In yesterday’s post I began to explain some of the problems that I had started to have with my original way of imagining this book, How Jesus Became God (I give the original prospectus in the three posts preceding that one). The problem I mentioned yesterday was a big one: I came to think that the proposal did not take into account fully enough the variety of Christological expressions that one finds at the same time in early Christianity, but seemed to assume that there was some kind of straight line, linear progression from a low Christology to a high one.
To some extent I still think that there was a progression. It is clear, at any rate, that the Christology embraced at the Council of Nicea was MUCH “higher” than the one found in the Gospel of Mark. You’d have to be blind not to see the difference. But something has to account for the fact that in our earliest source – Paul – we appear to get some kind of high Christology already, years before Mark. (Not nearly as high as at Nicea; but higher than Mark’s).
There was another big problem that I had with the proposal. It was that in my older way of imagining the development of Christology was I did not seem to be taking into account what was *driving* the development. Why were Christians saying new and exalted things of Jesus? What was behind it all?
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Very good. It was the ‘idea’ of the time.
Very interesting. I have often foolishly assumed that developments in faith communities take place in hermetically sealed cocoons, without any impact from contemporary culture. It was reading David Bebbington’s ‘Evangelicalism in Modern Britain’ which first opened my eyes to the considerable influence that contemporary culture has had on developments within one particular strand of Christianity. No reason to think things were any different with Christianity in antiquity.
I look forward to this book enormously, and just love this blog.
Wow. That actually makes a ton of sense, not only in regards to how the High Christology of Jesus developed, but as to how persecution against Christians developed, as well. If mass of people began ascribing a man with the honors normally reserved for the Emperor, it’s very understandable that the officials of the Empire might take offense.
Two questions: Did the exaltation of the Roman Emperors coincide simultaneously with the development of High Christology, or did one precede the other? And did any of the early Church Fathers write about the Romans claiming divinity for the Emperor?
The exaltation of the emperor came first; the Christian views may have been imitative. And yes they did.
Hey Bart 🙂
You write: “It can’t be an *accident* that Jesus was put on the same level as the emperor at almost exactly the same time that the emperor was being exalted to a divine status. Romans called the emperor the “savior” and the “lord” and even “God.” And these are things that Christians called Jesus.”
In its “Statement on Language”, a Presbyterian Hymnal Committee recently expounded on an implication presumed to inhere in the Christian appropriation of one of these titles of the emperor:
“That “Jesus Christ is Lord (kurios)” is one of the oldest confessions concerning Jesus. It has both a Roman and a Jewish background. On the one hand, “Lord” (kurios) was the title of the Roman emperor. When the writers of the New Testament confess Jesus to be Lord, they thereby proclaim that not Caesar, but Christ rules this world.”
http://www.presbyterianhymnalproject.com/committeeStatements.html
Thanks, as always! 🙂
Yes…you said it correctly. I was focusing on Constantine alone too much in my previous comments, but it had to do with the Roman influence on the early Christians and the Christian churches, and the Roman’s calling their emperor God. I want to learn more about this. I hope your book will get deeply into that.
This is all cool. Has your research uncovered any work linking Jesus divine titles to those of the empeor? Didn’t James Dunn write something about the distinctive ways in which early Christians worshiped Jesus? Does this come into play?
Yup, yup, nad yup!
As to who wrote the Book of John is up for grabs unless one accepts the traditional view. To think that a Fisherman from Galilee who was by accounts uneducated and unlearned wrote it is highly improbable. Especially when one takes into account that the ability to read, write and compose took yrs to learn, add to that the cost, which mostly the rich could afford , not the common man. I know Professor James Charlesworth believes that JN 1 was a later addition, as well as CH 15 &17. As you mentioned Prof. Ehrman, the relegating of people into a God like status was a common practice. When Paul and Silas healed a man the first thing the people thought was that the Gods had come down to them in human form and wanted to worship them.
