Loading...In broad terms, there were two major kinds of Christology in the early church. One of them could be called an “incarnation” Christology, since it maintains that Christ was a pre-existent divine being who became a human, as explicitly stated in John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:6-11. That’s the view, of course, that most Christians have always held, and is often referred to as a “high” Christology, where Christ starts out up above, with God, as divine himself.
The other could be called an “exaltation” Christology , sometimes called a “low” Christology or a Christology from below, where Jesus started out as a human, nothing more, but came to be exalted by God to become his Son, the Lord (at some point of his existence.) As I tried to show in my book How Jesus Became God, this was the oldest view among the Christians, and can be found in fragments of creeds and confessions that were later quoted by authors of the New Testament, so that in terms of raw chronology, they were formulated well *before* the New Testament was written.
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In the ch 2 Peter quote, what was the meaning behind attributing both honorific terms Lord and Christ? Was the meaning of Christ not sufficient or apparent at the time, or is this merely a convention of literary style and emphasis?
I suppose Christ would mean he is the Jewish messiah; Lord would mean he is the ruler of the world.
Thanks Bart. This was an excellent quick overview of the different Christology’s.
Big fan of the “one-sentence summary” blog series!
Beyond covering biblical texts, how about similarly comprehensive-yet-concise succinct statements responding to other “big picture” questions, such as:
1. How/why did Christianity evolve from an apocalyptic sect narrowly focused upon prophetically proclaiming the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God (sweeping away the current earthly order) into an afterlife-focused faith urging attainment of personal salvation through faith in a Divine Savior (erasing sin to ensure one goes straight to heaven post-mortem, rather than spending eternity in hell)?
2. How did Christianity also manage to evolve from a small backwater Jewish messianic movement into what has today become the world’s largest and most widespread religion — a vast global faith of profoundly immense historical, cultural, social, artistic, even political impact, influence and power?
I realize you’ve written whole books in response to such questions.
But highly simplified “in a nutshell” initial responses to questions like these would be helpful in many ways — and perhaps even eye-opening to many faithful followers who tend to assume that the single answer to all such questions is simply “because Christianity is the one true religion” (i.e. self-evidently true, divinely mandated/propelled, making all such developments essentially inevitable).
Great idea!
Reed,
I also recommend the recent Great Courses video series the learned doctor created on the subject of your second question.
-Eric
Thank you, Dr Ehrman. I’ve just heard on the news that there are wild fires in North and South Carolina. I hope you and your family will be safe. Best wishes, Geoff
Thanks. AS it turns out, it’s largely because of Helene. Lots of dead trees lying around wehre there used to be just undergrowth….
Reading Bart’s posts re the NT documents brought to mind a ditty that I was taught in Sunday School for remembering the NT books. It went like this : Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the Acts; Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians; Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians; 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. 1st Timothy, 2nd Timothy, Titus, Philemon and Hebrews; James 1st Peter, 2nd Peter, 3 Johns, Jude and Revelation. It makes more sense with the music, but … Did any others on the blog learn this ditty?
“Luke was a kind of Christian historian …”
Indeed, but how much of his work is fabricated?
One thing that makes me skeptical is the number of historical characters (most of them mentioned in Josephus’s works, for instance)
who interact with the Christian heroes of Acts (mainly Peter and Paul).
The following is a list of my own:
Annas (4:6) – high priest
Caiaphas (4:6) – high priest
Gamaliel (5:34) – master of the law
Herod Agrippa I (12:20) – last king of Judea
Sergius Paulus (13:7) – Roman governor of Cyprus
Gallio (18:12) – Roman proconsul of Achaia
Felix (23:24) – Roman governor of Judea
Drusilla (24:24) – Felix’s wife
Festus (24:27) – Roman governor of Judea
Herod Agrippa II (25:13) – king of Galilee and other territories
Bernice (25:13) – Herod Agrippa I’s daughter
My sense is that Luke fabricated all events involving historical characters.
