MovieChat Forums > The God Who Wasn't There (2005) Discussion > How time flies--Bart Ehrman's 'How Jesus...

How time flies--Bart Ehrman's 'How Jesus Became God' is out.

posted 10 years ago by clyons
29 replies | jump to latest

NPR interview--

http://www.npr.org/2014/04/07/300246095/if-jesus-never-called-himself- god-how-did-he-become-one

As always, strikingly original and supremely practical. Ehrman cuts to the chase. You don't have to agree with all of his explanations, but you can't say they don't make sense--unless you're one of those people who hates making sense. He simply follows the available facts to their logical conclusions, and if his former convictions don't jibe with those facts, he abandons them.

And now I'm off to Amazon.com to get my own copy. I've been quoting this guy for years, and while I do have some of his books, I never bought one fresh off the presses (in fact, my copy of "Misquoting Jesus" I found on a sidewalk, waiting for the garbageman, which no doubt some atheist Mythers AND fundamentalist Christians would say was highly appropriate).

Time to pay the rent. I guess I could just become a paying member on his blog (since only they are allowed to post there), but c'mon. I'm not THAT into this stuff.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

It would be nice if you would share your thoughts on the book once you're read it :)

[–] clyons 10 years ago

I shall get me to a wifi hotspot so I can download it to my iPad. Verily, this is the true age of miracles. ;)

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Yes, it is nice to be able to take advantage of technology. I obviously use a computer, but that's about my only contact with tech - I don't even own a cell phone!

[–] clyons 10 years ago

I have a pretty bare-bones cellphone, and text about a word a minute when I am forced to text at all. I can't get my girlfriend to take a cellphone around with her. She likes being able to reach me wherever I am, but she doesn't like the idea of having a digital device through which she could be tracked down. She even resisted getting our dog micro-chipped.

A woman we know doesn't go online at all, and when I mentioned her on a blog, I got emailed by not one but two old male acquaintances who wanted to reconnect with her, but had been unable to track her down. Her name is fairly distinctive, so once I mentioned her online, they could find her via Google--anyway, I called and relayed their messages, and that was several years ago, and I don't think she ever got back to them.

Back on topic--I downloaded Ehrman's book and just started reading it. He is definitely gearing this towards a lay audience--by which I don't mean secular, but rather non-academic--people who don't have any background in his field, though it's still interesting to those of us who do, just a bit irritating when he keeps explaining that he's not taking a scholarly position on whether miracles are real, or Jesus actually was God, though he is very clear that he personally believes neither.

He explains everything VERY painstakingly, and sometimes a bit repetitively, but he just seems determined not to be misunderstood. He knows he's got two entirely different groups who could take offense--Christians who take their faith literally, and atheists who do the same exact thing in reverse gear. Some of them will anyway, but he's just dotting every 'i' and crossing (heh) every 't'.

Honestly, he even seems worried about offending pagans. Who had their own Jesus-like figures as he explains, though Mithras isn't one of them. Any Apollonius fans still out there?

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Thanks for filling us in. Yes, I can see why Ehrman is being very exacting, so that, hopefully, both sides "get" it. So many fringe talk shows either won't interview him, or they will interview him and later have Carrier and Dorothy Murdoch ("Acharya S.") on, to "debunk" Bart. I would like to hear a real debate between Ehrman and his mythicist opponents.

I would like to see an indie docu-drama, or maybe just a History Channel (or whatever) documentary on Apollonius. The only cinematic Apollonius I am aware of was one of the personalities taken on by Tony Randall in The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao.

I'm empathetic to your cell phone use- or lack thereof. Sometimes it would come in very handy, but most times I can rely on Facebook and email - and regular phone - to keep me in necessary contact. Your girlfriend sounds like she really wants to live "off the grid", "under the radar" ... not a bad idea if you can manage it. Too late for me, I'm solidly and irretrievably nailed to the WebNets :)

[–] clyons 10 years ago

One thing Ehrman seems out to do is educate BOTH sides about the other religions besides Christianity--Judaism and the various 'pagan' faiths. Context. No, the gospel story isn't plagiarized from earlier myths, but it did arise in the context of a very different world than the one we live in now. This leads to a lot of fallacious assumptions on the part of both Christians and atheists.

