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

by Bart D. Ehrman

Here then we see Moses called what the king of Israel is called—and what, in a different context, the emperor of the Romans was called: god.

At times, Philo goes even further and imagines Moses as a kind of preexistent divine being sent to earth for a time:

Yes, I will argue, soon after Jesus’s death, the belief in his resurrection led some of his followers to say he was God. But in what sense? Or rather, in whatever senses—plural—since, as we will see, different Christians meant different things by it.

The problems with Paul are that he didn’t actually know Jesus personally and that he doesn’t tell us very much about Jesus’s teachings, activities, or experiences. I sometimes give my students an assignment to read through all of Paul’s writings and list everything Paul indicates Jesus said and did. My students are surprised to find that they don’t even need a three-by-five card to list them. (Paul, by the way, never says that Jesus declared himself to be divine.)

After Jesus died, his followers came to believe he was raised from the dead, and they saw it as their mission to convert people to the belief that the death and resurrection of Jesus were the death and resurrection of God’s messiah and that by believing in his death and resurrection a person could have eternal life.

Eventually, an author heard the stories in his church—say it was “Mark” in the city of Rome. And he wrote his account. And ten or fifteen years later another author in another city read Mark’s account and decided to write his own, based partially on Mark but partially on the stories he had heard in his own community. And the Gospels started coming into existence.

oral cultures historically have seen no problem with altering accounts as they were told and retold.

the Gospel of John did not rely on the other three Gospels for its information.

That is where Matthew and Luke got a lot of their stories. But they share other passages not found in Mark. Most of these other passages are sayings of Jesus.

Since this other source was mainly made up of sayings, these (German) scholars called it the Sayings Source. The word for source in German is Quelle, and so scholars today speak about “Q”—the lost source that provided Matthew and Luke with much of their sayings material.

scholars today speak about “Q”—the lost source that provided Matthew and Luke with much of their sayings material.

And so among our Gospels we have not only Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and, say, the Gospels of Thomas and Peter); we also can isolate Q, M, and L. These three were probably independent of each other and independent of Mark, and John was independent of all of them.

In other words we have numerous streams of tradition that independently all go back, ultimately, to the life of Jesus.

If a story is found in several of these independent traditions, then it is far more likely that this story goes back to the ultimate source of the tradition, the life of Jesus itself. This is called the criterion of independent attestation. On the other hand, if a story—a saying, a deed of Jesus—is found in only one source, it cannot be corroborated independently, and so it is less likely to be authentic.

This is called the criterion of independent attestation. On the other hand, if a story—a saying, a deed of Jesus—is found in only one source, it cannot be corroborated independently, and so it is less likely to be authentic.

Jesus probably associated with John the Baptist, a fiery apocalyptic preacher.

And so that’s probably what happened: he was crucified on order of the Roman governor Pilate.

When Jesus was born, we are told in Matthew (this comes from M) that wise men followed a star to come worship him as an infant. Unfortunately, this story is not corroborated by Mark, Q, L, John, or anything else.

This methodological principle is sometimes called the criterion of dissimilarity. It states that if a tradition about Jesus is dissimilar to what the early Christians would have wanted to say about him, then it more likely is historically accurate.

criterion of dissimilarity. It states that if a tradition about Jesus is dissimilar to what the early Christians would have wanted to say about him, then it more likely is historically accurate.

It’s hard to see any reason for someone to make it up, so Jesus probably really did come from there.

If no one would make up the story, why do we have it? Because Jesus really was baptized by John.

Jesus really was baptized by John.

we cannot establish that Jesus really made these kinds of predictions.

criterion of contextual credibility. This final criterion insists that we understand Jesus’s historical context if we want to understand what he said and did during his life.

One of the most important aspects of Judaism for understanding the historical Jesus is a widespread worldview shared by many Jews of his time that scholars have called apocalypticism.

Jewish apocalypticists believed that God had revealed to them the heavenly secrets that could make sense of earthly realities. In particular, they were convinced that God was very soon to intervene in this world of pain and suffering to overthrow the forces of evil that were in control of this age, and to bring in a good kingdom where there would be no more misery or injustice.

