The Historical Origins of Christology:

Barth Ehrman and the New Testament

Introduction
Ehrman’s view of the historical origins of Christology can be found, mainly, in his book How
Jesus Became God: The exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee,1 published in 2014. In it,
he answers how Christians began to see Jesus as a divine figure. For Ehrman, the beginning of
Christology has to be found in the belief of the resurrection of Jesus and it was an early
development. For him, however, the question is not when Jesus was seen as God but in what sense
he was seen as a god. The development of Christology, for him, was a process in which Jesus was
considered a divine figure in different ways. In his view, these different stages of the Christological
development can be seen in the New Testament, and have their parallels in the Greco-Roman
religious beliefs. That is, in a nutshell, Ehrman’s view of the historical origins of Christology and,
in the next pages, I will briefly analyze it and criticize it.

The Greco-Roman context

Ehrman starts from the premise that there was a common view in antiquity about the heavenly and
earthly realms. In our days we imagine the divine and the human realms as two different realities
separated by an unbreakable chasm. Nevertheless, Ehrman affirms, “the problem is that most
ancient people –whether Christian, Jewish, or pagan – did not have this paradigm. For them, the
human realm was not an absolute category separated from the divine realm by an enormous and
unbridgeable crevasse. On the contrary, the human and divine were two continuums that could,
and did, overlap.”2 It is important to note that Ehrman points to the fact that in antiquity the divine
realm had many levels. It was a pyramid with different levels of divinity in which not all the gods
had the same status but some divine beings were greater than others.
According to Ehrman, there were different ways in the Greek and Roman worlds in which
the divine and the human encountered. First, there were gods who temporarily become humans,
and it could be by incarnation or by taking human appearance. It is interesting that Ehrman
acknowledges that there are only two examples of incarnation in the ancient world, Jesus and
Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius was a Greek philosopher who lived in the Roman province of
Cappadocia. Scholars agree that he was contemporary of Jesus; however, the earliest and most
detailed source of his life dates from the biography wrote by Philostratus in the 3rd century.
Therefore, any similarities between the life accounts of Jesus and Apollonius could be better
explained by the influence of the former on the latter.
Furthermore, while there are undeniable similarities between Jesus and Apollonius,
Ehrman fails to note the differences. The redeeming death and resurrection of Jesus are lacking in
Apollonius’ story. And the most important difference is that while Apollonius is Proteus incarnate,
a god of a polytheistic worldview, Jesus is the incarnation of the only true God of the monotheistic
Jewish faith. While it may be true that both stories are an example of incarnation, it is not a
complete comparison if the dissimilarities are not highlighted as well. There is a huge difference
between being the incarnation of one minor divine being in the Greco-Roman mythology and being
the incarnation of the only true God of the Jewish monotheism. I will argue later in this paper that
one of the main weaknesses in Ehrman’s work is his misunderstanding of the particularity of this
ancient Jewish monotheism.

