purely spiritual being, but also that this spiritual being was here on earth and in historical time. Doherty can’t demonstrate any form of Docetism that did not believe this. I’ve challenged him on why none of the critics of Christianity (eg Trypho or, as you say, Celsus) seem to have noticed this alternative form of Christianity, since referring to it would be a strong argument against Christian claims about Jesus. Yet they seem unaware that any such form of Christianity existed or had ever existed. Similarly, Christian apologists addressed a wide range of “heretical” alternative forms of Christian belief, including several that had not existed for a century or more before the apologists wrote. Yet, again, they seem totally unaware of this “Mythic Jesus” form, despite it (allegedly) still existing in their time and despite it having a plausible claim to being the original form of the faith. But we get silence from them as well. I have yet to see a coherent response on these points from any Mythicist, though most simply resort to conspiracy theories about how such references did exist but got “censored by the Church”. Why “the Church” would censor mentions of just this “heresy” while preserving the apologetics about all the various others is never explained.

          Carrier knows that the lack of any solid evidence for this supposed Mythic proto-Christianity is one of the key flaws in Doherty’s thesis. This is why he has tried to bolster the Doherty model of Mythicism by detailing what he thinks is evidence of this vanished ur-faith. His tangled analysis of the Ascension of Isaiah is one of his desperate attempts to do this, but he bungles that one in typical style. That will be a topic for an upcoming article in this series.

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          1. The Spirit of Democracy exists today, on earth, in an historical era. Which helps prove it is an historical person?

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          2. You seem to be arguing that the Docetists’ partly immaterial spirit was however, said to be an historical reality, a spirit on this earth. And therefore you conclude, it had a kind of reality, historicality? Therefore still supporting an historical Jesus?

            My objection would be that an historical “SPIRIT” is still too far from what you want to prove. In fact so far from it, that any old mentions of it do present evidence that many in the alleged time of Jesus didn’t really see him as an historical PERSON, say….

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          3. I suspect you haven’t quite understood what I’m saying. One the critical flaws in the Doherty-Carrier form of Mythicism is the total lack of evidence that the proto-Christianity posited by this theory – one that believed in a purely celestial, non-earthly and non-historical Jesus – ever existed. Some Mythicists have pointed to references to people who believed Jesus was spiritual rather than physical and tried to argue these are references to this celestial Jesus form of Christianity: e.g. 1John 1:1-4 and 4:1-3.

            The problem with this argument is that these references make most sense as references to Docetism – the idea that the historical earthly Jesus existed, but was purely spiritual in form and only had the illusion of a flesh and blood human. The existence of Docetism does not help the Mythicist at all. The only way, therefore, they can argue these references are to their (supposed) purely celestial, non-earthly and non-historical Jesus and not to a spiritual but historical and earthly Docetic one is by assuming the very conclusion they are trying to prove. We know Docetists exist and these references fit them. We have no evidence these supposed “purely celestial, non-earthly and non-historical Jesus” proto-Christians existed, so to assume the references in question are to the latter is purely circular reasoning.

            Clear?

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          4. 1 John 4.2 is commonly taken as an early attempt to address, refute the claims of docetism. Suggesting in turn that docetism was found early; among 1st century Christians.

            So it’s early. And this meant that among very early folks who might be supposed to be close to eyewitnesses to any physical historical Jesus, there was a group suggesting that any such allegations of firm materiality, historically, were not reliable.

            So Jesus’s full material historicality was doubted very early; even by people who were in a position to have access to early reports of it. Or who in some cases could have seen him. If he had been fully real.

            Yet even these very early witnesses do not really fully support an Historical Jesus.

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          5. The problem with that argument Kendal is the Docetist full thought he was a real person, who walked the Earth, preached and was crucified. They simply thought that he was a spirit who happened to take on the appearance of a human.

            They never thought of this spiritual Jesus doing his events in the spirit realms, they thought it happened on Earth.

            Doherty’s view requires this to happen in his heavenly realms.

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          6. “1 John 4.2 is commonly taken as an early attempt to address, refute the claims of docetism. “

            It is.

            “Suggesting in turn that docetism was found early; among 1st century Christians. So it’s early.”

            Well, it may be earlyish. Though I am much more inclined toward those who date it to the first half of the second century.

            “And this meant that among very early folks who might be supposed to be close to eyewitnesses to any physical historical Jesus, there was a group suggesting that any such allegations of firm materiality, historically, were not reliable.”

            No, this is utter nonsense. Firstly, even the earliest dating for 1John puts it well after the time of any eyewitnesses or even those who had been close to any. And, as I’ve said, the more likely dating makes it much later still. But the critical problem with your statement above is your muddled conflation of “materiality” and “historically”. Yes, Docetists rejected the materiality of Jesus. No, this had nothing to do with rejecting his historicity. Your argument fails because you keep confusing the two.

            “So Jesus’s full material historicality was doubted very early”

            Garbage. This statement is total nonsense.

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          7. It would be more accurate to say that the full humanity of Jesus was doubted (quite) early. And it isn’t hard to see how that could have happened. Given the exalted claims made about Jesus, it isn’t surprising that some people might start to doubt whether he was truly human. That would not have happened when there were still many people alive who actually knew Jesus, but when most or all of the eyewitnesses had died off, something like the docetist view could arise.

            And that fits with what we know. First John was written in the late first century, the time when there were no more eyewitnesses. On the other hand, we don’t see Paul addressing the problem of Docetism, presumably because it hadn’t arisen.

            But how do things work on Carrier’s scenario? First, everyone believes in a celestial Jesus. Then people start to think Jesus was a figure of recent history. And then some people start to think Jesus was a historical figure but one who only appeared to be human. But why didn’t the people who wanted to deny the humanity of Jesus just go back the “original” view of a celestial Jesus? Had it been completely forgotten even by the end of the first century?

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          8. Careful with historians’ nomenclature; in History, the “first century” is roughly 1 AD to 99 AD. 100 to 199 AD roughly, is called the second century.

            1John was probably written late; say 110 AD. But he refers to an already existing docetist movement. Which would put it in at least say, 90 AD; within range of living eyewitnesses.

            And then? In 50 AD, Paul is bemoaning the contemporary lack of having seen Jesus physically. Paul speaking as one of many “untimely born,” and “walking by faith, and not by sight.”

            And then? Even earlier still, Philo, around 10 AD, was speaking of a Logos or Word, a son of God. Who at times was invisible.

            Materiality is a precondition for historically. In docetism and Platonism, Jesus, and related sons of gods, especially Logos or Word, was spoken of as only “appearing” to be material. Suggesting that assertions of simple materiality and therefore historicality, were mistaken.

            Doherty and others might suggest that rumors of heavenly gods, words, spirits, had lead to hopes and then rumors, of seeing them on earth. But those rumors were unreliable.

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          9. “Careful with historians’ nomenclature; in History, the “first century” is roughly 1 AD to 99 AD.”

            I’m entirely aware of this thanks. What on earth has that got to do with anything I said?

            “1John was probably written late; say 110 AD. But he refers to an already existing docetist movement. Which would put it in at least say, 90 AD; within range of living eyewitnesses.”

            Maybe. That still doesn’t matter, given that Docetism was about Jesus’ spiritual nature, not his historicity.

            “In 50 AD, Paul is bemoaning the contemporary lack of having seen Jesus physically. “

            What?

            “Even earlier still, Philo, around 10 AD, was speaking of a Logos or Word, a son of God. Who at times was invisible.”

            So?

            “Materiality is a precondition for historically. “

            Not according to the Docetists. Which is the key point here that you keep failing to grasp. They believed Jesus was purely spiritual but entirely historical. So they are in no way a support for Dohertyite Mythicism, sorry. You can keep flogging that dead horse if you like, but it’s not going to get up and walk.

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          10. Here’s a standard encyclopedia definition of Docestism:

            ” … docetism (from the Greek δοκεῖν/δόκησις dokeĩn (to seem) dókēsis (apparition, phantom),[1][2] is the doctrine that the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality.[3][4] Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion. ” (Wiki).

            Here it is said that in effect, for Docetists, Jesus had no real “historical” existence. That any apparent historical Jesus was an “illusion” or delusion.

            Examples can be found in standard academic surveys. Though here even the etymology of the word “Docetism” begins to find this meaning in the movement. Suggesting that Jesus was not real, or historical. But was only a “phantom.”

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          11. “Here it is said that in effect, for Docetists, Jesus had no real “historical” existence. “

            It says precisely the opposite, you moron. It says they believed “his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance”. You can’t believe something about someone’s historical existence unless you first believe they had a historical existence. How many times has this been explained to you? It seems you are either a complete idiot or a deliberate troll. Either way, you won’t be commenting here again. Goodbye.

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          12. “why none of the critics of Christianity (eg Trypho or, as you say, Celsus) seem to have noticed this alternative form of Christianity,”

            Mr. O’Neill. It may be time to think about how Christians destroyed the works of their opponents, including Celsus. We know them only from quotes that are convenient for apologists, for example Origen. They even destroyed most of the achievements of materialistic philosophers, especially Democritus.
            One more general remark. Which year (or age) do we have the oldest New Testament manuscripts from? Even those in small fragments, because certainly not from the beginning of the second century. It looks even worse with Paul’s letters and the fairy-tale apostles.
            Maybe it’s worth biting your tongue sometimes and refraining from arrogant confidence? I know it’s difficult for you.

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          13. (i) Given that the apologists quote these critics saying other things that are strong criticisms of Christianity so that they could answer them, why did they, somehow, ALL manage to totally neglect to mention this particular element in the critics’ arguments and so fail to answer them? That makes no sense.
            (ii) They preserved plenty of works by pagan philosophers, including ones that disagreed with them and including some that we consider “materialist”. So the claim they somehow systematically “destroyed” such works is clearly false. We don’t have the works of many ancient pagan writers for the same reason we don’t have them for many Christian ones – all ancient works existed in few copies and were vulnerable to loss. Democritus’ works were of little interest to most pagan philosophers long before Christianity. That’s why his works were lost to the centuries.
            (iii) We have older manuscripts for the NT material than we have for any other type of work. By centuries. So what is your point here?

            And it’s amusing to be lectured on “arrogant confidence” by someone who has just proven himself incompetent and incoherent. Goodbye.

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          14. @RomanP: “how Christians destroyed the works of their opponents”
            And here we have that other nice aspect of pseudoscience: the conspiracy theory.
            They didn’t, for a very simple reason: they didn’t need to. Texts were written on papyrus, which doesn’t last long. So texts had to be copied at least once and usually twice a century. That takes a lot of time and effort, so only texts that were thought important were copied. Unfortunately those copiists were too selfish to copy those texts you and I think important so many centuries later. How impolite!
            As a result many texts simply disappeared, somewhat similar to 95+ % of fossils having disappeared. It’s the other way round – that so many non-christian texts have been saved demonstrates that they had open minds.
            But hey, evil christian conspiracy feels so much better, doesn’t it? So why care about providing some actual evidence for your favourite conspiracy? That’s for wimps like professional scholars.
            [/sarcasm]

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          15. This is why he has tried to bolster the Doherty model of Mythicism by detailing what he thinks is evidence of this vanished ur-faith. His tangled analysis of the Ascension of Isaiah is one of his desperate attempts to do this, but he bungles that one in typical style. That will be a topic for an upcoming article in this series.’

            -That will be a topic for an upcoming article in this series.

            is it here ?

        2. Kendal, you keep missing the central point. If you want to use Docetism to argue for mythicism, then you need a theory which allows you to do that. Carrier’s theory does not allow you to do this. If you think it does then you need to demonstrate this. But consider the facts.

          The docetists denied the humanity of Jesus. These are people who would have found the “original” view of Jesus congenial, if they had been aware of it. But it seems that they weren’t. The debate between docetists and their opponents is a debate about an apparently human Jesus versus a genuinely human Jesus. It is NOT a debate about a heavenly Jesus versus an earthly Jesus. And there is no evidence of any such debate ever taking place.

          Your comments illustrate a typical failing of mythicists. You see something that looks a bit weird or anomalous and you would love to exploit this, but you don’t have a theory which could explain this and all the other facts that need to be explained.

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          1. The Docetists and Gnostics and others note, had an odd, highly qualified notion of all materiality; as often an evil delusion, or a lesser plane of existence. George Santayana has an essay suggesting that the modern idea of material physical nature was … a much later, modern discovery. So the scientist’s material reality in particular wasn’t what what we might call material reality today, in the Age of Science.

            Docetists and related Gnostics,.etc., saw Jesus as not fully human, say. Or having most of his existence not in the material “flesh.” His material self being close to an illusion or delusion; even more than other material things.

            So by modern historical standards – for which materiality is precondition for historicity – Docetic, Gnostic appeals of Jesus’s materiality and historicality are not fully solid.

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          2. Repeating a bad argument doesn’t somehow improve it. For the last time, Docetic doubts about Jesus’ materiality had nothing to do with his historicity. They accepted he was historical. So their metaphysical quibbling about how human he was does not assist Mythicism in any way. This has been explained to you several times by several people. Your argument has failed. Give up.

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          3. To clarify a point you may be missing: it may (or may not) be that 1) for Docetists, Jesus was what THEY would call “historical.”
            But I’m bringing up 2) philosophers and historians, whose findings suggest that a Gnostic’s notion of “history” may be wrong.

            Modern historisns only designate material, not spirit things, as real, and therefore capable of historical description. But? Docetists and their relatives the Gnostics, had no such clear sense of history, or historical reality. Which they saw as in some ways district from, but in other ways interpenetrated with, spirits.

            So when a Docetists says something is “historical,” he didn’t mean what that word means today.

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          4. This is still gibberish. Docetists “may” have had some other conception of what is historical? So what evidence indicates this? Either present some or go away. Because all the Gnostic/Docetic material we have indicates clearly that they thought of Jesus as existing in a historical time and place (early first century and Galilee and Judea) just like everyone else. Don’t come back here with more vague, pathetic, evidence-free hand waving like your crap to date or your comments will be dispatched straight to the trash. We’ve indulged your nonsense long enough.

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          5. In the above Modern definition of Docetism, that movement said that Jesus was only a mere “semblance” or “appearance” of reality. And in Phosophy, “appearance” as used here means “a mere superficial impression.” As in “appearances are deceptive.”

            Whatever Docetists believed, for a modern historian, and for CURRENT definitions of what is an ” historical fact, ” almost nothing that was said to be incorporeal can be said to be historical; not in current study. Since moderns are more materialistic and science-based.
            And believe or report as real, or as historical fact, primarily things that are physical.
            Spirits, ghosts, are therefore NEVER said to be historical. Not in contemporary historical study.

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          6. This seems to be confusing what a modern historian would find historical and what the Docetist Christians believed about Jesus. At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, the Docetists believed that Jesus was a historical, earthly figure. End of story. And that is the only thing about their beliefs that is of any relevance to the issue of historicity and, contrary to what some try to claim, it does NOT assist the Mythicists in any way.

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    2. Yes, there is a sense in which even a phantom exists and us a thing; it is a sensation in our minds.

      So I guess we could compromise here. To say that 1) for Docetists there was a “Jesus” who appeared in “history. ” But 2) all those terms need to be qualified, and put in quotes. Since Docetists and the like, saw Jesus as existing roughly, only as a “phantom” or illusion in the minds of many ancient people.

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      1. No they did not believe he was a “phantom” or any kind of “illusion”. They believed he was a person who existed and did things in a particular historical time (early 30s AD) and place (Galilee and Judea), but who only had the appearance of being a material person and who was actually a purely spiritual being. There was nothing illusory or “phantom-like” about his historical existence for them – they simply believed he was not a human.

        We really need to get this straight if we are going to understand this stuff and understand how Mythicists are distorting it.

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        1. But if you want to make that argument, then how do you explain say, the fact that the very name Doecetists apparently chose for themselves, the very word Docetism, means “phantom”?

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          1. They didn’t call themselves that. That was a term used by their opponents to describe a type of heretical belief about the spiritual nature of Jesus shared by several sects. There was no group who called themselves “the Docetists”.

            And my point is that they did not believe Jesus was a “phantom” in the sense that he did not exist historically at all, only in the sense that he was incorporeal. They believed in a historical Jesus. End of story.

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        2. Mr. O’Neill. Blocking discussions with opponents is your favorite tactic. So this is my last post to you. I’m not going to write to an arrogant megalomaniac who doesn’t know the basic rules of dialogue. You can’t call every opponent an idiot or a moron.

