Dr. Bart Ehrman Live Webinar Did Jesus Call himself God?

by Diogenesister 21 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Diogenesister

  There's a Live Webinar with Dr. Ehrman on the subject of the Divinity of Jesus. Folks will be able to put questions directly to Dr. Bart, the cost is $14.00 with the webinar covering the following topics:

  
  

  • Soon after Jesus’ death, his disciples claimed that he was God

  • What did they mean by that? Was he the One and Only God, Yahweh?

  • Did they think he was God before he died, during his public ministry?

  • Did he himself think so? Did he say so?
  

  • In this lecture, we will look at what the evidence actually tells us

  It begins at 3pm EST (8pm GMT) 7/11/21 and the Link is below.

  https://ehrman.thrivecart.com/bart-webinar/?affiliate=mythvision
  

  If you are not able to attend, thinking about the above topics covered, WHAT QUESTIONS WOULD YOU PUT TO HIM?? If I get some good ones I may be able to pass them on.
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  Nikolaus

  I would not spend a single cent on this BS.
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  slimboyfat

  I’ve read his book ‘How Did Jesus Become God?’ where he answered these questions already.

  • Soon after Jesus’ death, his disciples claimed that he was God. What did they mean by that?

  They meant he was a divine being, which was a common claim in the period, and there were degrees of divinity between humans and almighty God.

  • Was he the One and Only God, Yahweh?

  No. Paul believed that Jesus was an angel. It was later generations that elevated Jesus ultimately to the status of Jehovah God.

  • Did they think he was God before he died, during his public ministry?

  No.

  • Did he himself think so? Did he say so?
  

  No.

  I would ask Bart Ehrman if he believes Col 1:15 ‘the firstborn of all creation’, Rev 3:14 ‘the beginning of the creation of God’, and the early Christian use of Proverbs 8:22 ‘the LORD created me as the beginning of his way’, indicate that early Christians viewed Jesus as God’s first creation.
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  Anna Marina

  I would ask him why he is charging $14.00.

  (Matthew 10:7-8) . . .As you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.’ 8 Cure sick people, raise up dead persons, make lepers clean, expel demons. You received free, give free.

  
  Ask him if he will give you $14.00 for asking a question on the basis of:

  (Luke 6:38) . . .Practice giving, and people will give to you. They will pour into your laps a fine measure, pressed down, shaken together and overflowing. For with the measure that you are measuring out, they will measure out to you in return.. . .

  If he gives you $14.00 you could give it back to him.
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  slimboyfat

  He makes a point of giving his fees to charity
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  Fisherman

  People don't want to let go of error because it is embarrassing.

  “A Revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave him. “ God and the resurrected and glorified Jesus are 2 different entities according to this verse
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  Anna Marina

  So if he gives his fees to charity why does he need fees? And if he gives to charity why doesn't he do it privately? I suppose you could pay him $14.00 and ask him.

  (Matthew 6:1-4) . . .“Take good care not to practice your righteousness in front of men in order to be observed by them; otherwise you will have no reward with your Father who is in the heavens. 2 Hence when you go making gifts of mercy, do not blow a trumpet ahead of you, just as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be glorified by men. Truly I say to you, They are having their reward in full. 3 But you, when making gifts of mercy, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing, 4 that your gifts of mercy may be in secret; then your Father who is looking on in secret will repay you.

  
  
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  Earnest

  I was quite happy to pay what he asked and found the talk worthwhile. The subject was "Did Jesus Think He Was God?" and he approached the question from an historical rather than a theological standpoint. In other words, he did not address the theological question whether Jesus is God but the historical question whether that is what Jesus thought.

  He first established that the gospels are historical documents which were written in the first century, but that with all historical documents we have to determine what is fact and what is the opinion of the author. He then considered the four gospels, Acts, the writings of Paul, and whatever (oral or written) reports they relied on when recording what Jesus said.

  He asserted that it is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus claims to be God. He suggested John 8:58, 59 and John 10:30, 31 were both instances when the Jews thought Jesus was claiming divinity, and also mentioned Thomas' "My Lord and my God" response in John 20:28. So he thinks Jesus claims divinity in the gospel of John.

  But then he says, what about the other historical documents, all of which were written before John's gospel. None of them have Jesus claiming divinity, or even implying it to the extent that the Jews would stone him for blasphemy. He says from an historical viewpoint this doesn't make sense. Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, Paul all report various things that Jesus said, but they don't report him claiming or suggesting that he is God. It is inconceivable that out of all the historical documents only one reports something of such importance. For this reason he concludes that Jesus neither said nor thought he was God or divine, and that John created those scenes to express his own theology.

  Whether or not you agree with Bart Ehrman, remember that this is looking at the evidence as an historian and weighing the documents in the same way an historian would weigh any other historical documents to determine whether they were true or not.

  SBF : As he was talking about how Jesus viewed himself I did not ask the question on the view of early Christians. However, he did compare John 1 and Genesis 1 (which both start "In the beginning ...") and linked "the Word" with "God said ..." which showed the Word was an agent of creation. Then, again, that was John expressing his theology.
  
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  Anna Marina

  Sounds informative
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  Disillusioned JW

  A historical Jesus of the NT probably never existed (I now think that the idea of Jesus most likely started out a cosmic Christ myth), but if he did he was probably as Earnest describes Ehrman's current view of a historical Jesus.

  That which is Christianity possibly started out as Chrestianity; see http://cista.net/Origins-of-Chrestianity/sites.google.com/site/originsofchristianity/introduction.html and the other pages of that site. According to the site, the oldest known copies of the NT originally said (as transliterated into the English alphabet) "IS Chrest" and had a horizontal bar over "IS" (which allowed readers to interpret IS as Isis or Iesous [Jesus] according to their preference). See http://cista.net/Origins-of-Chrestianity/sites.google.com/site/originsofchristianity/syncretism/a-chronology-of-chrest-chrestian-christ.html and http://cista.net/Origins-of-Chrestianity/sites.google.com/site/originsofchristianity/christianity/how-christianity-subverted-archaeology-and-historiography.html . The latter page has photographs of Codex Sinaiticus showing that the '... Greek "H" (in English "E") has been scratched to become "I" - the "eta" ofChrest became "iota" to read Christ.'

  This information is a huge revelation (in a nonsupernatural sense) and interestingly an atheist author in a publication in the late 1800s said that the Christians were originally called Chrestians!