Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Another Mythicist View of Jesus'brothers by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth. In my previous post, I pointed out that mythicists have a real problem on their hands when it comes to insisting that Jesus didn't exist. Well, they actually have a boatload of problems, but this is one of them paul actually knew personally Jesus'own brother James. It's hard to say that Jesus never lived if in fact he had a brother. It doesn't solve the problem to say that this was in fact Jesus'cousin since, well, he would still then be the cousin of the real Jesus. Plus, the word Paul uses is brother, not cousin. And it doesn't work to say that he is Jesus'brother, meaning he is a member of the Christian church, since Paul differentiates him from himself and Peter by calling James the brother. And both Peter and Paul were also members of the church. Mythicists have tried other approaches, including the one I discussed yesterday of trying to claim that there was a group of fervent missionaries in Jerusalem called the brothers of the Lord, and James was one of them. No need to repeat yesterday's post. That claim just don't work.
[00:01:13] The one mythicist with a graduate degree in Nt studies is Robert Price, a smart, interesting and good guy, but he too doesn't think Jesus existed. And he too has to explain then how it is that Paul knows his brother. One of the other possibilities that Price sets forth is the one I discuss below. Again, in an extract from my fuller study, Did Jesus Exist?
[00:01:37] Price himself puts forward a different way to interpret Paul's words so as not to concede that the James that Paul knew was actually related to Jesus. In this second view, which I need to add stands at ODS with the first, James is said to be the brother of the Lord because he reflected on earth so well the views of Jesus in Heaven that he was his virtual twin. As evidence, Price appeals to several apocryphal books from outside the New Testament, including the famous Acts of Thomas. This is the second century account of the missionary endeavors of the Apostle Thomas, after Jesus'resurrection, most famous for its stories of how Thomas was the first to bring the Gospel to India. In this account, Thomas is called the twin of Jesus. And why is he Jesus's twin? For Price, it is because Thomas, better than any of the other disciples, has a true understanding of who Jesus is, as indicated in yet another apocryphal book, the Gospel of Thomas Saying. 13.
[00:02:38] In addition, Price notes several apocryphal works that deal with James of Jerusalem, which also call him Jesus's brother. Price argues that this is because of his particularly close ties to Jesus and his clear understanding of Jesus and his teaching. This last piece of evidence shows where Price's argument unravels itself. The reason James is called Jesus'brother in these other apocryphal works is because it was widely believed in early Christianity that James was, in fact, his brother. These texts say nothing, not a thing. To counteract that view, they simply assume a sibling relationship.
[00:03:17] So too, with the acts of Thomas. The whole point of the narrative of this intriguing book is precisely that Thomas really is Jesus'brother. In fact, he is his twin. Not only that he is his identical twin. This is not because he uniquely agrees with Jesus or understands him particularly well. Quite the contrary. The very first episode of the book shows that Thomas does not agree with Jesus and does not see eye to eye with him in the least. After Jesus'resurrection, Thomas is instructed by the other apostles to go to India to convert the pagans, and he refuses to go. It is only when Jesus appears from heaven that he forces his twin brother to proceed against his wishes. It is only in a different book, the Gospel of Thomas, that Thomas is said to understand Jesus better than any of the others. But strikingly, the Gospel of Thomas decidedly does not say, for that reason, Thomas was Jesus'brother, let alone his twin.
[00:04:16] The reality is that there was a tradition in some parts of the early church that Thomas really was the twin of Jesus. The Aramaic word thomas itself means twin. That Jesus and Thomas were identical twins plays a key role in the Acts of Thomas itself. In one of its most amusing episodes, while Thomas is en route, reluctantly, to India, his ship stops in a major port city, where the king's daughter is about to celebrate her wedding with a local aristocrat. Thomas, as an outside guest, is invited to the wedding, and after the ceremony, he speaks to the wedded couple, but in a highly unusual way. As a good ascetic Christian, Thomas believes that sex is sinful and that to be fully right with God, people, even married people, need to abstain. And so he tries to convince the king's daughter and her new husband not to consummate their marriage that night. But he is frustratingly unsuccessful in his pleas. He leaves the scene, and the couple enter their bridal chamber. But to their great surprise, there is Thomas again, sitting on their bed. Or at least they think that it's Thomas, since he does, after all, look exactly like the man they were just speaking with. But it is not Thomas. It is his identical twin, Jesus, come down from heaven to finish the task that his brother had unsuccessfully begun. Jesus more powerfully persuasive, of course, than his twin wins the heart of the newlyweds, who spend the night in conversation instead of conjugal embrace.
[00:05:51] This tale is predicated on the view that Thomas and Jesus really were twins in a physical, not symbolic or spiritual, sense.
[00:05:59] One might wonder how the Christians who told such stories could have possibly imagined that Jesus had a twin brother. Wasn't his mother a virgin? Then where did the twin come from?
[00:06:11] None of our sources indicates an answer to that question. But I think a solution can come from the mythologies that were popular in the period. We have several myths about divine men who were born of the union of a god and a mortal. In some of those stories, the mortal woman is also impregnated by her husband, leading to the birth of twins. It is hard to know how they could be identical twins, but anatomy was not among most ancient storytellers'longsuit. This, in fact, is how the divine man Heracles is born. His mother Alchmene is ravished by the king of the gods, Zeus, but only after she has already become pregnant by her husband Amphithrion. And so she bears twins, the immortal Zeus and the mortal Iphicles. Is it possible that the Christians who told stories of Jesus and his twin brother Thomas had a similar idea? That Jesus himself was conceived while Mary was a virgin, but then her husband also slept with her so that two sons were born? We will never know if they thought this, but it is at least a viable possibility.
[00:07:16] What does not seem viable, given what the stories about Thomas and Jesus actually say, is that they were unrelated. On the contrary, for these stories, they were actual twin brothers.
[00:07:29] Price claims that his view that immortal could be a special, quote, unquote, brother of Jesus because he so well reflected his views, is supported by a range of apocryphal acts. But he does not cite any of the others, just texts that deal with Thomas and James, the two figures in the early church best known precisely for being Jesus's actual brothers. But as a clinching argument, Price appeals to the 19th century revolutionary leader in China named taiping Messiah Hong Xikong, who called himself the little brother of Jesus.
[00:08:03] Price finds this figure to provide compelling evidence of his view. In his words, quote I find the possible parallel to the case of Hong Xi Kong to be almost by itself proof that James's being the Lord's brother need not prove a recent historical Jesus unquote. That is, since Hong Xi Kong was not really Jesus's brother, the same could be true of James.
[00:08:28] Now we are really grasping at straws. A 19th century man from China is evidence of what someone living in 30 Ce in Palestine thought about himself.
[00:08:39] Hong Xi Kung is living 1800 years later in a different part of the world, in a different social and cultural context. Among other things, he is the heir of 18th century's worth of Christian tradition. He has nothing to do with the historical Jesus or the historical James. To use his case in order to clinch the argument is an enormous stretch, even by Price's standards.
[00:09:05] I'll stop here. Jesus had a brother, and it's because Jesus really lived it.
