HOW JESUS BECAME GOD:
The exaltation of a Jewish preacher from Galilee
By Bart Ehrman
HarperOne. 404 pages. £17.99
ISBN 978 0 061 778 186
HOW GOD BECAME JESUS:
The real origins of belief in Jesus’ divine
nature – a response to Bart D. Ehrman
By Michael F. Bird, Craig A. Evans, Simon
Gathercole, Charles E. Hill & Chris Tilling
Zondervan. 236 pages. £10.02
ISBN 978 0 310 519 591
In his book, Ehrman leaves his usual sphere – textual and literary criticism – for Christology.
Again, there is really little new – rather, this book is to introduce and popularise liberal Christology to the wider lay public. One problem with this approach is that assertions are made without sufficient corroboration – understandable if the aim is to maintain the interest of the non-academic reader, but methodologically questionable if the goal is to prove a point. Ehrman essentially presents an evolutionary, developmental approach to Christology – for example, that the Gospel of Mark understands Jesus as a human who became divine, whilst John’s Gospel sees the reverse as true (p.5).