First-century Christians were not connected at all with the elite—
the Galilean fisherman Peter and the tentmaker Paul addressing so many Roman governors and kings?
Come on, Luke!
Wouldn’t it be more accurate to describe the author of Luke/Acts, as a theologian?
He tells us this in the prologue when he explains the purpose of the book, i.e. to remind Theophilus what he had been taught, and one can presume, I think, that history was NOT the key point here.
Let’s see, what’s the theology behind Acts 27:1-20?
A detailed account of the trip from Caesarea to some point in the Mediterranean Sea, west of Crete.
In this passage, Luke gives the name of the Roman centurion (Julius) who was guarding Paul; he names every port/region they visited (Adramyttium, Sidon, Cyprus, Cilicia, Pamphylia, Myra, Lycia, Cnidus, Salmone, Phoenix, and Syrtis—he even speaks about “a small island called Cauda”!);
and he explains all the maneuvers of the sailors and even the winds they had to face at each stage of the journey.
Why so many details?
I think the author of Luke makes every effort to show that he really was a companion of Paul, that he joined him in Troas (Acts 16:8-10), then stayed in Philippi, and finally rejoined Paul (Acts 20:6) for his
trip to Jerusalem and then to Rome.
Luke presents his work both as the result of intense research on the events in which he did not take part and as a direct witness to the ones he himself experienced.
So he is kind of a “Christian historian” who uses this “history” as a background for his theological claims,which he puts in the lips of the “Christian heroes,” mainly Peter and Paul.
This evokes the contemporary interpretation of the gospels presented in the series “The Chosen.” The writers and producers crafted a tapestry of narratives, weaving in characters from the gospel stories who are notably absent from the biblical account.
My bet is Paul is not a tentmaker but a scion of a very well to do family in that orbit.
The name of these groups.is carpocrations or Theos Hypatos which is like a trade union or guild where everyone is equal ( but some are more equal than others.
The idea that Paul was a tentmaker comes from Acts 18:2-3.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:9, Paul (speaking in plural) mentions “working night and day,” though he does not specify what kind of labor he performed.
This letter is addressed to the church he founded in Thessalonica. Interestingly, in his letter to the Philippians, we learn that the Philippians “sent aid” to Paul while he was in Thessalonica (Philippians 4:15-16). Apparently, the money they earned by “working night and day” was not enough, so the “brothers” from Philippi had to make the trip to Thessalonica to support him.
I do not trust either Acts or Paul’s letters—I think Paul was a sort of “professional preacher.” The Didache even warned about people like him (Didache 11:3-6).
I wish more pastor would tell their parishioners in their sermons that a great deal of what is written in the OT and NT is invented fiction. Take the story of Noah: it is very likely that there were several very large destructive floods in prehistoric times, caused by water produced from the melting in the regions that had been previously covered with ice and snow, but a man and his sons didn’t have the tools, skills, or time to build a large ark and gather animals. Also, the flooding did not “cover the earth.” Other cultures also had stories about floods handed down over generations. The Bible is not a History book — it is a mix of folk law and actual events. Each reader needs to decide which of these each described event is. The body of the crucified Jesus may have been left hanging on the cross, but this does not rule out claims that others later saw an apparition of him in Galilee. Even in modern times there are credible tales of people seeing deceased people. Stuff happens for which there are not yet explanations.
Bill Steigelmann
Scholarship convincingly shows that “original Luke” started with Luke 1:1-4 and immediately after that was Luke 3:1. And 3:22 originally ended with “Today I have begotten you”. That means original Luke denied a virgin birth, since Jesus became Yahweh’s son at his baptism, but it also means that verses 1:5 through 2:52 is a later insert. Question 1: do you think that the phrase “as was supposed” in 3:23 could be a later insert as well? If it was original to Luke, then it seems to mean that after Jesus became Yahweh’s son, he was no longer Joseph’s son and people didn’t realize it. I don’t see how its inclusion could falsify 3:23 “He was the son of Joseph”. Questions 2 and 3 next.
