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Loading...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 and eternal; we are finite and temporal. There is an unbridgeable gap between us and God. (Although in Christian theology, it is Jesus who bridges that gap by being a divine being who becomes human; in traditional theology, he did that so that we humans could then become divine)
People in the ancient world did not think of the divine realm o that way– both pagans (more obviously) and Jews (less obviously). Stick with the multitude of pagan religions for now. True, the major Gods were enormously powerful and knowing and were immortal (you couldn’t kill them, and they couldn’t kill each other. And they never died). But there were lots of different gods with lots of different power and knowledge. And many of the gods (nearly all of them) came into being at some point in the past. They haven’t always existed, so they were *immortal* not *eternal*. Like us, they get born. And like us, gods have strengths and weaknesses, and rarely were gods imagined as all-knowing, and almost never as all-powerful.
But there were gods and there were gods. I try to illustrate the divine realm to my students by speaking in terms of a divine pyramid.
If you’d like to see more about this, it is very simple: join the blog! Membership fees are remarkably low, and every thin dime goes to charities. You get a ton of information, the charities get your dimes, the world is good!
Very informative and helpful.
Some ancient rulers and kings used divinity to have power over others. I don’t think they were all good/in the light, although we are all born good and in the light.
Now we have the Pope, the Queen of England, and other heads of churches. Different countries have different governments.
I think some people were in light/heaven. I think Ancient Egypt at first kept it to royalty then shared it with the upper-class and then everyone could have a book. I think they did it because they valued Eternal life over inequality. They knew people were all born in the light. So they made eternal life available to all.
Are there some spirits more evolved than others? I think this is possible. With each life on earth, they may learn and grow.
So although we are all equals, we are at different stages/levels of growth and development. Each with unique strengths. Like the different gods and goddesses.
I also think it is a spiritual rising to heaven and possibly spiritual rebirth after many years or it could just be a spiritual guardian/connection to someone after many years. I think there are many in heaven, all greater than one individual. Maybe the greater good.
Some people see angels before rising. The angels are loved ones in heaven. So I think we can still communicate through prayer with them.
I think all people are born in light and can go to heaven. Babies are connected and don’t need to know their names. I think your heart matters. Love and kindness.
I think sin causes unnecessary suffering and pain.
We need 5 times or more positive than negative. Some stories and prayers are too negative.
So we are all born immortal and divine, many learn to sin, but they may still be able to get back into the light before passing. It may help to call their name in your silent prayers.
Not everyone sees angels. And it would seem that from ancient Egypt, these people did not live again, and they also would not die again.
Unity is love and kindness. Equality. People from different religions can go to heaven. We don’t have to be perfect. It is our hearts that matter.
I am working to help people to empower themselves without the false belief of needing power over others.
Bernice, daughter of Julia Bernice
“I married a Greek God, and now I’m married to a goddam Greek.”
A Greek god, really?
Hey, we were newlyweds. And you should have seen my six-pack. (OK, no one else ever saw it either…)
Dr. Ehrman, what is the Primary difference between the Son of God and the Son of Man?
They each mean different things in different contexts, different periods, and different authors. But for the MOST part the “Son of God” is a sentient being (angel or human) who is so closely connected/related to God as to stand in a special familial relation with him, so that it is a person through whom God mediates his will on earth; the Son of Man is a cosmic judge who comes from heaven to destroy what is opposed to God and perform God’s judgment on the people living here.
Elijah was raised up into the heavens, and some Jews believed he would return someday. (And perhaps some thought John or Jesus was Elijah returned, and perhaps they at times encouraged this comparison).
Was Elijah referred to as God? Certainly there are divine or semidivine aspects implied in his story (and he could raise the dead). But this is in the area of divinization, or adoption. Elijah was never supposed to be a pre-existent divine spirit come briefly to earth. He was a man empowered by faith, and at the end, as you say, lifted up into the heavenly realm (by a whirlwind and a blazing chariot, no less).
There aren’t as many traditions about Elijah in post-canonical literature as Enoch, for some reason. The Christian texts that refer to him think of him not as a permanent resident in heaven (and thus one made divine) but a mortal who was to come back to earth finally to die.
