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Where Did the Trinity Come From? The (Briefer) Video Version
Now that I’ve established that the earliest Christians came to think Christ was God (in some sense or other) and continued to think God was God, and yet thought there was only one God — I am able to move into the thinking and debates based on those views that eventually led to the doctrine of the trinity. This seems like a good time to share a video produced five years ago or so in which I talk about the issue at a speaking gig I did at the Coral Gables Congregational Church in (as one would expect!) Coral Gables, Florida. I did this gig soon after my book was published: “How Jesus Became God.” The lecture was the third in a series I did at the church. This was back when I did lectures in front of human beings instead of in front of a computer screen. Ah, the good ole days. On future posts on the blog I’ll be going into considerably more detail, but this can give you the major nuts and […]
March 9, 2021
Christ as “Not God” in the Second Century: Early Jewish Adoptionists
You might think – and many people do think – that as Christianity developed, every Christian more or less went along with the “standard” or “orthodox” Christian beliefs that emerged. The term “orthodoxy” literally means “right beliefs” (or correct opinions); the word “heterodoxy” means “other opinions” (that is, other than the right ones!). A term often used alternatively for the latter is “heresy,” which literally means “choice,” used for people who “choose” to believe the wrong things. (!) As you might imagine, these are highly subjective terms A view is “right” (that is, orthodox) for you depending on what you personally believe. That’s because no one chooses to believe something they know is wrong. If they think it’s wrong, they change their view to what is right. But that means that everyone necessarily believes they are right, i.e. orthodox. Or as one wag put it, “orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy.” That also means that it’s impossible to say that one group within early Christianity was absolutely right about everything (i.e. “orthodox”) […]
March 10, 2021
What Are the Sources of the Hebrew Bible?
Just now I was fishing around for an old post for a rerun, and thought it would be nice to do something on the Old Testament. It’s been a while! Here is one from many years ago that deals with a question I still get regularly today. You might have it too! QUESTION: Do you have a suggestion for a book concerning the Old Testament’s construction? I believe in the History of God (by K. Armstrong) she mentioned that there were about five distinct writers for the OT. Is this the scholarly view and do you have a book suggestion to delve deeper into it? RESPONSE: This is an issue that has been on my mind a lot lately [I was writing this in 2012!]. Right now, my current writing project is a college-level textbook on the entire Bible, Genesis to Revelation. This seems to me to be way too much to cram into a semester, but as it turns out, something like half the colleges in the country teach biblical courses this […]
March 11, 2021
Was Christ Human But Not Divine? Another Early Christian View
In my previous post I talked about Jewish Christians of the early centuries who held to an “adoptionistic” view of Christ, the view that he was not by nature divine but was a human being who at some point came to be adopted to be God’s son. This view was held by other groups as well (and still is); one that we know of from ancient sources comes not from Jewish but gentile circles. This was a group known as the Theodotians, named after their founder, a shoemaker who happened also to be an amateur theologian, named Theodotus. Since they were centered in Rome, scholars sometimes refer to this group as the Roman Adoptionists. The followers of Theodotus did think that Christ was unlike other humans in that he was born of a virgin mother (and so they may have accepted either the Gospel of Matthew or the Gospel of Luke as Scripture). But other than that, as the church father and heresy-hunter (i.e., “heresiologist”) Hippolytus, tells us, for them “Jesus was a (mere) man” […]
March 13, 2021
How to Make Sense of (or at least Peace with) What’s Strange in the Bible: Guest Post by Kristin Swenson
Three weeks ago we had a guest post by Kristin Swenson about her new book A Most Peculiar Book: The Inherent Strangeness of the Bible. Here’s the link if you haven’t read it yet: https://ehrmanblog.org/an-intriguing-but-most-peculiar-book-guest-post-by-kristin-swenson/ Her post raised a lot of interest, and so now we are fortunate to have her back for a second, related post. Kristen has PhD in biblical studies from Boston University and is an associate professor of religious studies (affiliate) at Virginia Commonwealth University. She has written other books as well, including God of Earth: Discovering a Radically Ecological Christianity and Bible Babel: Making Sense of the Most Talked About Book of All Time. ********************************** One of the things about writing is how frequently the process of writing itself reveals something new. In the case of A Most Peculiar Book, I set out to discuss some of the Bible’s many weirdnesses. It quickly became clear that the topic has two, general parts – what’s weird about the Bible, and what’s weird in it. So that’s how I continued (and what […]
March 14, 2021
TWO Live Lectures This Sunday (We’ve Changed The Plan…)! How Do We Know about the Historical Jesus? and Jesus, The Apocalyptic Prophet
APOLOGIES for the earlier post. It was mistaken. Can you imagine? Here is the true, infallible, inerrant information! At last, you may say…. This Sunday, March 7, I will be giving TWO live Zoom lectures (not one) for anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament and there will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. Please NOTE the time; the first is at 2:00 p.m., second at 3:15 p.m. EST There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, March 7, 2:00 pm […]
March 3, 2021
Christian Attitudes toward War, Through the Ages: Platinum Post by Dan Kohanski
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Apologies about the Comments!
