In Prof Ehrman’s recent Jan 4th Blog Post, “Answers to Recent Questions”, the 3rd question was about John chapter 1 and Jesus as Logos. I took that opportunity to ask a question that I’ve wondered about for a long time. A question that gets, not less, but more mysterious the more I’ve learned about ancient beliefs.
Stephen January 6, 2025 at 1:33 pm – Reply
Re: Question three
How does the Logos become flesh? Functionally I mean. For Mark, Jesus was adopted as God’s son at his baptism. For Matthew and Luke Jesus was divine at conception. How did John imagine Jesus’ birth as the Logos made flesh? Did the Logos come upon Jesus at some point the way the Holy Spirit was said to come upon Jesus in Mark? Was being the Logos made flesh in any way inconsistent with a normal biological birth? (I note that John refers to Jesus being the son of Joseph twice, once by a friend and once by an enemy.)
I understand John is not clear at all about this. Any intuitions?
BDEhrman January 8, 2025 at 10:36 am – Reply
Yeah, I wish he would have said! He appears to know that Jesus had a young life (he came out of Nazareth), so probably he doesn’t imagine him showing up as an adult as Marcion later claimed. Certainly in Greek and Roman myths divine men were literally born; so I suppose that’s my best guess. Not that God got Mary pregnant as a virgin but a divine being entered her womb.
I had forgotten about Marcion’s view. You could almost get that impression from John but as Prof Ehrman said, in John Jesus is tied to a life in Nazareth, his mother is mentioned and not named, and most interestingly, as I said, Joseph is explicitly named as Jesus’ father, twice! The problem is that in all the mythological cases of which I’m aware, when a god impregnates a human female to produce a divine child it is because the god took human form and actually had sex with her. The Virgin Birth desexualizes the process but at least acknowledges it.
The issue arises because what we are dealing with here is the case of a pre-existent divine being. The author of John – and Paul of course – were not systematic theologians, much less biologists. Maybe it just never worried them too much. Even if Prof Ehrman is right and a “divine being entered her womb” it still seems like we’re missing a step.
This is interesting enough to me to cause me to do some further research. The Truth is out there!
Perhaps the author did not think of or address the details you seek because he was blinded by a larger cultural opposition between his own new identity and his cultural roots?
Robert, you’re probably right.
Their cultural thought provided them with certain solutions but none of them jibed easily with their revelation. Mark had it easiest. The template of the divinization of a human being was provided already. It was just a matter of the details.
But the earlier Jesus becomes divine and more exalted his status the bigger issues you create. For Matthew & Luke, the “Holy Spirit” worked admirably. But For Paul, a “pre-existent divine being”? For John, the divine emanation of the Logos?.
And still having human parents?
Asking about the mechanics of it all simply highlights our modernism.
However people still claim the authenticity of these revelations so we are compelled to wonder.
Paul, with his view of the Resurrection body, gives us a clue. He viewed the human being similarly to the Stoics/Middle Platonists. A human person possessed Sarx (the “flesh”), Nous, (the “mind”), and Pneuma, (the “Spirit”). In the Resurrection the sarx and the nous wither away and the pneuma is transformed into the Resurrection body.
By extension perhaps we can then speculate that what happened in the Incarnation was that Mary and Joseph provided Jesus’ sarx and nous but his pneuma was divine. Otherwise you’re almost forced to look at it like a form of divine possession.
Anyway it’s a place to start.
In Catholic Trinity theology; Jesus is not a human being. A view that considered not as heresy.
Heresy is just a scary word that means you don’t understand the grammar and language yet.
IF, εαν (begin the subjunctive mood verbs) there’s anything absolutely accurate to say about it all according to nearly 2000 years of thought.
BDEhrman
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Robert
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