Ep 99: Why Can't You Be Like Your Brother?

00:00He's like, I wish y'all were like me, but you know, if you can't hack it, then go ahead

00:07get married so you can have occasional prophylactic and passionless intercourse.

00:13Which sounds great.

00:14Yeah.

00:15Oh, yeah.

00:16It's definitely what everybody was joining the church for.

00:20Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan and I'm Dan Beacher and you're listening to the Data

00:28Over Dogma podcast where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible

00:33and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:38How are things in the new digs?

00:40Oh, things are going good, just getting used to everything and enjoying a slightly different

00:47lifestyle.

00:48I'm all urban now, so that's kind of fun.

00:53You were just slightly suburban, just leaning into suburban.

00:56Yeah, yeah, leaning to it, I was, I was, I was a suburb, I was urban, but suburb rising.

01:03I was on, I was a cusp and now I've fallen, I'm straight downtown, Julie Brown is what

01:10I am.

01:11So there you go.

01:13There you go.

01:14Today's show is going to be fun.

01:15We got, we got a Houdis or Houdat, I don't know which one it is.

01:22But yeah, we're going to be talking about Jesus's brother, which I think is fascinating

01:27and something that I've been confused about for a while.

01:29So I'm glad that we will get to clear up any ambiguities there.

01:33And then in the second half of the show, we got a, what is that?

01:38Because you have mentioned Masoretic texts, the Masoretic text.

01:44I guess there's only one or well, that that's a long story, but we'll get to it.

01:51We'll get to it.

01:52We'll get to it.

01:53It's in the, it's in the, it's in the not too distant future.

01:55Yeah.

01:56But for now, Houdat, okay, so Houdat, we're, we're, we're in the, we're, we're in the

02:06New Testament.

02:07We're, apparently Jesus has a brother or, or actually many brothers as I have learned,

02:16as I sort of went through the thing.

02:19And sister and, and, and, brethren and sister and, yeah, yeah, he has his big family has

02:26a prolific family.

02:27They were Catholic.

02:28So, well, if they were, that poses a problem that we're going to get to, but yeah, the,

02:37so let's talk about James, the brother of Jesus.

02:42All right.

02:43So, and, and one of the interesting things, I guess we can just do this disambiguation

02:48now if it's as good a time as any, there are, there are other James's in the, in the New

02:54Testament.

02:55And in fact, there are, there are numerous, we've got James, the great son of Zebedee,

03:00brother of John, the apostle.

03:01So John, the beloved apostle, according to tradition, also had a brother named James,

03:09James, son of Alpheus, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, but almost, but you know, there's,

03:15we don't really know anything about him.

03:16He just mentioned once, we got James the less, which is an un, an unfortunate epithet.

03:21It just seems so mean is what it's saying.

03:24Yeah.

03:25It could, could we say something other than, can we just say that I'm short and not call

03:30me the less, please?

03:33Homicros is the, is the Greek James, the father of Jude, the apostle.

03:39Okay.

03:40James, the brother of Jude mentioned in the epistle of Jude.

03:45Okay.

03:46Whoo.

03:47So we got, we got a handful of James's there.

03:50There are Jimmy James, Jimbo, Jim Bobs, running all over the place.

03:55Yeah.

03:56I don't know how they told each other apart, but, and I don't know how you tell them apart

04:01necessarily in the Bible, because it's not always disambiguated to the way that you have

04:05just gone through.

04:06As a matter of fact, not, not clear.

04:08I, I, you know, as I was looking through this, it's unclear, like, like, I think some

04:15people purposefully further ambiguous, and ambiguous them just to avoid certain theological

04:25problems that crop up when you say that Jesus has a brother, because that can be a problem,

04:33especially if you are of the belief that Mary remained a virgin through her life.

04:40Yes.

04:41So let's talk about that, because that's not, that's not necessarily the case.

04:45Like, it doesn't, it's not necessary that she remained a virgin.

04:51That was just a postulation, a postulate that was proposed, and then a bunch of people ran

04:58with it.

04:59Yeah.

05:00And I think you, I don't think it comes directly from the proto gospel of James, but you have

05:10this idea that she remained a virgin, even after giving birth from the proto gospel,

05:15where the midwife is like, hang on a minute.

05:17I'm just going to check to see if something is still intact.

05:22And, and I was like, whoa, that's, it's still intent that her hand catches fire and she's

05:27got to pray to God to, to put it out because that God was like, how dare you, um, don't

05:32touch that.

05:33Yeah.

05:34Got went a little MC Hammer on, um, on the, uh, the midwife.

05:43And, and so there's this tradition that she remained a virgin and for whatever reason,

05:48the tradition also developed that she remained a virgin throughout the rest of her life.

05:52Right.

05:53And I, and I think this arises because at the time, you know, there was a, uh, there was

05:58a premium put on celibacy and on abstinence, not just abstinence, but like, you know, full-time,

06:04uh, career abstinence, you are a celibate.

06:08And because, uh, there were, there were an awful lot of, um, ascetics in early Christianity

06:14that we're trying to avoid all of the trappings of, uh, the flesh.

06:20And this has kind of a platonic, uh, idea where, uh, you know, you're, you're supposed

06:26to be a spiritual being, you should suppose to overcome and transcend this, uh, ever-changing

06:31corrupt fleshly body.

06:34And you know, we see this in Matthew, uh, where the, the real ones are the ones who,

06:39uh, you know, castrate themselves for the kingdom of heaven, uh, those who make themselves

06:44eunuchs for the kingdom of God.

06:45We see this in Paul.

06:46Yeah.

06:47Where he's like, I wish y'all were like me, but, uh, you know, if you can't, if you can't

06:51hack it, then go ahead, get married so you can have occasional prophylactic and passionless

06:59intercourse.

07:00Um, which sounds great.

07:02Yeah.

07:03Oh yeah.

07:04It's definitely, uh, what everybody was joining the church for.

07:08And, uh, and so the idea was that there was something sinful about sexual intercourse.

07:14Right.

