Summary of Bart D. Ehrman's How Jesus Became God

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 It is difficult to know where to begin when studying the New Testament. Should we start with the Apostle Paul, who wrote more of the books of the New Testament than any other author, or with the Gospels, which were written after Paul but discuss the life of Jesus, who lived before Paul wrote his letters.
#2 Apollonius was a pagan philosopher who traveled around the Roman Empire preaching that humans should not be concerned about their earthly lives and material goods, but should instead live for what is spiritual and eternal. He gathered a number of followers around him who believed he was divine.
#3 The life of the historical Apollonius, a Pythagorean philosopher, is not as important as the legends that sprang up about him and were widely believed among people of the time. His great philosophical insights led many people to believe that he could not have been a mere mortal.
#4 The story of Apollonius is similar to the story of Jesus. He was a philosopher who taught that the human soul is immortal, and that the flesh may die but the person lives on. Not everyone believed him, but after he died, he appeared in a vision to a follower who doubted him.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Jesus
• Jesús de Nazaret
• Jésus de Nazareth
• Christianity
• HIStory

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781669377894
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Bart D. Ehrman's How Jesus Became God
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

It is difficult to know where to begin when studying the New Testament. Should we start with the Apostle Paul, who wrote more of the books of the New Testament than any other author, or with the Gospels, which were written after Paul but discuss the life of Jesus, who lived before Paul wrote his letters.

#2

Apollonius was a pagan philosopher who traveled around the Roman Empire preaching that humans should not be concerned about their earthly lives and material goods, but should instead live for what is spiritual and eternal. He gathered a number of followers around him who believed he was divine.

#3

The life of the historical Apollonius, a Pythagorean philosopher, is not as important as the legends that sprang up about him and were widely believed among people of the time. His great philosophical insights led many people to believe that he could not have been a mere mortal.

#4

The story of Apollonius is similar to the story of Jesus. He was a philosopher who taught that the human soul is immortal, and that the flesh may die but the person lives on. Not everyone believed him, but after he died, he appeared in a vision to a follower who doubted him.

#5

The connection between Jesus and Apollonius of Tyana has been debated by modern scholars. But it is not a recent debate. In the early fourth century CE, a pagan author named Hierocles wrote a book called The Lover of Truth that compared the two alleged Sons of God.

#6

The idea that Jesus was divine began to spread after his death. It was not originally thought of that way, however. There were numerous divine humans in the ancient world, and they were not thought of as divine because they were different from the rest of us humans, but because they were humanlike gods.

#7

Christianity arose in the Roman Empire around the year 30 CE. The eastern half of the empire was thoroughly infused with Greek culture, and the common language of the eastern empire was Greek.

#8

One of the greatest Roman poets was Ovid, who wrote the Metamorphoses. In this work, he celebrates changes or transformations described in ancient mythology.

#9

The story of Philemon and Baucis is a beautiful and moving tale of love in life and death, but it is also a tale of gods who temporarily become human, and humans who become gods.

#10

The Greek and Roman belief was that a divine being came into the world because a god had sex with a human, and the offspring then was in some sense divine. This was not the normal Greek or Roman way of understanding how a divine human could be born of a mortal.

#11

The story of Amphytrion and Alcmena is a myth, and it is not clear that anyone actually believed it. However, the idea that a mortal woman could give birth to a child spawned by a god was plausible to many people of the ancient world.

#12

The founder of Rome, Romulus, was said to have been a divine human. He was conceived by a sacred virgin, but something went wrong with her vows. He was reported to have been taken up to heaven by the gods.

#13

The Roman historian Suetonius wrote that during his lifetime, Caesar had declared that he had a divine heritage. He was voted into divinity by the Roman Senate. The common people and even the heavens seemed to support Caesar’s deification.

#14

The Romans also worshiped their emperors as gods. While Augustus was not enthusiastic about being worshiped as a god, he was deified after his death and called divine.

#15

The Roman emperor was considered a manifestation of the divine on earth, and was worshiped as such. The emperor was declared a god at his death by a vote of the Roman Senate.

#16

The emperor was not just a mortal, but he was also treated as a god. The vast majority of Romans did not believe that the emperor was a god, but they still treated him as one.

#17

The Roman Empire was based around the idea of benefaction, or giving gifts to those under your rule. This was done through statues and inscriptions, which were dedicated to the rulers. The emperors were considered gods who gave gifts to their people.

#18

The second-century CE Greek-speaking wit Lucian of Samosata was the gadfly of all pretension, especially philosophical and religious. He was a brilliant satirist who made fun of standard assumptions, perspectives, views, and beliefs.

#19

The story of the death of Peregrinus, a famous Cynic, is told in Lucian’s book The Passing of Peregrinus. He planned to prove his virtue by voluntarily undergoing a violent and painful death, but when it came time, he realized he had no choice but to go through with the deed.

#20

The story of Peregrinus and the vulture is a prime example of how stories are invented, told by word of mouth, and then taken as gospel truth.

#21

The ancient world was full of gods and goddesses, and they were all considered human. Humans were even thought to be on a vertical continuum with the divine, and these two continuums sometimes met at the high end of the one and the low end of the other.

#22

The ancient Greeks believed in a pyramid-like structure of power, grandeur, and deity. At the very top was one ultimate deity, who was infinitely powerful and who was sometimes thought to be the source of all things. But below him were many other gods, who were worshiped by cities and towns.

#23

The divine pyramid was made up of several tiers, with a lower tier occupied by divine humans. These humans were not as powerful as the gods above them, but they were still very powerful.

#24

The question of how Jesus became God is a difficult one to answer, because it involves understanding the divine and human realms as being separate. The question of how Jesus became God involves understanding how he moved from being a human to being God.

#25

The followers of Jesus understood him to be human through and through, not God. They saw him as a teacher, a rabbi, and even a prophet. But he was also believed to be the Jewish messiah, who would bring about the apocalypse and a good kingdom on earth.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

I had a blinding realization when I visited the ruins of Priene, Turkey, in 2009. The inscription there referred to the God Caesar Augustus, which made me realize that Jesus became God as a purely internal Christian development.

#2

I began to realize that the Christians were not elevating Jesus to a level of divinity in a vacuum. They were doing it under the influence of and in dialogue with the environment in which they lived. As I said, Jews were monotheists, so how could they say that Jesus was God and still claim there was only one God.

#3

Judaism was not primarily about belief, but about how Jews lived their lives. It was a set of practices and a set of lifestyle choices. But for the purposes of this chapter, I am chiefly interested in what Jews thought about God and the divine realm.

#4

Jews at the time of Jesus believed in one God, who had created the world and all that is in it. They believed that he had promised the ancestors of Israel an enormous body of descendants who made up Israel. They believed that God had called Israel to be his people and made a covenant with them.

#5

Within the Jewish religion, there were divine humans who had superhuman powers. These beings were not equal to God, but they were far above humans in the scale of existence.

#6

Within Judaism, there was a continuum of divine beings and divine power, which was similar to the one found in paganism. Some Jews thought it was right to worship angels, while others believed that only God should be worshiped.

#7

In ancient Judaism, angels were seen as superhuman messengers of God who mediated his will on earth. The Angel of the Lord, who is regarded as the chief angel, is sometimes identified as God himself.

#8

The Bible has many examples of God appearing as an angel, but also as the Lord himself. These examples show how ambiguous and confusing God’s appearances can be.

#9

The most famous example of this ambiguity is found in the story of Moses and the burning bush.