Loading...I have now finished with my final edits for my book How Jesus Became God. IN the process of doing these final edits, I have cut out large sections of my Preface and the Introductions of four of my chapters and replaced them with other, hopefully better, sections. But I really like the old ones as well. So, since they won’t appear in print, I decided to post them here as a record of what almost was. The all involve anecdotes about my past. In most instances (the Introductions to the four chapters), these were narratives related to my “deconversion” from Christianity. My editor and I agreed that the reading public has heard enough about all that, and there’s only so much more that could still be interesting to them. And so I have replaced those anecdotes with other things. But I will present them here, anyway, for your reading pleasure or displeasure.
The following is from what was originally going to be my Preface; it is the opening gambit.
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The issue that lies behind this book is simple but gripping. Jesus was a lower-class Jewish preacher in the backwaters of rural Galilee who was condemned for illegal activities and crucified for crimes against the state. Yet within several years his followers were claiming that he was a divine being. Not long afterward they went even further, declaring that he was none other than God, Lord of heaven and earth. And so the question: How did a crucified peasant come to be thought of as the Lord who created all things? How did Jesus become God?
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Are those bullet points fleshed out (“incarnated?”) in the book? (Sorry-I couldn’t resist. But are they?)
Oh yes, the points are all in the book. I just don’t mention them in the Preface as bulletted points.
Hi Bart
thank you for sharing this with us, I truly am glad you did,
What about the very first Christians who lived some forty years earlier, the ones who very soon after the crucifixion came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead? Did they think that Jesus was in some sense God? I have come to think that they did.
can you please explain the reasons for this with examples, and does this include James and the Jerusalem church?
thanks
Sam
I think the answer is yes. For my reasons and examples: you’ll need to read my book!!
“1) The third day after Jesus was crucified and buried, did some of his women followers go to his tomb and find it empty? 2) Did the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke think that Jesus was in some sense God? Six months ago I would have said – and did say –No. 3) What about the very first Christians who lived some forty years earlier, the ones who very soon after the crucifixion came to believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead? Did they think that Jesus was in some sense God?”
Would you say the current dominant view within biblical scholarship to the above questions is closer to your older view than to your present?
Point 1): the dominant view is closer to my older view, not my current one; Point 2) it is closer to my current view; 3) again, closer to my current view. But even points 2) and 3) there are aspects of the dominant view that need to be revised in my view, as I try to show at length in my book.
Do you think any serious historian of early Christianity can make the case that the historical Jesus thought of himself as God “in some sense”?
There are certainly a lot of NT scholars who think so. but they are virtually all Christians and tend to be textual scholars rather than historians. Whether someone working as a historian might think this — I don’t know, it’s a good question. It’s a bit hard for me to get my mind around (how a first-century Jew could be imagined as thinking that he was actually a divine being)
One trained historian who believes the conservative interpretation of Easter and holds that Jesus considered himself God is Paul L. Maier at Western Michigan University. His main focus of teaching and writing includes the ancient Greece and Rome and the early Church.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_L._Maier
If it is easy to envisage first-century Jews including Paul thinking that Jesus was a divine being, why is it any harder to imagine a Jew thinking he was divine during his lifetime?
I deal with the question in my book. Short answer: we do know of Jews who claimed that others (who were not longer around) were the son of God and divine in some sense. What we don’t know of are any first-century Palestinian Jews who claimed *for themselves* that they were God in some sense. What kind of analogy would we have to such self-claims for Jesus?
Just to play devil’s advocate, could an historian with Trinitarian leanings respond that Jesus was unique in claiming divinity for himself? After all, every major figure of every religion was unique in his own way, while also fitting into the cultural and religious context of his day. As E.P. Sanders in effect answers in both the negative and affirmative on the uniqueness of Jesus’ teaching:
“What about the teaching of Jesus was unique? The historian who studies detail will answer, This is roughly paralleled here and there, this fairly distinctive, this otherwise unattested: very little is unique, actually. I believe that experts can do this sort of thing with Newton, Darwin, Marx and Freud. Does it mean that they were not unique, or that Jesus was not unique? Not in the least. Was his message not his own? Was his mission not his own? Was not the result greater than one would think who simply added up the discrete bits? What about him was
unique? Everything. He was himself.” (The Question of Uniqueness in the Teaching of Jesus. The Ethel M. Wood Lecture, 1990.)
Sure, a historian could claim that. But s/he would need some pretty good evidence. And since these divine claims cannot be found in any of hte Synoptic Gospels or their sources (M, L, Q e.g.) but only in much later and theologically driven accounts, I don’t thing the evidence would bear the claim….
Given you have revised your view of what the synoptic authors intended to convey with the title “Son of God”, do you still maintain “Son of Man” denotes a divine figure? If (a big if) Jesus identified himself with the Son of Man in the Danielic sense, would this amount to a claim to divinity “in some sense”?
Yes it would. But I don’t think Jesus claimed to be, or thought that he was, the Son of Man.
