Loading...I was browsing through some blog posts from many years ago and came upon this one, which I had completely forgotten about. It gets a bit feisty at the end, and that’s because it was written back when I was … feistier. Even so, it makes an overarching point I still agree with. It’s about my book that tries to explain how the early Christians came to see Jesus as God.
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My publisher, HarperOne, asked me to write a 1000-word response to the book that was written in response to How Jesus Became God. As you probably know, the book is called, somewhat expectedly, How God Became Jesus. I have toyed with the idea of giving a chapter-by-chapter response here on the blog. I’ve grown a bit cold to the idea, though, since I’m not sure every chapter of their book really needs a response. I may respond to a couple of the chapters. In the meantime, here’s one response you can read that is, interestingly, written by Daniel Kirk, a professor of NT at the evangelical Fuller Theological Seminary, about one of the better chapters in their book: http://www.jrdkirk.com/2014/04/24/god-became-jesus-part-1-review-evangelical-response-ehrman/
What I give below is the overall response to the book that I wrote for my publisher. We had thought about publishing it somewhere, but I’ve decided to give it here instead.
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It is always exciting to publish a book that is considered controversial; it is more exciting when it is thought to be controversial before anyone has read it. But the height of authorial excitement (and intrigue) comes when someone decides to produce a lengthy response to a book without even knowing what is in it.
I can understand why there was a flurry of oppositional activity afoot before How Jesus Became God saw the light of published day. This is a book that deals with an inordinately important issue – important not only for Christian believers but for all of us who are interested in the history of our form of civilization. If Jesus had never been considered to be God, we never would have had Christianity. That in itself is enormous. But consider the other consequences.
If Jesus had remained, in the eyes of his disciples, simply a Jewish preacher who ended up on the wrong side of the law and was crucified for his efforts, his followers would have continued on as a sect within Judaism. There would not have been large scale Gentile conversions to this form of Judaism, any more than there were to other forms of Judaism. If large numbers of Gentiles had not converted to faith in the God-man Jesus, the religion of Jesus would never have grown to be a very sizeable minority within the Roman empire by the beginning of the fourth century – when Christians numbered something like three million persons. If they had not been this significant presence in the Empire, the emperor Constantine would almost certainly not have converted. If the emperor Constantine had not converted, there would not have been the monumental conversions of the fourth century. Without these conversions, Christianity could not have become the state religion of Rome. And as a result, it would never have become the dominant religious, social, cultural, political, and economic force of the West. We would not have had the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, or Modernity as we know it.
A lot rides on the question of How Jesus Became God.
Evangelical Christian scholars who knew that my book was coming were reasonably certain that they would not like what I had to say, whatever that might be. And so, sight unseen, they agreed to write a response book. I then provided them with copies of my manuscript and they set out to uncover its flaws.
I imagine that to some extent they were disappointed that I didn’t come up with some outlandish claim that, for example, Jesus was not considered God until the Council of Nicea in 325 CE. Instead, I attempt to provide a clear, coherent, and historically cautious story, step by step, of how the divinity of Jesus developed in early Christianity. Of course fundamentalists and hard-core evangelicals will not be comfortable with this kind of historical approach. Among other things, I insist that Jesus did not declare himself to be God or even think that he was God. Just the contrary. Belief in the divinity of Jesus arose only after his death, because some of his disciples came to believe he had been raised from the dead.
But according to standard Christian belief, Jesus knew he was God and said he was God. That belief may be commonsensical to anyone who holds certain theological views affirming the infallibility, or even the complete inerrancy of the Bible, but it does not fare well in light of our historical evidence, as I explain in my book.
Still, the scholars who have produced How God Became Jesus are not fundamentalists, even if they are conservative Christian scholars who toe the theological line. Yet even they would agree that during his lifetime Jesus did not go around declaring that he was the second member of the Trinity. On the other hand, by the fourth century, virtually all Christians of record believed he was the second member of the Trinity. So how does one get from Point A (Jesus’ life and teachings) to Point B (the Trinitarian theology of the later church)? There needs to be a narrative of how it happens, and my conservative evangelical detractors need a narrative as much as anyone else.
