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

[hjalti]

(probably choking on the words as he dictated them)

Does Ehrman say this? I.e. that Paul really disliked writing this?

One could argue that a non-Pauline creed in an epistle by Paul would seem to indicate an interpolation!

[Diogenes the Cynic]

(probably choking on the words as he dictated them)

Does Ehrman say this? I.e. that Paul really disliked writing this?

One could argue that a non-Pauline creed in an epistle by Paul would seem to indicate an interpolation!

Those were my words, not Ehrman's. It was just the mental image I got of Paul having to go hat in hand to a bunch of pronomians and knuckle under someone else's apostolic authority to get funding.

His argument is not just that it's non-Pauline, but that it's more primitive than Paul or anything else in the NT. A later interpolation of a earlier Christology should not be expected since by the time Paul's letters began to be collected and published, this exaltation Christology would have already been extinct (this exaltation theory is not Ehrman's alone, by the way. He himself cites others scholars such as Larry Hurtado and even the late great Raymond Brown as having this opinion as well).

[hjalti]

(probably choking on the words as he dictated them)

Does Ehrman say this? I.e. that Paul really disliked writing this?

One could argue that a non-Pauline creed in an epistle by Paul would seem to indicate an interpolation!

Those were my words, not Ehrman's. It was just the mental image I got of Paul having to go hat in hand to a bunch of pronomians and knuckle under someone else's apostolic authority to get funding.

Ok. Wanted to be sure (and thanks again for the notes on his book!).

His argument is not just that it's non-Pauline, but that it's more primitive than Paul or anything else in the NT. A later interpolation of a earlier Christology should not be expected since by the time Paul's letters began to be collected and published, this exaltation Christology would have already been extinct (this exaltation theory is not Ehrman's alone, by the way. He himself cites others scholars such as Larry Hurtado and even the late great Raymond Brown as having this opinion as well).

But what is his evidence of this just being "earlier Christology"? This passage and some speeches in Acts are supposed to show that it is earlier. And what's the evidence for this not existing in Christianity later? ~80-150?

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The argument that it's earlier derives from the fact that the Christology is so low. It says that Jesus did not become the Messiah until he died. Messiahship was something he earned by his death, not something he was possessed while he was alive.Your last question asking for proof of a negative. but we know of no extant Christian writings (outside of these fragments in the NT) or sects, or even references by others to writings or sects which express a belief Jesus was not the Messiah while he was still alive.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Chapter 7 "Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies"

This one is the real meat of the book. Ehrman argues that Paul thought Jesus was angel - or rather THE angel of the Lord descended, incarnated, then exalted to an equal status with God. Ehrman cites Galatians 4:14 as a starting point.

and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

Ehrman argues, citing other experts (Charles Giesen and Susan Garret), that the Greek grammatical construction (ἀλλ᾽ ὡς...ὡς - "but as....as..") shows that Paul is definitely equating Jesus to an angel of God and not referring them as different entities. Ehrman then has a long discourse on the Philippians hymn, which he says is pre-Pauline, citing non-Pauline vocabulary and style (interestingly enough, Geza Vermes, in his last book, Christian Beginnings, uses the same non-Paulinisms to argue that the hymn is interpolated). The quick summary of Ehrman's argument is that it shows a belief in an angelic divinity, preexistent but subordinate to God, who descends, incarnates, dies, then is elevated to an even higher status than before.

Ehrman also cites Romans 8:3:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.


and makes an interesting comment about it:

It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness - just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the "appearance" of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human likeness? It is hard to say.

Bart keeps walking right up to the door but doesn't seem to realize it.

Ehrman then has a long section on incarnation Christologies in John and cites the work of John Tobin who cataloged a number of parallels between the Johannine Logos and the treatment of Wisdom in Jewish writings like the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch and Sirach. Ehrman does this to show that John had his own incarnation Christology which rolled the ideas of divine Wisdom and the Logos into a single hypostatic entity who became "enfleshed" as Jesus. At this point Ehrman has moved past Paul's Christology and is showing how it was a fast climb from "Jesus was an angel" to "Jesus was exalted as an equal to God" to "Jesus is God,"

[andrewcriddle]

Ehrman also cites Romans 8:3:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.


and makes an interesting comment about it:

It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness - just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the "appearance" of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human likeness? It is hard to say.

In Romans 8:3 the phrase sinful flesh may be significant. Paul may, in effect, be saying that Jesus was basically like us, but not sinful in the way that we are sinful.

