(13 votes, average: 4.77 out of 5)
Loading...One of my personal favorite books (of mine!) is How Jesus Became God. In my New Testament textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, now in its eighth edition with Hugo Mendez, we include a couple of brief discussions of the topic in two of the sidebars. One of the tricks in writing a textbook is figuring out how to say something in a way that is succinct and interesting, when there is not much space to cover a topic fully (so, my first box here covers in 326 words what I take an entire chapter to develop in my book!) But how to make something succinct but also accurate and / or interesting? It’s always a balancing act.
In any event, here are the two boxes.
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Is there any evidence that Paul may have believed in other gods but Yahweh and Jesus were the ones “over all” and alone to be worshipped (as in the Ten commandments)?
Yes, he acknolwedges there are many gods in 1 Cor. 8:5
Ah yes! Thanks!
If God really did write the Bible, and Romans 9, wouldn’t he have invented punctuation and the period first?
Right. What was he thinking?
I don’t know if perhaps your textbook already has a box on this, but one brief sidebar I’d like to see would be one on the New Testament’s use of the titles “Messiah” vs. “Son of Man.” Are their meanings largely interchangeable? Do they overlap some, but not completely? Do they refer essentially to the same single role, or to two different “offices”? Did Jesus and his disciples (and also the gospel authors) mean the same things by them, or different things? Did Jesus think of himself as both? These two terms seem in my mind to blur and run together a bit, so distinguishing and clarifying their subtle nuances and finer shades of meaning might be most helpful.
Good question. The terms are never used as synonyms, but they both could be applied ot the same person (as in 1 Enoch and the NT Gospels). Messiah refers to the future king of Israel; Son of Man refers to the future cosmic judge of the earth coming from heaven. If one person is/does both things, then both terms could be applied to him.
5 To them the forefathers belong, and from them the Christ descended according to the flesh. God, who is over all, be praised forever. Amen
Professor Ehrman this translation inserts a full stop in the middle of the sentence, separating Jesus from God…is it an appropriate way of translating the text?
It’s on e of the two optoins. The other is to word it: “… acording to the flesh who is God over all…” — in which case Paul would be aclling Christ God over all. The grammar can be constured either way.
It’s worth noting that ancient Greek had no punctuation. Any full stop in a modern printing or translation of an ancient text has been inserted, as has any comma, question mark, etc. They’re inserted according to the editor’s or translator’s construal of the sentence’s grammar.
The lack of punctuation sometimes leads to ambiguities not only in the NT but also in classical writers. Usually the ambiguity doesn’t matter, but sometimes it makes quite a difference (as here). And sometimes the grammar itself can be ambiguous — John 1.9 can be translated as “the true light, that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (KJV) OR as ” the true light that, coming into the world, enlightens every person” (NASB). The clause “coming into the world” can grammatically modify EITHER “the true light” OR “every person.” Both are grammatically correct, and it’s impossible to know which meaning the author intended.
This difference is important, since the Quaker doctrine of “the inner light” that exists inherently in everyone is based specifically on the the first translation (“that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”).
It’s not surprising to me that the idea of Jesus becoming God took root, given the spiritual and philosophical landscape of this planed at that time. It seems to me that across different cutures, there was already a shared undestanding that divine principles could manifest in the physical world and within human beings as an inherent quality in a potential transendent level.
For example, not far, and in the Hellenistic world, the concept of Logos was considered as a divine order—a rational, creative force that was both immanent and transcendent. I would say that these ideas of Logos, or even the platonic perfect form overshadowing the physical form, might have had substansial influence of the jewish community (even in the Gnostic ideas) and the Greec autors, that could shead ideas over the notion of Jesus as an embodiment of that divine principle, mostly potrayed in the GOspel of John and/or,,,perhaps even the transition from human teacher to God described in i.ex Mark..
Similarly, and not the least, in the East, Hindu ideas of Brahman—the ultimate, underlying reality points to a unity between the divine and the human, the eternal and the temporal. These traditions suggest that divine wisdom, order, and even creation itself are accessible to all of us, in it’s ultimate realization of “One”/”Oneness”. Even during the time when Jesus lived, this notion resonated across much of the populated world, hinting at a shared human intuition/idea about the presence of the divine within the core of existence.
