How did early Christians come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the divine Son of God? This is the central question in this book. When Did Jesus Become God? is a transcribed conversation between Bart Ehrman and Michael Bird, with a helpful historiographic introduction by Robert Stewart that helps listeners understand the conclusions reached by Ehrman and Bird.
Ehrman contends that neither Jesus himself nor the apostles believed that Jesus was divine during Jesus' life; it was only after Jesus was crucified and the apostles began to have visions and revelations that they became convinced that Jesus was a godlike figure who was sent by God. Over an extended period of time, the early church solidified its belief that Jesus was God-first, with an inventive claim that Jesus was exalted to divinity, then later by seeing him as a preexistent angel become human. Bird disagrees. Based on different historiographic criteria and different readings of Scripture, he asserts that Jesus himself claimed to be the divine Son during his lifetime and that many of the apostles believed Jesus to be identified with God's own prerogatives and identity. In Bird's account of the early church, Jesus was the preexistent Son of God from the beginning, who then became human, exercised the role of Israel's Messiah, and was exalted as God the Father's vice-regent.
A New York Times best-selling scholar's illuminating exploration of the earliest Christian narrated journeys to heaven and hell
“[An] illuminating deep dive . . . An edifying origin story for contemporary Christian conceptions of the afterlife.”—Publishers Weekly
From classics such as the Odyssey and the Aeneid to fifth-century Christian apocrypha, narratives that described guided tours of the afterlife played a major role in shaping ancient notions of morality and ethics. In this new account, acclaimed author Bart Ehrman contextualizes early Christian narratives of heaven and hell within the broader intellectual and cultural worlds from which they emerged. He examines how fundamental social experiences of the early Christian communities molded the conceptions of the afterlife that eventuated into the accepted doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory.
While most people think that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament are the only sacred writings of the early Christians, this is not at all the case. A companion volume to Bart Ehrman's Lost Christianities, this book offers an anthology of up-to-date and readable translations of many non-canonical writings from the first centuries after Christ--texts that have been for the most part lost or neglected for almost two millennia.
Here is an array of remarkably varied writings from early Christian groups whose visions of Jesus differ dramatically from our contemporary understanding. Readers will find Gospels supposedly authored by the apostle Philip, James the brother of Jesus, Mary Magdalen, and others. There are Acts originally ascribed to John and to Thecla, Paul's female companion; there are Epistles allegedly written by Paul to the Roman philosopher Seneca. And there is an apocalypse by Simon Peter that offers a guided tour of the afterlife, both the glorious ecstasies of the saints and the horrendous torments of the damned, and an Epistle by Titus, a companion of Paul, which argues page after page against sexual love, even within marriage, on the grounds that physical intimacy leads to damnation.
In all, the anthology includes fifteen Gospels, five non-canonical Acts of the Apostles, thirteen Epistles, a number of Apocalypses and Secret Books, and several Canon lists. Ehrman has included a general introduction, plus brief introductions to each piece. This important anthology gives readers a vivid picture of the range of beliefs that battled each other in the first centuries of the Christian era.
In this highly accessible discussion, Bart Ehrman examines the most recent textual and archaeological sources for the life of Jesus, along with the history of first-century Palestine, drawing a fascinating portrait of the man and his teachings.
Ehrman shows us what historians have long known about the Gospels and the man who stands behind them. Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament (and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter), Ehrman proposes that Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet-a man convinced that the world would end dramatically within the lifetime of his apostles and that a new kingdom would be created on earth. According to Ehrman, Jesus's belief in a coming apocalypse and his expectation of an utter reversal in the world's social organization not only underscores the radicalism of his teachings but also sheds light on both the appeal of his message to society's outcasts and the threat he posed to Jerusalem's established leadership.
From the New York Times bestselling authority on early Christianity, the story of how Christianity grew from a religion of twenty or so peasants in rural Galilee to the dominant religion in the West in less than four hundred years.
Christianity didn't have to become the dominant religion in the West. It easily could have remained a sect of Judaism fated to have the historical importance of the Sadducees or the Essenes. In The Triumph of Christianity, Bart Ehrman, a master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, shows how a religion whose first believers were twenty or so illiterate day laborers in a remote part of the empire became the official religion of Rome, converting some thirty million people in just four centuries. The Triumph of Christianity combines deep knowledge and meticulous research in an eye-opening, narrative that upends the way we think about the single most important cultural transformation our world has ever seen-one that revolutionized art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics, economics, and law.
The bestselling author of Misquoting Jesus, one of the most renowned and controversial Bible scholars in the world today examines oral tradition and its role in shaping the stories about Jesus we encounter in the New Testament-and ultimately in our understanding of Christianity.
Throughout much of human history, our most important stories were passed down orally-including the stories about Jesus before they became written down in the Gospels. In this fascinating and deeply researched work, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Erhman investigates the role oral history has played in the New Testament-how the telling of these stories not only spread Jesus' message but helped shape it.