Fundamentalist Christians certainly think this. But of course Jesus himself is never quoted as saying he was himself God incarnate.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how you think that early Christians after the death of Jesus continued to go to the temple in Jerusalem daily (and continued to do so for decades under the leadership of James, the human brother of Jesus) believing that Jesus was “in some sense” Yahweh, the Creator of the universe. It strains credulity that the Jewish leaders wouldn’t have had them all stoned to death within a year for making such statements. Again, it will be interesting to read how you get around that historical anachronism. It seems incredibly implausible.
I am definitely not saying that Jesus thought he was, or that his disciples thought he was, or that the NT authors thought he was Yahweh incarnate. he was a different divine being made incarnate. I’ll lay all that out in my book.
Yes, I think you’ve said he was an angel made incarnate or “in some sense” divine, based on Paul’s theology (or his evolving theology, anyway.) But what about BEFORE Paul, from 33 to the mid-60s CE? What are your beliefs about that era? Will you go into that in any detail in the book?
Yes I do, including the methodological question of how we can find what earlier thinkers *before* Paul thought if Paul is our earliest author. THere’s a way, as it turns out….
My wife is a scientist, and teaches chemistry at the college level. She and I have some interesting conversations about Christianity. She is also Christian. While I still think of myself as Christian, I am willing to concede that many of the central tenets of our faith are built on theological positions that developed well after the First Century CE. It is also my belief that early Orthodox Christianity adopted influences that derived directly from the cultural influences of the Mediterranean world around them, even though it inherited much of its belief system from Jewish tradition.
For that reason, I call myself a Christian in awakening. Awakening to what I’m not sure. I am to open to the possibility of a supreme being to call myself an atheist, but I still differ from most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians along these lines. At this point, I grow more reluctant to identify that supreme being as “God.” I am also beginning to believe YHWH, Elohim, Adonai and other names attributed to the deity in the Hebrew canon had the purpose and result of drawing Israel around a united faith and a national identify. By the time Jesus came along, it was thoroughly imbedded in the culture into which he was born.
I am also willing to believe Jesus’ first disciples considered Jesus the Son of God in a very special sense. In Luke 3:38, Adam is identified as Ἀδὰμ τοῦ Θεοῦ. I know only a enough Greek to get into trouble, but I can recognize that a literal translation would be something like “Adam of God,” where τοῦ is in the possessive form. In the surrounding context, however, the implication is that Adam was called the son of God. In Luke 3:22, however, a voice from heaven pronounces to Jesus “σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱός μου,” which means “you are the son of me.” And in Matthew 16:16, we have Peter confessing to Jesus “σὺ εἰ ὁ χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ζῶντος,” which roughly means “you are the Messiah, the son of the God [of] living.
All of these identities have very different connotations. To call Adam the son of God meant something completely different from calling Jesus the son of the living God, but I can’t help wondering if by this time the old Hebrew concept of a national deity had already begun to give way to something more influenced by Greco-Roman philosophies. Historically, they would have also been influenced by the Babylonian captivity, the return under Nehemiah, the Ptolemaic conquest, the Maccabean revolt and the subsequent Roman invasion and administration from Syria. The language of the people had gone from Hebrew to Aramaic. Greek and Latin had also no doubt crept in at least among the educated classes. From all I have read of your works and others, it seems that only the most educated members of that society could read and speak strict Hebrew, but they were also likely to speak Greek, Latin and Aramaic. Everyone else spoke only Aramaic in that culture, and reading abilities were extremely limited if present at all.
Here is my question. Is Θεός, the Greek word for God, a different divine being than the divine being identified in the Hebrew canon? I guess I can answer at least part of that question myself, and I would say the concept by itself is worlds removed from YHWH. In the context of the New Testament, it acquires some of the same characteristics as the Hebrew connotation of a deity who is interested, involved and who demands total allegiance. The difference, however, is that this Supreme Being is not bound to any particular nation: not Israel, not any other nation. In the New Testament, Θεός isn’t just the father of Adam, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but of all who will receive his only-begotten son, Jesus, who is incidentally also called the son of Joseph in places throughout the New Testament.
I remember reading several of your past blogs, where you discussed concepts of deity in the Greco-Roman world. I am looking forward to your book, where I will get a few more answers in greater detail. At least to my way of thinking, we have to understand ancient and modern understandings of deity much more clearly to grasp the significance of being called “son of God.” Also, I have come to realize that we in the West do not think a lot about the way we use the word “God” or what it really means historically or philosophically. Therefore, when I see all these debates about kicking “God” out of the classroom, and removing “In God We Trust” from our currency, I have to laugh. Who is “God” to us? I believe that question has an existential answer for almost anyone you talk to today, including Christians who are adamant in their belief systems.
On the sentence “I am to open to the possibility of a supreme being to call myself an atheist,” I meant to write “I am too open to the possibility of a supreme being to call myself an atheist.”
On the sentence, “it was thoroughly imbedded in the culture into which he was born,” I meant to write “embedded.”
