For most of the way, Jeffrey Butz's The Brother of Jesus is not that bad. But we get some warnings of what is to come when Butz cites one of the authors of the Holy Blood, Holy Grail as one who "changed my life" [x] and gives credit to such conspiracy-theorists as Maccoby, Eisenman, and Schoenfield.
Much of the book seems more an effort to give James credit he has otherwise been missing, which is fine. There is nothing particularly wrong with hypothesizing that James may have been a priest at the Temple (indeed, it would make sense as a way for James to try to recover the honor his family lost because of Jesus, prior to the Resurrection). But when it comes down to brass tacks, Butz is quite as much a failure as Eisenman in turning James into the leader of a rival sect that did not regard Jesus as anything more than the an average person that God anointed.
First, Butz must sanitize critical passages which show that James and the family of Jesus had some hostility to Jesus. It is right to correct the notion that such conflict meant a total break; the collectivist mentality of the ancients (something Butz clearly does not know about, as we will see, for he errs greatly for not knowing it) meant that while Jesus' family would reject him and his mission, they would do so in part by treating him as a deviant and thereby trying to "convert" him back to the proper point of view. Thus we would not expect a total break, but a maintaining of relationships.
The two passages Butz tries to resolve are:
- Mark 3:20-21 "And the multitude cometh together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. And when his friends heard of it, they went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself."
Butz tries hard to sanitize this story, laying hold for example upon the broad definability of the word used for "family" so that it could mean "friends". He admits that the Markan "sandwich" technique supports the idea that the family is being referred to in v. 21 (as it is in v. 31) but merely dismisses this off with the rationalization that no one would expect a jump of ten verses for a reference.
He is wrong. Butz is aware of a chiasm [31] that shows this over Mark 3-6, but not of one from 3:20-35, as Witherington's Markan commentary shows [153]:
- A -- Jesus and the crowd (3:20)
- B -- Jesus' family appears (3:21)
- C -- Accusation of the scribes (3:22)
- C' -- Response to the scribes (3:23-30)
- B' -- The family reappears (3:31)
- A -- Jesus and the crowd (3:32-35)
As social science tells us, the family of Jesus can only be there to pick him up and take him home, precisely because he is deviant (in their view) and either he needs to be protected, or else the family's honor rating needs to be guarded. It is because Butz is unaware of the honor-shame dynamic that he makes the error of claiming that a view of some sort of antagonism in Mark 3:20-21 is a misinterpretation.
Butz makes the same error as well regarding the exchanges of Peter and Paul [41] and also offers the common misreading regarding James and Paul [81]. For the latter, honor-shame relations and ritual purity explain the "why" of the actions of persons in that context.
- John 7:1-5 "After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jews’ feast of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth any thing in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him."
Not knowing the honor-shame dialectic is even more damaging for Butz here. He tries to evade the force of v. 5 by noting that others in John, including disciples, are said not to believe in Jesus [38]. But this is not the most critical part of the passage; that comes in 9-10: "When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. 10But when his brethren were gone up, then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret."
As Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their social-science commentary on John [145], Jesus treats his brothers here as an "outgroup" by withholding his plans from them. In this light vv. 3-4 are indeed the sarcastic commentary Butz denies that it is, and v. 5 is indeed a clear signal that the brothers of Jesus are not part of his ministry.
Admittedly Butz would have a ready explanation for these anyway, as he is not above suggesting hidden motives or agendas for disrespecting Jesus' family, on the part of the Gospel writers [36, 40ff]. But in such cases the theory clearly drives the facts, and so Butz does his own job of impinging upon his credibility and that of his case.
Beyond this Butz is concerned with trying to put as much honor on James as possible, with mixed results. As noted, making James a priest has some merit; it does indeed explain why he never journeyed on missions as Peter and Paul did. There is also nothing wrong with rejecting doctrines such as the perpetual virginity of Mary that seems to devalue James [118](though it really doesn't, because of patrilineal descent).
On the other hand, it does not mean that he possessed the "reins of leadership" of the entire church [53] even if he did head the Jerusalem church in particular, as suggested [61], and it reads far much into Acts 15:19 ("herefore my sentence is") to say that this proves that James had the "final call" over what ALL of the church would do [75].
Finally, Butz cannot resist reading rivalry into something as simple as James being listed after Peter in the 1 Cor. 15 creed [63].
The most conspicuous failure of Butz here, however, is his inability to justify the claim that James' group was one that did not believe in Jesus' divinity. Appeal to how the Ebionites used James as an authority 150 years later is not sufficient, or else we may as well give credence to people of the same date who made Jesus into a Gnostic guru and claimed Peter or Thomas as antecedents. He also fails to deal with answers to those who show that the works of James and Paul are not at odds (he merely dismisses these as "clever exegetical and hermeneutical tricks" [145] without so much as explaining them, much less answering them) and his use of Maccoby regarding Jesus' view of the Torah ignores consicuously any attempt to understand the role and nature of the law in the first place. <>
Butz skips right over reasonable efforts to emphasize the Jewishness of Christianity, excluding virtually ALL differences between them, and his vague claim that Paul "distorted" Jesus' message is left completely unargued [172]. Why?
It's not clear until the end, when Butz professes that his goal is to get Jews, Muslims, and Christians tosit down at the table in peace, giving up all their difference. But we don't need to know Butz's motives to see that his most critical arguments are ultimately untenable.