1
Bart Ehrman, How Jesus became God (New York: Harper Collins, 2014)
2
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 4
 In any case, incarnation was not, by any means, the most common example of divine and
human encounters in the ancient world. Ehrman notes that perhaps the most common view was
the belief of divine beings born from a god and a mortal.3 There are several examples in Greco-
Roman literature of gods having intercourse with humans that later gave birth to divine beings.
Nevertheless, the similarities of the Jesus’ narratives and such myths are too distant to establish
any connection. Barth himself acknowledges that the Christian stories do not include any kind of
sexual intercourse between divine figures and humans, and the Greco-Roman tales do not refer to
the virginity of the woman as an important feature.
Moreover, I maintain that it is not helpful to refer to the Greco-Roman mythology to
explain the origins of Christology without considering the particular context of the New Testament
documents as well. Ehrman fails in relying too much on parallels between the New Testament and
the Greco-Roman mythology without considering the difficulties of doing so. Not every parallel
means a direct connection or literary dependency. Even more, not every similarity proves a shared
worldview. While there can be found similarities between the ways in which the ancient Greeks,
Romans, and Jews saw the human and the divine encountering, it is fundamental to consider their
particularities as well.
According to Ehrman, the third model to understand divine humans in Greek and Roman
circles is humans who become divine. For him, this was the “most important conceptual
framework that the earliest Christians had for conceiving how Jesus could be both human and
divine.”4 It is shocking for me that Ehrman considers the Greco-Roman view even more important
than the Jewish context to explain the origin of the beliefs of Jewish-Christian communities about
the Jewish Messiah. Nevertheless, in his exposition of the origins of Christology, Ehrman mentions
several examples of humans who became divine by their own merits.
Ehrman tries to accommodate the story of Jesus to these ways in which the ancient world
pictured how the divine and the human encountered. The question is whether he is really having
right the way in which the New Testament speaks of Jesus as divine. Is he really understanding
the context of ancient Judaism? Is it useful to rely on the divine pyramid of the ancient Greco-
Roman worldview to explain the Christological development? Through this paper, I will try to
answer these and other questions. To start doing so, now I will criticize Ehrman’s use of the Greco-
Roman worldview.
Based on some similarities, Ehrman builds a context in which Romans and Jews shared a
whole worldview. As I have said earlier, he overemphasizes these, sometimes forced, similarities
and ignores the distinctiveness of the Christian beliefs. He assumes that the view of God as the
only one God was an invention of the fourth century. Before that, most people believed that the
divine and the human were a continuum. He says that “this view of the divine realm did not change
significantly until later Christians changed it. It is hard to put a finger on when exactly it changed,
but change it did.”5 Ehrman himself acknowledges that the view on the divine and human realms
changed because of the influence of the Judeo-Christian worldview. But he is unable to recognize
that, in spite of the common ground that could share with the Greco-Roman world, the Jewish
monotheism had its own particular beliefs since the first century.
In ancient Judaism existed already the belief that Yahweh was the only true God. Ehrman
seems to slightly recognize this particularity saying that “Apart from Jews in the ancient world

3
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 22
4
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 25
5
Ehrman, How Jesus became God ,43
[…] everyone was a polytheist.”6 And he even acknowledges that such belief was shared by
Christians, saying that “…the monotheistic Christians had far too an exalted view of God to think
that he could have temporarily become human to play out his sexual fantasies. The gods of the
Greeks and Romans may have done such things, but the God of Israel was above it all.”7
Nevertheless, he argues that “Jews also believed that divinities could become human and humans
could become divine.”8 In the next section, I will show how this description of the Jewish view
misguides his analysis of the Christological development.

The Jewish context

As I have just said, Ehrman acknowledges some particularity to Judaism but, for him, “…even
though Jews were distinct from the pagan world around them in thinking that only one God was
to be worshiped and served, they were not distinct in their conception of the relationship of that
realm to the human world we inhabit.”9 Which means that “…even within Judaism there was
understood to be a continuum of divine beings and divine power, comparable in many ways to that
which could be found in paganism.”10 Ehrman refers to the angel of the Lord as a divine being
who temporarily becomes human. Also, to angels that temporarily took human form in the biblical
narrative and other Jewish literature of the Second Temple. For Ehrman, the Son of Man and the
divine hypostasis are examples of nonhuman divine beings. And Finally, Moses, Enoch, and the
King of Israel are examples of humans who came to be divine according to some Jewish traditions.
The point Ehrman is trying to make is that even within the monotheistic Jewish faith there
existed the belief in other divine figures or even gods. While he is right in pointing to this Jewish
belief, I argue that “divine” and “god” would not be the most appropriate terms to refer to all these
figures. It is clear that even when there are other heavenly beings in Jewish literature, God is far
above all of them. The only true God is not only above them in a quantitative sense but in a
qualitative one. Yahweh is essentially different from the rest of creation. Therefore, it is important
not to put in the same category all of the heavenly figures that Ehrman mentions together with the
one God. There are exalted human beings, which despite their exalted status are just creatures of
God, like Moses, Elijah, and Enoch. There are heavenly figures like the angels who are servants
of God and never share his status. And finally, there are divine hypostasis or personified attributes
of God who are indeed God himself interacting with the world.
While Judaism was not a monolithic faith there were some common beliefs among the
different Jewish groups. One of the was monotheism. It is not necessary to think about the
philosophical monotheism of later centuries that negates the existence of any other transcendent
reality. Jewish monotheism had to do with the recognition of the only God of Israel as the creator
and sovereign over any other reality. Richard Bauckham argues for a different view of the
monotheistic Judaism during the Second Temple period. For him “Most Jews in this period were
highly self-consciously monotheistic, and had certain very familiar and well-defined ideas as to
how the uniqueness of the one God should be understood. In other words, they drew the line of
distinction between the one God and all other reality clearly, and were in the habit of distinguishing
God from all other reality by means of certain clearly articulated criteria.”11