What surprises me most about their response to my book is that they never provide a coherent narrative – or indeed, any narrative at all. Their objective is much simpler: to poke holes, if possible, in this or that detail of my exposition. I am heartily in favor of a rigorous and reasoned scholarly contretemps about each and every key issue: public debate has long been my modus operandi. But what is the alternative to my narrative? The title of their response book is hopeful, suggesting that Jesus did not become God but that God became Jesus. But where is the historical – or even theological – argument that this is what happened? Possibly it exists somewhere, but not within the confines of their book. It may be that these five authors didn’t have time to put forward a coherent counter-proposal – they were, after all, under quite a rush to have the response appear. Or possibly they don’t agree among themselves about how it all happened.
But I suspect there is a deeper reason as to why they provide no alternative vision. On one hand, they want to attack my views on historical grounds. But on the other hand, their own view – that Jesus actually was God in the flesh – is not based on historical evidence but on religious beliefs and theological assumptions. It cannot be established by historical methods of inquiry. And so they have resorted to something other than proposing a historical reconstruction. They have decided to deconstruct rather than construct. I think in the long run that’s a pity, because if they had provided a sustained statement about what they really think, readers would have a very easy time indeed recognizing which of the two books is a historical treatment of what happened in the rise of early Christianity and which is simply a restatement of traditional Christian dogma.
Dr bart is it true THe new testament is going through purification of THe text so could know THe original wording and how close wE tO THe original wording?
I’m not sure what you mean. If you want to see how the NT text came to be changed over time, you miht look at my book Misquoting Jesus.
Dr bart since when people start tO create this textual criticism of THe bible when did They start examine the bible writtting instead of just belive whatever written inside it Like people in Medieval time or lets Say in 1300s ? Is it true that before THe realization people actually read THe problematic bible ?
Like all books, the Bible is subject to interpretation, and readers of the Bible have always had to try to understand it, since it is not self-interpreting. That is true of all books and all readers of all sacred (and non-sacred) books of every kind– even those who say that there is no interpretation invovled, that the meaning is self-evident.
How did the historical Jesus think about the Holy Spirit?
He never talks about a “member of the Trinity” called the Holy Spirit; he did believe that God sent his spirit among his people and specailly granted his spirit to some — as found in the Hebrwe Bible.
On the one hand, I would like to read their book just out of curiosity. On the other, I’m pretty sure that it will irritate me, because I’m also pretty sure that it won’t be based on an argument after an argument setup, but on theological beliefs mixed with arguments. (By the way, I really believe there shouldn’t be a term “theological argument”. Because an argument by definition consists of a series of statements whose truth is undisputed by *everyone*.)
Also, it’s really funny it took 5(!!) scholars to refute you! One would assume that hardcore Christians got a tad desperate! Intuitively you’d think that, had your work been really problematic, one scholar would suffice to do the job. But five of them!!?
I’m curious, Mr. Ehrman, how exactly do they refute your claim that Jesus probably didn’t get a decent burial and that the whole Joseph of Arimathea asking for a favor narrative in the Gospels doesn’t make sense, considering all the evidence (about what Mark says a couple of verses earlier, Pilate’s profile etc.)?
FYI, Kirk’s blog doesn’t seem to be online anymore, so the link doesn’t work. Wayback Machine has it, at least:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160701195738/http://www.jrdkirk.com/2014/04/24/god-became-jesus-part-1-review-evangelical-response-ehrman/
Ah, thanks.
I wasn’t aware that you had ever penned a response to this book, though I had wondered about it when I saw it on bookstore shelves. Doesn’t sound feisty to me at all, btw!
Dr. Ehrman, the link to Professor Kirk’s post doesn’t currently work.
I found the post on the web archive site at:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140804131434/http://www.jrdkirk.com/2014/04/24/god-became-jesus-part-1-review-evangelical-response-ehrman/ .
I hope that helps anyone who may be interested.
Tom Callaghan
THanks!
Hi Bart,
A question related to Greek language in regard to: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).
English is not my first language, and I think this is probably obvious, but to my understanding “I am’ is not a complete sentence. For example, if someone asked me: are you Omar, then my answer would be, “Yes, I am”, but this is a short answer; the complete one is: “Yes, I am Omar”.
