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).
Before we go any further, considering how often Ehrman’s work is utilised by Islamic propagandists, Ehrman is to be commended for putting the record straight on the Council of Nicaea in regard to a frequent claim from Muslim polemicists that the outcome was a ‘close vote’, which Ehrman emphatically denies (p.352), observing that out of the 318 bishops, only 20 disagreed with the synodical creed. However, Ehrman is surely going beyond probability when he asserts that Constantine’s letter to Arius and Alexander suggested that he saw Christianity ‘as a potentially unifying force in his socially and culturally disunified empire’ (p.347). In fact, the letter seems preoccupied with the internal peace of the church.
Way over the top
Unfortunately, Ehrman has, at times, a tendency to over-state his case.
An example of this is to be found in his treatment of the first century miracle-worker Apollonius of Tyana (p.12), whom he presents as a parallel to Jesus – a human who, in the eyes of his devotees, became divine. However, the example is less than convincing when we consider that Apollonius died c.100AD but the biography by his devotee Philostratus was written around 220 or 230AD! Amazingly, Ehrman comments that both Christians and Apollonius’s devotees ‘could point to the authoritative writing’ to prove their points (p.13). How ‘authoritative’ is a work written so long after the event? Yet the New Testament was written within the same century as Jesus’ earthly ministry, sometimes by eyewitnesses and in the midst of hostile society. There really is no comparison.
Superlative response
On the central points of Ehrman’s thesis, the response from the writers of How God Became Jesus is superlative. In particular, Ehrman’s claim that only John’s Gospel teaches Jesus’ pre-existence, whereas Mark teaches that Jesus became the Son of God at his Baptism, Luke at his birth, and Matthew at his conception (Ehrman, p.238ff) is ably debunked by Simon Gathercole’s excellent and accessible chapter (p.94ff).Gathercole emphasises the phrase ‘I have come’ (e.g. Luke 5.32) which in the OT is never used by prophets, but rather by angels (e.g. Daniel 10.14), and obviously angels ‘come’ from heaven! Further, in the synoptic gospels, Jesus ‘has the privileges of YHWH’ (p.99), for example, forgiving sins and describing angels as ‘his’ (Matthew 13.41). Matthew 28.19 is one of the most important texts for the Trinity and the deity of Jesus, as is Mathew 11.27 / Luke10.22 about the Father being revealed by the Son and also their unique mutual knowledge.
All this should be emphasised in terms of practical mission, since it is a current favourite of Muslim propagandists to claim that Evangelicals have to rely on the Gospel of John to prove Jesus’ full deity – the very point Ehrman makes. Indeed, methodologi-cally, it is best to begin with synoptic evidence for Jesus’ deity, since Muslims are increasingly aware that John’s Gospel is clear on the matter.
The place of the resurrection
In Chapters 4 and 5, Ehrman asserts that ‘belief in the resurrection is what eventually led his followers to claim that Jesus was God’ (p.132). This must be qualified. Certainly, the resurrection vindicated everything Jesus claimed about himself, as was the case for Saul on the Damascus Road, but there were already prior indications of Jesus’ deity, such as when the disciples worshipped Jesus after seeing him walk on the water. Ehrman’s argument is especially objectionable when he equates the resurrection accounts with Roman claims of the ascension of King Romulus (the legendary founder of Rome), allegedly witnessed by Senators, and also RC accounts of visions of Mary. For a start, Roman traditions of the ascension/apotheo-sis of Romulus tend to be late – the majority view among scholars is that the tradition dates to around the first century BC (Fishwick, The Imperial cult in the Latin West, p. 53), whereas Romulus allegedly lived centuries before, and the actual tradition Ehrman quotes presumably comes from Plutarch, who lived mid-first to early second century AD; in his account the Roman Senators claim of Romulus’ ascension aimed to offset popular suspicions of regicide. Equally, there are no first century AD accounts of visions of Mary, nor any traditions of her assumption into heaven – such traditions are all late.
How God Became Jesus is also useful in answering Ehrman’s specific claims against the resurrection texts – that they are unhis-torical and contradictory, notably in terms of burial traditions. He notes that 1 Corinthians 15 does not explicitly refer to a tomb, that Acts 13.28-29 does not specify Joseph of Arimathea, and claims that the Romans usually left crucified corpses to rot. Evans answers this with contrary evidence from Philo, Josephus and various Roman texts as well as archaeological data (p.71ff), the last-mentioned being something which Ehrman does not address. Indeed, Evans quotes a Jewish archaeologist, Jodi Magness, who finds the Gospel burial accounts to be largely consistent with the archaeological evidence, p. 89.
Quite apart from being a response to Ehrman’s book, How God Became Jesus is an invaluable work in itself – lucid, concise and informative. It is to be highly recommended for anyone dealing with the polemical use of Ehrman’s material, and even in the more general sphere of apologetics. The authors are to be greatly congratulated.