A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman draws on a range of disciplines, including psychology and anthropology, to examine the role of memory in the creation of the Gospels. Explaining how oral tradition evolves based on the latest scientific research, he demonstrates how the act of telling and retelling impacts the story, the storyteller, and the listener-crucial insights that challenge our typical historical understanding of the silent period between when Jesus lived and died and when his stories began to be written down.
As he did in his previous books on religious scholarship, debates on New Testament authorship, and the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, Ehrman combines his deep knowledge and meticulous scholarship in a compelling and eye-opening narrative that will change the way we read and think about these sacred texts.
In a book that took eight years to research and write, leading Bible scholar Bart D. Ehrman explores how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty Creator of all things.
Ehrman sketches Jesus's transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus's followers had visions of him after his death- alive again- did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today.
As a historian- not a believer- Ehrman answers the questions: How did this transformation of Jesus occur? How did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? The dramatic shifts throughout history reveal not only why Jesus's followers began to claim he was God, but also how they came to understand this claim in so many different ways.
Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.
Large numbers of atheists, humanists, and conspiracy theorists are raising one of the most pressing questions in the history of religion: "Did Jesus exist at all?" Was he invented out of whole cloth for nefarious purposes by those seeking to control the masses? Or was Jesus such a shadowy figure-far removed from any credible historical evidence-that he bears no meaningful resemblance to the person described in the Bible?
In Did Jesus Exist? historian and Bible expert Bart Ehrman confronts these questions, vigorously defends the historicity of Jesus, and provides a compelling portrait of the man from Nazareth. The Jesus you discover here may not be the Jesus you had hoped to meet-but he did exist, whether we like it or not.
It is often said, even by critical scholars who should know better, that "writing in the name of another" was widely accepted in antiquity. But New York Times bestselling author Bart D. Ehrman dares to call it what it was: literary forgery, a practice that was as scandalous then as it is today.
In Forged, Ehrman's fresh and original research takes readers back to the ancient world, where forgeries were used as weapons by unknown authors to fend off attacks to their faith and establish their church. So, if many of the books in the Bible were not in fact written by Jesus's inner circle—but by writers living decades later, with differing agendas in rival communities—what does that do to the authority of Scripture?
Ehrman investigates ancient sources to:
* Reveal which New Testament books were outright forgeries.
* Explain how widely forgery was practiced by early Christian writers—and how strongly it was condemned in the ancient world as fraudulent and illicit.
* Expose the deception in the history of the Christian religion.
Ehrman's fascinating story of fraud and deceit is essential reading for anyone interested in the truth about the Bible and the dubious origins of Christianity's
Picking up where Bible expert Bart Ehrman's New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus left off, Jesus, Interrupted addresses the larger issue of what the New Testament actually teaches'and it's not what most people think. Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:
The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works
The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later
Jesus, Paul, Matthew, and John all represented fundamentally different religions
Established Christian doctrines'such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity'were the inventions of still later theologians
These are not idiosyncratic perspectives of just one modern scholar. As Ehrman skillfully demonstrates, they have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars across a full spectrum of denominations and traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators, and anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for'a clear and compelling account of the central challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus.
In times of questioning and despair, people often quote the Bible to provide answers. Surprisingly, though, the Bible does not have one answer but many "answers" that often contradict one another. Consider these competing explanations for suffering put forth by various biblical writers:
-The prophets: suffering is a punishment for sin
-The book of Job, which offers two different answers: suffering is a test, and you will be rewarded later for passing it; and suffering is beyond comprehension, since we are just human beings and God, after all, is God
-Ecclesiastes: suffering is the nature of things, so just accept it
-All apocalyptic texts in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament: God will eventually make right all that is wrong with the world
For renowned Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, the question of why there is so much suffering in the world is more than a haunting thought. Ehrman's inability to reconcile the claims of faith with the facts of real life led the former pastor of the Princeton Baptist Church to reject Christianity.
In God's Problem, Ehrman discusses his personal anguish upon discovering the Bible's contradictory explanations for suffering and invites all people of faith, or no faith, to confront their deepest questions about how God engages the world and each of us.
A bestselling author and well-known expert on early Christianity, Jesus, and the New Testament gives the first complete account of the discovery and impact of the Gospel of Judas.
Lost for nearly 1,700 years, newly restored and authenticated, the Gospel of Judas presents a very different view of the relationship between Jesus and Judas. Rather than paint Judas as a traitor, it portrays him as acting at Jesus' request.
A National Geographic special introduced tens of millions of viewers to one of the most important biblical discoveries of modern times. Now a leading historian of the early church (and a featured commentator in the special) offers the first comprehensive account of the Gospel, revealing what it contains and why it is so important for believers around the world.
Ehrman recounts the fascinating story of where and how this ancient parchment document was discovered, how it moved around among antiquities dealers, and how it came to be restored and translated. He gives a complete and clear account of what the book teaches, and he shows how it relates to other Gospel texts, including the Gnostic texts of early Christianity. Finally, he describes what we can now say about the historical Judas and his relationship with Jesus.
The Gospel of Judas raises many questions. Ehrman provides illuminating and authoritative answers.
(p) 2006 HighBridge Company.