Many apologies to Silver, Gold, and Platinum members. We are having a technical difficulty with comments on posts. Ugh. But we’re on it and will soon get it resolved.
Was Christ So Divine That He Was Not Human? The “Antichrists” of 1 John
Just as there were “adoptionist” Christians in the second century, who maintained that Christ was not really a divine being, but a human being who had been “adopted” to be divine by God (so: not pre-existent; not born of a virgin; not “equal” with God; etc.), so too, on the other end of the spectrum, there were others who claimed that he was so *entirely* God that he was not actually human. Here is how I talk about early representatives of that view in my book How Jesus Became God. **************************** We have seen that those holding adoptionist views of Christ claimed to represent the earliest views of Jesus’ own apostles. Of course, every group representing every view of early Christianity claimed that its views were the original teachings of Jesus and his earthly followers – but in the case of the adoptionists, they may well have been right. The view we will consider now is in some ways the polar opposite: it maintained that rather than being completely human, and so not – by […]
March 16, 2021
Christ as Non-Human (but fully God) in the Early Second Century
On this slow path we are taking to see where the doctrine of the Trinity came from (it may seem slow, but of course a full analysis would take volumes!) I have been trying to show how different understandings of Christ emerged in early Christianity – starting from the original belief of his disciples in his resurrection and exaltation, to later exaltation views (he was a man who became divine at his resurrection; NO! at his baptism; NO! at his birth) and then incarnation views (he was never a man who was not God. He was God who became a man). Paul has both views: Christ was a divine being who became human but then got exalted to a higher level of divinity; the final view is found in the Gospel of John: Christ was completely divine from the beginning, and in fact was the Creator of the universe. Wow. In the last post I showed that this incredibly “high” Christology in John was taken yet higher in the later Johannine community, as some members […]
March 17, 2021
The Value of Amulets for Reconstructing the New Testament Text: Guest Post by Brice Jones
Now here is a topic I bet you’ve never heard of before. The value of what? Amulets? For what? Really? Yup, really. Sometimes the most interesting issues are ones you haven’t heard of before. And hey, now you’ll be able to talk about it. This is a guest post from Brice Jones, a textual specialist on this topic, who has written the definitive book about it. I’ve asked him to tell us about it in layperson’s terms. This will take him a couple of posts. Here is a brief bio on him so you have a sense of who he is, followed by post number one, in which, among other things, he tells you what this is all about. – Brice Jones is the author of New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity and Matthean and Lukan Special Material. ************************************ Brice C. Jones is an ancient historian specializing in the study of Early Christianity and papyrology. He received his Ph.D. in Religion from Concordia University (Montreal) and his M.A. in New Testament from Yale University. […]
March 18, 2021
A Phantom Jesus: The Teachings of the Second-Century Marcion
In the past couple of posts I have talked about early Christian “docetists,” those who were so convinced that Jesus was completely God that they denied he was a “flesh-and-blood” human being. In the early Christian centuries, no one advanced that view more than the “arch-heretic” Marcion. Marcion had a huge following. In some parts of the Christian world at the end of the second century, there were apparently more Marcionites than other kinds of Christian. One could argue he his views are still broadly popular today, even among Christians who have never heard of him and among those who, if they have, would say that he was a “heretic.” Do you know Christians who think that there is a difference between the God of Wrath in the Old Testament and the God of Love in the New Testament, and who think that the Old Testament does not really apply anymore? That is a weakened version of Marcion’s thought. Or do you know people who say Christ was God and so he wasn’t […]
March 20, 2021
Lost Christian Writings I’d Love to Get My Hands On!
I thought it might be fun to intersperse some posts from years ago to break up here and there the thread on the Trinity, for those who have, well, lots of other interests too! So here’s a good option. I did a short thread before the vast majority of you were on the blog (and maybe before you were born. 🙂 ) based on a question: among all the ancient Christian writings that have been lost, which ones would I especially love to get my grubby paws on? Here’s the original question and my first response to it. QUESTION: What lost early Christian books would you most like to have discovered? RESPONSE: Ah, this is a tough one. There are lots of Christian writing that I would love to have discovered – all of the ones that have been lost, for example! But suppose I had to name some in particular. Well, this will take several posts. To begin with, I wish we had the other letters of Paul. Let me explain. In […]
March 21, 2021
Was Matthew Influenced by Buddhist Writings? Platinum Post by Steve Sutter
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March 9, 2021
More on Marcion’s Theology
Yesterday I mentioned Marcion as one of the prime early Christian thinkers who argued that Jesus was so much divine he was not at all human. I have decided that I need to provide more background to make sense of the particular way he appears to have come to that conclusion, by discussing in a bit greater depth his overall theological views, so far as we can know them. I did that before on the blog many years ago. Here I do it again! Marcion was active in the 130s and 140s; he came to Rome to become part of the Christian community there in 139; he apparently was booted out about five years later when the church leaders found his forcefully-proclaimed views unacceptable. He then went around Asia Minor (whence he originally came, from Sinope on the southern coast of the Black Sea) establishing churches. He held popular views that attracted lots of followers. Marcion and his followers believed that Jesus — whom they considered their Lord and Savior — was not connected with […]
March 23, 2021
Did Marcion Know the Gospels or Not??