In the gospels, Elijah looms pretty large–he seems to be treated as an equal to Moses in the story of the Transfiguration (and he does go back to heaven when that’s over). Perhaps there was some localized veneration for him in Galilee, or emanating from the strain of Apocalyptic Judaism John and Jesus represented?
Possibly. But my sense is that he was a big deal throughout Judaism as well. think of the empty seat for Elijah still. He was, after all, one of only two people that God thought important enough to take to heaven without dying.
I was struck by something Joel Marcus said in his book on John the Baptist–that there might have been a perception in John’s cult that Jesus was Elisha to John’s Elijah. (How literal such an understanding would be is of course impossible to measure–the line between metaphorical and literal interpretations can be fairly porous among people of a spiritual bent, and indeed, people in general).
If I recall correctly, he thinks it might have worked out roughly to Elijah being seen as higher in rank, closer to God–but Elisha perhaps more gifted (and more unpredictable).
Then he got really creative and compared them to Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, though I guess given the name of the elder in that duo, kind of a gimme. Obviously there are some significant differences in terms of how those two famous teacher/pupil relationships worked out. 😐
Thank you Bart, very interesting and informative. Re “I married a Greek God, and now I’m married to a goddam Greek”. Your wife sounds like a wonderful, funny woman. Is there any chance she might write a blog or two giving her thoughts and insights?
She maybe would, if she were the current wife. 🙂
Kudos for managing to convince the current wife to marry a goddam Greek.
Ha!!
“…and certainly not most educated ancient people – actually believed the myths as telling events that truly happened”
Interestingly, modern educated people today often believe the myths of the Bible…six 24 hour days of creation, walking on water, healing of blind, raising of dead…as historical events. But only if in the Bible. Similar stories outside of the Bible are considered nonsense.
Yeah, I know. ARen’t humans interesting?
God has so many forms in the different religions. One and the same religion also finds different understandings of God, depending on which group / orientation one is listening to. Even the Christian God has a very different form from the beginning to the end of the Christian Bible. Judaism, which we consider to be a source of Christianity, has a significantly different conception of God, everything from an external and somewhat distant god, to an all-present power in which the human soul originated and its goals and return (Jewish mysticism), and where man was born in the image of God (God is spirit, and man was first created as a spirit – Adam Kademon who came before the physical Adam Ha Rishon.
The understanding of God is very different, even 2000 years ago. I believe that understanding many of the New Testament scriptures must be seen in light of the author’s religious grouping / understanding of God, unless the meaning of the texts can quickly become “Greek”.
Great Book – Buy it!!
Yes I was definitely one of those who was thinking if this had any relevance to do with Judaism! 🙂 This particular post clears out a lot of confusion. In my experience, there are a lot evangelical christians who have misquoted you and have said something to the effect of : ‘Even Dr. Ehrman agrees that all of the NT writers believed that Jesus is divine’ but in their minds, they are equating Divine to Yahweh (I believe this came up in your debate with Justin Bass a while back) and hence build on that to support the trinity. In the post above you have given a variety of ways in which someone can be called ‘God’ or considered divine. Why do you think that, in general, christians interpret any usage or inference to the word God in the NT as a literal claim to being Yahweh, specially when you have the entire Tanakh filled with instances of someone being called God and not being Yahweh?
I find it puzzling that anyone could think the early Christians imagined God as Yahweh. It is so easily disproven.
RE “puzzling that anyone could think the early Christians imagined God as Yahweh” … Bart, when you say this do you mean both the Jewish early Christians and the Gentile early Christians?
Yes, I don’t know of any early Christian texts that claim Jesus is Yawheh. He may have been seen as *equal* to Yahweh, but that is precisely different.
If I understand you correctly, Jesus preached kingdom ethics – live today as you will live in the Kingdom of God. So he heals people because there will be no illness in the kingdom. Do not even think about sinning, because there will be no sin in the kingdom. But he never (as far as we know) said anything about slavery. Do you think we know what his views on slavery was? In the earthly realm and in the kingdom of God.