I wouldn’t say that showing Jesus became the Son of God at his baptism necessarily proves that Luke rejected a virgin birth, simply because he is notoriously inconsistent in his use of titles. For example, even though he does narrate Jesus being declared son of God / messiah at his baptism, he also indicatess in his speeches in Acts that he *became* the son of God and messiah at the resurrection (Acts 2:36; and especially 13:33-34). He is not here denying what he said earlier, just, well, apparently contradicting it by including an alternative tradition.
Luke often piles together traditions that aren’t commensurate, but I don’t think that means he didn’t agree with them necessarily.
(All of them! I know lots and lots of peole who believe contradictory things) If he didn’t originally include a virgin birth I should thnk it was because he hadn’t heard of it yet, not that he heard of it and rejected it.
Gospel of Luke continued. Question 2: Do you think the inserted verses could imply a virgin birth for John the Baptist? Verses 1:34-37 could suggest it since the conception of Jesus and John is so similar. Verse 1:34 is strange. Since Mary is engaged to Joseph in 1:26-27, why would she be puzzled about how she would have children in 1:34? This suggests that maybe there is no virgin birth for Jesus here. Since Mary knows she would have ordinary children with Joseph, perhaps what she is asking is how such ordinary children could be so exalted, and the angel is telling her that her sexual relations with Joseph will be overshadowed by God’s spirit. So, question 3: Do you think that 1:34-37 isn’t necessarily a virgin birth narrative?
I don’t see a suggestoin that JB was born of a virgin. 1:34: they are betrothed but they have not had sex and she’s not planning to until they get married, so how is she suppose to conceive. 1:34-37 is about as clear a virginal conception narrative as you can get, I should think. The spirit of God will get her pregnant, not a man.
Verses 1:36-37 implies that Elizabeth’s barrenness was overcome by an act of God. Sure, the act of God could happen via Zechariah but not necessarily so. So, it just seemed to me that maybe the door was open there for a virgin birth for John. I know that the traditional reading is a virgin birth for Mary. But I don’t see anything in verses 1:28-33 that necessitates Mary’s pregnancy happening prior to her honeymoon with Joseph. Maybe in the original Greek it doesn’t have the ambiguity that it does in English?
I guess the deal is that she’s been married for a long time, and I don’t think any ancient reader would suspect that they had never had sex. More than that, we’re told they haven’t had a child because she “was barren.” That necessarily means they were trying but could not. The parallel is less to jesus’ virginal conception than to the stories in the OT (Abraham and Sarah for Isaac; Hannah and birth of Samuel) of an older couple that has never been able to get pregnant but God then works a miracle to make it happen.
Yes, that’s the usual way to understand John’s birth. But I still don’t see how 1:34-37 could be unambiguously a virginal conception because there’s nothing in 1:28-33 that necessitates Mary’s pregnancy happening prior to her honeymoon with Joseph. Unless, of course, the story in the original Greek contains something that is missing in the English translations.
The Spirit, not Joseph, es explicitly the one who is said to have gotten her pregnant. That’s pretty much the point of the passage (esp. 1:35) — Jesus is the Son of God BECAUSE God is the one who made his mother pregnant. (BTW, they didn’t have honeymoons.)
How did scholars determine that we should consider Peter’s speech a fabrication *except* for the part that indicates an early Christology? Is it just deductive reasoning that he wouldn’t have had the speech at handle, and yet the low christology was out of place enough to indicate it had an early source?
About 1/4 of Acts is made up of speeches (which is fairly typical for the ancient history genre), and we know from ancient historians (Thucydides) that the author was compelled to make up speeches, based on what he assumed made sense for the person to say at the time, since they were almost never there to hear them. Moreover the speeches of Peter sound just like those of Paul, so you could virtually switch them and not know which was whose, the speech of an illiterate Aramaic speaking fisherman and a highly trained astute Greek author. That suggests Luke authored both speeches, so the voice you are hearing is Luke’s
“In these views, Jesus was exalted by God at the resurrection, and at that point he became God’s glorified son, the messiah, the Lord.”
