Jesus Puzzle: Chapter 6

Chapter 6 Critiqued:

Doherty wrote: “Ignatius in the first decade of the second century believes in a Jesus born of Mary, baptized by John, executed by Pilate in the days of Herod. He does not seem to be familiar with a written Gospel, for he does not point to one to support his claims. Does anyone before him, outside the early Gospel writers, possess this biographical data about Jesus? To judge by all the surviving Christian correspondence, the answer is no. (The one reference in the epistles to Pilate, in 1 Timothy 6:13, if authentic, probably comes slightly later than Ignatius: see Appendix 1)” (TJP:56).

It is extremely likely that Christians before Ignatius possessed this biographical data about Jesus, assuming Ignatius did not fabricate this biographical data.
However, Doherty wrote that Ignatius “believes in a Jesus born of Mary, baptized by John, executed by Pilate in the days of Herod.”
Ignatius would not have deliberately fabricated this biographical data since Ignatius believed the biographical data himself.
Thus, it is most likely that Ignatius obtained this biographical data from earlier Christians.
In addition to the biographical information mentioned by Doherty above, Ignatius actually provides far more additional details about the historical Jesus throughout the letters scholars consider to have been written by Ignatius. Examples of these other details will be provided later in this critique.

Doherty wrote: “The term ‘brother’ (adelphos) appears throughout Paul’s letters, and was a common designation Christians gave to each other. In 1 Corinthians 1:1 Sosthenes is called adelphos, as is Timothy in Colossians 1:1. Neither one of them, nor the more than 500 ‘brothers’ who received a vision of the spiritual Christ in Corinthians 15:6, are to be considered siblings of Jesus. ‘Brothers in the Lord’ (adelphon en kurio) appears in Philippians 1:14 (the NEB translates it ‘our fellow Christians’). This is a strong indicator of what the phrase applied to James must have meant” (TJP:57).

It is quite a leap in logic for Doherty to conclude that the phrase ‘ adelfon en kurio’ is equivalent to the phrase ‘ adelfoi tou kuriou.’ ‘ en’ meaning ‘in’ is different from ‘ tou,’ meaning ‘of the.’
If Paul was referring to a group of believers in a general sense, ‘brothers in the Lord’ would have been a much more likely word choice.
However, with the exception of Galatians 1:19, 1 Corinthians 9:5 is the only occurrence in which the phrase ‘brothers (or brother) of the Lord’ in Paul’s epistles.
There is no good exegetical reason for concluding that Paul is referring to a general sense of believers when he writes about the ‘brothers of the Lord.’
Anthony Thiselton concurs. Thiselton wrote:

“By contrast, on exegetical grounds alone many (with the notable exception of Richard Bauckham) suggest that the word means simply brothers in the usual sense, although many Catholic and Protestant commentators content themselves with the observation that the ‘half-brother’ hypothesis cannot be excluded with absolute certainty. Other Protestant scholars insist in robust terms that ‘there are no reasons for arguing, with Catholic thinkers, that James, Joses, Simon and Jude were not true sons of Joseph and Mary. And a similar remark could, of course, be made about their sisters.’ Since this is the only reference in the NT to the right of the brothers of the Lord to receive support from the churches, we know nothing more about the reasons or the role which they may have performed in this context” (TFEC:681-682).

Anthony Thiselton further wrote the following regarding the idea that “brother” only means kinsman in 1 Corinthians 9:5:

“Apart from appeals to uses as Christian brother, however, this depends largely on post-canonical traditions which are linked with a doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity” (TFEC:681).

There is multiple attestation to the idea that Jesus possessed literal brothers (all four gospels, Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History 2:1:10-17; 3:11, Tertullian, and Josephus’ mention of “James, the brother of the so-called Christ,” to name some examples).
Thus, there is strong historical documentation for the conclusion that Jesus possessed literal brothers, but there is no documentation for a “brotherhood of the Lord.”

Doherty wrote: “Modern scholars tend to relegate the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ miracles to exaggeration, hallucination, or later tradition” (TJP:60).

Actually, modern New Testament scholars have concluded that Jesus most likely performed what people during His time considered to be miracles.
A few New Testament scholars illustrating this point will be provided below:

New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman wrote: "Whatever you think about the philosophical possibility of miracles of healing, it's clear that Jesus was widely reputed to have done them" ( TNT:264).
New Testament scholar David E. Aune wrote: “Since there is little doubt that the historical Jesus was an exorcist and a healer, this historical factor has helped to shape the components of the stereotypical role he plays in the Gospel presentations" ( TNTLE:57).
New Testament scholar Paula Fredriksen wrote: "Did Jesus of Nazareth , then, perform miracles? Here I as a historian have to weigh the testimony of tradition against what I think is possible in principle. I do not believe that God occasionally suspends the operation of what Hume called 'natural law.' What I think Jesus might possibly have done, in other words, must conform to what I think is possible in any case. (Those who have no trouble accepting these miracle accounts as reliably, factually descriptive may skip this paragraph and the next. They should be aware, however, that Jesus, on the evidence, was hardly unique in performing such acts.) So, to answer my own question: Yes, I think that Jesus probably did perform deeds that contemporaries viewed as miracles. Those I have least trouble imagining his working conform to those also named by Paul: healings and exorcisms. Modern culture, too, is familiar with charismatic cures worked by suggestion. Our explanations differ from those given in ancient sources-where we use the language of psychosomatic disease and suggestion, people in antiquity spoke of demons and special powers-but the phenomenon observed seems identical" ( JNKJ:114-115).