Last week I summarized Chapters 1 and 2 from Bart D. Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of the Jewish Preacher from Galilee. In Chapter 1, “Divine Humans in Ancient Greece and Rome” Ehrman surveys the continuum between humanity and deity as depicted by Graeco-Roman literature. In Chapter 2, “Divine Human in Ancient Judaism” he does the same thing with Jewish literature. In the response book How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature —A Response to Bart D. Ehrman Michael Bird takes issue with Ehrman’s presentation. In this post I will summarize his argument as I did Ehrman’s.
In Chapter 1, “The Story of Jesus as the Story of God” Bird introduces the response book. He acknowledges that the deity of Jesus is a matter of faith, essentially, but “…exactly when, where, and why Christians first began to make such elevated claims about Jesus’ heavenly origins and divine nature is a historical question and one that can only be answered through a concerted investigation of the evidence (p. 12).” Bird’s response is not point-by-point, but instead he summarizes Ehrman’s argument and in this chapter points readers to what he calls “the Early High Christology Club” (EHCC), which includes Martin Hengel, Richard Bauckham, and Larry Hurtado (p. 13). Hengel’s work breaks down the divide between the Hellenized peoples and the Jewish people in order to debunk the idea that high Christology didn’t arise until the Gospel spread into the pagan world (previously many argued that it was impossible for Jews to speak of Jesus as a deity, only the Gentile Christians would do that (p. 14). Hurtado “argued that the devotional practices of the early Christians were foundational for their doctrinal developments (p. 15).” In other words, while the creedal language was still evolving the actual practices of early Christians worshipping Jesus tells us a lot about their doctrine as practiced. Finally, Bauckham’s study has presented Jesus as acting and doing things that were expected of or reminiscent of Israel’s God and therefore the earliest Christians saw Jesus as “embodying” the actions of Israel’s God and therefore Jesus’ identity was merged with the divine identity (pp. 15-16).
Bird concludes that “if the EHCC is correct” than there are two immediate implications: (1) “belief in the divinity of Jesus emerged surprisingly early” and (2) “later creedal claims about Jesus’ divine personhood are not wildly innovative” (p. 16). In essence, Bird accepts the claims of the EHCC and he will build upon them. Of course, there remains much debate over the accuracy of the Christology of the EHCC, which I think may be a topic that I’ll discuss over the course of the year (I plan on reading works by Bauckham, James D.G. Dunn, Hurtado, Hengel, Michael Peppard, and others over an undefined period of time, so I’ll be sure to interact with those scholars here as well).
In my next post I will look at Bird’s own argument in response to Ehrman’s views on the divine-human continuum. In essence, while Bird acknowledges Ehrman’s point that there was a variety of divine-ish figures in both Graeco-Roman and Jewish thought it is a mistake to apply to think that this explains how Jesus was understood as divine. Jesus’ divinity is better explained by how the EHCC presents it: Jesus’ oneness with Israel’s God which is superior to that of any other celestial being.
On a side note, I want to make you aware of a few other discussions related to Ehrman’s first two chapters as well as Bird’s response: (1) Bird, Chris Tilling, and Craig Evans all gave interviews with The God Solutions Show; (2) James McGrath has done a round-up of blog posts related to this discussion; (3) Jennifer Guo has begun a series on the response book; (4) adjacently, Nick Norelli posted a teaser on Daniel Boyrin’s view of the “Jewishness” of High Christology from article “Enoch, Ezra, and the Jewishness of ‘High Christology’,” in Fourth Ezra and Second Baruch: Reconstruction after the Fall.
the archives near Emmaus 
Boyrin’s view has some validity I think. Mike’s does as well, IMO.
There are so many OT passages that “fit” into the idea of at least 2 separate, different, yet alike Yahweh’s, a God-Man concept outside of Daniel’s son of man(Jacob’s wrestling foe, Abraham’s dinner guest, Joshua’s “man standing with a sword drawn”, Ezekiel 1 vision, etc).
All taken together explains I think why 1st century Jews could & did worship Jesus and not feel outside their original faith. Jesus “fit” into those roles to them.
Indeed, there are categories into which devotion to Jesus would have fit that were in place at the time. I think Ehrman and Bird, Evans, et al., all agree there. Their division is over whether this makes Jesus uniquely one with God the Father in the sense that he is the same as God in some sense and in a sense that isn’t like say “the Angel of YHWH”.