He tells the story of the miraculous conception of Hercules--which involves Zeus visiting the pregnant wife of a mortal in the guise of her husband (in other words in a fully equipped male human body), and having a truly epic bout of sexual intercourse with her, which leads to a second pregnancy. Hercules will be born alongside his fully human half-brother Iphicles, and both of them were conceived by someone having sex with their mother, who presumably lost her virginity to her husband who was then cuckolded by Zeus.

And Ehrman actually feels the need to tell the reader this would not qualify as a virgin birth!

It's like those notices I see on washing machines at the laundromat--"Do not place human beings inside machine." Wow, what a stupid unnecessary warning. Except--

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/child-stuck-washing-machine-s urveillance-video_n_1533063.html

and--

http://www.jesusgranskad.se/jesus_parallels.htm#Heracles

There are scores of other sites that try to draw parallels between Jesus and Hercules--and parallels do exist (you could draw parallels between any number of stories told by cultures that never remotely came into contact with each other), which is why Ehrman brings it up--but not to argue that early Christians were copying off somebody else's paper.

This Myther is so determined to prove his point, he just rewrites the myth to suit his purposes. Some versions of the myth do say that the Alcmene had not yet married Amphitryon when Zeus made his visit so Zeus was her first lover; some say both children were conceived the same night by two fathers, some say she was pregnant out of wedlock with Iphicles by Amphitryon with whom she had run away from her father, but wouldn't marry him until he'd achieved some quest or another, and Zeus took that opportunity to copulate with her. In ALL versions of the story, she has sexual intercourse with someone who is, to all outward appearance a man. With a penis. That he vigorously thrusts into her vagina repeatedly, causing both of them to orgasm, and culminating in ejaculation. Geez, now I'M turning into Captain Obvious from the hotels.com ads.

Mythers--the theological equivalent of fathers who put their kids into washing machines. You better just draw them a picture.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Excellent points, as always. The late Raymond E. Brown explained how there are no exact pagan antecedents for Jesus' birth. In all cases, the god/hero is conceived by intervention of a male reproductive organ, or some other physical means, whereas Jesus is conceived by God's will alone ("overshadowing by the Holy Spirit"). The dissimilarities can be expanded, the the core issue is, like you say, that Mythers invent patterns in order to erroneously create a Jesus-pagan parallel. The link you provided shows just how off-track these nutters really are, and the video clip is certainly a visual illustration of Mythers' intellectual irresponsibility.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Muslims, coming out of the same monotheistic tradition (though they also believe in lesser spirits, such as djinn), have no trouble believing in the Virgin Birth--Allah can do whatever he wills. If he says "You're pregnant", you are. This didn't mean Jesus was God. He had to be less important than Muhammad, who was human.

Virgin birth stories occur in cultures that had no connection whatsoever to the Middle East--such as the Aztecs. No doubt they go back to the earliest days of mythology--perhaps to the point where the connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy was still somewhat poorly understood.

Atheists love to point out all the other things people have believed, and that's fine--we should know more about the richness of world mythology. But they do it to mock and to say "See, it's all a made-up story!" and that's sad. They are missing out on their own heritage as human beings. It was out of these 'made-up stories' that our very capacity for culture and imagination sprung. Nothing they value in this world would have been possible without mythology. It's not something to sneer at.

It's also not something to confuse with what actually happened, which is what they do every time they say Jesus himself was a myth.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

I agree that myth(s) are not to be sneered at. I learned from Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell the value and truth of myth. Not all truth is fact. That factualness is the only kind of truth seems to be one of the less fortunate inheritances of the Enlightenment. Truth can be conveyed both by metaphor and fictional stories - i.e., the truth of Jesus' parables does not lie in their factual-historical-scientific accuracy. Also Jung taught me that in many cases, myths are not designed to explain the givenness of the natural world (e.g., a rock formation looks like a horse, so an explanatory origin myth is invented to explain the shape), but rather myths are frequently archetypal statements of the unconscious psyche about itself ... disclosures from the symbolic realm.

Sadly, most atheists and self-designated rationalists miss out on all the richness of mythology and metaphorical thinking. If x is not a scientific/historical fact, then x is junk. Or so they maintain.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Your mention of Jung reminds me of something I once heard about Joseph Campbell, who basically became famous by popularizing ideas of Jung and Frazer. A great lecturer, an engaging writer, perhaps a bit too inclined to take credit for other people's work, and someone who was perhaps not so much anti-semitic as anti-Jewish--meaning that he disliked the God of the Old Testament, considering Him an 'evil god'.