Yes, THEOS in the NT refers to the God of the OT (it’s the same Greek word in the Septuagint. And yes, the key is understanding how God was understood in both Greco-Roman and early Jewish cultures.
That Jesus was called the Son of God or the Messiah in no way implies that he was the literal birth child of Yahweh, or fully or partially divine himself, nor did those terms ever mean such a thing in Jewish thinking of that era. To reject the interpretation that Jesus was literally equal to God or was God incarnate does not necessarily require one to leap directly into atheism.
Dr. Ehrman, like others who have simply rejected everything and become atheists, completely ignores that the early Christians were very likely to be Adoptionist in their Christology – that God adopted Jesus as his Son in a “special sense” and anointed him in the same way He was said to have anointed the Hebrew Prophets. With those facts in play, the options aren’t “Jesus was either Lord, Lunatic or Liar” but the addition of “he saw himself as Divinely anointed Prophet” becomes a reasonable option. Inconvenient to some, perhaps, but an option that no longer almost REQUIRES atheism as a response to the shattered illusions of Textual Criticism and the “Awakening” that both you and I have gone through.
I’m confused. Why do you think that I refuse to acknowledge that early Christians were adoptionists? That is precisely what I do think. (And I do not think that atheism is required by those who become biblical scholars!!!)
True, Atheism is NOT *required* by scholarship, clearly, and that’s my point. But even I (a liberal, non-Pauline Christian – and instead, a Jesus Follower) would reject Jesus if I accepted your new view that Jesus saw himself as “somehow” divine, a claim that I hope gets LOTS of explanation in your book, since I believe this seems to be reading back into the text a literal, or even modern, understanding of terms like “Son of God” to mean “sharing in Divinity” or “partially Divine” – something no Jew of his time, or since, would have ever tolerated. (Paul’s beliefs that he was “some kind of angel” notwithstanding. Angels, in any case, are not “divine” but were said to be created beings.)
And the absence of the historic Adoptionist viewpoint here on the blog, which you have spoken of extensively in the past, is palpable. Or I may have missed it. Help me out if I’m way off track. Clearly, the Church moved from the original, Jesus-as-man Christology to a Higher one, not the other way around. I hope people understand that clearly after reading your blog posts here, which seem to argue otherwise.
That’s not my view. I do not think that Jesus saw himself as divine in any sense. And I think what you’re calling the adoptionist Christology is the very earliest Christology there was. That will be one of the major themes in my book.
“The third day after Jesus was crucified and buried, did some of his women followers go to his tomb and find it empty? I no longer think so. I am not certain, even, that his body was given a decent burial.”
Dafuq?!
Yup, you’ll need to read the book!
I’m definitely getting the book!
What a great tease! Really looking forward to this book!
Regarding your recent changes of mind: No doubt your Mythicist nemeses will be overjoyed that you’re now seeing another of the Gospel traditions (in this case, the empty tomb narrative) as being more fiction than fact. They will surely see that as a win. And no doubt the Evangelical Christians will be equally overjoyed that you’re now seeing that earliest Christians did consider Jesus as God, at least in some sense. They will surely see that as a win too. It’s a win-win for everyone haha!
Of course mythicists think the tomb was empty before as well as after. 🙂
I am sorry that this anecdote and the other personal anecdotes are being left out of the book. This one, and the others that you have shared, would have added a lot to the book. Ron
Apologies for going completely off topic here, but I wasn’t sure where else to put this… I received my new BAR magazine in the mail a day or two ago and there’s a side bar written by Hershel Shanks where he prints a testy email exchange between him and the Director of Communications at Harvard Divinity School. She directly states that there will be a release of reports (plural) this summer on the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife”.
Interesting! Can’t wait!
I think that even words such as “God” and “monotheism” may be subject to different interpretations and meanings in different times and cultures. Therefore statements like “Jesus is God” and “there is one God” are not straightforward as they seem.
Many Christians can be easily confused by Paul’s statements like “there is one God and one Lord Jesus Christ”: see, this means that Jesus cannot be God! (This is a “classic” argument of Jeohva Witnesses, btw).
Good point. It very often, (always?) comes down to definition too. And ‘God’ is a very generic, ill-defined word/concept that can be used in a zillion different ways.
I love the audiobooks so I’m hoping your new book will be available in audio form sooner than later.
Not many people, let alone scholars, would admit such changes of mind. Kudos to you!
Even though I still disagree with you (I think?) on what the earliest Christians (Paul included) actually meant with Jesus having ‘risen’ or ‘been resurrected’ 😉 Namely: his soul/spirit having been clothed, after his death, with a new, ‘spiritual’ body while his human body was continuing to rot in either a tomb or a mass grave.
Xeronimo74, thank you for this comment, which is what I wanted to say. Too often in our culture changing one’s mind is labelled “flip flopping”, and a sign of weakness, while I think it is really a sign of intelliegence and honesty. That intellectual honesty, and committment to following the truth where ever it may lead, are why I read this blog and buy the books. So thanks from me too Bart 🙂