How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee

by Bart D. Ehrman

For an ancient historian, the word cult does not have the kind of negative connotations it may have today—referring to a wild sectarian religion with bizarre beliefs and practices. It is simply a shortened version of the term cultus deorum, which means “care of the gods,” a close equivalent to what today we would call “religion”

I was not aware of this meaning when I started Seminary forty years ago, so when I heard my Old Testament professor use the word I had to learn it in an entirely different context.

Christians were not elevating Jesus to a level of divinity in a vacuum.

Henotheism is the view that there are other gods, but there is only one God who is to be worshiped.

such angelic greats as Semyaz, Ram’el, and Tam’el.

One has to appreciate the author’s tongue-in-cheek humor.

In this account the two hundred descend to earth onto Mount Hermon, they each choose a wife, and they have sex with her.

Sounds very human, doesn’t it?

belief or unbelief in Jesus’s resurrection is a matter of faith, not of historical knowledge.

Historical evidence is not and cannot be based on religious and theological assumptions that some, but not all, of us share.

Bruce Metzger

I had the pleasure of participating in a workshop led by Bruce Metzger. He was the chair of the team whose translation of the Scriptures in their original languages became the New Revised Standard Version.

it was God, not a human who made her pregnant.

This is the second time the author has used this word in reference to Mary. I struggle with it because, in a technical sense, Mary was not pregnant. She was "with child."

What preexisted was the Logos of God through whom God made the universe. It was only when the Logos became a human being that Jesus Christ came into existence. So Jesus Christ is the Logos that has become a human; but Jesus did not exist before that incarnation happened. It was the Logos that existed before.