Is “I am” (in John 8:58) a complete sentence in Greek language?
If it is not, then what could be the complete answer?
If it is, then how it has been interpreted to be ‘I Exist’?
This is a tricky question. JEsus appears to be alluding to the passage in Exodus 3 about Moses, where Moses asks God his actual name and God indicates that his name is “I am.” Yes, normally in ENglish a “to be” verb requires a predicate (I am a teacher; I am happy). BUt in this case Jesus seems to be claiing the name for himself, and it might mean something like “I am the one who exists.” Or “I am that which causes all to be” or something like thtat. But since Jews try to stone him for saying it, they appear to think he is declaring the divine name for himself.
And, as usual, especially in John, one would be justified in asking whether Jesus REALLY said that. Looks more like something that fits the unknown author’s theological agenda. But all we ever have in all of the gospels out there, canonical and not, are things that others are claiming Jesus said. Except for Paul we don’t even know who those others were. And Paul is either conveying visionary experiences, or things he heard from others, but since his visionary experiences trump any testimony anyone else offers, even the testimony of those who actually associated with Jesus, we’re not left with much. All hearsay, except some of the hearsay evidence seems better than others. It really doesn’t seem like much to hang a belief system on.
RICHWEN90, I do understand: John and the other authors are unknown. But there is a catch here: Jesus did exist, and his teaching managed to propagate outside it local domain in less than 20 years, this is unprecedented in this short time without political dominance. In 300 years his teaching (though was distorted) managed to redefine the dynamics of the world.
However, this man is only known to us through 4 small books with anonymous authors who might have been biased. This is really a tough rock. We are stuck with these books and we need to try to extract the most of it. To do so we need to have proper frameworks in order to filter these books into the probable, the possible, and the “can’t be”.
Now … I am a Muslim and I have two frameworks, the Islamic metaphysics framework (M.F), and the scientific framework (S.F), both moving into two parallel lines. The Islamic scriptures have very little notes about the life of Jesus and therefore we are also dependent on these 4 books, and our best strategy is to derive “solid scientific models” about the life of Jesus then to put them as inputs to M.F.
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Returning back to John 8.58. We can say from S.F that it is “possible but unlikely”. Possible as Jesus can be in a defiant mood and start to claim things about himself which are not true. Unlikely because Jesus did not have similar claims in earlier Gospels and because it is obvious that John was biased. Therefore, I could (in my understanding) hammer this quotation with the stamp of “Reject”.
But …. John was biased and he truly thought that Jesus was divine. But notice that John could add explicit words about this divinity to the mouth of Jesus, but John didn’t. So I can have an initial assumption that John had relative honesty of which he didn’t add words to the mouth of Jesus, but he might have mistranslated the original saying of Jesus (as he was biased).
This would become a puzzle that is fun to solve: let us suppose that John 8.58 is based on a true quotation that was mistranslated, then what could be the original quotation!
This would be preferable analysis before rejecting that quotation.
Thank you Bart.
Is it possible that the original Aramaic sentence was: “before Abraham was Yahweh”, and Yahweh had been mistranslated (deliberately or accidentally) to its main components (“I am”)?
In this assumption, Jesus was speaking about Yahweh; meaning that ‘Yahweh was before Abraham’, and Yahweh is the mighty God who can make miracles even if Jesus was many generations after Abraham. For this, the Jews have tried to stone him, not because of claiming divinity, but for uttering the holly name of God.
There is a weak point in this assumption: “Truly, truly, I say to you”, which imply that the thing that Jesus is about to say will be unexpected. But I could say that this was a sarcastic reply from Jesus, as the context itself was about Jews who were arguing with Jesus in sarcastic manner and Jesus replying to them in kind.
Good question, but no, that couldn’t have been what he said. The term Yahweh never occurs in the New Testament. And in the context the issue is all about Jesus’ own identity, not about when the God of the Old Testament existed (since no one doubted he existed before Abraham.)
Please forgive the quick off topic question. Why does your site only list the 4th edition of your: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction….. Do the later editions not have significant updates or is this simply something overlooked in your site’s list and descriptions of your books? I’m trying to figure out which edition to buy.