Andrew Criddle

[stevencarrwork]

Ehrman also cites Romans 8:3:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.


and makes an interesting comment about it:

It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness - just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the "appearance" of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human likeness? It is hard to say.

In Romans 8:3 the phrase sinful flesh may be significant. Paul may, in effect, be saying that Jesus was basically like us, but not sinful in the way that we are sinful.

Andrew Criddle

For Paul, flesh was sinful, so Jesus only had the likeness of sinful flesh. Is Paul really saying that Jesus was just like us, apart from being different?

In Romans 1:23, Paul uses the same word ' Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.'

It doesn't mean there that made real human beings and real animals when they made the likeness of mortal human beings.

[maryhelena]

Chapter 7 "Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies"

This one is the real meat of the book. Ehrman argues that Paul thought Jesus was angel - or rather THE angel of the Lord descended, incarnated, then exalted to an equal status with God. Ehrman cites Galatians 4:14 as a starting point.

and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

Ehrman argues, citing other experts (Charles Giesen and Susan Garret), that the Greek grammatical construction (ἀλλ᾽ ὡς...ὡς - "but as....as..") shows that Paul is definitely equating Jesus to an angel of God and not referring them as different entities. Ehrman then has a long discourse on the Philippians hymn, which he says is pre-Pauline, citing non-Pauline vocabulary and style (interestingly enough, Geza Vermes, in his last book, Christian Beginnings, uses the same non-Paulinisms to argue that the hymn is interpolated). The quick summary of Ehrman's argument is that it shows a belief in an angelic divinity, preexistent but subordinate to God, who descends, incarnates, dies, then is elevated to an even higher status than before.

Ehrman also cites Romans 8:3:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.


and makes an interesting comment about it:

It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness - just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the "appearance" of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human likeness? It is hard to say.

Bart keeps walking right up to the door but doesn't seem to realize it.

Ehrman then has a long section on incarnation Christologies in John and cites the work of John Tobin who cataloged a number of parallels between the Johannine Logos and the treatment of Wisdom in Jewish writings like the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch and Sirach. Ehrman does this to show that John had his own incarnation Christology which rolled the ideas of divine Wisdom and the Logos into a single hypostatic entity who became "enfleshed" as Jesus. At this point Ehrman has moved past Paul's Christology and is showing how it was a fast climb from "Jesus was an angel" to "Jesus was exalted as an equal to God" to "Jesus is God,"

I just caved in and bought the Kindle for PC version of Ehrman's book....

The quote below is from the Introduction:

What I have come to see is that scholars have such disagreements in part because they typically answer the question of high or low Christology on the basis of the paradigm I have just described—that the divine and human realms are categorically distinct, with a great chasm separating the two. The problem is that most ancient people— whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan— did not have this paradigm. For them, the human realm was not an absolute category separated from the divine realm by an enormous and unbridgable crevasse. On the contrary, the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap.

From that perspective, methinks that Ehrman is not, anytime soon, going to give up on the possibility that a historical JC became a god after death. Looks to me that this book is Ehrmans' real answer to the ahistoricists/mythicists. There are two stories in the NT: The Pauline angel (re Ehrman) that is incarnate on earth - plus the man that becomes, after death, a god in the heavens. It's not one or the other. There is no choice between them - no walking through that 'door' for Ehrman. Consequently, the road forward for the ahistoricists is not to keep singing the Pauline 'song' of a celestial christ figure - Ehrman can sing that song well. The 'fault line' in Ehrman' scenario is not his from man to god scenario - it's that his 'man', his gospel Jesus, is not a historical figure but a composite, pseudo-historical, literary figure. However, despite this error, the fundamental premise that Ehrman is upholding, that "the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap" remains.

A pseudo- historical, literary gospel JC does not suffice for the "overlap" between the "human and divine". Two imaginary entities do not reflect the thrust of the NT story - 'body' and 'spirit' are both part of our human experience. Or as Paul would have it - the Jerusalem above has it's corresponding Jerusalem below. In other words; physical reality cannot be eliminated from any theology/philosophy that seeks to reflect the human experience. The question then becomes: what historical realities influenced the gospel writers in the creation of their NT story. All in the mind, all Pauline imagination, and off we go on a magic carpet ride. It's the Jerusalem below - Jewish history - that can open a 'door' through which a search for early christian origins can move forward.