But to many, he was this very inspiring figure, somebody who opened their eyes to the world of mythology, and how all the stories human beings had told throughout the ages were linked together by certain patterns--that stem from our common desires, aspirations, and of course fears.

Anyway, I was once working a temp job for this charming older woman from the south--a real lady, in the good sense--and we happened to discuss Campbell, and she said this friend of hers had gone to see him speak, was incredibly impressed by his presentation, and said "I don't know if he's right or not, but he's GOD!"

This demonstrates in a nutshell what Ehrman is writing about in his new book--our tendency to deify people of exceptional talent and charisma (or people who seem to have these qualities, though that kind of deification doesn't tend to last once they're gone). Even in this modern era, where we put a barrier between the human and the divine, we still refer to this or that famous person as a god or goddess, because we admire them so much--we're being half-humorous about it, but only half--in ancient times, there was no sense of irony present.

Not comparing Jesus with Joseph Campbell (or Elvis); just saying that this is part of being human--the need to see certain people as being more than human. And as Ehrman points out repeatedly, there are many different levels of this process. It took about four centuries after his death for Jesus to reach the level he's at now. Somehow, I don't think Joseph Campbell is ever reaching that level (do people still read his books?). Elvis, maybe.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Yeah, I don't think Campbell or even Jung reached divine status, although they had nad have their cultlike followers.

I often wonder if it was historical memory of being in Jesus' presence that sparked notions of his divinity - e.g., if he claimed divine union and "backed it up" with transformative teaching ... or if the Deity of Christ stemmed mainly from "the Resurrection/Easter Experience", whatever that may have been. Most scholars say that Jesus was regarded as divine based on God placing him in a divine position on Earth (messianic son, Kingdom agent) and then elevating him to a heavenly throne from which he would exercise divine judgment at the end of the age. So there are those two factors.

However, I recently had my christological world rocked, by a book called The Great Angel: Israel's Second God, by Margaret Barker:

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Angel-Study-Israels-Second/dp/0664253954/r ef=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1398878487&sr=1-1&keywor ds=barker+great+angel

... which argues for an early, Jewish-Palestinian regard for Jesus as God. Not as The Most High God, but rather as that God's Son - an ancient divine figure in Middle Eastern pre-Jesus christology. Basically she argues:

1. The Most High was always El Elyon, not Yahweh.

2.El Elyon had sons, the greatest of which was, or at least evolved to be, Yahweh.

3. Aware that this inverts standard thinking that Yahweh himself is the highest deity, Barker emphatically shows that this is not so, El Elyon always being the great ineffable eternal Father, whose son Yahweh appeared to humans as El Elyon's representative - the highest Angel and son of God (the son of El Elyon).

4. Jesus relates to Yahweh, because like Yahweh, Jesus is called by the same ancient title, "the Son of the Most High".

5. Thus Jesus' Father was not Yahweh as commonly taught, but rather El Elyon, the Most High. Jesus himself IS Yahweh, and this is why Jewish liturgical worship was directed to him even before Christianity began to thrive outside of Judea. According to this view, when Jesus-Jews prayed to him as "Lord", they were praying to him as the Lord-Yahweh.

6. For his earliest Jewish believers, Jesus as Yahweh was viewed as the newest, greatest instantiation "in the flesh" of the Angel who in the Jewish Bible sometimes appeared in human form. Thus, Yahweh was an incarnating - or at least, "manifesting", celestial being even before Jesus was born, and Israel had a cult of this "second God" from ancient times ... and this is supported by writers like Philo, who without shame or sense of blasphemy referred to the Logos as "a second God".

We know that Divinization was believed in by Jews during Jesus' lifetime, and even before - the Maccobean texts claim that the souls of righteous martyrs become heavenly beings shining like stars. Persons like Enoch could ascend to Heaven, become like the angels, and return to Earth with a divinely-sponsored mission. Jesus talks about no one seeing God except the one who has ascended and descended from heaven, i.e., Jesus himself; Paul talks about ascending into Heaven and hearing the voices of angels; a member of the Qumran community speaks of entering the divine council and becoming an angelic being. So Deification was very much in the cultural air that Jesus breathed, and Barker argues that it would not have been a great stretch of the imagination for Jewish mystics to find in Jesus' life and resurrection the traces of a visitation by Yahweh, the Great Angel.

