Sunday, March 26, 2023
James' Influence On Luke's Resurrection Material
Last Christmas season, I posted an article about how Jesus' relatives influenced our view of his childhood. In that article, I provided several lines of evidence that Luke consulted Jesus' brother James as a source. Part of that article discussed a potential reason why Luke didn't narrate Jesus' resurrection appearance to James. You can read the article, or the relevant portion of it, if you're interested in that issue. But a larger point should be made as well. Luke's use of James as a source means that he was in contact with a pre-Pauline resurrection witness, even with one who had grown up with Jesus and lived with him for a long time. Though Luke was influenced by Paul, we should keep in mind that Paul wasn't the only influence in Luke's life. The influence of figures like James gives us more reason to think Luke's highly physical, highly evidential view of the resurrection and the resurrection appearances is pre-Pauline and historical.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Looking at the material that Luke received from eyewitnesses, who would have remembered exactly the birth accounts of John the Baptist and Jesus? If it was James who provided the account both Elizabeth's and Mary's songs then he would have been an extraordinary historian who investigated, collated, analyzed something foreign to himself. James was born after these events and therefore, wasn't a witness to them. If Luke's purpose was to find eyewitnesses (this, his stated goal-1.2), then the minister of the word and the eyewitness was Miriam of Nazareth, who bore the Son of God. If Mary were 15 at Jesus birth around 3 BCE, she would have been just under 70 years of age the time Luke was in Roman Palestina during Paul's Caesarean imprisonment.
ReplyDeleteThe comments at the opening of Luke's gospel don't suggest that he had an eyewitness for everything he narrated. He apparently didn't have an eyewitness for Jesus' temptations in the wilderness, for example. I don't argue that everything in Luke 1-2 (or everything relevant to Jesus' childhood elsewhere in Luke's writings) came from James. But I've argued that James was one of Luke's sources, and I provide several lines of evidence to that effect in my article linked above. See here regarding problems with the idea that Luke had Mary as a source.
DeleteThere is hardly any problem in Luke having access to Mary and John during his 2 years in Palestine. You mean to say that James preserved both Elizabeth's and Mary's exact words during the prenatal visit? You have to remember that James and Jesus other brothers were hostile during the period relevant to Luke's purpose, the life of Christ. Therefore, Luke would have sought out those who followed Him during that timeframe.
DeleteJohn, though younger than his brother James, is prominent in the first chapters of Acts and could have been the source for the formation of the church material. This down time in Palestine enabled Luke to find sources of what happened in the early church (Acts) since he knew of only Paul ministry. If Peter was in Rome at this time then the most likely candidate for source material would have been John. I see Luke finishing his Gospel in Roman Israel while Paul's Journeys (the rest of Acts) carried on after that time.
DeleteJohn is occasionally mentioned in the earlier chapters of Acts, but only with Peter, and Peter is more prominent than John in Acts overall. Furthermore, Luke could easily have recorded what he did about Peter and John without having had access to either of them. For example, Luke is often mentioned nearby Mark in Paul's letters, and Luke seems to have used Mark's gospel as a source, so he could have gotten information on Peter from Mark. As I explained in my post linked in my last response to you, the lack of evidence that John was consulted is accompanied by a lack of reference to Mary after Acts 1. There isn't any significant evidence I'm aware of that Luke consulted John or Mary.
DeleteYou asked:
"You mean to say that James preserved both Elizabeth's and Mary's exact words during the prenatal visit?"
As I mentioned earlier, I don't claim that everything about Jesus' childhood, much less everything related to John the Baptist's, came from James. And I don't think any source Luke consulted would have had Mary's (or Elizabeth's) "exact words". Mary would be unlikely to have had that good of a memory.
If James was Luke's source or one of his sources for the relevant material in Luke 1, James would have had a lot of opportunity and motive to have preserved that sort of information. See my post on Jesus' relatives for evidence that relatives other than Mary had interest in Jesus' childhood, were involved in preserving and disseminating information about the subject, etc. And the book by Richard Bauckham that I cite there provides other examples.
You wrote:
"You have to remember that James and Jesus other brothers were hostile during the period relevant to Luke's purpose, the life of Christ. Therefore, Luke would have sought out those who followed Him during that timeframe."
What evidence do you have that Luke was operating by that standard? To the contrary, it would be irrational to not get information on Paul's pre-conversion life from Paul, even though he had been hostile to Christianity during that pre-conversion timeframe. Paul would be a good source for that material, and he probably was at least one of Luke's sources on the subject. Part of what Luke likely got from Paul was what Jesus did and said to him on the road to Damascus just before his conversion. Thus, Luke got information from Paul about Jesus' activities, even though Paul was hostile to Jesus at the time of those activities. And we have evidence that Luke got information on Jesus' childhood from one or more of Jesus' brothers, probably James, as explained in my article on Jesus' relatives. That's further reason to conclude that Luke didn't abide by the standard you're attributing to him.