          And now about the critics of Christianity and Democritus. You wrote that his works were lost because “Democritus works were of little interest to most pagan philosophers” –

          Not true. Democritus was an extremely influential and prolific thinker. He wrote insightful treatises of literally everything and had a huge impact on ancient thought.
          Seneca called him the most subtle of the ancient thinkers, and Cicero asked a meaningful question:

          “Is there anyone else, whose greatness can be compared with him – not only with his genius but also with the spirit?

          Plato, whose views almost completely differed from Democritus, supposedly intended to order the burning of all his works, which did not happen, because he was convinced that they are already too widespread !!!
          Diogenes in the lives of famous philosophers wrote that:
          “Plato, mentioning almost all older philosophers, does not mention Democritus even once, even when he should have argued with him; probably because he was aware that he would be dealing with the most powerful of all philosophers. ”

          Tymon from Fliunt adds:

          “Such is he, Democritus, sage, prince of philosophers, incomparable in discussion.”
          Democritus’s works were lost, and there were about 60 of them, because materialism did not fit into Christian concepts. Plato and Aristotle, yes, but not an Ionian school.

          List the works of critics of Christianity that have survived since you cite them.

          You wrote: “We have older manuscripts for the NT material than we have for any other type of work. By centuries. So what is your point here?”

          Don’t you understand or pretend you don’t understand? Older doesn’t mean better. Oto przykład.
          First, Christians used NT works for liturgical purposes, each church wanted a copy for their own use.
          Secondly, frequent use of them resulted in quick wear and the need to make further write-offs. Given the rate at which Christian communities spread, thousands of copies had to be made. In contrast, copies of Euripides ‘or Aeschylus’ dramas lay quietly within the walls of the Alexandrian library for decades.
          Third, continuous copying inevitably led to errors. This can be compared to a rapid mutation in the genes of living organisms.
          Fourth, copyists were generally poorly educated. Paleographers can easily see in the manuscripts the skills and talent of their author. For example, the Sinai Code, probably from the middle of the 4th century (maybe later), was written by high-class copyists, perhaps from the imperial office, but manuscripts from earlier centuries generally betray sloppiness and lack of preparation of scribes.
          Fifthly, one must not forget that the numerous emerging branches of Christianity generated forgeries on a scale that amazed even pagan writers, as well as some Christian writers, such as Origen.
          At the same time, Horace’s writings, though less numerous, were in relatively secure libraries in larger cities, and no one had any reason or religious interest to change them.
          Sixth, the value and reliability of ancient documents is also greatly influenced by knowledge of him – who wrote it, when and where. It is also worth knowing how it hit our hands. Who, when and where found and shared it. For most of the oldest NT manuscripts, we have no idea or chance to find out in the future.
          A striking example are the writings of the Gnostics, sects fiercely fought against. It is known that they kept very carefully copies of the letters of St. Paweł, but we have no chance to meet them, because almost all the writings of the Gnostics have been destroyed. When Orthodox Christians took over Paul’s letters from the Gnostics, they obviously felt a great need to “correct” everything heretics wrote.
          Here are the specifics, Mr. O’Neill.
          Since you are so eager to refer to the New Testament, proving your arguments, then I repeat the question, when did the manuscripts that we have today arise and do you know the language of the originals – Greek and Latin, or are you just using the work of others?

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          1. Mr. O’Neill. Blocking discussions with opponents is your favorite tactic.

            Only after they have proven themselves total boneheads who want to use my site to honk their nonsense. I’m under no obligation to give anyone a platform for pseudo history and fringe garbage.

            Democritus was an extremely influential and prolific thinker.

            Yes. “Was“. He became much less so long before Christianity came to prominence.

            “Plato, whose views almost completely differed from Democritus, supposedly intended to order the burning of all his works”

            My, how very intolerant of him. So it seems it was not just Christians who had little time for Democritus. And, as Platonic and neo Platonic schools came to dominate Late Antique thought, Democritus became increasingly less popular and so less copied. And this was all before Christianity came to prominence. The Christians were simply following in their pagan predecessors in having little time for Democritus.

            “List the works of critics of Christianity that have survived since you cite them.”

            We have the responses to them by Christians. If these critics had been aware of any proto-Christianity that did not believe in an earthly Jesus, why didn’t they mention it in their attacks on Christianity? Or if they did mention them, why did the Christians respond to all kinds of other attacks but ignore this one? Surely doing so would be a total admission of defeat. This means there were no such mentions because there was no such proto-Christianity.

            “Older doesn’t mean better.”

            No. But I still can’t see your point. We have, as I said, more and older manuscripts for the NT material than we have for any ancient texts. By far. So what exactly is the problem?

            “when did the manuscripts that we have today arise”

            We both know the answer to that question. What I don’t know is what point you’re trying to make.

            “do you know the language of the originals – Greek and Latin, or are you just using the work of others?”

            I know some Greek and a little Latin. Not that Latin is very relevant here, given that no NT works were originally written in Latin. Are you making some other argument now?

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      2. Jon, let’s cut to the chase. Do you think that Jesus actually was a spiritual being with the power to appear to people in a way that would make them think he was a real person? If not, do you think there was some kind of mass delusion in the first century which left some people convinced that they had encountered a real person and others that they had encountered someone who only appeared to be human? If so, can you explain how this delusion arose?

      3. Docetists did not dispute the real, earthly existence of Jesus. They disputed the “substance” of Jesus — that is, whether Jesus’ body was physical or spiritual.

        Think of it like how religious people sometimes get help from strangers and then later argue that the strangers were really angels. They are not disputing the historical reality that a person pulled over to the side of the road to help them change a tire. They are saying that the person was really an angel.

        That interpretation would not make us think that nobody actually pulled over to help them change their tire. It would just make us think that they were trying to turn their real experience into some spiritualized religious experience.

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        1. By all accounts, it seems that early Docetists did not believe that Jesus was a normal physical human being. Here we have a choice then: assert that a not entirely or wholly physical person was entirely real. Or begin to smell something fishy.

          (If Jesus was thought to be partly or even wholly spiritual, then likely his spirit was also thought to have come from heaven, by the way. From God. Confirming Doherty.)

          Today some might try to say that Gnostics merely found something otherworldly about a real man. But that’s not quite right. We know from hundreds of scholars that most Gnostics saw him as wholly a phantom, or spirit. Whose materiality was entirely illusory. Meaning … not real. He was not a real person. But something else.

          And for them, that was good. Since all material things, all “flesh,” many believed, were corrupted and “perishing” and evil.

          For them it might have seemed good. But this same quality today, smells. It says that many did not quite see Jesus as physically, really, ENTIRELY … real. Not in the way that the physical grapefruit in front of you is real. He had appeared, he has seemed real to some. But something was not quite true about that appearance.

          The Bible’s own vocabulary, I will be working to establish, suggests that some suspected that Jesus was only a “word,” a rumor. Something that existed in our “hope” or imagination, or “spirits.” But not in the physical material reality that we today value.

          Perhaps in fact, the Biblical and docetic language was metaphor. For a being some suspected was made up. By crazy hopes, wishes, unproven words, rumors, only. Even, in short, composed of false imaginings in our minds or “spirits.” Or in the “empty words” of myth or fiction.
          Words, with no concrete referents.

          In every case, Jesus to many, seemed to have an “illusory” realness, or materiality. As hundreds of scholars noted for Gnostics.
          Jesus’s real nature lay somewhere else.
          Other than in the world of material facts.

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          1. “If Jesus was thought to be partly or even wholly spiritual, then likely his spirit was also thought to have come from heaven, by the way. From God. Confirming Doherty”

            This is not “confirming Doherty” at all. The human Messiah had long been thought to have a heavenly pre-existence, just as it was thought the Torah and the Temple did. This is found in the Christology of Paul and throughout Jewish apocalyptic literature of the period, including The Ascension of Isaiah and the Enoch texts. What we don’t have, despite the contorted efforts of Doherty and Carrier to argue to the contrary, is any indication of anyone who thought of the Messiah as being purely celestial and as never coming to earth in historical time at all. Which is another sucking black hole at the heart of Mythicism.

            “The Bible’s own vocabulary, I will be working to establish, suggests that some suspected that Jesus was only a “word,” a rumor. Something that existed in our “hope” or imagination, or “spirits.” But not in the physical material reality that we today value.”

            This is total garbage. And it shows you have no idea how the Platonic concept of the λόγος or “word” was adapted by Intertestamental Judaism. It definitely did not mean, when applied to Jesus, that he was merely some rumour.

            “As hundreds of scholars noted for Gnostics. Jesus’s real nature lay somewhere else. Other than in the world of material facts.”

            Yet none of them thought that Jesus had not had a historical existence on earth in historical time. Which means any attempts to use Docetists or other Gnostics to try to prop up the failed Mythicist theory is going to fail. So I hope your reference above (“I will be working to establish”) doesn’t mean you intend to post more of this meandering, muddled nonsense, because I’m afraid you’ll quickly find my blog is not the place for random nobodies to rehearse their crackpot theories.

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          2. Some people thought Augustus was the son of a deity. Now we have two choices; assert that the son of a deity is real or smell something fishy. See how silly your argument sounds when you apply it to other people who supernatural claims are made of.

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          3. So first you say that the docetists spiritualised an actual experience and now you go back to suggesting that docetism implies mythicism. It looks like you are playing games.

            It is all very well to think that you have smelt something “fishy” but this perception is no objection to a historical Jesus unless it leads you to a coherent theory of the origins of the Jesus movement. And your rambling comments do not constitute such a theory. You also seem to have the same problem as Kendal in failing to recognise that docetism is not evidence for Doherty’s theory. This may be because you and Kendal are the same person

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          4. “This may be because you and Kendal are the same person”

            Yes, I was just thinking the same thing. And, sure enough, both “Kendal” and “Jon” have the same email address and are posting from the same IP address. So both are now sent to spam hell. Goodbye Kendal/Jon.

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          5. “Here we have a choice then: assert that a not entirely or wholly physical person was entirely real. Or begin to smell something fishy.”
            Your entire premise here requires one to accept the Docetists’ assertion of the non-materiality of Jesus (as) as being true to begin with! The fact that some people believed that Jesus (as) did not have a physical body does not mean that he lacked a physical body in reality.
            If we accept that he was physically real, the so-called difficulty disappears.
            The rest of your post is just a confused idea-salad mixing random parts of disparate worldviews.
            As a bonus, your repeated (and impossibly vague) references to “hundreds of scholars” of Gnosticism are a grotesque exaggeration.

  3. The brothers of Jesus is a topic I have started to try to research in the last week so fairly perfect timing for me.

    Are there any good books or articles on the subject of the family of Jesus and the community of Nazareth as it relates to Jesus? I’m mostly interested in works that take the approach that they were actual siblings (or at least half siblings) rather than the Roman Catholic view and build from there – are there any good secular or religious texts on that subject?

    You mention a few books about James the Just which sound interesting, but I am unclear if they put much emphasis on the implications that would have on the life of Jesus or whether they are mostly focused on the aftermath?

    1. The books by Jeffrey J. Butz and John Painter that I mention in my article are probably the two best suited to your interests. Both make similar cases for James and the other brothers being followers of Jesus from the beginning, and do so persuasively in my view. Butz goes much further than Painter on the implications of a much more “Jewish” Christianity implied by the leadership of the Jesus Sect by James after Jesus’ death, though since he is dealing with scraps of evidence, this part of his book is more speculative than the earlier section on the interpretations of the NT material. But I think you’ll find both books worth reading. Don’t be put off by the reference to the “Lost Teachings of Christianity” in Butz’s subtitle. I have a rule not to bother with books that have references to “lost secrets” or “the hidden history” or any “conspiracy” in the title or blurbs, so I avoided Butz’s work for a while for this reason. Despite the slightly schlocky title, it’s actually a reasonably scholarly and serious book.

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  4. Hey Tim.

    I was left idly wondering: does Carrier give/have any supporting evidence for his claim that ‘the chronology of Acts is fucked’?
    I’d always been left with the impression that ‘Luke’ was generally regarded as a careful historian.

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    1. Carrier’s reasoning on the chronology of Acts being unreliable is not made very clearly. He notes some well known chronological problems in that work, particularly the speech it gives to Gamalilel (Acts 5:33-39) which garbles the order of two events, mentioning the uprising of Judas (6 AD), and placing it after the movement of Theudas (c. 45 AD), instead of before it. This speech is also depicted as happening sometime before 37 AD, making it impossible for Gamaliel to have had knowledge of Theudas, given that he was not to arise for at least another eight years or more. The chronology here is clearly gibberish.

      So the author of Luke-Acts can hardly be regarded as a “careful historian” and the early twentieth century assessments (e.g. Meyer) that he can be counted “among the best Classical historians” get repeated by Christian apologists despite the fact modern critical scholars would not agree.

      However, simply noting this well-known chronological error in Acts is not enough on its own to allow Carrier to blithely dismiss the idea that the meeting with the “pillars” in Galatians 2 is not the “Council” detailed in Acts 15, but rather took place in the journey to Jerusalem implied (but not explicitly mentioned) by Acts 11:29-30. So it seems what Carrier is doing here is taking the famine mentioned at Acts 11:27-28 and the fact that Acts 11:29-30 has Paul and Barnabas bringing a “gift” to relieve the community in Judea and is trying to link this to Galatians 2:9-10:

      “They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised. All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.”

      Therefore Carrier’s opaque and typically contrived reasoning seems to be that this general reference to Paul, Barnabas and Titus continuing “to help the poor” means the “pillars” meeting of Galatians 2 happened during the famine relief journey of Acts 11 and so before the execution of James son of Zebedee in Acts 12. Got all that?

      Of course, that’s a very slender and dubious thread from which to dangle his entire argument, but that never seems to bother the eternally overconfident Carrier.

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  5. Kendal Bixley

    “1 John 4.2 is commonly taken as an early attempt to address, refute the claims of docetism. Suggesting in turn that docetism was found early; among 1st century Christians.”

    Unless, John is from the second century. Either way docetists didn’t deny Jesus was a historical individual, they believed, as Tim pointed out, his humanity was an illusion. This is to say that Jesus APPEARED to be a man.

    > My objection would be that an historical “SPIRIT” is still too far from what you want to prove.

    Actually, no the question is entirely about what the docetists believed about Jesus not what Tim thinks about a spirit being historical.
    The docetists believed Jesus appeared to be a man, but thought that since he was said to be god and a god could not die, that he only APPEARED to be human so in docetism, you have Jesus as an itinerant preacher who gets crucified, that is a person in hisotry.

    1. Or was he the exact opposite to what you claim: a spiritual God, whose human status was only illusion, or deceptive “appearance.” Which all scholars universally tell us was the central message of related schools, like Gnosticism.

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  6. Fellow Mythicist Robert Price is rather more frank, stating “[the] most powerful argument against the Christ-Myth theory, in my judgment, is the plausibility of …. ‘the Caliphate of James’” (Price, The Christ-Myth Theory and Its Problems, p. 333).

    The “Caliphate of James”? Wow. Bob Price really is the gift that keeps on giving.

    1. Actually Price is quoting someone else there. “The Caliphate of James” is the title of a famous paper on the subject by Ethelbert Stauffer, originally published as “Zum Kalifat des Jakobus”, Zeitschrift für Religions und Geistesgeschichte, 4 (1952): 193-214.

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      1. Oops! Thanks for the correction and also the article title. I’ve watched a few of his, er, lectures and debates on youtube and read some excerpts from his written work, and I mistook the “caliphate” bit as something characteristic of his methodology. He doesn’t strike me as deliberately dishonest, especially since he’s been open enough about what could change his mind and that he’s speculating on some of his propositions. But he seems to strawman scholars who don’t agree with him and to stretch the evidence so thin that conspiracy theories leak in through the cracks.

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        1. ETA: So, I just looked up the article. I can’t find the original, but I found later scholarship that cited it. What’s your opinion on Stauffer’s thesis?

          1. I haven’t yet got hold of an English translation, but my impression is that he is simply using the word “caliphate” to refer to Jesus’ relatives succeeding him as leaders in the primary sect community in Jerusalem, as the relatives of Muhammad succeeded him also. This seems a pretty reasonable use of the word to me, since it refers to a kind of prophetic succession in both cases.

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    2. Ha, when I read that “Caliphate of James” line, my first thought was “So that’s why Price hasn’t published much the past few decades, he secretly converted to Shi’a Islam!” Bad jokes aside, interesting to see the title comes from someone who isn’t Price, as Tim’s explanation for the use of caliphate in this instance makes sense.