07:15And so it was like, well, we're not going to besmirch the good name of, uh, you know,

07:21Mary.

07:22And so for whatever reason that, that idea stuck.

07:26And so to make up for it or to account for the breath, the brethren of Jesus, uh, and

07:31I, and I think you do see this in the proto gospel of James, they had this idea that Joseph

07:36had a previous wife who passed away.

07:39And so all of the brothers are actually Joseph's children from a previous marriage.

07:44And so Mary is in the position of stepmother to, uh, all of these others.

07:49So that's, uh, one of the rationalizations for that.

07:51And when you say all of these others, I'm just going to quickly read from Matthew, what

07:56is it?

07:57Matthew 1355.

07:58Yeah.

07:59Yeah.

08:00Where, where it talks, it, it, and, and this is a story, a very brief story that's repeated

08:06in Mark, but in Matthew, it says, uh, I mean, Jesus has come to his hometown of Nazareth.

08:14Uh, and he's, he's preaching to them.

08:17And they're all just sort of rejecting him.

08:19And they're like, is this not the carpenter's son?

08:22Is this, is not his mother called Mary and are not his brothers, James and Joseph and

08:27Simon and Judas, I assume all different just Simon and Judas, like these aren't the,

08:34the simons and Judas's that we hear about, but, and are not all his sisters.

08:40So not, not just both all his sisters with us.

08:45So apparently in his previous marriage, according to that theory, Joseph was wolf.

08:52He was, he was going to town cause that is a lot of siblings to produce in a previous

08:58marriage.

08:59And then, and then, and these presumably are people who survived into adulthood who are

09:04still living, uh, when this happens, which, which means, um, you know, based on the odds,

09:11they probably would have had to have, uh, close to twice as many total pregnancies.

09:16Oh, right.

09:17Yeah.

09:18Because the, you know, you were lucky if, if you got, if you got north of 50% of your

09:24offspring surviving childbirth and then into adulthood.

09:28So I'm starting to think it's a little wonder that Joseph's first wife didn't survive.

09:32Like suddenly that makes a lot of sense.

09:36And in Matthew, it says James and Joseph in, in Mark six, three, the, the Greek has Yositos,

09:45which is usually transliterated in the English as Joseph's.

09:49Oh, yeah, which is, um, an unusual name, uh, but in Matthew, it's, uh, Yosif.

09:57So it's Joseph.

09:58Oh, interesting.

09:59So, so even in the Greek, it is a different name, uh, yeah, I'm going to look at the critical

10:05apparatus here to see if it's different in other manuscripts.

10:12Yeah.

10:13It looks like, it looks like even some manuscripts of Mark have Joseph there, uh, and then several

10:19of them have Yosie.

10:20Oh, interesting.

10:22Yeah.

10:23And I'm guessing that, uh, I mean, I'm, I've been looking at the NRSVUE.

10:28Mm hmm.

10:29I'm guessing that some of the translations harmonize those so that they both say the

10:35same name.

10:36Uh, the King James version has Joseph's in Matthew as well.

10:40Mm hmm.

10:41And I don't know if that's because of, well, I guess I could just look, um, that, that

10:45might be because the, uh, the Texas receptus read, uh, Joseph's, but let me, uh, pull up

10:55the Texas receptus and see if, uh, see what we have there, Joseph's, Yosie's, yeah.

11:02So the Texas receptus.

11:04So that is the later, um, manuscript tradition that formed the, the source text for our,

11:11our earliest English translations, right, um, including the King James version.

11:15That reads Yosie's just like Mark.

11:17So it looks like we must have, uh, decided we had better manuscript witnesses to the

11:22name Joseph somewhere along the way.

11:25Interesting.

11:26Yeah.

11:27All right.

11:28So anyway, that, that's not the brother that we're interested in though.

11:30Right.

11:31That's because, uh, James has a whole life of his own as a, as a, as a big time Christian.

11:41He does.

11:42He, um, and, and a lot of scholars think that he was basically the leader of the followers

11:49of Jesus who remained in Jerusalem up until around, uh, the Roman invasion and the siege.

11:57Uh, he was probably in charge there.

12:00You had Paul was doing stuff out in, uh, in, uh, Anatolia and elsewhere.

12:07Peter was probably also, um, a leader nearby, but, uh, a lot of scholars suggest that James

12:13would have been in charge in Jerusalem.

12:16And we even have Paul when he comes into town and in Galatians one, we have Paul talking

12:21about, um, some of the other apostles that he hung out with, uh, says, uh, do, I think

12:29it starts around verse 18.

12:31Yeah.

12:32Then after three years, I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Kphos, which is Peter, and stayed

12:38with him 15 days, but I did not see any other apostle except James, the Lord's brother.

12:45So, um, so Paul knew James and Peter and they were both hanging out in, uh, in Jerusalem

12:51and you know, it says, uh, James, the Lord's brother, there are some folks who argue that

12:55this epithet, the Lord's brother is really just, and, and kind of an honorific.

13:00This is a person who was considered a follower of Jesus.

13:03And so you called your, uh, your, the other fellow followers, brother and sister, similar

13:09to, um, you know, if you watch awful old movies about Mormonism, they always talk about brother

13:16Joseph.

13:17Uh, and so, uh, maybe that's what's going on, maybe that's why they're calling James that,

13:21but, uh, there, Paul has a habit of only refer, he like never refers to Peter as the Lord's

13:26brother.

13:27Right.

13:28It's only James is the Lord's brother.

13:29There's, there's not really a case to make that this is anything other than a recognition

13:33that he is Jesus's biological brother.

13:36Yeah.

13:37I mean, you, you say there's not a case to make, but people still to this, to make the

13:41case, to make the case because again, they're trying to solve the, the problem of, uh, the

13:47other hood of Jesus ruining, uh, ruining the, uh, the, the virginity of Mary.

13:54So yeah, so they'll find, they, they, I, you know, I found a whole bunch of different

13:58ways that people, especially, uh, in, um, I think it's Eastern Christianity.