It would seem to me, in light of your emphasis that the title “son of god” is as much of a political consequence as a religious one that the development of a High Christology of the Nicean and post Nicean age should be seen as an attempt to create a religious figure, i.e., Jesus to politically unite Roman empire. An empire that was religiously diverse and politically complex. The Roman emperor becomes the head of the Christian Church is the vicar of Son of God on earth. Have you read Caesar’s Messiah by Joseph Atwill? Maybe the Christology we have today is not of linear development as you suggest, but was the craftsmanship of Government sponsored churchmen after Nicea, who restructured by forgery and murder of the heretics to give the appearance that the Christ story began with a high Christ view, then poisoned by heretics only to be purified by the council of Bishops at Nicea and subsequent chuch councils.
As I noted previously, nothing happens in a vacuum.
Fascinating! Can’t wait to read your book!
This is fascinating! But…I’d been under the impression that the Romans thought of their emperors as “divine,” but on a lower level than the classic gods – Jupiter, Mars, et al. Is that wrong?
I suppose that even if they didn’t think of the Emperor as the “one true God,” their calling him a god could have influenced the Christians. And I’m eager to learn what was going on in the Johannine community!
I hope that at some point in your book, you’ll offer suggestions as to how Jesus’s followers could have come to believe he’d been resurrected. (Assuming he really hadn’t been.) My own guess is that there was an honest mix-up, and people like Peter and Jesus’s brother James really believed his body had “disappeared” from where it was supposed to be. Given that belief, they could easily have worked themselves up into experiencing “visions.”
Yes, that’s right. He was divine, but not one of the Great Gods. Just as Jesus was divine, but was not God the Father.
I do think you should include a section on your view of Jesus’ resurrection hallucinations, maybe state some good psychological evidence, to help people along in that degree. I’ve been researching the area of psychology relevant to that discussion but it’s slow going, with everything else I have to do, and I’d love to see what you’ve come across in your time.
This book could really make the biggest splash in New Testament critical studies, on the popular level, especially, in forever… Very much looking forward to what you’re going to turn out…
Interesting to note that Son of Jupiter, ect, were used but not “Son of God”, on mythical figures like Hercules, ect. Still, I have to wonder if the popular idea of these sons of gods didn’t influence the adoption of Jesus as a son of God, or at least prepare the common pagan mind for it.
Oh that trip does sound like a dream trip! As they say, “free your mind, and the rest will follow…” But really, Dr. Ehrman? I am aghast! that it took a pillar for you to realize this! I was expecting something earth shattering – not something noggin’ shattering! But maybe not everyone will know this already…
From Dr. Michael Shermer I have learned that every religion defines their God and/or gods differently. This is in part due to how we perceive causal events. That is, according to Shermer, Foster and Kokko, individuals lack the ability to assign causal probabilities to all sets of events that occur around them and this deficiency causes them to lump causal associations with non-causal ones.
Superstition, then, arises as an evolutionary mechanism to explain events by creating causal links between the event itself and the response–even when there is no direct causal link between the two. In other words, human brains have evolved to favor strategies that make many incorrect causal associations in order to establish those that are essential for survival and reproduction.
Simply put, our innate patternicity, that is our ability to detect patterns in the real world, often times leads to wrong inferences about reality. These mistaken inferences about casual events explains the development of superstitious reasoning. Superstitious reasoning, in turn, explains many facets we see within the development of religious belief. Not only the highly ritualized customs and practices, but also the very way in which religious believers think about God.
Is there any way to incorporate or link scientific cognitive error studies with the contruction of christologies? Even if its just “more likely or probable”?
I don’t have a good answer; I’ll have to think about it.
Oh my! Would that mean that the same “patternicity” (sic) that likely was a key survival trait for Homo Sapiens – that at least was key to us leaving hunter gathering and becoming agrarian food producers – was also precedent to our superstitions and belief in gods?
Bart,
From above
” And these are things that Christians called Jesus. Soon after the pagans were doing it. Moreover, the “son” of a divine emperor was the “son of God.” In fact, the only people in the empire to be called “son of God” were the emperor and Jesus. (Other divine men were called “son of Zeus” or “son of Apollo” etc. But the term “son of God” was used only of emperors. And then Jesus.)”