Why would Mary need to be mentioned later in Acts? She is not a church officer or involved like Jesus' chosen apostles. Your response about Mary's memory is astonishing in light of her theology and dedication as revealed in 1.46-56. If Anna in the Temple lived for 84 years as was still active, why couldn't Mary do the same?
ReplyDeleteThe content of Lk. 1-2 is the evidence that the best candidate for this information is Mary. If you will, could you just give me your evidence that Luke got his information from James instead of sending me to another link (unless it's too involved.)?
Jesus' brothers are far removed from what Mary experienced unlike Paul who was zealous for God but mistaken and then enlightened. It's quite a different scenario.
The issue isn't whether Mary "needed" to be mentioned. There was no need to mention her in Acts 1, but she is mentioned there. And many people who aren't church leaders are mentioned later in Acts (people traveling with Paul, people Luke and Paul met under various circumstances, etc.). Besides, as I explained earlier, I'm appealing to the lack of evidence that Luke consulted John as well, and he was one of the foremost church leaders. By contrast, Luke tells us that he met James, and that Acts 21 context lines up well with what we see in Luke's material on Jesus' childhood. If you want to know more about the evidence for James as one of Luke's sources, you should read the article I linked or do a Ctrl F search for whatever you want to read there. It's not a good use of my time to rewrite what I wrote there just because somebody asks me to without giving me any reason to do it.
DeleteMary's "theology and dedication" don't suggest that she would have remembered the "exact words" under consideration. Luke's material on Jesus' childhood has Mary sometimes knowledgeable, sometimes ignorant, and wavering, like the accounts about her during Jesus' adulthood. And what Mary remembered could be reported by James.
I don't know why you're mentioning the possibility that Mary was active, like Anna. I haven't suggested that it wouldn't be possible. Whether it's possible that Mary was active is a different issue than whether it's probable that she was consulted by Luke, remembered the "exact words" in question, etc.
Regarding how "far removed" James and the other brothers of Jesus were, you're changing the subject. I was addressing your claim that Luke wouldn't have consulted somebody who had been hostile to Christianity during the timeframe reported on. I cited Paul as a counterexample. You're now changing the subject to whether the source in question was "far removed". That's a different issue. And as far as that different issue is concerned, Luke was further removed from Mary than James was. If Luke could reliably report what Mary experienced, so could James. Neither Luke nor James needed to be close to the events in order to be close to Mary's memories of them.
It's not my claim that Luke would not have consulted someone who was previously hostile. My intention was more to point out that if they were believers, they would have cherished this information if they knew it. That the brothers were hostile in the time where Jesus was being opposed by the religious leaders, at least in my mind, shows that they were not knowledgeable of all the evidence for Jesus' miraculous birth.
ReplyDeleteIf Mary treasured these things as the text says, then she memorized them or the Holy Spirit caused her to recall the events and words. Yes, this is also separate issue but very plausible. Since I didn't intend what you claimed I meant, I am not changing the subject as a dodge or anything. In my thinking there are many more reasons to accept that Luke interviewed Mary for his nativity material than getting those details from the reported meeting with James. There is only one person who knew and treasured these things such that all the intimate details of Matthew 1-3. It is questionable to me also that James would have preserved Mary's genealogy as only she could have from her father Heli. James would only claim Joseph's heritage, since that was his father.
Mary may have wavered at times since the information received was cryptic enough to hide all the sorrows Jesus would have experienced. It was not so clear to her (possibly) that Jesus was the Lamb of God. Or, if it was clear, then a mother's love would still cause her to resist His need to take the route to the cross.
Again, the contents of the account are of a nature that it seems less likely that anyone besides Mary could competently convey to Luke these intricate details.
What Jesus' brothers knew at the time when they were unbelievers isn't all that's relevant. Once they became believers, there would have been changes in their priorities, interests, and so on.
DeleteAnd even when they were unbelievers, their unbelief doesn't tell us much about their knowledge of the events surrounding Jesus' birth. I've addressed the objection you're raising when Raymond Brown, Bart Ehrman, and others have brought it up in the past. See here and here, for example. Jesus was performing many miracles as an adult when people like the religious leaders and his brothers were opposing him. It wasn't a matter of a lack of knowledge of miracles in his life.
Regarding whether James "could competently convey to Luke these intricate details", you've given us no reason to think he couldn't. If Luke could preserve such details, I'm not aware of any reason to think James couldn't.