She makes a strong, but of course not air-tight, case for ancient belief in Yahweh as a binitarian second God, and for belief in Jesus as being this second God. If accurate, this claim would cause a new re-evaluation of the standard christology, because at the very least it says that Jesus was the Jewish God (Yahweh, the Son of the Most High El Elyon) long before the Gentile Church transformed him into the second person of a Trinitarian Godhead. Nicea, according to this view, finally got it right, but applied some misnomers to an originally Jewish notion of Yahweh-incarnation.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

I tend to agree with Ehrman that Jesus never claimed divinity in any way shape or form. At least that's where Ehrman seems to be going with this. But it is true that monotheism in the ancient Jewish world wasn't quite as monotheistic as we have long been led to believe. When you read the Old Testament, you're reading one side of an argument--who are they telling not to worship other gods? Other Jews. Who are, therefore, worshiping other gods. But probably still consider themselves monotheists. There are different levels of monotheism. Even many Buddhists and Hindus believe in One Supreme God. And of course Christians have interceding figures like saints, Jesus, and Mary.

Pure monotheism is actually pretty hard to maintain for us humans. NOBODY believes in only one powerful supernatural being in the universe--for some reason we find that unsatisfying. That's probably why Deism never caught on. Too abstract.

Muslims, the most monotheistic people, believe in angels (who have no free will) and jinn (who can and frequently do disobey Allah). They are not worshiped, but they are clearly just as powerful as gods (though not GOD), and must be placated in some instances.

With ancient Judaism, the field was much more wide-open to all kinds of interpretations. Essentially, Muhammad tried to take what he considered the best of Jewish and Christian monotheism and rationalize it, streamline it. Nothing created by men is ever perfect, and all religions are created by men.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

And all books are written by men (and women), and none of them are perfect either (not even if the writer is Tolstoy).

I disagree with Ehrman's strong assertion that Jesus believed himself to be the Messiah. I tend to agree more with Michael Grant, a historian of the Roman world who dabbled in Christology with his "Jesus: An Historian's View of the Gospels." Grant, in a chapter he entitled "And Who Do You Say I Am?", found problems with all the possible answers, including Messiah. Jesus, in his view, was aware that people were calling him this (as they were doing for others, including John), that his disciples wanted him to be Messiah, and he definitely toyed with the idea. But it's like trying on a fabulous suit of clothes that somehow just isn't--you. Jesus did not think he was someone the scriptures had prophesied. He thought he was something else.

Ehrman's argument, and it's a strong one, is that nothing in Jesus' life or death that we have a record of and seems to be a genuine recollection of his life, would have made his followers believe he was Messiah. And yet they did believe this, so he must have told them he was, albeit only in private, and therefore Judas' betrayal was actually to blab this to the Temple authorities and the Romans--that Jesus believed he would be King after the Son of Man (an entirely separate and divine manifestation of God's power) came to set everything right.

But it doesn't automatically follow that someone that charismatic, who was BELIEVED to be performing miracles, had to tell people he was Messiah to have that said about him. The Jewish Messianic tradition is one that is constantly seeking candidates. And I have proof of this--from the recent past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Mendel_Schneerson

I remember very well the subway ads of Rabbi Schneerson's smiling face (he was a nice man), saying "Mossiach is coming--Let's be ready!" Pretty obvious he's saying the Messiah is somebody else, and he's being pretty vague about the date (what's vague to me is what's supposed to happen--bring back the Roman Empire so it can be overthrown again? Free Israel from the yoke of Netanyahu?). But his devoted adherents continued to believe he was Messiah until he died, and probably some still do. And nobody said he was healing the sick and raising the dead. Is it POSSIBLE he told people in private that he was Messiah, and somehow it never came out? Yes, but it's not likely.

So I don't buy it. They said Jesus was Messiah because they wanted to believe he was Messiah. They had visions of him resurrected after his death because they STILL wanted to believe he was Messiah. And having come to believe he was resurrected, they began to evolve towards the belief that he was divine, and ultimately, the equal of God the Father.