He never says anything about slavery, so no we don’t know. Then again, there is scarcely *anyone* from the ancient world who condemned it as a social injustice on its own terms. (I’m not talking about individual slaves who knew they had been given a raw deal; I’m talking about condemnations of the institution)
It’s impossible to believe Jesus thought there would be slavery in the Kingdom. For whatever reason, pagan slaves were drawn to Christianity in great numbers–as were American slaves, millennia later, even when their masters discouraged it. (And, of course, slaves were the most likely people to be crucified–often for petty offenses–in the Roman order of things.)
Jesus doesn’t really condemn social injustices, per se. He condemns individual behaviors–which will lead people to not enter the Kingdom–where injustice will no longer exist, and all persecutors will go to Gehenna. I suppose Joe Hill (the Wobbly folk singer) might sneer at that ‘pie in the sky’, but the gospel tradition impacted him much more deeply than most, and the most famous song about him shows him risen from the dead. Patterns, repeating themselves.
Impossible? I’d say it’s not strictly speaking impossible to believe, since I believe it (which makes it possible to believe!) 🙂 Jews too practiced slavery and it was completely sanctioned in the Hebrew Bible. We simply can’t put our sense of social injustice on people living in a different context and assume that even the most moral among them would have agreed with *us*.
And Jesus believed everything his fellow Jews did was kosher? Divorce was entirely legal among Jews, but he condemned it all the same. I doubt Jesus knew any Jews in Nazareth who were rich enough to keep slaves. Do we have any data on how common a practice it was among Non-Hellenized Jews in Palestine in the First Century BCE?
If the least in the Kingdom of Heaven is greater than John the Baptist, and no one born of woman is greater than John, how can we believe there would be masters and slaves there? I I must humbly reassert my assertion that it’s quite impossible. All would serve God, of course. But that isn’t slavery, as Jesus sees it.
But I agree he wasn’t out to abolish it, by either legal or extralegal means. He believed the Son of Man would simply do away with the world where enslavement was an option.
These other issues were hotly debated. Not slavery.
First Century CE. ::sigh::
Probably because slavery wasn’t an issue in the ancient world, as you have said many times. Everybody accepted it on some level (with the exception of many slaves)–but Jesus wasn’t everybody.
Divorce, to name just one thing most Jews took for granted, was a commonplace event. But again, how many of the mainly poor people Jesus was speaking to had slaves? If nobody is debating slavery, nobody’s likely to bring it up with him, to get his reaction. So it’s not really an argument to say there’s no debates about it recorded in the gospels.
Plato obviously supported the continuation of slavery in the world he lived in. As an educated Athenian, slaves were for him, unlike Jesus, part of his daily existence as a young man, taken for granted.
And yet, his Republic of the mind doesn’t seem to have any such distinction between people. All children will be raised by the Guardians, and previous rankings of humanity will cease to exist. Nobody will really be free, but nobody will be specifically enslaved. A radical transformation of society, solving all our problems at once. It does sound familiar, doesn’t it?
So I think it was much the same for Jesus. He wasn’t necessarily angry about the institution, per se–it was mainly an abstract concept for him, since I doubt he encountered a lot of slaves.
But it was still a part of the old world that had to go, along with all other things that make people cling to foolish ideas of superiority (when the last should be first)–and it would offend him, I think, to make someone else your servant against his/her will, when you are supposed to willingly serve others.
Even though it had a basis in Jewish tradition, I see that the Torah forbade returning slaves who had escaped from other places to their owners, or re-enslaving them. (That had some influence on 19th century abolitionists, one would think.)
It’s possible in the sense that anything is with people, but no. I don’t think so. And if Jesus had endorsed slavery in any way, I find it hard to believe slaves would have flocked to his cult in such numbers after his death. Possible he did condemn it, but it was considered impolitic to mention that in the gospels, given its widespread acceptance.
Have you ever considered writing a comparitive study of Socrates and Jesus? I don’t just mean them personally, but the movements that surrounded them. A lot of interesting parallels.
Yeah, sometimes. It has been a subject of thought since early Xty.
Obviously a lot of work, but I’d love to read your take on those two, and the schools of thought and belief they inspired. (Without leaving any writings behind them.)
1. The good historian has to believe 10 impossible things before breakfast every morning; 2. I agree: Jesus was far less interested in social reform than in individual behaior.