14:04And also, uh, is it, it does, does Catholicism still want to hold to, uh, to Mary's perpetual

14:14virginity, uh, yeah, as far as I know, um, I, I am not going to speak for Catholics.

14:20This is something that we can ask Michael Pepperd, uh, when we have him on the show,

14:25uh, because we have his book, how Catholics read the, or approach the Bible, um, or what

14:29it encounter.

14:30What is the title?

14:32How Catholics encounter the Bible.

14:34Yes.

14:35That's very purposefully, he didn't say read, but encounter, um, so, uh, yeah, I, I think

14:42it's very common and yeah, the, the data don't really support it.

14:46Yeah.

14:47Um, but we have, uh, it looks like Herod Agrippa at some point chased Peter off, uh, which would

14:52have left James to be the main authority who, uh, presides over the council of Jerusalem,

14:58which we hear about in the book of Acts, uh, and, and Paul talks about, uh, James as well.

15:04And then it seems he is executed somewhere along the way, either in 62 CE or in 69 CE,

15:14depending on who you're listening to.

15:16Mm.

15:17Um, so we have, uh, an interesting reference in Josephus and the antiquities of the Jews

15:23or the Judean antiquities or Jewish antiquities, however you want to translate that, uh, in

15:27book 20 chapter nine paragraph one, we have this, uh, this person who took the high priesthood

15:34and this is kind of all, you know, like palace intrigue style stuff in this time period,

15:40the high priesthood was not necessarily hereditary.

15:44It was something, it was appointed by the Roman overlords.

15:51And so while it could be hereditary, you could also have somebody who just comes in

15:54and pays more money. And then Rome says, Hey, you, you're out. Hey, you, you're in. Um,

15:59so it was considered corrupt by, um, some folks, but, uh, at least I am going to go out of

16:07my way to not be childish. When you say this guy's name, the name of the guy that took

16:12over, uh, well, how to pronounce it, how to pronounce it. An anus Ben, an anus.

16:20That's good. That's a lot better pronunciation than an anus, but it's how my brain will

16:26only see it as I read it. So anyway, I didn't, I didn't manage to get through it without

16:31being childish. I apologize. Yeah. Well, I, that's, um, and, and the, uh, the Hebrew

16:36would have been Henan Ben, Henan. Oh, well, that's a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. So the,

16:42the oose on the end is, is really just a relic of the transliteration into, uh, Greek

16:49and then Latin. Right. So yeah. So he's, uh, he's a high priest. And Josephus says, an

16:54anus or hanan, uh, who, as we have told you already, took the high priesthood was a bold

17:00man in his temper and very insolent. He was also of the sect of the Sadducees. And unfortunately

17:05I've got a read from, uh, the old Felman, or is this the Felman? Oh, this is the Felman

17:10translation. I thought this was, there's another translation that, uh, was done by a

17:14Christian that is not great, but this is the LCL. This is the low classical library translation.

17:19This one is good. Um, also of the sect of the Sadducees who are very rigid and judging

17:24offenders above all the rest of the Jews as we have already observed when therefore hanan

17:30was of this disposition. He thought he had now a proper opportunity to exercise his authority.

17:36Festus was now dead and albinus or albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the

17:43Sanhedrin of judges and brought them, or brought before them, the brother of Jesus who is called

17:47Christ, whose name was James. And this is, this is one of the two references to Jesus

17:54in Josephus. Right. And again, we have a bunch of people who try to make the case, but there's

17:59not really a case or interpolation here. There's not really a case to make that Christians

18:04were like, Oh, what if we add Jesus here? Um, because Josephus is saying the brother of

18:09Jesus who was called Christ. And in this way, it's kind of dismissing the identification

18:14of Jesus as the anointed one. He's saying, Oh, yeah, other people called him Christ, those

18:19weirdos. Anyway, whose name was James and some others. And when he had formed an accusation

18:25against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned. So this would have happened

18:32around 62 CE. In other words, the cats away. And so the mouse is going to play and kill

18:40the enemies. Right. You know, as if, uh, well, I won't get political, but imagine the Constitution

18:48suddenly was out of town. There would be a lot of bad things happening in our nation

18:53right now. Um, so we have, uh, according to Josephus, uh, James is, um, unjustly executed

19:01by, uh, Hanan around 62 CE. And we can, but if we go look at other early Christian authors

19:11Clement of Alexandria, you see this of Caesarea, who was, uh, good buddies with, um, Emperor

19:18Constantine, uh, had Jessopus or Haggessapus is another early Christian author. These

19:25folks insist that James was killed around 69 CE, uh, in the hullabaloo of the, uh, Roman

19:33siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple and all that kind of stuff. So we

19:39don't have a real clear accounts. Uh, if we look at all those authors, some of them have

19:44more detailed accounts of what happened to James than others. But, um, it's in the air.

19:49I think most, it's up in the air. Uh, I think most scholars would probably say of all these

19:54folks, Josephus is probably the closest to the events and is probably to be trusted the

20:01most.

20:06And the other accounts, uh, if I'm, unless I miss my guess would not have, uh, have identified

20:13James as the brother of Jesus because, and the reason I know that is because I know that

20:19Josephus is kind of the only historian to have mentioned Jesus contemporaneously. Am I right

20:26about contemporaneously? Josephus is writing about 30 years later. Right. Um, but is yeah,

20:31but he would have been, he would have been alive when this was going on. So he was, um,

20:39was around during that time period. Um, I, um, to be honest, I don't know if the other

20:44ones, uh, refer to him as the brother of Jesus, but that's in the New Testament. I mean,

20:50why would you? Well, yeah, question it. I, and I don't know if the tradition had become

20:55firmly implanted by, you know, we're, we're talking, uh, second, third, fourth century

21:01CE. So we're not, we're not in delayed antiquity yet. Um, but yeah, so probably somewhere around

21:0962 CE, he's out of the picture. And this is one of the reasons that scholars think when

21:14it comes time to figure out who was the author of the gospels, the foremost prominence disciples

21:20of Jesus were Peter, James, John and Paul. And so you would expect, uh, you, you would

