This is asking what do you think really happened (as opposed to just what you don't believe).
Jesus certainly existed, he had a following, a lot of what he said and some of what he did during a particular time in his life is preserved, it's hard to establish what was preserved and what wasn't, etc. I wrote about some of this a while ago
here.
Also what are your thoughts on the earliest Christians including the apostles and eyewitnesses like St. Peter?
I addressed some of this in a response to the mythicist Doherty:
Paul’s visit(s) to Jerusalem and what likely took place
The first is his assertion in
The Jesus Puzzle that there was not “much opportunity in evidence for him [Paul] to have acquired details about Jesus’ life”. Doherty then references Paul’s visit to Jerusalem. However, there are problems with Doherty’s description here. First, he states that “Paul went to Jerusalem exactly once”. However, it is unclear what his basis is for this claim. In the very letter Doherty references (Galatians), Paul mentions (Gal. 2.1) a second trip. Nor is it clear that the references to a trip to Jerusalem in (for example) Romans corresponds with either of the two trips mentioned in Galatians. Then there is Doherty’s description of Paul’s 15 day stay with Peter. He states that “[a]ll he did at that time, so he says (1:18) was ‘get to know Peter’ and see James.” This is at the very least somewhat misleading. First, there is the length of the stay: 15 days. As C. H. Dodd put it so long ago, we can safely assume that “they did not spend all the time talking about the weather.” The only clue (other than the length of the visit) for what took place is the infinitive Paul uses to describe his action during the visit:
historesai. This word, whence comes our English “history”, was forever changed by the work of Herodotus, who began his work with a nominalized version
historia ,meaning (at that time) “inquiry” or “investigation.” However, Herodotus’ work began a new genre- that of historiography. Greek the verb
historiagraphein means “to write history”. There are several Greek words Paul could have used here, which are less formal and far more common (e.g.,
gignoskein), but he used one found nowhere else in the N.T. and rarely in Greek literature at all. It is commonly found within the works of historians, from Herodotus to Diogenes Laertius (Plutarch uses it frequently), but is almost completely absent from drama or non-technical texts. In other words, for Paul to use this word, there is probably something special about his visit, at least more than a simple “get to know” Peter. A better translation would probably be “inquire”, and indeed most analyses of the word as used in Galatians (for references, see the BDAG) argue that the word means something like “get information from” rather than “get to know.” And that would better explain the length of the stay.
Doherty’s failure to adequately represent research on oral tradition
Also problematic is Doherty’s explanation for the “Words of the Lord” (the title of the relevant section in his book) which Paul references. He writes (p. 29) “[m]any scholars identify these passages as reflecting a phenomenon common to the early Christian preaching movement…Paul is passing on to his readers directives and promises which he has received through inspiration.” Doherty includes an endnote here, in which he references Mack, Kelber, and Bultmann. He quotes Kelber here. However, what he does not do is inform the reader as to what Kelber actually meant or the context of Doherty’s quotation of him. He does not even indicate that he has not quoted Kelber’s entire sentence, but started midway into one. Kelber (who relies a great deal on the Homeric model of oral transmission pioneered by Parry and Lord) in fact states on the same page Doherty quotes from, “Whether a saying is from the earthly Jesus, prophetically transmitted as a word of the risen Lord, or Paul’s own word spoken or written in apostolic-prophetic self-consciousness, it is always legitimized by the authority of the Lord.” Kelber’s argument does not really support Doherty’s point, in that while Kelber argues that we cannot know whether or when Paul is actually reporting a teaching of Jesus or something received through “inspiration”, he certainly does not argue that this IS what Paul is doing- period. Also interesting, given that Doherty spends more time on Bultmann than on Mack or Kelber (and does so again in his “The Pauline Epistles- Part Two” response to Ehrman), is that having read Kelber, he nonetheless refers to Bultmann’s “classic statement” concerning the process he describes. What he does not do is note that even Kelber explicitly rejects Bultmann’s arguments, stating (p. 8), “Today it is no exaggeration to claim that a whole spectrum of major assumptions underlying Bultmann’s Synoptic Tradition must be considered suspect: Easter faith as watershed and point of departure for the tradition, the notion of the original form and its compulsory development into progressively more complex and hybrid formations, collective consciousness as the shaping force both of oral materials and gospel textuality, the concept of “setting in life” as the sociological determinant of oral forms, the heuristic value of the categories of Palestinian versus Hellenistic, and the thesis of an intrinsic gravitational or teleological pull toward gospel composition.” In fact, both within and outside of NT/Biblical studies, research on orality and oral transmission has flourished. The model Bultmann used, which was the then-current theory of orality within German folklore studies, is no longer even applicable to that field, let alone NT studies. And the work of numerous anthropologists, sociologists, and other specialists (Ruth Finnegan, Walter Ong, E. A. Mackay, Craig Cooper, Jan Vansina, William Schneider, etc.) has vastly increased our knowledge of the range, scope, and “genres” of oral traditions/transmissions. In fact, it was not long after Bultmann’s work that an entirely different model of oral tradition, one far more likely a priori to be applicable, was constructed: Birger Gerhadsson’s model based on orality within rabbinic circles. Although Gerhadsson’s work, initially subject to much criticism, has become far more widely accepted (or at least much of it), his model is hardly without critics (including Kelber). However, Doherty barely touches on any scholarship concerning oral transmission, content to cite the three he does, despite the fact that they disagree both with him and with each other.
