Early Christian Doctrine Archives - Page 5 of 8 - The Bart Ehrman Blog

What Did Ancient People Think (a) God Was?

A number of people have asked me how anyone could imagine a human being or becoming God in the ancient world, based on my claims that for Paul and other early Christian writers Jesus was a divine human. But if he was human, how could he be God? To answer that I have to stress a point I made repeatedly in my book How Jesus Became God. Anyone who wants to say that “Jesus is God” according to an early Christian text, has to explain “in what *sense*” is he God? Now is a good time for me to lay out how again how ancient people understood the divine realm. It was very different from the way most people today do – at least the people I run across. People today think of God as completely Other than us humans. We are mortal and limited in every respect; he is immortal and unlimited. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present. We are by comparison weak, ignorant, and in one place at a time. He is infinite [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:20-04:00March 6th, 2020|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Paul’s Incredibly High Christology

I have been trying to explain the unusually important statement about Christ in Paul's "Christ Poem" in Phil. 2:6-10. It's an extremely high Christology. Christ is a divine being before coming into the world; and at his exaltation he was made *equal* with God. Wow. Just 20 years earlier Jesus was a virtually unknown peasant with a few followers in a remote part of rural Galilee. Now he's equal to the Lord God Almighty?? How did *that* happen??? That, of course, is the topic of my book How Jesus Became God. I try to explain how it happened. In the book I talk about other passages in Paul that have similarly remarkable things to say about Christ. Here is how i discuss it there. (I do refer back to some of my earlier discussions in the book here -- e.g., about how some Jews thought of another power being on God's level; I can post some of those too if anyone is interested.) *********************************************************************** Other Passages in Paul The incarnational Christology that lies behind the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00March 2nd, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

A Fuller Exposition of the Christ Poem in Philippians

I’ve been talking about the Christ poem in Philippians 2:6-10, and given some keys to it’s interpretation. If you are new to the discussion, here is the poem itself, about “Jesus Christ…. Who, although he was in the form of God Did not regard being equal with God Something to be grasped after. But he emptied himself Taking on the form of a slave, And coming in the likeness of humans. And being found in appearance as a human He humbled himself Becoming obedient unto death – even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him And bestowed on him the name That is above every name. That at the name of Jesus Every knee should bow Of those in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth. And every tongue confess That Jesus Christ is Lord To the glory of God the Father. I’ve said some things about it’s interpretation, but here I want to give a fuller explication of its meaning. I’ve drawn this from my book How Jesus Became God [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-24T10:38:49-04:00February 28th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Did Paul Think Jesus Was a New Adam, Not a Divine Being?

In my last post I started talking about Paul’s “understanding of Christ” – that is, his Christology. It will take several posts to fill out the picture, and in this one I need to return to the Christ Poem that I talked about last week, expanding my discussion of it from what I said then. Just so you don’t have to flip back through to find the former post, here is what the poem says, set in poetic lines. It comes from Phil 2:5-7. It is introduced by Paul’s exhortation to his readers to “Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus”: And then he says Who, although he was in the form of God Did not regard being equal with God Something to be grasped after. But he emptied himself Taking on the form of a slave, And coming in the likeness of humans. And being found in appearance as a human He humbled himself Becoming obedient unto death – even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00February 25th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Was Christ an Angel, According to Paul?

I have received a number of comments and questions on last week’s about Paul’s understanding of who Christ was, based especially on the key passage called the “Christ Poem” in Philippians 2:6-11. An intriguing passage! But very puzzling in light of what Paul says elsewhere about Christ, as readers have pointed out, and asked about. So I thought I should return to the matter and lay out how I understand Paul’s “Christology” – his “understanding of Christ.” I talked about it at length in my book How Jesus Became God, and have dealt with it on the blog on occasion. But here I want to address it head on. To make sense of my comments it is important to remember two sets of terms that scholars have long used for early understandings of Christ. A “low Christology is one that understands Christ primarily as a HUMAN who somehow and in some way became divine. A “high” Christology is one that understands him primarily as GOD in some sense from before his birth. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:48:19-04:00February 24th, 2020|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

How Did We Get The 27 Books of the New Testament?