Ah, for a very simple reason. We’ve neglected to update it! Not good… But yes, the new editions are new and immproved. I’ll get on it!
I’ve watched a few Michael Bird videos on YT – seems like a rather uptight Fundy to me, although not in the fire and brimstone, American style. I wasn’t that impressed with what I saw. And he favors the New International Version of the Bible, which I think is a big tell.
I get the feeling he just dismissed your thesis out of hand. It was rather generous of you to hand them a pre release ? manuscript. I’m guessing the publishers were pretty happy – a nice PR coup, with the for and against books published on the same day.
I wonder if John Shelby Spong had a point when he said there’s no such thing as liberal or conservative scholarship, merely competent or incompetent scholarship ?
I’m not sure if Spong said that or not, but it’s a good point.
Thanks Bart. It’s a minor point, but Spong did say it, in a 2012 interview. I can provide a link if you like.
May I ask a question about Leviticus 20:13 ? My question is specifically about the words Ish and zachar in the original Hebrew text. The author of an article I read asserts that these words had precise meanings in Greek law – only men who were adults, who could vote, marry etc. were called men. Those who were too young to marry, vote etc. could only be referred to as males. The author’s main point is that “ a man lying with a male” is different to “a man lying with a man”, and creates the impression that Leviticus 20:13 is addressing pederasty rather than adult gay sex per se. The author is not a bible scholar as far as I’m aware (which isn’t to say that she cannot be right). The article would take about 2 or 3 minutes to read, if you’re interested.
My question is : do you agree that Leviticus 20:13 could legitimately be read as a condemnation of pederasty, more than adult gay sex ?
Thank you
https://jewishstandard.timesofisrael.com/redefining-leviticus-2013/
I”m afraid I’m out of town and don’t have any reference books with me, but I will say that pederasty was certainly a phenomenon in Greek culture in the classical period, but we do not have any evidence of it that I’m aware of in Hebrew culture. Hebrew does have words for non-adult males, of course (other htan “male”).
Do you think James, Peter, and John thought Jesus was God when Paul met them in Jerusalem? Or was it only the second generation of Christians who began to believe in it?
I’m pretty sure they thought that God had elevated him to a level of divinity at his resurrection.
I’m probably in the wrong place here. I was listening to your “in the beginning” seminar. Particularly the JEDP source discussion. A couple years ago I was reading some information on the authorship of the Pentateuch. I don’t remember exactly what it was but they made a case for Ezra being one of the authors. I was hoping you would hit on this some but I did not hear anything like that. Do you know anything about this claim? It sounded to me as if there could be at least some truth to it but I have not found anything else about it. What’s the skinny? Did Ezra have anything at all to do with the writing of the Pentateuch?
THere’s nothing that ties Ezra himself to any of the sources, no. THe only one of the sources that we’re pretty sure was post-exilic is P, and nothing in P suggests that it was produced by Ezra.
Did Paul know of Judas Iscariot and the traditions surrounding him? He seems to not recognize any “betrayal” traditions connected with Judas and Jesus. What do you make of it?
If you look up Judas Iscariot on the blog you’ll see some posts on just this question. I don’t think Paul probably knew about Judas; if he did, he doesn’t every say anything about it. The key passages is 1 Cor. 11:22 (does it refer to JEsus’ being “betrayed”? I think that’s a mistranslation of the word at that point)
Dr Ehrman,
On the Olivet Discourse…Jesus implies that he would not be present with the disciples in the future.
He concludes with the “Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven..”
Here is my question: Did Jesus forsee his death and believe he himself would return?
The only other possibility I see here is the Olivet Discourse was largely made up. Thoughts?
In the Gospels he definitely foresees everything that will happen. But if you’re asking about the historical Jesus, that’s a different issue. The major issue in discussing the historical Jesus is deciding how accurate the Gospels are in their portrayals — i.e., whether their narratives are historical or not. My very strong view is that Jesus never talked a out rising from the dead or coming back from heaven. When scholars say things like that, it’s not just spouting off an opinion; it’s based on an analysis of the surviving evidence. If you’d like to see how it works, a place to start would be my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
Bart, I hope you don’t take umbrage with this, but since you state that you are an atheist, is the title of your book, trying to convince people there is no God?