I think NT Wright and John Crossan have taken a similar tack in various writings- Is your view that much different from theirs?
Thanks
Jerry
My view will definitely be different from Wright’s, and probably closer to Crossan’s, with some differences.
A very interesting component. Are there significant differences from when Alexander the Great or Antiochus IV Epiphanes assumed divine status? Or, if comparable, were there Jewish teachers of those periods assuming resurrected or divine-like status and followings? If not, perhaps it is the apocalyptic mindset that is the crucial difference at the time of Jesus?
I think the difference is that other Jewish teachers were not believed to have been raised from the dead.
And what led to the initial belief in Jesus’ resurrection? Was it traumatic grief and guilt based on their abandoning their beloved but grandiose master at the time of his grusome crucifixion? Something like Gerd Lüdemann?
I wish we knew! But it’s a good guess.
But is it enough of an explanation for the rather rapid growth of a new movement into foreign countries and continents? Does it really explain Paul and his communities? Are there good historical analgoues for other similar phenomena? Not that I expect you to answer all such questions, but it is perplexing. Mythicists and apologists, alike, are not convinced by L. I sometimes think that there must have already been a number of communities or Gallilean and Syrian villages already successfully practicing Jesus’ ethics of the kingdom of God that functioned as a cell or base of early believers that accepted or experienced the resurrection as confirmation of an already growing movement that was not founded primarily upon the resurrection. The Q-people cursed and shook the dust off their feet of the villages that did not accept their preaching so perhaps there were other villages that had already accepted Jesus’ preaching before his execution. I can more easily understand and accept grief-guilt apparitions as a catalyst if there were already some kindling to be enflamed by apocalyptic mania. Make sense?
Makes sense, but my view is that the idea that Jesus had enormous success and converted hundreds during his public ministry is a later one. The early followers of Jesus convinced others that Jesus had been raised. I think they did it by telling of the miracles that were worked in jesus’ name. But that’s a very long story!
How interesting about “external” factors. I thought you were headed to Paul having a high Christology which passed down through the Marcionites and Peter and the disciples having, in conflict with Paul, a lower Christolgy which passed down through the Ebionites and the two movements remained in conflict until Constantine molded all views into one view. Carry on.
Bart,
I can hardly wait to read more about how you deal with Philippines 2. The seemingly early and high christology had always been a difficult issue for me. It created one very difficult conundrum for me as I first started to liberalize my theology. I remember having that passage drilled into my head as the most significant set of verses to apologetically show the Deity of Christ. The other big ones being John 1:1 and 8:58. Those 2 I could ultimately make sense of, but let me ask you, “How can a strict Jew (Paul) adopt such an idea?” That’s the million dollar question. Isn’t it?
Fascinating! I also *knew* this, but you’re right, it never hit me about the timing. In the Republic, of course, no man was called a god (or even a king). The fact that the Emperorship, with its divine trappings, was pretty darn new during early Christianity never occurred to me, either.
I recall reading a book as a youngster called 44 BC- AD 14, about the period of Augusuts, and that his birth was supposedly heralded by a comet or supernova or conjunction or some sort of celestial sign. Sound familiar?
Are you referring to the comet at Julius Caesar’s death?
How interesting! Are you saying that pagan Christian converts brought this terminology into their new Christian communities, and put these terms onto Jesus, or that the Christians used these terms to “sell” Jesus to potential pagan converts? Both are pretty interesting me, though I’m not sure how you could know which direction it went.
Wait and see!
Haha, will do 🙂
I think you’re in the right track. Most readers are already familiar with Roman history in books and movies (my favorite is Caligula, LOL) and it would be easier to understand your argument. So this is how Paul actually changed Christianity, by letting pagans switch their allegiances from mythological or human gods to Jesus but continue their practices under a different label. When the Roman Pantheon was converted into a church the pagan idols were replaced by Christian idols, pagan holidays became Christian, etc. I just wonder what would Christianity be like if Paul never got involved at all. Sometimes I’d like to think that it wasn’t really Jesus that Saul met but the devil (how would he know anyway). This is going to be a wonderful book. More power to you.