6
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 39
7
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 24
8
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 45
9
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 45
10
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 54
11
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdman, 2008) 182
 For Bauckham, the Jews distinguished clearly between Yahweh and any other earthly and
heavenly beings. The “divine figures” referred by Ehrman should be distinguished between those
that were creatures of God and, therefore, different from him, and the divine figures that actually
participated in the divine identity. Exalted patriarchs and angels were clearly creatures of God,
even when they were highly exalted beings. They never participated in the creation and did not
share the dominion over the world which belongs only to God. On the other hand, the personified
attributes of God did participate in the creation and sovereignty of God, therefore, were included
in the divine identity. According to Bauckham’s argument, for the Jewish monotheism, it was
crucial the distinction between God, the only creator and sovereign over the heaven and earth, and
any other being. In that sense, the early Christian included consciously and deliberately Jesus in
the divine identity when they saw him participating with God in creation (e.g. 1 Corinthians 8:6)
and dominion of the world (e.g. Acts 2:35).
Furthermore, for Larry Hurtado, the Jewish monotheism of the Second Temple period had
an exclusivist character. For him, one of the distinctive of the Jewish faith was the rejection of the
worship of any other god. Interestingly, this is a fact that Ehrman hardly considers. Moreover,
Hurtado argues that the development of Christology is to be compared to an explosion rather than
to an evolution. For him, the origin of Christology is to be found in the context of the exclusivist
monotheistic Judaism. According to Hurtado, the origin of Christology was a binitarian mutation
of that monotheistic faith in which Jesus was worshipped together with God.12

The belief in the resurrection

Ehrman maintains that Jesus was a Jewish apocalyptic preacher who expected the final
intervention of God in history. He argues that “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.”13 According to Ehrman, Jesus preached the coming of the kingdom of God that was about
to be brought by the Son of Man and saw himself as the future king of such kingdom. Jesus did
not identify himself with the Son of Man but his followers identified him as such after his death.
Thus, argues Ehrman, “Jesus must have thought that he would be the king of the kingdom of God
soon to be brought by the Son of Man. […] It is in this sense that Jesus must have taught his
disciples that he was the messiah.”14
What is highlighted in Ehrman’s account of the origins of Christology is that Jesus did not
see himself as God. Accordingly, Jesus’ ministry was about the kingdom of God and the coming
of the Son of Man but not about his own divinity. Then, why did Jesus begin to be seen as a divine
figure? Because of the belief in his resurrection, answers Ehrman. He says that “Belief in the
resurrection is what eventually led his followers to claim that Jesus was God.”15 He maintains that
“There can be no doubt, historically, that some of Jesus’s followers came to believe he was raised
from the dead—no doubt whatsoever. This is how Christianity started. If no one had thought Jesus
had been raised, he would have been lost in the mists of Jewish antiquity and would be known
today only as another failed Jewish prophet”16