  7. Richard Carrier recently published his new book “The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire” in December of last year. Here is a preview for his book: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13477

    While I am certainly not near as much of an expert in this field of historical study as you are Tim. I can probably say that Carrier is wrong in this main thesis. For example, just from this preview alone he tries to argue that science in the Roman Empire was NOT in decline before the rise of Christianity as the official religion. But he ignores the a very key and simple fact that it was the Romans who banned Human dissection in the year 150 B.C. when they invaded ancient Greece.

    Anyway, I would love to see what your opinion is of Carrier’s new book and a review if you should ever read it!

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    1. I have a copy but have yet to read it. Judging from the blog post you linked to and others he’s written over the years, I’m guessing it will be more of his exaggerations about Roman “science”, with a heavy dose of “Conflict Thesis”. So, ideologically-driven pseudo history, as ever with that hack.

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    2. Isn’t this book his PhD thesis? If there’s an error as basic as that in it, that’s really, really worrying. How come his supervisor, external and internal examiners all failed to spot it?

      Or was it a correction he was ordered to make and failed to make? He must have done that with his article on Hitler (no competent or even compos mentis reviewer would have passed his lies about Irving) – but again, if so, how was it missed?

      1. If you read this notorious blog post by Carrier from 2010, he maintains that the Romans and Hellenics never banned dissection. But it’s one of a number of highly dubious claims in that post and its comments, along with plenty of crazed speculation about what his favourite period (pre-Christian Antiquity, before Christianity came along and ruined everything, or something) possibly did, including inventing calculus. And his weird caricature of the Middle Ages as a “Dark Age”, which he achieves by defining “the Renaissance” as anything after 1300 and claiming medieval innovations like “escapement clocks, eyeglasses, the elliptical arch, and the Mean Speed Theorem” are therefore “not medieval”; which is particularly ridiculous even for him. According to Carrier, the Black Death, the Flagellant Movement and the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy were all part of “the Renaissance”, as were Edward III, the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses. Or something. By the time we get to the comments where this expert in medieval history declares “the heavy cavalry mode of combat is patently stupid” we are deep into ignorant idiot territory.

        “He must have done that with his article on Hitler (no competent or even compos mentis reviewer would have passed his lies about Irving) – but again, if so, how was it missed?

        I need to tackle his stuff on Hitler at some point. What lies about Irving are you referring to? This is off-topic for the article above, so perhaps you could use the “Contact the Author” link at the top of this page.

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    3. That excerpt is really shocking. It’s so badly written. How did he ever finish his doctorate? Did they just want to get rid of him, or did he just throw out everything that he learned?

      To start, his tone is unacceptably disparaging and arrogant, especially for a published academic work. I thought before that he responded to his critics far too aggressively and nastily when he was blogging. But in a published academic work? Is respectful disagreement a foreign concept to him? I have my masters and am in the first year of a PhD program with a focus on early modern British history, so I’ve done a fair amount of academic reading in the past eight years of my life. I’ve seen some pretty intense disagreements conducted over scholarly journal articles, but I’ve never seen a historian outright call another historian’s ideas “absurd” or “ridiculous.” Aside from being unprofessional, it’s simply unconvincing. It’s far more effective to challenge another historian’s thesis by acknowledging what research they did, what evidence they used, how they used that evidence, and why that historian has either misapplied that evidence or stretched it too thin.

      The second thing that’s concerning is that the excerpt seems to be a chapter summation. Instead of focusing on his own arguments and evidence, he wastes time ridiculing other historians. Sure, he throws out some examples that he likely explained in more detail earlier in the chapter, but he doesn’t pull them together, which is what he should be doing. Ancient science is definitely not my field, since I’ve been medieval/early modern since the beginning of undergrad, so I can’t comment on his accuracy. But even as a non-expert, his arguments are utterly unconvincing because, well, they don’t really qualify as arguments. I have to wonder how he crafted superficially convincing arguments for his mythicist stuff. (I say superficially convincing because they fall apart as soon as one goes to check his sources and realizes that they don’t say what he claims they say.) Was he merely riding Earl Dougherty’s coattails?

      And on a final note, his writing style is just snide, choppy, tonally inconsistent, and irritating as all get out.

      1. It’s bewildering to me also. He has besmirched the name of Columbia in every way imaginable. Not to worry, Roman science isn’t his field of expertise either…hell, he’s qualified in very little of what he talks about. He’s the definition of a dilledante

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        1. Actually, given his thesis topic, Roman science is probably one of the few things he pontificates about that he is qualified to write about.

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      2. As a sidenote: Pretty much anything I’ve ever seen from this Richard Carrier whether it’s a quote from one of his journal articles, a quote from one of his self-published books or a quote from one of his blogs from his pathetic website (complete with copious advertisements for the said self-published books) is always written in a really lightweight-sounding style of articulation. I know this could be construed as superficial from me but it just doesn’t come across as any train of thought from anyone especially intelligent, interesting nor even mentally mature.
        Reading what I have from Maurice Casey or Bart Ehrman is an enormous contrast.

        It’s like comparing some lightweight feel-good book of activist/filmmaker Michael Moore to something from George Orwell.

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    1. Acts depicts a fairly happy agreement between Paul’s more “Gentile” form of the Jesus Sect and the older and more “Jewish” original element. Paul’s letters indicate a much less easy and friendly relationship. Acts seems to be smoothing over a rather more fractious situation.

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  8. Gotta admire Carrier’s dedication. Even in that one chapter in his shitty book, he tries to claim that there’s more evidence for Socrates (as he and other figures like Homer, Buddha, Confucius , Lao Tse, Hannibal, etc. are compared to the amount of evidence) than for Jesus. The way he weasels around every thorn i the Mythicist side is just, ugh.

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  9. Tim Just one word to You: I want to Thank You for such a Great resources You put on this Website, A Lot of Great information can be find here, You Have put a lot of Time and Energy into these articles and Back up with the Facts..I Can’t recommended enough..

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  10. Tim, could you elaborate on how you are using the term “Jesus sect community”, especially as to how it might relate to the “Galatian community” or Paul’s ministry? In particular, are they all under the umbrella of “this guy was crucified but rose again, and now we’re trying to figure out the messy details?”, or are you thinking of something else?

    1. I try to avoid terms like “the church” (or, worse, “the Church”) or “the Christian community” when referring to the Jesus movement in the first century AD, since they tend to imply things which are anachronistic for this early period. At this stage the Jesus movement was still substantially a Jewish sect, though (like several other Jewish sects of the time) it had Gentile members. It is only in the second century that we begin to see both doctrinal and structural elements that we can recognise as “Christian” and pertaining to “churches” as most modern people understand them. This was when Christianity had effectively drifted from its Jewish roots and become more of a non-Jewish saviour cult.

      So I tend to refer to the first century movement as a whole as “the Jesus Sect” and to the various local “churches” as “the Jerusalem community” or “the Galatian community”. I do sometimes refer to leaders in this period as “bishops”, as I think I do in relation to James here. But I really should use “overseer”, as “bishop”, again, has anachronistic associations and implications that are not really appropriate for this early period.

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      1. It is only in the second century that we begin to see both doctrinal and structural elements that we can recognise as “Christian” and pertaining to “churches” as most modern people understand them.

        I find this a puzzling statement. Structurally, the form of “churches” has always been all over the map: small groups meeting in homes, loose federations of communities, large monolithic groups, and so on, with management structures corresponding to their size. There is a small “home” church near me that is physically located not too far from a Roman Catholic congregation. More importantly, as to doctrinal elements, both these groups would say that the crucifixion and resurrection are central. Is this core not early first century, perhaps traceable to the early 40’s? That is, as a “modern” person, I see Christianity back to the first half of the first century. Or might you argue that the crucifixion and resurrection is one of several competing early stories? If the latter, as a historian, would you hazard to say which story was closest to Jesus?

        1. I’m not Tim (obvsly ;-)) but I think his point is that the social and organizational forms of Christianity we are familiar with had not yet crystallized, and it’s important to use neutral language that doesn’t impose our expectations, conditioned by subsequent centuries, onto whatever was going on in, say, Ephesus c. 80 CE. Even the doctrine hadn’t crystallized yet — what we’ve got in the NT is the theology of the party that won the fight, with alternatives depicted as Those Nasty People Who Try To Lead You Astray. I think Ehrman has some things to say about the alternative Christianities of the early days.

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        2. Steve Watson has already correctly identified why I tend to use neutral terms when describing the first century Jesus movement. “Church” and even “Christianity” implies something too distinct and too non-Jewish to be accurate for the sect at this early stage.

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          1. Is there anywhere that sets forth this particular nomenclature? It isn’t clear, at least to me, what the distinguishing factors are. I can’t tell from these terms what label refers to a leaf, what label refers to a branch, and what label might apply to a separate tree. For example, how would the Ebionites be classified? They believed that Jesus was the Messiah and in the Resurrection (although there may be a difference of opinion on that), but kept Jewish law. I would think they would be a branch off of the Christian root, especially since groups with those traits are still around today. Gnostics, on the other hand, would be more difficult to classify, since they are generally syncretistic, so they join and split.

          2. This perfectly straightforward “nomenclature” is “set forth” in my comments above. The “distinguishing factors” are, as I said, the period I specified: the first century. Given that the Ebionites are identified much later, that answers your question. I have no idea why you seem to be struggling with the concept that, on the whole, the sect that arose from Jesus followers was more a Jewish one in this period and much less a Jewish one later, because that seems pretty simple to grasp to me. Finally, if you don’t like this terminology or don’t accept its underlying premises, you have a simple solution open to you: don’t use it. I do, so I use it. You asked why and so I explained.

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    1. Not yet. My copy is in the mail. I’ll review it here when I’ve read it, as I think it will make a good “compare and contrast” with Nixey.

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      1. Michael Kruger is also due to review Ehrman’s book though I suspect you may not be too interested in his view! But, perhaps surprisingly given Ehrman’s other books, Kruger has said so far from what he has read of it, he basically agrees with him.

    2. Tim, Reginald’s question seemed the most appropriate place to post a “Did you read X?” question, but my apologies if this is too off topic to merit a response. Any chance you’ve read any of Pinker’s latest howler, Enlightenment Now?

      1. I haven’t, but I suspect I will have to. Pinker’s overall thesis that “things are getting progressively better” may be correct. But both Better Angels and now, it seems, this new book are full of historical bunglings and oversimplifications and they seems to be classic examples of what happens when a scientist thinks he can write history.

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        1. *Better Angels* outright says “Cover up the two outliers with your thumb” and the wars of the 20th century decline! we know of Holocaust denial, but nobody else has had the gumption to say the two biggest wars in human existence were either irrelevant or accidents!

          it meshes neatly with Dawkins blandly saying 2013 you don’t have to read the Quran to talk about Islam: he not only saw nothing wrong with not knowing, but was confused by the idea of *wanting* to know

          Myers’ “courtier’s reply” is the full-fleshed version of this willful championing of ignorance

          that’s New Atheism’s approach to history or philosophy–shrug it off, say something about it’s written by the victors and they’re just postmodernists explaining away facts

          it’s all anti-intellectual, but also strangely populist in a way–“find things out for yourself” that “institutions” like “the Church” and the universities carefully sidestep

          1. It is pretty easy to come to whatever view you want if you simply ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

          2. Advanced warning that a humanities major is discussing math; I seem to recall one of the flaws with Pinker’s analysis of violence declining is that war tends to follow a power law distribution. While it may be true that we are having less wars in modernity than in previous eras, the conflicts we do have are much deadlier. There’s reason to believe that another conflict breaking out between great powers, like the two world wars, will see casualty numbers in the billions.

  11. I’ve enjoyed reading your work for some time now, thank you for your efforts. I did want to offer one small correction to an otherwise good post, however.

    The idea that the ‘brothers of Jesus’ are his cousins or other close male relatives rather than siblings is indeed very common in (western) Catholic circles, but it is not a formal doctrine.

    What is doctrine is that, as you mention, Mary the mother of Jesus is ever-virgin. Thus a Catholic could not agree that the ‘brothers’ are siblings, but the nature of their relationship is not defined. In particular, the view you describe as the Orthodox one is acceptable, but not common in the west.

    Also, whatever you may think about the arguments for the (common western) Catholic view, those arguments assuredly do not rest on ignorance of the meaning of ‘adelphos’. (Sorry, I don’t have access to a Greek font on my phone.)

    1. I’ll take your word for it that it’s not an official doctrine, but it is certainly widely taught as the explanation for how a guy with “brothers” could have had a mother who was “ever virgin”. And I was being kind when I said that the distortion of the word αδελφοι may have been due to less grasp of Greek. Because the claim it can mean “cousins” is total bollocks.

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      1. I have never encountered the claim that the word could mean ‘cousins’ to a native Greek speaker. The claim is that it is a Hebraeism. Again, you are certainly free to disagree, but let’s be clear about what the claim actually is.

        Please correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t LXX use ‘adelphos’ in a wider sense than sibling?

        1. “I have never encountered the claim that the word could mean ‘cousins’ to a native Greek speaker.”

          It’s a pretty standard Catholic apologetic tactic for resolving the conflict between the clear references to Jesus’ brothers and sisters and their doctrine of “Mary, Ever Virgin”. The official Catholic Catechism states “Against this doctrine [of Mary’s perpetual virginity] the objection is sometimes raised that the Bible mentions brothers and sisters of Jesus.The Church has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary. In fact James and Joseph, “brothers of Jesus”, are the sons of another Mary, a disciple of Christ, whom St. Matthew significantly calls “the other Mary”. They are close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression.” Catholic apologists tend to go further and suggest that these “brothers” etc. were actually cousins, pointing to some Septuagint texts were ἀδελφὸν/ἀδελφοὶ were used for nephews, not brothers. But they are unable to show any cases where these words are used for cousins. Yes, the claim is that Aramaic and Hebrew did not have a specific word for “cousin” (and I am not certain if this is accurate or not), but the problem is that Koine Greek does have such a word. It has the word ἀνεψιός, which definitely means “cousin”, along with συγγενής, which means “kinsman”. Neither of these words are used in relation to Jesus’ brothers anywhere in the New Testament. This makes the Catholic apologist argument on this point pretty weak.

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    2. But that is the problem with the Catholic view. The Biblical writings are twisted to mean something they dont, because they dont fit with a particular view of Mary that developed a long time later.
      But this is not the place to get into a theological debate!

    3. Thats one of the doctrines of the Catholic / Orthodox Churches, because they believe in the eternal virginity of Mary. Yet thats one of the explanations, the other is that Joseph had kids before marrying Mary, so James would be Jesus step-brother.

  12. Thanks Tim

    Great work as usual.

    I have to wonder why anyone would bother with the “Christ myth” idea. That there was an individual from Nazareth, called Jesus, around whom the Jesus movement was built, seems to me to be the most prosaic explanation for the belief that there was an individual from Nazareth, called Jesus, around whom the Jesus movement was built.

    It does nobody any injury to accept it, and as you demonstrate, accepting that claim doesn’t require anyone to pledge allegiance to Jesus as Christians do.

    The shear level of “just so” stories necessary to keep the Christ-myth going makes a mockery of anyone who believes it, and also claims to be a “skeptic”.

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  13. Does Richard Carrier address the writings of the Apostolic Fathers in his book? They repeatedly refer to Paul as an example to be followed, which would be rather akward if Paul believed Jesus to be a spiritual being and they were convinced Jesus had been on earth. Or does he imagine that not only all Christians who knew about who (or better, what) Jesus really was disappeared without a trace, but also that Paul could believe something completely different than the Apostolic Father and still be held in high regard for the centuries to follow?

    1. Carrier summarises what he claims to have happened toward the end of his book:

      “Between the 30s and 70s some Christian congregations gradually mythicize the story of their celestial Jesus Lord, just as other mystery cults had done for their gods, eventually representing him rhetorically and symbolically in overtly historical narratives, during which time much of the more esoteric truth of the matter is reserved in secret for upper levels of initiation (Elements 11-14, 44-48). Right in the middle of this process the Jewish War of 66–70 destroyed the original church in Jerusalem, leaving us with no evidence that any of the original apostles lived beyond it. Before that, persecutions from Jewish authorities and famines throughout the empire (and, if it really happened, the Neronian persecution of 64, which would have devastated the church in Rome) further exacerbated the effect, which was to leave a thirty-year dark age in the history of the church (from the 60s to the 90s), a whole generation in which we have no idea what happened or who was in charge (Element 22). In fact this ecclesial dark age probably spans fifty years (from the 60s to 110s), if 1 Clement was written in the 60s and not the 90s (see Chapter 8, §5), as then we have no record of anything going on until either Ignatius or Papias, both of whom could have written well later than the 110s (Chapter 8, §§6 and 7).

