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How Jesus Became God : the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee?
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It’s simple. There’s no evidence anywhere in the world that any human being has been brought back from the dead after being dead for three days. The Bible is a claim, not evidence. Why would anyone believe that Jesus was resurrected? You would have to prove it first to claim there’s no argument against it.
This book might give you some good perspective.
How Jesus Became God : the Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061778192/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_rSL8CbN6DVTPZ
Yes, Jesus existed. He was most likely an apocalyptic prophet/preacher.
If you can stomach a read, Bart Ehrman has written a number of books. I'm currently reading this one and it's just fascinating. I'm not much of a reader and it's slow progress for me, but I'm really enjoying learning who Jesus likely was. He was in some ways, more amazing than I had previously thought.
You’re making an assumption about my faith there but fair enough. Have a book recommendation anyway, by a man who knows a whole lot more about Abrahamic scripture than you or I.
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0061778192/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_HFYWD96RDKTR6TEEJADH
I'd recommend How Jesus Became God and first search the title from youtube to get a lecture. Ehrman is worth listening.
This is a scholarly thesis about Jesus. It's very interesting to read.
I recommend Bart Ehrman's books. He's a former fundy and a scholar of Christian history. How Jesus Became God goes right to the heart of Christian theology.
You must be one of them so-called Christians if you feel so strongly about it.
I encourage you to read this excellent book about the origins of the claims of Jesus divinity.
One I was pondering last night while frantically redditing: Since Jesus probably was not buried in a tomb after his death, how did the empty tomb theory come about? It makes a great narrative and its purpose is clear, but what's the origin?
>I think the evidence firmly points to the person of Jesus having existed and when you couple this with the fact that the apostles did not recant their faith, it makes a promising case that the Resurrection was genuine.
You need to develop a standard for evaluating claims. And the standard needs to be something you can honestly live with.
There are many, many supernatural claims out there. Mohammed, for example: There are Muslims who argue just as effectively for the veracity of Mohammed's miracles as do Christians with respect to Jesus' resurrection. The same goes for many other religions that we still live with today -- and countless more that have died off over the centuries.
If your belief in a supernatural event is satisfied by ancient second-hand accounts of uneducated people who've never been exposed to science, then you need to apply that belief even-handedly, without respect to your upbringing, cultural experiences, and so on. But, of course, if you do that, you'll find yourself believing in contradictory dogma.
There's a better option: Simply put, Jesus existed. He clearly had an impact. He was tried and executed for that impact. Myths about him (including his resurrection) also developed as a result of that impact. Human beings see patterns, conspiracies, miracles, divine intervention, and divine damnation where none exist. It's a constant in the human experience. We see it historically, with, for example, the myths about Jesus. We see it today, with myths about Q-Anon, crisis actors at Sandy Hook, Obama's birth certificates, and so on. There is something about our brains that invents realities that never existed.
The specific details -- the precise, exact manner in which this one specific miracle developed and grew, is a subject of some study (I'll cite one great book below) but we'll never know the exact truth of how this myth got started. However, the absence of absolute certainty as to development of a myth doesn't mean that you have to believe the myth. If you did, you'd be forced to believe in all kinds of contradictory nonsense.
For an empirical look at Jesus' life and the development of the myths around him, check out Bart Erhman's How Jesus Became God. Erhman is a highly-respected biblical scholar and author of a number of textbooks, a few of which I read ages ago when I was a Religious Studies university student.
I realize I am talking to a christian, and that is going to skew some of the way that you read things. You are coming into this conversation primed to see your religion in these texts. For this conversation, you have to forget everything you think you know about these texts according to your religion. If you don't, then you are going to misinterpret what some of the authors have written.
> You’re claiming that the Bible is a patchwork manuscript cobbled together from other religions.
It's not even debatable that it's got many different authors. It's pretty widely accepted amongst old testament (OT) scholars that the pentateuch is not authored by Moses, but by several different authors. Some think it's the authors JEPD, but others see even more inconsistencies between those, indicating it's more authors or redactors than just that.
As for heaven and hell, that's not taught in the OT or in Jesus' teachings. Sometimes sheol is translated as hell in some bibles, but that is not what Jews during Jesus' time or before believed. Sheol was just a place where everyone went when they died. It had no connotations of being a place where evil people were sent.
I'll give you just one example of a mistranslation of hell. This page cites Matt 10:28 saying "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Source: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Hell,-Punishment-Of
Now if we go to blueletterbible.org and go down to the word 'hell', we can see it's actually geenna, or gehenna. This was a place outside of Jerusalem where they threw their trash to have it burned. Gehenna =/= hell. I know I read a more extensive breakdown of all these mistranslations of hell somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where it was. It might have been in one of Bart Ehrman's books.
As far as Jesus just teaching separation of god, I dunno about that. I can't remember the book or verse, but Jesus was talking about punishment for not being one of his followers. It's in there, I promise.
> but I have been reading the New Testament for a LONG time and I have never noticed that the Gospel of John portrayed Jesus in a way that was “decidedly different.” Got any examples?
