Some Agreements Among The New Testament Documents About Jesus' Siblings

I've been discussing the perpetual virginity of Mary in some of my recent posts, and one of the issues I've brought up is how often Jesus' brothers are referred to as being together (Matthew 12:46, John 2:12, 7:3, 7:10, Acts 1:14). I think they probably were Jesus' youngest siblings, born well after him (with his sisters and any brothers who didn't survive born earlier), and were still living in the same house after Jesus left. They probably were in their teens to twenties at the time of Jesus' public ministry, with the oldest brother (likely James) having taken over the leadership role Jesus had in the home after Joseph's death. Since Jesus' brothers were still in the same house, they often did things together. The sisters of Jesus are consistently not mentioned in these contexts, even though they are mentioned elsewhere (Matthew 13:56, Mark 6:3). They probably had moved out of the house, whereas Jesus' brothers were still there.

But whatever reason you'd propose for why they're together so often, and whatever view you hold of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the fact remains that the brothers are often referred to as being active together. Later on, the brothers are referred to as being active individually, later in Acts and in Galatians and the letters of James and Jude. The contrast between their acting together earlier and acting individually later can be seen within a single author in the case of Luke. He refers to the brothers' acting together (Luke 8:19, Acts 1:14), but refers to James' acting individually in later passages in Acts. This is another line of evidence for the historicity of the gospels and other parts of the New Testament. The gospels and the opening of Acts all agree that the brothers were active together, with the sisters not being mentioned in those contexts, and the parts of the New Testament discussing later history agree in portraying the brothers as being active in a more individual manner.

One way to appreciate the value of such agreements is to think of how easily the sources could have disagreed. Why agree that Jesus had any brothers? Or more than one? Or that they acted together so often during the timeframe the gospels and Acts 1 cover? Or that they were more individually active later? The sources could easily have been less harmonious and probably would have been if the New Testament were as unhistorical as critics sometimes suggest.

Did the earliest information about Christianity circulate entirely in oral form?

A post I wrote last week about Josephus was partly about the likelihood that the earliest Jewish opponents of Christianity communicated about the religion in writing. Elsewhere in Tom Schmidt's book that I cited, he discussed a line of evidence I've brought up before. "For the same reason during the 30s CE it is probable that Saul of Tarsus received letters from none other than a high priestly son of Ananus I instructing him to arrest followers of Jesus." (Josephus And Jesus [New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2025], 185) In a footnote, Schmidt cites Acts 9:1-2 and 22:5. There are other examples of actual or potential references to Christianity in written sources that are no longer extant, among both non-Christians and Christians. See my post here that discusses the example in Acts mentioned above and others. See, also, my discussion here regarding how the genealogy of Jesus in the gospel of Luke likely came from the brothers of Jesus, most likely James, and probably in written form.

What Justin Martyr said about early Jewish responses to Christianity, which I discussed in my last post, probably involved written material as well, not just oral sources.

People often speak of the earliest history of Christianity as if it involved only oral communication about the religion or as if any written sources that existed at the time had little or no significance. But that doesn't make much sense in the abstract, it's inconsistent with the large amount of documents we have from Christians from the middle of the first century onward, and it's contradicted by the references we have to early written sources that are no longer extant (the likely presence of written documents other than the canonical gospels in the "many" sources of Luke 1:1-3; Acts 9:1-2, 15:23-29; etc.). The nature of life is such that communicating orally makes more sense in some contexts, and communicating in writing makes more sense in other contexts. Both would have been present from the start of Christianity, not just later on. And that start of Christianity includes Jesus' life before his public ministry.

The Evidence Against Baptismal Regeneration In Galatians 3

I've written about how the context of justification is inconsistent with baptismal regeneration. Paul describes that context in Galatians 3:2 when he refers to "hearing with faith".

A New Book On 1 Corinthians 15

Sean Luke of Anglican Aesthetics interviewed James Ware about a book Ware recently published on 1 Corinthians 15, The Final Triumph Of God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2025). I've bought it, but haven't read it yet. The interview is worth listening to, since it makes a lot of good points about a lot of significant topics (the physical nature of Paul's view of the resurrection, the unity of the apostles, etc.).