      It’s during this dark age that the canonical Gospels most likely came to be written, by persons unknown (Chapter 7, §4), and at least one Christian sect started to believe the myths they contain were real, and thus began to believe (or for convenience claim) that Jesus was a real person, and then preached and embellished this view. Because having a historical founder represented in controlled documents was a significant advantage (Chapter 8, §12; and Chapter 1, §4), this ‘historicizing’ sect gradually gained political and social superiority, declared itself ‘orthodox’ while condemning all others as ‘heretics’ (Chapter 4, §3), and preserved only texts that agreed with its view, and forged and altered countless texts in support. As a result, almost all evidence of the original Christian sects and what they believed has been lost or doctored out of the record; even evidence of what happened during the latter half of the first century to transition from Paul’s Christianity to second-century ‘orthodoxy’ is completely lost and now almost wholly inaccessible to us (Elements 21-22 and 44).

      No element of the theory I just outlined is ad hoc.”

      I’m glad he added that little assurance at the end about none of this being ad hoc, because otherwise that’s exactly how it would sound. He doesn’t explain why, if the earlier “Celestial Jesus” form of Christianity came to be condemned as “heresy”, there is no mention of any such heretical idea in any of the extensive anti-heretical literature we have or anywhere else. He says “almost all evidence of the original Christian sects and what they believed has been lost or doctored out of the record”, but actually there is absolutely no such evidence at all. He thinks he can twist the Ascension of Isaiah into evidence of this earlier belief, but only does so by (weirdly) dismissing the fact that text does mention Jesus coming to earth and does not say he was crucified in the heavens. Which leaves his conspiracy theory above with no basis at all.

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      1. Thank you very much for this reply. It all indeed sounds terribly ad hoc. Of course, if we take Irenaeus statement that Polycarp was “instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ” (Against Heresies 3.3.4) serious, that would mean that apparently Polycarp should have believed Jesus to be some kind of spiritual being. But that would mean Ignatius of Rome must have believed the same, or Polycarp would not have described him as “the blessed Ignatius” and as an example to be followed.
        Interestingly, Irenaeus in the same passage mentions how “the Church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the apostles.”
        BTW, do you have any plans on writing about Carrier’s reading of the Ascension of Isaiah in more detail? I’m really enjoying this discussion of Carrier’s work.

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        1. Good points about Polycarp et. al. Of course, I’m sure the Mythicists would point to some (valid) difficulties with accepting everything Irenaeus says about the first two generations of Christians as historical. That said, Mythicists seem to have some trouble explaining who was or wasn’t a “Celestial Jesus” Christian in this early period or how long this “Celestial Jesus” Ur-Christianity hung around. Doherty, if I recall correctly, seems to think it survived well into the third century, which makes the complete lack of any mention of it even more absurd. Carrier seems to recognise this problem and so his “totally not ad hoc” explanation kills this proto-Christianity off much earlier. In a blog post on this topic (“How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?“) he gives this very bald summary in a comment that begins in his usual charmlessly condescending manner:

          “For anyone who doesn’t get what this article has just explained to them:

          It’s simple.

          FACT. Many counter-cultural Jewish sects were seeking hidden messages in scripture.

          FACT. Cephas (Peter), a member or leader of one of those sects, had “visions” telling him one of those messages was now fulfilled.

          FACT. That fellow influenced or inspired others to have or claim supporting visions.

          FACT. They all died.

          FACT. Then some later folks did what was done for all savior gods: they made up stories about their savior god to promote what was by then a lifetime of the accumulated teachings, dogmas, and beliefs of various movement leaders.

          FACT. They all died.

          FACT. Then some later folks started promoting those myths as historically true.

          FACT. Those who protested that, were denounced as heretics and agents of Satan.

          FACT. They all died.

          FACT. Those who liked the new invented version of history won total political power and used it to destroy all the literature of those who had ever protested it.

          All ten points are indisputable facts. Not theory. Facts. Documented. Undeniable. Facts.”

          Of course, several of these things are not actually “undeniable facts” at all. The claim that there were people who protested the idea that the “myths” about Jesus were “historically true” got “denounced as heretics and agents of Satan” is not a “fact”, it’s an interpretation (presumably of some references to Docetism), and a highly contrived and dubious one at that. But the main problem with this weird summary is that all the “they all died” references, which seems to assume the slate of memory was wiped clean at each of those points. And that is absurd. He tries to argue that this happened in the disruptions of the First Jewish War and that this formed a “bottleneck” of memory, with only a few writings from the original “Celestial Jesus” Ur-Christianity making it through, with these being destroyed later. The idea that the original form of the faith would be so totally forgotten and all references to it so completely expunged is pretty infeasible. And it is particularly so given that the anti-heretical writers of the second to fourth centuries made a point of actually tackling all the heresies they had ever heard of – including long dead ones, just in case they arose again. The paranoid idea that no heresy ever truly dies was actually a key motivation for these anti-heretical apologists, so the claim that they countered all the other obscure, long dead ones but carefully expunged all mention of this one makes no sense at all.

          Yes, I will be devoting an article to Carrier’s contorted reading of the Ascension. It is pretty much the sole evidence he has for the Mythic Proto-Christianity his thesis requires, so the fact that his interpretation of it as representing this lost original form of the faith simply does not work means his whole theory has no evidential foundation.

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          1. You gotta admire Carrier’s dedication though. He either desperately needs money or is genuinely mad. One day he’s absolutely convinced that Jesus never lived, the next day he feigns humility and says he’s “open” to the idea (fact actually) that he did, that it would be “more useful” (in dismantling Christianity). But he has everything to lose if Jesus indeed existed

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          2. Again, thank you much for the reply. Looking forward to your thoughts on the Ascension of Isaiah

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  14. Keyra writes
    “One day he’s absolutely convinced that Jesus never lived, the next day he feigns humility and says he’s “open” to the idea (fact actually) that he did, that it would be “more useful” (in dismantling Christianity). One day he’s absolutely convinced that Jesus never lived, the next day he feigns humility and says he’s “open” to the idea (fact actually) that he did, that it would be “more useful” (in dismantling Christianity).”

    ‘Consistency’ does not seem to be a word in Carrier’s dictionary. Recently I was reading an article on his blog (https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/10046) where he first calls James McGrath a “regular historicity clown”, who has “published a silly rant on his blog”. Just a few paragraphs later however, Carrier lambasts McGrath (who had characterized the stil of an article as “undergraduate”) for poisoning the well, calling it “a dirty tactic” and that McGrath “should be ashamed of even attempting this.”

  15. Tim, I keep seeing Jesus denialists (which I think is an apt word) using this quote from Justin Martyr:

    “The Devil, since he emulates the truth, has invented fables about Bacchus, Hercules, and Sculapius”

    What did Martyr really mean when he said this?

      1. Very interesting read, one wonders what Justin Martyr would be thinking if he saw his works being used to discredit Christianity.

  16. Hi Tim,

    Nice work as always. Just a small correction – your suggested Greek rendering of “one of the brothers of the Lord” should use the gen. pl. (i.e. εἷς τῶν ἀδελφῶν).

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    1. If I understand your first question correctly, they get no objections from me when they say Christians were responsible for extinguishing a whole slew of indigenous cultural and religious practices, or that the Inquisition oppressed and sometimes tortured people and burned some of them simply for their beliefs, or the Teutonic Order organised systematic campaigns of extermination and forced conversion in the Baltic region. It’s the things they get wrong (including the things they get wrong about the examples I just mentioned) that are the problem.

      And believers can be just as guilty of bad history. Christian apologists attempts to get the infancy narratives in gMatt and gLuke to harmonise with each other and with historical evidence always ends in pseudo historical nonsense. As do the attempts at getting the bungled chronology in Acts 5:33-39 to somehow make sense. Attempts by Rodney Stark and others to pretend the Crusades were “really” defensive wars protecting Europe from Islam or his simplistic claims about the role of Christianity in the rise of science are about as bad as anything the NAs peddle. Then we get the overblown claims about the great innovations of Islamic science by some Muslim apologists. The difference is that there are plenty of people calling out the errors and distortions of the believers, but few do the same for the NAs and none of the ones who do are, to my knowledge, atheists themselves.

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      1. Weren’t the Crusades originally intended to be push-back against Islamic invasion though — with the crusaders (naturally) getting carried away? That the Inquisition mainly served the purpose of eliminating corruption in the Church (with the NA ideologues claiming that atheists were its victims), in which the horrors and number of victims exaggerated by Protestant propaganda against the Catholic Church? And the alleged “genocides” of Native Americans and Australians mostly being results of diseases the colonists carried?

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        1. I hesitated about answering Reginald’s questions, because I saw my answer potentially leading to discussion that is well off-topic for this blog article about Mythicism and James. So I’ll respond to your comments above, but I don’t want to see this turn into a further off-topic discussion.

          The First Crusade was triggered by a request for assistance by the Byzantines after the Turks took a large part of Asia Minor. But it had one military objective – to liberate the “Holy Places” in Palestine. There was no reference to protecting Europe from “Islam” and no sense at the time that there was anything called “Islam” as a single military or political threat anyway. If there was any part of Europe that saw some kind of actual threat from Muslim forces it was in Spain, yet just 32 years before the First Crusade Pope Alexander II had tried to stir up some enthusiasm to assist the Christian kingdoms there and got a minimal response. Clearly there was no great sense of some “Muslim” threat to western Europe. Nor were the Crusades driven to destroy “Islam” by “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here”, George W. Bush style. Palestine was a peripheral territory for the various Muslim states of the region, who were much more concerned with fighting each other anyway. It was not the religious heart of Islam – that was the Arabian peninsula. Nor was it the political heart – if there was one, that was Egypt. Or the intellectual heart – that was Baghdad. The Crusaders attacked Palestine because their motives were mainly religious and they wanted to take their faith’s key pilgrimage sites. Projecting stupid modern right-wing fears about “Islam” swamping Europe onto the Crusades as a way of justifying them is bad politics as much as bad history.

          And no, the Inquisition was aimed at the elimination of heresy, not “corruption in the Church”. The Spanish Inquisition began as a way of rooting out Jews and Muslims who had faked their (forced) conversions, though it quickly became a political tool of the Spanish crown. Yes, its horrors have been exaggerated, but that does not mean it did not oppress torture and burn people. And no, there were actual genocides of Native Americans and Australians which were deliberate and orchestrated. I come from Tasmania, and I can assure you that the “Black War” and its attendant and subsequent “roving parties” were part of an organised, openly stated and, sadly, effective program of “extermination”. And that is one example among many. But I was talking about the extinguishing of indigenous traditions, beliefs, culture and language that was an active Christian policy in many places including, again, here in Australia until quite recently. We are now just trying to preserve the intact traditions that survived this policy and perhaps piece together the fragments that were left as a result of these destructive policies of “assimilation”.

          So there is bad history on both sides. But as I said, this is off-topic, so no more on this thanks.

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      2. Im not sure why you call Acts 5 ‘bungled chronology’. Im assuming youre referring to Theudas being mentioned by both Luke and Josephus. But why assume they are the same individual, and Luke got it wrong?

        Gamaliel, as quoted by Luke, said he ‘claimed to be somebody’. I don’t think you can equate that with Josephus’ ‘magician’ and ‘prophet’. There are many people who have an enlarged sense of self-importance, but do not claim to be a prophet with supernatural powers.

        Per Luke he had a following of around 400 men. Yet Josephus states ‘a great part of the people’ followed him. Given there would have been 10’s of thousands of Jews, if not more, in Judea (incl Jerusalem) at the time, 400 hardly equates to a ‘great part’. Indeed, in the next section of Josephus’ Antiquities he equates a ‘great number’ with at least 20,000. There is no comparison.

        Luke also claimed that when he was killed , all his followers, 400 of them, dispersed. Yet Josephus said when the great many followers of his Theudas gathered before the river Jordan, many were killed there and then and many others were taken captive by the Romans. That does not equate with ‘dispersed’.

        So there is nothing in the 2 texts to indicate that Luke and Josephus were writing about the same individual. The only thing in common is the name.

        Is it really unlikely that 2 different individuals with the name Theudas were ‘rebels’ or ‘pretenders’ over a 40 year or more period? Josephus himself says there were 1000’s (10,000 in Judea) of ‘tumults’ after the death of Herod but only mentions the specifics of a few.

        There were, apparently, 3 ‘Judas’s’ who were the leaders of outbreaks within a 10 year period. And a number of ‘Simons’.

        So the evidence suggests Gamaliel and Josephus were talking about 2 different individuals, separated by at least 40 years.

        But I appreciate this is off-topic!

        1. Thanks for that excellent example of contorted Christian apologist pseudo history. We need to be reminded periodically that the New Atheists don’t have any kind of monopoly on ideologically driven arguments that are absolute patent garbage.

          “Gamaliel, as quoted by Luke, said he ‘claimed to be somebody’. I don’t think you can equate that with Josephus’ ‘magician’ and ‘prophet’.”

          What an absurd statement. Someone who Josephus calls a γοάω (an enchanter), who said he would part the Jordan and who Josephus tells us “claimed to be a prophet” and you don’t think this is compatible with the person in Luke-Acts? Josephus TELLS us he claimed to “be somebody” – a prophet. It’s right there in the text.

          “Per Luke he had a following of around 400 men. Yet Josephus states ‘a great part of the people’ followed him.”

          Ancient sources are completely unreliable on numbers – they use them for rhetorical effect. Jospehus uses a big number because his narrative emphasises the charlatans and fanatics who arose in the lead up to the Jewish War and led Josephus’ fellow Jews astray. The Luke-Acts author’s invented speech put in the mouth of Gamaliel uses a smaller number because his narrative is emphasising how inconsequential this Theudas turned out to be. Only someone with no clue about how this kind of made up figure was used in ancient sources would put any historical weight on either number.

          “Luke also claimed that when he was killed , all his followers, 400 of them, dispersed. Yet Josephus said when the great many followers of his Theudas gathered before the river Jordan, many were killed there and then and many others were taken captive by the Romans. That does not equate with ‘dispersed’.”

          Another stupid argument. Jospehus says “many” were killed and “many” were captured. He says nothing to indicate that this accounted for all of Theudas’ followers. And what would have happened to the rest? They would have been … dispersed.

          “So there is nothing in the 2 texts to indicate that Luke and Josephus were writing about the same individual. The only thing in common is the name.”

          Utter bullshit – see above. And the name is found nowhere else in the period.

          “Is it really unlikely that 2 different individuals with the name Theudas were ‘rebels’ or ‘pretenders’ over a 40 year or more period? “

          Yes, given the uniqueness of the name. And the fact that your feeble attempts to find differences in the two accounts are so weak. And Occam’s Razor. But, again, thanks for reminding us that Christian apologists can be every bit as bad as New Atheist fanatics when it comes to mangling historical argument.

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      3. A little bit of bad history which believers (creationists in particular) are guilty of is denying, or minimizing the ANE context of the Old Testament and it’s parallels with the material of the surrounding nations of Israel, this doesn’t mean there is ‘plagiarism’ however (something which NA’s get wrong). I’ve dedicated my website to discussing the OT in the context of Ancient Near Eastern literature and how both believers and atheists get it wrong.

        https://riderontheclouds.wordpress.com/

        1. I’ve perused some of your blog posts. If you don’t mind, might I ask what exactly your theological beliefs are? Are you a Jew? A Polytheist? An atheist? Something else?

          Thanks.

          1. Old Testament follower. I don’t know if I’d be a Jew by modern standards, since I reject about two millennia of Jewish theology and am not in any way ethnically Jewish, but in terms of my beliefs I;m more of a Jew than a Christian. I was a very strong atheist once I hold some quasi monolatric views, I see other Gods as real entities (see Deut 32 and Psalm 82) but are not worthy of being worshipped. I’d be a Christian if not for that pesky resurrection of Christ, alongside some other stuff.

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      4. Are the claims of Professor Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto based on good history? He claims that Western society will collapse in a post christian world because Christianity has historically been it’s backbone/foundation.