[hjalti]

Has Ehrman said anything about how this affects his argument in "Did Jesus exist?"? If I recall correctly, he said that Jesus couldn't have been a dying and rising god because he wasn't thought of as "God" (with a capital g) by early Christians. But now he saus that humanity/divinity was on a continuum and that Paul thought of him as an pre-existing angel (I think it's OK to call that a god with a lower-case g). So Jesus couldn't be a dying and rising god because he wasn't thought of as God, but merely a god? :l

[PhilosopherJay]

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.

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.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Chapter 7 "Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies"

This one is the real meat of the book. Ehrman argues that Paul thought Jesus was angel - or rather THE angel of the Lord descended, incarnated, then exalted to an equal status with God. Ehrman cites Galatians 4:14 as a starting point.

and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

Ehrman argues, citing other experts (Charles Giesen and Susan Garret), that the Greek grammatical construction (ἀλλ᾽ ὡς...ὡς - "but as....as..") shows that Paul is definitely equating Jesus to an angel of God and not referring them as different entities. Ehrman then has a long discourse on the Philippians hymn, which he says is pre-Pauline, citing non-Pauline vocabulary and style (interestingly enough, Geza Vermes, in his last book, Christian Beginnings, uses the same non-Paulinisms to argue that the hymn is interpolated). The quick summary of Ehrman's argument is that it shows a belief in an angelic divinity, preexistent but subordinate to God, who descends, incarnates, dies, then is elevated to an even higher status than before.

Ehrman also cites Romans 8:3:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.


and makes an interesting comment about it:

It is interesting that Paul uses this term likeness - just as the Philippians poem did when it spoke of Christ coming in the "appearance" of humans. It is the same Greek word in both places. Did Paul want to avoid saying that Christ actually became human, but that he came only in a human likeness? It is hard to say.

Bart keeps walking right up to the door but doesn't seem to realize it.

Ehrman then has a long section on incarnation Christologies in John and cites the work of John Tobin who cataloged a number of parallels between the Johannine Logos and the treatment of Wisdom in Jewish writings like the Wisdom of Solomon, Baruch and Sirach. Ehrman does this to show that John had his own incarnation Christology which rolled the ideas of divine Wisdom and the Logos into a single hypostatic entity who became "enfleshed" as Jesus. At this point Ehrman has moved past Paul's Christology and is showing how it was a fast climb from "Jesus was an angel" to "Jesus was exalted as an equal to God" to "Jesus is God,"

I just caved in and bought the Kindle for PC version of Ehrman's book....

The quote below is from the Introduction:

What I have come to see is that scholars have such disagreements in part because they typically answer the question of high or low Christology on the basis of the paradigm I have just described—that the divine and human realms are categorically distinct, with a great chasm separating the two. The problem is that most ancient people— whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan— did not have this paradigm. For them, the human realm was not an absolute category separated from the divine realm by an enormous and unbridgable crevasse. On the contrary, the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap.

From that perspective, methinks that Ehrman is not, anytime soon, going to give up on the possibility that a historical JC became a god after death. Looks to me that this book is Ehrmans' real answer to the ahistoricists/mythicists. There are two stories in the NT: The Pauline angel (re Ehrman) that is incarnate on earth - plus the man that becomes, after death, a god in the heavens. It's not one or the other. There is no choice between them - no walking through that 'door' for Ehrman. Consequently, the road forward for the ahistoricists is not to keep singing the Pauline 'song' of a celestial christ figure - Ehrman can sing that song well. The 'fault line' in Ehrman' scenario is not his from man to god scenario - it's that his 'man', his gospel Jesus, is not a historical figure but a composite, pseudo-historical, literary figure. However, despite this error, the fundamental premise that Ehrman is upholding, that "the human and divine were two continuums that could, and did, overlap" remains.

A pseudo- historical, literary gospel JC does not suffice for the "overlap" between the "human and divine". Two imaginary entities do not reflect the thrust of the NT story - 'body' and 'spirit' are both part of our human experience. Or as Paul would have it - the Jerusalem above has it's corresponding Jerusalem below. In other words; physical reality cannot be eliminated from any theology/philosophy that seeks to reflect the human experience. The question then becomes: what historical realities influenced the gospel writers in the creation of their NT story. All in the mind, all Pauline imagination, and off we go on a magic carpet ride. It's the Jerusalem below - Jewish history - that can open a 'door' through which a search for early christian origins can move forward.