For example, there is the problematic passage in Philippians 2:6–11, which may be dated as early as AD 56, and which speaks of Christ as a divine or semidivine being before he was incarnated on earth. But, as Ehrman shows, the picture is not so clear. Usually this process is seen as the gradual creation of a myth: little by little, Jesus grows from being a mere man (albeit a very special man) into the Second Person of the Trinity. This question is a bit more difficult than you might think. It explores how over the centuries Jesus came to be proclaimed as fully God and fully man. But the rest of the book has real value as well. This issue takes up over half of How Jesus Became God and is by far the most interesting part. After all, there were plenty of other messiahs runningĪround, and their followers were never able to create great world religions. Only the “Easter event,” as theologians sometimes call it, could explain this fact. This, in essence, is Ehrman’s argument. Taken this far, it is persuasive. Christianity cannot be understood, even historically, without accepting that the disciples must have had some experiences of this kind. And this, he contends, is all you can say when you are working with the rules of historical analysis. Such rules do not admit the possibility of miracles at best, they can say that people believed that a given miracle had occurred. Hence Ehrman argues not that Jesus was actually resurrected-this is a religious issue that he believes the historian cannot settle-but that the disciples had certain experiences that they equated with visions of the risen Jesus. About the veracity of the resurrection itself, Ehrman points out, academic scholarship can say nothing. “When it comes to miracles such as the resurrection, historical sciences are of no help in establishing exactly what happened.” In saying this, Ehrman steers a middle course between the faithful, who say that Jesus really did rise from the dead, and the skeptics, who say that the resurrection was a legend that grew up after Jesus’s time.

But, Ehrman writes, “what made Jesus different from all the others teaching a similar message was the claim that he had been raised from the dead.” In this, he stresses, Jesus was nothing special there were plenty of such prophets around. Ehrman regards Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet much as many scholars have for the last 125 years.

Discussing the evidence for the historical Jesus, Ehrman stopped short of saying what he thought about the resurrection-the central claim of Christianity.Īs he promised, however, he has dealt with this topic in his newest book, How Jesus Became God. Ehrman did that with his previous book, Did Jesus Exist? (reviewed in Quest, Spring 2013). But in a way the noted New Testament scholar Bart D. It’s hard to write a cliffhanger about Jesus.

Bart d ehrman how jesus became god