When Did Jesus Become God?
The Debate between Bart Ehrman and Michael Bird
Dr. Bob Stewart (NOBTS) has put together the proceedings of the debate I did with Bart Ehrman into a remarkably accessible and enjoyable volume.
When Did Jesus Become God? A Christological Debate Available 25 October 2022!
How did early Christians come to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the divine Son of God? This is the central question in this book. When Did Jesus Become God? is a transcribed conversation between Bart Ehrman and Michael Bird, with a helpful historiographic introduction by Robert Stewart that helps readers understand the conclusions reached by Ehrman and Bird.
Ehrman contends that neither Jesus himself nor the apostles believed that Jesus was divine during Jesus’ life; it was only after Jesus was crucified and the apostles began to have visions and revelations that they became convinced that Jesus was a godlike figure who was sent by God. Over an extended period of time, the early church solidified its belief that Jesus was “God”—first, with an inventive claim that Jesus was exalted to divinity, then later by seeing him as a preexistent angel become human. Bird disagrees. Based on different historiographic criteria and different readings of Scripture, he asserts that Jesus himself claimed to be the divine Son during his lifetime and that many of the apostles believed Jesus to be identified with God’s own prerogatives and identity. In Bird’s account of the early church, Jesus was the preexistent Son of God from the beginning, who then became human, exercised the role of Israel’s Messiah, and was exalted as God the Father’s vice-regent.
In Mark 13:14-19 it has the destruction of the Temple followed immediately by "days of distress" which then mercifully get "cut short" (v. 20). Then "in those days, following that distress" there are signs in the sky and then "At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds" (v. 26). These events are all in an immediate sequence, with constant emphasis on it all happening "at that time" and immediately after the Temple's fall. Is this in your opinion evidence that Mark 13 has the final apocalypse happening just after the predicted destruction of the Temple. If so, wouldn't this indicate a failed eschatonic prophecy or was there never really an estimated time for the apocalypse?
I've heard some people suggest that the word ‘generation’ genea could be translated as ‘nation’ or ‘race’ rather than ‘generation’. But there is only one other occurrence in the gospels where this could be the reading—in Luke 16.8. Such a view also proposes that, in these verses, we have a confused mixture of predictions about the near and the distant future, which suggests Jesus didn’t really know what he was talking about, or the disciples didn’t, or the gospel writers didn’t—or all three. More seriously, it has made not a few scholars conclude that Jesus thought his return would be within a generation, and that he was clearly wrong—he was a failed apocalyptic prophet, and the writers of the NT tried (unsuccessfully) to cover up the fact. Any help would be much appreciated.
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/12/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet/
https://bible.markedward.red/p/the-imminent-end-in-new-testament-and.html