So the earliest form of christianity is that Jesus was not the messiah during his lifetime, that he wasn’t the messiah when he crucified? So that although the messiah was crucified he was not actually the messiah *when* he was crucified? That would clearly be ridiculous.
No, the exaltation to messiahship is not what was probably the earliest Christology. The earliest was that he was called to be the messiah already in his lifetime but that in reward for his faithfulness unto death God exalted him to a divine status.
I’ve been exploring an intriguing connection between Aristotle’s “Generation of Animals” and the early Christian understanding of Christ’s dual nature. Aristotle’s concept of reproduction, where the male contributes form (εἶδος) and the female provides matter (ὕλη), may have influenced early Christian thought on Jesus’ conception.
In the birth narrative, Mary’s human matter is juxtaposed with the Holy Spirit’s divine form, echoing Aristotle’s distinction.
In Aristotle’s metaphysics, the form of a thing determines its essential characteristics and categorizes it into a specific type.
However, Aristotle also emphasizes the significance of matter in distinguishing between different types of beings. In the context of Aristotle’s philosophy, the presence of matter in humans is a key aspect of their composite nature, distinguishing them from divine beings, which are immaterial and eternal.
This Aristotelian framework offers a lens to understand the nature of Christ. As the incarnate Son of God, Christ possesses both a human and divine nature. The intersection of these two natures in Christ’s person enables him to embody both human and divine qualities, facilitating his role as mediator between God and humanity.
This idea is still in its exploratory stages, but I believe it warrants further investigation. What are your thoughts on this potential connection?
I’m afraid I’ve never thought about it. As you probably know, though, Aristotelian philosophy became very important to theologians later (esp. Aquinas); most early Christians were much more heavily influenced by Plato and the Stoics.
This is just fascinating. Once I finish Jesus Interrupted, I will like read How Jesus Became God next. Curious, what do you think about the book How God Became Jesus, written in response to yours?
We gave the authors/publisher permission to publish it at the same time! I’m on friendly terms with the various authors (the ones I know). But I”m afraid I was not impressed by the book. I think one problem is that they did not have a lot of time to write their essays and so they are not as strong, in my opinion, as they could have been. The best is by Craig Evans, which poses a real challenge. I devoted many blog posts to pointing out the many problems with it, and showing why I think he is completely wrong (if you do a word search for his name you’ll see the posts). But I think it was the best of the lot.
The Old Testament suggests that temporary messianic figures, (priests and kings), are prone to corruption. In contrast, the ultimate goal is humanity’s reconciliation to a paradise-like state, where God dwells among his people. This expectation is reflected in passages where God promises to personally shepherd his people (Ezekiel 34:16), build and marry them (Isaiah 62:5), and calls for preparation for Yahweh’s coming (Isaiah 40:3). Given these passages, it’s plausible that Jewish apocalyptic thinkers anticipated the permanent, incorruptible Messiah to be Yahweh himself, restoring creation and dwelling among humanity as in Genesis.
There’s no inherent reason to assume that pre-Jesus messianic expectations necessitated a “low” Christology. In fact, Paul’s letters exhibit a dynamic understanding of believers’ sonship, where they are already children of God (Romans 8:14) yet await adoption as children of God through glorification (Romans 8:23). Similarly, the Christ Hymn in Philippians 2 describes Christ’s journey from divine form to human form and subsequent exaltation. By analogy, Jesus and his followers may have viewed him as the preeminent Son of God, who became the Son of God in a more profound sense after his resurrection.
I don’t know of any Jewish text that considers the messiah to be God. He is always portrayed as God’s messenger/servant/appointed king, etc.