12
Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 2005)
13
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 118
14
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 119
15
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 132
16
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 174
 Two chapters of Ehrman’s book are dedicated to discussing the resurrection of Jesus. In
them, he affirms that it is not the task of historians to prove false or true theological affirmations.
Therefore, Jesus’ resurrection is not an event in the field of historical studies.17 However, at the
same time, Ehrman argues that the resurrection of Jesus is not a likely historical event. For him,
the resurrection narratives in the gospels are not historically reliable because they present so many
un-harmonizable contradictions. The traditions of the empty tomb were independent of and later
than the tradition of the apparitions. The empty tomb is not present in Paul’s account of Jesus’
resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. Indeed, for Ehrman, it was not the empty tomb but the visions of
the resurrected Jesus what led the disciples to believe in his resurrection. Even in the gospel
narratives, no one believes in the resurrection because of the empty tomb but because of the
apparitions of Jesus.
Thus, the belief in the resurrection, explains Ehrman, came to be because some of Jesus’
followers had visions that convinced them Jesus was alive. Based on some studies on social
psychology, Ehrman argues that the situation of Jesus’ disciples after the death of their master was
likely to produce a condition in which hallucinations are common. Jesus had died in a violent,
painful, and unjust way, he was betrayed, and some of his disciples flew away. His followers loved
him and his death may have caused them feelings of guilt, anger, and anguish. Therefore, argues
Ehrman, some of them experienced hallucinations of their master alive. The gospels portray Peter
and Mary Magdalene as those who mainly received the visions, and also there is a strong tradition
of doubt among some disciples. Thus, says Ehrman, some disciples hallucinated the resurrected
Jesus and tried to convince the others of the reality of their experience.
The resurrection of the bodies, continues Ehrman, was a present theme in the Jewish
apocalyptic ideas. Therefore, it was natural for Jesus’ followers to interpret their hallucinations
according to their religious beliefs. For them, the resurrection of Jesus was the beginning of the
coming of the kingdom of God that Jesus preached. And the belief in the resurrection was what
led them to see him as an exalted figure. However, says Ehrman, not as God in an absolute sense
yet.
I could not agree more with Ehrman’s statement that the belief of the resurrection is at the
heart of the Christian faith. Paul himself said that “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is
useless and so is your faith” (1 Cor 15:14 NIV). However, I find some weaknesses in Ehrman’s
argument besides the fact that it is highly speculative. First, he states that the visions could have
happened years after Jesus’ death.18 But he gives no explanation on why the followers of Jesus
remained as a community before the belief in the resurrection was consolidated among them.
Moreover, he argues that “these three people—Peter, Paul, and Mary, as it turns out—must have
told others about their visions.”19 For Ehrman, Paul is to be counted among the first who had
visions. Nevertheless, he never explains why Paul had visions if he was not a follower of Jesus,
nor why the earliest Christian community seems to be already existing before Paul’s own visions.
Paul himself tells how he persecuted Christians, but Ehrman still counts him as one of the first
people who had visionary experiences. If, according to Ehrman, the belief in the resurrection was
not spread until some years after Jesus’ death, even after Paul’s conversion, what did the earliest
Christians believed and why did they remain as a community? There are no answers to these
questions in Ehrman’s argument.

17
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 173
18
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 196
19
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 192
 What Ehrman argues is that the beginning of Christology was the belief in Jesus’
resurrection. Once some of his disciples were convinced that their master was resurrected they
began to see him as an exalted figure, a heavenly being. However, they did not consider that Jesus
was God in an absolute sense, but only a god. Ehrman emphasizes that Jesus was not seen as the
incarnation of God the Father in the earliest years after his death. For him, the development of
Christology was a process which I will analyze and criticize in the next section.

The development of Christology

To study the earliest beliefs of the first Christian communities, Ehrman focuses his analysis on the
pre-literary traditions identified in the New Testament texts. Of course, he is aware that such a task
has its problems. We only have sources of a later moment in the Christological development. Our
earliest sources are the letters of Paul, written in the ’50s of the 1st century. In them, Jesus is
already considered the Messiah (Christ), Lord, and Son of God. However, scholars have identified
in Paul’s letters and other New Testament writings self-contained units that probably are traditions
that predate the writing. In the study of these traditions, we need to be aware that we are on the
field of speculation. Nevertheless, Ehrman relays on the content of some pre-literary traditions to
study the earliest stage of the Christological development. Ehrman affirms that

these particular preliterary traditions are consistent in their view: Christ is said to have been exalted to heaven
at his resurrection and to have been made the Son of God at that stage of his existence. In this view, Jesus
was not the Son of God who was sent from heaven to earth; he was the human who was exalted at the end of
his earthly life to become the Son of God and was made, then and there, into a divine being.20

