Ehrman's "How Jesus Became a God" is now out.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I'll just quickly summarize the rest of the book because it moves past HJ and Paul and into the developments of conflicting Christologies in the 2nd a 3rd Centuries up to Nicea. Ehrman runs through the major Christologies and heresies - Ebionites, Docetists, Gnostics, the Arian controversy, Marcion, etc up to Constantine, Nicea and the Trinity. It's again, a lot of 101 stuff, but Ehrman gives a pretty good overview of the development of systematic theologies, heresies and the nature of the conflicts. It's good in a "Heresiology for Dummies" kind of way, but he's not propounding any new personal theories here. The Paul chapter was really the payload. He kind of goes on autopilot a little bit. He does not challenge any conventional history in these chapters, but I would still recommend them to anyone who wants a basic introduction to pre-Nicene theological food fights. Ehrman does point out that Constantine himself thought these were petty squabbles over trivial details and that he didn't really care what they decided at Nicea as long as they all got on the same page and agreed to something he could stamp as "orthodoxy." This shows the somewhat cynical, horse-trading nature of how official Christian dogma got decided.

I still haven't read the last chapter, which looks just to be a summation, but if there's anything noteworthy in, I'll post it after I read it.

[stephan happy huller]

but he's not propounding any new personal theories here

But isn't that a little like saying 'he takes the Patristic texts at face value.' I am not sure we can do that. The Ebionites certainly weren't 'poor,' the Borborites weren't 'dirty' etc. That's the problem with professional scholarship. It wants to pretend there is 'something' to study to justify being 'scientific' rather than 'speculative.' The problem is that the study of early Christianity is more like figure skating that the javelin throw.

I think Ehrman is an authority on manuscripts. I am not sure he is qualified to develop opinions in this area.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

He actually does say that the heresiologists are biased and untrustworthy. He doesn't take them at face value. He goes into a lot of detail about just that in Lost Christianities. In this book, he's only really talking about the evolution of Christologies and cites the Ebionites because they had a low, non-divine Christology

[stephan happy huller]

Yes, I am aware what he wrote there and it is not authoritative. It's just someone pretending to write something authoritative when he is just speculating. No one want to admit that they don't know way more than they know. This is especially true with scholars of early Christianity.

I don't know how to say this clearly enough but you can't talk about the 'evolution of Christology' in any meaningful sense of the word if we know very little - bits and pieces really - with any degree of certainty.

The Church Fathers offered a simple explanation. The Devil inspired the heresies. As stupid as that explanation is it's no better or worse than any of the things that Ehrman writes about. The problem is that Irenaeus is a funhouse mirror and everything is Irenaeus - even the surviving texts of Justin, Clement and the like have been altered by his 'funhouse mirror.'

Ehrman's authority lies in his knowledge of manuscripts and ancient witnesses to texts but the rest is bullshit. It's like before Jobim there were all these rules in Brazilian music. You can't do this and that and still make it sound melodic. Bullshit.

As I get on this debate as an observer I can't shake the feeling that there are so many parallels with death. You know we're all running around 'certain' about this or that. There is very little certainty except that we're going to die. But the reason why so many of these scholars of early Christianity are so fixated on a historical Jesus is that they are systematizers. They've made this stupid little 'organization' in their heads and the papers they've written and if it turned out that history can't be retrieved from the Bible they've been studying nonsense for 30 years.

That's all it comes down to and the 'evolution of Christology' is more of the same bullshit.

Mistrust systematizers.

'I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. the will to a system is a lack of integrity.'

[maryhelena]

Hi maryhelena,

I like your points about Ehrman. He is seemingly abandoning the standard historical Jesus argument that a low human Jesus slowly became legendary as a high Christology developed. According to this mode, Jesus was considered a man by the people who knew him, but slowly the legends grew about him after his death and eventually 40 or 50 years later, he was deified and mythologized into a God. Ehrman now seems to agree with Earl Doherty that Paul knew Jesus as an angel or heavenly creature.