Jewish apocalypticism in milieu of Jesus

The powers of good and evil, for Jewish apocalypticists, were engaged in a cosmic battle, and everything, and everyone, had to take a side.

The history of this world was divided into two phases: the present age, which was controlled by the forces of evil, and the age to come, in which God would rule supreme.

Jesus' conviction that the end would come in the lifetime of his followers. Jewish apocalypticists believed the world had gotten about as bad as it could get. How long would they have to wait for God to bring about his glorious end? Jesus told them the end was at hand - it would arrive before all of his disciples died.

Jesus held very strongly to an apocalyptic view, that in fact at the very core of his earthly proclamation was an apocalyptic message.

As time went on, the apocalyptic message came to be seen as misguided, or even dangerous. And so the traditions of Jesus’s preaching were changed. But in our earliest multiply attested sources, there it is for all to see. Jesus almost certainly delivered some such message. As we will see, this is a significant key for understanding who Jesus actually thought he was: not God, but someone else.

Jesus’s message was not altogether unusual for his day. Other Jewish preachers were declaring similar things.

Look again at the sayings given above. In none of them is there any hint that Jesus is talking about himself when he refers to the Son of Man coming in judgment on the earth.

Jesus preached a lot about the Son of Man, but there is no indication that he was speaking of himself.

A reader who thinks Jesus is talking about himself as the Son of Man has brought that understanding to the text, not taken it from the text.

In a saying preserved for us in Q, Jesus tells his twelve disciples that in the “age to come, when the Son of Man is seated upon his glorious throne, you also will sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28; see Luke 22:30).

After Jesus died, everyone knew that he had been betrayed by one of his own followers, Judas Iscariot. (That really did happen: it is independently attested all over the map, and it passes the criterion of dissimilarity. Who would make up a story that Jesus had such little influence over his own followers?)

Jesus is best understood to have proclaimed an apocalyptic message.

Jesus associated with John the Baptist at the outset of his ministry. Most scholars think Jesus started out as a disciple or follower of John before he broke off on his own.

Since Jesus associated with the Baptist at the beginning of his ministry and since apocalyptic communities sprang up in the wake of his ministry, the ministry itself must have been characterized by an apocalyptic proclamation of the imminent arrival of the Son of Man, who would judge the earth and bring in God’s good kingdom.

This

Description of the Jewish messiah - a future king like David, one of his descendants, would reestablish the Davidic kingdom and make Israel once more a great and glorious independent state, the envy of all other nations. He will be a mighty warrior and skilled politician, like David. The more apocalyptic Jews believed that the future kingdom would be no run-of-the-mill political system, but rather a kingdom of God, a utopian state with no evil, pain, or suffering.

Ancient Jews had no expectation—zero expectation—that the future messiah would die and rise from the dead.

Jesus, in short, was just the opposite of what Jews expected a messiah to be.

Jesus’s followers must have considered him to be the messiah in some sense before his death, because nothing about his death or resurrection would have made them come up with the idea afterward. The messiah was not supposed to die or rise again.

Jesus must have thought that he would be the king of the kingdom of God soon to be brought by the Son of Man. And what is the typical designation for the future king of Israel? Messiah. It is in this sense that Jesus must have taught his disciples that he was the messiah.

****How Jesus saw himself. Not as the one who would bring about the kingdom, but as king in the kingdom.

Passover was an incendiary time; the festival itself was known to stir up nationalistic sentiment and thoughts of rebellion.

Everyone

Tension during Passover

If the authorities wanted to arrest Jesus quietly, why not just have him followed? Why did they need an insider?

If Jesus never preached in public that he was the future king, but this was the charge that was leveled against him at his trial, how did outsiders come to know of it?11 The simplest answer is that this is what Judas betrayed.

Judas betrayed Jesus' plan, not his location

Evidence that Jesus really did think that he was the king of the Jews is the very fact that he was killed for it.