27 Books of the New Testament. This is now a continuation of my projected longer blog post that will serve as an introduction to the New Testament (possibly around 5000 – 6000 words or so). In the first section, I discussed the layout and structure of the New Testament. In the second I gave brief descriptions of each of the twenty-seven books. This one is spread out over two posts and deals with the question of how we actually got it. How was it collected together into a “book” and how was it transmitted to us over the centuries. How Did We Get The 27 Books of the New Testament? The New Testament did not drop from the sky one day a few years after the death of Jesus. It was written over a number of years by a number of authors with a number of different purposes, interests, and perspectives. But how did we actually get it? That is, who decided on these particular 27 Books of the New Testament (early Christian writings) rather [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:47:06-04:00November 18th, 2019|Early Christian Doctrine, Fourth-Century Christianity, History of Christianity (100-300CE), New Testament Manuscripts|

Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker
Gallery
Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker

Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus

Was Jesus Perfect? Then How Was He Human?? Guest Post: Jeffrey Siker

Another guest post by Jeffrey Siker, raising a very hard question with some peculiar answers and a provocative suggestion. Jeff Siker is the author of Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity and Homosexuality in the Church. Jesus and Sinlessness: Metaphor and Ontology, Blog 3 In the two previous posts I have shown how the tradition developed that Jesus was sinless, namely, retrospectively in light of resurrection faith. If Jesus was raised to divine stature at the right hand of God, then surely he must have been God’s divine Son throughout his public ministry (even if hidden by a messianic secret), and also in his baptism and birth. Thus, the logic goes, he must have been perfect throughout his life. He could have no taint of sin. On this the earliest Christians generally came to agree, though they expressed this agreement in different ways. Gnostic Christians like Valentinus in the second century associated sin with material existence, and bodily physicality. This led Valentinus to argue that Jesus only appeared to be a flesh and blood [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:01-04:00May 24th, 2019|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

When Did Jesus Become Sinless?

I recently received a question from a blog member about when it was in the Christian tradition that Jesus came to be thought of as “perfect,” without sin. I feel no great need to answer the question myself because my friend and occasional guest blog poster Jeffrey Siker, long-time professor of New Testament at Loyola Marymount University, has written an entire book on the topic. And so I asked him to prepare some blogposts, and here’s the first one. For what it’s worth, he and I both liked very much the title he wanted for the book, Jesus the Perfect Sinner; but, as often happens, the publisher went with something less scintillating: Jesus, Sin, and Perfection in Early Christianity. But the cover of the book is to die for. - Jeffrey Siker is also the author of Liquid Scripture: The Bible in the Digital World and Homosexuality and Religion: An Encyclopedia. ********************************************** Jesus and Sinlessness How and when did Jesus come to be viewed as sinless in earliest Christianity? Surprisingly, this question [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:45:00-04:00May 14th, 2019|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

The Radical Implications of the Resurrection

Over the years on the blog, I have reflected a number of times on the significance of the earliest Christians' belief in the resurrection. On this Easter morning, I thought it would be appropriate to return to one of those reflections. The most important result of the disciples' belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead was that it radically changed their understanding of what it meant to say Jesus was the messiah. As I have explained before that in my view, ,Jesus did believe he was the messiah (in a certain sense), and his followers believed it. Given everything we know about Jewish beliefs at the time, that almost certainly mean that they thought that he was (or would become) the king of the Jewish people. That’s certainly how the Roman governor Pontius Pilate took it. It was because Jesus made such a claim that Pilate ordered him crucified. The crucifixion would have proved beyond any doubt -- to anyone paying attention -- that Jesus was not the messiah after all. Rather than [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:44:39-04:00April 21st, 2019|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

Who Invented the Idea of a Suffering Messiah?

For this week’s readers’ mailbag I give a very interesting and important question. QUESTION: Where did the idea of a Jewish messiah dying for the sins of mankind originate from? OT? Did Jews prior to Jesus’ existence believe this notion of the messiah dying for other’s sins? RESPONSE: I deal with this issue in a couple of my books. Christians often point to messianic prophecy about Jesus in the Old Testament and suppose the suffering messiah was "right in front of the Jews' faces" all along. In fact, it wasn't. Here is one of my fuller discussion from Did Jesus Exist?, where I talk about the issue in connection with the question of why Paul originally opposed Christians before converting to the faith. ***************************************************************** Why, as a highly religious Jew, did Paul originally persecute the Christians before he himself joined their ranks? It appears to have been for one reason only: the Christians were saying that Jesus was God’s special chosen one, his beloved son, the messiah. But for the pre-Christian Paul it [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:50-04:00April 8th, 2018|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions|

