What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

What do you guys make of Hebrews? Dating? Content? As far as I know, it's the earliest text after the seven Pauline letters universally accepted as authentic, it relates a lot to Second Temple Judaism and excludes any mention of the Jewish revolt or Jerusalem's destruction... and it clearly emphasizes a Jesus who was a man and now reigns as the Jewish God in heaven.

Lately I've been wondering if Hebrews is somewhat Gnostic? (I don't know much about the book of Hebrews. As I recall, it tried to show that the temple practices foreshadowed the Christian practices.)

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So you think the scribal error was to write "the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James" instead of "James Bar Damneus"?

This is tricky. The Greek phrase as we have it now, is tou legomenou Christou. "The one known as Christos" is a perfectly acceptable translation. However, so is "The one called Christos" or even "the so-called Christos." So there is some ambiguity to begin with. But we don't know if Josephus wrote it - doubtful - or the scribe wrote it

Christos was the Greek translation of Moschach and it referred to someone was anointed. This was a purely Jewish rite and referred to the installation of a king or high priest. In that chapter virtually everybody except the two Romans was a king or high priest and thus a "christos" at one time or another.

Would a pharisee of a noble priestly family have equated some crucified hippie with a king or high priest of Judaea? I doubt it. Origen tells us that Josephus did not accept Jesus as the Christ the odds are that this is nothing more than jesus-freak wishful thinking. But it just doesn't make sense because the word meant something totally different to Josephus.

I don't see anything strange about Josephus referring to "the brother of Jesus, the so-called Christos". That phrase explains why the authorities wanted to kill James, and it doesn't imply that Josephus believed the claims about James' brother.

So what do you think the text would have read without the scribal error? "James son of Damneus" or something different?