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Loading...In this thread on the Trinity I am developing at some length the first major issue: how did someone besides God come to be considered God among people who thought God and this other God were different yet continued to claim they were monotheists? (Later I’ll talk about the Spirit, as many have asked; but there frankly is not nearly as much to say there, as we’ll see).
What I’ve spelled out so far is not hugely controversial among critical scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity. When the disciples came to believe in the resurrection, they thought that God had exalted Jesus to a unique, divine status. This is the oldest Christology there was. It is attested in such places as the pre-Pauline fragment in Rom. 1:3-4 and in several places, pre-Lukan, incorporated in the speeches of Acts.
And then what happened?
The Rest of this post tries to show how Christ came to be exalted more and more until his followers claimed he had been God from the beginning. Want to see how it happened? Keep reading! To do so, all you need to is join the blog. There’s a small membership fee, but it all goes to charity. So join up!
Hey Bart. What’s the evidence for people believing his exaltation to be at the resurrection? And do you give both Matthew and Luke the same location in time for his exaltation (at the birth?) ? Thanks
Look at the passages I cited, where they say just that (e.g., Romans 1:3-4; the passage in Acts 13, etc). As to Matthew and Luke, I believe so.
Dr. E, you are really making sense of this can of worms.
Thank you.
You often advise reading each Gospel on its own, perhaps trying to forget you are even aware of any tradition or story outside what is written in that Gospel.
if one were to successfully do that with John, what would be your understanding of “incarnation.”? Historically, physically I mean. Would such a reader suppose that this divine being “became human”:
a) in the form of an adult
b) with all his faculties, and knowledge of his divine nature and abilities “unrepressed”?
Or does content in John undermine such a conclusion?
I’ll be posting on that soon, but the short story is that John doesn’t go into any of that. He *does* suggest that Jesus was born and raised in Nazareth, so I assume it means he “came into the world in the usual way” (to quote Harry Chapin)
Professor Ehrman I didn’t understand one point. How could Paul write before Mark if he had the same understanding that John?
There are many people today who have views that are similar to those found in 1800; the fact they live now doesn’t mean they can’t have older views that many of us now would not agree with. But in any event, John’s view is in fact different, as I’ll be explaining in later posts.
Any thoughts why the start of Jesus’ exaltation got pushed back? The push back to Jesus’ baptism makes sense because it explains how Jesus did miracles said wise things and the like. But why push it back to his birth or even further back? What is to be gained by this?
It makes him yet more glorious, and for longer — until he is eternal, going back for all eternity as the son of God with no beginning! Christians thought that was a lot more significant than if he became divine at the end of his life.
Regarding why the exaltation got pushed back, I would suggest that it gave church leaders more power. If the god you are representing is all knowing, all powerful and all glorious for all eternity then you are also. So it was in their best interest to exhalt Jesus to the most highest christology.
Bart: is it not also, an understanding of the pre-existent Jesus as God’s partner in creation?
In Paul we find this in 1 Corinthians 8:6
“.. there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist,
and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.”
Which picks up the Hebrew bible tradition from Proverbs 8:22
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.”
And was to be further elaborated at Colossians 1:16
“for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him.”
Yes, I agree — Christ was *highly* exalted for Paul before becoming human (though I do not, as you know, think the Colossians passage comes from Paul); but he was not of *equal* authority with God until the resurrection. That’s a view, of course, that numerous other Christians had for some centuries. (Including many of the proto-orthodox)
One think that I don’t understand, no matter how much I read about the historical Jesus, how come his believers came to believe his divine even though he died on a cross.
So basically Jesus died a criminal’s death, which I suppose is very scandalous for Jews. Yet despite such death, somehow his believers, came to believe he was resurrected.
Could it be that Jesus was taken away so suddenly from them that they expected him to return at one point, thus having some of them ‘imagine’ his resurrection?
They believed he was divine because they “knew” he was raised from the dead (since some of them said they had seen him alive); he must hten have been taken up to heaven; and anyone taken up to heaven (in the ancient world) was made divine. That conclusion made them reconsider the logic of his death: it must have not been for his sins (since he was favored of God); so it must have been for the sins of others. He was a sacrifice! Once they decided that, everything else fell in place.
In Matthew’s gospel, some of Jesus’ sayings seem to be allude to words attributed to divine Wisdom in earlier Jewish writings like Ben Sirach.
Do you think this gospel’s association of Jesus with God’s Wisdom was another way (in addition to the ‘son of God’ language) for the author to describe Jesus’ divinity, or was the author only using wisdom language to identify Jesus as a sage?
I”m not sure which passages you have in mind? Prophets, of coruse, were thought to convey divine wisdom (though they were not Wisdom itself).
Oh, let me rephrase. Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus asks the weary and heavy laden to approach him, take up his yoke and receive rest, seems to allude to Ben Sirach’s instruction (51:26-27) for the listener/reader to take Wisdom’s yoke and receive instruction and find serenity.
Do you think that for Matthew’s gospel, Jesus performs the role of God’s Wisdom, and this association of Jesus with Wisdom was, like the term ‘son of God’, a way by which the author claim divinity for Jesus?