I’ve said something about Marcion’s canon of Scripture in the past couple of posts, and last time I did that — many years ago — some people got confused. The issue has to do with what at first seems a different issue. Did the apostle Paul (during his ministry) know about the Gospels? My answer to that is no, he probably did not. Especially since, well, he was writing before they were written! And he shows no knowledge of any written Gospel (even of ones we don’t have.) But then when I say elsewhere that Marcion promoted only Paul’s “gospel.” Uh…? Here’s the original question and my response. Question: You wrote: “The apostle Paul – well-connected and well-traveled and familiar with lots of churches – shows no knowledge that such a thing as Gospels exist.” I should have asked you about this earlier. I was surprised when, back in a post on Marcion, you said the other “gospel” Paul talked about was “a version of our Gospel of Luke.” Would you explain? RESPONSE: OK, so […]
March 24, 2021
Two More Live Lectures on Sunday, one of them very strange….
This Sunday, March 14, I will be giving TWO live Zoom lectures (not one) for anyone who wants to come. They will be recorded for my undergraduate course on the New Testament and there will be a 30-minute Q & A to follow the second one. Please NOTE the time; the first is at 2:00 p.m., second at 3:15 p.m. EST. When I say “lectures” with one of the two I’m using the term loosely, as you’ll see below. There is no charge per se, but I would like to ask for a donation to the blog in exchange, if you can see your way clear to do it. If not, that’s fine – we all have our circumstances! But one of the main reasons I’m doing these lectures is to raise money for the Food Bank of North Carolina; as with all food banks right now, it is in desperate need. Your donation is completely tax deductible. Here is the info you need: Time: Sunday, March 14, 2:00 pm and 3:15 (EST) The Lectures […]
March 12, 2021
Modern Christians Who Follow Marcion (Unawares)
Before I move on from Marcion to talk about “Gnostic” understandings of Christ — all in this long thread on where the Trinity came from — I’d like to return to an issue I mentioned briefly in my first post on Marcion, that in many ways his views are alive and well among us. As I have said on the blog before, I have known Christians over the years who in fact have views in many ways close to what Marcion taught. These people would, of course, deny they have anything like the touch of the heretic about them. But at the end of the day, their views are not so different. Maybe they are not as extreme as he was, but they do seem to be dwelling on the fringes of his camp. First, I have known a lot of Christians who think that the Old Testament has a God of wrath and condemnation and the New Testament has a God of love and mercy. Students say this to me with some regularity. The […]
March 25, 2021
Did the Disciples See Jesus Raised from the Dead?
On this Easter Sunday I would like to explain what I think led to the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. A lot of readers over the years have not liked my answer (readers on wide ends of the spectrum): I think some (a few) of the disciples had visions of Jesus. That is, they saw him, or thought they saw him — which for them would have been the same thing. I dealt with the matter in my book God’s Problem, and responded to a question on the blog about it a long time ago. Here it is. QUESTION: I am reading How Jesus Became God and would like to comment on some of the content of Chapter 5. To that point in the book, it seems to me you have been very careful to avoid speculation, but it seems to me that the application of your usual standards may have lapsed somewhat in regard to the visions of Jesus after the crucifixion. Specifically, what evidence do we have, apart from […]
April 4, 2021
Did Jesus Really Have a “Triumphal Entry” into Jerusalem?
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday, the day on which Christians commemorate Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem. It is a terrific holiday in the Christian calendar, a celebration of victory and joy, prior to the dark events to occur at the end of the week on Good Friday. The historian would want to know: did it really happen? Did Jesus really ride into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey to the acclamation of the crowds proclaiming him to be the coming messiah, laying down their cloaks and palm branches before him in full celebration? It’s a *terrific* story; a climax of Jesus’ ministry, in a sense. Is it historical? I deal the question in my book Jesus Before the Gospels and will excerpt the discussion here. This will take two posts. This one sets the stage and the next one asks how we can figure out if it really happened. ****************************** The Triumphal Entry There seems to be no reason to doubt that Jesus spent the last week of his life in Jerusalem looking ahead to the […]
March 27, 2021