I think Ehrman wants both JC NT stories, the Pauline story and the gospel story. (from what I've read so far....) His "the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap". seems, to me, to indicate that. And in that, I happen to think he has something to offer. Perhaps, "overlap", might not be the best choice of words. Maybe, relationship, interaction, would better reflect what I think he is attempting to say. ie there is no magic tricks here, reality does not morph into some ethereal or cosmic, or spiritual otherness. Our spiritual/intellectual capacity, our ideas, can become 'flesh', ie can be transformed into concrete reality - as our physical realities influence our, 'spiritual', thinking. In other words, body and spirit co-operate without either surrendering their own unique identities.

Throwing out the old playbook of the historicists, Erhman brews up a pot of "Instant Deity." Jesus had barely disappeared into the clouds before Paul started recognizing him as angel numero uno. One would have thought Jesus' brother James would have set him straight, when they hung out together for two weeks, saying something like, 'I saw him sucking on Mary's breast and defecating and urinating every day growing up as a child and he was definitely no angel. If you had seen him and Magdalene anointing each other, you wouldn't think of him as so sinless."

I don't think that Ehrman's move can work. If people really believe that Jesus became a God ten seconds after he disappeared into the clouds, why not believe that people really believed he was a God while on Earth? And why would people believe Jesus was a God on earth unless he really was a God. Ehrman is moving back towards his evangelical faith based heritage.

Of course, using the same impeccable historical methods of Erhman, we will be able to next prove that a rocket from a far-away planet really did crash into the Midwest United States in the 1930's with a baby aboard. After all, since we send rockets to other planets, isn't it probable that other planets would send a rocket here. There is nothing usual about it as all and probably more likely than the deification of a Galilean fisherman... and people adopt found babies all the time - remember the Moses story.

Yes, of course, for the Jesus fundamentalists, Ehrman' idea won't sell. However, for the JC historicists who are upholding an ordinary man version of the gospel JC - he has provided a way for them to counter the ahistoricists/mythicists. And he has done so by using the very Pauline argument of some mythicists - Paul has a cosmic type JC.

The weak point of his argument is that Jewish people would so deify a man - whether dead or alive. But, Philosopher Jay, I think we need to get past that and ask the question: What would the Jewish people 'deify', honor, make sacred, 'worship' - what earthly 'god' would the Jewish people so esteem? Well, I'm not Jewish - but I am Irish - and methinks, both Jewish people and Irish people have something they both cherish beyond all the telling of it - the land beneath their feet. The Irish write songs, the Jews write prophecy - all of which testify to the strong connection these two people have towards physical realities. Physical realities, that of course, encompass more than stone and soil - but flesh and blood as well. The Diaspora for the Jews; Exile for many an Irish family - next year in Jerusalem - 'I'll bring you home again, Kathleen' - testify to the place that physical reality holds in the hearts of both these people. And the gospel writers? Hard to imagine that they would write a story that places all their eggs in a Pauline cosmic basket.

Oh, well, enough philosophyzing for one morning....

A link to a webpage, fundamentalist, that takes a look at Ehrman' new book. It also has something to say about another new book - which by all accounts has not done a good job of taking Ehrman to task. The new book: How God became Jesus......

http://www.reclaimingthemind.org/blog/2 ... -response/

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The fundy response book basically sounds like a bunch of whining. Ehrman just debated Gathercole on Unbelievable and Gathercole was pathetic. For instance, he says Jesus identifies himself as God in the Synoptic Gospels because he says. "I have come..." a lot, implying, in Gathercole's mind, that he thought he came FROM someplace, therefore he was claiming to be preexistent (I don't know how apologists are able to convince even themselves with stuff like this). Ehrman pointed out that John the Baptist also used "I have come" type language and nobody thinks he was claiming to be God.