So did the very first followers of Jesus consider him to be like Augustus–a human elevated (by popular acclaim) to a lower rung of this hierarchy of divinity? Or did these early believers bump Jesus up to a higher rung, or even to the top? Is Paul any help here in figuring this out?
Different early Christians had different views, even those who thought that he was the Father in human form.
In your debates with Christian apologists, does it it even come up that the God of the Bible does not appear to be omniscient, for example, Genesis 6:6, “The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.” There are other passages where God appears to change His mind, or regret his actions, which does not seem consistent with omniscience.
It never has. Of course they would have easy (for them) explanations: God was just accomodating himself to human conceptions/abilities to understand — he wasn’t *really* like that. It’s just said that way to help us understand what happened.
Any thoughts on open theist views? To God, all things are possibilities until they are certain…..God’s accomodating will in the Old Testament….how God handles our suffering, etc.
You would need to spell these out a bit for me to comment on them (and so others can see what you mean). (E.g., does the view say “all” things, literally, are possible? Including, say, round squares?)
Yeah, good point. Figured that was coming. Round squares….love it. In short, God sees and knows all
possible decisions one may make in say a day, hour, or minute from now. However, God does not, or even cannot
know our decisions, until they are made. Basically, God is all knowing when it comes to possible outcomes. But,
God isn’t sure, until our possible choices become certainties. Hope that’s more than just clear as mud.
In referring to God’s accomodating will, the view that God allowed human sacrifice/pagan worship practices in the Old Testament for a time. God accomodated man’s view of what they thought He wanted for worship. Sort of a slow progression/evolution/revelation leading up to Jesus and Paul’s teaching of Him in the New Testament. As far as the suffering thing goes, where is God in the midst of all of our suffering? How does He feel? Why is it allowed? Can we blame Him? Is He standing by idle? Bad things happen to good people….a lot. Where is God? Those types of questions/comments. Thanks for caring, Bart.
OK, so don’t get upset but NOW, people reading this won’t know what your *question* is about these views! In fact, I don’t either. But my view is that the idea that God was accommodating himself to human views, I’m all for that, as long as it means that he is accomodating to their views when they die as well, in case their views don’t coincide with his!
But are you asking if that’s a plausible way of reading the OT? Only if you think that God really exists and you’re trying to figure out why he changed his mind, or at least seemed to. Otherwise the simplest solution is that ancient authors living at different times had different views of God, so that naturally what they wrote represented their historically and culturally bound views, not some kind of divine ultimate truth.
Gods work cos of mystery. Marriage is much harder – we get to know each other way too well! (I platz’d on reading your first wife’s – accurate I’m sure – marriage works that way – comment!!)
Given the varying understandings of God/gods, among religions past and present, do you think it is possible to create a universal definition of God? My opinion is no. If you think so, how would you define it and justify it (given that so many people past and present would disagree)?
Yeah, that would be a tough one. There are entire undergraduate courses designed to show why it is not possible even to define “religion” in a way that works across the map.
Rome banned Christianity for several hundred years. Why did they decide to make it their religion?
They actually didn’t; it was not “banned” until the second part of the third century, and then that was revoked in 313 CE. In any event, why did they adopt it? That’s the subject of my most recent book The Triumph of Christianity. I try to deal with all the ins and outs of the issue htere. I hope you can read it!
“True, the major Gods were enormously powerful and knowing and were immortal (you couldn’t kill them, and they couldn’t kill each other. And they never died)”
Not true. According to “Xena the Warrior Princess (1995-2001)” – the authoritative source on ancient mythology, the Greek gods could be killed by mortals using a number of special weapons (e.g. The Dryad’s Bone, The Rib of Cronos, Helios’s Dagger). According a less authoritative source (but still a goddamn good film), Wonder Woman (2017), as revealed by Ares to Princess Diana of Themyscira prior to their climactic battle, “Only a god can kill another god.”
Ah, if only Xena had been around in 1995 BCE!!
But wasn’t there an impersonal aspect to certain pagan concepts of the divine that maybe wasn’t present in Judaism or Christianity? I’m thinking of Fate or Destiny, “Moira”?
thanks
Yes, I’d say that Christians at least tried to steal the uncertainties again from Greek/Roman Fate and Fortune by having it all tied into the plan of God (unlike the other mythologies!)