Sure. Basically John's gospel indicates that Jesus is divine. The synoptics do not. There's a passage in John where someone is like "Who are you?" and Jesus is all "I'M BATMAN!". Ok sorry, he says "I Am.". Had to throw in a little levity there. Of course I'm sure you're aware, I Am is Yahweh's response to Moses.
The synoptic gospels, in short, do not make this indication. They call Jesus many things. They say he's a really great guy, that he's the messiah, the son of god and all of that.
- Lord: Another name for a king. Not an indication of deity status
- Messiah: Several people have had this title, and it didn't mean they were a deity. It translates as 'god's anointed one'. King David was a messiah. When they 'prophesied' a messiah, they were probably referring to someone who would reinstate Israel as a sovereign nation so they could be under theocratic rule according to Yahweh's commandments.
- Son of god: Nope, and all I have to do to demonstrate this point, is ask you to google 'children of god'. You will find many many results referring to all of us as children of god. It does not mean we are gods. They are trying to say we are special in god's eyes, or that we were created in his image, or some other positive affect. So too did earlier Jews say this about people, without any indication of being a deity. See How Jesus became God by Bart Ehrman
In the OT, it's not uncommon to see Yahweh Sabbaoth, which translates as Yahweh, lord of hosts/lord of armies. He was a war god. AND, he wasn't even the only god those people believed existed, hence the monolatrist polytheism. You can see indications of this in the texts, and in other sources. I belive it's in The Origins of Biblical Monotheism where Mark Smith talks about the cult of Yahweh borrowing attributes from Baal, (yes THAT Baal)
There's a pottery shard that was found that says "Yahweh and his Asherah". Asherah was one of the gods in the Levantine pantheon of gods. She was a fertility goddess. Baal was a storm god, and sometimes a war god. Molech was in there too. I'm sure you've heard these names before, among others.
I know what modern day christians say about these gods, that they are gods with a little g. You have to throw out what they think about these texts, and ask yourself, "What did the authors of these texts mean?". The scholarly consensus is that they were monolatrist polytheists. This idea is in many scholarly books like The Origins of Biblical Monotheism by Mark Smith.
There's a passage in Deuteronomy where El gives land to Yahweh! That's right, El is not simply another epithet for Yahweh. Is El sometimes used as a word meaning god? Yes, it is. Is it sometimes used as a name for a different deity than Yahweh? Some scholars argue that yes, that is the case. One of the evidences they point to, is Deuteronomy 32 where it mentions El giving land to Yahweh.
>Contrary to these biblical traditions that suggest an assimilation between Yahweh and El, there are other passages that seem to indicate that Yahweh was a separate and independent deity within El’s council. Deuteronomy 32:8-9 is one of those rare biblical passages that seemingly preserves a vestige of an earlier period in proto-Israelite religion where El and Yahweh were still depicted as separate deities: Yahweh was merely one of the gods of El’s council! This tradition undeniably comes from older Canaanite lore.
>>When the Most High (’elyôn) gave to the nations their inheritance, when he separated humanity, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of divine beings. For Yahweh’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.
https://contradictionsinthebible.com/are-yahweh-and-el-the-same-god/
I read that book IN SCHOOL (a trinitarian faith secondary school) and pretty much had everyone freaking out. I got called down to the office to get a talking to by the headmaster. I got yelled at by the librarians for daring to open "a book of the Devil". I was really amused bc the opening of it is all about the Council of Nicaea and how Jesus was voted on as a god. lol I knew that bc I was raised unitarian and so it wasn't surprising to me any of that history but they really freaked out about a NOVEL!!!
BTW if you haven't read "How Jesus Became God" by NT scholar Bart Ehrman you really should. It's factual and brilliant and easy to understand.
I'm happy you are deconstructing! A lot of us reached that point and that's why we are here now.
If you haven't heard or read any Bart Ehrman stuff I highly recommend his works.
Good book recommendation: ’How Jesus Became God’ by Bart D Ehrman
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0061778192/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_fabc_3GDGHN5TSRGXCXVY9A1B
OK, put it like this: God exists, and is perfect. I know that whatever he says is both correct, and moral. But that doesn't tell me what religion I should be!
Maybe he says Muslims go to heaven! They believe in God (Allah is just the Arabic word for "God", Arabian Christians also call God Allah). Maybe he says Zoroastrians go to heaven; they believe in God. Maybe he says Manicheans, or Mormons, or Rasafari, or Eastern Orthodox but not Roman Catholics go to heaven! These are all religions and sects that believe in God, and there are many more!
Also, just because I know he's infallible and all knowing etc., why should I assume that he even cares what religion I am? Or hell, even worse maybe he says the only the nonreligious go to heaven, because all religions are evil! Or maybe it's really specific, he doesn't care if you are not religious, but will punish you if you're the wrong religion. So maybe Druze and moral atheists go to heaven, but Muslims, Christians and Jews go to hell!