It seems to me that there is only one Hebrew Bible passage that is at all suggestive of two YHWHs, and that’s Gen 19:24, which is most likely a textual issue. Jacob’s wrestling match and Abraham’s visit from God reflect very early conceptualizations of God’s activity among humanity. Esther Hamori’s book When Gods Were Men treats those two pericopae. The “Angel of the Lord” passages that appear to conflate the identity of the angel with YHWH were most likely originally the result of the interpolation of the word “angel” in an effort to obscure God’s interactions with humanity (pretty much every other translation of the Bible from antiquity does the exact same thing). Sam Meier’s DDD entry on the Angel of YHWH discusses this in more detail. The interpolations did not smooth out the rest of the text in most cases, though, so it seems like the two identities are confused. Other biblical texts composed after those interpolations incorporated the Angel of YHWH, which forced the readers to find some kind of room for the mixed up identities in their ideology. The solution was to posit God’s endowment of the angel with his name, which gave him God’s authority, name, etc. He could act on God’s behalf and speak directly in his name (Exod 23:21). The Apocalypse of Abraham has the Angel Yahoel explicitly state that he has the authority to do what he does because of God’s holy name, which dwells in him. This concept of the investiture of divine authority via God’s agency (his Name, Glory, Word, etc.) seems to me to be a much better model for understanding how Jesus could take on God’s titles and authority.
I’m enjoying this series. For those too young to have much of a pre-internet perspective, I want to remark how incredible it is to have so much “live” (or nearly so) interaction among scholars, students and others on this and many other important subjects. I can’t say how much different it seems (and IS) than the days of the 70s and 80s.
@Daniel: I don’t want to jump ahead into the next chapter quite yet (post goes live tomorrow), but I think its worth asking: do you read Bird’s response as not so much denying the possibility of parallels but as continuing to affirm that in whatever sense parallels exist Jesus remains unique in that he is presented as superior to other figures like angels and so that superiority is accounted for only when using language of “divine identity”? That seems to me to be his argument.
@Howard: It’s pretty cool, right? This is why I like blogging. If I were to try to find five people in San Antonio to do a book club with I wouldn’t be able to do it. But here on the blog I can find anyone interested in the subject!
@Brian: I do think that’s a main thrust of his argument, but I disagree with the need to appeal to “divine identity.” I’ll treat it more directly in my review of the response. (And I should have the Ehrman review to you today. Sorry it’s taken so long.)
No worries, I look forward to reading your thoughts on this.
@Brian, Yes it is! I hope others of relatively young age also appreciate how significant is this kind of advance in communication, and as applied to not only conceptual theology (discussions, debates, etc.) but connecting and making relationships online… a number of mine have then led to meeting in person, even though the people live far away.
To me, one exciting result is that in this process we (whether we ever meet or not) have the potential to build on common ground and (hopefully) better understand and/or accept our differences of view or practice and thus cooperate toward “the common good”, and other such benefits (and fun!)… “unity of the Body of Christ” (which I have come to see as very healthily “obese” – a broad body). Of course, I say “potential” bec., if people let the Net bring out “the worst in them”, it can stir up more problems than it solves.
Brian,
There is the feel of “same,but, different” to the varied Yahweh’s in the OT text. The angel of Yahweh I believe is Yahweh. There is logic to this internally, IMO.
Like I said earlier, I took OT theology courses along these lines, it isn’t all that easy to pick up on this stuff. In fact, had I not taken the courses, the passages would have gone right over my head.
Daniel,
There’s a whole lot in the OT text along these lines that has not been popularized by any modern theologian I know of outside of Michael Heiser. He’s got a course out right now called “The Jewish Trinity” on Logos. Why not consider it? You can always say he’s full of it.
Alan Segal’s work, “2 Powers in Heaven” is a scholarly research effort documenting a couple of things:
1) 2cd temple Judaism before Christ did apparently see 2 Yahweh’s. There was not enough evidence to know exactly what they felt about this, maybe they felt it was 1 Yahweh with 2 manifestations, maybe gnosticism played it’s role, maybe more like I interpret it,etc.
2) This view was orthodox until 200 AD in reaction to Christianity when it was anathemized. Go figure.