Loading...A couple of snapshots of my life right now, followed by a comment.
Snapshot One:
Snapshot one: I’ve had a couple of people ask me why I’m reading so many books and articles about the resurrection right now, in preparation for my book How Jesus Became God. The resurrection, of course, is key to answering the question of the title, since if Jesus was thought to have been executed, and to have stayed dead, not only would there never have been anything like Christianity, but Jesus himself would have been thought of by posterity as, possibly, a Jewish preacher who ended up on the wrong side of the law, or a failed messianic pretender, or yet another prophet who met a bad end, or something else – but not God. The resurrection itself did not immediately make anyone think Jesus was God (at least that’s what I’m going to argue in the book), but without the resurrection, the thought process that eventually declared he was God would never have been set in motion.
But back to the question: why am I reading so much about the resurrection? Haven’t I read, thought, and written about the resurrection for forty years? What am I going to learn that I haven’t already thought about?? And isn’t this just a small part of the book? Why spend so much time on one aspect of the big problem, when there are so many other things to deal with as well – especially when this is an aspect that I already have clear thoughts and ideas about?
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Have you considered that the idea of resurrection and even declaring a man “god” was not unheard of at that time? According to the Oxford History of the Biblical World, military or athletic heroes and exceptional rulers were acclaimed as gods sometimes even while still alive. Augustus Caesar used the title “son of god” on coins and inscriptions all over the empire because his “adopted father had been declared a god by the Roman Senate. It seems to me that a look into the practice of the times would be fitting in the book you are working on now.
Yes, I have indeed considered that! It’s a major element of my scholarship!
Looking forward to the next book! I have decided that I am going to just go ahead and buy the books instead of getting them from my library. I don’t want to take them back, I have had 3 of them for over 2 months and just keep renewing them. Problem is that I take notes and when I own the books I can just scribble down page numbers and key words on post – its that I put inside.. But with the library copies, I have to almost rewrite the book on post – it notes and put them into notebooks. This is not working for me. You need to offer an entire library collection for those of us addicted to your work! LOL
Bart,
I very much appreciate your dilemma. It’s probably the hardest thing anyone can do, trying to share what you know with other people who only think they know what they don’t. All you have to do is separate the wheat (10%) from the chaff (90%), and then put the tip of the iceberg into readable words that are easy to understand, interesting, and that somehow cover the subject at hand.
If anyone can do it, you can. Just don’t be in too big a hurry and try to get feedback from ordinary, non-scholarly readers.
DCS
Looking at my relatively well supplied library about Jesus / Early Christianity I must say you’re right and there is no (text)book which I have and would cover this period, at least in the way you described! I guess the closest match comes in Henry Chadwick’s “The Early Church” on some 300 pages. But if Peter Brown can deal with “The Rise of Western Christendom” (years 200-1000) on some 500 pages (discounting the footnotes/bibliography), I bet you can manage your time period in half that many! ; ) I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you and will definitely buy your book when finished!
Your new textbook project reminds me of the documentary series in which you featured (a little, about Gnosticism and apocalypticism): __Apocalypse__, by the Frenchmen Mordillat and Prieur (both atheists and amateurs with a passion for NT scholarship). I liked as well the two previous documentaries, __Corpus Christi__ and __The Origins of Christianity__. Would you share your reminiscences about the shoot and the whole project? Is this work a way to kindle youngsters’ curiosity about your discipline? If not, why?
Yes, it was an interesting experience. We did it in Paris, and their English was good but not perfect. My French was terrible. And so it made for rather difficult conversation! But they were very good natured and extremely professional, and so it seemed to lead to a good result. But I have to admit, even though they sent me the DVD, I have not watched it to see how it all came out.
” It will have to deal with the apostolic fathers, the spread of Christianity throughout the empire, persecution and martyrdom, Christian apologies, Gnosticism, other heterodoxies, the heresiologists, development of church offices and hierarchy, shaping of church liturgy and church offices, figures like Ignatius, Justin, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Tertullian… and many more, and that’s just up to the year 200! I’m having second thoughts! J”
No, don’t have second thoughts.
A comprehensive insight as to how we arrived at where we are now, and this period is the key to that of course, is more important than the ideas contained in the Gospels I believe.
By the way, buoyancy does not depend on the mass of ice only, but the relative mass _density_ of the ice and the surrounding water (Archimedes principle). Ice cube or iceberg, it is the same.
Yes, of course! Thanks for pointing this out. Of course, when someone is writing a book they don’t want to think that it is an ice cube. It’s an ice berg!!
I’m very much looking forward to the textbook on early Christian history.
Paul’s early and high christology seems to be the most difficult challenge in outlining a devopmental arc toward a gradual recognition of the Christ as divine. I’m tempted to see some of this development as having already occurred in some quarters of Jewish apocalypticism, as seen, for example, in the messianic apocalypse of Qumran (4Q521), where the heavens and the earth obey the annointed/messiah, who raises the dead.
Bravo for the iceberg analogy! Wish I’d thought of that when, during my preaching days, church members sometimes asked me why I spent so much time researching and writing my sermons. “Why”, they would ask, “can’t you be more extemporaneous?” (I don’t recall the rule of thumb for what amount of time a preacher should spend on preparing a weekly sermon, but I was always uncomfortable when I’d try to “shoot from the hip” with a sermon into which I had put less than 24 man-hours.)
Anywho, I agree with your statement: “The best books [like the best sermons] are based on substantially more research and depend on much more work than a casual reader would suspect.” 🙂
Go Heels!
I’m not trying to snoop for advanced information on your book “How Jesus Became God” (ok, so maybe a bit of snooping); will you be covering any aspects of the Trinity debates of the fourth century in this book, or will we have to wait for your planned textbook re the first few hundred years of Christianity?
Just the early debates about how Jesus could be God if God the Father was God but they weren’t one and the same, and yet there was only one God.
As Paul evidently said, unless someone falsely ascribed this statement to Paul, without the Resurrection, faith is in vain. So, it’s the most important topic in Christianity. Keep reading so you can explain it to me in your book.
I hope you write the book on Chrisitanity until Constantine. I read Lost Christianities and thought it was excellent. Is there a book that covers this topic that you would recommend? I find this time to be very interesting. There were very active debates, charges of heresy, counter-charges of heresy, etc.
I hope you do the history of christianity up to constantine. We need that to understand how we got to HERE! Thanks.
Please do the 1st 300 years. It is sorely needed in the same way your other books have been to make it common knowledge.
Your professor reminds me of one I had for a class on the synoptic gospels. During the first half of the course, we were required to read countless pages on a variety of topics. When the day for the mid-term exam arrived, the professor didn’t show up for class. Instead, the faculty secretary walked in at the appointed hour and gave us two essay questions, each of which must be completed in 15 minutes. #1 : Explain the synoptic problem. #2: Define redaction criticism. From our brief answers, the professor had a pretty good idea how much we really understood, and he didn’t need to waste a lot of time grading papers.
If Jesus was God, then the Ressurection means he simply returned to Heaven. So then what does the Ressurection mean to us Mortals? Was this a dilemma to early Christians? If not why not?
I don’t think any of the early authors thought Jesus was God (until the Gospel of John).
Actually, I was thinking of the Third Century Christians.