Ehrman also argues that Jesus prophesied all 12 disciples (including Judas!) would sit on 12 thrones, beside the Son of Man (who Ehrman says Jesus did not claim to be), once the Kingdom of God was established--this is from Matthew. But it's JUST in Matthew. Ehrman is so eager to prove his opinion correct that he's ignoring this. It's far from certain Jesus said this, or what he meant by it if he did. Ehrman thinks Jesus was tacitly predicting he, Jesus, would sit on a throne as well, above the disciples but beneath the Son of Man, meaning I guess there are 14 thrones, which seems like a lot of thrones--not even Game of Thrones has that many thrones!

Nah, I don't buy it. This is what happens when you try to get really specific--there's always something that doesn't suss out right. Jesus is just not that easy a puzzle to crack. His existence we can be sure of. His humanity we can be pretty sure of. His apocalyptic preaching that was not born out by history is pretty well established. But that he thought he was going to be a king on a throne? Literally, a king of kings? I don't see it. I think he wasn't even sure himself who he was. I suspect his thinking on the matter was constantly shifting. He just knew he was someone with a special destiny. And he was sure right about that.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Two nice posts, sorry I don't have time right now to do them justice - just some quick thoughts:

I disagree with Ehrman that Jesus "in no way" considered himself divine. As Barker shows, he was not claiming to be the Father, El Elyon, but rather "the son of the Most High". Certainly his testimony to Caiaphas reveals that Jesus either claimed to be the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great glory, or at least identified himself with that celestial figure from the Jewish scriptures. This is the only interpretation that explains the high priest's tearing his garments and charging Jesus with blasphemy: Jesus was making a divine or semi-divine claim, and the Sanhedrin knew it.

Nor can Jesus' frequent use of the term Son of Man be narrowed to a vernacular use meaning "I, me, this guy". It has a specific mystical meaning that is reflected in the Caiaphas claim and in other semi-divine claims such as the Son of Man having power on Earth to forgive sins, and to return as the one who judges and separates "the sheep from the goats". That Jesus, who was clearly a type of divine-union mystic, identified himself with a divine or angelic figure is unsurprising, given what we know from Jewish mysticism at the time, including the evidence from Qumran, where seekers were practicing "Ascent to the Heavens" and returning with accounts of "being counted among the angels".

Also, I think Ehrman has got it backwards if he's saying a prior belief in Jesus as Messiah is what caused belief in the resurrection. The resurrection is nowhere expressed as a belief. Rather it is spoken of as an experience of Jesus or his living "Spirit". Since Jesus fulfilled no messianic prophecy (except maybe the one about the blind and sick being cured and the prisoners being set free), his disciples had no reason to think he was the Messiah. Rather, I think it was their resurrection experience that forced them - retroactively - to think of Jesus in messianic terms - that is, who else but the Messiah would God have raised from the dead? And even then, they did not see him as having been the Messiah in his lifetime - instead, they thought of him as a Messiah-designate, who would only fulfill the prophecies and perform the messianic role after he would return to judge the world at the end of the age. This is probably why Mark only sneaks the messiahship rumor in through the back door - Jesus never admits to being the Messiah except once, and he tells the disciples never to mention it. Ditto with demons who claim to know his supposed messianic identity - he strictly enjoins silence on them.

Morton Smith famously said that it is possible - given the mystical practices of the time - that the Christ of Faith began in the mind of the Jesus of history. We have in Jesus a figure who claimed unity with God, who claimed to know God's thoughts and secret plans, who claimed to have ascended and descended from Heaven, who claimed to be / or at least identified himself with / the cloud-coming Son of Man, who forgave sins in consequence of his special closeness to God ... To me, all these factors point to Jesus as the early - the first - source of belief in his divinity. I am not saying "Jesus was/is God". But I think the evidence leads to a strong plausibility that Jesus was, to borrow terms from non-Judaic systems - a "god-man", a "god-realized person", a "person who has realized the Divine Self within his own soul" ... and who phrased that experience in the Jewish terms available to him. That is, it is not difficult to see Jesus' own self-understanding as similar to the self-understanding of many other well-known mystical "types" who are very well documented in cross-cultural studies. The "divine Jesus" may have been one instantiation - a Jewish/mystical instantiation - of a broader category of divine-union mystics.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

I'm about halfway through the book, and Ehrman, as you know, likes to take a lot of time building up to things. I'm disagreeing with a very narrow (though important) point--his argument for why Jesus must have told his disciples he was Messiah and would someday rule the Kingdom of God with them (though still under the Son of Man, and God the Father), even though he did not say that in public.

