Dear Friends,

This is my first post of direct commentary on How Jesus Became God, by Bart Ehrman, and we’ll be in Chapter 1. See the previous post for introductory comments.

As I attempted to do with The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, by Habermas and Licona, I’m going to try to write short blog posts with somewhat stacatto observations as I go through the book. Of course, this failed miserably with the Habermas book and I ended up writing long form blog posts instead. We’ll see what happens with How Jesus Became God, but for now I’ll just say…

God help me!

.

Shots fired…against Christ myth theory

I’ve mentioned this a number of times already, but it bears repeating as I actually start going through this book. Christ myth theory (the idea that Jesus never existed) (1), though popular among atheists, is highly discordant with mainstream New Testament scholarship. Here’s an example from page 9 of 302 (again, we are reading from an atheist Bible scholar here!):

“The idea that Jesus is God is not an invention of modern times, of course…it was the view of the very earliest Christians, soon after his death.”

And here’s another one for good measure (page 20 of 302):

“Christianity arose in the Roman empire immediately after the death of Jesus around the year 30 CE.”

Again, notice the stark contrast between statements like these and the idea that Jesus never existed in the first place.

One of these is not like the others

This book is not about how Jesus literally transitioned from human status to God status; it’s about how Jesus came to be seen as divine. And Ehrman answers this question very succinctly on page 12 of 302:

“The short answer is that it all had to do with his followers’ belief that he had been raised from the dead.”

But since Ehrman is an atheist, he’s not going to explain this belief by pointing to an actual resurrection. Instead, he’s going to spend a fair amount of time talking about how other people came to be seen as divine.

But in his search for parallel accounts from the pagan world, Ehrman still admits at least 2 important differences between Christian and pagan beliefs:

1. “I don’t know of any other cases in ancient Greek or Roman thought of this kind of ‘god-man,’ where an already existing divine being is said to be born of a mortal woman.” (20 of 302)
2. “In none of the stories of the divine humans born from the union of a god and a mortal is the mortal a virgin.” (23 of 302)

Ehrman still considers the pagan accounts to be “close”, but that is of course a subjective term. I say “far”…how about you?

Everyone was dead

Ehrman first discusses (15 of 302) the case of Apollonius of Tyana, a supposed miracle worker who died around 100 AD. In order to understand how Jesus came to be thought of as God, Ehrman tells us, it’s helpful to look at the apotheosis of Apollonius. Indeed, when discussing the conflict between the Jesus camp and the Apollonius camp, Ehrman says, “Both groups could point to the authoritative written accounts of their leader’s life to score their debating points.”

However, he thereby begs a question which I did not see an answer to:

How could the very late written accounts of Apollonius (the earliest one cited by Erhman was written about 117 years after his death) be legitimately compared, in terms of reliability, to the very early written accounts of Jesus (The Gospel of Mark is generally dated between 66–74 AD (about 40 years after his death) (2))?

In other words, when the gospel of Mark was written, numerous eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life and death were still alive and could have contradicted any falsehoods therein. No such eyewitness would have existed when the earliest account of Apollonius was written.

Everyone was dead!

Please do not smash us into tiny bits

I was fascinated by Ehrman’s discussion of the story (in Ovid’s Metamorphoses) of Jupiter and Mercury visiting a certain neighborhood, disguised as mortals in need of shelter. Long story short, they get the cold shoulder and destroy the neighborhood as punishment. Ehrman then connects this story with the account in Acts 14 where Paul heals a cripple in the city of Lystra:

[Act 14:11-13 KJV] 11 And when the people saw what Paul had done, they lifted up their voices, saying in the speech of Lycaonia, The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men. 12 And they called Barnabas, Jupiter; and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. 13 Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people.  

The account in Ovid, Ehrman explains, provides fascinating context to how the citizens reacted to Paul and Barnabas. The main reason they gave Paul and Barnabas such a warm reception does seem to be the simple fact that Paul had healed a cripple. But some of the townspeople may have also been trying to stay off of Jupiter’s hit list!

All in all, though the context added by Ehrman doesn’t constitute slam dunk proof of the Acts passage’s authenticity, I think it at least pulls in that direction.

So far, this is a fascinating study. I look forward to sharing more with you!

God bless, and thanks for reading!

TFOTF

Links/references:

(1) The surprisingly popular theory that Jesus never existed

(2) When the gospels were written