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

by Bart D. Ehrman

When we talk about earliest Christianity and we ask the question, “Did Christians think of Jesus as God?,” we need to rephrase the question slightly, so that we ask, “In what sense did Christians think of Jesus as God?” If the divine realm is a continuum rather than an absolute, a graduated pyramid rather than a single point, then it is the sense in which Jesus is God that is the main issue at the outset.

It’s like what some Episcopalians say about themselves today: get four in a room and you’ll find five opinions. So too with ancient Jews.

Stoics believed that Logos—reason—was a divine element that infused all of existence. There is, in fact, a logic to the way things are, and if you want to understand this world—and more important, if you want to understand how best to live in this world—then you will seek to understand its underlying logic. As it turns out, this is possible because Logos is not only inherent in nature, it resides in us as human beings. We ourselves have a portion of Logos given to us, and when we apply our minds to the world, we can understand it. If we understand the world, we can see how to live in it. If we follow through on that understanding, we will indeed lead harmonious, peaceful, and enriched lives. But if we don’t figure out the way the world works and is, and if we don’t live in harmony with it, we will be miserable and no better off than the dumb animals.

It is also important to stress that precisely when the Christians were starting to say such things about Jesus is when the emperors were beginning to be worshiped with increased frequency throughout the Roman world. The emperor was the son of God (because he was adopted by the preceding emperor who had been divinized at his death); Jesus was the Son of God. The emperor was regarded as divine; Jesus was divine. The emperor was the great ruler; Jesus was the great Ruler. The emperor was lord and sovereign; Jesus was Lord and Sovereign. This lower-class peasant from Galilee who had gotten on the wrong side of the law and had been crucified was in fact the most powerful being in the universe. The emperor, according to this Christian view, was in reality no competition. Jesus’s adoptive father was not simply a preceding emperor; he was the Lord God Almighty.