Does anyone call a Roman emperor “dei filius” or Jesus “divi filius”?
Michael Peppard in his book on Son of God in the Roman World argues that dei and divi were in fact used interchangeably.
Have you not read:
Jesus and Gospel
Graham N. Stanton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (August 2, 2004)
ISBN-10: 0521008026
Yes indeed I’ve read it. And recommended it to others!
Dear Professor
May I suggest a book to you? I am mindful of your very busy schedule of lectures and writing but some of the ideas in this book are pertinent to what you are discussing in this:
The Price of Monotheism
Jan Assmann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN-10: 0804761604
ISBN-13: 978-0804761604
In the introduction of the book (which follows from his earlier book: Moses the Egyptian) he proposes the idea of Secondary religions (or counterreligions) which form from the play of ‘syncretistic acculturations’ and ‘antagonistic acculturations’.
It can even be suggested that in the development of early Christian theology one can view Jesus of Nazareth is an anti-Messiah since his life and death can be seen as the antithesis of Jewish Messianic expectations and also the anti-Roman-God-Emperor yet claim the Truth that he is both the Messiah and God.
Wow this is truly fascinating. I’ve never before considered the external influences of the time being in many ways the driving force behind the development of a high Christology, but now it does indeed make sense and seems so obvious. Thank you for this insight!
Having come from a conservative evangelical background myself (Mennonite Brethren), I tried my hardest but never really did get the whole theology of Jesus being fully God yet at the same time fully human. It always seemed like a paradox; like two opposites somehow co-existing in perfect harmony. Can someone be purely good yet at the same time be purely evil? The God-man concept seems like too much in the way of theological gymnastics to try reconciling opposing bible verses.
Are you also saying that Jesus never claimed to be “son of God” (in the Jewish sense of the term, alongside other OT figures) and that the early Palestinian Christians didn’t do so?
I don’t know if Jesus did or not. If he did, he probably meant he was the son of God in the way that all people have God as their Father. But the early Palestinian Christians certainly thought he was the Son of God in a unique sense.
Is it clear that Mark was referring to Jesus as the Son of God in a unique sense? If so, surely this sense is still uniqueness of a human being, not a divine being?
Ah — I’m getting to that!
“That is, I had to think about how what was going on in the world around them influenced the Christians (with converts increasingly being drawn from pagans, who worshiped the emperor as god) and their view of their alternative lord, savior, and God.”
As I walked the Ephesus street in front of the “slope houses, rich houses” I couldn’t help but think of Paul walking that street and thinking “how gross.” Me sleeping and performing humanly functions in the wild and these people with “air conditioned” homes with running water. At the time I started reading the Bible and religious studies in a politic, economic context. It has helped me understand the turmoil of the times.
Ron
The main proponent of this line of approach was Richard Horsely, correct? It is an important social even political context for understanding Paul’s language of Lord, Savior, Son of God, gospel, etc, but I think it’s probably a mistake to see this as the primary matrix from which this language developed. In my opinion, more fundamental is Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom of God, which would be seen by some perhaps as in confrontation with the Kingdom of Ceasar, but by others as subsuming and ultimately dominating all earthly dominions. Many seem to think the Kingdom of God is absent in Paul, but it is at least minimally present, and I think should be seen as part of the background and strained continuity between Jesus and Paul. Would appreciate your thoughts on this.
I’m a little lost in knowing which comments of mine you’re referring to. But I do think Jesus saw the Kingdom of God as standing in direct conflict with the kingdoms of this world (esp. Rome), and that Paul as an apocalypticist had a very similar view to that extent.
Sorry, I wasn’t that clear. Do you think that Paul’s language and thoughts referring to the kingdom of God (Rom 4,17 1 Cor 4,20 6,9-10 15,24.50 Gal 5,21 1 Thess 2,12) were dependent upon some idea of Jesus’ preaching on the kingdom of God?