21:28hope that, you know, maybe James would get credit for, for one of these gospels, but

21:32he was, he was dead before these gospels started circulating. So there's, there wouldn't have

21:37been a good case to make that James had written one of these gospels. They didn't start getting

21:42written down until, uh, around 70 CE after James was gone. So, uh, so that's why scholars

21:49think, well, that's why Matthew got one. Cause there was one left over and it was like, well,

21:54what are we going to do here? Well, there's this guy Matthew and he's, he goes by Levi

21:58and all the other gospels, but here he's Matthew. So maybe he was like, I'm going to get my

22:02freaking name right in one of these. Um, but you have ways to get from the other gospel

22:10authors to, uh, Peter, uh, Paul and John because Mark was supposed to be the interpreter of

22:17Peter. Right. And so you tag the, the petrine base by attributing one gospel to Mark. You've

22:23got John and then, uh, Luke was supposed to be the traveling companion of Paul. So you

22:29tag the Pauline base by attributing a gospel to Luke. So you get three of the four and

22:34then Matthew is your wild card. So interesting. Well, you've got to play off.

22:38Yeah. Okay. That's, I, I've got to check my fantasy league, but I think I, I think I've

22:45got all of them. Uh, the last thing though, is that even though none of the gospels are

22:50attributed to James, there is the book of James. There is the book of James is the

22:54epistle of James is so Oi. Oh, I get an Oi from that. Okay. Talk to me about that. Oi.

23:02Well, um, I don't think there are scholars, many scholars anyway who take seriously, uh,

23:09the notion that, uh, that James was actually written by the brother of Jesus. This is probably

23:14coming from, uh, from much later. Uh, but there's, um, I pulled up one of the, um, one

23:22of the commentary series I liked. There are four commentary series that I have pointed

23:27to regularly as I think the most reliable critical commentary series. Uh, Herman is my

23:33favorite anchor Yale Bible commentary series is good. The, uh, Old Testament library slash

23:40New Testament library is very good. And then the ICC, which is the international critical

23:44commentary is, uh, another one that I think is really good. And Dale Allison Jr is, uh,

23:52is a great scholar who wrote the, uh, the volume on James. And, uh, one of, one of the

23:59interesting things is, um, there's a, there's been an argument about which James is, is

24:07the epistle of James actually attributed to, is it James, the brother of Jesus? Or is it

24:11somebody else? We got a lot of James's. We've already established there's a, there's plenty

24:16of James's to choose from. And they're, who knows that you could throw another James into

24:20the mix. Yeah, well, there could be one we don't know. Um, and yeah, that's always, it's

24:27always an option. We always tend to want to side with the, the devil we do know, but like,

24:33you know, that's like, like John, the revelator, the, the author of Revelation, people are like,

24:38we got, we got another John over here. We could just, you know, say the same John. Yeah,

24:43they like one of them, uh, is clearly very educated and the other one is clearly not.

24:49But, um, let's just say they're the same John. I mean, who's going to know? Who's going

24:53to know? But this is, so, so the, so the, the epistle of James chapter one, verse one starts

25:00with James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, two of the 12 tribes in the

25:06dispersion greetings. Yeah. So not, not making many claims there. Right. Does not say,

25:12same James, brother of Jesus or anything like that. Yeah. Says a servant of God and the

25:18Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah. So the, uh, I think the, the scholarly consensus is that this

25:23was, uh, this was not written by the brother of Jesus. If it was written by a dude named

25:28James, it's probably a James we don't know about, uh, but more than likely, um, or at

25:35least likely, uh, this is suit epigraphic. Somebody is writing later and trying to sound

25:42like, uh, the brother of Jesus, uh, but, but you can look for, uh, you can look in that

25:48the ICC, the international critical commentary, uh, the discussion of authorship is, um, is

25:57long, it's many pages. Um, but, uh, there, and there's one really interesting thing

26:03here. He's got, um, well, he concludes the authorship thing, but saying to sum up the

26:08previous pages, although not all of the arguments marshaled to deny authorship by the brother

26:13of James, Jesus have merit taken together, tip the scale. So denying authorship by, by

26:20James, the brother of Jesus is, is what tips the scale. Hence this commentary, uh, adopts

26:25the thesis that James is a pseudo-pigraphon. It was, is a false writing. And then the next

26:32thing is, uh, let's talk about date. As for the date of James, opinion is here as on so

26:37much else, remarkably diverse. Here is a sampling and then he lists like three dozen scholars

26:44and what they say about the date of James and we have between 120 and 150, we have before

26:5150, we have 44 to 66, we have 40 to 50, 75 to 125, 120 to 50, 80 to 130, 57 to 62. Uh,

27:00so it's, it's like basically during James's lifetime or we after James's lifetime into

27:07like the second quarter of the second century CE. Okay. So if I put it, uh, if I put the

27:13over under, uh, at a hundred, are you going? Are you taking the over? You taking the under?

27:17Uh, I personally would take the over. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. I, I think the, I think

27:24overall the, uh, what they call the, the Catholic epistles, uh, Peter, James, John, Jude, uh,

27:32I think those are overwhelmingly, probably second century. Okay. Um, and, and I think

27:37second Peter is probably considered the last one written, which would be somewhere between

27:42120 and 150 CE. And I wouldn't be surprised. And, and, uh, also for the pastoral epistles,

27:48uh, first and second Timothy and, uh, Titus, those are probably also, um, maybe first quarter

27:54of the second century, uh, but the, the Joe Hennine epistles, the, the petrine epistles,

28:01uh, the Jacobian epistle. Um, that's this one. That's the James. Yes. Stop, stop confusing

28:09us with, with names. Well, if you look at that, that's, that's because it's yackaboos.

