McGrath evidently hasn’t kept up with the literature in his own field. Bart Ehrman has effectively schooled him on this incorrect argument about Galatians 4:14 (see Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God; and Ehrman there also cites scholars concurring).

To be fair to the other side here, their thinking is not with respect to the claim of descent being true, but of it only making sense of an ordinarily born human. On its own internal logic that makes sense as an objection. It only collapses when it comes into contact with external reality, and simple logic: since any messiah had to be biologically linked to David per Scripture, the probability anyone believed to be the messiah would be so linked is 100%, wholly regardless of what mechanism they contrived to invent that link.

Such as the Gospels having the Davidic seed inserted magically by the Holy Spirit…Where did it get it? How was it preserved? Why did it have to do this rather than just let Joseph conceive with Mary? You can throw these questions at it claiming this is an absurd and unnecessarily elaborate way to invent the required heritage, but alas, this isn’t even in dispute: that is literally what both Gospel authors did! So one cannot claim “they would never do such a bizarre thing.” It’s the other way around: they clearly were very comfortable doing such a bizarre thing.

So the starting point of thinking that’s too bizarre for them to have done is already refuted before it even gets started. So it actually doesn’t make sense to say “it would only makes sense of an ordinarily born human.” Even the Gospels themselves disprove that premise.

So we are back to asking what Paul meant by it, especially since he uses very peculiar and specific vocabulary, never mentions “descent” or explains what he meant by Jesus arising “from” Davidic seed, or how anyone claimed to know this, or any of the other details we would need to verify any particular theory of what he means. So in actual fact, we do not know what he means and should stop assuming we do. Especially since our usual assumption (that he means ordinary biological descent) is accepted by no Christian text in the canon and denied by at least two of them. Add to this that Paul believes Jesus’s body was manufactured for him to inhabit after descending from heaven (Philippians 2) and the “usual assumption” is no longer looking as credible as it used to.

The same happens for the Brothers of the Lord, where the only kind of those Paul ever mentions is cultic (all baptized Christians are adopted sons of God like Jesus and thus Jesus is “the firstborn of many brethren”). So he would have to make clear the distinction if ever he intended it; and yet he doesn’t; so clearly he never intended it.

The mainstream assumption has no actual basis in any of the canonical texts. It’s an evidence-less import derived from dogmatic prior assumptions that ultimately come from Catholicism, not the first century of Christian teaching, No such “biological” brothers exist in Acts, the entire first history of the early church. Paul never identifies anyone as such brothers. The Epistles of James and Jude never identify themselves as by any such. And the only such brothers mentioned in the NT are in the Gospels, where they exist solely as a prop for Jesus to denounce them as not his family anymore, showing no sign of any of these authors knowing they lead the church after he died, and instead they only mythically reify the Christian teaching to abandon one’s bio-family for the fictive Christian family.

In short, when you look at the evidence without Catholic faith-assumptions, those assumptions don’t actually find any early evidence, and even clash with early evidence. So historians need to stop defending Catholic faith assumptions as facts, and start acting like historians. When you do that, you get different results.

“There seems to be a long parade of traditional biblical scholars making the podcast rounds recently. None of them like the mythicism hypothesis and they tend to misrepresent, misunderstand or ignore the mythicism points. The invited scholars inevitably read the gospels back into Paul and bend themselves in verbal pretzels trying to explain Paul’s complete silence on the gospel figure of Jesus of Nazareth. “

As expected, McGrath responded and here is a selected section of the comments exchange:

McGrath, Are you going to try to claim that Paul’s Jesus is supposedly not the same person the Gospels tell stories about because Paul never mentions to readers who’ve never heard of Nazareth that that’s where Jesus was from? Is Acts not weaving a narrative about the Paul who wrote the letters because does not present himself as Saul of Tarsus?

Me, Of course, the issue is much broader than just the Nazareth location – nothing in Paul’s letters describes anything about the historical Gospel Jesus figure. Erase everything about the gospel Jesus in your mind while reading Paul. Why? Because the Gospels did not exist during Paul’s time. This is very difficult for traditional scholarship since they had the gospels baked into their brains since early childhood. Christianity is a religion of the gospels. Much, if not most, of secular scholarship does not consider Acts historical. I’m leaning toward a mid-second century date for Acts.

McGrath,Paul also doesn’t describe anything about a celestial Jesus figure, apart from in specific places that involve his post-resurrection status. You are simply replacing the evidence from soon after Paul’s time about what Christians thought about Jesus with other things that Paul didn’t say but which no one else said around his time.

Me, Not sure what “evidence” I’m replacing and what “other things” you’re referring to. I’m guessing that, by post-resurrection status, you mean the material provided in the later Gospels. If that’s the case you are reading the Gospels back into Paul – a common Christian scholarship malady. The cognitive dissonance causing mythicism hypothesis is that Paul’s celestial Jesus was turned into an earthly Jesus by Mark. On balance, I believe the evidence supports that hypothesis.

Recently, McGrath presented his opinions again on Mythvision where he stated that Jesus was mythicised over time. I commented:

“The Jesus figure did not progress from human to celestial in the NT. The reverse is the case. Paul identifies Jesus as an angel in Galatians 4:14, “and even though my illness was a trial to you, you did not treat me with contempt or scorn. Instead, you welcomed me as if I were an angel of God, as if I were Christ Jesus himself.”

As expected, McGrath commented that I misunderstood the meaning of, “angel of God”

“You should not assume that what seems obvious to you reading an English translation was the obvious meaning of the underlying text, which in this case it was not. To be sure, the word COULD mean angel, in which case there is still the possibility that Paul is making a point through gradation – you welcomed me as though I were an angel, more than that, as though I were Jesus himself. There is insufficient basis in this one reference to Jesus and messenger of God in close succession to claim that Paul thought of Jesus in particular metaphysical terms that he nowhere articulates explicitly.”

I actually think that a better translation of the Greek text would be “God’s angel”.

Anyway, I see McGrath is on again, this time on Berman’s podcast. I may find some more opportunities to engage him.

Contrast it with the brother of the Lord argument. That at least obviously scans: If Jesus is said to have had a real brother that people actually met, that really makes a historical Jesus much more likely. I’d still point out that cults do weird shit and absolutely would pretend that a real person was the brother of an archangel they believed in, but that’s more of a stretch and would lower the relative probability.

But on this one? If the non-mythicist theory was correct, then that would mean that we would be hearing cultists claim that their founder was descended from the supposedly real David. But… would that actually be true? That claim would be made, but it wouldn’t be based on the actual truth. It’d be a lie they told about Joseph or whoever his actual father was. Even if there was some legitimacy to the claim, it’d only be because David was traced through to a lot of people.

So we’re supposed to infer that there was a real guy based on a lie which would be propaganda either way. That seems exceedingly weak tea. I get that the initial kneejerk reaction is “They mention him being made from seed, so he must have been a real guy” (as if God can’t make fictive people), but when one thinks about it, it seems like meaningless verbiage that doesn’t actually track any real biographical data.