        1. Let’s just say I find Peterson rather hard to take seriously as a historian (he isn’t one), let alone as a prophet. Christian prophets of doom of various kinds have been saying that for centuries and western civilisation keeps proving them wrong. I suspect this will continue to happen.

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  17. Hi Tim, just discovered your work here and have to say how interesting and informative. Something I’ve come across but not yet read is David Bentley Hart’s new, A Translation of the New Testament. Maybe of interest to you. I have his Atheist Delusions, just to say, and he’s pretty ferocious against the so called “new atheists”.

    Me, I have a London uni. physics background and interested in foundational issues and what we can say is true, or near enough. Kind of related. Cheers! Alan

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  18. You said:

    “Contrary to Mythicist fantasies about Christian writers salting the historical sources with interpolated references to Jesus to prop up his historical existence, there simply were no Jesus Mythicists in the ancient world and so no need for Christians to insert this kind of reference.”

    Richard Carrier has a response to a similar argument (that nobody in the Ancient world questioned Jesus’ existence, it’s a new concept) here:

    “First, this is false. Some Jews and even some Christians did question whether Jesus lived…the very period in which the historical Jesus was invented, the 70s to 120s A.D., is when we should hear people challenging that invention. But we are not allowed to hear what anyone said in that period. All criticism of Christianity in that half century was erased from history. Even all debate among Christians in that half century was erased from history. Which is suspicious. But even suspicion aside, we still can’t argue from the silence of documents we don’t have. We don’t know what the critics of a newly minted historical Jesus were saying in that whole human lifetime of Christian history. So we cannot say ‘there was never any debate’ about it. Any debate there had been, was deleted.”

    He later says in his conclusion:

    “Somehow no historical references, becomes abundant historical references; and late hagiographic myths become histories; and forgeries become evidence; and texts showing some challenged a historical Jesus, becomes ‘no one’ challenged a historical Jesus; and somehow we magically know what existed in entire lifetimes of missing texts discussing the reality of Jesus. ”

    When he was asked in the comments how he could be sure that ALL of the documents were deleted, he responded with a classic overly lengthy response. Here’s part of it:

    “Even in Paul’s day we see seething schisms and attacks from within and all around, as the sect had already fragmented into several, calling each other anathema and servants of demons and false Christs. That would have been even more the case a lifetime later. The Gospels, written in the gap period, exhibit different competing theologies and perspectives. They are in fact arguments against each other (as I show in OHJ, Ch. 10). But they effect that through allegory and fake history (Acts is another classic example: see OHJ, Ch. 9). So we have to infer what the real arguments were, and often can’t tell. No one tells us directly.

    So there was a lot going on and being said in that lifetime, that we don’t get to hear. Whether anyone recorded it (wrote it down) is a different question; but no one even talks about it in the second century. And they show no sign of knowing what was really happening in that period (e.g. Papias relates a history of the writing of the Gospels that is impossible and thus not even remotely true; so they either didn’t even know what happened in that previous lifetime, or they decided to delete it and replace it with myths).

    So it could have all been deleted by time, and not deliberate erasure. Deleted all the same. We don’t get to hear it all the same. But proposing no one wrote anything, no letters in a whole human lifetime of the church, is very unlikely: it makes no sense that we would have rampant letter writing in Paul’s lifetime (much more than was preserved, as Paul himself references letters we don’t have), and none whatsoever the next lifetime, when the sect was larger and even more diverse and thus even more at each other’s throats, and even more butting heads in competition across three continents and two empires.
    And this is why we don’t know what the reaction was to the publication of the first Gospels. Neither approval nor censure, verification or falsification, we don’t get to hear, and thus don’t get to know, what anyone’s reaction was. We therefore cannot claim to know it was uniformly positive. Though we know it can’t have been. Because we have evidence in the second century that gives us clues of mythicist Christians the century before (e.g. The Ascension of Isaiah; 2 Peter). And the Gospels not only deliberately contradict each other on fundamental things (which no one could have simply been fine with or ever questioned or challenged: the very fact that each Gospel rewrote the ones before to say different things is evidence of disapproval of the original things said), they say wildly false things anyone could have refuted had they regarded them as making any true claims at all (e.g. that a horde of zombies descended on Jerusalem; that Jesus was famous across the entire province of Syria; that the sun went out for three hours). If anyone noticed who knew the truth, we don’t get to hear what they said. And if no one who knew the truth noticed, we can’t claim to know what they would have said. Except the obvious: that those things didn’t happen.”

    This seems to refute the assertion that nobody questioned Jesus’ existence, among other things, in ancient times.

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    1. “This seems to refute the assertion that nobody questioned Jesus’ existence, among other things, in ancient times.”

      It does? How? How? All he does is assume that there were any such questions and make conspiracy theory-style excuses for why it isn’t reflected in the surviving material. The only two texts he refers to – the Ascension of Isaiah and 2Peter – are not support for the idea that anyone believed in a purely celestial, non-earthly, non-historical Jesus. The former does refer to Jesus coming to earth and the latter is addressing Docetism, not some supposed Mythic/Celesitial Jesus. Carrier can’t just assume that there were such references and then wave his hands around and say “but then they destroyed them all”. This is crackpot stuff.

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      1. Well, what about Carrier’s reference to Papias basically making up things about the compilation of the Gosepel narratives?

        1. What about it? How does that support Carrier’s wishful thinking fantasy about why there is no evidence for his fairy castle of suppositions? And Carrier’s claim that Papias’ account is “impossible and thus not even remotely true” is his usual bombastic. overblown rhetoric. All Papias says is this on gMark:

          “[John the Elder] used to say: Mark, in his capacity as Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately as many things as he recalled from memory—though not in an ordered form—of the things either said or done by the Lord. For he neither heard the Lord nor accompanied him, but later, as I said, Peter, who used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai, but had no intention of providing an ordered arrangement of the logia of the Lord. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong when he wrote down some individual items just as he related them from memory. For he made it his one concern not to omit anything he had heard or to falsify anything.”

          What is “impossible” about this? How exactly does Carrier know it’s “not even remotely true”? Personally, I’d say that the gMark we have today is at several removes from Peter or any other eye-witness, but I find Maurice Casey’s evidence that there are signs of a written Aramaic source lying behind it persuasive, which means there could well be an element of truth behind the tradition Papias preserves here.

          Here’s Papais on gMatt:

          “Therefore Matthew put the logia in an ordered arrangement in the Hebrew language, but each person interpreted them as best he could.”

          Again, this is hardly “impossible”. The use of the word “logia” (sayings) here makes sense given that the writer of gMatt made heavy use of the Q material, much of which is made up of sayings rather than anecdotes. Of course, the gMatt we have today is not in “the Hebrew language”, but it does contain a lot of Semiticisms. Whatever lies behind what Papias is saying here, to declare this “impossible” is overblown and it in no way supports his conspiracy theory about the total lack of evidence for the key elements of his fanciful theory. At best we could say the early traditions are garbled and not entirely reliable, but that is hardly surprising. To pretend they can be completely dismissed is not sustained by Carrier’s argument and, as usual, he has to bolster his argument with bombastic rhetoric as a result.

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          1. Interesting.

            Regarding Josephus’ “brother of James” footnote, I’ve alsways found it doubtful he would write something like that. Josephus’ audiences were Romans and Romanized Jews. The mention of anyone related to such an obscure (at that time) person as the brother of some little known preacher/messianic figure would’ve been really odd, to say the least. Only later Christians trying to substantiate a history would care enough that Josephus didn’t mention their Messiah to make sure it was included in his acclaimed history. In fact, we have our very first defense of a historical Jesus in the New Testament itself. 2 Peter was forged for just such a purpose.

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          2. “The mention of anyone related to such an obscure (at that time) person as the brother of some little known preacher/messianic figure would’ve been really odd, to say the least.”

            Not really. First of all, Josephus regularly uses relatives (usually fathers, but occasionally brothers) as a way of differentiating people with common first names. That’s because this was a standard Jewish practice. If I call someone “Joseph, son of Matthias”, you don’t have to know who “Matthias” was, you just know that this particular Joseph is the one who is the son of Matthias, as opposed to any other Josephs I may mention. Secondly, if you accept the majority view that there actually was an earlier mention of Jesus at Ant. XVIII.63-4, which I do, then Josephus is doing what he does elsewhere and is referring his readers back to a previously mentioned figure. Either way, the identifier makes sense.

            Only later Christians trying to substantiate a history would care enough that Josephus didn’t mention their Messiah to make sure it was included in his acclaimed history.”

            Josephus’ history was not actually particularly “acclaimed”. And, as I note in my article above, this brief mention does not fit with what a Christian interpolation would look like. As I note above:

            “Unlike the elements in the Testimonium that all scholars agree are interpolated, this reference serves no apologetic purpose and bolsters no theological claims. The Testimonium’s additions helped Christians support the claims that Jesus was the Messiah and had risen from the dead, by allowing them to point to a Jew (supposedly) stating this things as facts – things that were most hotly disputed by Christianity’s Jewish opponents. But this passing reference does nothing like this and bears no hallmarks of a apologetic Christian addition to the text.”

            No-one was denying that Jesus existed prior to the eighteenth century, so there was little reason for Christians to be inserting mentions of him in historical texts to begin with. And if they did, it would be very odd for them to just insert this brief reference in a passing mention of someone else.

            “In fact, we have our very first defense of a historical Jesus in the New Testament itself. 2 Peter was forged for just such a purpose.”

            No, it wasn’t. That’s Mythicist nonsense.

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    2. Carrier hath spoken, let’s all bow low before the unemployed blogger’s out-of-this-world genius. There is a reason he’s not respected in academic circles, ya know

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  19. Tim asked:

    Eh? What point are you making?

    Luke 3:1 says: ” In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,…”

    But, according to Josephus, this couldn’t have been right. The Lysanias who was Tetrarch of Abilene was executed by Antony in 36 BCE. So Luke got it wrong.

    Until an inscription in a temple was found that showed there was another Lysanias who matched Luke’s description.

    1. A bit of both, but mainly the former. He is someone who has managed to arrive at a number of conclusions on a range of subjects which share two characteristics: (i) they are contrary to the consensus of other scholars and (ii) they happen to put Christianity in particular and religion in general in the worst possible light. It doesn’t take too much thought to see this pattern is driven by an anti-religious bias which skews his analysis. And observation of his behaviour and what he says about himself and others reveals a narcissistic personality and someone who is motivated by a belief that he is much smarter than most other people and that this can be shown by his highly detailed support of contrarian views. In my experience, the very best scholars are humble, respectful of their peers, open to critique and able to see and gladly correct problems in their analysis and strive to be genuinely objective. None of these things can be said to any real extent about Carrier.

      1. “Narcissistic personality” is putting it mildly, having read some of his blogs (and got headaches as a result of his bad writing from his [barely] “peer reviewed” book). He’s a history-revisionist who most certainly has an agenda. The guy tried to debunked Hitler’s table talks (he really thought he did) and portrays the Medieval era as one of unparalleled terror and perpetual darkness, with none other than the big bad church being responsible for it all.
        He even gave lectures against fine-tuning, despite not being a cosmologist or scientist of any kind. Then there’s his degenerate personal life. It just amazes me how uncultured and deeply uncritical his followers are, that they don’t see _why_ he’s not respected in any real Academic circles, and somehow think only Christians say he’s full of shit

  20. Great article Tim. I think Jesus mythicism is no different than holocaust denialism, 911 inside job conspiracy theories, etc…The fact that Carrier has to try hard to find evidence for his theory just shows how weak and nonsensical it is. His arguments are based on vague generalities that could really apply to almost anyone.

  21. I sometimes wonder why we don’t hear more in the second and third generations of Christianity about the families of Jesus and the original apostles. Surely these people had offspring who were Christians.

    1. As I note in my article above, we do have fragments of traditions and memories of the family of Jesus and their descendants, the so-called “desposynoi”. But it’s not actually too surprising we don’t have much on them or anything on the descendants of the other original disciples, because the disruptions of the two Jewish Wars of the late first and early second century would have fragmented many families and destroyed what little existed. Remember that in this very early period the total numbers of Christians was tiny and even this small number was scattered across a wide region in very small, loosely connected groups. It is not surprising at all that we don’t have much from this period – it’s actually more surprising that we have anything at all.

  22. Regarding Price and Carrier and mythicism, the best argument I can think of for mythicism is that Paul says the Rulers of this Age (Which could be interpreted to mean Supernatural powers = The demons to whom pagans sacrifice) crucified Jesus (1 Cor 2.8, also see 1 Cor 8.5-6; 2Cor 4.4), and that these are the powers the returning Christ will subjugate (Rom 8.38, also cf Eph 6.12). Phillipians says these are the powers who will bend knees before Christ.

    But this possible evidence for mythicism runs against Paul calling Jesus an “anthropos (human, 1 Cor 15.47),” and says that Jesus was “made” from the seed of David. I think Carrier’s “cosmic sperm bank” proposal in OHJ to “explain away” this evidence fails Occam’s Razor, since scripture speaks of conception as being “formed/made” by God (Isaiah 44:24; Jeremiah 1:5 ), and so seems to indicate conception in the usual way. Surely if Paul had in mind something as unusual and unprecedented as Carrier’s cosmic sperm bank hypothesis, Paul would have mentioned it.

    Of course, if Paul is saying the gods of this world crucified Christ, this could mean the Romans were “under the influence of Satan,” and hence crucified Christ. For instance, Paul writes: “4The god of this age [Satan] has blinded the minds of unbelievers so they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:4).” So, 2 Corinthians 4:4 suggests Paul thought Satan was influencing people’s minds. As I said, this might be what Paul means when he says the rulers of this age crucified Christ – if we are to think such language is meant to refer to demonic powers: Satan influenced the Romans to crucify Christ.

  23. In your article you raised a controversy which arose three centuries after the death of Christ. You said that James was the brother of Jesus according to our English way of speaking. This idea was proposed at the time of Jerome (who translated the whole Bible into Latin and was a famous scholar). He denounced this idea as a “new one” when it was proposed, and this theory failed to win adherents in the Church thereafter. In fact, Jews (like many non-Europeans) also referred to cousins as brothers and we see this when they translated the Old Testament into Greek and retained their own way of speaking. I mention this because at the crucifixion, Matthew (27:56) clearly states that there was another woman also named Mary who was the mother of James and Joseph. She is described usually as just the mother of James because of his status as bishop of Jerusalem. However, in John (19:25) she is described as Mary, the sister of the mother of Jesus. Thus she would be the sister-in-law through the family of Joseph. This is confirmed in Jude (1:1) where he describes himself as the brother of James (known to all as the bishop of Jerusalem) leaving aside any reference to Jesus himself. Thus, three of those said to be brothers of Jesus in our European sense are actually cousins through another Mary (Mary’s “sister”). Simon, the last of the four, also reigned as bishop of Jerusalem after the death of James.

    1. This is Catholic apologist nonsense. The gospels quite clearly refer to James and the other brothers as Αδελφοι and never refer to them using the Greek word for cousin, which is ἀνεψιός.

  24. What you say about the choice of words in the Gospel is certainly true, but the point I made was that in translating the Old Testament into Greek, the Jewish translators routinely used the Greek word for brothers when the text was referring to cousins. This is why it takes three centuries for your interpretation (brothers in the European sense) to finally appear and to be rejected by people who knew the Greek of the time and Jewish customs much better than anyone around today.

    1. The Septuagint translators did not “routinely” use ἀδελφός to mean cousin. They occasionally used it to translate the Hebrew ‘ach, which was less clear about what kind of kinsman was indicated, but they only did so when the context made it suitably clear what level of kinship was meant. Elsewhere – e.g. Numbers 36:11 – the LXX uses the standard Greek word for cousin: ἀνεψιός. Nowhere is ἀνεψιός used to refer to James or the other brothers of Jesus in the NT. Nowhere. This whole idea was one of several attempts to avoid the implications of actual siblings for the doctrine of Mary’s supposed perpetual virginity. This theologically driven twisting of the texts’ meaning is the one that is the later development, not the idea that Jesus had siblings, since the latter is clearly what is in the text of the gospels and Acts. Spare us the Catholic apologetics please.

      1. You call this Catholic apologetics, but even Luther and Calvin were well aware that these “brothers of Jesus” were not brothers in the European sense of the word, which is why Jesus, at his death, entrusted the care for his mother to John since she had no other sons. Calvin and Luther were willing to break with any Christian ideas that they could not justify by the scriptures and thus this is not Catholic apologetics in any way. It is simple logic based on the Bible text.