28:15Am I right? It's yackaboos. Yeah. That something I was going to point out when you look at

28:18those names, like we look at Joseph's versus Joseph. Yeah. In, uh, in the Greek of Matthew

28:24and Mark, uh, nothing says James in there. It says, it says, uh, Jacob in there, which

28:31is the origin of the name James oddly enough. Yeah. Uh, and if you look at the epistle of

28:36James in Greek, it will be, um, it, it just says according to, or it says, um, the letter

28:45of Jacob. And this, and this comes from Hebrew. And then when it goes into, um, in the Greek

28:50is yackabos. And then in the Latin is yackaboos. Oh God. And then you have a bunch of regional

28:55variations, you know, uh, you get some roadization and some parts of, uh, you know, some places,

29:02you drop your ours and, uh, you, you get a lot of, uh, variations. And so yackaboos gets

29:08nasalized and becomes yackomboos. And then you, you, you drop the B and you get yackamoos.

29:15And that's where you get, uh, yackimo, which is a, I've known some yackamos in, in Uruguay,

29:22for instance, that's not an uncommon name in, in Spanish speaking places. Well, and Italian

29:27has the name jakimo, jakimo. Yeah. And then, um, uh, you also, uh, that's where Iago comes

29:33from. Right. And, um, and you've got some, some Portuguese, uh, names. You have, uh,

29:39Tiago, which probably comes from the combination of San and Tiago. You got San Diego, which

29:48contrary to a popular opinion, uh, doesn't mean something else. Uh, something, something

29:55involving a whale. Is that where you're going with that? It's, it's not anatomical in orientation,

29:59that, that particular name, but, but, um, San Diego, Santiago, Chile. Uh, these are, these

30:06are variations on St. James. Uh, and then you go from yackimo and yackamos to, uh, the

30:12sea gets, uh, gets dropped, uh, I think in French. And so, um, we get like yamis. And

30:18then once we get the J, uh, in like the 17th century in English, uh, that becomes James

30:25as the name comes into English. So, uh, and you know, you in Spanish, you get the Jaime

30:30and, um, stuff. Yeah. It's interesting that we have both Jacob and James in our language

30:35and yeah, they have, they have, you know, Diego and Jaime and all of these, like it's

30:40interesting that, that various iterations still survive. They get preserved. Yeah. Well, I,

30:46I looked at, uh, when I was living over in England, I was like, I'm going to do some heraldry.

30:50And I went and looked at my family history and I've had, um, like my mom has done a bunch

30:57of family history and, uh, and we go back to, uh, at least the name McClellan goes back

31:03to, uh, the, there's a McClellan castle in a lovely little town called Kircubri, uh, in

31:10the Dumfries in Scotland. We've been there and, um, but I looked into all the variants

31:17on that name, which comes from, uh, son of the servant of St. Wolf is where McClellan,

31:23um, originates, but, uh, like we have a, we have neighbors, uh, named the Gilliland's

31:30and that is a variant of McClellan. Oh, wow. Oh, interesting. Like there are, there are

31:35over a hundred different variants forms of, uh, last names that derive from McClellan.

31:43I thought you were going to go to like McClellan with a D, but no, you went Gilliland or whatever.

31:48Yeah. You went off the rails on that. It's, it is bananas. Yeah. How many have any very,

31:54but you know, and that's what gives us Jacob and James. So yeah, you know, we, we're living

31:59just a few houses, uh, down from each other and you wouldn't even know it that they're,

32:02they're both descended from the exact same last name. Yeah. Uh, so yeah, it is a peculiar

32:07little, uh, accident of, uh, linguistics and language and stuff like that. Yeah. All right.

32:13Well, I think, I think that wraps up the brother of Jesus, uh, as best we can. Uh, I'm fascinated.

32:20I, one wonders, there's, there's so many questions. Like the more you dig into this stuff, the

32:26more like you get more questions than you get answers. And that's kind of how all of

32:30this works. But yes, it's a fun thing to explore. It is, it is so interesting that of all the

32:35disciples that we know of from the New Testament, we have traditions about, you know, a bunch

32:41of them and, and most of those traditions are probably don't have any truth to them.

32:47But there, we, we seem to think we know an awful lot about James. Um, and it's so, um,

32:53it's so fascinating that Josephus preserves that little reference to him. I don't know

32:56where he's just like, there was a dude named James. Yeah. His brother thought he was the

33:00Messiah. Um, and, or other people thought his brother was the Messiah, but Josephus is like,

33:05I'm concerned with what happened to this James guy. Uh, although it is, it is really about just

33:10point, uh, kind of an illustration of, uh, how much of, uh, uh, how much this guy Ananu's lived

33:18up to his namesake. Um, right. At least, uh, a, uh, mispronunciation of his namesake. Yeah,

33:26exactly. All right. Well, uh, that's it for that. Let's move on to our, our next, uh, segment.

33:33What is that? By the way, before you get into this, uh, I got, I got dragged,

33:43um, through them across, raked across the coals, uh, because I mentioned that what is that? I

33:52mentioned a Saturday night live skit about that. Oh, yes. And I said the very first season and, um,

33:58I had a bunch of, uh, people point out it was actually the first episode of the fifth season.

34:04You, you were not raked across coals. You were gently corrected. I was, I was, I'm just, I'm just,

34:10I'm just going to be dramatic about it because I think it's funny that, uh, I was like, I think

34:14it's pretty sure it's the first season. You were way off, man. I was way off. I was off by four whole

34:21years because Bill Murray wasn't even part of the cast yet. It feels shameful now. I feel like,

34:27I feel like we may, we may need to give this whole thing up. Uh, all right. So the, so this week's,

34:33uh, what is that? Is, uh, what? Is it the Masoretic text? Is that what are we, what is that thing?

34:40Yeah. Let's, let's say, let's call it the Masoretic text. Although I think we want to talk a little

34:45bit about, uh, that namesake as well where that comes from, the Masoretes, uh, which is a, uh,

34:51a fascinating story. And, and I think, uh, as good a place as any to start. Yeah. Uh, but to begin,

34:57back, you know, once the, the Hebrew Bible had been completed and, and you know, you got translation

35:03into Greek and the early Christians are using the Greek translation and then they get the Latin,

35:08but you have the Hebrew Bible being preserved and transmitted among Jewish folks as well. And

35:14there are two different main kind of centers of strength, uh, of, uh, Judaism in late antiquity.