The questionable claim of a “heavenly source”
Even more curious is his own analysis of Paul’s language. He claims that it “points to a heavenly source” and to support this claim cites 1 Cor. 7:25. He tells us Paul’s words indicate “a general category of things [he] is accustomed to possessing for himself, not as part of a wider community knowledge or inheritance from tradition.” How, I wonder, does Paul’s statement that a particular direction comes from him, not the Lord, indicate some “heavenly source” unless one assumes already that there was no earthly Jesus? There is nothing within Paul’s language to indicate a heavenly source, and in fact if one looks at 1 Cor. 7 in full such an interpretation is problematic. Earlier, in 1 Cor 7:10, Paul explicitly seperates his instruction from that of the Lord:
tois de gegamekkosin paragello, ouk ego alla ho kurios…/”to the unmarried I command, or rather not I, but the Lord…” Paul’s assertion that this prohibition of divorce is from Jesus is also echoed in Q and Mark. Almost immediately following this, however, Paul states (1 Cor. 7:12),
tois de loipois lego ego ouch ho kurios…/”to the rest I say, not the Lord,…” He goes out of his way to indicate that the first part is a teaching from Jesus Christ, as he does in the line quoted by Doherty (where he states he has no command from the Lord). On the assumption that there was no earthly Jesus, these lines by necessity are from some “divine revelation”. Of course, if Paul received “divine revelations” one wonders why he would ever need to indicate that an instruction or command was his own, not the Lord’s. After all, if he receives divine instructions, and it is understood by his audience that he does, why would they give credence to his own thoughts on some matter when he makes it clear he didn’t receive any divine instruction? Why didn’t he? It’s rather odd that Paul has a divine decree concerning divorce, one that is rather general, but when it comes to how followers of Christ should deal with unbelieving spouses, divine inspiration dries up. This makes perfect sense if Paul is actually passing on the same teaching recorded in the gospels and coming from an earthly Jesus, who did not have to deal with issues which occurred in the early church, but is harder to explain if all teachings of Jesus are divine inspirations.
James, Jesus, and Josephus
But why should we think that Jesus had an earthly presence, or that Paul thought of him as having lived and preached on Earth? Passing over (for the sake of brevity) both the statements Paul makes about “flesh” and “descended from David” as well as the references Doherty and others use to argue that Paul did not conceive of Jesus as ever living on Earth, there is the issue of James, identified at one point by Paul as the brother of Jesus. Within both the gospels and Josephus James is also identified as Jesus’ brother. It is easiest here to start with Doherty’s treatment of Josephus. First, it is important to note how scholars over the decades (especially Jewish scholars of ancient Judaism) have dealt with the reference to James within Josephus. Theißen and Merz, in their review/textbook on the historical Jesus (
Der historische Jesus: Ein Lehrbuch) include an enormous reference list and sum up the conclusion of 100 or so years of work by stating, “Die Authentizität der Stelle kann als gesichert gelten…” (p. 74; “the authenticity of the text can be considered certain) noting a single exception to the numerous commentators and Josephan scholars: Schürer’s work from 1901. So why does Doherty question its authenticity? In his book, he “consider[ S ] the matter in point form”. The first point has to do with the date of our earliest manuscript. However, there is neither anything remarkable about this (in fact, if we had an earlier manuscript, it would be surprising), nor is this any reason to doubt the authenticity of this line. His second point has to do with what he claims is an extraneous, unnecessary feel to the reference of Jesus. However, this analysis is fundamentally flawed. As Doherty is no doubt aware, first names were common and could not serve by themselves as identifiers. Something else (context, a patronymic, a title, etc.) had to serve if someone in a text like Josephus’ was introduced. Josephus uses a quite common form of identification: kinship. The most common method was by the father, but other methods (including metronymics; see e.g. Depauw’s article from the journal
The Language of the Papyri) were also used frequently. So Doherty is not correct in saying (in point 2) that the Greek
Iakobos onoma auto or “James by name” would be “a phrase [which] could have stood perfectly well on its own (with a slight change in grammatical form)…”. Josephus elsewhere (BJ 6.92) introduces a certain individual named James, along with others, showing the variability in his identifications:
ὁ τοῦ Μέρτωνος Ἰούδας, καὶ Σωσᾶ υἱὸς Ἰάκωβος τῶν Ἰδουμαίων ἡγεμών, τῶν δὲ ζηλωτῶν ἀδελφοὶ δύο, παῖδες Ἀρί, Σίμων τε καὶ Ἰούδης
The first person, Jude, is identified by his father, but the genitive of kin is placed between the nominative article and the name (Jude) it corresponds to. Next, we find James, only here the fathers name comes first, followed by “son”, followed by “James” and finally another (genitive) identifier “leader of the Idumeans”. Next, we find Simon and Judas, only here the genitive identifier comes first in the form “of the zealots, followed by “two brothers”, followed by “boys of Jarius”, way at the end we get (finally) to their actual names. Josephus frequently go beyond what “could stand on its own”, and (contrary to Doherty’s third point about “suspicious” word order), he does so in some of the most convoluted ways possible.