They Kept Hearing

The early impact of Jesus' resurrection is sometimes divided up between two phases, the initial witnesses and the much later appearance to Paul. Not only are the two separated by a significant amount of time, but Paul is arguably the foremost apostle, at least in some contexts and probably overall.

Put yourself in the place of a Christian who was alive at the time of the appearance to Paul. The last resurrection appearance was years earlier. You weren't expecting any further appearances. You wouldn't have expected Saul of Tarsus to become a Christian, much less by means of a resurrection appearance. But "they kept hearing, 'He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy.'" (Galatians 1:23) Ananias "heard from many about this man" (Acts 9:13) and was hesitant about the report of his conversion, like the Christians in Jerusalem who "were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple" (9:26).

They didn't uncritically accept Paul's conversion. But Ananias was given some evidence in the form of a vision followed by the healing of Paul. And Paul would later perform "the signs of a true apostle" (2 Corinthians 12:12).

It's significant that the Christians in those earliest years were so well informed that Ananias had "heard from many" (Acts 9:13) about Paul and others "kept hearing" (Galatians 1:23) about his conversion and subsequent activities. That's not an atmosphere in which somebody like the author of Acts or his sources could make up an account of Paul's conversion that differed substantially from what the Christians at the time of the conversion heard so often and from so many sources. (It's also not the sort of atmosphere in which nobody would have gone to Jesus' tomb, nobody would have verified reports that it was empty, etc.) There was a large network of communication, and word often spread fast, as Paul's letters and other lines of evidence illustrate.

I want to return to something I said near the beginning of this post, to make another point. Most likely, none of the Christians at the time were expecting anything like a resurrection appearance to Saul of Tarsus. We're so accustomed to it now, after having two thousand years to get accustomed to it. We should keep in mind God's wisdom and generosity in doing it.

The Diversity Of The Empty Tomb Sources

I've argued elsewhere that the empty tomb was affirmed not just by the early Christians, but also by both their early Jewish opponents and their early Gentile opponents. In the post just linked, I argue for Justin Martyr's citation of a first-century Jewish source corroborating the empty tomb, and I discuss some other significant material in Justin. I've also written, here, about the tenacity of the Jewish corroboration, so that it persisted well beyond the time of the apostles and adapted to ongoing circumstances. The original Jewish explanation of the empty tomb, that Jesus' disciples stole the body, made far more sense early on than it did later. So, though some Jews continued to use the explanation that the disciples stole the body, others developed another argument, that a gardener took the body.

Not only are these large groups affirming the empty tomb diverse (Christians, non-Christian Jews, pagans), but there had to be a diversity of individuals within each of these groups. Paul was a former Pharisee and persecutor of Christians, and he would have had a substantial amount of knowledge of what non-Christian Jews knew about and were saying about the empty tomb. James would have had the knowledge of a family member who had close connections to other relatives of Jesus. If Jesus had received some other sort of burial than what the early Christians reported, such as being placed in some kind of family tomb, James would have been in a good position to know it. The Jewish leaders who had spent years working against Jesus and had arranged to have him crucified surely would have monitored what was going on and would have formulated a response to ongoing circumstances. Or think of Pilate's involvement in the events surrounding Jesus' death, including the entombing of the body and what happened immediately thereafter. Pilate not only had an opportunity to shape both Jewish and Gentile non-Christian views on these subjects, but also may have kept a relevant written record of some kind.

Even if one or more sources like the ones just mentioned were apathetic, careless, or some such thing, it's unlikely that all of them were and that they all erred in the same direction. The best explanation for such widespread affirmation of the empty tomb is that the tomb was empty.

Why only one appearance to Paul?