[maryhelena]

Just got through ch.2 of Ehrman' book. He wants to show that within monotheistic Judaism, with a graduation in the divine spirit world of 'gods', angels etc, that some Jews believed that these spirit creatures made appearances on earth in human form. And all that is, of course, is great imagination on the part of the figures in the OT stories. Now, when he comes to trying this the other way around, that human can be considered to have stepped up on that pyramid of godlike creatures, he again turns to OT figures. Well, I suppose that's all he has got.......but to maintain that Jews would place an itinerant carpenter preacher figure on that pyramid of godlike creatures - needs more than what Ehrman is proposing. That argument, that the gospel Jesus became 'god', that some Jews turned this figure into, in some sense, a god figure, needs some evidence. Not evidence re a historical Jesus - (that's a secondary issue) but evidence that the Jews at that time, a time when turning men into gods was a Roman pastime, did likewise. OT theology can't help. Prophetic interpretations can't help. Ehrman needs to produce a concrete historical example of Jews turning men into gods.

He can't - thus, his book fails in its stated purpose of demonstrating "How Jesus became God". If, re that gospel Jesus story, it can be interpreted to indicate that the Jewish followers of Jesus did deify this figure - all the more reason to realize that this gospel Jesus figure was not a historical figure, was not a flesh and blood figure. Turning literary, symbolic, mythological figures into xyz gods is part and parcel of the medium of creative writing.

So, no to Ehrman - the ahistoric position on the gospel JC can't be overturned by an argument derived from OT theology. It's not belief that is the issue here - it is historical evidence that the Jews would do to a flesh and blood man, what Ehrman is accusing them of doing.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

His thesis is that the disciples saw visions and believed Jesus had been "adopted" as a son of God after his death (and Ehrman argues that adoption was a great significance and honor in the Roman world e.g. the adoption of Octavian by Julius Caesar). Adopted/exalted son of God then became preexistent angel at some point in between the disciples and Paul. He says the disciples had an adoptionist/exaltation/binitarian Christology, but that the Philippians hymn is pre-Pauline (it is, at the least, non-Pauline). Ehrman says the change from a pure exaltation Christology to an incarnation Christology happened within about twenty years. After reading and re-reading those sections, though, i can't find him suggest any particular source for the Philippians hymn, other than that it's intermediary (if I understand him correctly and maybe I don't) between the disciples and Paul.

If I understand correctly Ehrman is saying the trajectory was as follows:

1. Historical disciples of a historical Jesus had visionary experiences after his death which convinced them that he had been exalted and adopted as a son of God and as "God" in an elastic sense the way that "wisdom" and the "logos" and the Holy Spirit and the "Angel of the Lord" were fungible with "God" in other lines of Jewish thought and scripture.

2. Somebody (it is unclear who) decided that Jesus had not only been adopted and exalted but was a preexistent, condescendent divine entity or angel and whoever these people were formulated something like the Philippians hymn.

3. Paul bought it and expanded on it.

It's the 2nd step I'm still not clear about, especially as it pertains to what the Pillars thought about Jesus, and to what they thought about Paul teaching an incarnation theology.

[stephan happy huller]

1. Historical disciples of a historical Jesus had visionary experiences after his death which convinced them that he had been exalted and adopted as a son of God and as "God" in an elastic sense the way that "wisdom" and the "logos" and the Holy Spirit and the "Angel of the Lord" were fungible with "God" in other lines of Jewish thought and scripture.

But here is where the theory breaks down for me. If we start from the assumption that three or maybe four gospel writers say the same thing about Jesus independent of one another then we can safely push the 'hallucinations' to the side. But Ehrman (at least as far as I have read thus far) never seems to deal with the Marcionite claim that:

1. none of the canonical gospels were written by eyewitnesses to Jesus (Methodius, De Recta in Deum Fide)
2. the Marcionites themselves had the first gospel
3. all other gospels were based on corruptions of that proto-text

