Posted: May 07, 2012 6:10 pm
IgnorantiaNescia wrote:
Okay... Do you think that "brother of the Lord" has some different meaning then, like Carrier's fictive kinship?
Note: I didn't assume much in my previous post aside the (attested) existence of the phrase "brother of the Lord" and the hypothetical existence of Jesus' brother (and thus Jesus).
What I am asking you is for the context in which that phrase is notable for any reason at all. It's notable in a context where one is inquiring as to whether or not Jesus is historical, prior to any reason to believe that the bible contains history about people and events.
If Carrier promotes a theory about 'fictive kinship', does it imply to you that Carrier does not believe James is a fictional character? In point of fact, the only reason you might not yourself believe James is fictional is because Josephus refers to him, but Josephus (if not interpolated) might simply be parroting early xian dogma about the characters of James and Jesus.
You don't fucking know, do you? You don't really know what reason Josephus had to believe that there was a person executed thirty years before he wrote Antiquities. So you are forced to trust that he had his sources. Nobody else reports anything about this event. It's not a very-well-documented event. And from that, you want to ask me questions about what 'brother of the Lord' means in the context of Galatians. I walk away, realising that you've assumed your conclusion.
Considering how poorly-documented are the subjects of this tale, the amount of fuss over them is disproportionate to the data. Two guesses as to why there is so much fuss, and the first one does not count.