Or are you saying that it was vital for early Church theologians to proclaim “their” God, above all others, so they made Jesus part of this God?
I agree with you that Jesus never said he was God. But he did say “I and my Father are one.” John 10:30. Jesus is also recorded as saying “.. nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Luke 22:42.
These two statements taken together should make it clear that it is the “will” of Jesus and the “will” of the Father are one. When the wave finally recognizes that it is part of the ocean, it does not become the Ocean.
“Behind this body speck of yours, the infinite ocean of Divinity roars. Identify with the Infinite Ocean of Divinity.” Spiritual Yoga Master, Yogiraj.
This is what Jesus achieved as other Enlightened Ones did.
No umbrage taken! The thesis of my book is that the followers of Jesus during his life did not consider him to be God. After his resurrection they eventually did think he was God. How did that happen? How did he “become God” in their view? I’m not dealing with the question of whether he actually *was* God. I do not think, by the way, that the divine claims in the Gospel of John go back to the historical Jesus, and I explain why in my book. (And with Luke 22:42: notice he is by himself when he prays that; so this is not an instance of someone recording what he said — no one was there!)
You wouldn’t believe what a boon your books are to me and other Muslims. The preachers who annoy me after I exit Friday prayers don’t need any response from me defending my beliefs anymore. I can just tell them, I couldn’t believe in Christianity even if I wasn’t a Muslim I’ve read too much Ehrman!
I mean I haven’t used that line yet but I am itching to. No sweeter revenge to someone annoying you for a minute or two than sparking the chance of a massive crisis of faith.
I have noticed that whether its Muslims, Jews or atheists, evangelical preachers tend to just get whacked argument wise. And if they argue with critical scholars like yourself Christian themselves or otherwise they also get whacked.
I feel this has been the way since inception-Christian arguments WEREN’T convincing to first Jews especially when they ad hoc forced their views onto Jewish scripture (whatever proto OT writings were in circulation at the time) and then Roman pagans. Your average Christian today doesn’t either. Orthodoxy was always fought over but never the spirit of it.
The spirit of it was hope and vibes and compassion and empathy. Spread thusly.
Thanks. I will say, though, that the things I’ve written about are pretty much what I believed while I was still a Christian; and most of my scholar friends agree with me on my views and they still are Christians. You would not be able to be a *fundamentalist* Christian and agree with my views, but you could definitely still be a Christian.
Dr Ehrman,
May it be possible that Arius was teaching/believing as per previously agreed upon belief about Jesus(subordinationist theological tradition) and it was actually Alexander of Alexandria, along with his supporters, who had come up with innovation of opposing this centuries old tradition?
(It should have been called Alexandrian controversy instead of Arian controversy??)
regards,
Both views developed over time — neither one of them was “original.”
Yes of course but subordinationist theological tradition seems to be earlier? Isn’t it so?
What was the particular need to exalt Jesus to a Highest God level?
Could it be to make Jesus worship emperor-worthy (for Constantine, as how can the emperor of the world bow down to a miserable Jew who is not even the highest God?)
Yes, early Christains naturally understood that Jesus was subordinate to God the father; that’s the consistent view of most of the NT. The story of his greater exaltation is the topic of my book!
Off topic: what is the evidence for the 165-168BC dating of the Book of Daniel as opposed to the 6th Century BC other than the precision of the prophecies up to the 160s? — Pro early daters appear to dismiss the “late daters” as simply “unwilling to accept a supernatural explanation.” Maybe you dealt with this exact matter in the blog, but I haven’t found a reference to it as yet. Or feel free to direct me to a source outside the blog.