It seems to me this theme is not emphasized enough when looking for continuity/discontinuity between Jesus and Paul.
No, my sense is that as an apocalyptic Jew, Paul had his own notions about the coming kingdom, which happened to coincide in some ways with the views of Jesus, since he too was a first-century apocalyptic Jew. But Paul never refers to the proclamation of Jesus about the Kingdom, and I don’t see much evidence that he knows much about it.
Do we have any indication that Paul was apocalyptic prior to his experience of the resurrected Christ? What do you make of his language of ‘inheriting’ the Kingdom of God? Are there close analogues to this in contemporary Judaism? I will look again at Qumran texts when I get a chance.
Yes, as a Pharisee he would have been an apocalypticist, and the fact that he interpreted Jesus’ appearance to him as a “resurrection” shows that he was already using apocalyptic categories. Good question about analogues to “inheriting” — I’m not sure.
Very interesting. I never realized that all Pharisees were apocalyticists. I was probably just anachronizing a more modern sense of heaven.
According to John 17:3 where Jesus calls the Father, “the only true God”, it seems that Jesus is clearly stating that HE IS not God but only the Father is. But according to Dr. James White this isn’t the case since in John 17:5, Jesus asks the Father to glorify HIM with the glory HE had WITH THE FATHER.
What’s your take on John 17:5 personally? Does Jesus by asking the Father to glorify HIM with the same glory he had with the Father before the world began implausibly imply Jesus preaching about HIS DEITY? Is Dr. White’s interpretation the only implausible one?
I think in the Gospel of John Jesus is understood to be a pre-existent divine being who was equal with God before he became human. I also think that has very little relationship to what hte historical Jesus thought about himself. None in fact!
But wouldn’t it still be contradictory if Jesus calls the Father the only one true God and then moments later says HE IS EQUAL to the FATHER? Could this be an example of a Bible Contradiction?
Well there may be only one you, and I may be your equal, without being you!
I know of your debate with Dr. Wallace, where he talked about how we if all the NEw tEstament manuscripts were to be destroyed we can still reconstruct all that Jesus did say and preach from the letters of the Church Fathers.
My question is how reliable are the manuscripts that we have of the Church Fathers’ LETTERS to know what Jesus and the NEw Testamant actually did teach about the Jesus’s identity and WHO HE REALLY was?
It’s a complicated qustion. We don’t have the originals of any of the writings of the church fathers either, so these texts also have to be reconstructed. In *most* (not all) cases there was less reason for scribes to alter these texts than texts of Scripture, but it’s a long story. The reality is that we do not have extensive early mss of the NT — or of the writings of the church fathers; so no matter how many later ones we have, it is very difficult indeed to know what was in the earlier ones (that no longer survive).
Do you know what is the dating of the earliest manuscript of the letters of the church fathers?
It depends which church father you mean! There is no manuscript that has all of them in them. All of the church fathers have separate manuscript traditions. Do you have one in mind?
Well what I meant is from ALL the writings of the Church fathers or their copies, which manscript is the earliest? And associated with which Church father?
Hmmm. Good question I never thought about it. There is a second-century papyrus fragment of the Shepherd of Hermas. I doubt if there are many witnesses for any of the church fathers older than that….
This is a documentary on youtube, called The Human Jesus made by Unitarian Christians. You may find it interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7ZJYL1KKRU.
How firmly grounded in reality is the claim of Jehovah’s Witnesses that the ‘divine name’ (Jehovah) belongs in the New Testament?
Here is the list of reasons given by the Watchtower Organization:
http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/appendix-a/divine-name-christian-greek-scriptures/#p1
______________________________
Among the above iterated we find:
Recognized Bible translators have used God’s name in the Christian Greek Scriptures. Some of these translators did so long before the New World Translation was produced. These translators and their works include: A Literal Translation of the New Testament . . . From the Text of the Vatican Manuscript, by Herman Heinfetter (1863); The Emphatic Diaglott, by Benjamin Wilson (1864); The Epistles of Paul in Modern English, by George Barker Stevens (1898); St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, by W. G. Rutherford (1900); The New Testament Letters, by J.W.C. Wand, Bishop of London (1946). In addition, in a Spanish translation in the early 20th century, translator Pablo Besson used “Jehová” at Luke 2:15 and Jude 14, and nearly 100 footnotes in his translation suggest the divine name as a likely rendering.