35:20You have, uh, some folks who are around, uh, the, not in Judea, they've kind of fled Judea, but they're

35:28further up north around the Galilee, for instance, and there are, um, and there are folks over in

35:34Babylon as well. A lot of Jewish folk stayed in Babylon or returned to Babylon and you had the

35:40text being transmitted, but the Hebrew doesn't have any vowels. And so you start to see in the first

35:47few centuries of the common era, some kind of stops and starts with attempts to come up with

35:53vowel annotations, wait at ways to add vowels to the, to the, um, continental text.

36:00Because it's confusing, right? There, there are going to be words where, uh, a different

36:05vowel makes it a different word. Yeah. And not having that, uh, can cause like, you know,

36:11there are context clues and whatever, but it's still, it's still nice to know what vowel you're

36:16supposed to have where. Yeah. And Hebrew is also changing quite a bit. It's, uh, heavily influenced

36:22by Aramaic in this time period as well. And so Mishneh and Middle Hebrew is, is quite different

36:29from biblical Hebrew. So it's also helpful just to for clarity. So we know for sure what we're

36:34looking at, uh, but the, the different, uh, vowel systems and, and you know, they're like little

36:41dashes and curls that usually are written above the consonants. They don't want to add letters to

36:48the text. So it's basically writing stuff above, below or within the characters. And we have, uh,

36:56the, this, these scribes who are known as, uh, the Mazaretes who come up with the system that would

37:06end up being used all the way down till the modern day for the overwhelming majority of, uh,

37:14Jewish folks. And, uh, the name comes from, uh, I think it's Ba'alayha Masarah, which is,

37:21which would be lords or masters of the tradition. And, uh, there, is that like a title that was

37:27bestowed upon them? These are, these are the keepers of the book. They are the lords and masters of

37:32the tradition sort of thing. Yeah, something like that. Um, there, and then their, their

37:37children are the became the masters of the universe. And we have, um, I hear they're doing a live

37:43action version of that, by the way, of, of he-man and masters of the universe. It would be, I would

37:49be interested also in a live action version of the Mazaretes, but I think, uh, but I get

37:53that you were talking about human. So between around the fifth and the 10th centuries CE,

38:02we have these, uh, these folks who are working in, uh, mainly in Jerusalem and Tiberius. Tiberius

38:10is a city, um, right around the middle of the west coast of, uh, Sea of Galilee. Uh, it's like a,

38:17a resort town these days. So, and, and, you know, it was, uh, anciently as well, but, uh, and then

38:24they're also working in places in, in Mesopotamia and they come, they put together this, uh, system

38:32and they come up with a couple of additions, uh, to the vocalization tradition. So they, they come

38:38up with these dots, series of dots and lines and things like that, that are going to go mostly below,

38:44but there are a couple that go above to indicate the vowels. But then they also create these, um,

38:51annotations that help you identify when consonants should be doubled. So, uh, that's the doggash

38:57that they come up with. They come up with, uh, a cancellation system, which is, is supposed

39:03to help you understand what words go with what other words, uh, and how to aid in, in reading it

39:11out loud and particularly like chanting or singing, uh, from it. And then they also, this is,

39:15this is what the cantor in, in a, in a synagogue does is, is sing the thing. So it's, it's, it's,

39:21where was there sort of a musical notation to that? Or was it just to help you sort of

39:26understand like how to string the words together or what? Um, usually the, the cancellation marks

39:33occur on the stressed syllable of the word. So the accented syllable. And usually they were

39:39intended to, um, to indicate, uh, if you should be connecting one word with another word or, um,

39:46and I, I'm not an expert on the cancellation system. I, um, uh, did not become a cantor for

39:52reasons that are obvious to anyone who's ever booed me off of a karaoke night stage. Uh, you know

40:00who you are. And, um, and then I apologize many times for that, Dan, jeez. And then they also came

40:06up with, uh, two additional, uh, things that they added to the text, what they call the

40:11masora parva and the masora magna or the large and small masora. And these are, uh, the masora

40:19parva or the, um, the short masora goes on the, uh, in the margins of the manuscript.

40:26And these are little abbreviations that indicate, uh, where, you know, there is a form of a word

40:32that only occurs once or maybe twice or where there is what's called a kativa or karai. Um,

40:38and this is where kativa karai readings are very interesting. And that's where the masorates

40:43have gone through and, uh, have decided that even though this is the vocalization tradition

40:50that we have received that we have inherited, we've written the vowels down according to that

40:55tradition. We're pretty sure that's wrong. And so in the margins, they have, uh, so that's

41:02the kativa, what is written. And then the margins, they would have a little coalf letter and then

41:06under it, they would tell you how to pronounce it. And the idea there is basically read this way.

41:12And, um, and you know, you, if you looked through all of them, some of it's phenomenally, um, tedious,

41:19but there's some fascinating changes where they've got like universal carres where every time this

41:27word appears, you're not going to read it according to the vowels in the text. You're going to read

41:30it according to these other vowels. Huh. And, and some of them are, are euphemistic. Like,

41:36you're replacing the word in the text with another word that, uh, so that you're not saying something

41:43that it's, it's, it's like when autocorrect tells me I'm trying to use the word done. Yeah. Or,

41:50you know, um, for, for anybody who's gone to, uh, any kind of literary, uh, or historical graduate

41:56program, you've probably had word, um, fill your, uh, your papers with the word periscope when you,

42:03when you're like, I meant pericopy. Right. You dummies don't know what a pericopy is. Um,

42:11so I'm a dummy and I don't know what a pericopy is either. So there you go. It's a fancy way to say,

42:16uh, a story. Um, well, then just say story is what is what Microsoft Word wants you to say.