I mentioned the resurrection appearance to Paul in my last post, citing 1 Corinthians 15:8. It's noteworthy that Paul only refers to one appearance and calls it "last of all". That's harmonious with what Luke reports in Acts. The appearance to Paul is narrated three times in Acts, but it's limited to one appearance. By contrast, there were a few appearances to Peter mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, and some of the other apostles also saw the risen Jesus more than once. We're often told that the apostles were highly disunified, that their followers competed with one another, etc. So, why did neither Paul nor Luke claim more than one appearance to Paul? As N.T. Wright commented in another context, concerning James:

"In particular, if it is true that stories of people meeting Jesus were invented in order to legitimate leaders in the early church, it is remarkable that we hear nothing, throughout the gospel stories, of James the brother of Jesus….Why does he, too, not run a race against Peter [as in John 20:3-8]? Would that not have been a convenient fiction to clothe early ecclesial power struggles?" (The Resurrection Of The Son Of God [Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2003], 610)

The fact that Paul only claimed one appearance also goes against the notion that he was prone to hallucinations, delusional, overly imaginative, etc.

Some Agreements Between Paul And The Gospels On Miracles

In a recent post, I discussed the double healing passages, which involve incidents in which people are healed both physically and spiritually. Notice that those passages provide more examples of agreement between the Synoptics and the fourth gospel. And notice that Paul corroborates some of what we see in those passages. In Galatians 3:5, he refers to how miracles are often received through faith, as we see in the double healing passages in the gospels. And he compares that reception of miracles through faith to receiving justification through faith, as in the double healing passages.

What should we make of the discussion of confession in Romans 10?

Somebody wrote to me on Facebook:

The Problems For Baptismal Regeneration In Romans 10

I want to expand on what I've said about the subject in other posts (like here and here). Notice that baptism is absent across multiple contexts addressed in Romans 10: the activities of the justified person and others involved (no getting baptized, no baptizing, no sending a baptizer), the means by which justification is received (no baptism), the nearness of redemption (as referenced in verses 8-11, and both the theme of nearness in general and what this passage in particular says about it make more sense if you don't have to wait until baptism to be justified), and the Old Testament passages cited (involving no baptism or equivalent of it). The absence of baptism across such a large number and variety of contexts is conspicuous and is best explained by justification apart from baptism.

Corroboration Of The Gospels And Acts In Paul's Letters

The documents are written in different genres and at different lengths (the shortness of some of Paul's letters), among other differences. We shouldn't expect Paul to say much about the contents of the gospels and Acts. But he does say more than people typically suggest.

In addition to the more obvious references - the timing of Jesus' life, his crucifixion, the Last Supper, his being betrayed, his having multiple brothers, that one of the brothers was named James, the names of some of Jesus' disciples, etc. - there are many less obvious corroborations. I want to link some examples I've discussed in the past. See here on Jesus' childhood in Paul's letters. And here on Jesus' performance of miracles. Or here on undesigned coincidences, some of which involve the letters of Paul. Here's something on the details involved in Galatians 2:9. Go here and here for posts about details related to Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. See this post on the soteriology of the gospels, and notice the parallels in Paul (the significance of Abraham, justification through faith alone, etc.). Or the posts here and here on relational and moral issues, like the primacy of love and opposition to polygamy.

These examples, which are large in number and variety, are far from exhaustive. There's so much more that could be cited regarding Trinitarianism, moral issues, etc. And skeptics typically accept some facts about Jesus that aren't referred to anywhere in what they consider the genuine letters of Paul (e.g., Jesus' residence in Nazareth, his baptism by John the Baptist, the initial unbelief of his brothers).

Paul's Familiarity With The Other Resurrection Witnesses

Last year, I wrote about the significance of the details mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6 regarding the appearance to more than five hundred. Something else worth noting is that Paul's comments elsewhere corroborate the idea that he was closely following the lives of the other resurrection witnesses. Think of his comments in Galatians 1-2 about visiting other apostles, spending a lot of time with them, and coordinating his efforts with theirs. Or his discussion of the sufferings of the apostles in 1 Corinthians 4:9-13. Or his discussion of the practices of the apostles when traveling in 1 Corinthians 9:5. Or his reference to how they were all proclaiming the same message, a comment he makes shortly after 1 Corinthians 15:6, in verse 11.

Why don't the gospels have Jesus anticipating Paul?

It's often suggested that later Christians attributed words and actions to Jesus that advanced their later theology, preferences, and so on. The Jesus of the gospels is at least largely a fabrication of later Christianity.

