From the title Christadelphians might get the mistaken idea that Bart Ehrman’s new book, How Jesus Became God, would be sympathetic to the biblical unitarian position, exposing the doctrine of the deity of Christ as a later deviation from the apostle’s doctrine. And Ehrman does believe that the deity of Christ was a later development, but he also believes that Jesus was only an apocalyptic prophet, that he never claimed to be the Son of God and that he didn’t rise from the dead. Ehrman is not seeking to restore the apostle’s doctrine but to give a historical account of how a mere man could come to be regarded, eventually, as God.
In this sense, Christadelphians may find more common ground with the five authors who respond to Ehrman in their book How God Became Jesus (edited by Michael Bird). Of course, Christadelphians will not be sympathetic to the overall purpose of the book – to defend the doctrine of the deity of Christ – but these five scholars, who accept the authority of scripture, ably challenge many of the errors made by Ehrman. Once again, Christadelphians find themselves somewhere between critical and conservative scholarship.[1]
Ehrman’s main thesis is that Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet whose followers, in response to visions of Jesus after his death, came to believe that he had been exalted into heaven and thus become a divine being (Ehrman calls this “exaltation Christology”). Later Christians began to reflect on this and came to the belief that Jesus must have been divine during his lifetime, initially believing him made divine by adoption, later believing him divine due to miraculous birth, and later still believing him to be pre-existent divine being who was incarnated (Ehrman calls this “incarnation Christology”). Only after centuries more did Christian theology develop from incarnation Christology to Nicene Christology, with Jesus as very God.
Ehrman’s thesis rests on the idea that the ancient world did not have a sharp demarcation between humanity and divinity, but that there was a spectrum from humanity to divinity with God at the top. In his first two chapters, he explores both pagan and Jewish beliefs about divine beings, arguing that both accommodated numerous lesser divinities. This is essential to Ehrman’s thesis as it would allow Jesus’ earliest followers to form the belief that Jesus was a god without compromising their Jewish monotheism. Both Michael Bird and Chris Tilling respond to Ehrman’s categorisation, arguing that the Jewish monotheism made a sharp distinction between God and everything else. This is essential to Bird and his collaborators’ response as they, following Richard Bauckham and others, want to argue that by ascribing any divine attributes or prerogatives to Jesus the early Christians incorporated him into the unique divine identity. I wonder if both these analyses fail to do justice to the originality of the Christian message. The apostle affirms both one God and one Lord (1 Cor 8:6) without any concern that the reality of the latter might question the uniqueness of the former. Paul could affirm an exalted Christ without believing in two gods or believing that Jesus had been subsumed into the identity of God. Since both books set out with a misjudged categorisation of what it means to be God, it is unsurprising that both books reach the wrong conclusion.
The next stone in Ehrman’s construction is his chapter “Did Jesus think he was God?” in which he aims to show that Jesus in no way thought of himself as divine. And this means not only denying that Jesus claimed to be God, but also Son of God or even Son of Man because any of these identities would, according to Ehrman’s categories, amount to Jesus being a divine being. To get to this conclusion Ehrman has to do some pretty drastic redaction criticism because Jesus’ self-identification as the Son of Man occurs in all four gospels, in the hypothetical Q source, and even in some hypothetical unredacted reconstructions of the hypothetical Q source. Ehrman has to deny that all these are inauthentic, claiming instead that Jesus believed the Son of Man was someone else, a divine figure who would bring God’s Kingdom. And here Ehrman’s analysis is odd. He believes that Jesus self-identified as the Messiah (he never tries on the ridiculous attempts of previous generations to claim that even that claim was inauthentic) but Ehrman wants to deny that Jesus is the regent of God’s Kingdom. One wonders how Ehrman squares the circle of Jesus believing himself to be the future king and yet also not being.