I think it’s possible, but I would imagine that if we looked around for the image of “taking up someone’s yoke” we would find it used in other contexts as well. Unfortunately I”ve never done so!
Is there any evidence that Jesus was called the son of God (either as a title or a description) during his ministry? Is there any evidence against it?
There are passages that attribute the identification to him. The quesiton is whether they could be historical. Think Mark 14:61-62; this is the only passage in our earliest Gospel where Jesus confesses he is the son of God; but there are all sorts of reasons for doubting it is historical. For one thing, it’s a meeting of the Sanhedrin. Which of Jesus’ followrs were there. None. Who was taking notes? No one. How would a Christian writing 40 years later in a different part of the world know what happened there? Well… Even worse, it leads to a charge of blasphemy, but claiming to be the nmessiah / son of God was not a blasphemy. NOr saying that the Son of man was soon to arrive. So… Each passage has to be examined like that.
Dr Ehrman,
Is there any significance to the age of Jesus and its relation to the start of his ministry?
Thank you.
I”m afraid we are a bit handicapped when it comes to Jesus’ age. Luke says he was “about 30” but almost certainly it was a guess. I think I’ll post on this!
A smart guy once said, “It depends on what gospel you read.”
If I am to elaborate, it is tempting to consider the various theological views that were around the area around the year 30 AD.
If I were to write something on the “blog” 2000 years ago and had as many adopted or influenced by theological views that definitely existed at the time, I could also get the idea of a high christology. If one consider Zoroastrianism (which was quite influential all the way from Cyrus and / or the Dahrus dynasty. And more (until Hellenism took over) or less in 1000 years which extended long to Greek (Hellenism) and Egypt, including the Middle East.In addition to that, the current and muuuuuuch older theological views from Hinduism, and also Buddhism which probably began to be written down from oral sources a few centuries BC .. In addition to that, a lot of the platonic views from Greece as well. No wonder the Gnostic came up with the concept they did related to the Soul descend (e.g. Apcrychon of John) and soul ascend, and “eminence” of the divine, as in (for example, in the Gospel of Phillip and the Gospel of Egyptian, the first book of IEOU) back to unity. In my mind, many of these concepts can directly by derived very current and dominant theological views and philosophies of the time ,,,,,,,,, even the “mandala” (Hinduism, but also ! universal) symbol which some of the gnostics associated with 5 seals baptism in Gnosticism that was used to get in touch with the transcendental world .
So, in my mind, ideas were strongly influenced by at that time common religions like Zoroastrianism, Hinduism and maybe Buddhism in addition to Platonic / Egyptian views. If they added Jesus into this concept as Christ, he would in my mind certainly be added as what they call the “Child” of Norus/Father and Barbelo, and his devinity would have been there from the infinity past. In addition to that, since his expantions into 12 aeons (Carl Gustav Jung would probably claimed this would describe the mind” he would also be related to the original and spiritual Adam, the perfect Anthropos which was made.
In this concept, a concept which I think is based on much much older religions / philosophies, the stage was set for Jesus as Christ to be there from the very beginning as an emanation of the Father. These ideas were already there when Jesus lived.
Maybe!,,, it’s like, “it depends on what gospel you read”, and also “it depends on what traditions who wrote them”.
In a YouTube discussion with prof. Ehrman (hosted by Unbeleivable?) Peter J Williams (starting at 1:05 in the video) pointed out, that there are suggestions of Jesus´s divinity already in Mark, e.g. when Jesus said “I AM” when walking on water (6:50), when he healed the blind man (8:22ff), which supposedly was province of God only, and so on. Do you have any second thougts about it, professor?
No, not really. THe Greek phrase he is referring to (EGO EIMI: “I am”) frequently is used to say, “Yup, that’s me.” Even in the NT. In John 9:9 when the “man born blind” is being questioned — is this really the guy Jesus healed? — the man says “EGO EIMI” (I am). He was decidedly not claiming to be divine. If my friend Peter wants to say that the words probably mean that in Mark 6:50 and 8:22ff, he would need ot say they mean that in John 9:9!
I read a book a while outlined how Jesus switched back and forth between his divine mind and his human mind. What to do about the Bible verses that show Jesus without divine knowledge?
Most Christian theologians would find that view to be theologically problematic (or probably heretical). Nothing in the Bible says any thinglike it. The author is trying to figure out how he could be all knowing and yet limited as a human and so is just kinda makin’ up the idea that he must have switched back and forth.
Regarding Luke being written approximately 15 years after Mark: One would think this to be a paltry amount of time to change a rather important narrative on the people. Can you then comment on the idea of the Gospels, in all their contradictions and variations, circulating orally at one time together. And if this was the case, how do scholars make a determination on a date considering when a Gospel was spoken versus when it was written?
I think scholars have realized that major alterations in a narrative can happen literally over night. Even in our days of mass media where facts can be checked, different news sources report the exact same event in radically different ways, depending on their own slant, agenda, purpose, audience, etc. In the ancient world it could easily happen on the spot as well and demonstrably did.