Quite honestly, it's impossible to be 100% certain of exactly what he was saying--personally, I don't think he thought or said he was divine, but as Ehrman is going to great pains to document, there were many types and levels of divinity in the ancient world.

You know Godspell, right? I've only ever seen the movie, which is remarkably good (and a subject of great nostalgia for anyone who was in New York in the 1970's). They put together an amazing cast of unknowns (some of whom went on to have great acting careers, some didn't), and told this beautiful story, combining the gospels with hippie culture. Honestly, I'd love it just because Mel Gibson hates it, but it really is something special.

I've often fantasized of mounting my own production, and this is how it would end--the disciples would be mourning Jesus after he got electrocuted on the chain link fence (or however the crucifixion would be staged), and singing "Long Live God", and then one of them would take off his or her outer garment--and he or she is wearing a shirt with the same off-brand Superman logo Jesus always wears in Godspell. Amazement--where did that come from?! Another disciple discovers he/she is also wearing one--and another--they all have them! Then they join hands and reprise "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord." Who they now realize was there all along, inside of them.

And that's all Jesus was ever trying to say. The power was never just in him. It was in all of us, and he was just trying to bring it out. That's so integral to the gospel story, it can't be a later addition. If he said that thing about thrones, the thrones were a metaphor for the godpower the coming of the Kingdom would unleash, and since Jesus was preaching that anyone with true faith could move mountains--and nobody in the Kingdom wouldn't have true faith--then logically, what are they ruling? Nothing. Everyone would be able to rule themselves, because in a perfect world, there's no need for laws and rulers.

Thing about Ehrman is, he was a believer--a very deep one--and when he rejected the rigid fundamentalist beliefs of his youth, he went a bit too far the other way on some things. I respect his opinions, and his knowledge. He's certainly somebody that both believers and unbelievers should read. But what he's basically doing is dissecting early Christianity, and the thing about belief systems is that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. You will never know what a frog is if you've only ever seen one on a dissection table, instead of in a pond, where it belongs. Or what a dog is, if you've never had one as a best friend. He still has affection for Christianity, and Christians. He knows faith has value. But he's still moved to take it all apart, piece by piece, to try and find out how it works. Or maybe to try and find something he can believe in, the way he once did?

I do wish his prose was a bit less stilted. Now Michael Grant--damn, those British dons know how to lay down the words.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Thanks for sharing your ideas for Godspell - your proposed ending is poignant. I think it would work wonderfully and would like to see it staged :)

Sounds like you're enjoying the Ehrman book. Yeah, his style can be stilted, maybe because of his fundie-type background. But he seems a nice guy and an important voice of reason amidst the raging storms of fundamentalism and mythicism. I wish he somehow had a stronger presence on You Tube. I tried to join his group, but some kind of computer glitch would not let me register, even after repeated attempts and assistance from his administrator. It looked like a fun group.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

I did actually sign up--mainly because I want to throw my observation about Rabbi Schneerson at him, and see how he responds. Sucks that you couldn't. I understand that making people pay is a great way of keeping out--well, who knows better than you and I the type of person that would keep out.

I should have finished it no later than tomorrow, maybe tonight. Really picking up now--the stuff on Paul is amazing. Much as I may disagree with this or that point, his overall grasp of the material is transformative. And it's not like he doesn't give alternate viewpoints. The nice thing about his prose is that he doesn't speak in 'scholar-ese'. Very geared towards laypeople. But as you say, his mode of presentation, including his propensity to preface certain arguments with episodes from his earlier life, comes from his evangelical background--he's still TESTIFYING.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Yep, still testifying! I'm glad you signed up. I hope he answers your Schneerson observation, I would be interested in hearing it. Payment fee for joining is a good precautionary measure, as you mentioned - should tend to keep things much more even-handed than simple free, random membership. All in all, from what you describe, he is being careful to supply alternatives, which to me is one hallmark of an authentic scholar.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Just a brief discussion by Bart about his new book and such topics as follow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH2rXTo2aHw

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Thanks--quiet in here, huh?

