Loading...Here are a couple of the tricky and interesting questions I have received lately on the blog, along with my answers to them. They seem important enough to me to share more broadly for everyone’s benefit. As you’ll see, they cover a range of topics.
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QUESTION:
| I was wondering if in Paul’s letters themselves, if there is any concept of Jesus worship like we see in the gospels? Many examples including the word proskuneo (προσκυνέω) where it is argued Jesus is being worshiped in the New Testament; are these present in Paul’s letters?
MY RESPONSE: PROSKUNEO is a tricky word in Greek. It is a compound verb formed of KUNEO, which means to “kiss”, and PROS which means “before” and is generally used in the sense of falling down in reverence before someone and/or to show humility in their presence (by kissing their feet?).
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“In none of these cases does it appear to mean that Christ was the one back in Genesis who created life on earth.”
Not sure how popular or broadly accepted it is among Christians as a whole, but I have the impression that many of them (especially conservative evangelicals, but maybe others too?) hold that Christ — being God the Son, being the Logos, etc. — is indeed the Creator of everything (presumably thereby including earthly life).
They point to verses like John 1:3 (“All things were made through him”), and Colossians 1:16 (“For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him”).
How do such verses track with those in Acts?
Yes, John 1:3 says it. I’m talking about the verse in Acts.
I guess I’m just wondering how some theologians square the two.
Often they’ll say that a verse means something that it doesn’t actually say….
Dr. Ehrman,
You’ve seemed to ask the question, Was Jesus the Son of Man or Was a third person the Son of Man. If Paul thought Jesus was coming back, was Paul picking up on, “You will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds”?
Steefen
Google AI:
The Apostle Paul describes Jesus’ return to judge the living and the dead in 1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-5:11.
So, whereas Jesus’s disciples knew Jesus as the Son of Man in the first half of his ministry but learned of a third person Son of Man in the second half of his ministry, including after the Wicked Tenants parable where the once former Son of Man is going to be killed by the Wicked Tenants, Paul does not think there is a third person Son of Man?
If so, that is fascinating we postulate a third person Son of Man but Paul does not.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea of vrarious sons of man for Jesus. Paul, of course, does not use the term.
You’re not sure where I’m getting the idea of first person Son of Man and third person Son of man?
“So how does Ehrman deny such clear claims? Well, one simple argument he makes is that Jesus always speaks of the Son of Man in the third person, which Ehrman thinks is odd. Note that even in the passage above where Jesus clearly identifies himself as the Son of Man, he refers to the Son of Man in the third person. And never mind the fact that Jesus also refers to “the Messiah” in the third person several times (Matthew 22:42, 23:10; Mark 9:41, 12:35; Luke 24:26), yet Ehrman still thinks Jesus believed he was the Messiah.”
https://embracethetruth.org/blog/ehrman-vs-ehrman-who-is-the-son-of-man/
In Mk 13,26 Jesus is speaking of the heavenly Son of Man in the third person, not of himself in the first person.
Robert, Bart Ehrman Blog Forum Administrator
[Jesus said to the apostles:] When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. (Matthew 10:23)
Are you denying Jesus used Son of Man in the third person?
I thought you were talking about the historical Jesus and how he used the term, not how the term is used in various ways in the Gospels. Jesus hmself is referring to someone else, in my judgment; the Gospels have some of those sayings but also some in which he refers to himself. I think the latter do not go back to the historical Jesus.
Dr.Ehrman,
The title ”Son of Man” is found in the Bible 178 times:
Psalms (1 time)
Ezekiel (93 times)
Daniel (2 times)
New Testament (82 times)
Ezekiel was a Hebrew prophet of the 6th century BC who prophesied the forthcoming destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. He inspired hope for the future well-being of Israel when the Kingdom of G”d arrived.
Ezekiel is called ”Son of Man” 93 times, and there seems to be many parallels between Ezekiel and Jesus in the narratives.
Do you have any thoughts on the historical Jesus being influenced by the prophet Ezekiel?
Some scholars have argued that Ezekiel is his source for his son of man sayings, but it’s always been a very much minority position. Given what he says about the son of many coming on the clouds of heaven in judgment, it appears that he is much more influenced by the statements about “one like a son of man” in Daniel 7.
we’re all going to die,,, all of us,,, what a circus
that alone should make us love each other
but it doesn’t
(poet/philosopher Charles Bukowski)
Dr. Ehrman,
I read your.book on Hell and really loved.it. I have also watched several of your talks on the subject. I might have missed it, but why didn’t the King James translators choose the classical word ” Hades” for the Aramaic “Gahenna”? And is ” Hell” derived from the “Hel” of Norse mythology? If so, why would they have used that as the preferred term? Why not Hades, which would seemingly have been more in line with their classical background? Thanks in advance for any light you can shed on that.
They really believed he was talking about the place of eternal conscious torment, not the shadowy world of Hades or some other alternative.
It seems to me that the issues here point to an important question at the heart of early Christology. By and large (always??) the NT texts seem to cohere with a consistent distinction between Jesus (the human person) and (the) Christ (the title denoting a personage, that is – minimally – God-anointed King). The latter is not mortal flesh and blood, but can be thus embodied. (Paul’s *soma pneumatikon* raises real ontological questions here.) In any case, depending upon what ontology Paul understood to underlie Genesis, it would be possible for him, and other Christians, to have held that the *role* of anointed King would be “baked into” the world at its creation, even though Jesus wasn’t there. 1 Thes. 4 is rather perplexing to me since since it refers to “the Lord Jesus” (kyrios ‘jezes), most naturally, perhaps, understood as the Messiah-embodied human being. But note that, in mentioning Jesus’ resurrection, 1 Thes. 4:14, he omits the title ‘Lord.’ I wonder whether Paul’s Christology might have evolved a bit between the 1 Thessalonians and later letters.
My granddaughter received the Jesus Bible for her 14th Birthday. I was told that she had recently become interested in Christianity. It is a highly interpretative reading of the NIV, based on extensive examples of passages in the Hebrew Bible that are claimed to be forecasts of Jesus. I am troubled by what seems to me to be false interpretation. Could you recommend some introduction-to-Christianity book that might be more helpful to her?
If she is closely connected with a community that endorses those kinds of views, I would imagine that any book providing an alternative perspective would be seen as threatening and not insightful, and thus might reinforce the views she is learning in her group. That is at least is how I would have reacted at that age. I don’t know what would be most suitable for someone that age to see an alternative view, but maybe some other members of the blo can suggest some ideas for us?
Dr. Ehrman, you pointed out that Paul believed that Christ was to be worshiped at the end. (Philippians 2:6-11)
Paul also says that, in the end, the son will hand over the kingdom to the father and be subject to him. (1Cor 15:24-28) Those two passages seem a bit contradictory.
Yup, some readers have noticed that! The Philippians hymn suggests God made him his equal; 1 Corinthians 15 suggests he is subordinate. But it may be that Paul thinks Christ is subordinate in some sense (he was *made* equal with God) and not others (he is worshipped as God).
Did Paul think that Jesus was “in the form of God” yet did not have “equality with God?” After all, it says he didn’t think equality was attainable.
Philippians 2:6 (ESV) who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
He doesn’t say that equality was unattainable. On the contrary, he says Jesus attained it. In v. 6 he says that before he became a human Christ did not try to attain it; in vv. 9-10 he says that after the resurrection God rewarded him with it.