The big problem is that Jehovah is not the divine name. Maybe I’ll explain about that in a post. It’s a made-up word.
Just recently I have seen James White’s debate with Muslim apologist, Shabir Ally on the topic of “Did Jesus’ earliest followers consider him to be God?” which took place on January 2015.
In the debate, James brought the Carmen Christi up, saying that it testifies to the deity of Jesus and that it is Pre-Pauline. He then started using that as proof for his assertion that the belief in the deity of Christ was part of the beliefs of primitive Christianity.
Any comments?
Yes, this one of the few things I agree with him about. I discuss the passage in my book How Jesus Became God (a book that White will not like at *all*!)
What does the earliest copy of the Carmen Christi date to? Also when does the earliest reference to the Carmen Christi date to?
I”m not sure what you mean by “earliest copy.” Do you mean the earliest Greek manuscript of the book of Philippians? Or do you mean the earliest attestation of the “hymn”? That would be Philippians, written around 55 CE, quoting the “hymn” from an earlier source.
I was talking about the earlier source (from which Phillipians is quoting it from), in one of my questions (the other you just answered and thanks). In other words the original source of the hymn, what is the earliest manuscript do we have of that?
We don’t have the hymn in any source outside of Philippians. The earliest manuscript of Philippians is P46, from around the year 200.
Is the Carmen Christi proof that the deity of Christ was part of the earliest Christology?
Yes indeed (although I was say it was *one* of the early Christologies, not “the” early Christology)
So if I understand you correctly would it be correct to say that there were Unitarians among the earliest followers of Jesus?
I know some Unitarians who would say: “Definitely Yes”!
Yeah but what do you say as a historian? Historically as you have mentioned there were more than one Christologies among the earliest followers of Jesus, so historically would it be safe to say that there Christians among the earliest Christians who did not believe in the deity of Jesus?
Again, I deal with this at length in my book. Yes, there were early Christians who believed Jesus was entirely human, but that he had been exalted to a divine status — but not to a level of equality with God.
Whenever James White is confronted with the argument that Mark represents the earliest Christology and that John represents a later more developed Christology, he (White) then attacks the scholars who claim this to be bias and coming from a naturalistic predisposition ( as a way of discrediting them ). What are your comments on that?
It’s the view of virtually every Christian critical scholar I know; I suppose if someone doesn’t agree with White they are a radical anti-supernaturalist secular Satan-worshipping maniac?
He has the tendency of requesting his opponents to refer to the works of Conservative scholars (whatever that means) and one time he was talking about how believing scholars should be used as references to Bible related topic.
You wrote:
” I was looking at a large ornamental stone that had an inscription on it. The inscription described the emperor Augustus and called him “god.” And something hit me. Surely I knew this before, but it had never really HIT me before. I don’t know why. But it hit me at this moment and it nearly took my breath away. This was really important. The Christians began calling Jesus God at just the same period that the Romans began calling their rulers God.”
Gee, I thought this idea had been around for years and years if not centuries. I remember this idea being discussed in a Theology 101 course I took in the late 1950s at one of the Jesuit universities (one or two courses in theology were required in those long past days regardless of your major–mine was Physics).
Yeah, I probably wasn’t paying attention….
Greetings Dr. Ehrman!
I’ve read quite a few of your books and other books on the subject of the historical Jesus, but one thing that remains a bit unclear to me is what kind of “son of God” each gospel writer believes he is talking about. In particular the Gospel of Matthew since it is the “most Jewish” of our gospels. Does Matthew believe that Jesus is the son of God in the very Jewish sense? In other words, does he just use this title as a reference to the Biblical understanding that all messiahs are sons of God? Or does he view them as a demigod of some kind being half human and half God?