42:23You can't make me. Um, but we have, uh, uh, and, and probably the most, the most famous one of these,

42:30these maseritzas, uh, the Ben Asher family, we have several generations of folks in it,

42:36and it's primarily hereditary. You know, you, you grow up to, to go into the family business,

42:42which was reading the Hebrew Bible and annotating it. Oh, and then the Masura Magna, the one that

42:47there's another, um, collection of things at the bottom where they give notes on a completely

42:54separate text where they kind of go through and just have notes about where things are occurring,

43:00how many times things are occurring. Um, what's weird and that kind of stuff. So if you get a

43:06critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, like the Bibliothabraica, Stuttgartensia or something like

43:10that, you will see all the cancellation marks, all the vowels, all the Dagashim. You will see the

43:17Masura parva on one side. You will see them as a Magna on the bottom. Uh, so that's, that's all being

43:23represented in critical editions of the Hebrew Bible. Uh, but the Ben Asher family is largely

43:28responsible for the Masoretic text as we know it today. And there are a handful of manuscripts that,

43:35that are considered most authoritative. Uh, the, the critical editions of the Hebrew Bible,

43:41like the Bibliothabraica, Stuttgartensia, and now they're, they're releasing in fascicles, uh, the,

43:48uh, Bibliothabraica, Kinta or Quinta, which is the, the newer edition and, and it's not even halfway

43:55done yet. But anyway, they're all based on a single manuscript known as the Leningrad Codex.

44:01And this Codex contains every single word of the Hebrew Bible. It is a complete manuscript and it

44:07dates to about 108 or 108, it dates to about, uh, 1008 or 1009 CE. Okay. And, and this is

44:18kind of the, the pinnacle of, of the Masoretic project, which is about which, which is the end

44:23point. You, you said that the Masaretes were sort of in, in operation from the fifth through the 10th

44:29centuries. So this is, this is in the sort of towards the end of that. Yeah. And in fact, uh, I,

44:37I think scholars think it was probably, uh, transcribed in, in Egypt. Oh, and so, uh, it, it, yeah,

44:45was, was probably the tail end. It may be somebody else was picking up the, uh, the Scrabble football

44:51and running with it. Uh, but there are a couple of manuscripts that are older. One of them is the

44:56Aleppo Codex, uh, which, uh, comes from about a hundred years earlier, maybe nine 20 ish. And this

45:05was probably written in Tiberius. So this was probably a part of, was, was done by perhaps the,

45:11the Benasher family. And we have most of that, but a lot of the Pentateuch is missing or was

45:18destroyed. Uh, like there are burn marks on, on a lot of parts of it. And, and just recently, like,

45:23within the last 10 or 20 years, somebody found some fragments from Genesis or Deuteronomy or

45:29something like that in their basement. Um, that was, that was identified as, as a part of the Aleppo

45:35Codex. Uh, and, but, uh, we're missing, I think the majority of, uh, of the Pentateuch, the first

45:44five books of Moses. And then just, uh, just a few years ago, like maybe within the last five years,

45:50uh, there was a Codex called Codex Sassoon, which was, I believe auctioned off

45:56and the, the auction house described it as the oldest witness to the Masoretic text. It's supposed

46:04to be roughly contemporaneous with the Aleppo Codex, but there are a lot of scholars who are a little

46:11skeptical about the, the dating that maybe the, uh, the folks who dated it were just trying to

46:18make it a little sexier for, uh, for the, uh, for the auction. Do they not open it up to other

46:24scholars to, to verify that? I think there are others who have looked at it, which is why I think

46:29you have competing, um, ideas about dating. I'd say it was sold at Sotheby's in May of 2023

46:38for $38.1 million. So yeah, check your basements, everybody. Yeah, get your hands on a Codex if

46:46you can. If you have a piece of the Aleppo Codex or, yeah, um, yeah. So, uh, this, it makes it the

46:54fourth most expensive book and manuscript ever sold. So, um, that's pretty cool. So, um, the,

47:04the Masoretic text is considered the authoritative, uh, version of, uh, the Hebrew Bible. This is what,

47:11like the Jewish publication society, which is, uh, they, uh, produce a lot of, uh, Hebrew Bibles

47:19in Hebrew for use by, by Jewish folks, they also have a translation into English that is used in,

47:25like the, uh, the Jewish study Bible and the, uh, JPS, uh, commentary series. They all follow very

47:33closely the Lenin grad Codex and the Masoretic text that's considered most authoritative by,

47:37by most Jewish, uh, communities. And so, uh, this is the tradition that was returned to, uh,

47:45when, uh, Martin Luther goes to translate the Bible into German, uh, he's like, I'm not doing

47:52the Vulgate thing. We're not doing your Latin. We're going to go back to the Hebrew and the Greek

47:57and, uh, because Erasmus had just put together the first couple editions of the Texas receptacy,

48:03use that for the New Testament, but then he went and found an addition of the Masoretic text from

48:08the 1400s or something like that, which was probably, uh, if not directly descended from

48:14the Lenin grad Codex, at least closely related to it. Uh, but yeah, it is, uh, it is a fascinating

48:23story. There has been so much research on that. We have some, we're, we have some other manuscripts

48:29of the Hebrew Bible. They're not complete, but they are earlier than the, uh, like the Aleppo

48:35and the Sassoon and the Lenin grad Codex that were discovered in, uh, what they call Ganesas.

48:41Have you ever heard of the, that word before Ganesa? So the Cairo Ganesa is probably one of the most

48:46famous Ganesas and a Ganesa is a, um, it's basically the place where you discard holy text within Judaism

48:57because you're not, you don't just throw them out. Right. Because these are holy and

49:00anciently there were a variety of different ways. They were discarded, uh, but usually you just had

49:05to, there was a special room where you just had to put them. And so, you know, if you discover a Ganesa,

49:13like jackpot, right, you just, you just found the place where they discarded centuries and centuries

49:20of sacred texts. Right. And so, uh, they were discarded for a reason. So they were probably

49:26already degraded or somehow, uh, in disrepair. Well, it usually the, it was because their, uh,

49:35holy texts were expected to, um, function at a very high level. It didn't take a whole lot

49:41for them to be like this holy text, no longer up to par. There's a dog here on this codex where

49:47we're gonna get rid of it. Stick it in the Ganesa. And so, uh, the Cairo Ganesa was discovered with,

