Giuseppe wrote: ↑Fri Mar 16, 2018 1:42 am
Why not? Under the my hypothesis, James and John, the Pillars, were both martyrs. At least James was already a martyr by the time Paul wrote to Galatians.
This doesn't follow. If James and John in chapter two are the brothers Zebedee, then why (how?) is Paul speaking of them as if they are still alive? You can say that they were martyred
after Paul had composed
Galatians, but not before.
I can't help but feel that you are basing the martyrdom of James on Josephus. You are only confusing your arguments if so. Just forget Josephus even exists.
When 'James' and 'John' were killed is not known because the sources stem from differing traditions. One places them being killed by Trajan during Kitos; the other by Hadrian after bar Kochba.
Galatians was itself written ca. 135-140, and makes mention of two specific timeframes: the three years after Paul's initial revelation, then fourteen years after this, giving us seventeen years to work with.
True. But in the other only verse where he mentions the
''brothers of the Lord'', the his sense may be easily explained by the hypothesis that ''brothers of the Lord'' = Christian
martyrs:
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?
Note the
crescendo: if even who is a voyager (the apostles), if even who is dead (
''the brother of the Lord'') , has a wife, if even Cephas (the founder of the cult), then why I not?
You're projecting your own preference into the text. It reads "... as
do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?"
"
Do, in this instance, is present tense, meaning that those of whom it is referring to are still alive.
The
brothers of the Lord refers to those who are baptized in Christ, as in
Rom 6:1-11. Observe:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
So those who are
brothers of the Lord, do undergo a figurative death and resurrection, and are not necessarily martyred.