Quite apart from the fact that Greek word order is very flexible in general, a cursory examination of scholarship shows how variability in word order specific to identification. A paper in
Studies in Language (32:5; pp. 894-915) entitled “Rheme before theme in the noun phrase: A case study from Ancient Greek” Carlotta Viti addresses (among other things) this very issue. On page 908 she writes, “In particular, the relation of kinship is the privileged domain of preposed genitives (e.g. Il. 1.9
Lētous kai Dios huios ‘Lato’s and Zeus’ son’), as well of preposed adjectives (e.g. Il. .1
Pelydes Achilles). Kinship relations are a favored strategy of textual cohesion, whereby the author introduces new characters by anchoring them to characters that have been already presented or that belong to the general knowledge of his public.” She delves in some detail into the issue of post- vs. preposed genitives, and the flexibility and use of both. And she is dealing with word order prior to the Greek of Paul, in which methods of address became even more flexible. Eleanor Dickey is perhaps the foremost authority when it comes to Greek forms of address, kinship terms, and similar topics. Her book on the subject, as well as subsequent articles, are among the most cited and authoritative works on this topic. In two such articles (“The Greek system of address of the Roman period and its relationship to Latin” in the journal The Classical Quarterly and “Literal and extended use of kinship terms in documentary papyri” published in the journal Mnemosyne) she notes the shifts in forms of address, use of kinship terms, and similar shifts/changes in post-classical Greek. Here the only salient points are the fact that Doherty’s assertions about word order are misleading at best, but Dickey’s work will become more important when the reference to James in Paul is discussed.
In points 3 through 6 (his final point), Doherty discusses the construction used and the likelihood of interpolation. His first argument concerns the phrase
tou legemenou Christou which he claims is a “phrase…in use by Christians.” As evidence, he points to Matt. 1:16 and John 4:25. There are two problems with this claim. The first is that early Christian literature is FILLED with various methods of referring to Jesus, yet Doherty cites only two which match Josephus’ and claims that this is somehow evidence for use of the phrase by Christians. Not only that, but it is enough to suspect a Christian hand at work in Josephus’ reference. Yet of the two he cites, only one could be called “Christian”. Matthew ends his genealogy of Jesus with this phrase. However, the use in John is quite different. Jesus is speaking to a Samarian woman. In the line Doherty cites, the author of John writes
legei auto he gune, ‘Oida hoti Messias erchetai ho legomenos Christos/”the woman says to him ‘I know that Messiah comes, the one referred to as Christ”. The purpose of the line
legomenos Christos here is simply to translate the Hebraic term “anointed” into Greek. In fact, one could translate the line “I know that the Messiah, which means Christ, comes” and while this would be a far less literal translation, it would be a more accurate rendering of the meaning. The only purpose of the phrase Doherty identifies as “Christian” here is to translate the Hebraic term. It is not intended as a designation for Jesus. Also interesting is the fact that Doherty chose not to include two other uses of this method of referring to Jesus which are in the gospels. Matthew twice uses this very construction, in Matt. 27:17 and 27:22. However, in both cases it is Pilate speaking to the crowd about who to execute or release: Barabbas or “the one called Christ”. In other words, the two uses of this construction Doherty does not mention are placed on the lips of not only an unbeliever, but the one who orders Jesus’ execution. No rational analysis of this use in Matthew could conclude that the author’s use is “Christian”. It is explicitly NON-Christian: a way to refer to Jesus by non-believers. That is exactly how Josephus uses it. The reason that the Testimonium Flavianum is so obviously at least corrupted (and perhaps interpolated) is because Josephus states Jesus IS Christ. If not for this and a two other short components of the passage, there would be little reason to suspect a Christian hand at all. If Josephus had really said Jesus was the Messiah, he’d be a Christian, so clearly that passage has been at the very least altered. Yet in the later reference, in which Jesus is used to identify James, we find a different construction. Whereas in the Testimonium Jesus “is Christ” here he is only “known as” or “called” Christ. As Theißen and Merz put it, “Die Rede von Jesus, der Christus genannt wird, spiegelt eher jüdischen als christlichen Sprachgebrauch, da Christos im Christentum bald zum Eigennamen wurde (und in den römischen Quellen als solcher erscheint” (The address of Jesus, called Christ, reflects a Jewish, as opposed to Christian designation, for “Christ” in Christianity soon became a proper name (and shows up in the Roman sources as such).