Early Christology: How I Changed My Mind

It seems like every time I write a book, based on the research I do I change my mind about one thing or another that I've thought for a long time. Some people (including some fellow scholars) think that's a weakness or a problem. I think of it as one of my charming personality traits. :-) OK, seriously, I think more scholars ought to be willing to change their minds -- instead of being intransigent and thinking they are always right. If intense research gives you new and different insights, that's a *good* thing, not a problem. I think about this a lot every time I'm in the midst of doing research for a book (such as now) (well, OK, such as almost always), and just now I was looking through old blog posts , and I ran across one (almost exactly five years ago today!) where I talk about a big change of mind involving the early understandings of Jesus as a divine being, in connection with the book I eventually published, How Jesus [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:40:19-04:00March 2nd, 2018|Book Discussions, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine|

Did They Crucify the Wrong Guy? Jesus’ Identity Switch.

Yesterday I posted about the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which clearly differentiated between the man Jesus and the spiritual being, the Christ, who inhabited him temporarily – leaving him at his suffering and death since the divine cannot suffer and die. That understanding of Jesus Christ is not, strictly speaking, “docetic.” The term docetic comes from the Greek word DOKEO which means “to seem” or “to appear.” It refers to Christologies in which Jesus was not a real flesh-and-blood human but only “seemed” to be. In reality, what they saw, heard, and touched was a phantasm. That is not what is going on in the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter. Here there really is a man Jesus – flesh and blood like the rest of us. But he is indwelt by a divine being who leaves him at his death, abandoneding him to die alone on the cross. That is similar to a docetic view, but also strikingly different. I call it a “separationist” Christology because it separates Jesus from the Christ (who himself separates from [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:45-04:00December 27th, 2017|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy, Public Forum|

Did Jesus’ Death Matter? The Intriguing View of the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter

From remembering the birth of Jesus (Christmas!), we turn for a moment to remembering his death. I recently received this question, in response to my statement that some Christians did not think the death of Jesus mattered for salvation, and others maintained that he never actually died. QUESTION: Can you give some reference to where I can explore this idea of the Crucifixion being unimportant or not happening at all? RESPONSE: I will take two posts to answer this question, since they involve two different sets of “Gnostic” belief, which, in brief, was a distinctive and “declared-heretical” understanding of the Christian faith that stressed that the ultimate divine realm was not closely connected with this material world (the highest God was not the Creator), a world that was to be escaped, not one that would be redeemed. One document that embraces the view that the death of Jesus had no bearing on salvation is the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, which provides an alternative understanding of what happened at Jesus’ death – as witnessed by [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:39:45-04:00December 26th, 2017|Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Heresy and Orthodoxy, Public Forum|

Are Jews and Christians Monotheists? Mailbag October 15, 2017

I will be dealing with an unusually important question in this week’s mailbag: is it right to consider Judaism and Christianity monotheistic? QUESTION: Aren't Judaism and Christianity really henotheistic rather than monotheistic? For example, even in the 10 Commandments it merely says YHWH is the only god to be worshiped, not that He is the only god. And in Christianity there is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Satan, angels and demons, and in some sects, Mary the queen of heaven. And I would think all the pagans coming into the church would bring along their polytheistic thinking - perhaps that is part of the reason Jesus was elevated to the status of God. RESPONSE: This is a very good question, and as you might imagine, a lot of it comes down to how one defines one’s terms. One set of definitions involves the actual terms themselves. Normally “Monotheism” is understood to be the belief that there is only one God, no other; “Henotheism” is the belief that there are other gods, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:56-04:00October 15th, 2017|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Did Luke Have a Doctrine of the Atonement? Mailbag September 24, 2017

For this week’s readers’ mailbag I have chosen a question about my claim that the author of Luke-Acts, unlike other writers of the New Testament, does not have a doctrine of the atonement – that Jesus’ death brought about a restored relationship with God (for Luke, it was the *resurrection* that mattered, not the crucifixion). The questioner sets up the question with an important observation. I suspect my answer will not be what he expected. QUESTION: I have spent a lot of time looking in the gospels for teachings on the atonement. I could only find 5 passages (really more like 2, because they are parallel). Mt 20:28/Mk 10:45 Jesus life as a ransom for many Luke leaves this part out of the story Mt 26:28--this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Mk 14:24--This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Lk 22:20 This cup that is poured out for you is the new [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 24th, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Does the Book of Acts Underplay the Significance of Jesus’ Death?