At least your ex-wife can’t be accused of not having had a sense of humor! 😉
Yeah, I always thought that was a good one….
Thank you Prof Ehrman, this is a very enlightening and great piece. It really explains and throws light on where most of our views of the Divine emanate from. I guess there is nothing new under the sun after all. Appreciate your time to write and respond to every single question on this blog. Great work.
Please does your book – How Jesus became God expand more on today’s subject regards to the concept of God(s) in the ancient world. And in how many chapters please.
Thank you.
Suppose someone adhered to a belief system as outlined in the pyramid – from top to bottom; and worshipped and acknowledged a Single Supreme Being (the 1st on the Pyramid) and also saw the other Gods ( from 2nd to 4th) in their respective sense of being Gods.
Will such a person be a Monotheist (since he/ she believes in the Almighty) or Henotheist or Polytheist?
If they worship only the top god on the pyramid they are a henotheist; if they worship some of the others, they are a polytheist.
VERY nicely put!
Fascinating insights. I was thinking about how pagans interacted with their gods yesterday, especially in comparison to Judaism and their sacrificial system as I had been reading N T Wright again – I was wondering if you had insight into what happened?
I understand that ancient Jews sacrificed animals or farm produce (wheat, wine, oil, etc) for a couple of reasons – as an offering for some sin they personally committed (sacrificing something of value to demonstrate remorse and repentance), or for a ritual at a festival to celebrate something (Passover being the obvious example). Interestingly, the collective sins of the nation were carried away by a goat into the wilderness and was not put to death.
I understand that Pagans often sacrificed similar items of value, but they did so in order to please the gods so they would answer a prayer or petition to help them in their lives (better luck, helping someone fall in love with them, etc) or to satisfy the wrath of a god they believe was displeased with them (after losing a battle or suffering some natural disaster).
But here’s the bit I’m stuck on – I think I read in one of your books or this blog that pagans didn’t believe that their gods had a particular ethical code they were expected to follow. For sure, their were ethical codes available, but these were worked out by philosophers, not the gods. So my question is, did ancient pagans ever sacrifice to their gods because they personally (not collectively) broke some ethical or moral code, much in the same way ancient Jews did?
Not normally, per se. Only when they did something very wrong that got the gods ticked. It would have been to appease the gods, not so much to bring about their personal salvation.
Very interesting. So how do you think the average Pauline Christian would have reacted to Paul’s message that Christ’s sacrifice would have saved them from the coming apocalypse? Why would a pagan Roman citizen have willingly suffered the public ignominy of turning against the pagan gods to worship a defeated messiah if they had no concept of a sacrificial system that would save them from their sins?
Genuine question – I’m not trying to be funny or trick you – it’s something I find difficult to grasp.
The sacrifices in pagan circles *were* meant to please and even placate the gods. But the issues were almost always not about personal ethical sins, but about neglecting to reverence the gods properly and seeking their assistance. So pagans could resonate with *that*; Christians did have to provide an altered understanding of personal sin, but it was not BRAND new — it was a recognition widely shared that gods could be displeased with people for the things they did. Most new religions build seriously on the old, but provide some peculiar or even unexpected twists that are picked up and suddenly make sense to people.
I think I see. I guess the twist with the Christian message was that God’s son that did the sacrifice so the people didn’t need to? And perhaps it was seen by Paul at least, as a liberating act that set people free from the sacrificial system, from the law and sin itself and into the Kingdom of God, in the same way the Passover sacrifice symbolised the liberation from the Angel of Death and into a new kingdom?
I’m trying to get my head around the context of the struggles Paul had with his ex-pagan converts. In particular, the way he found that the ‘Men of James’ were able to convince these converts that they should realign with the Jewish legal system.
Perhaps that there was an overlap between Pagan and Jewish thought that meant it was easy to mentally and emotionally drift back into the idea of an angry God that needed to be placated and pleased by personal sacrifice. It seems Paul spends a great deal of ink trying to undo that in his letters, stressing that the salvific act of Jesus was meant to put an end of that – is that how you read the situation?