There are a lot of ways to respond to that sort of claim. What I want to focus on here is a counterexample that doesn't get as much attention as it should. The Jesus of the gospels doesn't anticipate Paul. He doesn't address the controversies surrounding his apostleship, his not having been with Jesus "from the beginning" (John 15:27; see, also, Acts 1:21-22), etc. We don't just see controversies surrounding Paul in his letters, but also in other sources (2 Peter 3:15-16, first- and second-century heresies that opposed Paul).

Think of Luke especially. He thought highly of Paul and says a lot about him in Acts. But Jesus doesn't anticipate Paul in Luke's gospel. To the contrary, he highlights the significance of having twelve apostles (Luke 22:28-30), and the opening of Acts even has a set of requirements for apostleship that would exclude Paul (1:21-22).

This sort of refraining from reading Paul back into the gospels (and the earliest portions of Acts) is even more significant when interacting with critics who allege that Paul created Christianity, radically redefined it, or something else along those lines. If later Christianity was shaping the gospels and the earlier portions of Acts as much as critics often suggest, you wouldn't know it from looking at the relationship between those documents and Paul.

Neglected Evidence For Acts' Material On The Resurrection Appearance To Paul

There are some good arguments that are often brought up for the material on Jesus' appearance to Paul in Acts, such as the authorship of Luke/Acts and the general historical reliability of the author. See, for example, my posts on such issues here, Craig Keener's video on Luke's historiography here, and a video featuring Lydia McGrew on the subject of hard things Acts gets right here. What I want to focus on in this post is some evidence that comes up less often. I'll occasionally mention more common arguments in the process of discussing the less common ones, but my focus here is on lines of evidence that have gotten less attention.

Paul's Suffering And Prophecy Fulfillment

I've been thinking about Paul's comments in 2 Corinthians 11 regarding how he'd suffered as a Christian. What he says there is significant in a lot of contexts. It provides further evidence that the earliest Christians lived in a setting in which there was a large amount of potential to suffer for the claims they were making (about Jesus' resurrection and other topics). Given Jesus' crucifixion, Paul's former persecution of Christians, and Paul's references to his own suffering in 2 Corinthians 11 and elsewhere, we have multiple, independent lines of evidence that Christianity arose in that kind of atmosphere. And what Paul reports about his own experiences corroborates much of what the gospels and Acts report about such circumstances. The gospels' reports about efforts to throw Jesus over a cliff or stone him, for example, are rendered more plausible by what Paul tells us about the violent reactions he often met with. There are some undesigned coincidences between 2 Corinthians 11 and the gospels and Acts as well. These are just a few examples of the value of Paul's comments in 2 Corinthians 11. What I want to do in the remainder of this post is focus on one of the other examples, the significance of the passage in a context involving prophecy fulfillment.

Why forge three pastoral letters rather than one?

Tim Challies recently linked an article that discusses some of the reasons for accepting the Pauline authorship of the pastorals. I want to highlight one of those reasons here, one that I think has been especially neglected.

If the letters were forged by one individual, thus explaining their similarities, why forge three letters instead of one or two? There doesn't seem to be sufficient motive to forge any of them, given their contents and the time when they allegedly were forged, for example. But if somebody wanted to forge such content, why not put it in the form of a smaller number of letters? The more letters you forge, the harder it is to convince people that the letters are genuine despite a lack of the evidence you'd expect to accompany genuineness (the lack of previous discussion of the documents, the lack of the documents' presence in other locations, etc.). Why try to get away with forging so often when you can so easily do it less?

Ephesian Sources On Jesus' Childhood

We're often told that the early Christians don't show much interest in Jesus' childhood outside the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke. Actually, there's more material on the subject elsewhere than is typically suggested. Some of those other sources are affiliated with Ephesus in one way or another, so we can summarize much of that evidence by referring to Ephesian sources. There's reason to think the Ephesian church was well informed about Jesus' childhood and was expected by other Christians to be well informed about the subject. What the sources writing to and from Ephesus tell us suggests that there was some interest in Jesus' childhood in Ephesus, and what's said about the subject corroborates and supplements what Matthew and Luke reported.