One of the things that I have found most interesting about doing the blog over these, lo, past five and a half years is that when I decide to write a post on something, I often realize that I need to provide some background that involves something else that, on the surface, may seem unrelated, but that is crucial for understanding the point I want to make. Which leads me to a different topic and then to another, and so on. I suppose that’s why I still haven’t run out of things to say (yet); I *thought* I’d have nothing to write about after six months. But it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve been talking about the sects within Judaism because I wanted to make a simple point about how widespread the views of “resurrection” were at the time of Jesus and Paul. This morning it occurred to me that it would be helpful to illustrate the conflict between Sadducees and Pharisees over the issue, as exemplified in a famous passage in Acts 22 where the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:40-04:00September 22nd, 2017|Acts of the Apostles, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

Is There Evidence that Luke Originally Did Not Have the Story of Jesus Birth?

This is the second of three posts on the question of whether Bible translations should place the first two chapters of Luke's Gospel in brackets, or assign them to a footnote. For background: read the post from yesterday! Again this is a Blast from the Past, a post I made back in December 2012. . ******************************************************************** In my previous post, ostensibly on the genealogy of Luke, I pointed out that there are good reasons for thinking that the Gospel originally was published – in a kind of “first edition” – without what are now the first two chapters, so that the very beginning was what is now 3:1 (this is many centuries, of course, before anyone started using chapters and verses.) If that’s the case, Luke was originally a Gospel like Mark’s that did not have a birth and infancy narratives. These were added later, in a second edition (either by the same author or by someone else). If that’s the case then the Gospel began with John the Baptist and his baptism of Jesus, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:21-04:00August 14th, 2017|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, New Testament Manuscripts, Reflections and Ruminations|

Charges and Anti-Supernatural Biases! Readers Mailbag August 6, 2017

I will be dealing with two interesting questions in this weeks’ Readers Mailbag, one involving a criticism of my work by the well-known New Testament scholar N. T. Wright, who apparently challenges me (publicly) for taking a position that, in fact, I have never taken, and the other about whether it is pure anti-supernatural bias to think that prophets like Daniel did not predict the future. - N. T. Wright is the author of several books, including Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense and The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion. QUESTION: I saw a Youtube clip with Dr N T Wright giving a short talk on Gnosticism, where he mentioned Elaine Pagels’ and your names, stating: “…scholars like Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, several others, have said quite stridently: this [Gnosticism] was the real early Christianity; and Mathew, Mark, Luke and John tried to cover it up, muddle it up, and they told this very Jewish story about things going on on earth, and with, um, sacraments and all of [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:38:05-04:00August 6th, 2017|Bart's Critics, Early Christian Doctrine, Early Judaism, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Public Forum|

Did the Earliest Christians Believe Jesus Became God?

This will be my final post on the debate I had in New Orleans with Michael Bird on “How Did Jesus Become God” a couple of weeks ago. As I indicated in my previous post, it appears where we disagree in particular is with how the resurrection affected the disciples’ understanding of Jesus. My view is that when they came to think Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples thought that this entailed his being exalted up to heaven. And *that* is why thy started calling Jesus “God,” because in ancient thinking – as documented widely in both pagan and Jewish circles – it was believed that a mortal being who was taken up to heaven was made immortal, and was in fact, considered then to become a God. That is the belief attested for such figures as Romulus in Roman circles and Enoch in Jewish circles. And it is, I’ve contended, how the earliest Christians understood Jesus. Only as they thought about it more did they start saying even more exalted things about [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:19-04:00February 29th, 2016|Bart's Debates, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

Jesus’ Virgin Birth in Mark (Reader’s Mailbag February 26, 2016)

It is time for the weekly Readers’ Mailbag. This week I will be dealing with only one question, one that I find particularly intriguing. If you have any questions you would like me to answer, either in a comment or in the mailbag, let me know. I can’t answer every question I get, either because I don’t know the answers (often enough!) or because I can’t get to them all. But I take them all seriously and will do my best to get to yours! ******************************************************* QUESTION: I've read of one NT scholar who is critical of your reasoning in How Jesus Became God. He says that your argument from silence is fallacious. For example, he says that just because the virgin birth is absent in Mark's gospel does not constitute evidence that the writer did not believe in the virgin birth. RESPONSE: Great question. The first and most obvious thing to point out is that there is no way to know what another person believes (either the person who wrote Mark or [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:32:19-04:00February 26th, 2016|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions|

Previous 1···456···8 Next