That’s part of it. The other part is that the sacrifice is for personal sins that have alienated people from God. The men from James agreed with Paul on that bit. But they said that since salvation comes from teh Jewish messiah sent by the Jewish God to the Jewish people in of fulfillment of the Jewish law — to be a follower of Jesus you *had* to be Jewish. So Paul and they *agreed* that Jesus was the sacrifice for sins; but the question was: for everyone or for those who join the covenant people of God?
Thanks, Bart – that’s a good point, and certainly fills in the Jewish side of the argument (why pagans should become Jewish). I’m doing a class on the NT in the Roman Empire this semester (with Peter Oakes) and it’s fascinating how pagans lived. I hadn’t appreciated before the width and depth of pagan worship in everyday life.
We were shown the archaeological evidence of murals, frescos and shrines from Pompeii, and how abundant they were throughout the city. It seems nearly everyone had some evidence of pagan worship in their dwelling and/or place of work.
It’s stunning really and brings fresh meaning to your central thesis in The Triumph of Christianity. I appreciate how you calculate the numbers and the way that monotheistic Christianity had an erasure effect that polytheistic pagan forms did not. Even so, to almost completely dominate the Roman Empire within 400 years or so from a standing start (without the aid of military conquest) is remarkable given how saturated and central paganism was within Roman life. The ancient world is fascinating!
I’ve been on a pretty deep dive over this for the past few weeks and something has struck me. I wonder if you could help?
It seems to me that the ancient world saw reality significantly differently to how we in the post-enlightenment west do – the boundary between the earthly and cosmic worlds was slight. Prayers, vows, sacrifices and rituals had a tangible effect upon the pagan gods where you could enter into contracts with them to bestow fortune or alleviate wrath. Moreover, certain cults believed in a system of reality behind the observable curtain, where cosmic beings such as angels or δαίμονες were at work in nature or people, pulling levers and pressing buttons.
I wonder if the mechanisms or system of this intra-earthly-cosmic reality is what Paul described when he talked of the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου (usually translated ‘elemental spirits of the universe’)? His criticism was accompanied with warnings to avoid religious rituals and getting drawn into angelic worship. If so, do you think a more suitable translation would be ‘metaphysical cosmology’?
Yes, they probably are what he have in mind. I don’t know of a good translation, but I don’t think “metaphysical cosmology” quite makes sense, since it’s not something Paul wold have concevied of. It may mean something like the “various superhuman entities that make up the cosmos”
Pagans did change Christianity, but one shouldn’t underestimate the extent to which they did grasp many of its central ideas–and the way those ideas impressed them. There may have been questions they had about the world, about life, about themselves–that the version of paganism they had couldn’t answer. And Christianity at least promised to.
Yes, I think you’re right about that, Godspell. There must have been something very attractive about Christianity for so many pagans to risk public disgrace, ignominy and persecution. I hadn’t appreciated until recently how difficult it would have been for everyday people within the Roman empire to keep their faith a private matter.
I’m led to understand that it would have been very noticeable when pagans converted as most kept some symbol or sign of pagan worship within their dwelling or workspace. If they took down idols or painted over frescos, it would have been immediately obvious to others and probably lead to social isolation and loss of public honour at the very least.
It’s a really good book.
Your first wife’s saying made me spit out my coffee????
Prof Ehrman,
Is it possible that God concepts and religious themes found in organized religions (Judaism, Christianity) are possible borrowings from the very ancient world or civilizations?
Many of them, abosolutely.
I always assumed that most ancient people were much more religious and believed the mythical stories that they were told. Is there any research to assess how credulous ancient people were?
Lots of it. Simple story: most ancient people practiced religion regularly; but the myths were not actually part of it. They were just good stories told that might have important lessons, but you didn’t have to “believe” them adn they weren’t part of the religious rituals themselves.
This doesn’t sound all that different from how many Christians practice their faith.
It’s a matter of temperament and training–Origen would tell educated pagans that of course he didn’t believe all the stories about Jesus, but that wasn’t the point of anything. He still had faith in what the stories meant.
We don’t really know about what most pagans believed, do we? The ones who left writings behind were educated, usually of higher rank, and of course they’d be more skeptical. I understand that the versions of the pagan myths we have are mainly written down for an educated audience, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an oral tradition of folklore and legend that the poor folks had, and that they didn’t believe them (again, the quality of belief can be quite fluid and hard to pin down).