Yeah, I know they do. But it’s not that so much as a full understanding of how apocalypses work. Many of the best commentators on Daniel (all of whom hold to a date in the 160s) are personally committed Christians, not wide-eyed anti-supernaturalist atheists…. We have a wide range of apocalypses from Jewish and Christian antiquity, almost all of them written in the names of famous holy men from earlier times — Enoch, Baruch, Ezra, Abraham, and even Adam! No one thinks these books were really written by these people. It’s part of the genre. Daniel is part of the genre. There’s nothing weird a out the author claiming to be a visionary from the past. The demonstration that he is not really DAniel is that the “predictions” of the future in the book are very broad and general (and sometimes wrong) from the 6th and 5th and 4th centuries… and start getting highly detailed in the predictions of teh 2nd century up to the 160s, with the predictions that perfectly fit Antiochus Epiphanes — and then make predictions about Antiochus (that he will be killed and the kingdom will come to the Jews) that did not happen. That shows that the book was written during his reign. See what I mean?
Your explanation sounds perfectly plausible to me. The podcast I’m listening to has no problem late-dating 1st Enoch despite acknowledging that one or more church fathers claimed that Noah carried a copy of 1st Enoch on the Ark and that 1st Enoch is considered canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. But they’re still not willing to late-date Daniel — a line they just won’t cross. If I were going to take the same position (which I’m not!), I might ask: are there any clues in the text for a late date: words or phrases only common to the 160s BC as opposed to the 6th C BC? One Catholic (I believe) source I googled mentioned the use of Greek words for certain musical instruments in the text of Daniel, but dismissed that argument because archaic Greeks traveled many places outside Greece long before the Seleucid period (sounds like a stretch to me). Anyway, thanks for your time, as always!
Are there any conservative Christian scholars that you do respect? Basically even if you disagree with the scholar’s conclusions, his or her scholarship is solid. Or do you find that most if not all conservative Christian scholars’ religious convictions get in the way of sober interpretation of the historical evidence?
Absolutely. It just depends on what fields of scholarship they’re dealing with. Some of the best manuscript specialists in the world, for example, are conservative evangelicals.
Dr bart Quran didnt Deny there is crucifixon because quran Said jesus is replaced by some one else oN THe cross that god Made resembled jesus , so whether that someone is raised from THe dead or not wE muslim actually doesnt care, so muslim more interested in proofing whether bible is innerant or not instead of asking about ressurection Proof, what do you think about this ?
I’d say it’s based on a later legend and does not have any historical evidence to support it. The first instance we have of this claim is in the second century Gospel of Basilides summarized by Irenaeus in 185 CE.
Just for clarification:
There are two legitimate interpretations in regards to the Quranic phrase “4:157” about the crucifixion of Jesus. I am going to put part of the text (for all google: Quran 4:157): “The Jews says that they killed Jesus …. but they didn’t kill him and they didn’t crucify him ….”.
The default meaning for crucifixion is: to execute by the cross. There is another alternative meaning which is: to nail on the cross. The default implies that Jesus was nailed to the cross but didn’t die, while the alternative implies that someone else was nailed to the cross.
Muslims took the alternative interpretation as they couldn’t believe that God will let Jesus go through this horrible treatment. This was supported by different stories originated from Christians who converted to Islam.
This view was dominant until 1984 when Ahmad Deedat highlighted the other legitimate interpretation of the text, and built an interesting model accordingly. However this model was not widespread in the Muslim world.
Now … let us try to derive a scientific model of possible options of what happened to Jesus after the crucifixion, based on the available stories, and excluding any metaphysical input.
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This will provide us with 3 options:
1. Jesus died on the cross. He was buried. Someone took his corpse, while his companions imagined seeing and talking to him.
2. Jesus died on the cross. He was buried. A group of his companions decided to take his corpse and bury him somewhere else. Then they decided to tell the people that Jesus is still alive.
3. Jesus was nailed to the cross but didn’t die. He recovered, and went into hiding waiting for the right moment to move, but he died suddenly. One of his companion was with Jesus at the time and he buried Jesus quietly, and he managed to keep this matter secret.
The first option is highly unlikely: people don’t have the same exact hallucination.
The second option is possible but unlikely: these people were peasants and it is unlikely that they could maintain a conspiracy of such magnitude.
The third option is probable as it is possible to withstand 6 hours of crucifixion.
Therefore, regardless of the probability distribution of these options, I could claim with confidence that the death of Jesus on the cross was historically not certain.