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        1. This is the last time I respond to this stuff, after this any more of your weak apologetics goes in the trash. Luther and Calvin were both heirs to the western tradition on this – a tradition that was shaped by the doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. They certainly did retain this baseless “cousins” nonsense because of that element in gJohn, but that is an element found only in gJohn for its own theological purposes. The weird idea that people who are consistently called his “brothers” in texts that had access to a separate word for “cousins” were somehow, despite this, his cousins is exactly the opposite of “simple logic” and it is also found precisely nowhere in the NT texts. It’s a later theological construct. Now go away.

          1. Lutheran Book of Concord teaches that Mary was virgin ante, in, an post. Thus it is wrong to say “The concept of Mary’s eternal virginity was rejected by the sixteenth century Protestant reformers, and so that tradition has maintained the idea that they were Jesus’ actual younger siblings”. Lutheran Church is with the Catholics in this. If I what I have heard, also Calvin and Wesley rejected the idea that brother of the Lord were sons of Mary. But I must admit that I am not familier with those traditions. Lutheran Church and Luther himself is with the two old-church marian doctrines: Mary Mother of God and Mary Ever Virgin. (This said, my goal was simply to correct the obvious error in your argument)

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  26. I had a thought regarding Carrier’s approach to the James passage in Galatians. Carrier interprets “brother of the lord” to be a cultic title, not a biological one, to refer to all non apostolic baptized Christians. Carrier has to make this “non apostolic” distinction because the Galatians passage distinguishes James from the apostle Cephas, James being a brother of the lord, while Cephas is not. But Carrier’s cultic interpretation here excluding Cephas from being a brother of the lord seems to contradict Romans 8:29, which says Jesus is the first born of many bretheren – implying Cephas would indeed be a brother of the lord in a cultic sense. I think the evidence is very strong in favor of a biological interpretation of “brother of the lord” with the James passage in Galatians.

    1. I suppose he could say that there are two uses of “brother” in Paul: the cultic “brother/s of the Lord” title referring to this imaginary “non-apostolic baptised Christian” category and a wider, more generic usage meaning “all Christians” or perhaps even (depending on how you interpret Romans 9:29) “all humans”. So Cephas could be said to fall into the latter category but not the former.

      1. I actually had a fun conversation with Carrier about this. The conversation went:

        JM: Romans 8:29 seems to suggest all Christians were brothers of the lord, not just non apostolic baptized Christians.

        RC: Of course. But just as you’d say “I met the Pope and a Christian named James,” you’d say “I met the Apostle and a Christian named James.” In no way do these statements mean the Pope or Apostle is not a Christian too. Rather, they mean the other is just a Christian, without rank.

        JM: Does it really make sense to say Paul spent 15 days with Cephas and the only non ranking Christian he met was James? What about Cephas’ family? It would make sense if Paul was saying the only other apostle he met was James.

        – As Ehrman points out, the distinction between Cephas and James is not that one is an apostle and the other is just a regular Christian, but that both are apostles and one is Jesus’ brother, while the other is not.

        1. I can’t think why Richard Carrier’s academic career failed, given reasoning like that. Why can only online anti-theist fanboys in their “vehement new atheist” phase recognise his genius?

          1. I know right? If he has to shit-talk his critics, he must be doing something right. Remember, you’re a Christian undercover as an atheist according to him.

    1. Yes, I will be doing so. Once you strip out all the weird insults and hysteria, there’s not much substance there. He didn’t even address most of my arguments, spent a lot of time on a passing comment I made about why a marginal note would agree grammatically with the text, tackled a strawman version of what I said about how Josephus uses identifying appellations and then completely misrepresents what Mizagaki says via a context-free quote. It’s rather weak stuff considering he’s taken two whole years to get around to responding to my original criticisms. The psychodrama of this kind of to and fro is pretty tedious, but unless I respond he and his peanut gallery will claim they have “won”, or something.

      1. I like Ehrman’s account of what it’s like to deal with Carrier:

        “Carrier wrote a very long and detailed response which was meant to show, as is his wont, that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I have been asked several times by several people to respond to his response, but I know where that will go – it will take a response twice as long as his to show why his views are problematic, he will reply with a reply that is four times as long to show I don’t know what I’m talking about, I will respond with a response twice as long as that to show that I do, he will rejoin with ….” LOL See https://ehrmanblog.org/carrier-and-james-the-brother-of-jesus/

        1. All very true. That’s why people like Carrier tend to get the last word in disputes with real scholars and so claim “victory”. It’s not because the real scholar can’t answer the fringe contrarian/crackpot, it’s just that they have a decreasing incentive to do so in the face of the contrarian/crackpot’s boneheadedness and they also have much better things to do with their time. Whereas the contrarian/crackpot has a massive incentive to keep responding until doomsday and, like the unemployed Carrier, usually have plenty of free time.

          With the failure of his academic career before it even got off the ground and the his pariah status among many in the atheist community over his sexual harassment allegations and, shall we say, “dubious” reputation, Carrier has been forced to live on the charity of his Patreon sponsors – which makes for a meagre living. So he has to attack any and all critics as vigorously as he can, otherwise his dwindling reputation as an “expert” will decay with his small hardcore of supporters and his tiny income stream will shrink still further. This seems to be why his attacks on critics like me are becoming increasingly frenzied and weird.

          So in a recent interview when asked about me he did his usual “he’s a dishonest person” shtick and said “I swear he’s a crypto-Christian …. he’s actually posing as an atheist …. because the stuff he writes sounds way too fawning on Christianity …. and too much like Christian apologetics”. Painting all of his critics as dishonest, as “liars” and as secretly Christians or as “apologists” are his main ways of discrediting them for his followers. In his email to his patrons about the latest rant against me he declared grandly “I’ve dealt with the lies and slanders and tinfoil hat of the pseudo-atheist shill for Christian triumphalism Tim O’Neill before.” And then in the article in question he says I “lied” 14 times and calls me a “liar” no less than 7 times. That’s in addition to “asscrank”, “hack”, “tinfoil hatter”, “crank”, “stupid”, and “delusionally insane”. This is how an Ivy League scholar behaves, apparently.

          But all this is mainly bombastic theatre for his rusted-on supporters. The guy is basically a showman these days, though the audience is thinning out and the applause is faltering.

          1. What you say is too fawning of Christianity (which somehow makes you wrong), yet he villifies Christianity every.single.time he talks about it’s role in history, with nothing good to say about it _at all_. I guess that’s being objective. If l didn’t know any better, I’d say he deep down he’s struggling with doubt over whether Jesus was who he said he was and if there is a God, he’s fucked. By being as loud as possible and by convincing more disillusioned fundamentalists, the more he convinces himself. Either that or he’s genuinely deluded. How any honest truth-seeker with a college education would think he’s of any relevance to anything ever, is beyond me

          2. I’ve never understood why Carrier is so persistently aggressive, rude and bombastic towards anyone who questions his ideas. Not to mention all the ableist language. And the insistence that anyone who disagrees with him must be dishonest, incompetent, or both.

            (I’m not fond of calling him “unemployed blogger” and so on, because I feel that using “unemployed” as an insult causes splash damage to unemployed people in general – in the nightmarish capitalist society we are all forced to inhabit, being unemployed is not a moral failing. Besides, as I understand it, he’s self-employed. On the other hand, it is both fair and relevant to point out that he is not a professional Biblical scholar, that he’s never worked in a department of Biblical studies or equivalent, and that his work in Biblical studies has had little to no impact on the field.)

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          3. I only ever note that Carrier is an unemployed blogger in the context of people talking about his (virtually non-existent) status as a scholar and to remind them that he has never managed to secure an academic position and holds no such position to this day. I am in no way saying that there is any moral failing associated with unemployment. Be careful what you assume.

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          4. Ok. It may be that I’m being oversensitive. In any event it’s a minor quibble, since I otherwise generally agree with what you say about Carrier.

  27. Thomas Brodie, highly regarded until he came up with the “imprudent and dangerous” views he had reached, just might be correctly identifying the genre of the Gospels. If so, “brother of the lord” arguments are plainly ridiculous.

  28. Do you have a response to Licona’s rebuttal to Painter, in “The Resurrection of Jesus: a New Historiographical Approach”?

    I agree with Licona and find the Christian scholarly majority viewpoint on Mark 3:21 and John 7:5 to be reasonable.

    This leads to interesting problems for apologists: If, as you likely believe, a Christian can continue being reasonable to take a popular biblical position while avoiding reviewing the replies of bible critics…can an atheist also continue being reasonable to take a popular skeptical position while avoiding reviewing the replies of apologists?

    1. I haven’t read Licona’s book, so no. I’m also not sure what it has to do with the topic of my article above. Nothing that I can see.

  29. Sorry for my english. I wrote from Poland. Regards.
    Unfortunately, but the reference to Josephus as an independent source confirming the historicity of James does not stand up to criticism. The sect allegedly led by James the Just had to be very few and largely devoid of Judaism. And in this context, there is information from Flavius ​​that because of Jesus’ brother James, the high priest calls the Sanhedrin to condemn him to death – which was prohibited by Roman law – and after the execution, powerful and influential citizens of Jerusalem intervene at the prosecutor’s office of Judea. This, in turn, forces intervention with King Herod Agrippa, who deprives the high priest of the office. All this confusion was allegedly caused by the brother of Jesus Christ, whom they probably never heard of. If, however, we assume that the Christian copist wrote Flavius’s work ” brother of Jesus called Christ “- whose execution was James writing? Or maybe the copyist only wrote: “called Christ”? The original text of Flavius ​​would be: “[…] he brought before trial James, brother of Jesus […]”
    What Jesus? Let’s look at the last sentence of the quoted passage from Flavius:
    “For this reason, King Agrippa deprived him of the high priestly dignity he held for three months, and in his place he called Jesus, son of Damnaus.”
    Here is the actual Jesus, brother of the lost Jacob, mentioned again in the same chapter by Josephus – Jesus, son of Damnaus – the high priest appointed by the king. This passage does not apply to James the Just or Jesus Christ. As in the case of “testimonium flavianum”, Christian literature of the first centuries has no idea about this mention in the work of Flavius ​​and, as before, again the first who mentions it is Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century.

    1. The sect allegedly led by James the Just had to be very few and largely devoid of Judaism.

      What? Why? There is nothing in what Josephus says to indicate anything about the size or the nature of any “sect … led by James the Just”, largely because he doesn’t say the James he mentions led any sect at all. So this claim of yours makes no sense.

      All this confusion was allegedly caused by the brother of Jesus Christ, whom they probably never heard of.

      This also makes no sense. Josephus tells us nothing about who had or hadn’t heard of James (let alone his unmentioned sect). He simply says unnamed Jews “who seemed the most equitable of the citizens” objected because they were “uneasy at the breach of the laws”. The breach of the law was the issue, not who the breach focused on.

      What Jesus? Let’s look at the last sentence of the quoted passage from Flavius … Jesus, son of Damnaus

      Wrong. Did you actually read my article? I deal with this argument there. This would require Josephus to introduce this Jesus simply as “Jesus” and only later refer to him by the identifier “son of Damneus”. But this is contrary to the consist way Josephus uses this kind of identifying appellation. He ALWAYS uses it when he first mentions a person and then later, having identified which person he’s referring to, uses their first name alone. Your claim runs counter to this consistent pattern. So your argument fails.

      1. I do not agree with your arguments, but it does not matter. If you are a believer, it does not surprise me. Where faith begins, reason is getting worse.

        1. I do not agree with your arguments

          You don’t get to simply “disagree”. I’ve stated a fact. Josephus NEVER does what your argument requires. He ALWAYS uses an identifier like “son of Damneus” when he first mentions a person and then later, having identified which person he’s referring to, uses their first name alone. Your claim runs counter to this fact, so your argument is wrong.

          If you are a believer, it does not surprise me. Where faith begins, reason is getting worse.

          Try actually reading my blog more carefully. I am not a “believer” – I am an atheist and a rationalist. So I work with what the evidence says. The evidence is counter to your argument and so your argument is wrong.

        2. Hahahahaha You talk about other people not having reason yet you just say “I do not agree with your arguments”.

          Oh dear…

      2. If you try to justify that historical Jesus existed, unfortunately you have almost nothing or nothing to support this thesis. It is not me, as an atheist, who should justify anything. It is the believers who have to present credible arguments. They have NOTHING.

        1. If you try to justify that historical Jesus existed, unfortunately you have almost nothing or nothing to support this thesis.

          Nonsense. There is sufficient evidence to conclude that it’s most like a Jewish preacher called Yeshua is the point of origin of the later Jesus stories, which is why this is the consensus position of the overwhelming majority of NON-Christian scholars. The idea that there was no such person is fringe idea accepted by almost no scholars at all.

          It is not me, as an atheist, who should justify anything. It is the believers who have to present credible arguments. They have NOTHING.

          Garbage. See here for a detailed summary of why almost all scholars, including the NON-believers, accept that a historical Jesus as most likely. And the existence of a historical Jesus has nothing at all to do with the separate question of the existence of God. As I just explained to you, I AM and atheist.

          1. this text does not apply to James mentioned by Paul.

            Your arguments that you thought supported this have all been shown to be wrong. So I’m afraid you don’t get to just assert this claim as though it’s fact.

            I will not even mention that the historicity of Paul and all of his letters is also debatable.

            If Paul didn’t exist, why did people fake letters in his name? This makes no sense.

            How do you explain the fact that there are no artifacts of early Christianity in the Holy Land before the fourth century, and are full of them in other parts of the empire?

            We have few early Christian “artifacts” from anywhere in this period, so this is hardly a mystery.

            M

            aybe the fact that this religion was interpolated to Palestine in the 4th century?

            And that is ridiculous. I think you’ve wasted enough of my time here with your kooky ideas. Go away.

      3. I also find it specious that the high priest executing this James, brother of Damneus, would somehow lead to Damneus becoming the new high priest. Surely, if that were the case, Josephus would have said something like, “Herod did this to bring justice to Jesus, son of Damneus.”

        1. Exactly. The idea that the man who replaced Hanan ben Hanan as high priest was the brother of the man who he had executed would not have been noted is ludicrous. Josephus was, like all historians of the age (and most now) a story teller. That he would leave something as poetic as this unstated stretches credulity.

    2. “Unfortunately, but the reference to Josephus as an independent source confirming the historicity of James does not stand up to criticism. ”

      So says you.
      But thats not what the credible secular scholarship thinks.
      And they know just a bit more about this than you do.

      And this is evident in your reciting of that Richard Carrier’s hilarious and far fetched theory and in an amusing matter-of-fact way).
      Origen quotes this passage in his Contra Celsus. And he wrote that before Christians were in any position to be altering ROMAN texts.

      And why would Josephus suddenly break his established pattern of identifying introduced people the first time they’re mentioned at this one and only point and not specify that it’s “Jesus son of Damneus” (and then identify him later)?
      Can you not see how extremely far-fetched your idea is?

      And before you might get the idea otherwise: No I am not a Christian. I’m an atheist speaking on the behalf of the silent majority of atheists in this world who are not convinced by these mythicist attempts to discredit the evidence fr Jesus.

  30. As I keep reading this, especially your comments about how Carrier says that his understanding of “brothers of the Lord” requires less “ad hoc” assumptions, I remind myself of something the philosopher Oswaldo Chateaubriand uses to say. I’ll paraphrase, but it goes along the lines of: Occam’s Razor should suppose the least amount of assumption, but which can explain all of the evidence best; it is not a castration complex. I think that, in this sense, Carrier has a “castration complex” which, ironically either leaves some things unexplained, or needs more ad hoc assumptions to explain them.

  31. Reading over this old blog again (it was a bit much to follow in one go the first time): I cannot help but wonder about the following from Tim about Carrier finding the 1975 journal article from L. Paul Trudinger that advocates another translation that leads to the conclusion that Paul didn’t regard James as an apostle:
    _”Obviously this reading helps Carrier, because it means the sentence is excluding James from the category of “the apostles”, bolstering Carrier’s reading of “brother” as meaning “a non-apostolic Christian”.”_

    I can’t help but think that ironically, this actually damages Carrier’s argument.
    Because if James ISN’T any apostle; then why oh why would he be relevant for Paul to record if he was just some mere Christian?! Wouldn’t the only reason for Paul to record James (in this scenario) be if… …he’s the actual biological brother of Jesus?

    And I also think that this is a good example of how Carrier isn’t actually all that smart….