If Paul was not an apostle (although the Marcionite never confess this and perhaps even said that Marcion was the head of the apostles cf. Maruta bishop of Maipherkat De Sancta Synodo Nicaena so even the distinction between 'Marcion' and 'Paul' was unknown to them cf. the question of Adamantius to this effect in De Recta in Deum Fide) then according to the traditional model his authority was based on hallucinations. The standard Patristic model for understanding the development of the gospels was that all the existing texts were attempts at reinterpreting a proto-text called the Gospel according to the Hebrews. If the Marcionites were right the development of these 'spurious gospels' mirrors that process negatively. Irenaeus develops the fantasy that four winds blew into the four evangelists the same message. The various scholarly reconstructions however have no ancient attestations and offer no resistance to the idea that the original evangelist may have developed his narrative by hallucination or visions.

The point again is that I don't see where you draw the line between the 'hallucinations' and the historical story of Jesus. It is fashionable (or at least was) to posit the existence of 'oral traditions' and while they can't be discounted it has to be worth something that both the Marcionites and the community associated with the Gospel according to the Hebrews (assuming they are two different communities) posit basically the same understanding against the modern view (in effect - again our interpretation of the evidence was unknown to the ancients). Nothing stops the proto-gospel from being the origin of the Jesus story through hallucination. I think Ehrman is developing a personal opinion, a 'hunch' but there is no ancient source to establish this false distinction between 'a spiritual composition' (= hallucination) and 'solid history.' Irenaeus's 'four winds' idea can be viewed as a variation of the composition by hallucination. His understanding regarding Ezra as the author of the Torah might well be similarly interpreted.

[maryhelena]

His thesis is that the disciples saw visions and believed Jesus had been "adopted" as a son of God after his death (and Ehrman argues that adoption was a great significance and honor in the Roman world e.g. the adoption of Octavian by Julius Caesar). Adopted/exulted son of God then became preexistent angel at some point in between the disciples and Paul. He says the disciples had an adoptionist/exaltation/binitarian Christology, but that the Philippians hymn is pre-Pauline (it is, at the least, non-Pauline). Ehrman says the change from a pure exaltation Christology to an incarnation Christology happened within about twenty years. After reading and re-reading those sections, though, i can't find him suggest any particular source for the Philippians hymn, other than that it's intermediary (if I understand him correctly and maybe I don't) between the disciples and Paul.

If I understand correctly Ehrman is saying the trajectory was as follows:

1. Historical disciples of a historical Jesus had visionary experiences after his death which convinced them that he had been exalted and adopted as a son of God and as "God" in an elastic sense the way that "wisdom" and the "logos" and the Holy Spirit and the "Angel of the Lord" were fungible with "God" in other lines of Jewish thought and scripture.

2. Somebody (it is unclear who) decided that Jesus had not only been adopted and exalted but was a preexistent, condescendent divine entity or angel and whoever these people were formulated something like the Philippians hymn.

The second step is where the incarnation and christology theories come into play. And for that interpretation of the NT story it's back to the Nicene Creed! A creed that came about due to ongoing debates as to the nature of the gospel Jesus. The problem being, as it still is even with Ehrman, is how to link the two NT stories. The gospel story about a human, assumed, Jesus - and the Pauline story about a cosmic celestial Christ figure. The solution offered by the Nicene creed - as a template for Christian faith - is that both these figures, the gospel figure and the Pauline figure, are one and the same figure (hence preexistence for Jesus...). My take on this is that there are two JC figures in the NT story. Two figures that are not assimilated, not synonymous. Two figures that interact, interconnect, have a relationship - but retain their own individual identities. (Thus two crucifixion stories, the cosmic, spiritual or intellectual 'crucifixion' and the gospel story about an earthly, physical crucifixion. The Jerusalem above and the Jerusalem below - both retaining their separate identities. )

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, light from light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary
and became truly human.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

3. Paul bought it and expanded on it.

It's the 2nd step I'm still not clear about, especially as it pertains to what the Pillars thought about Jesus, and to what they thought about Paul teaching an incarnation theology.