Their stories of the gods were probably quite different, and probably not all about the reigning pantheon. I bet they told stories in which their local gods triumphed over the big shots.
Who knows how many religions flourished in the shade of the official governing version of paganism? As practitioners of Santeria worship their tribal gods in the form of Christian saints, in Catholic cathedrals.
Paganism never died. It’s all around us, and we just don’t see it most of the time.
Professor Ehrman,
Where on this scale or pyramid of divinity would Jewish thinking at the time have placed Angels? Jews seemed to have had their own hierarchy of divine beings as you reference in the post. Would angels have been roughly equivalent to lesser Greek divinities such as the Daimonia? And would Paul’s idea of Jesus as Angel of The Lord been referencing a being more akin to an Archangel, or perhaps THE Archangel? I’m trying to wrap my mind around the way in which Angels stacked up in terms of power against the lesser Greek divinities.
I suppose roughly you’d have God at the top. His top angels (archangels, divine counsellors as in Job 1-2) below. Other angels below, and so on. Christ in Paul’s view would have been at the top of the top angels. Of course it depends completely *when* within Judaism we are talking, where, and who!
In what sense do you think Paul is using god in 2 Cor 4:4 “In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers…”? Seems like a verse a gnostic/dualist may have run with.
I think he’s referring to the head of the evil cosmic forces, i.e., Satan.
Professor, of your works I have read to date, I most enjoyed How Jesus Became God because it got into the mind of the ancients providing a way to the hardest thing I have found to garner in a lay interest or study of the NT, which is context!
(Alleged) network engineer here. Back-end computer processes in UNIX are called “daemons” – entities that run behind the scenes that cause everything else to happen. They are often unseen but very powerful, especially if the code for that particular service (the actual technical name for a ‘daemon’) was written by someone with administrator or “super-user” authority. A daemon with the right author can literally stop and start the entire system or decide what does or doesn’t happen. Applications written by users can and do run into conflict with ‘daemons’ all the time.
Dr. Ehrman:
Do you agree with ALL of the late Raymond Brown’s scholarship?
No indeed. I don’t agree with all of *anyone’s* scholarship, just as no one agrees with all of mine.
Bart
When you say that ” Jesus became God,” do you think people (Jews? Greeks?) though of him as Yahweh? Was that the name of the deity in their minds for Jesus? Or Just the generic “god” or “kyrios”?
No, I don’t think that. Yahweh was his father. He was God in a different sense. I lay all this out in my book.
Dear Bart, Have you read (I assume you have) Larry Hurtado’s “How on earth did Jesus become a God”? If you have, what would you say are the coincidences and divergences between your and his theories?
It’s a popular presentation of the views he set forth in two of his scholarly books, the largest one, his magnum opus, is called Lord Jesus Christ. We agree on a lot of things, but he places a lot more (almost everything) on the *worship* practices of Christians as the reason Jesus came to become divine in their mind, I think their theology involved a ton of thinking, it was not principally a result of worshiping practices. I also see lots more diversity in the early Christian movement than he does, especially in their theological views.
The pre-existing Christ lived in heaven with YHWH before he was sent to the earth. He was the first of YHWH’S creations. After ransoming mankind he went back to heaven and was exalted to a higher position than he previously had but he was still lower and a subject whom submitted himself to YHWH.
The inherent immortality of the soul doctrine partly is from the teachings of Plato and one of Mystery Babylon’s false doctrines. When we die we go back to the dust and require a resurrection to live again such as was the case with Lazarus, Dorcas, and others in the Bible
Mr ehrman I was really wondering why scholar that agree on bible full of error and Jesus wasn’t god didn’t give up Christianity and search on another religion like Islam, because Islam book doesn’t have contradiction in it, it has been proofed also it’s preserved because it’s easy to memorize, like lately deceased Larry hurtado he also didn’t give up Christianity fully, it’s really weird people ditch Islam just like that
I’m not looking for the “true” religion. I do not believe in God.
Hello Dr. Ehrman! I’m new to this blog so idk if this question has been asked. Is the Catholic Church the “original” church? I see a lot of Catholics on social media boasting about this. Thank you!
No, the original church was not at all like the Catholic Church. Or most any other denomination.