    1. Or is being deceitful and dependant on his gullible readers to not notice these things. Comes with the territory of being an anti-Christian apologist

  32. I know you are an atheist but God bless you for writing this article. It feels so satisfying when I see an overdogmatic personality with pseudoscientific and pseudoreasonable arguements get rhetorically crushed. It is also a relief to know that there are atheists who can be objective when it comes to scientific truths regardless of their convictions. It seems to me that the theist-atheist debate has degenerated vastly over the last few decades andhas become devoid of meaning (both parties are to blame).

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    1. He was writing to Greek speaking people would be my rather simple answer. Where should he have used an Aramaic version?

    2. Because he was writing in Greek for a Greek literate audience who were mainly Greek speakers. And, given Greek was the major literary language of the eastern Mediterranean, it was the Septuagint translation that became the main edition used even though Hebrew and Aramaic editions of the same texts were also in wide use, especially in Palestine.

  33. One thing which is overlooked in Carriers arguments concerning Gal 1:19 is that Trudinger’s interpretation of Gal 1:19 makes the text to say that Paul met a whole group of apostles. Or in Trudinger’s own words – “it has Paul meeting with ‘the apostles’ and not just with Peter”. This in turn is clearly contradictory to Carriers contextual premise that Paul wanted the number of Christians he met “to be low for his argument to hold” (OHJ, p. 590). Carriers strange proposal, that Paul could “simply classifying a meeting with ‘Cephas’ as a meeting with the “apostles” (ibid.) defiles in my opinion all laws of logic. If Paul wanted to keep the believers he met in Jerusalem in so low numbers as possible for his Galatian readers, then it obviously doesn’t follow that he would have written “the apostles” in plural when he actually meant Cephas alone.

  34. >they were forbidden to refer to themselves with that specific sequence of words

    I know I’m missing something here (particularly since, as Carrier assures us, he passed peer review)
    but if Jesus didn’t have brothers, there’d be no reason for his followers to avoid calling themselves the brother(s) of the Lord. On the other hand, if he had biological brothers who were distinguished from other Christians, by that designation, there’d be no reason to police the description since plain cultic brothers would not fit the exalted status of Jesus family.
    Notably, Peter had comparable authority and yet is distinguished from James, The Lord’s brother.

  35. Very detailed article. Much appreciated!
    Even though I’m not a mythicist since I think the references in Paul speak of a flesh and blood Jesus I’m still 50/50 on the Josephus passage about James. I don’t take Carrier’s points about a marginal note too seriously. I think its possible that the original might have been τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου … something else here besides Χριστου.
    Then later uses Jesus son of Damneus when concluding the story with his ascension to high priest and referring to the same Jesus. This second description is also important since the next high priest, noted only a few paragraphs later in XX.9.4 is also another Jesus – Jesus son of Gamaliel.
    Given that the other passage in Josephus was altered by Christians I leave this open to possibly being so here. The phrase ‘called Christ’ as opposed to ‘the Christ’ is not solely a non-believer’s phrase as you already noted though rare. Again, just a possibility but I lean towards a partial FT and this being original. Keep up the good work!

    1. “I think its possible that the original might have been τον αδελφον Ιησου του λεγομενου … something else here besides Χριστου.”

      Okay. And you think this based on … what? Seems like pure supposition to me.

      1. It is just speculation, like I said just a possibility, based upon the TF being altered and the High Priest also being Jesus. Given there are no extant mss before the 10th century and up till that time controlled and copied by Christians I think it is possible. It’s not a hill to die on though.

        1. … based upon the TF being altered …

          Except those alterations have a clear and fairly clumsy apologetic purpose. What purpose does inserting Jesus serve here? Christian interpolations are meant to DO something. What is this supposed one doing, exactly?

          … and the High Priest also being Jesus …

          That was one of the most common Jewish men’s names of the time. So that reason has no weight either. Sorry, this is highly unconvincing.

  36. “What is this supposed one doing, exactly?”
    The insertion is Christos not Jesus. It gives credence to this James being the Lord’s brother. By seeing a Jesus called X and then a James as his brother inserting Christos instead of X would be easily accomplished particularly if the same copyist altered the TF.
    “That was one of the most common Jewish men’s names of the time.”
    Exactly! This is why Josephus would use Jesus called X (not Christos) and also then use Jesus son of Damneus and then next use Jesus son of Gamaliel all within 4 paragraphs – because there are a lot of freaking Jesus’. It is an easy opportunity to given the commonality of both James and Jesus.
    Again, just musing here! Not sure why this is so hard to accept as a possibility?

    1. ” It gives credence to this James being the Lord’s brother.”

      To what end?

      “Not sure why this is so hard to accept as a possibility?”

      Nowhere have I said that it’s completely impossible, but mere possibility is a very low bar. Historical analysis is based on assessments of which of the many possibilities are most likely. I can’t see any reason for this merely possible thing and so find it deeply unlikely and unconvincing.

  37. “To what end”
    To and apologetic end – having a non-believing historian like Josephus acknowledge Jesus and James as historical persons having died for the truth at the hands of the Jewish leadership and as result bore the consequences of such by having their Temple destroyed (which of course Josephus says nothing of the sort) but which is assumed by the Fathers in citing Josephus wrongly.
    For me I don’t put it past a Christian copyist altering it given what we do know about the TF and as such not unlikely. I’m not decided on it either way – still 50/50 for me until we find a pre-Eusebian manuscript that confirms or denies all these arguments I’m sitting on the fence.

    1. ” having a non-believing historian like Josephus acknowledge Jesus and James as historical persons having died for the truth at the hands of the Jewish leadership and as result bore the consequences of such by having their Temple destroyed”

      That’s loading a hell of a lot of hypothetical and almost completely implied apologetic work onto just two words. Christian interpolations and apologism generally tended to be rather more overt, detailed and explicit than the subtle addition of two words, expecting a lot of background knowledge and understanding from the readers to have the desired effect. So, sorry, but this is very uncompelling.

      1. When altering a text, not your own, you only have so much to work with. Seeing a phrase such as “…the brother of Jesus, who was called X, whose name was James, and some others…” there would not be much else to do in order to accomplish this purpose. Simply inserting Christos in place of X does a whole lot of work – This Jesus is the Christ not X, James is established as a brother and his martyrdom at the hands of the Jews acknowledged, plus given the other traditions in quoting Josephus does a whole lot with very little by asserting this event was the downfall of the Jewish Temple thus confirming the truth of Jesus and James.

        I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about it’s possibility.

        1. “When altering a text, not your own, you only have so much to work with.”

          But examples such as the TF and the Slavonic Josephus show this doesn’t deter interpolators from being less than subtle (“He was the Christ” or “He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him.”) or, in the Slavonic Josephus case, even adding large swathes of new text. This supposition supposes a level of restraint, subtlety and assumption that seems very unlikely.

          “I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about it’s possibility.”

          No, we have to disagree about its probability. Which is not the same thing.

          1. Yes, but I did not suggest it was probable but only possible.

            Interpolators can have a range to their interpolations – I don’t think we need to constrain them to one mode of interpolation. The context, goal, and end result is what matters. If restraint accomplishes said goal and does a lot of apologetic work at little cost then it can’t be ruled out.

          2. “Yes, but I did not suggest it was probable but only possible.”

            A vast number of things are merely possible, so that’s a very low bar to clear. And you’ve said a few times that you’re “on the fence”, which implies a 50/50 probability. I’m explaining why I find that a wild overestimation.

            “If restraint accomplishes said goal and does a lot of apologetic work at little cost then it can’t be ruled out.”

            Again, I’m not “ruling it out”. I’m saying I find it highly improbable and explaining why. And that “goal” and any “apologetic work” here is pure supposition.

          3. @JR: “Yes, but I did not suggest it was probable but only possible.”
            This doesn’t make sense. You’re applying every day language to science. When scientists talk about probability they talk about values from 0 to 1. Every possible option, like yours, has a probability. So when ToN writes

            “we have to disagree about its probability”
            he’s saying that the probability that your theory is correct is much lower than the probability that he himself is correct. You’ve been arguing the opposite.
            At the other hand even a theory that has the probability of 0,0001 has the possibility of being correct. Who knows, in the future evidence may be found that supports it (dramatically raising that probability).
            Usually Bayes’ Theorem is used to estimate probabilities of theories. Rule of thumb: the more auxiliary hypotheses your theory needs (ie hypotheses without evidence, so that they become assumptions) the lower the probability of your theory. That’s why ToN wrote “That’s loading a hell of a lot of hypothetical”.

  38. @FB
    Yes, I get the point but from the outset I was not trying to assign values to a probability – I already understood that ToN’s probability of it being correct was lower than mine. Usually when someone says it is probable they are saying that it is more likely than not. I don’t want to say that at all. I simply made the point about a possibility. Again, I don’t necessarily hold to it. As to your point about adding more auxiliary hypotheses without evidence I was making my possibility pretty low in that regard by hypothesizing one simple act based upon evidence of the same sort – redacting the text in a simple way (one / maybe two words -either Christos/called Christos) based upon a known and accepted redaction of similar material in Josephus thus avoiding Carrier’s adding of hypotheses – particularly the marginal note gymnastics.

    Anyway, I appreciate the responses of both you guys!

  39. Hi Tim,
    Great rebuttal, as always. I am just started reading your blog, but there’s so much I would like to be able to use myself to rebut ridiculous claims…

    I am certainly not an scholar, having only a BA in History (many years ago), and a career made out of mainly IT jobs, but…

    How would the many Mythicists deal with the various Qur’anic traditions of Jesus as a historic figure? Are those also Christian interpolations?

    Also, I might be out of my depth here, but provided a non-historical Jesus could be proven, what’s the benefit to that? I mean, do the Mythicists expect that Christianism would just collapse and disappear in such event?

    1. “How would the many Mythicists deal with the various Qur’anic traditions of Jesus as a historic figure? Are those also Christian interpolations?”

      No, but given they come centuries later, they don’t pose much of a problem for Mythicism. Mythicists posit that a “historical Jesus” form of Christianity became dominant as early as the later first century, eclipsing their supposed “celestial Jesus” form of the faith. So this had happened centuries before Islam arose and the Qur’an just works from the assumption Jesus was historical. Qu’ranic conceptions of Jesus are clearly derived from Christian traditions and so aren’t independent references in any way.

      “provided a non-historical Jesus could be proven, what’s the benefit to that? I mean, do the Mythicists expect that Christianism would just collapse and disappear in such event?”

      Probably not, but it would undermine the foundations of pretty much all current forms of Christianity. Whether it would actually have the effect of making it collapse is unclear and actually doubtful, but the objective is largely to give Christianity no leg to stand on. Christianity is a faith based on supposedly historical claims about a man who existed in history. Take that man away and those claims are baseless.

      1. “Take that man away and those claims are baseless.”
        In the eyes of you and me yes. But given that Jesus is portrayed as a miracle worker anyway I think that christians won’t care. They will construct some story or another; that exactly is the strength of faith.
        IIrc you have mentioned it too; I think the benefit is rather psychological. It gives atheists a feel of superiority (I’ve felt it myself many years ago when JM sparked my interest). Also ex-christians might see it as a way to take revenge. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that JM is especially popular in the USA.
        A funny example of a Dutch JM is minister and theologian Van der Kaaij, member of mainstream Dutch protestant church PKN. In 2015 he wrote an article in protestant mainstream paper Trouw called Jesus Never Existed (Jezus heeft Nooit Bestaan). I translate from his webiste:

        “The Gospels are myth and Jesus was not historical. That refines and refreshes your belief a lot.”
        He’s preaches for the PKN church in Aardenburg.

      2. Thanks for your prompt reply.
        Surely I need to read a lot more about the issue before I can even use you arguments.
        I will carry on reading tour articles as I might learn a bit more about how to understand and tackle such arguments. Thanks.

  40. FrankB,
    I understand what you are saying, but I think Tim answered my question pretty well. I was naively thinking that proving Jesus as a farce wouldn’t be worth the effort, and I now understand what the whole issue is about.
    Having said that. I think Christianity would not collapse on itself fo this reason alone, but I understand why it would make the Mythicists argument sound better.
    I just think atheists would have better options to pursue, but that’s obviously why we have fringe options. It’s just that having a sheltered life in the UK it seemed a non-starter. How mistaken I was…

  41. “a career made out of mainly IT jobs..”
    ======================
    Hasn’t stopped Atwill from claiming to be a scholar! But seriously, you’ll find most of the basis for rebuttal in the arguments themselves. Not a scholar either, but I’m continually amazed how many ppl claiming to be impressed with Carrier miss the obvious problems. Just as an example, he uses Rank-Raglan, but inputs the miracle working son of God, when what needs to be refuted, for his thesis to work, is the minimalist historical Jesus: An apocalyptic, itinerant preacher with a handful of followers., who may have thought of himself as a messiah. Likewise, he distorts prior probability. Even if we grant that only John the Baptist is similar, we have plenty of reason to think Jesus was like him. Fortunately, there were more mentioned by Josephus. So, Prior probability goes up and in no way justifies Carrier’s weird numbers.
    I recall reading or trying to read something he wrote about Jesus fitting into Josephus list, but arguing that Jesus belonged to some other category, which made this unimportant.
    Hope Tim doesn’t mind a book plug, but you might find David Law’s The Historical-Critical Method: A Guide for the Perplexed, useful.

    1. The other problem with Carrier’s use of the Rank-Raglan Scale lies in the fact Carrier fiddles with the criteria to make them fit his a priori conclusion.

      “The hero’s mother is a royal virgin” (Raglan) vs “The hero’s mother is a virgin” (Carrier)
      “His father is a king” (Raglan) vs “His father is a king or the heir of a king” (Carrier)
      “Reared by foster parents” (Raglan) vs “Reared by one or more foster parents” (Carrier)
      “[He] becomes a king” (Raglan) vs “He is crowned, hailed or becomes a king” (Carrier)
      “[He] is driven from the throne and city” (Raglan) vs “He is driven from the throne or city” (Carrier)
      “His body is not buried” (Raglan) vs “His body turns up missing” (Carrier)
      (see Raglan, The Hero: A Study in Tradition, Myth and Drama, (1949), pp 178-9; Carrier, On the Historicity of Jesus,(2014) p. 229)

      Spot the differences? Carrier has changed the criteria to make Jesus fit the mythotype more closely. As Gullota notes in his negative critical review of Carrier’s book:

      “Per Carrier’s assessment of the Rank-Raglan hero-type applied to Jesus, Mark’s Jesus scores 14 and Matthew’s Jesus scores 20. But according to the traditional Raglan heroic archetype, Mark’s Jesus scores 7 or 8, and Matthew’s Jesus scores 8 or 9, producing a result that is less than 11 (the required result, according to Carrier’s methodology, to firmly place Jesus in the same reference class as Oedipus, Moses, Theseus, Dionysus, Romulus, Perseus, Hercules, Zeus, Bellerophon, Jason, Osiris, Pelops, Asclepius, and Joseph, son of Jacob).”

      (D. Gullota, “On Richard Carrier’s Doubts – A Response to Richard Carrier’s On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt”, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 15 (2017) 310-346, pp. 310-346, p. 343)

  42. There are also many other sins Carrier commits; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

    – John 21:25

    1. No. Paul specified that his teaching that Gentiles could also be saved by Jesus’ sacrifice and that they didn’t have to practice Judaism was something revealed to him by Jesus. But what he says about other teachings about Jesus show it was “passed” to him the way he passed it to others – by being taught it by earlier followers.

      1. But what he says about other teachings about Jesus show it was “passed” to him the way he passed it to others – by being taught it by earlier followers.

        okay but did Paul ‘s “earlier followers” know Jesus historically or via visions?

        1. I know of no evidence that the people Paul calls “those who were apostles before me” only knew of Jesus via visions. I know of plenty that they knew of him because they … knew him. So the evidence indicates the latter and there is absolutely no reason to think otherwise.

          1. the people Paul calls “those who were apostles before me”

            are you referring to James and Cephas-anyone else ?

            what do we know of “those who were apostles before me” ?

            did they play any role in sources and writing of GMark?

          2. Paul refers to people like Peter/Cephas, James and John, who all have a high level of authority in the Jesus Sect before he joins it. He makes it clear this sect existed before he joined it and he had previously opposed it. And he refers to “those who were apostles before me” and makes it clear in Galatians 1 that these included people other than Peter than James. So clearly there was a Jesus sect before Paul and people who were in it before him had authority by merit of being long term members. Then we get the gospel accounts that talk about Jesus having followers in his lifetime that included Peter, John and most likely his brother James. It’s not hard to connect the frigging dots here.