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

You're welcome ... yes, at least for now the mythicists seem to have gone the way of the Flowers and the Soldiers et al. But they will probably be back at some point!

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Something new: Ehrman expresses surprise over five items he discovered when writing the book:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/faithforward/2014/06/five-surprises-that- hit-me-when-writing-how-jesus-became-god/

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Well, it's new if you haven't read the book yet.

I'm not sure I agree with him about Jesus being left on the cross--which isn't a new idea, as Ehrman makes clear in the book--John Dominic Crossan notoriously said Jesus' body wasn't lifted into heaven, it was eaten by dogs. But Crossan thinks they probably did take him off the cross and bury him in a shallow grave. Eventually.

I'm not entirely sure it matters that much--it is important to know if the story of the empty tomb is true or not. But hard to see how we ever can know.

They faithfully preserved the story that he was crucified as a criminal, between two thieves--that he cried out in despair at the end--that his own followers abandoned him--they somehow made all these negatives into positives. Could they have done the same with his body having been left to rot and be eaten by scavengers? Wouldn't people have known the story about Joseph of Arimathea didn't happen? Whereas, only a handful of people would know whether or not the body disappeared from the tomb--or how that came to happen.

Speaking as a dog lover and a bird watcher, feeding the animals I most love after I die sounds like a perfectly decent way to go. The gospel authors probably weren't big dog people (it's the Middle East, after all).

One thinks about the story of Jesus and the woman of Canaan, where she says even the dogs may eat the crumbs that fall from the master's table--most works of art that depict this scene have a dog somewhere in them. My personal favorite is Matia Preti's painting, but I can't find it online--saw it at the Staatsgallerie in Stuttgart. The dog has this look on his face that seems to be saying "You're damned right!"

And of course there's the brief story from the Gospel of Judas--Jesus and the disciples see a dead dog on the street--

The followers said, ‘How this dog stinks!’

“But Jesus said, ‘How white are its teeth!’”

A buried memory?

Not enough to work with. We can only guess.

(editing)

Found it! "Jesus and the Woman of Canaan", by Matia Preti. 4th down from the top of the page.

http://www.webalice.it/marcoberrini/images/cananea_Preti.jpg

That dog definitely has a secret or two.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Just ran across this, sorry for the late reply. Yeah, I also just love the Preti "dog" painting. ... Don't know if you've been following Ehrman, I just found this, in which Ehrman says he now thinks that Jesus was regarded as divine, based on cumulative impact of claims about him - although not ontologically divine -

http://bloggingtheology.org/2014/04/14/3329/

Happy 4th, if you observe it.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Well, I've read his entire book, and I don't think his views have changed substantively since then.

And I agree with him--as long as we properly recognize the many possible ways a person could be considered 'divine' back then--it wasn't really so very unusual for that to happen in the ancient world. What WAS unusual was that over a long period of time, Jesus came to be considered The Supreme Being. But as he points out, that took centuries to accomplish. But no question Jesus' followers considered him divine in the more qualified sense of the world almost immediately after his death.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Yes, I think "divine" would cover their notion of a God-raised martyr who now sits on God's right hand "from whence he will come to judge" the world on the last day. Ditto those who felt Jesus' presence as a spiritual experience ....

[–] clyons 10 years ago

Not clear how soon they came up with the thing about him judging the world on the last day, though. He may have said some things that led them in that direction.

As good as Ehrman's analysis is, when it comes to who Jesus thought he was, I still prefer Michael Grant's "Jesus: An Historian's View of the Gospels", in the chapter entitled "And Who Do You Say I Am?" Grant really covers the bases in that one. But Ehrman has the benefit of decades of scholarship since then.

I still am skeptical that Jesus believed he was the Jewish Messiah. I tend to agree with Grant that he thought he was something nobody on earth had ever quite anticipated, though he certainly tried on various biblical prophetic roles for size. Tried them on, and found they didn't quite fit.

[–] clyons 10 years ago

http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300171914

Just crossed my desk at the library, and I suspect I'll be taking it out shortly.

[–] bastasch8647 10 years ago

Looks interesting :)

Yes, i would agree that Jesus thought of himself in novel terms rather than identifying himself with pre-made cultural categories.