Michael Bird’s response, defending the reliability of the gospels and the authenticity of Jesus’ claims, is a useful riposte to Ehrman. Yet Bird wants to go further, claiming that the divine prerogatives Jesus claims in the gospels, such as authority on Earth to forgive sins, were, in effect, claims to be God. This rests on the idea that there is no middle ground.
Ehrman spends two chapters exploring the historical evidence for the resurrection. Ehrman formerly affirmed the two key facts that many scholars take to be strong historical confirmation of the resurrection: the empty tomb and the appearances. Ehrman now denies the former. Yet his grounds for doing so seem flimsy. First, he believes Joseph of Arimathea should be mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15 and takes that absence to be terribly significant, and second, he argues that the Romans didn’t respect the Jewish burial customs, especially when it comes to criminals.
Craig Evans demonstrates, through multiple examples, that Ehrman has misrepresented the evidence – some Jews were buried in tombs after crucifixion and the Roman authorities allowed them dispensation to do so. It was even a responsibility of the Sanhedrin to ensure that the bodies of crucified criminals were interred in a family tomb. There is, therefore, nothing unlikely about Jesus having been buried in a tomb, and given all the positive evidence indicates that Jesus was buried in a tomb, it seems a strange kind of historian that would seek to deny it. Ehrman does not deny the resurrection appearances; indeed he believes one cannot explain early Christianity without the conviction of its early adherents that Jesus was alive again.
It is worth reflecting on the gap in Ehrman’s argument. He thinks that the conviction that Jesus was alive convinced his followers that Jesus had been exalted to heaven without any prior claims from Jesus that this would be the case. Yet for Jews resurrection meant bodily resurrection, not ascension into heaven. If Jesus was alive again, it was because his body had been reanimated not because his soul had flitted off to heaven. Perhaps this is why Ehrman is so keen to deny the empty tomb, because if his argument is to be sustained, Jesus has to appear from heaven, as to appear exalted. Now, of course, at least one of those who claimed that Jesus appeared to him did see him exalted in heaven, i.e. Paul. Yet Ehrman claims that Paul does not adopt an “exaltation Christology” but affirms a form of “incarnation Christology”, arguing that Paul believed Jesus to be an angel who was incarnated as a man (from Gal 4:14, Phil 2:6-11, and not much else). Chris Tilling argues that Ehrman has overlooked much of Paul’s writing in favour of very little evidence. (He also argues that Paul’s writings, taken as a whole, point towards the deity of Christ).
Here again Ehrman’s proposal is odd. He believes that Paul, twenty years after the crucifixion, affirms that Jesus pre-existed (as an angel) and was incarnated. But he also believes that Mark, forty years after the crucifixion, still thought Jesus was an ordinary man adopted by God at his baptism. Ehrman struggles with trying to make the evidence fit with his chronological framework. He wants to show that within the twenty years between Jesus and Paul’s letters that Christianity has passed through several iterations of Christology but his evidence for each step is out of sync. One might think it would be better if Ehrman argued more strongly against interpreting Paul as affirming Christ’s pre-existence yet, despite rejecting half of Paul’s letters as inauthentic, he still ends up in favour of that interpretation. His interpretation of John’s gospel is even less critical, agreeing that John presents Jesus as God.
Throughout his book Ehrman includes anecdotes about his own journey to agnosticism or other comments where he implies some duplicity by Christians. His commentary turns really sour towards the end of the book when he argues that the Christian belief in the deity of Christ led to anti-Semitism and the persecution of the Jews. This feels like a cheap shot. Charles Hill counters with historical evidence that Constantine and his successors actually increased toleration for Jews.
In summary, Ehrman’s book is original and readable, but also flawed and ultimately unsuccessful in its attempt to account for Christianity in some other way than what actually happened. Bird’s response book is a little more dense but is still readable and an appropriate counter to Ehrman. Yet both books seem to miss the point. One cannot crop Jesus into an apocalyptic prophet or inflate him into God, the evidence will not bear either reading. The only credible option is to affirm, as the early Christians did, that Jesus is Lord.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)