  43. hello tim! thanks for the work! my english is rusty but if i may, i would like to make a small contribution: you’re say that “The western tradition dealt with this by maintaining these brothers were actually Jesus’ cousins; an idea which is the doctrine of the Catholic Church to this day” but in the comments you’re mentioning the Cathecism that demonstrate that the Catholic Church does not have a teaching that James is the cousin of Jesus.

    1. I should amend that. The Catholic Church doesn’t have a fixed position on whether James was a half-brother or a cousin of Jesus.

      1. Yeah! I think it would be the best thing to do. Actually, the idea of ​​James being Jesus’ brother confuses me: the Catechism says that in Mt 27:56 there is a Mary who is the mother of James (and Joseph) if this “Mary” was also the mother of Jesus, the wouldn’t the passage have made that clear? Mary, mother of James and Joseph, is later identified in Mt 28:1 as “another Mary”.

        I also have a doubt regarding the translation from the Greek: in Mt 13,55 the word ἀδελφοὶ , used to refer to “James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas” as brothers of Jesus and the word ἀδελφὴν , used in 1 Cor 9 to mean referring to the sisters of Jesus, according to the bible hub, seems to have as one of the meanings: “member of the same religious community”. Wouldn’t that be evidence that Jesus had no brothers or sisters and when they used those words they were referring to people who followed Jesus?
        I really like your work! Since I found out about the site I have read several of your posts and noted their references to read later. Thanks for the reply!

        1. Given that Miriam/Mary and Jacob/James were among the most common names of the time, the various references in the gospels and Acts to people with those names are rather confusing and it’s not always clear who they are or how we differentiate between them. Personally, I don’t think the Mary of Mt 27:36 is the mother of Jesus and James, as it would be an odd way to identify Jesus’ own mother. It seems to be another of the many Marys.

          But the context of Mt 13.55 and its analogue in Mk make it very clear that these brothers are his siblings, not followers. The people asking the question about who Jesus is are referring to his parents and then to these brothers. So they’re talking about his family, who they knew since the family was from Nazareth.

      2. Hey Tim! It’s a little late, but… Happy New Year!
        So… I came back to your post because I was reading a book called “The Brother of Jesus” by Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington and there they said “Jerome, the fourth-century church father, taught that James and the other brothers were actually cousins of Jesus, sons of some woman and man other than the biblical Mary and Joseph. This is the most frequently enunciated position of the Roman Catholic Church.”
        I have not found any official Church teaching stating that James and Jesus were cousins. In the Catechism, it even says that “they are close relations of Jesus”, but it does not define the relationship, so Catholics can indeed adhere to the theory that they were “half-brothers”, being children of Joseph, but not of Mary, mother Of Jesus. I don’t know if that helps anything, but on the page 291 of this text https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/e-books/lightfoot_jb/galatians_lightfoot.pdf it shows that many Christian writers supported the idea that Jesus and James were half-brothers (“Sons of Joseph by a former wife”)
        Anyway, I see that you didn’t change the passage I mentioned, when you said you could. Did you read anything else that led you to identify that this was/is official church teaching? Oh! And another doubt that also arose reading the book I mentioned earlier: if James (and the other brothers and sisters of Jesus) are the children of a previous marriage of Joseph why are they not mentioned in the journey that Joseph and Mary made to Bethlehem?

          1. The removal of the word “doctrine” certainly made all the difference, but… i don’t know… i think putting it as an “idea which is common in the Catholic Church to this day” will still imply that popes prefer accept the theory that James is Jesus’ cousin than the theories that claim he was Jesus’ “half-brother” or “step-brother”, when in fact the church does not support one of them and just says that “they are close relations of Jesus”. By saying that it is a common idea in “the Catholic Church” it is generally implied that it is a common idea among popes, but i do not recall ever reading or hearing any popes (especially more “contemporary ones”) endorsing that James was cousin of Jesus, so that’s why I asked “Did you read anything else that led you to identify that this was/is official church teaching?”. I ended up making a little confusion when I put the word “official” because i associated your speech with that of the book i mentioned (sorry for that), but my question is precisely if you are aware of any evidence (whether from a writing of a pope or a record of speeches theirs) that shows that this theory is an “idea which is common in the Catholic Church to this day” because i am not aware of it 😅

          2. i think putting it as an “idea which is common in the Catholic Church to this day” will still imply that popes prefer accept the theory that James is Jesus’ cousin

            No, it doesn’t imply that at all. It says nothing about any “popes”. It simply states a fact. So it stays as it is.

  44. Tim, there seems to be some counter-examples to the idea that the grammar of Galatians 1:16 implies that James is an apostle. For example, Luke 4:26 says that “Elijah was sent to none of them [i.e. the widows in Israel] but only to a widow of Zarephath in Sidon”. The conjunction εἰ μὴ here is used to mark a contrast rather than state an exception (and certainly doesn’t imply that the widow in Sidon was one of “the widows in Israel”).

    What do you think?

    1. I can’t see how this works as saying the conjunction in Gal 1:16 excludes James from the category of “apostles”. The equivalent category in Luke 4:26 is “widows”. Both the widows of Israel and the one in Sidon are still widows. So in both cases the conjunction is marking an exception, not a contrast.

      1. Well, “none of them” in Luke 4:26 means “none of the widows in Israel” (as the previous verse makes clear). This parallels “none of the other apostles” in Gal. 1:16. So, the equivalent of “the other apostles” is “the widows in Israel”.

        Since the widow in Sidon is excluded from “the widows in Israel”, it would seem that James is likewise excluded from “the other apostles” (the corresponding category). The conjunction in both verses has the force of “but only” or “but rather”; not “except” or “save” (Rev. 21:27 is another good example).

        1. Well, “none of them” in Luke 4:26 means “none of the widows in Israel” (as the previous verse makes clear). This parallels “none of the other apostles” in Gal. 1:16. So, the equivalent of “the other apostles” is “the widows in Israel”

          Certainly. But just as the (included) widow in Sidon is just as much a widow as the (excluded) ones in Israel, so James (who Paul did meet) is as much an apostle as the apostles he says he didn’t meet.

          Since the widow in Sidon is excluded from “the widows in Israel”, it would seem that James is likewise excluded from “the other apostles” (the corresponding category).

          No. See above.

          The conjunction in both verses has the force of “but only” or “but rather”; not “except” or “save” (Rev. 21:27 is another good example).

          Perhaps it has the force of “but only”, though not of “but rather”. The Sidon widow is still a widow. James is still an apostle.

          1. “But just as the (included) widow in Sidon is just as much a widow as the (excluded) ones in Israel, so James (who Paul did meet) is as much an apostle as the apostles he says he didn’t meet.”

            Let me explain how things seem to me:

            Gal: none of [the other apostles] εἰ μή [James]”.

            Lk: “none of [the widows in Israel] εἰ μή [a widow in Sidon]”.

            In the Luke passage, the person mentioned after εἰ μή (namely: “a widow in Sidon”) is excluded from the category given before it (namely: “the widows in Israel”). So, why can’t the same thing be happening in Galatians 1:19 (where the person mentioned is “James” and the category given is “the other apostles”)?

          2. from the category given before it (namely: “the widows in Israel”). So, why can’t the same thing be happening in Galatians 1:19 (where the person mentioned is “James” and the category given is “the other apostles”)?

            Here’s what the Luke passage actually says, with full context, not with the reworking of the text you give:

            “And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.'”
            (Luke 4:24-27)

            So the writer depicts Jesus making a point about his being rejected in his home town, and giving two illustrative examples of Elijah ignoring his own, and helping others. In the first, he doesn’t assist widows in Israel, but does assist a Phoenician widow. In the second he doesn’t heal any of the lepers in Israel, but heals a Syrian leper. In the first example the relevant category is “widow” and the Phoenician woman belongs to that category. The contrast in the anecdote doesn’t work unless she does. In the second examples the relevant category is “leper” and Naaman belongs to that category. The contrast in the anecdote doesn’t work unless he does.

            So in both cases, as in Gal 1:16, the conjunction marks the contrast within the common category of “apostles”. Paul says he didn’t meet any of the apostles, except the apostle James.

        2. I’m rather curious to know one thing: since ‘except’ is the absolute standard meaning of εἰ μή throughout Greek literature, pagan and Christian, how is a reader to suppose that in this particular example it is to be understood completely differently from the usual and obvious meaning, especially since we are even having litotes for emphasis?

          (I have my suspicions.)

          1. But εἰ μή does not always mean “except”, even in the NT. Luke 4:26 and Revelation 21:27 are two examples I pointed out.

    1. He tries to claim it represents a form of Christianity which believed in a purely Celestial Jesus. The only problem is, the Ascension as we have it includes a sequence where Jesus comes to earth before ascending back into the heavens. He tries to argue this is a later addition to the already very heavily layered text, which has several strata added at various dates. So he has to assume that there was an early version that doesn’t include this element and then use this assumption to support … the thing he’s assuming. Which is not exactly a powerful argument.

      1. i want to say I read this thanks

        are there other documents like this ? like Ascension of Isaiah represents a form of Christianity which believed in a purely Celestial Jesus

        Doherty mentions Ode of Solomon

        btw does Kenneth Humphreys add any thing ?

        1. Ken Humphreys adds nothing useful to anything he opines on.
          The Ascension refers to Jesus coming to earth. The idea that it represents an earlier belief in a purely celestial Jesus and so the elements where it talks about him coming to earth are later additions assumes the idea of a purely Celestial Jesus form of proto-Christian belief. So to cite the Ascension as evidence of this early belief is a perfectly circular argument.
          The Odes of Solomon represent early Christian apocalyptic thought with nothing in it to suggest a purely celestial Jesus.

  45. Does Allen argue that all of 20.9.1 is interpolated, or just the “brother of Jesus called Christ” part?

  46. I’ve stumbled across someone making a seemingly more plausible (though less conclusive) case that “brother(s) of the Lord” was not an appellation for regular Christians but was a title for more senior apostles:

    https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/brothers-pauls-and-james/

    https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/brothers-ii-like-jesus/

    https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/brothers-iii-like-paul/

    Given his arguments, I’m left to wonder why Peter is never referred to a “brother of the Lord.” He also has several articles on the James passage, which mix old and new arguments. This one got a pingback here:

    https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/josephus-and-jesus-iv-how-origen-gave-james-a-new-brother/

    1. “ I’m left to wonder why Peter is never referred to a “brother of the Lord.” ”

      Yes, you’ve identified the flaw in yet another tendentious argument that tries to avoid the clear meaning of the text.

  47. Is it strange that Antiquities passage gives Jame’s name only after he is identified via. His relation to Jesus? In contrast, the passage about Joseph called Cabi gives his name before his appellation and menton of his father.

    1. It’s a slightly odd construction, but this seems to be because it’s emphasising that this man is Jesus’ brother because Jesus is the more prominent of the two. Imagine if we were referring to the far lesser known brother of a celebrity, e.g. Kurt Cobain. It makes sense that I would refer to him as “Kurt Cobain’s brother, who was named Chad”, since most people have never heard of Chad Cobain. This also makes it likely Josephus had already mentioned Jesus in Bk XVIII and so was referring his readers to that reference.

      1. That may be right, but I’m thrown for a loop by the fact that Josephus would construct the sentence that way when James, not Jesus, was the one directly involved to the narrative of Ananus’s downfall. I’m not sure if the construction really has much bearing on authenticity since it would remain even if “who was called Christ” was removed,” but the longer I think about it the weirder it gets.

        1. I think if it was so weird in Greek, this would have been noted in the scholarly literature. To my knowledge, it hasn’t. So it probably just seems weird in English translation. But, again, it seems to be an artefact of the relative importance of the two men mentioned.

  48. Called Christ it’s pretty neutral towards Jesus and it doesn’t mean the Messiah and most of the incidents here’s examples of neutral terms of geocises for others This J. ref seems to indicate the shift from title to name, as the standard Greek lexicon ABG indicates (s.v. “Christ”):
    “the transition to sense 2 (personal name) is marked by certain passages in which Christos does not mean the Messiah in general (even when the ref. is to Jesus), but a very definite Messiah, Jesus, who now is called Christ not as a title but as a name”
    This lexicon also points out that this form (as the passive of lego)is routinely understood in this sense, and actually cites a different passage from Josephus to illustrate this:
    be called, named Mt 13:55; Hb 11:24. “ho legomenus” the so-called (Epict. 4, 1, 51: “so-called kings”; Socrat., Ep. 14, 7: “so-called Death”) …(Herm. Wr. 2, 14 the “so-called gods” in contrast to “the only God” Somewhat differently Josephus., Ant. 12, 125 (“Antiochus who is called ‘god’ by the Greeks

  49. “Nowhere in any of his works that I can find does Josephus refer to someone by their name alone when introducing them to his narrative for the first time (e.g. “Jesus”) and then refer to them by their name and an appellation a few sentences later (e.g. “Jesus, son of Damneus”). This is for the very obvious reason that it would be highly confusing to do so…this requires Josephus to do something else he seems to never do: use an appellation when introducing someone to the narrative and then using it again when mentioning them a few sentences later.”

    It seems that there are a few examples of Josephus identifying people as you describe, although they are not 100% analogous. One of Godfrey’s old posts (https://vridar.org/2009/05/16/josephus-
    james-jesus-hegesippus-and-eusebius/) includes this extract from Earl Doherty:

    “Shaye Cohen (Josephus in Galilee and Rome) states: “The uneven method of introducing and re-introducing characters and places is particularly conspicuous in Vita (“Life”). Cestius Gallus, the governor of Syria is mentioned first in Vita 23 but his title does not appear until Vita 30….Jesus ben Sapphia is introduced in Vita 134 as if he were a new character although he appeared at least once before [Vita 66]….We meet Ananias, a member of the delegation, in Vita 197, but Josephus describes him in Vita 290 as if for the first time….Any deductions about Josephus’ sources based on these inconsistencies are unreliable.”—quoted on an IIDB forum by D. C. Hindley, who comments: “Josephus, for the most part, does identify new characters (either by naming family relationships and/or significance for a particular location) at first introduction (at least those named Jesus), but also can be inconsistent in introducing and re-introducing characters. I can only propose that AJ 20.200 might represent such a case.” Steve Mason also had this to say in an email posted on the IIDB: “…The Iēsous in Tiberias (Life, 271) is the archon, or council-president ([not stated until] 278-79)—a case of mentioning the name shortly before giving the identification. That also happens occasionally in [Jewish] War. I have wondered whether it is not a deliberate narrative technique: provoking the reader to wonder who this guy is, and then supplying the identification after a few sentences…” (Footnote 23 in Josephus on the Rocks)”

    I checked these against the greek text of Josephus (https://www.biblical.ie/page.php?fl=josephus/Life-Gk) and they appear to be legit.

      1. I don’t mean to nitpick, but while the instances of the double use of an identifier are certainly far removed from Carrier’s case, the examples of Cestus and Jesus of Tiberius do render your fist statement rather misleading:

        “Nowhere in any of his works that I can find does Josephus refer to someone by their name alone when introducing them to his narrative for the first time (e.g. “Jesus”) and then refer to them by their name and an appellation a few sentences later (e.g. “Jesus, son of Damneus”). This is for the very obvious reason that it would be highly confusing to do so.”

        1. Sorry, but I disagree. I’m referring to how Josephus uses specific identifiers like “X son of Y”, “X the brother of Y” or “X who was called Y”. In the first of those examples he’s talking about the legatus of Syria – a very well known figure who was one of the most powerful men in the Empire. Not someone with a very common name who could be easily confused with someone else with the same name. The second example does involve a very common name – Jesus. But he immediately makes it clear which Jesus by saying in Vita 23 that this Jesus was “then [Tiberias’] governor”. So I can’t see how that one is even relevant, let alone analogous to what I’m talking about.

          1. If you mean to draw a distinction between identifying someone by an appellation versus by their occupation, then I suppose you have a point.

    1. This is the second time someone has posted a link to that site. I have no idea who writes those critiques, or if they are generated by some kind of AI, but they are facile, pretty childish and seem based on a simplistic model of a “good” analysis would be.

      1. The “What Is It?” tab says that it uses GPT-3. As such, I think it mostly serves as a cautionary lesson in the limitations of large language model AIs. If it thinks Tim is “biased”, it would be interesting to see what it would make of Carrier’s frequently unhinged attacks on his critics.

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