Apostle Rehab: could James or Peter write a line? (of Greek)

[Peter Kirby]

What I am saying is, no, it does not surprise me if any one particular text might be free of major interpolation.

[Ben C. Smith]

I can't see any reason they'd be talking about each other, if they weren't both talking about Jesus. Paul had no use for them otherwise. If Paul was peddling a Christ Jesus and James was not talking about Jesus, then James could be safely ignored, just as every other Jewish group without a Jesus Christ was ignored in Paul's polemic and struggles.

Well, I think spin has been arguing in that thread with Michael that there is no need to assume that James was talking about Jesus (though Paul was probably talking about Jesus). Paul consulted James, and admits that James is a person of repute, which may be enough in certain contexts to prompt Paul to consult him. Perhaps Paul was seeking, for example, precisely an imprimatur or a nihil obstat from James, because his approval would be beneficial and give Paul credibility, and James said something like, "Whatever, just keep it away from Judea," which Paul later reported (tendentiously) as a gentlemen's agreement (rather than the snub it actually was). That is a speculative scenario, of course, but the fact remains that Paul nowhere actually states that James said or knew anything about Jesus Christ except in passages that are suspect on other grounds (1 Corinthians 15.7; Galatians 1.17 is not explicit but may be implicit, but this verse was probably lacking in Marcion). Maybe too many different dominoes have to fall into place overall for such a scenario. But I have thought about each domino separately before on other grounds, so it seems worth exploring, at least to me.

[John2]

Ben wrote:

What is it about this account from Hegesippus that leads you to take it as historically accurate (especially with regard to reporting what James said)?

I wouldn't necessarily call it historically accurate (but neither would I call the speeches in Josephus and Acts historically accurate). But I do see it as possibly being Hegesippus' understanding of the "coming of the Lord," the "judge" and the "door" in the Letter of James, as well as the meaning of the Son of Man, which is Jesus in the gospel of Hebrews (which Hegesippus used).

Regarding the issue of Is the coming of the Lord in James and Paul, Jesus was thought to be equal with God (at least by Paul in Php. 2:6 and 1 Cor. 10:4). And again, I have a hard time picturing the End of Days without some kind of messiah figure by the first century CE. But let's say it means the coming of God and not Jesus. Does anyone from antiquity understand this to not mean Jesus? Everything I've seen (so far) understands that Jesus and/or the Son of Man (which I take to be Jesus in most if not every case) will come at the End of Days.

The Damascus Document also expected God to "visit" them at the End of Days (and also says that he did visit them when the community was founded), but it also expects the Messiah to come too as part of the package. It just seems to be the nature of post-OT Judaism to me. So again my question is, did anyone in antiquity who lived after James and Paul think that Jesus was not coming at the End of Days or understand James and Paul that way?

[outhouse]

One of the earliest and most pervasive arguments for the inauthenticity of James and 1 Peter is their good Greek

.

My whole take is that traditions in Mark regarding the real followers being traitors and cowards, is that they fled back to Galilee after arrest. I also think that is the end of their historicity right there.

There were traditions about his inner circle and these followers carried weight/authority, every author was trained in rhetorical prose and these authors were used solely to build authority in the early movement. The same way Pauls name was used for text after his death. Pseudepigraphal use of names was the norm, not the exception.

[outhouse]

Paul consulted James, and admits that James is a person of repute,.

Not directed at you, just playing off the quote

I don't know how anyone could ever think an Aramaic Galilean direct follower of Jesus or John would ever have anything to talk about to a Hellenist like Paul who claimed to be an apostle of Jesus. Jesus had a movement in Israelite Judaism by all accounts learned from John, that was against the Hellenistic oppression and perversion of Judaism by Hellenist. We do not have Jesus going to Sepphoris or Tiberius, where he should be going if we follow NT text portrayal. We also have some scholars that think the whole money changers in the temple violence being attributed to Melqart being on the temple coin. Sorry I see a Hellenistic division between James and Paul that should have never been theologically crossed.

We know these authors wrote prose that used names to build authority in their own text. I see Paul and other NT authors using these names for authority building their version of theology to be the correct one.

[Ben C. Smith]

Paul consulted James, and admits that James is a person of repute,.

Not directed at you, just playing off the quote

I don't know how anyone could ever think an Aramaic Galilean direct follower of Jesus or John would ever have anything to talk about to a Hellenist like Paul who claimed to be an apostle of Jesus.

Okay, but part of "the game" of this thread is to avoid assuming, for example, that James was actually a Galilean follower of Jesus. Peter wrote in the OP:

There's a remarkable blind spot in this argumentation, however: what if James and Peter were not Palestinian fishermen?

If we drop that assumption (and I think the "fishermen" designation is supposed to apply to Peter more than to James, but the idea remains), what happens? In other words, you may be right (about Galileans and Hellenists having little or nothing in common), but it is not really what is under discussion.

[John2]

Ben wrote:

What is it about this account from Hegesippus that leads you to take it as historically accurate (especially with regard to reporting what James said)?