The Gospels And Acts' Polymodal Resurrection Accounts Corroborated In The New Testament Letters

The comments about hearing, seeing, and touching in 1 John 1:1 aren't limited to resurrection appearances, but surely included them and included them prominently. The passage is about the Word of Life, a context in which including resurrection from the dead makes more sense than not including it. The author is writing as one among the "we" of apostolic eyewitnesses, in contrast to the "you" of his audience. The apostolic experience wasn't limited to witnessing the resurrected Christ, but did include witnessing him in that context (Acts 1:21-22, 1 Corinthians 9:1). It could be argued that the resurrection experiences only included the seeing mentioned in 1 John 1:1, not the hearing and touching, but that's a less likely interpretation for multiple reasons. It's more complicated, and it involves an unlikely scenario in which a witness like the letter's author would be so interested in hearing and touching for the large majority of Jesus' life, but not so interested or unable to obtain hearing and touching in the resurrection portion of Jesus' life. The simplest and best understanding of 1 John 1:1 is that the author is appealing to the apostolic polymodal interaction with Jesus throughout his life, including his resurrection appearances. Given the emphasis placed on witnessing Jesus' resurrection in particular in order to qualify as an apostle (Acts 10:40-41, 22:14-15, 1 Corinthians 9:1), it would go against the context of apostolicity to make the apostolic experience in 1 John 1:1 so much more limited in the resurrection context than in the pre-resurrection context. Notice, also, that even in a scenario in which the author happened to never get an opportunity to hear or touch Jesus in the resurrection context, the passage would still be another example of the witnesses' interest in such interactions with Jesus. Given the large number of resurrection appearances that were reported and how many people were involved (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:5-8), it's highly unlikely that few or none of the hundreds of people involved attempted to interact with Jesus in the way described in 1 John 1:1 or that they kept trying and failing to do so without realizing they were hallucinating, imagining things, or whatever. And 1 John 1:1 is a "we" passage. So, the critic who wants to appeal to the possibility that the author himself happened to only think he saw the risen Jesus, without thinking he heard or touched him, still has to address the other resurrection witnesses included in the "we".

1 Timothy 5:18 is also relevant. For more about the likely reference to Luke's gospel as scripture in that passage, see here.

The Level Of Detail In 1 Corinthians 15:6

Jesus' resurrection appearance to more than 500, mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15:6, tends to get underestimated in our day. But there's a lot to commend it and warrant assigning the passage more significance than people often do.

One of the reasons why the passage should be held in higher regard is the level of detail it includes about significant issues. Paul is briefly summarizing several of Jesus' resurrection appearances, yet a series of important details about the appearance under consideration are included even in that brief summarizing context. Paul refers to the relative chronology of the appearance ("After that"), the number of people involved, saying "more than" instead of just leaving it at a rough estimate of 500, specifies their gender ("brethren"), recognizes the significance of their having seen Jesus "at one time" and the importance of mentioning that detail, and followed their lives since the time of the appearance enough to know that "most" are still alive and the value of their still being alive. (See here regarding the likelihood that some non-Christians were present during the appearance.) Paul not only experienced a resurrection appearance himself, but also had a lot of interest in and knowledge about the appearances to others. And the details he shows interest in in 1 Corinthians 15:6 reflect well on him, since they're such significant ones.

How Jesus' Relatives Shaped Our View Of His Childhood

Early beliefs about Jesus' childhood developed in a context in which relatives of Jesus, including some who lived with him for a long time and interacted with him in other contexts, were highly accessible and often involved in the life of the church. When I mention the earliest beliefs about his childhood, I'm not just referring to Christian beliefs. I'm also referring to the views of non-Christians. They, too, had access to Jesus' relatives (e.g., Mark 3:21-35, 6:1-6; Josephus, Antiquities Of The Jews, 20:9:1). Non-Christians didn't just have access to relatives of Jesus who were believers, but also had access to relatives who were unbelievers. Part of what we need to take into account when evaluating any view of Jesus' childhood is how well it addresses the influence of his relatives.

I want to recommend some resources on those relatives and make some points that are relevant to Christmas issues. Jesus' family is prominent in some modern Christmas contexts, such as theology and music. But there's been a lot of neglect of the role of his relatives in the context of the historical evidence pertaining to his childhood.