Ehrman studies Romans 1:3-4 where he identifies a pre-Pauline tradition. It is a self-

contained unit, appears to be well structured, and contains some words and ideas that are present
nowhere else in Paul’s letter, such as Jesus descending from the “seed of David”. Also, this unit
presents Jesus as being appointed “the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead”
(Rom 1:4). Moreover, Ehrman finds the same idea in the speeches contained in acts, that Jesus was
made Son of God, Lord, or exalted in some way, in the moment of or because of his resurrection
(Acts 13:32-33; 2:36; 5:31). Thus, concludes Ehrman, “it appears to be the earliest form of
Christian belief: that God exalted Jesus to be his Son by raising him from the dead.”21
What is not explained in Ehrman’s argument is why Paul and the author of Acts used
preliterary traditions that contained a different Christology from the one that they themselves held.
His timid attempt to explain this fact is that such traditions were useful to Luke (the author of Acts)
to show his point that God had reversed what humans did to Jesus. In the case of Romans 1:3-4,
Ehrman argues that Paul used an early and well-known creed that encapsulated the common faith
shared by the Romans and himself. However, argues Ehrman, Paul added the word “in power”
(Rom 1:4) because in his view Jesus was already Son of God.
This arises many problems. First, there is no evidence that Paul added the word “in power”
besides the fact that Ehrman wants the pre-literary tradition to contain a different Christology from
Paul’s. Second, how a well-known creed could show the common faith between Paul and the
Romans if it was clearly modified? Third, the fact that Paul actually used a creed that he did not
write but was widespread among Christian communities does not support Ehrman’s argument that
there were different Christological developments that competed each other. Instead, it shows that

20
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 218
21
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 226
Paul himself agreed with other Christian groups, to the point of using their creeds, and that he tried
to establish connections with them. In other words, the possible different beliefs about Jesus were
not radically different and did not stop Paul from creating fellowship with other Christians. Unlike
Ehrman’s view, the evidence shows that the Christological differences in the New Testament were
not necessarily opposed views but different ways of expressing the significance of Jesus among
communities that shared a common faith in spite of their differences.
In any case, Ehrman acknowledges that the view of Jesus exalted is a remarkable
development. He argues that the earliest Christians

believed that Jesus had been exalted to the highest status that anyone could possibly imagine. He was elevated
to an impossibly exalted state. This was the most fantastic thing anyone could say about Christ: he had
actually been elevated to a position next to God Almighty who had made all things and would be the judge
of all people. Jesus was THE Son of God. This was not a low, inferior understanding of Christ; it was an
amazing, breathtaking view.22

For Ehrman, this is even the origin of the worship of Jesus, for “if the earliest Christians held such
elevated views of Jesus as the exalted Son of God soon after his resurrection, it is probably already
at this early stage that they began to show veneration to him in ways previously shown to God
himself.”23
The view that Jesus was a simple human who was exalted to a divine status is what Ehrman
calls “exaltation Christology”. He prefers this term better than the traditional “low Christology”
because, in his view, there is nothing low in the earliest Christology where Jesus is viewed in a
high exalted level of divinity next to God. However, what I must stress here is that there is no
independent evidence of any group that considered Jesus a simple human that was exalted later in
his life. We only have vestiges contained in sources from some decades later, when the Christian
communities already saw Jesus’ life as divine and with no “previous lowly existence” as Ehrman
wants. In other words, if Paul and Luke took preliterary traditions and included them in their
writings to express their beliefs about Jesus it means that they did not consider such traditions
containing a drastically different Christology from the one they themselves held.
The development of Christology continues with what Ehrman calls a “backward
movement”, which means that the Christological moment of Jesus’s exaltation was progressively
seen in an earlier moment of his life. This movement is found in the gospels. Accordingly, “the
oldest Gospel, Mark, seems to assume that it was at his baptism that Jesus became the Son of God;
the next Gospels, Matthew and Luke, indicate that Jesus became the Son of God when he was
born; and the last Gospel, John, presents Jesus as the Son of God from before creation.”24 However,
Ehrman acknowledges that this is not necessarily a chronological development for “views of Jesus
did not develop along a straight line in every part of early Christianity and at the same rate.”25
Ehrman argues that there were two fundamentally different Christological views, the
exaltation Christology and the incarnation Christology. I have already explained what he means
by exaltation Christology, and I will explain now what he means by incarnation Christology. It is
the view that Jesus was a divine being who became a human being. For Ehrman, this is the view
present in Paul and the Johannine literature. He contends that “the earliest exaltation Christologies
very quickly morphed into an incarnation Christology, as early Christians developed their views