You may be interested in reading up on Jewish messianic views in John Collins, the Scepter and the Star, who lays it all out.
If I understand, Collins argues that while ancient Jewish texts suggest Yahweh’s intervention, the expectation was that Yahweh would act through the Messiah rather than being identical to him.
While this may have been the dominant view, I would argue:
1. Certain messianic passages simply dont lend themselves naturally to this interpretation. Ezekiel 34:11 states, “I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them.” Given the context—Israel’s failed leadership, including kings/priests/prophets—this passage suggests God would intervene *rather than* merely appoint another flawed person.
2. Although Jews longed for Israel’s liberation and restoration of the Davidic monarchy, the ultimate hope was surely the restoration of Eden, where God once again walks among us.
3. Even if the prevailing expectation was a “functionally” divine Messiah rather than an ontologically divine one, it’s easy to imagine someone reading passages like Jeremiah 23—where Yahweh declares that he himself will gather his flock and return them to pasture—and interpreting it at face value to mean that the Messiah=Yahweh.
I challenge the idea that early followers of Jesus merely searched for proof-texts after his crucifixion to justify his divinity. Rather, scripture itself provided the framework for a historical figure who identified as Messiah to also conceive of himself as Yahweh incarnate.
There aren’t any Christian or Jewish texts that speak of the Messiah as Yahweh incarnate.
11Q13
Look into it a bit more.
Seems to me that Philippians 2:6–11 displays a dual purpose Christology. Yes, Jesus was pre-existent, but after emptying himself he was obedient in going to the cross, therefore he was exalted by God.
If the author of Luke believed that Jesus was the Messiah and Son of God during his lifetime, why wouldn’t he have put that spin on the speeches of Peter and Paul, especially if he made the speeches up?
It is usually thought that it is because the speeches reflect “pre-literary traditions” that Luke has used. That is, there are statements (in the speeches) that Luke appears to have acquired from some of his sources (not necessarily speeches themselves) and used in coming up with the speeches. “Pre-literary” in this context simply refers to materials an author uses in producing his own writing (it does not mean that the materials he uses were necessarily oral, though they could have been.)
Is there any evidence of the location of the tomb where Jesus was allegedly buried? Is there any evidence a deceased body was ever in the tomb? Wasn’t it the standard practice for the Romans to bury a criminal in an unmarked grave with other criminals? If so, why would Jesus have been different? We have conflicting resurrection stories in the synoptic gospels, but I have never seen a source citing the location of the tomb and the evidence of a body occupying that tomb.
No, we have no evidence of where the burial would have occurred. My own view is that he was not buried on the day of his death, but like all the other crucifixion victims we know of was left to begin to decomposes and be subject to the elements and scavengers before his remains were deposited somehow or other (in a burial ditch or pit, etc.)
In their section on “The coming of Melchizedek (11Q13),” Wise, Abegg Jr., and Cook (1996) state “For our author, Melchizedek is an enormously exalted divine being, to whom are applied names that are generally reserved for God alone, the Hebrew names El and Elohim. In the author’s citation of Isaiah 61:2, which speaks of ‘the year of the LORD’s favor,’ ‘Melchizedek’ is substituted even for the most holy name of Israel’s God, Yahweh. Yet even more remarkably, Melchizedek is said to atone for the sins of the righteous and to execute judgment upon the wicked- actions usually associated with God himself” (p. 455).
Vermes (2011) adds that “this manuscript sheds valuable light not only on the Melchizedek figure in the Epistle to the Hebrews, but also on the development of the messianic concept in the New Testament and early Christianity.” (Vermes, p. 532).
Notably, Jesus’s Messianic claim in Mark 12:35-37 quotes Psalm 110:1. Psalm 110 is one of only two biblical passages referencing Melchizedek (Genesis 14 and Psalm 110). Jesus’s identification with this passage suggests a connection to the Melchizedek figure, reinforcing the notion that Jesus saw Himself in a role akin to this exalted, divine being.