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

by Bart D. Ehrman

an angel.

in Galatians 4:14 Paul is not contrasting Christ with an angel; he is equating him with an angel.

For according to these three stanzas, God rewarded Jesus abundantly for his temporary condescension to become a human and to die.

if someone is humbly obedient because of what he or she will eventually get out of it, that is simply another way of doing things out of self-interest.

You may have noticed that one line is longer than the others in the poem: “obedient unto death—even death on a cross.” It is even longer in the Greek. Scholars frequently think that Paul added the words “even death on a cross,” since for him it was precisely the crucifixion of Jesus that was so important.

it was of utmost importance to Paul not just that Jesus died, but that he died by being crucified.

this poem presents an incarnational understanding of Christ—that he was a preexistent divine being, an angel of God, who came to earth out of humble obedience and whom God rewarded by exalting him to an even higher level of divinity as a result.

Paul clearly says in other passages that Jesus was indeed a preexistent divine being who came into the world.

According to the original passage as found in Isaiah 45:22–23,

Christ Poem of Philippians, v. 10-11, refers to Isaiah 45:22-23