I thought I'd expand on this a bit because I was focused on the part of the question that is in parentheses (I was at the library earlier and didn't have a lot of time).

Regarding the first part of your question, earlier in this thread I gave my point of view on Hegesippus and it seems like a suitable answer.

...isn't this more or less the situation for all Christian writings, i.e., that they are unattested until after 70 CE? So in my view all early Christian writings are more or less in this same boat. And let's take Hegesippus for an example. He was alive more or less at the same time as other second century CE Christians (c. 100 to c. 180 CE), and he is said to have known the gospel of the Hebrews and also appears to me to know the Letter of James (or at least he says things that are in accordance with the Letter of James).

So in my view Hegesippus is as "historically accurate" as any other post-70 CE Christian writer and perhaps even more so given his Palestinian Jewish Christian and knowledge of oral traditions. But I think the speeches are probably as made up as the speeches in any other ancient historian (and Acts) but would at least reflect genuine second century CE Jewish Christian thought (like the speeches in Acts do for second century CE proto-orthodox thought).

[Ben C. Smith]

So in my view Hegesippus is as "historically accurate" as any other post-70 CE Christian writer and perhaps even more so given his Palestinian Jewish Christian and knowledge of oral traditions.

Maybe. But my estimation of the accuracy of people writing in the second century about things that happened in the first is not extremely high, unless some sort of chain can be established. If we could surmise that Hegesippus found this information in the gospel of the Hebrews, for example, and then could date that gospel reasonably well, then we might have something of a chain extending back. Do we have something like this for what James said about the door and the judge? Or does the buck stop with Hegesippus?

But I think the speeches are probably as made up as the speeches in any other ancient historian (and Acts) but would at least reflect genuine second century CE Jewish Christian thought (like the speeches in Acts do for second century CE proto-orthodox thought).

Well, then, the speech about the door and the judge may well reflect the concerns of the second century and have little or nothing to do with a person named James in the first, right?

[outhouse]

but it is not really what is under discussion.

You know context is key here. Nothing points towards a Hellenistic Peter or James.

The division between Hellenism and Pious Judaism has no part in the historicity of James or Peter????

If Jesus historicity is on thin ice at best here, and that is just for the HJ side of the coin here, then only his inner circle should have historicity. I think one should determine what is plausible on a cultural background.

that James was actually a Galilean follower of Jesus

I think James is an early name from his inner circle.

But I also think there may have been a James/Peter of the Jerusalem sect that did not have any part of the Aramaic Galileans. I don't see a Aramaic Peter or James setting up camp in Jerusalem either.

is to avoid assuming

Sorry, evidence is to limited and to far removed from this time period to do anything but educated assumptions.

[John2]

Ben wrote:

But my estimation of the accuracy of people writing in the second century about things that happened in the first is not extremely high, unless some sort of chain can be established. If we could surmise that Hegesippus found this information in the gospel of the Hebrews, for example, and then could date that gospel reasonably well, then we might have something of a chain extending back. Do we have something like this for what James said about the door and the judge? Or does the buck stop with Hegesippus?

My understanding is that all early Christian writings are unattested until the second century CE and Hegesippus should be treated like any other writer from that time period (for good or bad). What sets him apart in my view though is that we do have a chain. As Eusebius puts it:

And he wrote of many other matters, which we have in part already mentioned, introducing the accounts in their appropriate places. And from the Syriac Gospel according to the Hebrews he quotes some passages in the Hebrew tongue, showing that he was a convert from the Hebrews, and he mentions other matters as taken from the unwritten tradition of the Jews.

When was the gospel of the Hebrews written? I don't know, but Hegesippus does not appear to me to know (and is not said by Eusebius to have known) any of the NT gospels or Paul and does appear to know the Letter of James, and it's interesting that he knows stories (perhaps via the "unwritten tradition of the Jews") about the grandsons of Jude (who is called the brother of James in the NT letter of that name) who are said to have lived up to the time of Trajan, which is around the time that Hegesippus was born or even within his lifetime. So he at least seems like a good Jewish Christian source to me, as good as it gets, actually, and certainly no worse than any other second century CE Christian writer.

I would say the buck stops with the Letter of James (and Paul), but I think Hegesippus is a good resource for understanding what the Letter of James means.

I wanted to add, regarding the speeches in Hegesippus, my all time favorite Christian origins website has an interesting page on ancient speeches (and here is a little taste):

Matthew" claims to know stuff he could not possibly have known. "Matthew" says things happened that could not possibly have happened. "Matthew" made stuff up. The Gospel of Matthew, right there in our Bible, is full of stuff that didn't really happen. Not literally. Not actually.

So was "Matthew" a dirty liar? No, he wasn't. "Matthew" was a product of his time and place. In ancient times this is how people wrote history. In ancient times historians routinely, unashamedly, got their quotations by making them up. Our Bible, our New Testament, is a product of its culture. It includes stuff—direct, verbatim quotations—that it's authors made up.

http://pocm.info/pagan_ideas_phony_quotes.html