22
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 231
23
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 235
24
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 236
25
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 237
about Jesus during the early years after his death.”26 Therefore, exaltation and incarnation
Christologies where present in contemporaneous communities since the beginning.
The catalyst to pass from exaltation to incarnation Christology, argues Ehrman, was the
view of Jesus as an angelic figure. He maintains that “exaltation Christologies became transformed
into incarnation Christologies as soon as believers in Jesus came to see him as an angelic being
who performed God’s work here on earth.”27 According to Ehrman, this view is seen in the Pauline
letters. He builds a whole argument out of one single, isolated, and debated verse in Paul’s letter
to the Galatians. In Galatians 4:14 Paul says to the Galatians “you did not scorn or despise me, but
received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus” (ESV). For Ehrman, it shows that Paul saw Jesus
as an angel from heaven. However, the passage has been interpreted in other ways. In any case,
what must be noted here is that is the only passage in Paul that may refer to Jesus as an angel.
Ehrman analyzes the pre-Pauline tradition in Philippians 2:6-11. For him, this is an already
known poem that Paul included in his letter. According to Ehrman, the poem contains the
combination of exaltation an incarnation Christology where Jesus was a pre-existent angelic being
who became human and was exalted after “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point
of death, even death on a cross” (v. 8). Jesus existing “in the form of God” (v. 6) does not mean
equality to God the Father but being a lesser divine being. That Jesus “did not count equality with
God a thing to be grasped” (v. 6) does not mean that Jesus was equal to God but that he did not
look for such equality. Finally, at his exaltation Jesus was made equal to God receiving his very
name (v. 9-11).
This interpretation of the poem in Philippians 2 is only plausible within the context Ehrman
has built in which Jews, as well as Romans and Greeks, believed in the heavenly realm as a
continuous pyramid in which there were different levels of divinity and in which God the Father
was the top of the pyramid. I argue, in agreement with Bauckham, that for Jews the one God of
Israel cannot be counted as part of a continued pyramid of divine beings. He was in a completely
different level to which no other being had access. Therefore, the view of Jesus as equal with the
God of the monotheistic faith cannot be seen as an escalation process in which Jesus was seen
progressively with a higher divine status until he was seen as equal to God the Father.
Finally, the best example of incarnation Christology in the New Testament is the gospel of
John. For Ehrman, this gospel presents a completely different Christology from the synoptic
gospels and was the one that became dominating in Christianity. However, according to Ehrman,
Jesus is not seen as the incarnation of God himself but as the incarnation of the Logos of God, a
different being who, nevertheless, existed with God from the beginning and revealed his glory.
Indeed, Ehrman argues that the view of Jesus as God in an absolute sense is not found in the New
Testament but was a development of later Christians theologians who dealt with the issue of the
relationship with God and Jesus. My analysis of Ehrman’s argument, however, ends here.

Critique of Ehrman’s view and conclusions

Bart Ehrman is an excellent scholar that should be taken seriously and that is why it is important
to analyze his work and consider his arguments. There is no time nor space to offer a better
understanding, such a task would need to be for a different paper. Now, I will need to end
criticizing in a general way some of his arguments in the light of the New Testament evidence.
I have already criticized Ehrman’s view of the Jewish monotheism as sharing the pagan
beliefs in many gods, and the heavenly and earthly realms where humans can commonly become