It does not feel unnatural for me that these concepts would (perhaps evolve) and find expression in different forms, including the story of Jesus. His elevation? ( such as what I read in the gospel of Mark,) from man to God, or even this “Logos/Christ in John as the preexisting divine idea/principle doesn’t seem strange in light of , at that time, the broader philosophical and religious ideas that existed across the most populous cultures.
Did believing in divine beings other than Yahweh make them polytheistic? Or would they have somehow maintained a monotheistic identity?
They ironically owuld have said there is one God, God the Father is God, and Jesus is God. And yes, there is only one God….
Interesting article.
According to the gospel of John
and the letters of Paul,
Do you think a pre-existent Jesus goes back to
the creation of modern humans
the creation of the Solar System
the creation of the galaxy
the creation of the Universe
or other, back to when?
I don’t think John or Paul knew anything about a solar system, galaxy, or universe; I’d say they give no clear indication of when the pre-existent Christ began to exist or if they thought he had no beginning but was always with God. John,though clearly thinks he existed before the creation, since it is through him that all things came into being. Paul probably similarly.
Dr. Ehrmman,
The author of Gospel of John and Paul as the author of the Pauline letters are not authorities on topic of creation.
They were not disciples of the biblical Jesus while he was alive and are not authorities on the pre-crucified Jesus–whether or not he claimed to be pre-existent.
These authors can use the following for a philosophical basis; but, while the Logos has a basis it is conjecture that Jesus was the Logos.
Heraclitus (Greek philosopher active around 500 BCE) held that all things come to be in accordance with the logos.
The later Stoics (200 B.C.E. with Boethus – 180 C.E. with Marcus Aurelius) understood the Logos as “the account which governs everything.” For Heraclitus, logos provided the link between rational discourse and the world’s rational structure. Logos is that which is between meditation or rational discourse and manifestation.
The authors of Gospel of John and the Pauline Letters have absolutely no credibility for telling us how light (stars) was created, when, and whether or not there was a creation-being or a creation-phenomenon that produced stars and the beginning of the universe and whether God the Father and Son were somehow part of the Nothingness that was before the Big Bang.
Why didn’t you mention
Romans 9: 5?
New International Version
Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of
the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
“The Messiah, who is God over all” is another instance of Jesus as God in the NT?
Only if you punctuate the sentenc that way in the Greek.
Ummm . . . Dr. Ehrman DID mention Roman 9.5, in detail, at the end of the article. And other comments have discussed it as well
SŌTEIRA MOU!
elizvand.
Dr. Ehrman wrote:
Paul says that “from them is the Christ according to the flesh. May the God who is over all be blessed forever, amen.”
I was looking for “Jesus as/is God.” This isn’t it.
We agree with that. That translation is not Jesus as/is God. That’s the point the professor was making by saying there are two translations, one does not say Jesus is God, the other one does.
My comment clearly shows a translation where Jesus is God:
NIV: the Messiah, who is God…
Yes, this is there:
“from them is the Christ according to the flesh, the one who is God over all,
I probably would have caught it if it were:
“from them is the Christ who is God over all.”
over all what? over all people or over all creation?
Then there is Christ is over all as in God delegated judgement of all to Jesus but let us forever say God blessed where God is not Jesus–Messiah over all end of sentence, new noun, God is blessed forever. This is in the NRSV and in Young’s Literal Translation.
I was looking for the words of Romans, title of the post’s topic, not just the citation.
TY, copy editor.
Sorry if I misunderstood your point. But your question was ‘Why didn’t you mention Romans 9/5?” and my response was to point out that Dr. Ehrman did in fact mention Romans 9/5, and discuss it in some detail.
You’re right, of course, that the translation you cite indicates that Jesus is God. No-one denies that the passage CAN be translated that way.
As you say, you were “looking for the words of Romans, not just the citation.” And Dr. Ehrman was discussing the words of Romans. The actual (Greek) “words of Romans” are grammatically ambiguous due to the fact that Greek had no punctuation. I just looked at it again in Greek and it can indeed be construed in either of the two ways Dr. Ehrman describes, one implying that Jesus is God, the other definitely not saying that. So if you’re looking for a passage in the NT where Paul definitely and unambiguously *in Greek* calls Jesus God , Romans 9:5 doesn’t qualify–whichever translation you choose. If the question is “what did Paul say in Romans 9:5,” then the answer is “his words were ambiguous.”
Google AI,
Who in the New Testament thought Jesus was God?
