- 416 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
New York Times bestselling author and Bible expert Bart Ehrman reveals how Jesus’s divinity became dogma in the first few centuries of the early church.
The claim at the heart of the Christian faith is that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. But this is not what the original disciples believed during Jesus’s lifetime—and it is not what Jesus claimed about himself. How Jesus Became God tells the story of an idea that shaped Christianity, and of the evolution of a belief that looked very different in the fourth century than it did in the first.
A master explainer of Christian history, texts, and traditions, Ehrman reveals how an apocalyptic prophet from the backwaters of rural Galilee crucified for crimes against the state came to be thought of as equal with the one God Almighty, Creator of all things. But how did he move from being a Jewish prophet to being God? In a book that took eight years to research and write, Ehrman sketches Jesus’s transformation from a human prophet to the Son of God exalted to divine status at his resurrection. Only when some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him after his death—alive again—did anyone come to think that he, the prophet from Galilee, had become God. And what they meant by that was not at all what people mean today.
Written for secular historians of religion and believers alike, How Jesus Became God will engage anyone interested in the historical developments that led to the affirmation at the heart of Christianity: Jesus was, and is, God.
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Information
Table of contents
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Divine Humans in Ancient Greece and Rome
- 2. Divine Humans in Ancient Judaism
- 3. Did Jesus Think He Was God?
- 4. The Resurrection of Jesus: What We Cannot Know
- 5. The Resurrection of Jesus: What We Can Know
- 6. The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven
- 7. Jesus as God on Earth: Early Incarnation Christologies
- 8. After the New Testament: Christological Dead Ends of the Second and Third Centuries
- 9. Ortho-Paradoxes on the Road to Nicea
- Epilogue: Jesus as God: The Aftermath
- Notes
- Scripture Index
- Subject and Author Index
- About the Author
- Also by Bart D. Ehrman
- Credits
- Copyright
- About the Publisher