49:53you know, just tons of, of texts, including, uh, fragmentary, uh, manuscripts from, uh,

50:00the early medieval period, uh, with, you know, Isaiah and, uh, all that kind of stuff in it. And,

50:07and so there, there's a long reconstructing the history of, of the Masoretic text is, um,

50:13is a phenomena, a phenomenally complex thing to do. Yeah. Uh, but is fascinating. But the,

50:18the short story is that we have, uh, these families and, and I, I'm trying to remember the name of the,

50:24the main, um, Ben Asher guy. I think his name was, um, Aaron Ben Moses, Ben Asher was like the leader

50:33of, uh, of the group. And he's the one who kind of established the pattern and the, the system

50:40that was followed. And he, I think it was ninth century. So the Aleppo, the Sassoon, the Leningrad

50:46Kodaks are coming in the generations immediately after him. And they're the ones that kind of set

50:51the standard for, um, now, now I know that my monadies did, uh, was a Ben Asher guy. I'm a Ben

50:59Nef Tully guy. That's just me. That's just my own personal feeling. But, uh, but yeah, I, I'm,

51:05I'm guessing that, uh, that there was a, that, that, that endorsement from my, my monadies

51:11probably sealed the deal for Ben Asher. It was, uh, it was definitely incredibly influential,

51:16but I think he would have been okay without, without the, uh, the, my monadies deal.

51:21But yeah, there, there is, uh, you do have a little bit of competition because, uh, you know,

51:29it wasn't just, wasn't just one guy who, who, uh, you know, exercise unilateral authority.

51:34Uh, there were, there were other folks who were in the same game. Uh, and so there were other

51:40traditions. Uh, they weren't the only game in town, but they were, uh, the best. But yeah,

51:44my monadies was, um, was definitely, uh, a stan, a Ben Asher stan.

51:51Now the, the, the Masoretic text, uh, it's, it's the Tanakh, right? It's the, uh, the Hebrew Bible.

52:00It's the whole Hebrew Bible Tanakh, which is a, um, an acronym, uh, that has, uh, Torah,

52:06Nephiem, Ketuvim, uh, so the law, the prophets and the writings.

52:11Right. Uh, it, does it differ from what we see in like, you know, a modern Christian Bible in

52:18terms of, I, I know we've talked some about how some, sometimes, uh, the Jewish text

52:25puts the, the books in a different order. So yeah, there, there will be a different order in Christian,

52:33versions because the, the Christian, uh, order of the, the canon like puts a Malachi last because

52:42that's the, uh, the most convenient segue into the New Testament because you've got this, uh, you know,

52:49you've got Elijah and then you've got the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.

52:55And then you've got Matthew, which goes into the birth of the Messiah. So it's this convenient

53:01transition. And then the, um, I'm pretty sure the low, Leningrad Codex follows the traditional

53:06Jewish order, which ends with second chronicles, which is a passage about how King Cyrus sends

53:15everybody back and there's hope for restoration. And so the Jewish canonical order kind of ends

53:22with this, um, hope for restoration and the return of, uh, the Jewish people and the Jewish

53:29nation. Uh, and so yeah, there's, there are differences in that regard. And usually translations that

53:35you see of the Hebrew Bible, if you got a Christian translation, it's going to more regularly fill

53:42in gaps in our understanding or replace things using like the Septuagint, the ancient Greek

53:49translation. Whereas if you look in, uh, a JPS translation of the Tanakh, they're a lot more

53:57strictly going to stick to the Masoretic text. What's JPS? I don't know. Oh, sorry. The Jewish

54:02publication society that I talked about earlier that publishes the Tanakh, they're, um, they're

54:09going to programmatically stick with the, uh, with the Masoretic text. And so they're not going to

54:15die. Um, they're not going to diverge from it unless they absolutely have to. Right. So,

54:22so they're a little more faithful to it in that regard. And you know, they won't,

54:26they'll say, like, you know, we got some Dead Sea Scrolls that say something else here, but, uh,

54:30a Christian translation is usually going to fiddle with the text with a lot more liberty and so may

54:37changes, make a lot more changes here and there. Um, although that's, it's more of a spectrum.

54:42It depends on what kind of publication you're looking at, what kind of translation you're

54:45looking at. So, um, there you go. Yeah. And yeah, and you can get the, you can get a PDF of the

54:53entire Leningrad Codex online pretty easily. Okay. Um, you know, it's public domain. So,

54:58I got a guy, I got to come to the back room. I got a guy. We'll get you the whole, the whole

55:04Leningrad thing. And, uh, and the interesting thing about, uh, well, one of the many interesting

55:10things about the Leningrad Codex is the, you know, what's called the carpet page, uh, which is, um,

55:17like an illuminated page in a manuscript toward the front, uh, has the star of David on it.

55:24Uh, which is frequently something that like it, it's found within Judaism going back to like the

55:32first century CE and maybe into like the fifth century BCE, uh, depending on how you reconstruct

55:39some, some iconography, but, uh, a lot of people don't think it was used as a religious symbol

55:45until the modern era, but you do have a star of David, uh, front and center on the, the

55:52carpet page of the Leningrad Codex. Interesting. Okay. Well, there you go. Some text written inside

55:59it. And then I, I think even the, the edges of the, the star are written text. Oh, cool. So,

56:06Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking at it right now. And, and yeah, if you zoom in, you can see the,

56:10yeah, it's all that. Yeah. That's really interesting. Yeah. Uh, neat. All right. Yeah. We should talk

56:18about the star of David at some point. That's a fast, that's a fascinating idea in and of itself.

56:23Yeah. All right. Well, that's it for the show today. Thanks everybody for joining us. If you would

56:30like to become a part of making this show go, keeping us alive, keeping us around. If you want

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56:52Dan and I just shoot in the breeze answering patron questions and having a good time. Uh,

56:59so definitely check that out. That is, that is worth checking out. If you'd like to reach us,

57:06contact at data over dogma pod.com's the place to do that. We'll talk to you again next week.

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