My point is, why should I assume that a God who meets all of your definitions wants me to be one particular religion over the other? There is no evidence of this at all, seems pretty presumptuous if you ask me. Almost disrespectful, to assume I understand what a perfect being wants. Maybe that disrespect is enough to send me to hell!
What's more, let's say I decide to make my absolute best guess about what this perfectly moral, infallible creator wants for me:
Well, for starters, sacred texts are obviously out. There a hundreds upon thousands of them, all contradictory, with no reason to believe in any one over any other. Many of them (the Bible for instance) are obviously made up by fallible humans, and don't even agree with themselves, or portray God in a vaguely consistent manner, and we have a pretty good historical record of exactly how they were made up, and how they changed over time.
So okay, sacred texts are out. What else do I have? Well, I can't know what God's "true" morality is, but he did, I assume, create me, and so it wouldn't be crazy to assume that my moral instincts might in some way line up with God's true morality right? Maybe not, but it's not a bad guess... Well, my instincts tell me that a moral God wouldn't punish someone for being of the wrong creed, so it doesn't matter which one I choose. Seems like as good a justification as any, at the very least.
Now, maybe I'm 100% wrong, maybe God created me with bad moral instincts, but the point is that I have literally no way of knowing that, so I may as well just do by best and cross my fingers...
So sure, God exists: he's perfect, infallible, all knowing, all powerful, everywhere, perfectly moral etc. etc. etc. But I have no reason to believe the Christians know what he wants from me. And, in fact, plenty of good reasons to assume that believing in a specific sect of a specific religion piously might well be thumbing my nose at God for all I know! How presumptuous and arrogant for a speck of dust to claim to know exactly what his almighty creator wants. Better to play it on the safe side if you ask me...
When I was a Christian, I read a lot of short articles to explain why verses like these exist. Many of the answers are total BS to justify things like owning a person as property, stoning homosexuals to death, etc. They will throw out the old testament laws because "Jesus makes those laws not matter anymore". Oh really? Show me in the bible where he says we should no longer own people, and no longer consider being gay a sin. I used to say to people that God used slavery to make the Jews, God's people, stronger. Or that they had to punish gay people so Jews could reproduce.
That was bullshit given by someone who needs to justify their God's book because they need to believe God is real and moral and the bible doesn't contain errors.
The other type of apologetics I've read are the books that my family has thrown at me since discovering I'm an atheist. The Case for Christ came from my mom (she never read it), Mere Christianity came from my dad (he never read it), and The Reason for God from my uncle, who may have read it.
I think apologetics are all fundamentally flawed in their methods. They start with a conclusion and selectively accept information that supports that conclusion, or otherwise just make things up. With God, all things are possible.
If you want a reliable source, try Bart Ehrman. His book is used as the reference textbook at Yale for New Testament Studies. That class has all of its lectures posted here. I can't recommend them enough. They use only scholarly sources. All the videos are free. I would believe anything they say in those videos because all of the information is backed up with modern science and historical analysis.
Great question. The first part of your question about his influence on Christianity is rather simple in the fact that it is generally agreed upon that Apollionus of Tyana lived and preached some time after the historical Jesus was already executed. It's somewhat disputed over what exact years Apollionus lived through, but generally historians agree it was the second half of the first century, some 20-70 years after the Historical Jesus died.
Now you are correct to assume their extreme similarities in both their life and in the way their followers worshiped them after their deaths. However the two groups hated each other. Christianity spread much faster and farther than those of Apollionus and they frequently condemned the teachings of his as fraudulent (which Apollionus' followers accused Christians of the same thing). For sources, primarily all we have are the writings of Philostratus’s who wrote a multi-volumn account of the preacher's life around 200-230 CE, which we can understand came over a century from when the last of the "biblical" Gospels (John) was written (around the year 90).
A really easy to read pop history book called How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by a highly respected scholar named Bart Ehrman actually discusses this in pretty great detail. Here is a section from that book:
>Apollonius lived some years after a similar miracle-working Son of God in a different remote part of the empire, Jesus of Nazareth. Later followers of these two divine men saw them as being in competition with one another. This competition was part of a bigger struggle at the time between paganism— the forms of religion supported by the vast majority of everyone who lived in antiquity, who embraced a variety of polytheistic religions— and Christianity, a newcomer on the religious scene, which insisted that there was only one God and that Jesus was his Son. Christian followers of Jesus who knew about Apollonius maintained that he was a charlatan and a fraud; in response, the pagan followers of Apollonius asserted that Jesus was the charlatan and fraud. Both groups could point to the authoritative written accounts of their leader’s life to score their debating points...
>Modern scholars have debated the significance of the obvious connections between Jesus and Apollonius, but it is not merely a recent debate.
From this, it should be reasonably understood that more-so than trying to see how one influenced the other (which it is more likely understood that Jesus' teachings were somewhat stolen by Apollionus since all four of the traditional Gospels were completed by around the year 90), but that the two religions saw a major division between the two, one that lasted for centuries. Hope this helped.
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