26
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 249-250
27
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 250
gods and vice versa. A closer look to the Jewish context and the New Testament evidence will
show that such view is simplistic and misguided. Paul’s letters show that he, as most Jews,
considered the pagan cult of idols as something foolish (e.g. 1 Thessalonians 1:2-10). Therefore,
for Ehrman’s view to be plausible, he would need to offer a better argument to explain how the
Jews and the first Christians could include in their faith the beliefs of a system that they consciously
and deliberately rejected. Moreover, Ehrman uses the words “divine” and “god” in a confusing
way. He uses them indistinctly to speak of any non-human being. Perhaps it would be useful in
the context of the Greco-Roman view, but in the Jewish monotheism it is crucial to distinguish
between any heavenly figure and the one true God of Israel, only creator and sovereign of the
world.
According to Ehrman, in the pre-literary traditions Jesus was seen as a mere human being
who was exalted at some point in his life. What should be stressed here is that even if Ehrman is
right in pointing that the Christological development started with a stage in which the death and
resurrection of Jesus were the emphases to understanding who he was, such process developed
really fast to the point that we do not have independent sources to attest the earliest stages of such
development. We only have vestiges contained in sources from some decades later, when the
Christian communities already saw Jesus’ life as divine and with no “previous lowly existence”.
Therefore, a stage of the Christological development based on the preliterary traditions is only
speculative. And, the fact that Paul used those traditions shows that there was no rupture in the
process but, rather, continuity.
Ehrman’s sketch of the exaltation and incarnation Christologies as two different views
misguides our understanding of the origins of Christology. While it is true that the New Testament
contains different ways to express who is Jesus, there is no evidence of different communities that
held these different views in opposition to each other. There are no hints that what Ehrman calls
exaltation and incarnation Christologies were two radically different views. What we have, instead,
is that earliest Christian communities used both views to express who Jesus was for them and how
they understood his divinity. Paul, who according to Ehrman held an incarnation Christology, used
preliterary traditions that supposedly contained an exaltation Christology. And there is no evidence
that Paul tried to oppose such Christology. It does not seem that Paul regarded such a way to
express who Jesus was as a radically different view that should be opposed or amended.
One of the weakest points in Ehrman’s argument is his claim that the Christology of the
actual followers of Jesus was radically different from the Christology developed later. He says that
if one of his disciples would write a gospel just after Jesus died it “would look very different from
the ones we have now inherited—and its view of Jesus would not at all be the view that came to
be dominant among later theologians when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman
world.”28 Against this view and in agreement with James Dunn, I argue that the development of
Christology is better explained as a process of continuity rather than a process in successive stages
that supersede each other.29 There are simply no conclusive evidences to argue for competing
Christologies in the first century. Hurtado argues for the silence of Paul regarding any
Christological differences within the churches. Instead, it seems that the Pauline churches shared
a general common Christology even with the churches in Jerusalem. For example, the fact that
Paul used the Aramean invocation “Maranatha” (1 Corinthians 16:22).30

28
Ehrman, How Jesus became God, 245
29
James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans, 1996); Did the First
Christian Worship Jesus (Louisville, Kentucky: John Knox Press, 2010)
30
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, 113
 In general, I see that the analysis of Ehrman is simplistic and incomplete. In his argument,
he ignores so many Christological evidence in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 8:6 is regarded
by many scholars as a reformulation of the “Shema”, and it is highly important for a study of the
origins of Christology. Nevertheless, Ehrman rarely mentions it. There are several passages in the
New Testament that quote the Old Testament referring to Jesus instead of Yahweh (e.g. Rom
10:13; 1 Cor 1:10; Rev 1:8, 17; 21:6; 22:13). Ehrman does not even mention such fact. Also,
Ehrman does not mention some important features of the gospel narratives that would put into
question his argument that the synoptic gospels saw Jesus as a mere human who was exalted. For
example, the fact the in the gospel of Mark Jesus has the attribution of forgiving sins that belonged
only to God (Mk 2:7-10). Unlike Ehrman’s view, it does not seem that the gospel writers were
concern about the specific moment in which Jesus was exalted but about his identity. The list could
go on but I am already over the number of words allowed. Suffice it is to say that in spite of being
an excellent scholar, Ehrman’s account of the origins of Christology presents many weak
arguments, is misguided in his presentation of the context, and ignores many pieces of evidence in
the New Testament. Therefore, a better understanding of the historical origins of Christology
would be needed.

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