Answer:
Thomas explicitly stated that Jesus was God, saying “My Lord and my God” after seeing the resurrected Jesus.
Steefen
Resurrecting does not make one God.
Google AI:
After Thomas, there is Gospel of John. Then there is Col. 2: 9. For in Christ is the fullness of God in the bodily form [of Jesus]. Colossians in not one of the 7 Authentic Letters of Paul.
So, Eliz Vand, why didn’t Bart consider Col. 2:9? It clearly says Christ Consciousness is God 100%. That in bodily form in the New Testament would be Jesus.
Bart?
You could also put in Philippians 2:6-11. There are places that clearly indicate that in one way or another, somehow or another, Jesus represents God on earth. What you don’t have is any place that comes out and says that “Jesus is God.” And, btw, Colossians was not written by Paul, so it doesn’t count as something that Paul said. And in Philippians 2 Christ is not made an equal with God until AFTER the resurrection.
Correction: Colossians is not one of the 7 Authentic Letters of Paul.
= = = = =
You know what’s coming next.
if Colossians wasn’t written by Paul, it was a pseudepigraphal work written by his followers.
Therefore, Romans 9:5 is not ambiguous. Paul’s followers who wrote or supported Col. 2:9 knew what the Greek meant at Romans 9:5: unambiguously, the verse was saying Jesus is God.
Interesting argument. So you mean that later followers of a person always portary that person’s views correctly? Would you say that is true, for example, of all of Jesus’ later folloewrs, that all of them portrayed his views correctly?
The pertinent discussion here is about Greek grammar, not about comparative Mediterranean religion. *Of course* post-Pauline Christian theologians made the claim that Jesus was God, and developed the doctrine of the Trinity to explain how he could be “God” in a monotheistic system.
But the point under discussion was whether PAUL ever unambiguously called Jesus “God.” The answer, as Prof. Ehrman laid out clearly, is No — in the one place where Paul perhaps called Jesus God, the grammar of the Greek is ambiguous, so that we cannot tell if that’s what Paul meant or not. That’s it. That’s all I was discussing. Isis, Osiris, etc. have nothing whatsoever to do with that point.
I think you’re misunderstanding what is meant by grammatical ambiguity. All languages have some constructions that are ambiguous, even to native speakers. An example in English is “you”, which can be singular or plural. When my friend says to me “Can you have coffee with me tomorrow?”, does she mean “just you-singular, by yourself” or “you-plural, you and your husband”? It’s ambiguous. The only way to know whether she wants to see one or both of us is to ask, directly.
I can’t go into a detailed explanation of the grammar in Romans 9:5 here, but it’s that kind of built-in grammatical ambiguity. No-one, not even a native speaker of ancient Greek, could “know what the Greek means at Romans 9:5” unambiguously. Presumably Paul’s own spoken intonation and pauses would have clarified whether “the God who is over all blessed forever” is in grammatical apposition to Christ, or whether it is an independent sentence, with “God” as the subject of a new (implied) verb. But the written words can be taken either way, even by someone fluent in Greek, since there was no punctuation (which was invented to partially reproduce the clues of spoken intonation).
I’ve already admitted there are the two translations of the verse and Bart raised only a weak reasonable doubt with his attack on Col. 2:9.
Luke 5:21 only GAWD forgives sins. Jesus: Your sins are forgiven. I’m God for this practical purpose. Jesus is God independent of Paul and “my Lord and my God” without cautioning Thomas for blasphemy.
Take it up another level. Jesus has pre-existence before Abraham, is the Word, and as the Son is a member of the Trinity.
Take it up another level. Isis is a goddess because she had the power to bring Osiris back to life. In making Jesus a deity, he had to trump Isis. So, he resurrected the dead in the gospels. Osiris is a god because all His worshipers go through the hours of death as Osiris. In Ancient Egyptian Religion, who is Lord of Resurrection? Answer: Osiris is. In Christianity, Jesus is Lord of Resurrection, so, Jesus knocks out Isis, Osiris, and Serapis.
This is a settled argument, elizvand. You’re on the wrong side of history and the argument, ultimately. For many practical purposes at higher levels, Jesus is God, given increasing notions of God.
New Revised Standard Version
to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
Young’s Literal Translation
whose are the fathers, and of whom is the Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed to the ages. Amen.
This seems to be a translation where the Messiah is NOT God but is over all humans.