Yes, I'm well aware of those, Galatians in particular, and the arguments surrounding them. As some commentators have pointed out, 'brother' is ambiguous, a term Paul uses elsewhere to refer to followers of Jesus.
Nowhere does he employ the term "
brothers of the Lord" to refer to disciples. Brothers and sisters in relation to one another in the unity of the church but never 'of the Lord'.
It is clear from the text that the Greek is saying these men were his actual bros. Carrier jumps through proverbial hoops of circular reasoning to evade this basic factoid and it is unfortunately lethal to his thesis.
The attempt to allegorize or spiritualize this phrase is a cop-out.
I don't think that argument is overwhelming, but nor do I think a reading of a blood brother is a clincher for an historical Jesus. It's also notable that Paul, who knows all but nothing biographical about Jesus, learns nothing more from a week with James.
You must remember that Paul was not writing a biography of Jesus, nor was he interested in doing so. He was writing letters to churches he had founded in an attempt to ensure that they overcame factionalism, were thriving and growing, by pushing his understanding of the Jesus movement.
What's fascinating, is that in spite of this agenda we find scattered references to various elements of Jesus's life and preaching in his letters, which indicates that Paul knew a lot more than he wrote down:
1 Corinthians 15:1-8. Paul tells us he received the tradition (
paredōka = “I delivered”;
parelabon = “I received”), of Christ’s death on a Roman execution stake and burial. He reiterates this in 1 Cor. 2:2, Gal. 3:1, 2 Cor. 13:4, and many more occasions.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Paul tells us that he received the tradition that Jesus had a last supper with his disciples before dying, quotes his alleged words and then notes that he was betrayed.
1 Corinthians 15:3-8 Paul tells us that Jesus had a core of inner disciples called "
the Twelve"
Romans 1:3 Paul tells us that in "his earthly life [Jesus] was a descendant of David". That is, he tells us about Jesus's flesh and blood ancestry (this could
only have come from a family tradition i.e. "do you know, our family is supposedly descended from King David").
1 Thessalonians. 2:14–15 Paul tells us that Jewish leaders participated in the killing of Jesus
And, of course, the fact that Jesus had brothers which I've already noted.
Then we have quotations of Jesus in Paul's epistles. In answering the Corinthians' questions about marriage, Paul cites Jesus' ruling on divorce as binding on his followers. "
To the married I say, not I but the Lord, that the wife should not separate from her husband but if she does, let her remain single or else be reconciled to her husband and that the husband should not divorce his wife" (
1 Corinthians vii. 10 f.).
Paul's tells the Corinthians that "
the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel" (
1 Corinthians ix. 14). This "command" appears in our gospel tradition in the Matthaean commission to the twelve (Matthew x. 10), "
the labourer deserves his food", and in the Lukan commission to the seventy (Luke x. 7).
Do you imagine that he derived this information - which he explicitly tells the reader was passed onto him by other people i.e. James and Peter - by psychic osmosis?
Leaving aside the volumes of debate on the authenticity, or lack of it, in Josephus' two mentions of Jesus, Antiquities did not appear until the early 90s CE. It therefore records the belief, which certainly existed by then, that there had been an historical Jesus (who would have died before Josephus was born). So it can't be a clincher either.
It's a clincher because Josephus was a 25 year old man from Jerusalem when Jesus's brother James was executed, which Josephus describes. He was a contemporary of Jesus's brother James.
His brother therefore existed and Josephus explicitly describes him as the brother of the one known as 'Christ'.
Not spiritual brother (which would have meant zilch to Josephus) but his actual brother.
Are you really supposing that James was going around claiming to be the brother of a mythical person in a city with a relatively small population that would have known about the Jesus family and the fact that James suffered a tragic death not unlike his brother before him?
A substantial consensus of scholars published on the subject take the passing comment in AJ 20:200 as authentic evidence of the following historical markers:
- that Jesus existed as a Jewish man
- that some people said Jesus was the Christ (that is, the Jewish Messiah)
- that Jesus had a brother called James
- that James lived into the 60s of the first century, and was stoned to death by a mob for allegedly breaking Torah
- that Josephus was a contemporary of James and they both lived in Jerusalem
- that Josephus knew of his contemporary James as being the brother of Jesus
The passing comment was known and quoted in antiquity i.e. it is found in the work of 3rd century writer Origen: six words about Jesus and his brother James, verbatim as in AJ Book 20, with comments that tie it to AJ 20.
So it hasn't undergone interpolation or revision, so far as most agree and there would have been no purpose for a scribe to do so anyway. Since there were no Jesus mythicists in ancient times, there would have been no apologetical reason for Christians to interpolate a tiny reference to Jesus in a passage where the focus is on his brother, in the context of a dense power struggle between the Roman governor Albinus and the Jewish High priest Ananus, whereas they had good reason to tamper with the fuller Josephus reference to Jesus to make it more complimentary in their efforts to proselytise Jews.
The evidence against the historicity of Jesus is incredibly weak when you actually get your teeth into it, which makes it clear why so many scholars and experts in the field unanimously concur that Jesus existed. The more pressing question is what the historical Jesus actually taught and did. The mythicist fringe debate is therefore a playful distraction from the real questions and the real scholarly debate.