I do not at all think these are “the” three options. There are dozens of others.
I agree that there might be other options I am not aware of, and they can take shares from the probability distribution of all possible options. But still the question remains:
It is almost certain that Jesus was nailed to the cross, but is it certain that he died on the cross?
I could claim according to the previous analysis that there is a fair amount of probability (regardless whether it is high or low, but it is fair) that Jesus might not have died on the cross. I could rephrase this to: Jesus death on the cross is not certain.
Well, we don’t know of anyone else who was crucified who was mistakenly taken for dead, among the many thousands of reports of crucifixion we have. So the questoin would be what evidence one could adduce that this is what happened in this particular case.
Fair point, and I agree that I won’t be able to present any evidence beyond the collaborated accounts available in the 4 books. These accounts claim that the companions saw Jesus and talked to him. Therefore, either they were delusional, lying, or Jesus didn’t die on the cross.
These accounts also claim that the crucifixion took 6 hours, the governor was surprised that Jesus died quickly, and Jesus legs have not been broken. [I wonder if the “criterion of dissimilarity” applies here?].
These accounts would give extra points to the possibility: “Jesus didn’t die on the cross”.
I am aware that these accounts don’t follow the Roman custom in crucifixion, but the Roman didn’t follow their custom every time, therefore the custom angle is possible but “not definite”.
If I am claiming that “A is certain” then I need to give a clear solid proof. But if I am claiming that “A is not certain” then I only need to present a fair amount of probability for it.
The claim that “Jesus death on the cross is not certain” has a fair amount of probability based on analyzing the possible options that were extracted from the 4 books.
jesus was/is divine. as i see it his godly nature never died & he could do whatever despite his human nature dead.
As we learned it: he was dead & buried but on the 3rd day he arose. definitely not 3 nights or 72hours as Job was in the belly of the sea creature.
Dr bart ITS Said that messiah in old testament suppose tO have an actual child when hE come is that true? Because even when jesus return is hE gonna have literal child ? I mean ITS Said in OT that messiah have a child not spiritual but biological childern
The OT never mentions a predicted messiah who will have a child. It mentions kings who have children, and the messiah was often thought to be a king — so possibly that is the confusion.
I so much prefer the prophecies of Christ in the Book of Mormon: no ambiguities and even clearly identifying his mother as a virgin named Mary. Amazing how ancient Israelites in the Americas could make such precise predictions! :-).
I remember hearing a debate between you and Mike licona. He said something to the effect that Jesus referred to himself as the apocalyptic son of man. I believe Mike was arguing that this was a claim to divinity. I cannot remember the exact verse he referenced, but I think it was in the gospel of Mark. Does any of this sound familiar? Is there any hint in the *synoptic* gospels that Jesus thought he was divine?
Jesus certainly refers to himself as the son of man in the synoptics, with some regularlity. And yes, I think the Synoptic authors did indeed think tht Jesus was divine *in some sense.* But not in the sense that developed elsewhere in Christian thought, that he wsa a pre-existent divine bein made incarnate.
Dr bart i learn that gospel of John is a Lie becuase hE invent lazarus that becoming beloved diciple of jesus and THe story of Barabbas released Also fake because ITS emulate that in OT where two Sheeep is one being released bring sin away and the other is for atonement, so barabbas is as that sheep that being sent away and jesus as Sheep for atonement, what do you think about this?
I don’t think “lie” is that correct term for stories that didn’t happen.
Dr bart did Paul really against woman speak in church or not ? Because i learn that was inserted and Paul never against woman tO speak in church
The verses that claim to be written by Paul that say such things (1 Cor. 14:33-34; 1 Tim. 2:11-18) were almost certainly not actually written by Paul.
Prof Ehrman,
Would it be a fair statement to make that Jesus gave an apocalyptic spin to the Law which otherwise had no bearing with apocalypticism. In other words, Jesus viewed the Law through an apocalyptic lens. I ask this because I believe the essence of the Law had nothing to do with apocalpticism.
I don’t think Jesus put an apocalyptic spin on teh commandments of the law themselves, but he did think that it was important to obey God’s commandments faithfully especially because the apocalyptic end of things was soon to come.