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

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Dan McClellan (1:01)

He's like, I wish y'all were like me. But if you can't hack it, then go ahead, get married, so you can have occasional prophylactic and passionless intercourse.

Dan Beecher (1:13)

Which sounds great.

Dan McClellan (1:14)

Yeah, oh yeah. It's definitely what everybody was joining the church for. Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:25)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:26)

And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things in the new digs?

Dan Beecher (1:40)

Things are going good. Just getting used to everything and enjoying a slightly different lifestyle. I'm all urban now, so that's kind of fun.

Dan McClellan (1:52)

You were just slightly suburban, just leaning in the suburban.

Dan Beecher (1:56)

Yeah, yeah. Leaning to it. I was on.

I was a suburban. I was urban, but suburban rising. I was on. I was a cusp. And now I've fallen. I'm straight downtown. Julie Brown is what I am. So there you go. There you go. Today's show is going to be fun. We got we got a hoot is or hoot at. I don't know which one it is. But yeah, we're going to be talking about Jesus' brother, which I think is fascinating and something that I've been confused about for a while. So I'm glad that we will get to clear up any ambiguities there. And then in the second half of the show, we got a what is that? Because you have mentioned Masoretic texts, the Masoretic text. I guess there's only one or...

Dan McClellan (2:46)

Well, that's a long story, but we'll get to it.

Dan Beecher (2:50)

We'll get to it. We'll get to it. It's in the not too distant future. Yeah. But for now, who dat?

Okay, so who dat? We're in the New Testament, where apparently Jesus has a brother, or actually many brothers, as I have learned as I sort of went through the thing. And and...

Dan McClellan (3:21)

Brethren and sister and...

Dan Beecher (3:22)

Yeah, he had...

Dan McClellan (3:25)

Big family.

Dan Beecher (3:25)

He has a prolific family.

Dan McClellan (3:27)

They were Catholic, so...

Dan Beecher (3:29)

Well, if they were, that poses a problem that we're going to get to.

Dan McClellan (3:33)

Yeah, no, no.

Dan Beecher (3:35)

But but yeah, the... So let's talk about James, the brother of Jesus.

Dan McClellan (3:42)

All right. So and and one of the interesting things, I guess we can just do this disambiguation now, if it's as good a time as any.

There are there are other James's in the New Testament. And in fact, there are there are numerous. We've got James the Great, son of Zebedee, brother of John the Apostle. So John, the beloved apostle, according to tradition, also had a brother named James, James, son of Alpheus, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus. But almost but you know, there's we don't really know anything about him. He's just mentioned once we got James, the less, which is an unfortunate epithet.

Dan Beecher (4:22)

It just seems so mean is what it is.

Dan McClellan (4:24)

Yeah, could we say something other than...

Dan Beecher (4:28)

Can we just say that I'm short and not call me the less, please?

Dan McClellan (4:32)

Homikros is the Greek. James, the father of Jude, the apostle. Okay. James, the brother of Jude, mentioned in the epistle of Jude.

Dan Beecher (4:44)

Okay.

Dan McClellan (4:46)

So we got a handful of James's. There are Jimmy James, Jimbo, Jim Bob's running all over the place.