Also, are all of the gospels stemming from the Pauline communities? In which case I would assume all of them do in fact have a much higher view of Jesus than just the Jewish concept of kings beings sons of God since Paul seems to have considered Jesus as some sort of angelic being.
Even Jews believed that there were “sons of God” who were divine beings. See, e.g., Genesis 6. And the king, the son of God, is sometimes called “God”. I talk about all these references in my book How Jesus Became God.
I didn’t realize that the king himself was ever called “God”. Interesting. I listened to your Great Lectures series on “How Jesus Became God” but I haven’t yet read the book. Look forward to it.
One last question. Do all early branches of Christianity come from the communities founded by Paul and James? Or were there other contemporary preachers who had completely different ideas of who/what Jesus was? In other words, if we are to have a family tree of all Christian ideologies (Gnostics, Ebionites, Proto-orthodox, etc.), do they all go back to one of these two communities?
For example, Paul mentions other apostles with different views on Jesus than his (2Cor 11:4-5). Is he just talking about the people from James or were there other preachers who were rooted in neither James or Paul?
No, there were lots of other forms of Christianity as well.
Fascinating. I had always understood all of the other forms of Christianity like Gnosticism to have been offshoots of Paul’s communities. Thank you for answering.
Bart, I have a question about that “twelve thrones” quote which you consider authentic. If historical, wouldn’t you say it makes Jesus out to be kind of nutty? -Maybe that’s more of a comment than a question.
I wouldn’t say he was nutty. I’d say he was a committed apocalypticist.
I don’t know, I think it’s one thing to be a apocalypticist and quite another to believe you’re a central figure of the coming cosmic events. It’s like the difference between believing in the second coming and believing you are Jesus come again. Though it’s possible he did really say it and didn’t believe it, in which case he would be a bit of a conman, and not a nut. Then, there’s always the other Trilemma option, that he’s the Lord. 🙂
Dr. Ehrman, I have another question about that “twelve thrones” quote. You’ve said this is what Jesus was betrayed over, but then why do you think the gospels instead record the betrayal over simply where to find him? Especially, when they still include the “king of the Jews” charge at the trial.
I think they wanted the ‘kiss’ to be the betrayal, so that it would fulfil scripture, and that required a narrative context of Judas identifying who Jesus was (as if those coming to arrest him wouldn’t know!)
so the early Christians started thinking Jesus was God at the same time or shortly following the Romans thinking their rulers were god and although they begin to think this, is it safe to assume or think that they did not have the same christology as the later 4th century doctrines that Jesus was the self-same God as Yahweh? Could they have thought that he was a god and not the God ?…… I should probably just get your book on Kindle!
Thank you Mr Ehrman
Romans were saying it first; then the Xns. But the fourth-century theologians decidedly did not think that Jesus was Yahweh. He was the Son of God who was *equal* with the Father, but he was not *identical* with the Father.
thank you Mr Ehrman for taking this question and the question that I asked a couple days ago about John and his reordering of events:)! and I might need clarify my thought on this question,’cause I understand the 4th century theologians is that they thought that Jesus was god, the same god as Yahweh but not Yahweh along with the Holy Spirit who became the third person of the Trinity ……. but is it true correct me if I’m wrong that closer to the 1st century men like Justin Martyr believe Jesus to be god but not the same god as Yahweh in contrast with the later Trinitarian doctrine where Jesus was the same god but distinct from The father? It was your string of articles that I read concerning the Trinity They helped me think more clearly about the matter.. if I’m following correctly this doctrine developed overtime and the former were deemed heretics. love your miss quoting Jesus podcast I watch it on youtube every Tuesday!
I believe some conservative evangelical Chrisitans say that Jesus was Yahweh. I think that’s bizarre and am not sure where it comes from. If he’s Yahweh I’m not sure who the Father would be. And there are biblical passages that early Christians used regularly to talk about the relationship of the father and son that rule it out (Psalm 110: Yahweh said to my Lord, sit at my right hand….) Justin does not think the Father and the Son are the same, ni the least.
Glad you like the podcast!