Yesterday I started a thread dealing with things that I learn, discovered, or changed my mind about in the course of doing the research on How Jesus Became God. This then is the second post on the topic. In this instance I was struck with a blinding realization of something that I guess I knew for a long time, but it had never nailed me between the eyes before. Once it did, it completely changed how I decided to write the book. Fundamentally changed it. I realized – duh!!! – that the environment within which Christians were calling Jesus God was *everything*, not just a minor side note (as it is often treated by NT scholars). This realization assaulted me one day when I was minding my own business, snooping around an archaeological site in Turkey. Here’s the story as I tell it in the book, at the beginning of chapter 2. ********************************************************** When I first started my teaching career in the mid 1980s I was offered an adjunct position at Rutgers University. My teaching [...]