The fact that it does show up in Roman sources as such is another problem for Doherty, who asserts that Josephus’ audience could not be expected to know this Jesus, called Christ. First, if the majority of scholars are correct, and the previous section on Jesus is a corrupt version of a passage which did originally discuss Jesus, then that issue would be resolved without reference to Tacitus or other Roman sources. Yet even if it is an interpolation, the Roman sources indicate that by the time of Nero this “Christ” and his followers were known well outside of Jewish and early Christian circles. Doherty’s assertion that Josephus would have identified Jesus as the one crucified by Pilate is as speculative as anything I’ve read from conservative Christian scholarship on the historical Jesus. Doherty’s interpretations of Origen and Eusebius’ mention of Josephus and James are almost as outlandish. There is no reason to assume that because their discussion of Josephus and James doesn’t reflect much of what Josephus actually said that they therefore must be referring to a different passage or can’t be referring to the passage in question. While proper citation is an issue today, it was certainly not at the time, and “paraphrases” which blatantly distorted original meanings were hardly rare.
To sum up, there is absolutely nothing to support Doherty’s claim (p. 221) that “[t]he phase “the one called the Christ” is demonstrably Christian”, as in the vast number of constructions, titles, and so forth used to identify Jesus, this one is hardly used at all, and when it is there is only a single usage in Matthew which might be called “Christian.” To argue that a designation or term used to describe Jesus is Christian because it appears in the NT is obviously fallacious because Jesus is referred by various derogatory terms more than once by non-believers, in the same way that Pilate and Josephus refer to him as “called Christ” rather than “Christ.”
James in Paul
Then there is the issue of James in Paul and the gospels. Doherty performs a nice little “sleight of hand” maneuver on p. 57 by referring to the construction
adelphon en kurio/”brothers in the lord” and equating it with the genitive construction. Paul clearly uses the terms “brother” and “sister” without intending to refer to actual kin. Eleanor Dickey, in her paper (referred to above) on extended and literal use of kinship terms notes how common this was. However, she notes important exceptions to the metaphorical use of kinship terms, especially any time an author uses a kinship term to connect an individual who isn’t the author or the addressee. In such instances, she concludes that the term is always a literal usage, and it is exactly this usage we find in Paul’s Galatians. Doherty also relies on the use of “Lord”/kurios rather than “Jesus” as evidence that the reference to James it intended not to mean a literal brother but rather the “family” of brothers and sisters in Christ. However, this is again indicative of a lack of reference to (or knowledge of) scholarship. Had Doherty spent some time reading letters written in Greek during Roman rule he would have known that even outside of Christianity, the term
kurios/Lord (among others) was often used by people writing letters and to or with reference to family. In her article “The Greek address system of the Roman period” Dickey notes that one of the major changes from classical Greek to the Greek during Paul’s time was the use of kurios even “without special intimacy, affection, or respect” within letters. And it was certainly not uncommon for authors of letters to refer to fathers and other authoritative or respected figures by the term
kurios rather than their name. As in Josephus, the usage within Paul is quite clear: identification through a genitive kinship construction. This James is the brother of Jesus. He is the only one referred to as the brother of Jesus. Elsewhere, his use of “brother(s)” and “sisters” falls under the categories Dickey identifies as common metaphorical use of kinship terms.
James, the Brother of Jesus
Paul, Mark, Matthew, and Josephus (and perhaps Luke) all refer to a James, the brother of Jesus. It is possible that Matthew is dependent on Mark, but either way, that still leaves at least three independent references to Jesus’ brother. And whatever one’s view on the historical reliability (if it exists at all) of the gospels, the references within Josephus and Paul to Jesus’ brother remain. And despite Doherty’s arguments, there is every reason to believe both were authentic references to a literal brother of Jesus.
